OOC Information:
Name: Walk
Are you over 15? Yes.
Contact: aim: sionwalk plurk: walkitalki
IC Information:
Name: Rei Ayanami (Rei Ikari in her reincarnation)
Canon: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Age: 14
Preincarnation Appearance: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Rei_Ayanami.jpg
Any differences: This incarnation of Rei will have brown hair and blue eyes rather than blue hair and red eyes. Other than that, all is the same.
Preincarnated History: Reference at: http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Rei_Ayanami
Rei was not “born” but rather created somewhere deep inside NERV headquarters using the remains of Yui Ikari. But to discuss Rei one must first discuss Lilith, the so called “Seed of Life” of the first ancestral race. Enveloped in a “black moon” traveled through space until eventually colliding with Earth. Lilith was able to spread life over the planet, creating all animal life and eventually even human beings. Lilith was eventually found by the organization SEELE, and they converted the Black Moon into what would become NERV headquarters with Tokyo-3 just above. Having captured and crucified, being used for various purposes including the use of LCL (Lilith’s blood) in the Evangelion projects. Later in the series, Kaworu Nagisa would inform Rei that she is the human vessel where the soul of Lilith resides.
Originally taking the form of a toddler aged girl, Rei was introduced by Gendo Ikari as the daughter of an associate. Soon after Rei would meet Naoko Akagi, a spurned lover of Gendo’s and in a fit of anger towards Gendo ended up choking the child to death.
While for any other human life would simply end, Rei had another body prepared with which her soul could reside, continuing her existence. The process wasn’t perfect though; she’d lose much of her memory and any emotional progress gained, leaving her essentially a blank slate each time her body was replaced.
Another facet of Rei’s existence was her ability to pilot the Evangelion, a machine built by the organization NERV in order to combat the creatures known as Angels that began to assault the earth. Referred to as “The First Child,” Rei would pilot the prototype Unit-00. The first attempt to activate the Evangelion with her as the pilot ended in failure, with Unit-00 going out of control and attempting to destroy the test facility. Though Unit-00 was eventually stopped before it could injure any of the researchers, Rei is dealt considerable wounds from the accident. Gendo, fostering great affection for Rei due to her connection with his late wife rushed into the chamber and pried her out of the Evangelion’s entry plug despite sustaining severe burns to his hands as he opened the hatch.
The course of Rei’s life hadn’t truly begun to change until the arrival of a boy named Shinji Ikari at NERV headquarters. The son of Gendo Ikari, Shinji was designated as the “Third Child” and chosen to pilot the test type Evangelion, Unit-01. Initially refusing to pilot Unit-01 in order to defend against an ongoing Angel attack, it was decided that Rei would be sent in instead. However when Shinji saw the state that Rei was already in, her arm in a sling and with bandages over one of her eyes, he decided to become the pilot of Unit-01 rather than allow the girl to become further harmed.
Outside of NERV, Rei attended school in Tokyo-3 along with a class of other students her age. Tokyo-3, being a city essentially created to draw the attention of the Angels and destroy them before any damage could be caused elsewhere. As such, the buildings contract under the ground in times of crisis to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Even so, school life was mostly normal for children living in Tokyo-3. Angel attacks aside; it would have been a fairly ordinary existence were Rei not already anything but.
Due to the nature of her existence, Rei had little to no understanding of what emotions are, and thusly was unable to connect with the other students on any meaningful level. She would mostly just keep to herself and not say a single word while silently participating in class activities.
Following the re-activation of Unit-00, the Angel Ramiel besieges Tokyo-3. Shinji attempts to battle it with Unit-01 but is quickly and easily defeated by the Angel. This leads NERV to scramble to create a plan to defeat this Angel as it begins to drill a part of itself down into the ground and towards NERV headquarters. It is decided that Shinji will use a special positron weapon constructed by NERV that will use all of the electricity and power of Tokyo-3 in order to defeat the Angel with a tremendous blast. Rei was assigned to protect Shinji’s Unit-01 with her Unit-00. However when Shinji was informed of this he again expresses his wish not to pilot the Evangelion, with Rei responding that if that is the case, she will become the pilot of Unit-01 instead.
Ultimately, Shinji went through with the plan but still expressed concerns over dying in battle, leading Rei to reassure him that she will protect him from harm. Before the two departed on the mission, Shinji questioned Rei as to why she pilots the Evangelion. Rei responds by saying it is because of her bond with all people, and because she has nothing else. Eventually the pair is victorious in their battle against the Angel, but Unit-00 took severe damage, causing Shinji to rush towards it and remove Rei from the Entry Plug similar to the way Gendo had weeks earlier. With tears in his eyes, Shinji tells her that she shouldn’t say she has nothing else anymore, and when Rei is unable to understand how she should respond, Shinji simply asks her to try smiling. Thinking of Gendo as she stares into Shinji, the girl smiles.
Upon meeting the pilot of Unit-02, Asuka Langley Soryu, the two don’t hit it off as much as Asuka would like. This is due much in part to Rei’s rather cold, almost lifeless demeanor (something that taps into a very emotional memory of Asuka’s) as she tells Asuka that she’ll only become friends with her if she is instructed to do so. Nevertheless, the three pilots then go on various missions thereafter that pit them against the invading Angels, and the three manage to be victorious each time.
Things don’t remain smooth for long, as Rei gradually starts to question her existence more and more as peculiarities about her arise to the forefront of the series. The downward slope of events is capped off by the recruitment of the “Fourth Child” Toji Suzuhara, a boy from her class at school. During Toji’s first test in the Eva, it was invaded by a parasitic Angel and was taken control of. Gendo instructed the other Eva pilots to destroy the “Angel” and Rei, in a moment of humanity, finds herself unable to fire at him and is incapacitated by the Angel. Implementing something called the “Dummy System” Gendo surrenders control over Shinji’s Eva to an autopilot-esque system that utterly destroys Unit-03 and leaves Toji severely injured with permanent injuries.
