Reevaluating Rei's memory

[TehDonutKing]

The general consensus here seems to be that Rei 3 has no memories of what happened to her as Rei 1 or 2, based on the fact that she doesn't remember saving Shinji.

However, think back to any time you came to conciousness after falling asleep, being knocked out, fainting, going into a coma, or going catatonic. Do you remember what happened right before? Do you remember the exact moment you fall asleep? Do you even remember what it's like to fall asleep?

Is it really so much of a stretch to say that it's the same with Rei's 2's death?
And as for the change in personality, remember that Rei 3 also has memories of Rei 1 in addition to Rei 2. And considering that Ichi probably hates Gendo for imprisoning her inside the Eva, San will too, despite Ni's love for him.

[Aozora]

I always figured Rei III had memories from her previous lives based on her anger at Gendo, loyalty to Shinji, and many of the things she says in EoTV.

[Monk Ed]

The general consensus here seems to be that Rei 3 has no memories of what happened to her as Rei 1 or 2, based on the fact that she doesn't remember saving Shinji.

The last I checked, the consensus was that Rei 3 only forgot everything since her last memory upload. I recall one happening in ep 17, not sure about any that occur later than that.

[NemZ]

I would assume that Rei 3 has all the memories of Rei 2 up to the last point at which she was 'backed up'. Rei 1's memories were not made so available.

That doesn't in any way mean she has instant recall of these memories, that they actually mean anything to her, or that she has the same emotional attachments to these memories. They are in her brain but she is well aware that the memories aren't really hers... it's probably more like something she read about, not something she did.

[Sachi]

The last I checked, the consensus was that Rei 3 only forgot everything since her last memory upload. I recall one happening in ep 17, not sure about any that occur later than that.

This. So it's generally assumed that she remembers everything up to a few days (give or take) prior to the Armisael incident. And, as Nemz pointed out, she doesn't have the same emotional attachments she seemed to have as Rei II, and she suddenly focuses her loyalty to Shinji. Why? Well, it may be because Shinji suggested it during their conversation in the hospital.

[The Abhorrent]

I suspect quite a bit of this theory will probably depend on which side of the fence you sit on for another related debate (are each of the incarnations of Rei entirely separate entities or the same soul?), but I'll just give my thoughts from the perspective the split-soul hypothesis.

The basis of this is that Rei's soul (during the majority of the series), is split into two fragments: one piece inside the body of Rei II, the other within Eva-00. Both bodies were destroyed in the same incident, and Rei's soul effectively became "whole" during the death of Rei II; this is the soul which inhabits Rei III.

As for the reason Rei III's memories are hazy at first, this can be explained by viewing her analysis during episode 25 a certain perspective: each of the fragments of Rei's soul is trying to become a single entity. Rei III has all the memories of Rei I & Rei II, but she's having trouble making sense of it all. With episode 25 implying that she hasn't got each of the fragments completely fused together (yet), she could simply be having difficulties understanding her memories as a result.

Shinji's first encounter with Rei III (which is her first appearance in that body) is probably when she's having the most difficulty. When she sees Gendo's glasses afterwards (she starts to break them and starts crying), she acknowledges that she remembers them but doesn't at the same time; she has the memories, but has difficulty understanding their significance.

Once she has it all sorted out (and going with the concurrency theory of EoE & EoTV, this would presumably be just before Gendo speaks to her), she "has" all of her memories.


The other issue which has been mentioned is Rei III's lack of emotional attachment. She's rather distant (and perhaps a tad ambivalent) towards Shinji when she first meets him (due to previously described difficulties), but isn't hostile at all. I can't recall any other interactions Shinji had with Rei III before 3I, and he may have been actively trying to avoid her after his trip down into the Chamber of Gauf.

However, it's Rei's attitude towards Gendo shows a significant change. The explanation for this is that the fragment of Rei inside Eva-00 contains the memories of what he did to her, it did go after him (and later, Ritsuko...?) during the activation experiment just before the start of the series (and when Shinji attempts to sync with Eva-00); alternatively, it could simply be Rei's (icy) anger & vindictiveness. Rei II either can't remember her reasons for hating Gendo or is simply incapable of doing so; Rei III on the other hand, has both.

[Reichu]

I'm wondering why Rei needs backups in the first place. Elsewhere in NGE, souls clearly carry 'memory data', and retrieve it on their own, without the problems that Rei seems to have. Does soul fragmentation mess this up?

[Monk Ed]

I'm wondering why Rei needs backups in the first place. Elsewhere in NGE, souls clearly carry 'memory data', and retrieve it on their own, without the problems that Rei seems to have. Does soul fragmentation mess this up?

