On the power of souls in NGE

[Bagheera]

So, Ag made a recent post in the Pet Peeves thread, noting that humans are the 18th Angel. And my first thought was "so what?" I mean, we each have our own soul, just like the Angels, so why does it matter if we're classified as an Angel or not? And then I got to thinking, and I started wondering . . . what if the value of a soul isn't absolute? That is, what if Angel souls are much stronger than human souls? What if their souls are amalgamates of many, much weaker souls? What if Seele's goal was to turn us into a de facto Angel rather than a hivemind lacking identity or free will?

In short, what if a soul's power is proportionate to the number of souls sacrificed to create it?

This would explain many things. It would explain why Angels are more powerful than Lilin: apart from the S2 organ, they are composites of many souls while we are single souls. Further, it would explain why Seed souls are "special": they are amalgamates of more souls than any other single entity, and have the power (read: potent AT Fields) that goes along with. It would even explain why the Lances are able to pacify the Seeds: if the Lances are amalgamates of even more souls than the Seeds, and dedicated to a single purpose on top of that, their collective strength would be fearsome indeed. And of course, it would explain why Adam only ever created fourteen offspring. Some are strong, some are weak, but that's all he had to work with because the population that fueled his efforts only produced fourteen souls.

This is the height of fanwank, mind; I'm not even interpreting here, just pulling shit out of my ass. But I do think it's an interesting idea.

[riffraff11235]

I thought it was simply that Seed of Life type souls are more powerful than Seed of Knowledge type souls. Some may refer the Lilim as the "18th Angel", but they are of a different lineage than the other 17 proper Angels.

[Monk Ed]

A single piece of evidence disproves all of this: the Evas themselves. The bodies of gods with the souls of mere humans, the Evas indicate that the power of a projected AT Field lies in the body rather than the soul, because there's no way Yui's/Kyoko's/etc's soul is that powerful. Even the cases of Rei and Kaworu can be explained if we suppose that their flesh was taken initially from that of Lilith and Adam respectively, and it's a popular interpretation.

I changed the topic title to something more specific because that seems to be where this has gone (even if we're only 3 posts deep). Disagreement welcome.

[AuraTwilight]

Monk Ed beat me to it. The Evangelions indicate that the body effects how powerful the ego can stretch it's wings, and it's implied that the Reis are pulled directly out of Lilith's body.

And Kaworu even says outright that he can control Eva-02 since it's "the same body."

[Chuckman]

They seem to need an energy source, too. The angels have the super solenoids in their cores and the Evas have to be plugged in, barring intervention by one Adam or Lilith themselves.

[Bagheera]

I can't deny any of that, but even so: why are some Angels so much more powerful than others? They all draw their power from the same S2 organ, right? And why are the souls of Seeds necessary to start Impacts (Seele's grandiose Plan B notwithstanding)?

Maybe the body is necessary but not sufficient? After all, the Evas project an ATF not by virtue of the Eva itself so much as the synchronization of the pilot with the soul inside of the Eva. That's the same process I described at work. And if we look at the MPEs, which have the bodies but no sync to speak of, they have no ATFs . . .

I dunno. Probably nothing to it.

[Shinoyami65]

Possibly the power a soul holds may be related to a person's perception of their self, or their ego. The Classified Information states that "The maximum extent of an A.T. Field's expansion is an ego without restriction- in other words, a god. Before this can happen a person's ego collapses and he reverts to LCL". It also states that "people are people because they think of themselves as people". This seems to suggest that the power of an individual's soul or ego affects the power of their ATF, and thus the amount of power that individual is able to access. Removing the ego barrier of the souls of humanity creates a godlike uber-being in the form of the Sea of LCL, a conglomerate "perfect being" in which the flaws of each individual are balanced out by the strengths of others. Thus possibly normal humans don't have much power because they have a limited ego barrier and can only perceive themselves as human; Angels have a less limited ego barrier which allows them to determine their own form and abilities through their ATFs, and a being such as the Sea of LCL has no ego barrier at all and can be considered a god.

In regards to the MP Evas, they do seem to have ATFs, as at one point it is mentioned that their AT Fields are "resonating".

[Bagheera]

In regards to the MP Evas, they do seem to have ATFs, as at one point it is mentioned that their AT Fields are "resonating".

True. They don't manifest them when fighting Asuka, but then again they don't need to.

[Chuckman]

If the energy from the S2 really is infinite they should all be invulnerable, so obviously it isn't. All of it lends more credence to the notion that the technobabble spewing apes on the show really have no idea what the hell is going on and just make it up as they go along.

