Characters / Neon Genesis Evangelion – The Children

Neon Genesis Evangelion Main Character Index
The Children (Asuka Langley Soryu) | NERV Staff | GEHIRN Staff | Other Characters | Extracanonical Characters

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This page contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned.

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The Children

In General

• Five Temperament Ensemble: The timid Extreme Doormat Shinji is Leukine, the Emotionless Girl Rei is Melancholic, the Hot-Blooded Tsundere Asuka is Choleric, The Big Guy Toji is Sanguine and the serene Nice Guy Kaworu is Phlegmatic.

Shinji Ikari

Voiced by: Megumi Ogata (Japanese); Spike Spencer [ADV], Casey Mongillo [VSI] (English)^note Other Languages: Víctor Ugarte (Latin American Spanish); Albert Trifol Segarra [TV series and films], Carlos Larios [VSI] (European Spanish), Donald Reignoux [TV series and redubs of the films] (French), Cyril Aubin [The End of Evangelion, Death & Rebirth] (French), Vincent de Bouard [Evangelion 1.0] (French); Fábio Lucindo (Brazilian Portuguese)

"I found something I enjoy doing. Finding something you like and doing just that one thing... What's wrong with that?!"

"I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away..."

Shinji, the Third Child, is the estranged son of NERV Commander Gendō Ikari. He is the main protagonist and the Ordinary High-School Student of the cast, and the series is actually mostly about him and his relationships with the other characters. He witnessed the death of his mother Yui when he was four years old (she was seemingly killed in an early test stage of Evangelion Unit-01), and was abandoned by his father shortly thereafter. As a result, he suffers from an extreme lack of self-confidence, has a very low opinion of himself, and generally does whatever is asked of him.

Especially in the early episodes, Shinji is the series' Butt-Monkey, the victim of almost every joke the scriptwriters could come up with for purposes of comedy relief. He's The So-Called Coward who saves the day occasionally but never gets any respect; the No-Respect Guy who means well but can't ever get a break; the "Well Done, Son" Guy who desperately wants his father to validate his existence. His day-to-day personality is meek, insecure, and indecisive, shaped by his constant fear of being hurt by his relationships with others. Although this is the only way he can cope when dealing with people, it hinders his interactions with fellow pilots Rei and Asuka, both of whom he is attracted to, and with his extroverted and very attractive guardian, Misato Katsuragi. Only when fighting the Angels does an inner core of strength and Determination shine through. Unfortunately, because of his psychological trauma, it often takes a mixture of Unstoppable Rage and suicidal fear to bring it to manifest.

In the first episode, Gendo blackmails Shinji into piloting Unit-01 with the threat that if he doesn't, a severely-wounded Rei will be sent out in his place to certain death. Because of this, Shinji is reluctant to pilot his Eva, doing it more out of a sense of duty and moral obligation than anything else. He seems to be the only pilot who fully grasps what is at stake, although he does not want such responsibility, and it weighs heavily upon him and constantly preys upon his mind.

More than once he tries to run away or escape from his life as a pilot, only to return when driven back by the knowledge that he can't stand by while the world is destroyed. However, despite whatever conviction influences his decisions, an overriding theme in the series is that his actions are those of a child seeking approval, piloting Eva to earn his estranged father's praise or desperately trying to be accepted and valued by the people around him.

Over the first half or so of the series, Shinji makes noticeable progress toward becoming more stable and more accepting of others. However, beginning with the Angel Leliel's attack, and the increasing toll subsequent Angels' attacks and revelations about the truths behind NERV and SEELE take on him and everyone around him, Shinji becomes increasingly alienated, increasingly depressed, and his sanity slowly erodes. By the end of episode 24, he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown or starting one. This leads to a major point of contrast between the anime's more hopeful resolution in episodes 25 and 26, and End of Evangelion, where he becomes much less sympathetic, particularly at the start when he masturbates over a comatose Asuka and later attempts to strangle her. What was once bravery becomes insane recklessness, as his pain drives him to a point where he no longer really cares whether he (or anyone else) lives or dies.

In the manga version, Shinji's personality has noticeable differences, as he is more apathetic, depressive, and prone to anger or snarkiness, rather than being fearful and cringing. Although he is portrayed as being a bit more stable, he is fundamentally the same damaged child. His Character Development in this version is also very different than the anime version. This is most seen in how he feels about the people around him. In the anime, he comes to believe that nobody cares about him, while the manga emphasizes his desire to protect all the people he cares about, with losing almost all of them being what sends him into a mental state close to what he was like in The End of Evangelion. While the story plays out in largely the same fashion as in End, Shinji's motivations and mindset through it are not as complex, and because of this the final resolution is arguably the most hopeful of all the story's iterations.