This incident, once again, prompts Shinji to reign from his position as an Evangelion pilot. In response to this, Rei is ordered to attempt to synchronize with Unit-01 but the test fails almost immediately. Not even the Dummy Plug is able to operate the Evangelion. Thus, when the angel Zeruel attacks, Rei is sent out in the Unit-00 as per usual along with Asuka in her 02. The Angel begun lying waste to Tokyo-3 and even nearly penetrates all the way to the GeoFront. Rei and Asuka were little match for Zeruel; valiantly though they fought, the two were vanquished before they could inflict a fatal blow to the Angel. Seeing the carnage from afar, Shinji is motivated to return to NERV and pilots the 01 against Zeruel. Though he is almost defeated, Unit-01 went berserk and Shinji lost control as it tore the Angel apart. In a horrifying act of brutality even for an Evangelion, it consumed Zeruel’s S2 Engine, an organ that allows for unlimited power.
Because of the way that Unit-01 went berserk in order to protect him, Shinji merged with the Evangelion and had remained inside it unable to be retrieved for an entire month.
Shinji was not the only one of Rei’s comrades going through serious trouble however. Asuka’s synchronization rate with her Unit-02 began to drop drastically. Rei attempts to inform Asuka of the souls that reside inside the Eva units, and that she should treat it as such, but Asuka angrily rejected her with a slap. Later on, Asuka was incapacitated and lost her synchronization with Unit-02 completely during a telepathic attack by the Angel Arael. This forced Rei to be ordered to retrieve the Lance of Longinus from Terminal Dogma and launch it at Arael, causing the Angel to be destroyed but sacrificing the lance into orbit.
The next Angel Rei would face would be Armisael. Deployed alongside the essentially functionless Unit-02, Rei was left to take on the Angel by herself. It wasn’t long before Armisael was able to penetrate Unit-00 and begin fusing itself not only unit the Eva unit, but into Rei’s anatomy as well. Invading the girl’s psyche, the Angel established communication with Rei, telling her that it is lonely, and forcing Rei to accept that she too is lonely. Upon confronting the emotions she had buried within herself, Rei begins to cry and expresses great confusion towards the fact that she is doing so.
Armisael seemed to attempt to use the Unit-00 to resurrect the fallen Angels by creating an enormous growth out of the Unit-00’s back. Witnessing this, Gendo instructs NERV to sortie Shinji in his Unit-01 to assist Rei. Shjinji fought valiantly against Armisael but became terrified upon watching it begin to take Rei’s form via it’s link with her. Rei, realizing the danger Shinji is, activates her A.T Field in an attempt to contain the Angel, and then decides to self-destruct Unit-00 to take the Angel out along with herself. NERV Headquarters and Shinji watched in horror as both Armisael and Rei along with Unit-00 were completely obliterated.
But to Rei, death was not permanent, for she was simply replaced with a new body. The nature of her replacement was confidential, however, leading Shinji and those not in the know to believe it was a stroke of luck that lead to her survival. The death did not come without consequence, however. Rei’s memory became muddled and she seemed to regress emotionally, easily evidenced in the way that acted towards Shinji while in the hospital. Upon finally returning to her home, she gripped Gendo’s glasses tightly and began to cry over them. Much like after her experience with Ramiel she questions her own tears, stating that even though she’s never this before, that it feels familiar.
Rei had a brief meeting with the “Fifth Child”, Kaworu Nagisa. He stated that she is just like him, going on to elaborate how he is the human vessel of Adam while she is the same for the being Lilith. After this meeting Rei began to greatly question herself, her purpose, and what she was doing. When Kaworu descended to Terminal Dogma after being discovered as the 17th Angel, he did battle (though wishing to lose so as not to destroy the humans and the person he truly loves, Shinji) with Shinji while controlling the Unit-02. Rei arrived, activating her incredibly powerful A.T Field to counter Kaworu’s, allowing Shinji to gain the upper hand. Rei looked on as Shinji is forced to kill Kaworu.
Soon after, NERV headquarters was laid siege by the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Force by SEELE’s order. Gendo thus attempted to finally use Rei for what she was created for in the first place: to begin his version of instrumentality and incite the third impact so that he could reunite with his departed wife. With Adam fused into his right hand and the soul of Lilith within Rei, he attempted to join the two in order to bring his plans to fruition. Surprisingly, Rei then rejects him, stating that she is not a doll. Choosing to join with the body of Lilith of her own accord, much to Gendo’s dismay, she decides that she will leave the fate of the world and instrumentality to Shinji rather than Gendo. As she departed, she told Gendo she could hear Shinji calling, leaving the man in despair as she finally made a choice for herself.
In joining Lilith, Rei became an enormous humanoid with a snowy white appearance. As Lilith, Rei began instrumentality by using the Mass Produced Evangelions of SEELE and Shinji in his Unit-01. During this process she created an Anti A.T Field that spanned the entire world, reducing all of humanity to LCL and joining them together inside an egg-like sphere. Shinji grappled inside his mind about whether life would be better like this, or if happiness could truly be gained by living with others in the normal world. Having allowed Shinji to decide how Instrumentality would play out, he ultimately decides to reject it, and thus reformed himself from LCL and caused both Lilith and the MP Evas to be destroyed. Any human who truly willed it could come back into existence because of Shinji’s choice.
Reincarnated History: Rei was born into the Ikari family as one half of a pair of twins opposite her brother Shinji. While not necessarily bad parents, one or both of them were almost constantly working, overseas, or simply attending to business, leaving both the Ikari children with a babysitter much of their life, and then eventually by themselves. Her relationship with her parents wasn’t strained for any reasons other than the fact that they didn’t get to see each other very often. Rei held no spite or ill will towards her parents, though she did find it much easier to get along with her Father than her Mother.
Growing up with only each other to interact with most of the time, Shinji and Rei formed a very close bond as siblings. As she got older she became more and more protective of her brother, never hesitating to step in when she notices he’s having trouble with something or if another kid was picking on him at school. Having the kind of stare that could make even the most stalwart seven-year-old boy shrink in fear, she was able to help Shinji out of a few sticky situations now and then. This relationship has lasted even to the present day; Rei would do anything for Shinji, and would easily trust him with her life.
