Is Rei actually 10/11

[orcot]

abouth the "He was completely dissolved in LCL, including his brain." thing
If the neurons in his brain are dissolved as is his entire brain we even have Misato walking around in it (the actual physical stuff) and he can remember have a self image but can not interact he also had a pattern sepia soul that they could sort of interact with.


Abouth the "stay with a single decision"
You claimed Rei's memories are backed up and that is the reason Rei doesn't need to learn to speak and do potty training etc.

Another alternative is that Gendo is perfectly capable to feed baby Rei a 5 year old soul so that she now has those basic skills.
Another alternative is that Yui had a talk with Lilith and seduced her to explore the world and interact with her child lilin and gave her the basics. It explains Rei's intrest and why Rei knew german (Yui did) Sure some of the memories got lost or locked away to experience a more normal life I guess(Unit 01 was still attached to lilith at the time and I don't think you could extrat lilith soul against her wishes [without creating third impact])
All these examples are just to show that theirs alternative ways how Rei got her memories and the best we could do is say we don't know.

Kaworu knew less then you think. He knew what he was, in the manga he mentiones the death sea scrolls so he might have read them. Rei knew more then she tought if Kaworu remained her of it.

Soulless doesn't mean dead in the NGE universe look at the reiqurium the spare Rei's aren't looking in random directions most are focussed on the people that came looking at them neither are they expressionless they rather respond well to the external stimuli.

to IgRAzm
I agree Rei III merged with both Rei II and Rei I but Rei I itself was split between Rei II and unit 00 , So if I say Rei III is the merger of Rei II and unit 00 this includes all of Rei I but also any experiences unit 00 might have had, Correct?

Rei, I believe, is better understood, and the process of her receiving the memories after dying has to be artificial because she didn't know what happened

it is the has that botheres me I have 2 alternatives allready, that has should be a could and that's just to say we don't really know.

and she perhaps begins to understand that he didn't treat her the way she deserved to be treated,

In the series Gendo let her clean out her appartment and then she mostly just sits on a stool waiting for third impact to start? Shinji never says a positive thing to her and activly avoids her, Rei also does not choose Shinji over Gendo in the series, the scene you refer to was from the series.

Gendo and Rei's relation is honnestly weird and in suspence of disbelieve (if I had to rewrite a 3 second part of the series I would have a scene where Gendo ejects Yui's entry plug during her contact experiment with another 1.5 seconds I would have Gendo sitting in LCL cradling Yui's plugsuit copying Misato with Shinji and with a other 2 seconds have Gendo stare at unit 01 still attached to Lilith) but that's fan fic stuff and mods don't like that.

I also agree Naoko worked on unit 00 and unit 01 but it was Yui who was in charge, but she never worked or met Rei (until she was apparently 5).

You are right that Fuyutsuki did not "create" Rei, deliverd comes closer I think. I don't think it's a figure of speech as it is now my turn to say who else would have done it. Gendo isn't qualified, Naoko wasn't involved theirs potential for a small group of unnamed technisians but Fuyutsuki was potentialy capable and said that he did it. He most certainly has not any sort of parentel relationship with Rei and the same goes for Rei.

and I don't see how their worldviews are similar
episode 6 (16:23) why does Rei work for NERV (pilot the eva)? Because she is bonded to it and bond to all people I have nothing else, why does Fuyutsuki work for NERV? episode 21 (15:10) Gendo implies Fuyutsuki's reasons are to create a future for humankind. These are more similar then anyone else including Gendo's nihilistic views.
Their both also right hands of Gendo.
The book that Rei is reading involves genetics and philosophy and could be a reference to Yui's study field of metaphysical biology but that was also the field the Fuyutsuki teached.
Fuyutsuki is rather cold but has the best intrest of humanity in mind, the same could be said of Rei. I think their world views are quit similar.

Now I've written all this and didn't even mentioned Rei's age :/

So again I think theirs no defined age for Rei and it's mostly a point of view.

[Berserker]

abouth the "He was completely dissolved in LCL, including his brain." thing
If the neurons in his brain are dissolved as is his entire brain we even have Misato walking around in it (the actual physical stuff) and he can remember have a self image but can not interact he also had a pattern sepia soul that they could sort of interact with.

What are you even talking about? Shinji was fully dissolved until he came out of entry plug splashing LCL, naked and lied unconscious, Misato came rushing and hugged him. Until that the only thing that they were able to retrieve was his plug suit.