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• 10-Minute Retirement: Every time something traumatic happens to him in his Eva he swears off piloting only to be dragged back in not long after due to his own hidden Determinator qualities. The one time when he finally decides to call it quits for good, things don't turn out well.
• Abusive Parents:
  • His father is this of the emotional and neglectful kind, causing Shinji to have both low self-esteem and low self-worth.
  • Likewise, his foster parents are subtly implied to be this, especially in the manga where it's implied that they pretty much ignored him as much as possible.
• Accidental Pervert: His first actual conversation with Rei starts with this, and is notable for being one of the first major signs that Rei isn't normal.
• Ace Pilot: Not at first, but through trial and error he becomes the most effective EVA pilot of the three main children; from Episode 16 onward, he even surpasses Asuka's sync rate.
• Action Survivor: His first encounter with danger occurs at the feet of Sachiel, which crushes and detonates an army helicopter less than fifty feet from him, and the next encounter is inside Misato's car and beneath Misato as the blast wave from an N2 explosion throws and rolls the car sideways and up a hill.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: The news that he has gained the highest sync score causes him to very briefly develop this in Episode 16. The twelfth Angel brings him back down even faster than that.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Where the anime depicts Shinji with dark blue eyes and a dark shade of chestnut as his hair color, he has brown eyes and pure black hair in the manga.
• Adaptational Badass: In the manga, Shinji is far more prone to being a badass than in the anime, with one of the best examples being his battle against the Mass Production Evas, where he continually beats them down while trying to protect Asuka. That said, his insecurities and personality issues are still the driving force behind much of his actions.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the manga, despite being generally more sullen and sarcastic, Shinji shows more potential for heroism than he did in the anime. He connects more with the people in his life, he has a stronger moral center, he does not masturbate over Asuka's comatose body, and he gets his shit together fast enough to save Asuka's life, something he failed to do in the anime. And ultimately, his more moral mindset leads to a much more unambiguously happy ending.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Compared to the Extreme Doormat from the anime, the manga version of Shinji can assert himself when it counts, won't hesitate to talk back to Asuka when she berates him, and is a much braver Determinator in general.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In the anime, Shinji is Ambiguously Bi, but not conflicted about his sexual orientation in any case. In the manga, he's explicitly bisexual, but deeply closeted about it.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Misato calls him "Shin-chan" (little Shinji).
  • Toji tends to half-jokingly refer to him as "chief".
• Age-Appropriate Angst: Some speculate that this has contributed to some of the hatedom for Shinji (who is 14) in viewers of the English dubs. In the original Japanese version, he is voiced by Megumi Ogata, and his voice sounds like that of a prepubescent child. In the 1996 ADV English dub, he is voiced by Spike Spencer, and sounds more like a mid-puberty teenage boy. The theory is that audiences are more tolerant of angst when they hear the voice of a child than that of a more masculine, older-sounding voice, even though the scripts between the two versions don't differ significantly in their portrayal of the character.
• Ambiguously Bi: While he's definitely attracted to several of the show's female characters, in the anime his feelings for Kaworu are left ambiguous and could be interpreted as romantic. Though the facts that he frequently blushes in a bashful manner when speaking to Kaworu, and for all his usual shyness, is not frightened of being touched by him, indicates at least some degree of subtext. The manga avoids any ambiguity and makes him bisexual.
  • Some supplemental material, as well as the debatably canon video game Neon Genesis Evangelion 2 game, seem to consider Kaworu as a same-sex love-interest to Shinji, and Shinji is shown to reciprocate.
• Apologises a Lot: Too often, according to Asuka.
  Asuka: Stop apologizing to me! Grow some backbone!
  Shinji: S-Sorry!
• An Arm and a Leg: Played with. When Unit-01 has its arm torn off, the synchronization causes Shinji to feel as if it was his arm. For the rest of the series, he reflexively opens and closes his hand on that arm when agitated, as if to remind himself that it's still attached.
• Anti-Hero: While initially cast as a Classical Anti-Hero, it gradually becomes more and more obvious that he qualifies as a modern version as well. He's so deep into his own irrational self-loathing and self-pity that he frequently shuts down around other people and refuses to actually make them feel better, it's questionable if he actually pilots the EVA out of altruism or if it's just a method of personal validation, and he nearly causes Instrumentality before reversing course at the last minute.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Develops into one after Instrumentality. See Straw Nihilist below.
• Anti-Villain: Becomes a Tragic Villain by End of Evangelion, where he is willing to destroy humanity as a result of his sheer despair and desperation. While he and Yui manage to ultimately ensure that Instrumentality is reversible, he still did it mostly out of selfish reasons and the world will take a long time to recover.
• Armoured Closet Gay: Or bi anyway. In the manga if Kaworu ever gets too close to him Shinji will insist that boys can't like each other that way. However, following Kaworu's death, he admits to having been attracted to Kaworu. Even though he didn't "want to fall in love with a boy like that"◊ Combined with previous comments by Sadamoto about Shinji being interested, his armour seems transparent at times.
• Audience Surrogate: Whether people want to admit it or not, Shinji acts much the same way a lot of people would act given the circumstances, asks many of the same questions the audience is asking, and shares many of the audience's views on the events happening in the series (or vice versa, thanks to the story being told from his perspective). This, naturally, leads into a lot of the Fan Wank about the series.
• Author Avatar: Additionally, many perceive Shinji as a reflection of Hideaki Anno's own psyche. This is backed up by statements from both the show's staff and Anno himself.
• Ax-Crazy: When his Berserker mode comes into play, he is an absolutely unhinged killing machine.
• Badass Adorable: He qualifies more as "cute" than "handsome", but he is still relatively attractive, and is often one of the only reasons for humanity's continued survival.
• Badass on Paper: A shy, depressed teenager who slays trans-dimensional monsters for a living.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Both End of Evangelion and the manga play with this with how he initiates Third Impact. However, it's more clearly this in the manga, as his desire stems more from not wanting to lose anyone else instead of wanting everyone to die along with him.
• Beginner's Luck: Subverted in several ways. His initial skill at piloting Unit-01 is revealed to have very little to do with any actual talent on his part, and his becoming its pilot was anything but a sudden chance.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension:
  • Deconstructed with the attraction between Shinji and Asuka. They're two emotionally and mentally scarred teenagers with completely incompatible personalities, and the friction between them just serves to show how dysfunctional their relationship and personalities are. Asuka's abusive treatment hurts Shinji's already low self-esteem, while Shinji's lack of passion makes Asuka frustrated with both him and herself. In the end, they can't find comfort in each other and become more distanced as the series goes on.
  • Compared to the immediate friendship the two develop in the anime, manga-Kaworu's relationship with Shinji is built around tension and the uneasiness Shinji feels around him. Kaworu is also no less interested in Shinji, but is presented as far more naive and a rather big Jerkass. Sadamoto described their relationship as two schoolboys who are constantly bickering, but secretly desire to impress the other.
• Berserk Button:
  • In the TV series, any intervention/interruption his father makes pushes it. In The End of Evangelion, it is both the consequences of his impotence and the rejection of others.
  • The button is pushed more effectively by his father in the manga. However, consequence and rejection fail to touch it by the end of the novella, as the dire peril of those he loves pushes it first.
• The Berserker: When pushed past his breaking point, Shinji becomes a brutal killing machine. There's only so much pressure a doormat can take.
  • One downplayed example from the manga, during the aftermath of Toji's death, Gendo calls for Shinji to explain why he didn't follow his orders. Instead, Shinji demands Gendo explain himself for ordering him to kill his own friend. When Gendo coldly dismisses it, arguing that he's the one in charge, Shinji completely loses it, jumps onto Gendo's desk, and tries to punch him. Kaji catches his fist an inch away from Gendo's (shocked) face.
• Beware the Nice Ones: When he's driven over the edge, horror ensues for the Angels, Asuka, and possibly for Gendo. In particular, after he thinks Gendo has forced him to kill Toji, he threatens to use Unit 01's remaining power to go on a rampage and destroy NERV HQ.
• Big Damn Heroes: Sometimes as the rescuer, sometimes as the rescued.
  • His one indisputable moment of this comes in episode 19, in the battle against Zeruel.
  • In the manga, he manages to save Asuka from the Mass Production Evas and proceeds to kick their asses.
• Blessed with Suck: Shinji takes to piloting Unit-01 quickly after a couple sorties, and manages to attain high synch ratios as the series progresses. This leads to a lot of suffering later. Not that any of it is enjoyable, or safe, for him...
• Break the Cutie: His psychological erosion over the course of the series is one of the defining examples of this trope in anime.
• Butt-Monkey: In the more lighthearted episodes, he plays a more traditional version of this, constantly getting the short end of the stick for the audience's amusement. In the later arcs, this is takento the extreme, but not in a comical way.
• Character Tic: The twitching of his fingers, and opening and closing his hand.
• Chick Magnet: Asuka, Misato, Mana Kirishima in Girlfriend of Steel and Rei's actions around him say much... and then there's Kaworu.
• The Chosen One: Zig-Zagged. Even though being a pilot already makes him one of The Chosen Many, Shinji is still viewed and treated as someone extra special by NERV, but as the series progresses it becomes increasingly clear that this is actually a result of him being the pilot of Unit-01, which plays a central part in Gendo's plans. However, by the last act of the series, it also turns out that Yui had chosen him to play the most crucial role in her own plans for the Instrumentality Project probably right from the day he was born, if not before.
• Classical Anti-Hero: He saves the day several times in spite of all that he goes through.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: While he's implied to be aware that several of the women in his life have feelings for him, his own cowardly nature and indecisiveness ensures that he'll never get anywhere with any of them.