Becoming independent was less something Rei was forced to do as she began to bud into a young adult, but more something she had grown into from an early age of fending for herself with her parents out of the house so often. Where other kids had to hold their parents hands or wait for a crossing guard, Rei was boldly looking both ways and skipping across busy intersections by the time she was eight. At this point she had gained such confidence in her ability to handle herself that she stopped being overly careful about her actions, eventually leading to her become quite the accident prone person. Even if she did get hurt, it wasn’t as though she didn’t know how to slap on a bandage or hold a rag to a wound. This confidence did get her into considerable trouble at one point in her life, however. While attempting to retrieve something from a top shelf in the kitchen by standing atop a wooden chair that was entirely too wobbly to be used for anything other than sitting on, she fell backwards onto the kitchen counter. In her descent her arm split a glass bowl open which in term split her arm open, leaving Shinji to take care of what turned out to be a very serious wound all by himself.
The incident didn’t change much of how she acted, solidifying that her calm, somewhat apathetic demeanor was there to stay. If anything, the injury only further strengthened her bond with Shinji more so than anything negative it may have done. The attitude Rei had towards her own safety wasn’t unique to those situations. Rei also paid little mind to the way that she looked, causing her to often leave the house wearing mismatched clothes or with ruffled, unkempt hair. This progressed into a somewhat lazy attitude when it came to more superficial things such as the clothes she wore or the housekeeping.
Though attending a rather densely populated school, Rei never finds any luck in connecting with other people besides Shinji. Acting fairly aloof and unresponsive towards most things, it was just as hard for other people to approach her as it was for her to do the same. Never feeling any connection or drive towards others, Rei became rather content with her solitude. Being so close to Shinji her whole life only made it more difficult to bond with others, and provided and easy excuse for why she didn't have to. On the occasion that she was interacting with someone, she’d often default to silence or one-word answers. When someone was bothering her, getting too close, or being mean, she’d take to dismissive sarcasm or deadpan snark in an attempt to create distance between him or her. This isn’t to say Rei had begun to hate people, merely that “people” wasn’t something she wanted out of life. Interactions with others just seemed exhausting, and she became apathetic towards everything they could offer. Shinji filled her emotional needs just fine, so everyone else was met with a sort of apathy. She would still repay kindness with kindness, still converse when spoken to, but getting close to others never became a priority to her. It wasn’t long before she was designated “That weird girl that only talks to her twin.” Rei being Rei, she didn’t particularly care, and instead poured her attention into solitary activities like reading, puzzles, and studying. Reading and learning about things through non-fiction books and encyclopedias is how she’d spend her time when she wasn’t with Shinji at home or was on a break during school. She will then default to Wikipedia when she’s out of physical reading material, a website with which she had become a prolific contributor and editor.
Though she does have her interests, Rei mostly wanders through her life directionless without clear goals. Though she is a straight-A student she has no clear career plan, always doing a lot of reading about a lot of different subjects, and never latching onto anything specific. While going through the usual motions one day, she decided to be impulsive and got into a cab to head towards one of the larger libraries, though a bit out of the way. It’s there that she got into a car accident, and though relatively unharmed, experienced her first echo.
First Echo: In a Taxi cab one day, another car swerved into their lane and swiped the cab across its front hood. The cab spun out, jostling Rei around the back seat, something that suddenly felt very familiar. All of a sudden she was hearing someone calling her name, and hearing the sound of a hatch opening. Before losing consciousness for a moment, she could swear she saw an older man with glasses looking at her, and he reminded her of her Father.
Preincarnation Personality: Rei is anything but a normal human being. This is not only because of the way she is created, but also the way she acts as well as her understanding of the people and world around her. Without a normal life or normal upbringing, Rei has great difficulty with emotions in ways that most people don’t.
Looking at Rei, the first thing that usually comes to mind is how expressionless she is. With her lips in a straight line, she accepts orders, responds to crises, and sits silently as the world around her goes by. She doesn’t find joy in her daily life at school, she doesn’t gossip with the other girls about the people they like, she doesn’t even feel the need to interact with anyone around her. If it weren’t for NERV, it’s more than likely she’d spend each and every day in her own isolated, expressionless world. When Shinji asks Rei why she pilots the Evangelion, her response is that she has nothing else. She continues to exist only for this purpose she serves, perpetually empty. Additionally, she seems to have very little free will or a desire to do much. Frequently she responds to questions with “If I’m ordered to” and will work tirelessly to accomplish her orders. However once those orders are complete, the drive shuts down.
Regardless of how expressionless she may be, an important fact that is hammered home hard by both the series and its creators is that there is a very significant difference between one who is expressionless and one who is emotionless. The key difference that separates her and others is her understanding of emotion and how she reacts to it. Rei is not a being that has any sort of profound understanding of what an emotion is, and therefore, being unable to understand what, if anything that she’s feeling, how could she possibly express that? How could she possibly understand the people that do? This is the great barrier that separates Rei from everyone else and is the root of the loneliness buried in her heart.
Certain key scenes highlight Rei’s general lack of understanding towards emotion. When Ramiel defeats her Evangelion and Shinji saves her from the entry plug, she expresses a great uncertainty towards how she should respond or how she should feel. Being protected or saved by someone: It’s a very simple action that puzzles her to the point where she needs to ask Shinji what she should do as a response. Another point is when Armisael invades Rei’s psyche, prompting her to confront her loneliness and bitter, sad feelings. For the first time, she begins to cry and at this action she expresses great disbelief, wondering if those tears were really coming from her.
Throughout the series, Rei does experience growth emotionally, most evident in her relationship with Shinji Ikari. It’s with Shinji that she first starts to question herself. Highlighting how he specifically affected her, Shinji is also the first person that she ever thanks, noting that even Gendo had never received these words of gratitude from her. Rei isn’t necessarily cold or unfeeling towards others, either. It gets to the point where she can’t bring herself to fire upon the Eva Unit-03 because it would harm her classmate, Toji.
It isn’t only seismic shifts, either. Rei has many little displays of emotion. Reiterating that Rei’s issue is with expression and not necessarily emotion, these are moments where the faucet of her feelings seems to drip, while never quite flowing openly until her confrontation with Armisael. She is seen smiling loyally in conversation with Gendo. She becomes angry with Shinji not because he walked in on her getting out of the shower, but rather because he was touching a precious object of hers, and again later when he speaks negatively about Gendo. She gets nervous when Shinji likens her to a Mother, and gently pushes back against Asuka’s aggression.