That would raise questions about Kyoko.

The conflicting natures of Rei's body vs her soul might play a role. Her soul spent billions of years as Lilith and was then thrust forcefully into a new body without going through what might be considered the "proper" process of rebirth. Her arguably sickly appearance, the medicine she has to take, and her physical cohesion problems in EoE might be to suggest that her soul is an alien presence or ill fit within her body.

So it might be that the data is there, the soul just refuses or is unable to let the body access it or something.

[Kendrix]

I think it was confirmed somewhere that the tube-thing was memory backuping (somewhere here, needs a lot of scrolling, tough)
And well, the Memories don't seem to come with it automitically since duh, if they did, wouldn't she remember being Lillith?


She can't possibly be a Tabula Rasa, since, duh, she seems to know who Shinji is, she doesn't ask who he is.
She probably remembers everything except her death/the few Days before it.
Tough I'd agree with NemZ that she seems to remember it like "stuff she read", sort of like a film without the BGM, since she recalls who Shinji is, but doesn't show the emotional reaction Rei II would have shown.
She also comes to different "conclusions" faced with the same memories/situations... (ep 25: Rei IIs mindset is explained, she's afraid of her Lillith side. ReiIII: "Uh, actually, I'm not afraid." )so while the memories are there, what she "learned" from them is not.
There is 'some' echo (much like all Reis have felt that "dark intangible presence" that is an echo of Lillith) but it's not all too much.

[AuraTwilight]

I had the theory that the memory backup is used to overwrite her existing memory so she didn't ask any question. "So...Commander. I died like twice. And I'm pretty sure I was in the Eva once. What's up with that?"

[AshPhoenix]

I had the theory that the memory backup is used to overwrite her existing memory so she didn't ask any question. "So...Commander. I died like twice. And I'm pretty sure I was in the Eva once. What's up with that?"

Isn't Rei aware that she is/was Lilith, though? I would imagine that her memory isn't "overwritten", just "added to". She even says:

Rei: No. you are a human whose false sole was made by a
man named Ikari Gendou.
You are a false object which is pretending to be a human.
Look, you have a dark, invisible, and uninteligible mind
within you, where the true you exist.

Rei: No, I'm glad.
I am the thing that wishes to die.
All I need is a dispare.
I want to be a nothingness.

Rei: No, no way.
You can't be a nothingness.
That person won't let you be a nothingness.

Rei: Still not allowed to return.

So she is aware that she's being brought back to life, even though she doesn't want to be.

She also comes to different "conclusions" faced with the same memories/situations... (ep 25: Rei IIs mindset is explained, she's afraid of her Lillith side. ReiIII: "Uh, actually, I'm not afraid." )so while the memories are there, what she "learned" from them is not.

I don't think that's because of the memory issues; I think that's more of the fact that Rei III has more of her actual soul than Rei II did (i.e, Rei II only had a fragment of the full Lilith-soul whereas Rei III had Rei II's part AND Eva-00's part). Therefore, she's more complete(? I can't think of a better word to use there) and her judgement is less "clouded" (again, for lack of a better term).

That would raise questions about Kyoko.

Such as? Kyoko isn't the most stable of individuals while she's in the Eva, and there's no indication that she has all her memories properly aligned. All that we truly know about the Kyoko in Eva-02 is that it's the maternal portion of the full Kyoko's soul.

[TehDonutKing]

Where is everyone getting the memory backup from? I don't recall seeing it in Eva or the CI.
As for whether or not Rei remembers being Lilith, I would like to posit that Ichi and San know that they were once Lilith, but Ni doesn't.

[AshPhoenix]

Where is everyone getting the memory backup from? I don't recall seeing it in Eva or the CI.

From here, apparently. It was pretty long, so...I guess I just kinda went with it.

As for whether or not Rei remembers being Lilith, I would like to posit that Ichi and San know that they were once Lilith, but Ni doesn't.

Again, that might have to do with the fact that Rei II's soul was fragmented further when part of it was inserted into Eva-00.

[TehDonutKing]

Thanks. I was to lazy to present evidence, but you brought up the most important piece.

[Reichu]

Where is everyone getting the memory backup from? I don't recall seeing it in Eva or the CI.

Strongly implied as part of the big mechanical "brain"'s function. We can deduce, based on its location at the center of the dummy plug plant, that its "main purpose" is to digitize Rei's personality data, which amounts to the counterfeit soul that is the dummy system. But Gendo and Fuyutsuki are seen at this installation, standing in front of the pod-like device, before Rei 3 appears. What's going on there? Is a Rei clone being implanted with data from the "brain"?