Abouth the "stay with a single decision"
You claimed Rei's memories are backed up and that is the reason Rei doesn't need to learn to speak and do potty training etc.

It seems like you didn't understand a single thing i said. Rei I's memory was created. She was taught those simple things. Her memories had back up which later got injected in Rei II. Rei II's memories were also reserved, which later got injected in Rei III.

So again I think theirs no defined age for Rei and it's mostly a point of view.

Another change of decision. You already said you agree with Kendrix about the age which is 4-6 for Rei I, 14 for both Rei II and III. And this is the 4th time mentioning this. Just read Kendrix's post if anyone still have question about the age.

[Zusuchan]

I just want to clarify that Rei absolutely doesn't have the entirety of Lilith's soul, but only a part of it. Remember that when Rei levitates towards Lilith in EoE, Lilith seems to say "Welcome home". Rei is a part of Lilith, but not Lilith-there's a very important distinction there.

[Line]

^ Despite not being as good in the Eva lore as many of others here, it's the point of view I share, though it maybe more of a emotional bia from my part, than a solid science fact engraved in stone.

[IgRAzm]

If you take Rei I's soul as whole Lilith's soul and soul capable of storaging memory, then it's entirely contradictory as Rei I or Rei III didn't have a single memory of Lilith whatsoever, but Kaworu did as he's obviously the vessel of Adam's entire soul. On the contrary, if soul's incapable of storaging memory and Rei I had Lilith's whole soul, then it makes sense on the case of Rei not having any memory of Lilith, but it's incorrect as Kaworu doesn't have Adam's brain while having Adam's whole memory.

I take position of the latter concept, with souls incapable of storaging memory the way brain does. I don't agree with that it's a plot hole because Kaworu's background and even the way Angels have their memories formed is not known. For all we know Kaworu might be artificially created, like Rei seems to be. He might also be an Angel who has total control of the AT-Field, like all the rest, who just copied a person for the form it wanted to take for itself in our dimension and learned of humans through other Angels (ex. Leliel and Armisael could speak well enough, Ireul could work with information and hack computers). We have gotten hints that Angels have their own Dirac Sea, where they seem to, to some extent, change their bodies based on the information received by their kin visiting Earth, for ex. Armisael taking form of an AT-Field penetrator after Arael dying to the Spear of Longinus, while Arael itself was focused on obtaining all the information it could, apparently about one of the Evas and its pilot. What was the transition between Armi and Kaworu, exactly? A lot of people assume he was growing all this time at SEELE, but we don't have a confirmation for this, he could be also inactive until Armi's death, hybernating in the Dirac Sea the same way all the other Angels did. A lot of assumptions, yes, but they explain to an extent all the weirdness that is Kaworu's available knowledge, which wouldn't make sense if he was really on the level of Rei in knowing what he is and what he should be doing with his life.

What I was trying to also answer with my theory of souls having marks on them was the influence of Lilith's soul on Rei. I think it's to ignore a really important aspect of her character to not see what connects her to Lilith. Memories don't, alright, but she certainly was aware of this inhuman presence in her soul, that made her question her identity so much. I think it's reasonable to say she also was being called to Lilith, to reunite with it, perhaps constantly. When you know what influence souls have on identity, it really turns the table when you think why exactly Rei really pilots. Orcot's idea what she does it for humanity's sake does have some merit, but I like to think about it as also her getting reconnected with her other half that was ripped off her. The phrase that she has nothing else is more literal for her than it could be for any of her comrades. Unlike her fellow pilots who have mothers and feel comforted in their Evas, Rei is deep down scared of the only mother she has; the only comfort that mother is eager to give to her is the comfort of nothingness, of destuction of her very identity. While Evangelion is purpose, its the only meaning of her life, and its acceptance of a side of herself inside of it, that is probably insane and willing to attack the people she cares about, but it's still something Rei is willing to deal with in order to do what is right. And she has a connection with all the people, for real, through her soul that got birth to them. She feels good to do something for humanity's sake, to her weirdly it is actually personal, as she cannot have an ego in the usual understanding of the word, she has the mother-child connection with everybody in the world. And on top of it all, mentally she is less than fourteen. That's a crazy amount of tension to live up to. And she has no idea how to value all these things all these people she is supposed to be connected to, value healthily. Because she was raised by a guy who didn't like the idea of relationships and who thought neglecting her was the best thing he could do (that is if he even thought of it this much in the parent-daugther sort of way, and not just as representation of his wife returning to him).