A problem that is perhaps even more powerful than her issues with expression and emotions is her understanding of herself, more specifically her knowledge of her expendable nature. If Rei dies, she can be replaced by one of the many soulless bodies residing deep in NERV headquarters. Asuka notes how Rei will do anything to accomplish her objectives, and this is true not because she is a “self-righteous bitch” but because even if she dies, she can be replaced. Therefore why should she exercise caution for her own safety when if she dies trying, it doesn’t even matter? This aspect does not help her bitterness towards the world, as her own understanding as something that is not important, something that can be replaced shapes her idea of herself in the minds of others.
Although when she dies sacrificing herself to defeat Armisael, she loses much of her memory and emotional progression in the process of her soul moving into the new body. However, she does seem to retain much of it eventually, as it is in her third incarnation that she decides she is her own person and should live as so. When Gendo attempts to use her to conduct human instrumentality and join her with Adam, she resists, not wanting to be his doll or tool. Instead, she makes her own decision to leave it in the hands of Shinji rather than his Father, truly marking her progression into someone who no longer sees herself as a replaceable tool into a unique existence with free will.
Any differences: The most obvious, glaring difference between pre and post reincarnation Rei is the fact that she is an emotionally stable girl with a relatively normal life. There are no existential issues for her to deal with, thus her psyche is rarely strained. This impacts her personality in huge ways, and though she still is generally distant towards most people with her calm, quiet demeanor, she is very much emotionally active on the inside. Even then, she smiles at the things the amuse her, laughs at the occasional dumb joke, sarcastically refuses to clean her room and plenty of other little things her pre reincarnation self never even began to do. She’s a much more well put together person, functioning perfectly fine in regular society. Unlike her past self, she has a very normal, pedestrian side to her. She hates cleaning up, gets excited about doing crossword puzzles, and hums her favorite songs as she browses the internet.
Another great change is her family, and most importantly her brother, Shinji. While her pre reincarnation her bonds were thin and scarce, Rei now has a deep, trusting relationship with someone. The closeness of their relationship is shown in that Rei will tell anything to Shinji, and do whatever she can to help him when she knows he’s in serious trouble. She would trust him with her life. That isn’t the only kind of closeness she has with him, though. Shinji is the one that gets to see Rei’s playful side. While not close enough to anyone else that they would have her interacting with them in this way, Shinji can find himself assaulted with sarcasm, wit, and blunt, humorous statements. There is no shortage of teasing and prodding in the household, deadpan or otherwise.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei shows that on the inside she is actually very lonely, while in her reincarnation, Rei is content in solitude. Though her original self may have been yearning for human contact, to be somebody amongst others, this Rei is completely apathetic towards being part of a group or having close friends. With the sole exception of her brother, Rei doesn’t seek out interaction with others, and even deep, deep inside her, she really doesn’t want it at all.
A lower key, but major difference nonetheless is Rei’s free spirit. Pre reincarnation, Rei spent most of her life being Gendo’s tool and obeying every order from NERV until the last moments of her life. In this life however, Rei has been independent and brimming with free will ever since she was little. Though she lacks true aspirations or long-term goals, Rei won’t be swayed by anyone’s persistence once she has her mind set on something, no matter what kind of authority they hold. Brash in her actions, Rei is a much more independent free spirit than the obedient soldier girl of her past life. If she wants to skip school to clean up the Wikipedia article for the French-Indian war, she’s going to do it! Everything she wants to do is her first concern, and everything she doesn’t, her last.
Abilities: Rei was created for the sole purpose of piloting an Evangelion, and therefore has a great deal of knowledge regarding the piloting and functions of an Evangelion. It can be surmised that Rei also had a certain degree of military level training given to her at some point in her life. As part of the being Lilith, Rei actually has an extraordinarily powerful A.T Field, a sort of barrier surrounding her that can repel all sorts of objects and attacks.
When merged with Lilith, Rei (In addition to becoming a giant, snowy white humanoid) is capable of creating life through “primordial ooze”, a substance that allowed for the creation and evolution of all life on Earth. In The End of Evangelion she is shown being capable of reducing all life to LCL and containing the souls of all of humanity within and egg-like sphere. These two feats however are done after a considerable amount of preparation so it’s dubious how easily these feats could be attainted.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: The house was empty; this was nothing new, of course. She and Shinji tended to end up on separate buses on the way back from school, and her parents being out of the house was about as surprising as the fact that she would need to inhale oxygen in a few seconds. Kicking off her shoes with such gusto that they both torpedoed into the wall in front of her, Rei let her school bag drop to the floor and her body fall back onto the living room couch. Another boring day at school was over, and it was time for a suitably boring night at home. She reached over towards the coffee table and grabbed a book she had been reading the day prior. It was a collection of information regarding various natural disasters. She figured she could learn a thing or two about tsunamis while waiting for Shinji to get home.
From there she moved on to a book about robotics, to one about the life of Victor Hugo, and back again to the tsunamis. Shinji still wasn’t home, so the girl was starting to get a little restless. Rei propped herself up against the window, looking out into quickly darkening skies.
“Seriously, where could he be?” She muttered to herself, wondering now whether or not he might get caught in the rain whenever he decides to come home. He doesn’t have an umbrella, so…
“He’d better not be in the computer lab playing that game of his…” With a quiet chuckle to herself, Rei lay back down and held her book above her face. “Yeah, as if he’s going to do that in public. So what’s the problem, Shinji?”
At this point, it was time to be a responsible twin sister. She picked up her cell and quickly dialed Shinji’s number only to be met with no response other than his robotic answering machine message. An exasperated sigh left her lips and she decided to just trust that Shinji was all right and that she had nothing to worry about.
That line of thinking didn’t take her very far as ten minutes later she was pulling on her rain boots, ready to walk out into the worsening conditions in order to find her brother. There were two things she was sure of: That if Shinji was in trouble or something was wrong, she needed to go help, and that if Shinji wasn’t home soon she’d have to cook herself dinner. In the interests of both their safety, she had to step out.
Roleplay Sample - Network: Sample Thread
Any Questions? Just a note that I have permission from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
neopianangst to play the twins backstory/dynamic!