• Conscription: It's been said that the reason Shinji gets so much flak from anime fans is because he has far more in common with a draftee from The Vietnam War than with most Shōnen protagonists. While the reasons for the animosity are up for debate (like virtually everything else in Evangelion), there certainly isn't any doubt that Shinji was shanghaied into becoming an Eva pilot.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: In the first episode, when he only agrees to pilot Unit-01 so that an injured Rei won't have to do so in his place. It's part of a pattern of behavior for him — because of Shinji's self-loathing, he hates the idea of other people being hurt because of him and this guilt complex is the best thing at motivating him into action. However, by End Of Eva, he starts using it to justify his inaction.
  Shinji: All I ever do is hurt people, so I'd rather do nothing at all!
• Corrupted Character Copy: His story falls along the likes of Amuro Ray, being a teenager who finds success fighting with a mecha and copes with a father who spends all of his time working with advanced weapon technology. He's also another brown-haired blue-eyed Everyman who ends up Falling into the Cockpit in the first episode. Unlike Amuro, Shinji's not a genius, a prodigy, nor does he have a lot of courage. The few times he Shinji's personality and emotional state are more internally toxic and help bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
• Word of God also states he was inspired by Akira Fudo from Devilman. Before Akira becomes Devilman he and Shinji do look alike, but unlike Akira, Shinji never gets the genuine support or care he needs to keep going.
• Covert Pervert: As evidenced by his dream sequences. No more than Truth in Television level for a hormonal teenager, though.
• Cowardly Lion: Shinji is a lot braver than he gives himself credit for (and certainly more than anime fans sometimes say). While he's a passive pushover with low self-esteem, he still tries to do right by others, proves himself capable of rising to the occasion several times, and almost always manages to pull through in the end... emphasis on "almost".
• Creepy Child: He becomes this big time when he finally breaks in The End Of Evangelion. Having hit the rock bottom of the Despair Event Horizon, his Sanity Slippage reduces him to fits of shrieking insanity and climaxes with him brokenly choosing to allow all of humanity to die.
• Deadpan Snarker: He has signs of this in the anime, at least in the beginning, before Break the Cutie rears its ugly head. In the manga, it seems to be his default state when he's catching flak from people, especially to Asuka. On a more subtle level, it also counts as another trait that makes him like his father, as seen in Episode 22 where it turns out the younger Gendo also had quite the sarcastic wit back in the day.
• Declaration of Protection:
  • In the manga version of End of Evangelion, Shinji piloting Unit-01 takes a stand against the MP Evas once Unit-02 shuts down and, vastly outnumbered, speaks this line in utter badassitude:
    I will... protect Asuka!! Never... again... shall anyone die!!
  • He also felt this way about Rei though he doesn't succeed in protecting her.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Of The Chosen One, Kid Hero, and The Hero. Shinji is not your typical handsome hero with Ideal Hero tendencies. In fact, he's very neurotic, realistic and vulnerable, and only gets worse as the series progresses. First off, he's initially presented as a cliche anime stereotype before revealing that he's much more complex psychologically than that label. In fact, this stereotype is very harmful, since its expectation is dictated mainly by the stereotype. This could explain the fact that his character was so controversial for the time the anime was released. At the end, he's eventually revealed to be an extremely messed-up individual whose behavior is an endless source of troubles. In short, Shinji comes as a harsh rebuke.
  • Also of the No-Respect Guy. The guy fights dangerous monsters on the daily, risking his life and sanity, but at the end of the day he continues to get treated like crap: his Implied Love Interest cares little for him, his father refuses to show him any affection, and he all around gets constantly belittled, insulted, beaten and ignored. He's eventually convinced that no one loves him and if that's the case then the whole world should just disappear...
• Despair Event Horizon: Shinji approaches it several times over the course of the series, but manages to come back, although he's increasingly damaged each time. The culmination of his interactions with Asuka in End (built upon with the hospital scene and the sight of the MP Evas with Unit-02's mangled corpse, and capped with her rejection of him in the "kitchen scene") is what finally drives him over.
• Desperately Craves Affection: He desperately wants love and affection, but is so terrified of being hurt by rejection that he pushes everyone away regardless. Unfortunately, just when it seems that he finally found what he wanted in Kaworu Nagisa, he lost him in one of the most horribly heart-breaking ways imaginable.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: He seems to be incapable of finding something to do with his life that he actually enjoys. He hates piloting an Eva due to the massive emotional toll it takes on himself and everyone around him, but struggles to find anything else to devote himself to, as whenever he finds something he enjoys his self-esteem issues interfere and cause him to abandon it. This failing is shown to him in a metaphorical scene in End of Evangelion where a young Shinji spends an entire afternoon carefully building a perfect sand replica of the Geofront pyramid for another child. Seeing her leave with her mother before he's finished, Shinji feels unappreciated and is unable to take pride in his work, causing him to fly off the handle and destroy it.
• Determined Defeatist: Kaworu admits that what he admires the most about Shinji, in contrast to Gendo and SEELE, is that Shinji keeps going despite all the heartbreak life causes him. Kaworu's death at his hands, however, on top of all the other traumatizing events he recently had to endure, utterly breaks the few remaining shreds of Shinji's spirit, and he ends up too mentally and emotionally exhausted to go on and spends pretty much all of The End of Evangelion having a mental breakdown in slow-motion.
• Dragged into Drag: Forced by Asuka to wear one of her spare female-oriented plugsuits during their first battle together, complete with cleavage. A few of the spinoffs bring this back with a maid costume.
• Dreadful Musician: He considers himself as such, but is actually a pretty decent cello player. Case in point: he can play the prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, a piece known for requiring a considerable amount of skill, very well. Even Asuka is impressed.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Sadamoto has joked Shinji's design is essentially Nadia with no eyelashes and a boyish haircut. His rather slender frame, which tends to gets emphasised every time he is put into a skintight outfit, also occasionally contributes to give him a somewhat feminine appearance, especially that one time Asuka forced him to wear one of her plugsuits or that time he was made to wear a leotard along with a loose t-shirt matching Asuka's during synchronisation training.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: End opens with Shinji, who at this point is teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown and is desperate for any source of comfort, going to Asuka's hospital room and trying to wake her from the medical coma she was placed in after her own mental breakdown. He ends up rolling her onto her back, only to discover that her shirt is open. He then locks the door and masturbates to the sight of her, only to come to his senses once he's done and sink further into horror and self-loathing.
• The Eeyore: Not (generally) played for laughs; he's genuinely depressed, and we're meant to feel his pain. What makes this even more painful to watch is the contrast the audience sees in episodes ten to fourteen, where he actually seems to be genuinely smiling for a short period of time and seems relatively happy, or at the very least content, with a fair bit of emotional stability thrown in for good measure. This doesn't last long, though.
• Empty Shell: Kaworu's death causes him to be reduced to one, which lasts throughout the first half of End of Evangelion. Misato actually has to drag him across the floor because he refuses to so much as move an inch, let alone speak to her. He finally has an emotional outburst right as Misato brings him to Unit-01's location, and a final heart-to-heart with her seems to allow him to return to a somewhat more stable emotional state... but then the events that immediately ensue after this cause Sanity Slippage to kick in at full force, throwing him down the exact opposite path of the Despair Event Horizon into a fit of shrieking insanity.
• Even the Guys Want Him:
  • Played straight, subverted, or both at once, depending on how you look at it. His interactions with Kaworu fall into Ho Yay territory, but end very messily. None of his relationships with the other characters turn out well either, due to his insecurities and everyone else's unique psychological issues.
  • In Shinji Ikari Raising Project, Shinji gets unwanted attention from both Kaworu and Gendo.
• Extreme Doormat: Shinji's abandonment issues have left him with a subconscious belief that he has no worth as a person, so he has no real drive to do anything for and by himself, which has led him to adopt a main philosophy of keeping his head down and doing as he is told. This attitude is somewhat downplayed in the manga.
• Failure Hero: He is this in general, but the manga actually spends more time examining it. After killing Kaworu in the manga, he wonders about what kind of hero he is for not protecting any of people he actually cares about. Ironically, despite Shinji still feeling that he's a failure, he is less of one there. He manages to get his shit together much faster in the finale and is able to save Asuka from a painful death at the MP Evas' hands, while in the anime he only arrives after they have finished tearing Asuka's Eva (and by extension Asuka) limb from limb.
• First Kiss: An experience which differs between the anime and the manga. Neither of them are initiated by him.
  • In the anime, Asuka pressures him into kissing her under the pretense of experimenting. She pinches his nose down the entire time while Shinji just kind of stands there dumbfounded.
  • The manga has two instances, although the first is a subversion:
    • Asuka teases Shinji about not having kissed anyone, but he stands up to her and they agree to go for it. However, just as their lips are about to meet, the elevator they stopped in front of opens, revealing Misato and Kaji.
    • Kaworu attempts to give Shinji CPR after he starts hyperventilating, but ends up performing something closer to a kiss. Once he regains his breath, Shinji is understandably freaked out.
• Freak Out: Happens often. Earlier in the series the occasional Freak Outs just temper into a Heroic BSoD, and eventually he seems to "recover" for a bit. However, as the series goes on, they become more and more damaging, and it becomes more and more difficult for him to recover from. And then we get to The End and, well...
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Stuck between a lost mother and a cruel father, he's left to fight monsters for the sake of humanity, until he eventually decides it's not worth it and devastates Earth himself. A common interpretation of Asuka putting her hand on his face after strangling her and then saying "Disgusting." at the end of End is that while she is able to empathize with and forgive him, she is still absolutely horrified by his actions.