[Monk Ed]

If the energy from the S2 really is infinite they should all be invulnerable, so obviously it isn't.

How does that logic necessarily follow?

[Chuckman]

If they've got infinite energy, how can one AT-Field be more powerful than another? If Ramiel has infinite energy at its disposal, why not just blast right through all the armor and skip the drill? The fact that they get progressively stronger itself suggests there are limits on their powers.

Unless they're "infinite" in the sense that they never run out, but have a limited output at any given time.

[AuraTwilight]

I can't deny any of that, but even so: why are some Angels so much more powerful than others? They all draw their power from the same S2 organ, right? And why are the souls of Seeds necessary to start Impacts (Seele's grandiose Plan B notwithstanding)?

Can't it basically be force of will? The Angels effectively define their own shapes; some might have simply picked better images or have stronger egos.

Long story short the power of an Angel is measured by dick size.

[Ornette]

Unless they're "infinite" in the sense that they never run out, but have a limited output at any given time.

Or that there's a limit to how much energy can be "safely" channelled.

[Shinoyami65]

Possibly each Angel chooses a different way to channel the S^2's energy when they choose their form. Ireul can evolve endlessly; Ramiel, Sahaquiel and Zeruel try to dominate through sheer power; Arael uses mental attacks; etc. There is no "jack-of-all-trades" Angel that can use every single other Angel ability (that would be practically impossible to defeat) so possibly they can only choose one "area of expertise", so to speak and can't go outside of a specific set of abilities.

[Monk Ed]

Unless they're "infinite" in the sense that they never run out, but have a limited output at any given time.

It seems you've come up with a possibility to answer your own question, now apologize to those technobabble spewing apes!

Especially when, as a quick search through the scripts I have reveals, nobody in the entire original series nor EoE ever actually describes the capabilities of the S2 engine. At all.

[K40s]

This is what I've been proposing scattered through several threads, basically all beings have souls coming from FAR individuals, a FAR soul would be like the atomic soul unit that can't be split any further.

Based on that I concluded that regular lilin are beings composed of at least 2 FAR souls, this is why their souls can be "split" (e.g.: Kyoko's Contact Experiment), also an Eva requires at least 4 FAR souls (2 from the resident lilin soul and 2 more from the lilin pilot) to actually do stuff and emit an ATF.

Synchronization is just a measure of how "fused" the 4 FAR souls inside the eva are, the highest levels of synchronization involve a complete fusion.

Most likely the minimum for an Angel and the Seeds would also be 4 FAR souls, but some can simply have more, I guess the stronger the ATF the more amalgamated FAR souls are there.

Well, technically the actual minimum for an Eva, angel and Seed would be 2 FARs like a lilin, only that it doesn't let them do much, Yui moves an arm without pilot and before having an S2 organ, although is arguable what can she actually do when becoming a Seed at the end, besides floating in space.

[Lorkhan]

Larger souls that have not undergone the degree of subgradience that their lessers have, and thus having access to the feats that the respective Adam/Lilith oversouls can achieve? Admittedly, I've had the idea in my head for awhile now, though I'm not entirely sure if we can applicably measure whether or not this can be potentially true for humans as well.

[Monk Ed]

Larger souls that have not undergone the degree of subgradience that their lessers have, and thus having access to the feats that the respective Adam/Lilith oversouls can achieve? Admittedly, I've had the idea in my head for awhile now, though I'm not entirely sure if we can applicably measure whether or not this can be potentially true for humans as well.

If you've had it in your head for a while, how did you reconcile it with the fact that the Evas are occupied by ordinary human souls yet have such incredible ATF power?

[Lorkhan]

If you've had it in your head for a while, how did you reconcile it with the fact that the Evas are occupied by ordinary human souls yet have such incredible ATF power?

Walk like them until they walk like...whoops, wrong franchise.

Like I said, the major issue here is the fact humans are backwards compatible with something that should otherwise require far more then what this line of thinking would indicate. Hell, Unit 2 ripped one in half and didn't seem worse for wear. The other elephant in the room is the fact that Lilith and Adam themselves can be torn apart, stuffed in a whole host of assorted jars, and can still feasibly initiate a impact event without a hitch.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Since it hasn't been mentioned already, I'll just note that Angels are also composed of PWM. Whenever we see any fantastic abilities and glowing orange octagons, it's always tied to a being made out of whatever PWM is. Humans have AT Fields, but they don't have S^2 Organs or whatever other special organs/substances are needed to project those ATFs out into the physical world.

On the original point of the "strength" of souls; I don't see a problem with certain souls/ATFs being stronger or weaker than others. In fact, I think it's possible to put figures on how large and small the differences are.