Name: Walk
Are you over 15? Yes.
Contact: aim: sionwalk plurk: walkitalki
IC Information:
Name: Rei Ayanami (Rei Ikari in her reincarnation)
Canon: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Age: 14
Preincarnation Appearance: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Rei_Ayanami.jpg
Any differences: This incarnation of Rei will have brown hair and blue eyes rather than blue hair and red eyes. Other than that, all is the same.
Preincarnated History: Reference at: http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Rei_Ayanami
Rei was not “born” but rather created somewhere deep inside NERV headquarters using the remains of Yui Ikari. But to discuss Rei one must first discuss Lilith, the so called “Seed of Life” of the first ancestral race. Enveloped in a “black moon” traveled through space until eventually colliding with Earth. Lilith was able to spread life over the planet, creating all animal life and eventually even human beings. Lilith was eventually found by the organization SEELE, and they converted the Black Moon into what would become NERV headquarters with Tokyo-3 just above. Having captured and crucified, being used for various purposes including the use of LCL (Lilith’s blood) in the Evangelion projects. Later in the series, Kaworu Nagisa would inform Rei that she is the human vessel where the soul of Lilith resides.
Originally taking the form of a toddler aged girl, Rei was introduced by Gendo Ikari as the daughter of an associate. Soon after Rei would meet Naoko Akagi, a spurned lover of Gendo’s and in a fit of anger towards Gendo ended up choking the child to death.
While for any other human life would simply end, Rei had another body prepared with which her soul could reside, continuing her existence. The process wasn’t perfect though; she’d lose much of her memory and any emotional progress gained, leaving her essentially a blank slate each time her body was replaced.
Another facet of Rei’s existence was her ability to pilot the Evangelion, a machine built by the organization NERV in order to combat the creatures known as Angels that began to assault the earth. Referred to as “The First Child,” Rei would pilot the prototype Unit-00. The first attempt to activate the Evangelion with her as the pilot ended in failure, with Unit-00 going out of control and attempting to destroy the test facility. Though Unit-00 was eventually stopped before it could injure any of the researchers, Rei is dealt considerable wounds from the accident. Gendo, fostering great affection for Rei due to her connection with his late wife rushed into the chamber and pried her out of the Evangelion’s entry plug despite sustaining severe burns to his hands as he opened the hatch.
The course of Rei’s life hadn’t truly begun to change until the arrival of a boy named Shinji Ikari at NERV headquarters. The son of Gendo Ikari, Shinji was designated as the “Third Child” and chosen to pilot the test type Evangelion, Unit-01. Initially refusing to pilot Unit-01 in order to defend against an ongoing Angel attack, it was decided that Rei would be sent in instead. However when Shinji saw the state that Rei was already in, her arm in a sling and with bandages over one of her eyes, he decided to become the pilot of Unit-01 rather than allow the girl to become further harmed.
Outside of NERV, Rei attended school in Tokyo-3 along with a class of other students her age. Tokyo-3, being a city essentially created to draw the attention of the Angels and destroy them before any damage could be caused elsewhere. As such, the buildings contract under the ground in times of crisis to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Even so, school life was mostly normal for children living in Tokyo-3. Angel attacks aside; it would have been a fairly ordinary existence were Rei not already anything but.
Due to the nature of her existence, Rei had little to no understanding of what emotions are, and thusly was unable to connect with the other students on any meaningful level. She would mostly just keep to herself and not say a single word while silently participating in class activities.
Following the re-activation of Unit-00, the Angel Ramiel besieges Tokyo-3. Shinji attempts to battle it with Unit-01 but is quickly and easily defeated by the Angel. This leads NERV to scramble to create a plan to defeat this Angel as it begins to drill a part of itself down into the ground and towards NERV headquarters. It is decided that Shinji will use a special positron weapon constructed by NERV that will use all of the electricity and power of Tokyo-3 in order to defeat the Angel with a tremendous blast. Rei was assigned to protect Shinji’s Unit-01 with her Unit-00. However when Shinji was informed of this he again expresses his wish not to pilot the Evangelion, with Rei responding that if that is the case, she will become the pilot of Unit-01 instead.
Ultimately, Shinji went through with the plan but still expressed concerns over dying in battle, leading Rei to reassure him that she will protect him from harm. Before the two departed on the mission, Shinji questioned Rei as to why she pilots the Evangelion. Rei responds by saying it is because of her bond with all people, and because she has nothing else. Eventually the pair is victorious in their battle against the Angel, but Unit-00 took severe damage, causing Shinji to rush towards it and remove Rei from the Entry Plug similar to the way Gendo had weeks earlier. With tears in his eyes, Shinji tells her that she shouldn’t say she has nothing else anymore, and when Rei is unable to understand how she should respond, Shinji simply asks her to try smiling. Thinking of Gendo as she stares into Shinji, the girl smiles.
Upon meeting the pilot of Unit-02, Asuka Langley Soryu, the two don’t hit it off as much as Asuka would like. This is due much in part to Rei’s rather cold, almost lifeless demeanor (something that taps into a very emotional memory of Asuka’s) as she tells Asuka that she’ll only become friends with her if she is instructed to do so. Nevertheless, the three pilots then go on various missions thereafter that pit them against the invading Angels, and the three manage to be victorious each time.
Things don’t remain smooth for long, as Rei gradually starts to question her existence more and more as peculiarities about her arise to the forefront of the series. The downward slope of events is capped off by the recruitment of the “Fourth Child” Toji Suzuhara, a boy from her class at school. During Toji’s first test in the Eva, it was invaded by a parasitic Angel and was taken control of. Gendo instructed the other Eva pilots to destroy the “Angel” and Rei, in a moment of humanity, finds herself unable to fire at him and is incapacitated by the Angel. Implementing something called the “Dummy System” Gendo surrenders control over Shinji’s Eva to an autopilot-esque system that utterly destroys Unit-03 and leaves Toji severely injured with permanent injuries.