• Friendless Background: He admits that he didn't really have any kind of social life before he came to Tokyo-3. Toji and Kensuke are for all intents and purposes his first real friends.
• Gender Flip:
  • In a meta sense. He has a stereotypical weak-willed, sensitive, delicate feminine personality to contrast to Asuka's bullish, brash, hardened masculine personality. He could also be considered a rare (and early) example of a male moe character, as he hits all the basic traits—he's cute and vulnerable, cries often, and gets into situations where you want to give him a hug, the basic building blocks of moe.
  • Played straight with regard to his character design, as Yoshiyuki Sadamoto has said that he based Shinji's design on that of Nadia from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
• Generation Xerox: He's heavily implied to be very similar to how Gendo was at his age, which would make him dangerously close to becoming just like his father when he reaches adulthood. End of Evangelion outright confirms that this is the case, but also has Shinji finally overcome his personal problems, ensuring that he at the very least won't end up like Gendo.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: He spends the first third of End of Evangelion going through a major depressive episode, but is at least still sane. He completely goes off the deep end on seeing Giant Naked Rei, and his mind snaps for the rest of the movie.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Played With. Asuka is sent over the edge when Shinji's sync ratio got higher than hers even when she trained as a pilot for years. Then we found out why: it's revealed that Asuka figuratively "walling off" her heart from everyone (to avoid being hurt again) also caused her to shut out Eva-02 in all her attempts to synchronize with its resident soul, which just so happens to be that of her dead mother, thus she was essentially piloting an Eva all wrong. The fact that she managed the highest sync ratio for any period of time is impressive, and Asuka is still a better pilot than Shinji in terms of self-discipline and practical skill anyway.
• Hates Baths: Downplayed. In a private moment, Shinji admits that he feels uncomfortable when bathing in a tub, because he usually has nothing to do but turn his thoughts inwards, and doing so always tends to bring his bad memories, of which he has plenty, back to the surface. It is later indicated that he has a fear of water in general, as Leliel's spectre calls him out on the fact that he has never learned how to swim, to which he replies with a downright offended "Humans aren't made to float!"
• Hates Being Alone: Despite his introversion, his greatest fear is being abandoned by the people he cares about.
• Hates Being Touched:
  • In the anime, just about any kind of physical contact is beyond Shinji's comfort zone, particularly involving women. However, he does let Kaworu touch his hand in one episode, in contrast to him rejecting Misato when she tried to in the previous episode.
  • Subverted in the manga; his desperation for love and acceptance lead him to have some vulnerable moments with Misato and Rei, showing he's more willing to empathize with others despite his mentally depressive state.
• Hates Their Parent: Shinji resents and loathes his father Gendo, due to him being absent, cold, and neglectful for most of Shinji's life. And it is made more complicated by the fact that he, often against his own better judgement, still cannot help but seek out Gendo's approval.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: He's often seen wearing headphones, listening to music on his SDAT player, when he wants to block out reality.
• Heroic BSoD: Several times over the course of the series, and so much so in End that after the Dude, She's Like in a Coma opening, he becomes a passive Death Seeker.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Shinji is hesitant to accept any praise he gets and he tends to try to downplay his own accomplishments. Most notably, he considers himself a Dreadful Musician, despite what Asuka sees of him playing (she's impressed enough to consider him a pretty competent cello player). Gendo really did something awful to his self-esteem.
• Heroic Willpower: He mustn't run away. (The one time he does, it's 10-Minute Retirement).
• Hidden Depths: It's not immediately obvious, but Shinji is much more impressive than meets the eye, and he could achieve quite a lot in life, if only he had the courage and self-confidence to apply himself more. It is demonstrated on a couple of occasions that, despite his unassuming and quiet demeanor, he has a bit of an eye for detail and is surprisingly observant. The manga takes it further as he comes from an evidently more neglectful childhood in that continuity, as everybody goes out of their of their way to pretend he doesn't exist.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Shinji's own crippling lack of self-esteem is at the root of many of his social problems. Because he always thinks the very worst of himself, he cannot truly accept that other people might like or even love him, and a result he isolates himself from the people around him because he fears that he is just a burden to them.
• House Husband: If it weren't for the whole "piloting Eva to save the world" thing, he'd fit the role completely. He's almost entirely responsible for the cooking, housekeeping, etc. in Misato's house. Asuka even calls him "a housebroken male" to his chagrin.
• I Am Who?: The son of the woman who built the EVAs, and born into a family that has been involved with The Conspiracy for what appears to be generations. Also, he'd seen Unit-01 long before he was made its pilot...
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Desperately clings to any chances at a normal life despite knowing all too well that he's stuck in the world Gendo has placed him in. Even discounting that, the plans Yui made for him effectively means that he never really had a chance.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: In the manga, Gendō uses the Dummy Plug system to have Unit-01 destroy Toji's entry plug, killing him, while Shinji can do nothing but watch. Shinji blames himself for Toji's death and very nearly quits being a pilot until Kaji gives him a pep talk about how he must accept to live burdened by the guilt of his friend's death.
• Iconic Outfit: Shinji's generic school uniform coupled with his brown hair makes him an instantly recognizable character.
• Image Song: A cover of "Cruel Angel's Thesis", which was already a song about him in the first place.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Inverted. He is absolutely filled with inhuman self-loathing, but he ultimately places his emotions above other people pretty frequently, as shown when he's willing to destroy nearly all of humanity in order to feed into his grief.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Misato, who is 15 years older than him. This is yet another deconstruction, as Misato bouncing back and forth between his commanding officer when they're on duty and a Cool Big Sis at home keeps them from truly being able to relate to each other in a way that would be mutually beneficial. Additionally, his struggles with dealing with women in general and the ambiguity of exactly what Misato feels for him cloud things even further.
  • Also with Rei, who is technically billions of years old.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: In the anime, Shinji's dark blue eyes are used to underscore his naivety and innocence. The manga goes for a more everyman kind of look by giving him brown eyes.
• Interspecies Romance: Any fanon pairing with Rei or his relationship with Kaworu fits, the former being a mixed human/Angel clone and the latter being a full Angel.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Shinji is infamously wimpy and effeminate, along with the fact that he does all the cooking and cleaning at home, Apologizes a Lot, and (kind of) pairs up with a rather aggressive young lady - that is, when he isn't busy blushing over Kaworu.
• It's All About Me: Shinji is a more introverted, self-destructive example of this trope. While he's not arrogant, his self-loathing is matched by an almost bottomless capacity for self-pity which drives him to do some truly despicable actions for his own selfish comfort. This is most glaringly evident in End of Evangelion when he masturbates over Asuka's comatose body to "cope" with his guilt over murdering Kaworu as well as when he curls into a fetal position while NERV's personnel are slaughtered by the JSSDF and Asuka tries to fight the MP Evas.
• It's All My Fault: He has a nasty habit of blaming everything on himself. The absolute refusal by the rest of the cast to explain anything to him only makes it worse.
• It's Okay If It's You: Since the anime doesn't label Shinji's sexuality, one interpretation of his relationship with Kaworu is that he's simply so desperate for someone to love him that their gender doesn't matter to him.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Double Subverted. To begin with, Shinji absolutely hates being an Eva pilot, feeling both utterly overwhelmed by his duty to defend mankind and that he gets very little in return for risking his life on a regular basis. However, he eventually comes to see that as a side effect of being a pilot, he has gained several new friends and a better home life, and realizes that he much prefers this new, more sociable life over the very lonely and humdrum existence he came from. As a result, he starts to identify more with his post as a pilot and even starts to draw happiness and hope from it. But just as this happens, the Angels start becoming increasingly dangerous and insidious in their methods of attack, and Shinji is soon faced with increasingly frequent assaults on his very sanity and psyche, as well as the fact that his friends are either in the midst of their own mental breakdowns or getting put of commission by various events. By the time of The End of Evangelion, he has been effectively worn down to a borderline catatonic wreck from the stress of it all and looks back on his piloting as something that has only led to suffering for himself and others.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's a lot more sullen, rude, and snarky in the manga. Ironically, this incarnation seems to be a much better person than the anime version underneath, as he has a more obvious conscience and willingness to do the right thing, as well as a greater willingness to express the love he feels for the people around him which is what motivates him to try to get closer to Rei and keeps him sane after Kaworu's death.
• Kavorka Man: While Shinji is hardly unattractive, he's clearly drawn to be very plain and unremarkable looking. Despite this and his crippling lack of self esteem and charisma, Shinji manages to charm more than a few girls throughout the series, something he seems to have in common with dear old dad.
• Kid Hero: Protecting the world from the powerful Angels at the age of 14 along with his colleagues, although this is savagely deconstructed as the series progresses.
• The Kirk: He forms the insecure and indecisive center trying to balance out the emotionally unexpressive Rei and the overly emotional Asuka.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Being forced to kill Kaworu ultimately breaks him.
• Kissing Cousins: His possible relationship with Rei in Shinji Ikari Raising Project, where she is his distant cousin.