Well, anyway, Rei 3's memory loss lead to the speculation that maybe Gendo and Fuyutsuki had to upload the most recent version of Rei's data into her. Why she had that memory loss in the first place is up for grabs.

[AshPhoenix]

Why she had that memory loss in the first place is up for grabs.

I just thought of this, but:
What if Rei III's memory loss can be attributed to her being "newly born"? As we all know, Rei III remembers everything up till a few days before Rei II's death. The vast majority of human beings cannot remember their birth, or the earliest years of their lives. I imagine that the same thing could have happened to Rei III, but in reverse--since she was "just born" (i.e., "brought back to life" quite recently), she can't remember what went on in the end (rather than the beginning). This would reinforce the "mother/birth" motif, as well as the "end is also a beginning" motif...

[katastroff]

It always appeared to me as if Rei III lost all memories but retained many of her feelings from Rei II. Namely, Rei II's relationship with Shinji and uncertainty about her purpose and life, especially as instrumentality approaches. My memory is not so fresh, but particular actions in Rei III seem to suggest that she isn't as if she were completely reborn like Rei II, although Shinji assumes that. Shinji's distance was also something I think confused Rei III, which contradicted the inexplicable feelings that carried over from Rei II. Her lying on the pillow (the way she did when she said "Thank you... words I never said before") and the loss off attachment to Gendo's glasses seem to suggest a state of mind closer to the more developed Rei II.

At first I feel like Nerv clearly has adequate technology to restore Rei's memories, and the transcendental feelings are just my trope meters and wishful thinking making the assumptions. Then again, maybe Nerv's technology isn't so powerful, and they are only able recreate a blank Rei II with memories only from a specific point in time. Like say your hard drive crashed and you only have a spare backup hard drive that you which only contains bare-bone necessities. Perhaps Nerv took the same approach with Rei.

On the other hand, the transcendental feelings seem a bit more abstract than memories. How come they would be preserved? Well I would like to argue that feelings reside in the soul rather than the physical body like memories seem to. So if Rei's body were to be destroyed and then her soul is transferred to a new clone body, then her memories would be lost in the old body but her feelings transferred within the soul, to the new body. There is one other example with the same results, Yui. When she was absorbed into Eva 01, you could say her physical body was destroyed with her memories, but still retained her maternal need to protect Shinji even as Sho.

So what we have in Rei III are feelings with no memories to explain them. This could explain her distance from Shinji, which is only exacerbated by his own avoidance, and also her disloyalty towards Gendo, which is comes from the residual uncertainty from Rei II.

Anyway, this was my take on the matter. I only wish I could find more concrete examples of her behavior.

[Muphrid]

This is a fascinating subject for me, in part because I'm fast approaching the point where I'll have to write this experience of being reborn from Rei's perspective.

From the standpoint of the Rei's memories being backed up as given information, it strikes me that several possibilities should be considered. Obviously if the memory restoration were perfect, we'd expect Rei III to behave identically to II unless the posited merger of her soul fragments (from II and the part of I imbued in Unit-00) produced something inherently different. I think this is an acceptable answer, but perhaps not the only valid choice.

If instead the memory restoration is imperfect (aside from only being good up until the backup was done), then what imperfections are possible? There's no indication that she simply doesn't know certain things. She doesn't ask Shinji who he is, for example. She must, at minimum, recall people's identities in some bare, factual sense. Perhaps it is that which she's given--recollection of facts and names, but the emotional attachments she might've developed to them were lost. Even so, it's difficult to reconcile the Rei who turns over control of Instrumentality and Third Impact to Shinji unless there is some emotional component to her thoughts. She would necessarily have to recover some aspect of that, either through direct recall or rediscovering her feelings first-hand. It could be, as katastroff says, that the influence of souls mixing and recombining gives some feelings that are disconnected from the memories they were once attached to. Perhaps this is why Rei cries over Gendo's glasses.

Even so, it's unappealing to me that Rei would have perfect (or even good) factual recall of events. When Rei died the first time, it was because she'd done something out of bounds, because she strayed from Gendo's strict control and pissed off Naoko when Gendo otherwise had the elder Akagi wrapped around his little finger. I should think the memory mechanism, if he could have such fine control over it, would bestow upon Rei the kind of knowledge that we just know--that apples are red, that this person is Shinji and the other Misato--but beyond that, any real knowledge of her history, her past, is a form of continuity Gendo would want control over. That said, while we see how Rei feels isolated and detached from Gendo, it's a far cry from saying that Gendo would want to purge her mind as much as possible to make her more compliant. She's pretty compliant already, after all.

