Rei's Deal (Emotions? No Emotions?)

[Tumbling Down]

Me: I think Rei's emotionless because she's not a real human. I mean she's a clone

Friend: No, she has emotions, like when she blushed, or when she slapped Shinji. She's just been isolated for most of her life.

I'm taking this to the experts. You guys are the experts, right?

[Jayfive]

She has emotions, but she doesn't understand them.

[Tumbling Down]

She has emotions, but she doesn't understand them.

Because she's not human or because she hasn't spent much time around humans?

[NemZ]

No, she isn't emotionless. She just doesn't understand her own feelings.

She absolutely is human, but she's been raised in an odd manner and half her soul is elsewhere.

SPOILER: Show

For more info on Rei's personality look here
or here for more about the basis for her odd behavior
or maybe here to learn more about that whole part of her soul is missing thing

[BlueBasilisk]

Rei has feelings and emotions, she's just very emotionally constipated and doesn't really understand how to use them or how to relate to people. When Shinji tears open her entry plug to check on her, she apologizes because she doesn't "know what to say or feel at a time like this."

Rei just needs to build relationships so she can learn to deal with her own feelings.

[Vikocho]

It's been mentioned a few times i guess, both in NGE and Rebuild timeline that Rei's soul is somewhere else... But taking her role in EOE, it's giving me doubts thus i can't say for sure

Perhaps due to this 'lacking' of soul that makes her can't exert emotions properly, even though she's still capable of feeling those emotions

That or she's just awkwardly raised by the big man Gendo

Out of topic:

SPOILER: Show

Rei from the alternate universe in episode 26 is cute as hell

[/spoiler]

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Oh, she absolutely has emotions. She's just not very good at expressing them, or doesn't understand them fully.

I'm taking this to the experts. You guys are the experts, right?

SPOILER: Show

[Ornette]

It's been touched upon in countless threads, but some of the more focus on her emotions you can read further in a couple of analysis:

http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/13033/A-Comparison-of-Rei-Ayanami-to-Frankensteins-Monster/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/3774/How-I-Came-To-Know-Rei/ (An old analysis written by Reichu)
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/14136/Reis-Upbringing-Vs-Kaworus/ (A nature vs nuture thread, one of many)

[Grand Duke of Yashima]

I think Reichu's analysis is pretty insightful. Rei Ayanam's inner struggle is a matter of identity and who gets to define who and what she is. While this is true in some way for most of the characters in EVA, her inner conflict with her identity is complicated by not only the heavy "template" that Gendo has placed on her but also with her prior incarnations.

Without regurgitating a lot of what's already out there, Rei's ultimate struggle is to be able to define herself for herself. Yes, its true that she's a "fragment" of Lillith, just as it's true that she's a "fragment" of Yui Ikari also. Each one of the incarnations of Rei (I, II & III) is also a "fragment" of something larger, but she's not complete and that gives her a very unsettling and insecure feeling. In the manga, she monologues about being "Made of Straw" in that she's a construct made by men but not equivalent to human, yet inside she struggles if she wants to actually be human or not. EoE's conclusion allows her to find that victory, to unify the components of herself together, and then to define them as herself as she sees it (hence taking off the mask of Lillith and revealing Rei inside). It finally comes to her, but at a huge cost.

For her emotions, the clone issue is irrelevant. She's synthetic but the soul's not, for starters. Also, if you see a clone as a "soulless" individual, even being so she can learn emotions by watching others, just like anyone else can. She's highly isolated at the first part of EoTV then becomes less so once she comes into contact with someone (Shinji) other than the three scientists who created and raised her, and this is more dramatically exhibited in Rebuild 2.22. Because of this initial period where's she's basically treated as a lab rat she has emotions but doesn't have them "mapped" correctly and so she defaults to expressionless behavior unless she's learned what to do with it, and the growth for her is how she can use her connections to others in order to fill in that map of emotions and make herself more complete and self-defined.

[Kendrix]

This whole "emotionless" thing is really overstated/ never was there to begin with.

Just read through the episode 5 script.

There are a few specific occassions where you'd expect a reaction and there isn't one (nakedness), or not an obvious one (Tells Shinji she's not afraid of the contact experient, but glances at Gendo's glasses for support and exhales in relief when the deal is over), but reactions are not something she doesn't do - she raises her head in surprise, she furrows her brows in annoyance, or when she's pissed, and in ep 17, Touji, while perceiving her as "weird", very much does expect her to get upset about having her stuff touched - which her initial expression does confirm, although her realization of Shinji's intentions quickly changes it to a blush.

Due to her limited life experience, she might not always make sense of her feelings or be fully concious of her wishes and needs, (but that is true of all of us to a lesser degree), but her creators have described her as "before every thing else [...] a bitterly unhappy young girl" and "a very sad girl", pretty much the opposite of that common "mechanicaly and emotionlessly obedient" perception.
Really, it needs to die already.


One factor here - one that would never have ocurred to me if a film hadn't sensibilized me for it - is that Rei is a girl. In our society, many don't even do it conciously anymore, but women are typically conditioned to always be smiling and pleasant, while men typically only smile when there is a specific reason. In the film, there were some ladies disguising themselves as men for some social experiment of sorts, and they really had to "deprogram" that, although they were able to, and the experience helped them with presenting themselves in business/leadership environments.
It's not that there aren't any happy or funny men around, they smile equally when there is a reason, it's more about your face's 'standby mode'. At least I didn't notice it untill it was pointed out, but if you're used to women being all smiley, it will strike you as weird when they aren't.
In our time, this is probably less perpetuated by deliberate conditioning than people just not being aware of it and copying it off their parents.

The only real attachment Rei had in her childhood is Gendo, so he was the only person she could copy her body language etc off. This is apparent in that both do their clasped hand pose, like to sit next to windows in "closed" body postures, often stand in a straight and soldierlike manner... Now Gendo is a particularly stoic and icy man, but few people think that there needs to be an "inhuman" explanation to justify the way he acts - "He lived a grim life (dead wife etc)" is enough.
Well, if you watch Rei throughout the series, she is actually more expressive than Gendo, and her life probably sucked even more.

[robersora]

Kendrix, I always love to read your posts and enjoy your seemingly extremely high level of (emotional) intelligence you are able to showcase. But this post was one of the most enlightening ones regarding Rei's character. I always kind of set her aside, but only recently I've begun to really appreciate her deep character which is equal to Asuka's, Shinji's, Misato's, Ritsuko's...

Time to become a Reifag.

I have to say, that at least in Vienna nobody ever smiles. Not even the children.

[Aether]

Time to become a Reifag.

I think "Reitard" might be a better fit.

As to the topic: In volume 3 of the manga(which I received due to a shipping error), albeit not really "canon", there's a little commentary in the back(or front) discussing this. Again, it's not canon, but it basically says what's been said here over, and over, and over again.

Maybe it's just my interpretation but it doesn't seem like much more than memories(rather lacking ones at that) are implanted into the clones when "activated", everything else is basically left to her to figure out. The one we see throughout most of the series has been around somewhere between a year and five years. She seemed, dare I say it... lost, in a way.

Oh, I can't stop it, here it comes!

She was just a two dimensional creature, lost in our three dimensional anime world, longing for a purpose.

So... she's a drawing.

Exactly.