Basically, the question of Lilith's body being soulless or not soulless.

The point that complicates things is, we don't know the exact details of how soulless creatures should behave in comparison to the same creatures with a soul. Like orcot replied to Berserker, it isn't necesserily a "dead" state, Rei clones do respond to telling them their name, which probably means they have Rei's memories already instilled on them (creepy). Why are they so happy? Maybe Ritsuko has hormones of happiness getting pumped in this LCL, who knows. I think smiles were meant to reveal the loss of humanity, sort of like Armi's little smile, or Rei I inside the Eva's crazy smile. The point is they can express certain emotions at the very least (but it doesn't seem they have a real conscience, the question of their awareness isn't really presented from other point of view than Ritsuko's, while Gendo sees them as tools and thats it), and they act like living beings to an extent.

Why I think Lilith being handicapped this way makes sense is simple - thus far all the FAR descended creatures who could manipulate AT-Fields needed a soul. Rei could manipulate her own when she was Rei III, which makes me think it might have to do with her soul being incomplete until then. Could be what Gendo intended to merge her soul back together for his final stages of the plan, and the merging that actually happened was just a less appealing to him way that ultimately did that same thing in the end? Maybe Rei could initiate Instrumentality for Gendo even with incomplete soul, she simply surpressed her abilities while they weren't needed? The only times when she might've been projecting AT-Field were when she piloted the Eva, she needed to do some bonus work that normally the soul of a parent would be doing I believe. So, while Rei might be above regular mortals, she still grew up like a human being for multiple years; her will (which I take as the strength of a body in manipulating an AT-Field) couldn't possibly compare to a god, so to have Lilith completely inactive even without the spear, the way it is, it's better for it to have none of the soul. Adding to that, we don't know what its mask that SEELE placed on it does, it could've very well been the restraint that SEELE needed when they experimented on Lilith, which actually suppressed it back then, and which NERV left where it was even after salvaging Lilith's soul - if they removed it, SEELE might get to know that something about it had changed. SEELE didn't know about Rei's existence, which was the whole point of Gendo's scheming. They perhaps assumed Lilith's soul got into Unit-01, but more likely Keel knew that it was Yui in there.

I forgot about the "welcome home" thing. Well, Rei was right next to Lilith in that moment, just underneath its head. In just a second this chest mouth thing opened and consumed her. It could've been that Rei already started giving away her soul in that moment and Lilith started waking up. Maybe "I'm home" signified Rei spreading out her AT-Field and losing her ego borders in the process. Passing through the door, so to say, with doors to homes often being associated with AT-Fields in Eva. Which are sort of like an aura, a couple of meters around the person, at least it can be, for ex. Kaworu. And actually, the area at which Lilith got active is about the size of the Core, which is the range at which Rei should be able to operate, based on her words in her death scene. Lilith never acted before this instance, so it still seems to me that it could be soulless.

[orcot]

@ Zusuchan

I tought it was Rei who said welcome home.
Is she even speaking to Rei or lilith? Rei had just consumed the soul of adam (Gendo's hand) and she was abouth to merge lilith and adam. In my interpretation it is Rei/lilith talking to adam.
Wasn't the whole point of lilith (fruit of knowledge) decending to earth to consume adam (fruit of life)?

@ beserker
the goop was Shinji's original matter regardless Shinji was more or less sentient whilst not having a brain (he could however not observe the real world)

It seems like you didn't understand a single thing i said. Rei I's memory was created.

When do they say that? unless they say so we don't know.

Another change of decision

Theirs a valid explenation to claim Rei as perhaps 1 month old, theirs a valid explenation to claim Rei is a couple of years old, theirs a valid claim (that kendrix made) that she is 14 years old theirs also a valid claim that she is billion of years old. It's a thesseus ship/grandfather's axe problem.