This incident, once again, prompts Shinji to reign from his position as an Evangelion pilot. In response to this, Rei is ordered to attempt to synchronize with Unit-01 but the test fails almost immediately. Not even the Dummy Plug is able to operate the Evangelion. Thus, when the angel Zeruel attacks, Rei is sent out in the Unit-00 as per usual along with Asuka in her 02. The Angel begun lying waste to Tokyo-3 and even nearly penetrates all the way to the GeoFront. Rei and Asuka were little match for Zeruel; valiantly though they fought, the two were vanquished before they could inflict a fatal blow to the Angel. Seeing the carnage from afar, Shinji is motivated to return to NERV and pilots the 01 against Zeruel. Though he is almost defeated, Unit-01 went berserk and Shinji lost control as it tore the Angel apart. In a horrifying act of brutality even for an Evangelion, it consumed Zeruel’s S2 Engine, an organ that allows for unlimited power.
Because of the way that Unit-01 went berserk in order to protect him, Shinji merged with the Evangelion and had remained inside it unable to be retrieved for an entire month.
Shinji was not the only one of Rei’s comrades going through serious trouble however. Asuka’s synchronization rate with her Unit-02 began to drop drastically. Rei attempts to inform Asuka of the souls that reside inside the Eva units, and that she should treat it as such, but Asuka angrily rejected her with a slap. Later on, Asuka was incapacitated and lost her synchronization with Unit-02 completely during a telepathic attack by the Angel Arael. This forced Rei to be ordered to retrieve the Lance of Longinus from Terminal Dogma and launch it at Arael, causing the Angel to be destroyed but sacrificing the lance into orbit.
The next Angel Rei would face would be Armisael. Deployed alongside the essentially functionless Unit-02, Rei was left to take on the Angel by herself. It wasn’t long before Armisael was able to penetrate Unit-00 and begin fusing itself not only unit the Eva unit, but into Rei’s anatomy as well. Invading the girl’s psyche, the Angel established communication with Rei, telling her that it is lonely, and forcing Rei to accept that she too is lonely. Upon confronting the emotions she had buried within herself, Rei begins to cry and expresses great confusion towards the fact that she is doing so.
Armisael seemed to attempt to use the Unit-00 to resurrect the fallen Angels by creating an enormous growth out of the Unit-00’s back. Witnessing this, Gendo instructs NERV to sortie Shinji in his Unit-01 to assist Rei. Shjinji fought valiantly against Armisael but became terrified upon watching it begin to take Rei’s form via it’s link with her. Rei, realizing the danger Shinji is, activates her A.T Field in an attempt to contain the Angel, and then decides to self-destruct Unit-00 to take the Angel out along with herself. NERV Headquarters and Shinji watched in horror as both Armisael and Rei along with Unit-00 were completely obliterated.
But to Rei, death was not permanent, for she was simply replaced with a new body. The nature of her replacement was confidential, however, leading Shinji and those not in the know to believe it was a stroke of luck that lead to her survival. The death did not come without consequence, however. Rei’s memory became muddled and she seemed to regress emotionally, easily evidenced in the way that acted towards Shinji while in the hospital. Upon finally returning to her home, she gripped Gendo’s glasses tightly and began to cry over them. Much like after her experience with Ramiel she questions her own tears, stating that even though she’s never this before, that it feels familiar.
Rei had a brief meeting with the “Fifth Child”, Kaworu Nagisa. He stated that she is just like him, going on to elaborate how he is the human vessel of Adam while she is the same for the being Lilith. After this meeting Rei began to greatly question herself, her purpose, and what she was doing. When Kaworu descended to Terminal Dogma after being discovered as the 17th Angel, he did battle (though wishing to lose so as not to destroy the humans and the person he truly loves, Shinji) with Shinji while controlling the Unit-02. Rei arrived, activating her incredibly powerful A.T Field to counter Kaworu’s, allowing Shinji to gain the upper hand. Rei looked on as Shinji is forced to kill Kaworu.
Soon after, NERV headquarters was laid siege by the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Force by SEELE’s order. Gendo thus attempted to finally use Rei for what she was created for in the first place: to begin his version of instrumentality and incite the third impact so that he could reunite with his departed wife. With Adam fused into his right hand and the soul of Lilith within Rei, he attempted to join the two in order to bring his plans to fruition. Surprisingly, Rei then rejects him, stating that she is not a doll. Choosing to join with the body of Lilith of her own accord, much to Gendo’s dismay, she decides that she will leave the fate of the world and instrumentality to Shinji rather than Gendo. As she departed, she told Gendo she could hear Shinji calling, leaving the man in despair as she finally made a choice for herself.
In joining Lilith, Rei became an enormous humanoid with a snowy white appearance. As Lilith, Rei began instrumentality by using the Mass Produced Evangelions of SEELE and Shinji in his Unit-01. During this process she created an Anti A.T Field that spanned the entire world, reducing all of humanity to LCL and joining them together inside an egg-like sphere. Shinji grappled inside his mind about whether life would be better like this, or if happiness could truly be gained by living with others in the normal world. Having allowed Shinji to decide how Instrumentality would play out, he ultimately decides to reject it, and thus reformed himself from LCL and caused both Lilith and the MP Evas to be destroyed. Any human who truly willed it could come back into existence because of Shinji’s choice.
Reincarnated History: Rei was born into the Ikari family as one half of a pair of twins opposite her brother Shinji. While not necessarily bad parents, one or both of them were almost constantly working, overseas, or simply attending to business, leaving both the Ikari children with a babysitter much of their life, and then eventually by themselves. Her relationship with her parents wasn’t strained for any reasons other than the fact that they didn’t get to see each other very often. Rei held no spite or ill will towards her parents, though she did find it much easier to get along with her Father than her Mother.
Growing up with only each other to interact with most of the time, Shinji and Rei formed a very close bond as siblings. As she got older she became more and more protective of her brother, never hesitating to step in when she notices he’s having trouble with something or if another kid was picking on him at school. Having the kind of stare that could make even the most stalwart seven-year-old boy shrink in fear, she was able to help Shinji out of a few sticky situations now and then. This relationship has lasted even to the present day; Rei would do anything for Shinji, and would easily trust him with her life.