• Laughing Mad: A more subtle example than most but when he’s particularly unstable he’s prone to start nervously chuckling creepily with an insane look on his face. He can be seen doing this when he’s attempting to rip Zeruel’s face off, when he sees Rei/Lilith and when he’s strangling Asuka in the kitchen.
• Like an Old Married Couple: With Asuka when they're both at their most emotionally stable. It's lampshaded by Toji, to their mutual embarrassment.
• Like Father, Like Son: It becomes increasingly apparent, especially near the end of the series, that Shinji takes a great deal after his father, both in looks and in personality. They are loners who struggle to form emotional bonds, attract attention from their female coworkers despite their less-than-appealing personalities, are traumatized by the loss of Yui, and are willing to destroy the world to get what (they think) they want.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • He is quite unaware of the going-ons behind the scenes in NERV. In fact, at one point Kensuke talks with Shinji about some rumors he has gotten through his own sources in NERV, assuming that as an important EVA pilot Shinji must surely be able to indulge him some further information, but Shinji honestly knows so little that it is actually him who ends up getting some of the bigger picture from talking with Kensuke. Kensuke is quite shocked to learn this fact.
  • Misato hurriedly attempts to bring him up to speed in End, but the amount of time she has to dump such a large amount of complicated information onto him isn't anywhere near enough and he clearly isn't paying attention to her while she's saying it.
• Loser Protagonist: A core aspect of his character is his refusal to acknowledge anything about himself besides his failures.
• Lovable Coward: He's a very neurotic and whiny coward but he does often have moments of being heroic, endearing and sympathetic. It helps that he never really betrays or abuses anyone in the main series, unlike his father.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Feminine Boy to Asuka's Masculine Girl. His lack of masculinity is partly why Asuka has such a hard time expressing her feelings towards him, finding him too weak to be worthy of her admiration.
• Maybe Ever After: In the manga ending, Shinji meets Asuka again, after both have been reborn in the new world where Angels don't exist. Nothing in the ending implies they'll get romantically involved soon, but the sole fact that they're both alive in a more peaceful world ends their relationship on a hopeful note.
• Meaningful Name: "Shinji" means "to believe" or "have faith", though much of Shinji's problems come from the fact that much of his faith in others is betrayed and destroyed over and over again in the show. "Ikari" on the other hand can mean both "anchor" and "rage" depending on the kanji used. The kanji for Ikari in Shinji's name means "anchor", which makes sense, seeing how he is the protagonist and therefore is the audience's anchor point, but the "rage" interpretation also comes up, especially when he pilots the Eva.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Shinji's a neurotic loner with severe daddy issues, and it only goes downhill before reaching a nadir in the End of Evangelion, where he shifts from being near-catatonic at the beginning, to a shrieking madman near the middle, and finally to a genocidal ball of rage and hatred during the climax. He seems to regain his senses by the end, though his blank expression in the final scene still raises some concerns.
• Messianic Archetype: Ultimately becomes this at the end of the manga, where he not only restores humanity but also apparently butterflies away the Second Impact, as the epilogue is shown to take place in winter.
• Mirror Character
  • During the beginning of instrumentality, Shinji realises that he and Asuka are very much alike:
    Asuka: Even just the sight of you gets on my nerves!
    Shinji: Because I'm just like you? ^note To elaborate, they both suffer from cripplingly low self-esteem and become Eva pilots out of a desperate need for validation.
  • It becomes obvious by the end of the series that he and Gendo actually are very similar people, both being introverted persons wracked with an extreme sense of social anxiety and self-loathing.
• Mr. Fanservice: There are quite a few shots of him naked, and the manga goes as far as Male Frontal Nudity. He is also at one point Dragged into Drag.
• The Muse: Other Gainax protagonists (like Naota and Simon) are based on what Shinji would be like if he grew up in a different environment.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • After he masturbates in front of a comatose Asuka, he is horrified at what he just did and falls even deeper into his downward mental spiral.
  • When Asuka caresses his face while he's in the middle of choking her to death, he lets her go and breaks down.
• Nephewism: In the manga, Gendō dropped Shinji off at his maternal aunt's place after Yui died. Shinji's uncle and aunt made clear that they weren't happy to look after him and even had him live in a playhouse at the garden instead of letting him stay at their house.
• Nervous Tics: He has a habit of clenching and unclenching his hand when anxious. It's possibly a tic in the actual psychological sense, due to the extreme pain he suffered when his Humongous Mecha had its arm ripped off.
• Nervous Wreck: Poor guy, in the first few episodes. He spends his first few battles freaking out. While he does get much better after the Futagoyama incident as far as battles go, he never quite stops acting like this in his everyday life... and then, of course, any progress he made is undone as everything goes straight to hell...
• Nice Guy: On the surface, at least. Shinji is, for the most part, polite, kind, and hates the idea of hurting anyone, but his reservedness can also come across as rude and, more troublingly, he's clearly filled with a lot of resentment, both for himself and the others around him. By End of Eva, the Trauma Conga Line finally causes that resentment to boil over — he refuses to make any effort to protect NERV (and in fact impedes Misato's attempts to do just that due to his mopiness slowing her down), strangles Asuka for rejecting him, and ultimately decides that all life on earth deserves to die. That said, his decision in the original TV series ending concurrent with End also gave humanity a chance to return from Third Impact, so some of that kindness was still there.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: After the whole Bardiel incident, Shinji finally comes to the conclusion that he can simply no longer trust Gendo and that his approval is worth nothing to him, and with this revelation any fear of incurring his father's disappointment or anger also evaporates. When Gendo confronts him in the aftermath of the incident, Shinji faces him without any of his usual reluctance or skittishness, responding to him with only determined, ice-cold resentment. Even more notable, during their next interaction, Gendo reacts with skepticism to Shinji's request of being reinstated as a pilot. Though visibly distressed, Shinji still ultimately refuses to back down and manages to reply with a confident I Am What I Am statement.
• Only Friend: Rei and, slightly less obviously, Kaworu never had a real connection to other people, until they bonded with Shinji.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Subverted. His family past is such that he could never have had an ordinary life to begin with, which Kaji makes amply clear in the manga. It's also deconstructed since it shows how well an actual ordinary teenager would react to being unwillingly thrust into war against Eldritch Abominations.
• Out of Focus: The Rei Ayanami Raising Project games follow the events of the series, but Shinji is given secondary focus due to the player acting as Rei's (or Asuka's) guardian.
• Overly Polite Pals: To Rei, due to her being a soft-spoken Emotionless Girl and him being a shy, socially awkward boy. Even in the manga where he has more backbone and snarkiness, he is still very polite to Rei.
• Parental Abandonment: Dad is emotionally neglectful/abusive (especially in the manga). Even more painfully, Gendo did it because he was afraid he would hurt his son if he was with him (only to hurt him by leaving him, something Gendo acknowledges and regrets at the end.) Mom appears to have gruesomely died before his eyes, as far as he knows. Misato tries to fill in, bless her heart, but she simply can't get the job done. Ultimately, it is revealed that Mom is very much alive, and deliberately left her husband and son to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. In The End of Evangelion, Shinji never seems to realize the implications of this, but in Take Care of Yourself, he gets to call the old woman out and asks her why she forced all those battles on him. The finale seems to imply that he parts with both parents on good terms, even thanking Gendo for his misguided efforts.
• Perpetual Frowner: He is usually shown with a sour demeanor, which fits rather perfectly for a Tragic Hero.
• Pitbull Dates Puppy: At heart, Shinji and Asuka truly care about and are attracted to each other, but Shinji's extreme passivity and Asuka's similarly over-the-top aggressiveness prevent them from forming a real relationship during the series. That doesn't stop them from having a few Pet the Dog moments on either side.
• Precision F-Strike: In the original dub.
  • "I'm so fucked up."^note In Japanese, he says, "I'm the lowest of the low, aren't I." (最低だな、俺って。), while the 2019 Netflix English dub has him say "I'm the lowest of the low."
  • "Now if I were to run away, let's analyze that: where the FUCK would I go?!"
  • In the 1996 ADV English dub, Shinji's response to hearing how Gendo burned his hands rescuing Rei from her entry plug after Unit-00 went berserk is an incredulous "Bullshit."
• Pretty Boy: In contrast to the more manly designs given to Gendo and Kaji, Shinji is lithe and has soft features. Sadamoto wrote that he specifically designed Shinji to be a delicate/vulnerable-looking bishonen.
• Prone to Tears: Played for Drama. He tends to get upset rather easily, though it's hard to blame him given his multiple shortcomings.
• The Protagonist: This is his story despite how much he doesn't want it to be. Interestingly, much of the show is dedicated to showing that Shinji is only a small part of a massive and complicated universe, but the fate of humanity is ultimately left entirely in his hands... all while showing how much it could crush normal people.
• Properly Paranoid: Shinji despite his biases initially states Gendo cannot be trusted in the several episodes of the series. His doubts are scorned, ridiculed and dismissed by the other members of NERV. Shinji is proven correct during the events of the End of Evangelion as the attack on NERV Headquarters occurs because Gendo refuses to comply with Keel's demands to initiate his own scenario for Third Impact.
• Punny Name: "Ikari", when spelled with a different kanji, means "anger"/"wrath".
• Rage Breaking Point: In The End, after so many hardships, being coldly rejected by Asuka is enough to finally drive Shinji over the edge, strangling Asuka to near death and initiating the Third Impact.
• Repressed Memories: He saw his mother being absorbed into Unit-01 but now has no memory of it (or any memories related to her, really). While it's possible he simply forgot because he was so young, Dr. Akagi implies he intentionally repressed the memory due to the trauma and coldly mocks him for it. Shinji's internal confession from Episode 20 that he lied to himself when he said that he had never seen Unit-01 before — he recalls that he did remember having seen it before and that he saw it on the same day his mother disappeared — supports it.
• Reused Character Design: Shinji's character design is a Gender Flip of Nadia.