@ IgRAzm
I think your wrong they did not respond to calling her Rei, they respond to the audio stimuli a noice generater would have attracted them just as much as calling them Rei I think. I also would not call them happy for that they seem stuck in their way. The Rei inside unit 00 is also smiling but it seems to freak out when you call it Rei, because it want's to be it's own thing. That's what made unit 00 go beserk the 2 times first time Rei II tried to convince it that it was a part of her with unit 00 freaking out because it want's to be it's own thing (she deals with it by saying that she is bonded with it and all of humanity a compromise unit 00 seems to accept), the second time it came looking who was in the entry plug and again it went beserk afther Shinji called it Rei. Funny thing is Rei is probably a apt name for the soul in unit 00. Just don't call it that.

[Zusuchan]

orcot wrote:
I tought it was Rei who said welcome home.
Is she even speaking to Rei or lilith? Rei had just consumed the soul of adam (Gendo's hand) and she was abouth to merge lilith and adam. In my interpretation it is Rei/lilith talking to adam.
Wasn't the whole point of lilith (fruit of knowledge) decending to earth to consume adam (fruit of life)?

Rei levitates up to Lilith, she says "I'm home" and a black screen appears with a white text saying "Welcome home". This is most likely Lilith communicating with Rei in whatever way. (The black screen/white text is used again when GNR communicates with Shinji prior to 3I, so it has been used for communication between an Angel and someone "lower" already). Rei hadn't consumed Adam's soul-you're forgetting about Kaworu, who also had Adam's soul. The embryo Gendo'd installed in his hand may have had the soul of Adam and most likely had, but it'd be a similar situation to Rei/Lilith-the embryo would only have a part of Adam's soul. There's no reason why Rei/Lilith would be speaking to Adam either-there's precisely zero evidence showing to that and the scene itself seems to make it clear that it's Rei and Lilith communicating.

And no, the whole point of Lilith coming to Earth wasn't to consume Adam-the fact that both ended up on Earth was a colossal accident, not anything else. Admittedly, this comes a lot of a PlayStation 2 game with questionable theories, but so far there's no reason to presume Lilith entered Earth specifically to screw with Adam in whatever way. Adam and Lilith even kind of get together in a way, seeing as how Kaworu and Rei have joined Lilith and Adam and are now one deity-seemingly with Rei/Lilith as the more important one, but well...I don't know. Trying to make sense of Eva's metaphysics in a more than intuitive way is hard, man. (Btw, this is a cool thread that comes up with some pretty nice theories that have some stuff to do with what we're discussing here: thread/20093/Kaworu-and-SEELE-Gendos-Plans-Angel-Rebirth/)

Also, Rei can't be billions of years old. You seem to assume that since Rei's soul is the partial soul of Lilith, then therefore Rei could be argued to be billions of years old, but that's not true, because that would argue Rei is Lilith, but she's not-she's a part of Lilith, in a way, but in no way is she Lilith actually. Also, in biological terms, Rei is 14 years old, absolutely and exactly how Gendo and Co. managed to make that happen while also retaining her memories and making sure she's not really a 8-year-old mentally or whatever is a very different question and while it's certainly worth asking, it doesn't show whether or not her biological age really is 14 or not. In philosophical terms, of course, you can go ahead and think something totally different if you wish, but that's also a very different question, since it relates to the world of personal interpretation instead of to the world of facts.

IgRAzm wrote:
For all we know Kaworu might be artificially created, like Rei seems to be. He might also be an Angel who has total control of the AT-Field, like all the rest, who just copied a person for the form it wanted to take for itself in our dimension and learned of humans through other Angels (ex. Leliel and Armisael could speak well enough, Ireul could work with information and hack computers).

Kaworu was artificially created most likely, yeah. Remember that he held communication with SEELE after all and most likely grew up with them. For whatever reasons, SEELE was alright with him being more "in tune" with his Angelic nature. Why? Shrug. Maybe they lied to him about their intentions and made sure that Kaworu would reveal himself easily. There are also some theories that Kaworu did have some sort of communication with the other deceased Angels (and that the lake conversation in ep. 24 is an instance of this) and because of that he's more obviously Angelic than Rei.

An idea I had is that Lilith had so little of her soul left and she had been experimented on so much that she'd become so weak so as to have very little capability of doing anything. I like your idea too of course, but I'm not sure where her soul went then. Rei can't possibly have all of Lilith's soul.

Minor unrelated nitpicks:

Because she was raised by a guy who didn't like the idea of relationships and who thought neglecting her was the best thing he could do (that is if he even thought of it this much in the parent-daugther sort of way, and not just as representation of his wife returning to him).