Becoming independent was less something Rei was forced to do as she began to bud into a young adult, but more something she had grown into from an early age of fending for herself with her parents out of the house so often. Where other kids had to hold their parents hands or wait for a crossing guard, Rei was boldly looking both ways and skipping across busy intersections by the time she was eight. At this point she had gained such confidence in her ability to handle herself that she stopped being overly careful about her actions, eventually leading to her become quite the accident prone person. Even if she did get hurt, it wasn’t as though she didn’t know how to slap on a bandage or hold a rag to a wound. This confidence did get her into considerable trouble at one point in her life, however. While attempting to retrieve something from a top shelf in the kitchen by standing atop a wooden chair that was entirely too wobbly to be used for anything other than sitting on, she fell backwards onto the kitchen counter. In her descent her arm split a glass bowl open which in term split her arm open, leaving Shinji to take care of what turned out to be a very serious wound all by himself.
The incident didn’t change much of how she acted, solidifying that her calm, somewhat apathetic demeanor was there to stay. If anything, the injury only further strengthened her bond with Shinji more so than anything negative it may have done. The attitude Rei had towards her own safety wasn’t unique to those situations. Rei also paid little mind to the way that she looked, causing her to often leave the house wearing mismatched clothes or with ruffled, unkempt hair. This progressed into a somewhat lazy attitude when it came to more superficial things such as the clothes she wore or the housekeeping.
Though attending a rather densely populated school, Rei never finds any luck in connecting with other people besides Shinji. Acting fairly aloof and unresponsive towards most things, it was just as hard for other people to approach her as it was for her to do the same. Never feeling any connection or drive towards others, Rei became rather content with her solitude. Being so close to Shinji her whole life only made it more difficult to bond with others, and provided and easy excuse for why she didn't have to. On the occasion that she was interacting with someone, she’d often default to silence or one-word answers. When someone was bothering her, getting too close, or being mean, she’d take to dismissive sarcasm or deadpan snark in an attempt to create distance between him or her. This isn’t to say Rei had begun to hate people, merely that “people” wasn’t something she wanted out of life. Interactions with others just seemed exhausting, and she became apathetic towards everything they could offer. Shinji filled her emotional needs just fine, so everyone else was met with a sort of apathy. She would still repay kindness with kindness, still converse when spoken to, but getting close to others never became a priority to her. It wasn’t long before she was designated “That weird girl that only talks to her twin.” Rei being Rei, she didn’t particularly care, and instead poured her attention into solitary activities like reading, puzzles, and studying. Reading and learning about things through non-fiction books and encyclopedias is how she’d spend her time when she wasn’t with Shinji at home or was on a break during school. She will then default to Wikipedia when she’s out of physical reading material, a website with which she had become a prolific contributor and editor.
Though she does have her interests, Rei mostly wanders through her life directionless without clear goals. Though she is a straight-A student she has no clear career plan, always doing a lot of reading about a lot of different subjects, and never latching onto anything specific. While going through the usual motions one day, she decided to be impulsive and got into a cab to head towards one of the larger libraries, though a bit out of the way. It’s there that she got into a car accident, and though relatively unharmed, experienced her first echo.
First Echo: In a Taxi cab one day, another car swerved into their lane and swiped the cab across its front hood. The cab spun out, jostling Rei around the back seat, something that suddenly felt very familiar. All of a sudden she was hearing someone calling her name, and hearing the sound of a hatch opening. Before losing consciousness for a moment, she could swear she saw an older man with glasses looking at her, and he reminded her of her Father.
Preincarnation Personality: Rei is anything but a normal human being. This is not only because of the way she is created, but also the way she acts as well as her understanding of the people and world around her. Without a normal life or normal upbringing, Rei has great difficulty with emotions in ways that most people don’t.
Looking at Rei, the first thing that usually comes to mind is how expressionless she is. With her lips in a straight line, she accepts orders, responds to crises, and sits silently as the world around her goes by. She doesn’t find joy in her daily life at school, she doesn’t gossip with the other girls about the people they like, she doesn’t even feel the need to interact with anyone around her. If it weren’t for NERV, it’s more than likely she’d spend each and every day in her own isolated, expressionless world. When Shinji asks Rei why she pilots the Evangelion, her response is that she has nothing else. She continues to exist only for this purpose she serves, perpetually empty. Additionally, she seems to have very little free will or a desire to do much. Frequently she responds to questions with “If I’m ordered to” and will work tirelessly to accomplish her orders. However once those orders are complete, the drive shuts down.
Regardless of how expressionless she may be, an important fact that is hammered home hard by both the series and its creators is that there is a very significant difference between one who is expressionless and one who is emotionless. The key difference that separates her and others is her understanding of emotion and how she reacts to it. Rei is not a being that has any sort of profound understanding of what an emotion is, and therefore, being unable to understand what, if anything that she’s feeling, how could she possibly express that? How could she possibly understand the people that do? This is the great barrier that separates Rei from everyone else and is the root of the loneliness buried in her heart.
Certain key scenes highlight Rei’s general lack of understanding towards emotion. When Ramiel defeats her Evangelion and Shinji saves her from the entry plug, she expresses a great uncertainty towards how she should respond or how she should feel. Being protected or saved by someone: It’s a very simple action that puzzles her to the point where she needs to ask Shinji what she should do as a response. Another point is when Armisael invades Rei’s psyche, prompting her to confront her loneliness and bitter, sad feelings. For the first time, she begins to cry and at this action she expresses great disbelief, wondering if those tears were really coming from her.
Throughout the series, Rei does experience growth emotionally, most evident in her relationship with Shinji Ikari. It’s with Shinji that she first starts to question herself. Highlighting how he specifically affected her, Shinji is also the first person that she ever thanks, noting that even Gendo had never received these words of gratitude from her. Rei isn’t necessarily cold or unfeeling towards others, either. It gets to the point where she can’t bring herself to fire upon the Eva Unit-03 because it would harm her classmate, Toji.
It isn’t only seismic shifts, either. Rei has many little displays of emotion. Reiterating that Rei’s issue is with expression and not necessarily emotion, these are moments where the faucet of her feelings seems to drip, while never quite flowing openly until her confrontation with Armisael. She is seen smiling loyally in conversation with Gendo. She becomes angry with Shinji not because he walked in on her getting out of the shower, but rather because he was touching a precious object of hers, and again later when he speaks negatively about Gendo. She gets nervous when Shinji likens her to a Mother, and gently pushes back against Asuka’s aggression.