• Rookie Red Ranger: The last of the main trio to be recruited, and the one to eventually overtake them all, at very least in terms of synch ratio. Too bad that for all his talent, his lack of any sort of prior military training left him with no preparation to deal with the psychological impact of participating in actual life and death battles at such a young age.
  Random NERV Techie: These readings are incredible! It's like he was born to do this!
  Misato: ...Except that he hates it.
• Sanity Slippage: Shinji goes through a gradual one over the latter half of the series, and finally cracks in End.
• Screaming Warrior: Is rather fond of this. His fight with Samshiel, for example, culminates in him burying his terror with berserk screaming as he charges right into it to stab it to death with a progressive knife, and is then left trembling and catatonic once the adrenaline wears off.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Shinji pilots Unit-01, a purple Evangelion with an orange neck and green highlights. Besides serving to set him apart from Rei's blue motif and Asuka's red, it's a telltale sign that Shinji's about as far from the typical mecha protagonist as one can be.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He is rattled almost immediately after being pressed into service, his first fight against an Angel causing no shortage of psychological trauma. It only gets worse as the series progresses.
• Ship Tease: He's teased with Asuka, Rei and Kaworu throughout all incarnations of the series. The anime places more focus on his sexual tension with Asuka, whereas the manga focuses more on his relationship with Rei (who unbeknownst to him is the partial clone of his mother), while also making his relationship with Kaworu much more overtly romantically-charged.
• Shrinking Violet: Generally a passive wallflower in social situations, though he does make attempts at being more social.
• The Scream: Screams quite a bit throughout the series, and at least three times in End of Evangelion. This usually coincides with a particularly painful Freak Out or begging Gendo to stop doing something highly unethical.
• Smarter Than You Look: With his quiet and withdrawn demeanor, Shinji might appear unassuming, and he is frequently is treated as such by the rest of the cast, but he proves mutiple times that he really is quite observant. At one point, he manages to visibly catch Kaji off-guard by making a suprisingly astute observation about him and his relationship with Misato.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Played for tragedy. He desires to get close to people and is desperate for affection, but his insecurities make his efforts halting and ineffective.
• The So-Called Coward: Subverted; he saves the day again and again, but rarely gets any respect for it.
• Spanner in the Works: Shinji forming a emotional connection with Rei by caring about and being concerned for her as a person meant that Gendo's plans were in the end all for naught, as it made her decide that Shinji, rather than Gendo, should ultimately decide what to do with the power of Instrumentality. Ironically, Shinji is at the same time the ultimate Unwitting Pawn of the story. While he might have derailed his father's plan (the existence of which he only had a vague idea about) without intending to, he also unknowingly played out his part in his mother's plan perfectly.
• Straw Nihilist: His character is often described as this, especially in the manga, where he even stated that he had zero ambition or purpose in life. In his childhood, when a class assignment asked them what they would want to be in the future, Shinji simply relied that it doesn't matter and he isn't interested in wanting to become anything, which angered the teacher and scolded him to take his life seriously. In The Movie The End of Evangelion he becomes an outright Omnicidal Maniac by declaring to Rei that "Nobody understands me, therefore everyone must die" thus initiating Instrumentality. Eventually however, he comes to the realisation that despite all of life's pain, it is still worth living, causing him to reject Instrumentality.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Shinji rather strongly resembles both of his parents, particularly his mother.
• Success Through Insanity: Shinji certainly qualifies, since it's implied Unit-01's berserk mode is tied to his manic state.
• Super Mode: When the sync rate with Unit-01 is at 400%. This occurs twice in the anime, and three times in the manga: both occasions in the anime exist in the manga — the first being Unit-01 against Zeruel, and the second being when Asuka awakes inside Unit-02 to face SEELE's punching force; the instance that exists singularly within the manga is when Shinji decides to protect Asuka during End of Evangelion.
• Supreme Chef: In every adaptation, Shinji takes over the cooking for the household (Misato can't cook anything beyond instant ramen, and Asuka seems just as clueless), and all the characters agree his cooking is fantastic, to the point that Asuka never wanted to share her lunch with anyone when he made it.
• Survival Mantra: "Don't run away, don't run away, don't run away..."
• Tareme Eyes: Shinji has these eyes to signify his meek, shy and fragile nature in the anime. While his manga version has more of an attitude, he's still fundamentally the same damaged child deep inside, so these eyes still work in full effect.
• This Loser Is You: Shinji was partially made as a criticism of the growing number of introverted shut-ins in Japan at the time. By Anno's own admission, though, there's also an element of "This Loser Is Me, As Well" thrown in.
• Took a Level in Badass: Played with in the original series, when he unleashes his hidden badass, it's a sign that he can no longer tamp down his depression and fear. In a more standard but less flashy way, he goes from barely being able to pilot Unit-01 without it doing all of the work for him to being roughly on par with Asuka by the later episodes. Played straighter in the manga adaptation and Super Robot Wars, where he actually works up the guts to save Asuka from the Mass-Produced Evas, and in Rebuild of Evangelion where he's generally portrayed as having more of a backbone.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: By The End Of Evangelion, Shinji's Trauma Conga Line has finally pushed him past the brink of despair and he becomes much more spiteful and nihilistic - he masturbates in front of Asuka's comatose body then strangles her when she refuses to help him, utterly refuses to pilot Unit 01 despite Misato's pleas, and eventually decides that humanity deserves to die. He seems to have gotten better by the end of the film, though it's still ambiguous.
• Tragic Bromance: The poor kid has both of his closest male friendships end like this. The second time it happens is what finally pushes him over the Despair Event Horizon.
• Tragic Hero: He oscillates back and forth during the series between terrified near-catatonia and insane superhuman courage, though by the end he's clearly heading for a nervous breakdown, and completely snaps in End of Evangelion.
• Trauma Conga Line: Shinji's life. A lot of it courtesy of Gendo. As for the result types, he's a result B in the original.
• Tsundere: In the manga, the feelings Shinji has for Kaworu are very troubled. Shinji greatly dislikes Kaworu's weird behavior, No Sense of Personal Space and utter Lack of Empathy. Every time Kaworu tries to approach him, Shinji gets away from him and outright tells him he doesn't like him. In the end, when the moment he must kill Kaworu arrives, Shinji admits that a part of him did feel drawn to Kaworu, but he didn't want to become attached to another person only to lose them again.
  Shinji: I was attracted to him... Even so, I really don't want to fall in love with a boy like that.
• Tuckerization: Anno stated in an interview that that Shinji is named after his good friend, storyboard artist Shinji Higuchi.
• Tyke-Bomb: He is actually easily the show's ultimate example, but unlike Asuka and Rei, he neither knew anything about it beforehand or ever saw it coming. It is rather heavily implied that no matter who and how her child would turn out to be, Yui had planned for it to be the ultimate Unwitting Pawn, whose eventual purpose was to derail SEELE's Assimilation Plot at the very last minute.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: After all, he is the central character, and on a fundamental level the series / franchise is all about growing up, including learning about the opposite sex. First and foremost, with Asuka. Also plenty with Rei and Misato (although they both are also mother figures to him) and Kaworu.
• Unstoppable Rage: Whenever he gets pushed too far by the stress of being an Eva pilot.
• Uptight Loves Wild: There are clear traces of it in his attraction towards Asuka. Where he is a timid conformist who always does as he is told, she is strong-willed, outspoken, and absolutely refuses to take crap from or be pushed around by anyone, and it is evident that he admires her quite a bit for those traits.
• Useless Protagonist: In-Universe. Shinji hates himself, and a few of the other characters including Misato comment on how pathetic he really is at heart. That said, he's really an aversion. Unit 01 is easily the most dangerous and powerful of the Evangelions shown in the main series and he kills more angels than any of the other pilots. If it weren't for him, NERV would have been destroyed in the first episode, and again when Zeruel attacks he subdues it quickly and would have killed it if the Eva's batteries hadn't run out.
• Villain Protagonist: Temporarily becomes an Anti-Villain variant of this in End, where he refuses to help people as the world is destroyed around him, and nearly destroys humanity before pulling a Heel–Face Turn.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Shinji's feelings on the subject of his father are ambivalent to say the least. It is made clear at several points that Shinji is very resentful towards Gendo for abandoning him (and on a more subconscious level, some part of him believes Gendo is in some way accountable for Yui's death), and late in the series he admits that his original motivation for journeying to Tokyo-3 was to confront his father with his hatred for him, but found himself utterly unable to muster up the courage to do so when Gendo sprung the surprise of wanting to recruit him as Unit-01's pilot. Yet he finds, time and time again, that he desperately craves Gendo's approval, as no matter how much he wants to, he can't completely give on the idea that his father might care about him deep down and the hope that the two of them might one day reconcile. He's this way up until the incident with Unit-03, where Gendo forces Unit-01 to cripple Toji despite his protests, at which point this hope dies a very messy death. When Gendo calls up Shinji to reprimand him for his insubordination, Shinji is completely unaffected and coldly tells his father that he has no intention of ever speaking to him again. Afterwards, Shinji by and large avoids even acknowledging Gendo altogether, with his final mention of him, during his sleepover with Kaworu, being bluntly stating that he hates him.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He fits this trope in The End and then subverts it by rejecting Instrumentality.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: It seems that everything that brings him enjoyment or boosts his self-confidence will inevitably turn against him at the worst possible time.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: His cripplingly low self esteem makes him blind to his genuine talents and inner strength. Misato makes several efforts to get him out of this, but they are temporary at best. The show hints at a hopeful future for him when his final epiphany is to actually realize this about himself.