I just want to clarify that in my viewpoint Gendo did view Rei as a daughter of sorts. He's just extremely scared of emotional relationships and pushes people away constantly, perhaps also to prove his own worthlessness and evil to himself. In ep. 21, he offhandedly comments about how he's used to being hated-his mental state is not in a good place and while he arguably may have gotten better through Yui, her leaving his world just made things even worse. Gendo is essentially a grown-up Shinji without the wish to have people love him.

SEELE didn't know about Rei's existence, which was the whole point of Gendo's scheming. They perhaps assumed Lilith's soul got into Unit-01, but more likely Keel knew that it was Yui in there.

I'm pretty sure they knew. It would be quite hard to just ignore a pilot of an Eva. It's not necessarily information that needs to be hidden, either. Rei was a way of initiating Third Impact, ultimately, and SEELE is a fan of that.

[Kendrix]

In my take it's definitely Lillith who says that (the black text is used perhaps to communicate a "voice of god" like effect), but that doesn't necessarily mean a chunk of her remained within her original body, the "voice" could also be "coming" from Rei's own subconcious

[Berserker]

Kaworu was artificially created most likely, yeah.

If by artificial you mean an unknown human making contact with a being of light, progenitor of angels, fruit of life bearing Adam, resulting in a birth of a bishonen jesus out of thin air at that exact moment which happens to have the whole soul of Adam and the original body of Adam being reduced to an embryo while a huge so called impact just evaporated whole Antarctica; then yes. It's stated Kaworu was born at that very moment of 2nd impact.

When do they say that? unless they say so we don't know.

Throughout the whole series, movies do we ever see a single moment where someone utters a single word about FAR? Do they exactly mention how Rei was created at the first place? Does anyone mutters, "hey,look there goes our space jesus who has the whole soul of Adam?" These were all hinted through somehow or something. All we had to do was to open our eyes and decipher these. I already pointed out why that's the most possible way for Rei I to learn all those things, including hint. There's no point reiterating those again, unless you all want to agree on Rei "consuming" some random 5 year old kid's soul or some other absurd ways to go.

I don't agree with that it's a plot hole because Kaworu's background and even the way Angels have their memories formed is not known.

And yet, Kaworu's the only one to recognize Lilith as Lilith before anyone ever could figure out. Even if SEELE knew that, they obviously made it classified among themsleves. Even again,if they taught Kaworu that the giant in the LCL pond was Adam, there's no possible way for him to recognize Lilith if he didn't have his memory from his previous incarnation according to your POV. And if they actually revealed everything to him, then either Kaworu's a bigass actor or an idiot who knew it was Lilith, forgot everything and recollected everything as soon as he saw the marshmellow giant.
I don't have anything else to say. Continue with all your imagination you can possibly come up with.

[Kendrix]

Clearly the Angels can sense the seeds of life somehow (hence why they all make straight for Tokyo-3, except for Gaghiel who happened to spot the real Adam by pure dumb luck) but whatever sense they have registers Adam and Lillith as similar enough that you could only tell the difference up close;

Kaworu is the only one who actually got close enough to take a good look; there's nothing to suggest that the others couldn't have realized the difference

And no, the whole point of Lilith coming to Earth wasn't to consume Adam-the fact that both ended up on Earth was a colossal accident, not anything else. Admittedly, this comes a lot of a PlayStation 2 game with questionable theories, but so far there's no reason to presume Lilith entered Earth specifically to screw with Adam in whatever way.

Actually, [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn6med28mqg"]do check out some recent translation[/url]. In the "classified information" it's stated to be just an accident but in Rei's scenario it's implied that what appeared to be an accident was actually a deliberate act by Lillith (something which of course only Lillith herself knows); She disagreed with the plan apparently. Fun way to screw with anyone who expected her to be a caring mother godess.
I imagine she'd get on great with Yui; I picture them trash talking the FAR's plan over tea while Rei sits in the corner shaking her head about how her gene donors are both jerks.