A problem that is perhaps even more powerful than her issues with expression and emotions is her understanding of herself, more specifically her knowledge of her expendable nature. If Rei dies, she can be replaced by one of the many soulless bodies residing deep in NERV headquarters. Asuka notes how Rei will do anything to accomplish her objectives, and this is true not because she is a “self-righteous bitch” but because even if she dies, she can be replaced. Therefore why should she exercise caution for her own safety when if she dies trying, it doesn’t even matter? This aspect does not help her bitterness towards the world, as her own understanding as something that is not important, something that can be replaced shapes her idea of herself in the minds of others.
Although when she dies sacrificing herself to defeat Armisael, she loses much of her memory and emotional progression in the process of her soul moving into the new body. However, she does seem to retain much of it eventually, as it is in her third incarnation that she decides she is her own person and should live as so. When Gendo attempts to use her to conduct human instrumentality and join her with Adam, she resists, not wanting to be his doll or tool. Instead, she makes her own decision to leave it in the hands of Shinji rather than his Father, truly marking her progression into someone who no longer sees herself as a replaceable tool into a unique existence with free will.
Any differences: The most obvious, glaring difference between pre and post reincarnation Rei is the fact that she is an emotionally stable girl with a relatively normal life. There are no existential issues for her to deal with, thus her psyche is rarely strained. This impacts her personality in huge ways, and though she still is generally distant towards most people with her calm, quiet demeanor, she is very much emotionally active on the inside. Even then, she smiles at the things the amuse her, laughs at the occasional dumb joke, sarcastically refuses to clean her room and plenty of other little things her pre reincarnation self never even began to do. She’s a much more well put together person, functioning perfectly fine in regular society. Unlike her past self, she has a very normal, pedestrian side to her. She hates cleaning up, gets excited about doing crossword puzzles, and hums her favorite songs as she browses the internet.
Another great change is her family, and most importantly her brother, Shinji. While her pre reincarnation her bonds were thin and scarce, Rei now has a deep, trusting relationship with someone. The closeness of their relationship is shown in that Rei will tell anything to Shinji, and do whatever she can to help him when she knows he’s in serious trouble. She would trust him with her life. That isn’t the only kind of closeness she has with him, though. Shinji is the one that gets to see Rei’s playful side. While not close enough to anyone else that they would have her interacting with them in this way, Shinji can find himself assaulted with sarcasm, wit, and blunt, humorous statements. There is no shortage of teasing and prodding in the household, deadpan or otherwise.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei shows that on the inside she is actually very lonely, while in her reincarnation, Rei is content in solitude. Though her original self may have been yearning for human contact, to be somebody amongst others, this Rei is completely apathetic towards being part of a group or having close friends. With the sole exception of her brother, Rei doesn’t seek out interaction with others, and even deep, deep inside her, she really doesn’t want it at all.
A lower key, but major difference nonetheless is Rei’s free spirit. Pre reincarnation, Rei spent most of her life being Gendo’s tool and obeying every order from NERV until the last moments of her life. In this life however, Rei has been independent and brimming with free will ever since she was little. Though she lacks true aspirations or long-term goals, Rei won’t be swayed by anyone’s persistence once she has her mind set on something, no matter what kind of authority they hold. Brash in her actions, Rei is a much more independent free spirit than the obedient soldier girl of her past life. If she wants to skip school to clean up the Wikipedia article for the French-Indian war, she’s going to do it! Everything she wants to do is her first concern, and everything she doesn’t, her last.
Abilities: Rei was created for the sole purpose of piloting an Evangelion, and therefore has a great deal of knowledge regarding the piloting and functions of an Evangelion. It can be surmised that Rei also had a certain degree of military level training given to her at some point in her life. As part of the being Lilith, Rei actually has an extraordinarily powerful A.T Field, a sort of barrier surrounding her that can repel all sorts of objects and attacks.
When merged with Lilith, Rei (In addition to becoming a giant, snowy white humanoid) is capable of creating life through “primordial ooze”, a substance that allowed for the creation and evolution of all life on Earth. In The End of Evangelion she is shown being capable of reducing all life to LCL and containing the souls of all of humanity within and egg-like sphere. These two feats however are done after a considerable amount of preparation so it’s dubious how easily these feats could be attainted.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: The house was empty; this was nothing new, of course. She and Shinji tended to end up on separate buses on the way back from school, and her parents being out of the house was about as surprising as the fact that she would need to inhale oxygen in a few seconds. Kicking off her shoes with such gusto that they both torpedoed into the wall in front of her, Rei let her school bag drop to the floor and her body fall back onto the living room couch. Another boring day at school was over, and it was time for a suitably boring night at home. She reached over towards the coffee table and grabbed a book she had been reading the day prior. It was a collection of information regarding various natural disasters. She figured she could learn a thing or two about tsunamis while waiting for Shinji to get home.
From there she moved on to a book about robotics, to one about the life of Victor Hugo, and back again to the tsunamis. Shinji still wasn’t home, so the girl was starting to get a little restless. Rei propped herself up against the window, looking out into quickly darkening skies.
“Seriously, where could he be?” She muttered to herself, wondering now whether or not he might get caught in the rain whenever he decides to come home. He doesn’t have an umbrella, so…
“He’d better not be in the computer lab playing that game of his…” With a quiet chuckle to herself, Rei lay back down and held her book above her face. “Yeah, as if he’s going to do that in public. So what’s the problem, Shinji?”
At this point, it was time to be a responsible twin sister. She picked up her cell and quickly dialed Shinji’s number only to be met with no response other than his robotic answering machine message. An exasperated sigh left her lips and she decided to just trust that Shinji was all right and that she had nothing to worry about.
That line of thinking didn’t take her very far as ten minutes later she was pulling on her rain boots, ready to walk out into the worsening conditions in order to find her brother. There were two things she was sure of: That if Shinji was in trouble or something was wrong, she needed to go help, and that if Shinji wasn’t home soon she’d have to cook herself dinner. In the interests of both their safety, she had to step out.
Roleplay Sample - Network: Sample Thread
Any Questions? Just a note that I have permission from
neopianangst to play the twins backstory/dynamic! 