Rei Ayanami

Voiced by: Megumi Hayashibara (Japanese); Amanda Winn-Lee [ADV], Ryan Bartley [VSI] (English)^note Other Languages: Circe Luna [Locomotion, VSI], Gabriela Ugarte [Animax], (Latin American Spanish); Joël Mulachs [TV series and films], Laura Pastor [VSI] (European Spanish); Priscila Concepcion (Brazilian Portuguese)

"If I die, I can be replaced."

Rei, the First Child, is a Shy Blue-Haired Girl. She is beautiful, fey, and otherworldly, and has a Mysterious Past that is only partially revealed late in the series. When asked why she pilots her Eva, she says that it's because she's "bonded" to it, or that it's her bond to humanity, or something like that. She displays little concern for her own life (see the quote); this takes on seriously creepy layers late in the series.

At first, her only human relationship is with her commanding officer, Gendō. Shinji once stops to observe a conversation between Rei and Gendō from some distance, and though neither he nor the audience can hear what they're saying, Rei and Gendō are shown smiling at each other. Gendō, for his part, appears to care for Rei more than anybody else, even his own son. After a failed test forces Rei to eject from her Eva, Gendō, in an uncharacteristic panic, is the first to reach her entry plug, burning his hands while forcing it open to retrieve her. Rei still keeps the broken glasses that fell from his face during this incident, and is initially very defensive of him, as exemplified when she slaps Shinji for saying negative things about Gendō. This, plus the aforementioned conversation, deceives Shinji and the audience into thinking that they are close. Later, when Shinji asks Rei about Gendō, she replies that she doesn't know what kind of person he is. By the end of the story, her attitude toward Gendō has changed dramatically.

It is also in the last part of series Rei's origins are revealed. She is an Artificial Human; one of a series of clones created by Fuyutsuki and Gendō from DNA of Yui Ikari and the Second Angel, Lilith, to act as a vessel for a Soul Fragment from the latter. As the secrets surrounding her are revealed to Shinji and Misato, Rei herself becomes increasingly aware of her own identity, and she starts to consider that what she desires might be different from what her creators have planned for her...

She is stated in Episode 17 to have strong feelings for Shinji, though her thoughts and feelings are for the most part revealed neither to the people around her nor to the audience. This is changed in the manga adaption where, as well as the pair having more scenes together, she shows much more of a fondness towards him and openly admits it, albeit in her own subdued way. However, the true depths of her feelings are still hidden until later in the story.

She is in many ways the polar opposite of Asuka, and is compared to Yui Ikari, both implicitly and explicitly, on multiple occasions.

