Would you pilot an eva?

[M.Mega]

Let's say you were given the choice to pilot an Eva. Would you accept or decline?

Personally, I wouldn't. As cool as it would be to kick ass in a giant robot thing, all the pain that would come from physical combat and the large amount of stress from not performing as well as you hope may not make it worth while.

[Zoop]

That really depends.
Just pilot one for a time for kicks? Sure.

Or do you want me to put myself in Shinji's shoes? Most probably not.

Mari usually seems to have a lot of fun piloting her eva, even if/when it hurts like hell.
Also the "curse of eva" from rebuild essentially makes you immortal, that *may* be a bonus too.

So it largely depends on circumstances.

[MirrorUniverseAsuka]

Would the curse freeze you at your current age or would adults regress to teens?

[Reichu]

I want to BE an Eva, wild and free.

Piloting an Eva is what the kids call "problematic" these days. They're giant people that may or may nor have your dead mom inside them, created and enslaved via highly invasive cybernetic modification by a shady secret organization with the intention of forcefully directing human destiny according to the vision of religious nutjobs. Being casually interested in the prospect of "piloting" an Eva is the same thing as saying "oh boy, I can't wait to invade another person's body and use technology to impose my will upon their nervous system while they remain trapped inside a red ball, screaming silently!" You're complicit in the worst kind of slavery. Creating a slave in a lab does not make it okay.

Now that said, we don't completely know what's going on with the NTE Evas, but they're still referred to as "human" (both a 'special' one like Eva-01 and a 'normal' one like Eva-02), so yeah.

Of course, the entire idea of sapient entities being enslaved as "pilotable" weapons is a tantalizing thing to explore in sci-fi, and I kind of wish Eva explored it more... I wonder if it's Anno's own failure to give the idea sufficient enough weight that we have fans pulling a Kensuke and glamorizing the concept even after they know what's going on.

[Rei IV]

No because I'm of of the opinion being in an Eva takes a psychological (maybe even physical?) toll on one's self. Getting in/piloting an Eva multiple times must have some unseen effects/consequences as well. Also what Reichu said (funny enough, I would've NEVER thought about the Evas being essentially slaves until she brought it up. You learn something new everyday.).

[child of Lilith]

Being the Eva (so long as you're free to do as you please) would be better then piloting it. Though if you did pilot it you'd likely become the Eva in the long run anyway so. . .

[天使 | Nyo | 天使]

Personally, for me, I would LOVE to do such a cool thing (basically I'm like Kensuke in a sense, out of jealousy more than anything), however I believe my emotions and mental state would probably affect the piloting of an Eva DRASTICALLY (after all, the nerves are directly linked to the Evas.) It would take A LOT of work to prepare myself for something so...big? I dunno, just having the fate of the world on your shoulders is something that I REALLY don't think really anybody could keep themselves stable over since we all people crumble and usually break down under such heavy pressure.

Basically, being a human being would get in the way, but in the end, I guess Shinji and the rest of the pilots are all human too, so it CAN be done. Who knows.