[Berserker]

Clearly the Angels can sense the seeds of life somehow (hence why they all make straight for Tokyo-3, except for Gaghiel who happened to spot the real Adam by pure dumb luck) but whatever sense they have registers Adam and Lillith as similar enough that you could only tell the difference up close;

Then what's the reason behind Sachiel, Shamsiel, Ramiel trying to intercept Geofront? There wasn't a single being bearing fruit of life in Tokyo-3 until Adam's embryo and Kaworu came up. You can say every angel after Gaghiel came because they sensed Adam's embryo. But that can't be it cause clearly their goal was to make contact with Adam as in the giant in geofront that they thought of was Adam, so that they can initiate their version of 2nd impact. And Kaworu went straight up to terminal dogma, not Gendo's hand.

[BusterMachine4]

Then what's the reason behind Sachiel, Shamsiel, Ramiel trying to intercept Geofront? There wasn't a single being bearing fruit of life in Tokyo-3 until Adam's embryo and Kaworu came up. You can say every angel after Gaghiel came because they sensed Adam's embryo. But that can't be it cause clearly their goal was to make contact with Adam as in the giant in geofront that they thought of was Adam, so that they can initiate their version of 2nd impact. And Kaworu went straight up to terminal dogma, not Gendo's hand.

I think it's generally accepted that the Angels were mistaking Lilith for Adam, like Kaworu did in Episode 24. Given that they were both seeds of life, their bio-signatures were probably very similar, and hard to tell from a distance. And as for the infamous Episode 24 plot hole, the generally accepted explanation is that Kaworu believed only some of Adam's flesh was in Gendo's hand. Since the largest bio-signature was coming from Terminal Dogma, he thought that was where the rest of Adam's body was, only to find out it was actually Lilith.

[Kendrix]

^^^^ That's basically what I was trying to say; Sorry if it came off convoluted

[Zusuchan]

Berserker wrote:
If by artificial you mean an unknown human making contact with a being of light, progenitor of angels, fruit of life bearing Adam, resulting in a birth of a bishonen jesus out of thin air at that exact moment which happens to have the whole soul of Adam and the original body of Adam being reduced to an embryo while a huge so called impact just evaporated whole Antarctica; then yes. It's stated Kaworu was born at that very moment of 2nd impact.

I meant 'artificial' in the sense that it wasn't a natural process, there was a lot of scientific poking around and process when it came to Kaworu's creation. It's not like Rei could exactly be argued to have been created naturally, either, and Kaworu's creation was something intended by SEELE most likely, so...

Kendrix wrote:
In the "classified information" it's stated to be just an accident but in Rei's scenario it's implied that what appeared to be an accident was actually a deliberate act by Lillith (something which of course only Lillith herself knows); She disagreed with the plan apparently. Fun way to screw with anyone who expected her to be a caring mother godess.

Gah. Sorry. I had no idea about this. In this case, Lilith is a strange asshole. I'll have to check this out sometime. Then again, the game also has some information that can't possibly be true within the universe itself, so I'm going to have to investigate further into this whole thing in order to understand whether Lilith may truly have done that as well in NGE. There's also a statement to the contrary in the wiki, stating that Lilith's Moon colliding with the Earth was an accident after all...


Hey y'all: considering Kaworu's plans, do check out the thread I linked to earlier on: it's elucidating and intriguing in equal measures and features some grade-A theorizing. Whether you consider it to be mostly fanwank or not is up to you, but it's got new viewpoints.

[Kendrix]

There's also a statement to the contrary in the wiki, stating that Lilith's Moon colliding with the Earth was an accident after all...

The source this is based on comes from the same game tho.
Again if its something only Lillith knows it's not gonna be in the files that you can hack into when you play as Kaji.

It's a fun layer really, "ah, the creators couldn't agree either & also sabotaged each other", it's like a cosmic version of "who says your parents had their shit together" or the feud between SEELE & Gendo.

Granted I'm very inclined to accept this because I've always read Lillith & Rei as separate entities even when there was not enough (translated) info for this to be anything more than opinion or semantics; For the longest time the prevailing paradigm was that she's basically Lillith with amnesia.

It would be interesting to see Rei discuss this information with Kaworu. Adam got kind of screwed over didn't he? It'd be bad enough if the "we have to fight to the death situation" was the product of a tragic accident though at least in that case it's no one's fault, neither side can be blamed too much for fighting for their lives - but someone deliberately created it. A lot of ppl might be resentful or becry the unfairness, but Kaworu is very abstract-philosophical, always driven more by ideals than simple self-interest. He seems to feel some melancholia about that his fate was sort of pre-determined (this is how he introduces himself to Shinji: "I'm another of the ones whose fates were predetermined". He seeks out Shinji & Rei in part because he feels they're in the same boat) or at least desires freedom, so maybe he'd view it through that lens, lamenting how the karma from the past world still binds them in this one. But I can't exactly see him wishing he'd never encountered the Lillim. Perhaps he'd be bemused that the one who gave it to her children doesn't value the fruit of knowledge that much. (cut to that conversation at the end of ep 11)
Like if he was a normal human he'd be the sort that would leave behind their old life in a heartbeat if a little green man offered to take him along on his ufo.