As for what Rei knows about being Lilith, you figure she has to know by the time she's actively using AT fields and finding a way to penetrate Lilith's chambers herself. Curiously, if you put that against "The Case of Rei Ayanami" in 25, it seems strange that Rei I would refer to that so abstractly, but it does put the emphasis on what Rei fears--that she's irreconcilably inhuman--over a broad statement of fact.

Regardless, I feel that a central part of Rei's character is that on some level she knows she's forced to exist, that Gendo's responsible for it, and that's why she wishes to die, whereas what makes her wish to live is the desire to be something different, to be human, even if it goes against her nature, and be validated in her existence by others.

[AuraTwilight]

Isn't Rei aware that she is/was Lilith, though? I would imagine that her memory isn't "overwritten", just "added to". She even says:

She really only realizes this after she starts talking to herself like someone with multiple personalities, which I took to mean as overwritten/suppressed parts of her trying to essentially reintegrate. ("Hey Rei, this is the part of Rei 1 you didn't absorb, and I'm Rei II. We're gonna fill you in on what we know but you don't.")

[Kendrix]

The Memory can't be regularily overwritten because, duh, there were never any indications, we see her relationship with Shinji and others (such as Touji) gradually develop, they never show it in any way (like, one character mentioning some recent event and Rei not recalling it)

It's more that the "soul and mind of a person can't be fully digitalized" (as Ritsuko explains mentioning it as a difficulty to the construction of the dummyplug) and while the memories/factual knowdledge is transfered, the transfer of emotions is either incomplete or impossible, with the little echoes that do survive being related to Lillith's soul...

It always appeared to me as if Rei III lost all memories but retained many of her feelings from Rei II. Namely, Rei II's relationship with Shinji and uncertainty about her purpose and life, especially as instrumentality approaches. My memory is not so fresh, but particular actions in Rei III seem to suggest that she isn't as if she were completely reborn like Rei II, although Shinji assumes that. Shinji's distance was also something I think confused Rei III, which contradicted the inexplicable feelings that carried over from Rei II. Her lying on the pillow (the way she did when she said "Thank you... words I never said before") and the loss off attachment to Gendo's glasses seem to suggest a state of mind closer to the more developed Rei II.

Except it is confirmed that they were backupping the Memories, and the fact that the feelings were not, or not entirely retained is very apparent: She known who Shinji is, but shown no emotional rection to seeing him - she doesn't look at him, she doesn't answer him (He upheld conversation with Rei II with her replying, if only in one-liners, as early as episode 5) she shows no reaction to him thanking her or him comming to check on her/expressing happiness that she's alive. (Rei II appreciated it when people were concerned about her) - If that was Rei II, she'd had turned her head towards Shinji (and probably blushed) at some point of the conversation, but there is no such emotional reaction in Rei II (The script specifically states that "Her eyes have gone cold" when we see the first close-up shot of her.)
They take different actions while having the same memories because they are essentially different people, twin sisters, if you will, that had another's memories plasted on.
Its not really a "contuniation" of Rei IIs character developement - hers always led her towards humanity, while her sucessor starts out noticeably more inhuman and moves away from humanity untill she finally discards her indentity as she merges with Lillith.
Rei II never really lost the attachment to Gendo - she was still ready to die for him by ep 22 (which was, at that point, because it's Gendo and not because it's an order - she has questioned/hesitated to fullfill orders before in eps 16 and 17) and saw a flash of him before she died - not as a menacing, dark figure, or suceeded by an expression of anger, but gentle and smiling. The Echo from Rei II that her sucessor experiences actually stops her from breaking the glasses, and that last apparition of her we see in EoE is seen picking up Gendo's glasses and holding them close to her body...
There IS that scene where she says that she doesn't know what sort of person she is, but do you think Rei would have been able to "discribe" any other person like that at this point? She also replied "I don't know" to Rebuild!Asuka's question as to what she feels about Shinji... and you all know how she elaborated on that after Asuka, unlike Shinji, wouldn't be satisfied with a half answer.
In fact, in the very episode before, Rei associated Gendo with "agreeable" clear water...

I don't think that's because of the memory issues;

I never said so. I think I explicitly said that was despite the memories being mostly the same.

@Lillith Issue: She always seemed to have known she's replacable/artificial, as we see her angsting about it at various points in the story, but there were never any indications that she knew what she was created from.
She's aware of Lillith's presence on a subconcious level ("dark and intangible presence...", the moon in background when Rei III talks of "Returning"...), perhaps in a way that could be compared to the echoes from her previous selves, but I don't think she really "knew" it on a concious level before the "I'm home" line.
(She mentions having a "fake soul", so she didn't know where her soul's actually from in a concious way yet by 25...)