Another possible parallel is... well, you could say that the first impact was an inside job just like the second.

[IgRAzm]

The conclusions are simple, then. Treachery is in Lilin's blood! Lilin - making the mess of things since 3 999 997 985 BC.

[orcot]

Could it be a roman catholic thing (filioque) that lilith has the ability to be multiple entities at the same time? God the father, god the son and god the spirit.
With Rei being space son? It flows nicely with the concept that the NGE universe has a creepy (but not necesairly) evil god (Lilith). The early introduction of spooky Rei (the one that teleports and watches) would be the holy spirit part but wasn't necesairly enough to be completly flesh out.

[Kendrix]

"Split" soul phenomenon doesn't seem to be unique to Rei (see poor, poor Kyoko)

Also there's not really a reason why a bit of Lillith unrelated to Rei would look like her.
So far "the forbidden fusion lets you peer through time" explanation seems the most consistent (you see a lot of those aparitions immediately before Third Impact, like when Misato & Ritsuko are killed. )

One wonders if this implies that Yui could probably also "peer through time" once she ate the S2 engine (and see alternate timelines, if they exist), though there is no specific indication.

There is that also that bit in Death that depicts Rei I as having a vision of Kaworu just before she dies. Does he get put on soul collection duty because Rei collecting 'herself' (sort of) would create a paradox? Perhaps he volunteered to save her the awkwardness.
I do think he's actually there for Gendo's last scene (ie not just a vision like when Maya sees Ritsuko), cause Gendo didn't know or care enough about Kaworu that his presence would "lower his defenses", but Kaworu was lowkey curious about him as the other recipient of Adam's power & because Shinji talked about him.
The Manga also gives Kaji a vision, perhaps implying that everyone since second impact got "collected" (and not reincarnated as normal, hence the sinking birth rate?)
Though only the manga continuity really confirms reincarnation as a thing; Though you could read something Fuyutsuki's line about the tree of life being "the source of all souls", I don'tthink there's any hard suggestion of an afterlife in the main continuity.

[Zusuchan]

Kendrix: Talking about the Lilith's Moon thing and whether or not it was an accident, I have to admit I don't find NGE2 really useful in any way. It explicitly states that it was an accident, but then also hints that it wasn't. While I'd be more inclined to believe Rei than CI, I still don't find there to be enough useful information to truly ascertain what truly happened.

Personally, I've decided that whenever I'm faced with a theory that could be true, but could also be wrong and has no true lead towards either case, the best thing to think would be rather it would add something to the plot or not. In this case, while Lilith deliberately ending up on Earth is possible and adds further credence to Reichu's "Duel of the Seeds" theory, it also doesn't need to happen. I also love the small interplay with how the Angels ofttimes act like confused children instead of malicious creatures bent on destruction. This would mean there's a certain level of failed communication between the Angels and humans; something further espoused by the fact the Lilin aren't really all that different. Misato literally calls the Angels examples of failed humanities. I like this little detail, since human relationships is probably the No.1 overarching theme of NGE/EoE along with mental health problems and this nice statement of miscommunication is something I feel personally adds to the whole deal. Whereas Lilith knowledgeably screwing up Adam's plans kind of detracts from that a bit and adds some different overtones.

But that's just a theory of mine. At the end of the day, there's no definite conclusion for either course and because of that, I can't really argue with you, though personally I feel differently.

Edit: So it has been brought to my attention that Misato does not call the Angels examples of failed humanities, but rather alternate possibilities. Furthermore, Lilith did most likely go off and end up on Earth knowingly, as her own talks can be trusted more. In terms of the thematic implications of this, I guess it could relate to male/female relationships, which we know the Angels fights have also featured elsewhere along with themes of females fighting back against aggressive males (Shamshel is likened to a man by Misato, the entire Zeruel scene). I apologize for any confusion.