---

• Action Girl: She has her moments. Most importantly, she got a solo kill on an Angel, something Asuka could never pull off in the original anime.
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Despite having the physical fusion body of Lillith and Adam destroyed, it's indicated by Rei's appearance to Shinji at the beach that her consciousness still exists and remembers him. Notably, she also appears at the beginning of the series in a way she wouldn't realistically be able to, leading to fan theories of her now being a Quantum entity that exists outside linear time.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Each of the Children get this to some degree, and for Rei it's her exact skin color. Particularly when you branch out to the manga and promotional images, Rei's skin tone varies from starkly albino all the way to simply being very-fair-skinned-but-still-recognizably-Japanese, with hosts of examples in between. The actual shows and movies are a little better about this (tending more toward the albinism) but even then there's still variance between episodes or movies.
• Adaptation Expansion: The manga places more focus on her and her relationship with Shinji, in the process making her the clear female lead while slightly reducing Asuka's prominence.
• Adaptational Nice Girl:
  • Her initial cold treatment of Shinji is toned down in the manga. Most notably, she doesn't slap him when he tells her that he doesn't have faith in Gendō, even though she still clearly didn't like what he said.
  • Also applied to her conversation with Naoko. In the anime, she had a smug and almost cruel smile on her face as she told Naoko about how Gendo called her an old hag that had outlived her usefulness, as if she was deliberately mocking her. However, in the manga, she instead had on her usual emotionless expression and even added that she was telling her that because she felt sorry for her.
• Albinos Are Freaks: While not explicitly labeled as an albino, she has a similar color scheme going on (red eyes, incredibly pale) and a few characters consider her creepy (Kensuke and Toji mention that she scares them in the manga and it's one of many reasons Asuka hates her).
• Alternate Identity Amnesia: Rei spends most of the series being more or less ignorant of her true identity as Lilith, but is ambiguous to how large a degree it actually is the case, as she appears to be at least subconsciously aware of her close bond to humanity, notably telling Shinji at one point that a large part of her motivation for piloting is because she feels compelled to protect all of mankind. She definitely becomes aware of it near the end, between dying and being resurrected and Kaworu revealing his own true identity as Adam to her and pointing out that they are the same.
• Ambiguously Human: Initially, it's not exactly clear what she is. While she looks largely human, her blue hair, red eyes, and extremely pale skin give her a strikingly inhuman aura. It's later revealed that she's actually an artificially-created lifeform made from a combination of Yui and Lilith's DNA.
• Ambiguous Situation: Her intent for going against Gendo is never fully explained. While she seems to have done so solely because she wanted Shinji to make the decision, the fact that she speaks in tandem with Yui as they explain the methodology by which humans can return to their corporeal forms, and the extreme convienence she had to her mother's plan implies she might have been in on it with Yui.
• Amnesiac God: Rei carries the soul of Lilith, the mother of humanity and a mighty powerful being in her own right, which, in a sense, also makes her Lilith. She spends most of the series unaware of this fact, appears to be a normal teenage girl (aside from her very withdrawn personality and blue hair), and defers to Gendo, mostly out of a belief that she is no one and has no purpose outside being a tool to achieve his plan. But she as starts getting an increasing awareness of her true identity by the end of the story, she both starts showing hints of her own Angel-like powers as well as an emerging sense of antipathy towards Gendo for what he has turned her into. By the end, sensing that Shinji is in deep distress, she finally decides to completely break away from Gendo and fully reclaim her identity as Lilith in order to help Shinji, and it is clear that is nothing that Gendo, or anyone else for that matter, can do to stop her at that point.
• Anti-Anti-Christ: She was intended to be the key for Gendo to take control of Instrumentality from SEELE. However, when Gendo tries to force her to start the process, she defies him, takes control herself, and then tries to talk Shinji out of it. She succeeds, eventually.
• Anti-Nihilist: Similarly to Yui and Shinji, she develops this attitude by the end of the series. Being a faultily-produced clone made with the sole purpose of serving as an Apocalypse Maiden for Gendo to re-unite with the woman she was used as an emotional substitute for, she was initially willing to accept being killed numerous times and treated as a doll by Gendo, but gradually comes to the realization of herself as an individual actor despite the chaotic and nihilistic nature of the world and comes to the conclusion to go against Gendo in favor of Shinji, staying with her own self-perception even after being physically killed.
• Apocalypse Maiden: The intention was for her to cause Instrumentality according to how Gendo wanted it. Didn't quite work out that way, as she slices off his arm and betrays him for Shinji. (Who still causes the apocalypse, but she most likely didn't expect him to, and he changes course at the last minute.)
• The Ark: In the official Gainax sequel video game, NGE 2, that explains the backstory of the Angels, Lilin, and the First Ancestral Race, it's explained that Lilith and Adam are two of the seven last members of their own civilization that must carry the souls of the lost to give form in a new chosen planet. Two carriers landed on one planet by accident and due to humanity messing with the progenitors, they fought when they shouldn't have. This is relevant for Rei because she is the vessel for Lilith's soul.
• Artificial Family Member: Gendō created Rei (though it is strongly implied that Fuyutsuki did most of the actual work) from the DNA of his beloved wife Yui and he treats Rei like a surrogate daughter for the most part. For what it's worth, if Gendō and Yui had had a girl instead of Shinji, she'd have been named Rei.
• Artificial Human: She's an artificially-created clone of Yui Ikari, with Lilith's DNA mixed in.
• Assimilation Plot: Gendo intends to use her for his own take on Instrumentality, which runs at odds with SEELE's intentions. This all goes out then window when she turns against Gendo and hands control of the process to Shinji.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Bonding with Lilith causes the resulting hybrid being to grow first to mountain size, and then to astronomical size.
• Badass Adorable: The vessel of the mother of the precursor race to humans, pilot of a mecha that fights said precursors, harbinger of the apocalypse, and Trope Codifier of Moe.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason she mildly mellows out and gets closer to Shinji is because he's likely the only person who's ever treated Rei like a real person and shown genuine concern and care for her. This culminates in End Of Evangelion, where she rebels against Gendo and, upon merging with Lilith & Adam, leaves the fate of the world in Shinji's hands instead.
• Berserk Button: Early on, the first time she ever looks mad (or shows obvious emotion at all) is when she finds Shinji touching Gendō's broken glasses from the time he burned his hands to open her Entry Plug after a failed test with her Eva.
• Betty and Veronica: Rei and Asuka have this dynamic going between them, though it goes two ways. In Japan, Rei is seen as the Betty because of her gentle disposition, reserved nature, and tendency to get horribly injured, whereas the Fiery Redhead foreigner Asuka is the cultural Veronica because her forceful and aggressive personality is just so strange to the generally reserved Japanese public. However, in the more demonstrative West, the more outgoing, more human, more badass, and more overtly in love Asuka is the familiar Betty, and the bizarre, cold, and strangely unsettling Rei is the exotic Veronica.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: That strange girl who spends her school days staring out a window? She's killed at least several Angels, is the basis of a particularly brutal Body Backup Drive, houses a fragment of the soul of a godlike being, so ancient that "primordial" might be the only word that comes close to describing her, and is musing on how to handle the Assimilation Plot.
• Big Damn Heroes: Biggest in the series: she tries to reason with Shinji not to cause Instrumentality and when he does through SEELE Rei reverses it. Her nuking one Angel counts as well.
• Bitch Slap: The first time Rei expresses anger is when Shinji bad-mouths Gendō in front of her and she retaliates with a slap to the face.
• Bizarre Human Biology: While Rei is canonically known to be at least partially human, the specifics aren't made clear. To compensate, Fanfics tend to depict her with either this trope, Bizarre Alien Biology, or both, each in various ways. To list them all would be a herculean task, given the size of the fandom; one notably common aspect, however, is whether or not she has an S² Engine/Organ, and its exact role in her physiology. There is also lot of speculation about the line in her monologue from Episode 14 about a "woman that never bleeds".
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Subverted. After fusing into her godlike form, she grant's Shinji wish to destroy mankind, but this was done only because she had betrayed Gendo out of moral disgust and left it to Shinji believing he wouldn't make such a decision, even discouraging him from doing it several times.
• Blunt "Yes": Says yes when Asuka asks if she would be willing to kill herself if ordered to do so.
• Body Backup Drive: Rei has several clone bodies hidden deep inside the oldest parts of NERV HQ, and since said clone bodies are soulless, her soul can be transferred to them in the event she dies, allowing her to live once again, though there seems be some side effects associated with the process, like temporary amnesia and loss of identity. Ritsuko eventually destroys the remaining clone bodies after the creation of Rei III, leaving Rei effectively Out of Continues, though Rei's ever-increasing awareness of her own superhuman powers, such as generating AT-Field that matches Kaworu's and allows her to regrow limbs at will, and her role in Instrumentality at this point implies that it hardly matters at all.
• Breakout Character: Rei is easily one of the most popular and iconic characters in the series, so much so that she inspired a whole slew of similar characters in anime and manga. She and Asuka are the most-marketed human characters in the Evangelion franchise, and possibly for Gainax as a whole.
• Broken Pedestal: Gendo becomes this for her at the end of the story. At the beginning of the series, he was the one person she displayed any kind of warmth towards and held unwavering faith in following his orders. By the end, she fully rejects him and his plans, symbolized by her shattering his old set of glasses she once treasured and declaring that she wasn't his puppet before initiating Third Impact on her own terms.
• Came Back Wrong: This could apply to either of Rei's second or third versions, depending on how you interpret her personality in regards to the previous version(s).
• Classical Anti-Hero: She's a Classical Anti-Hero, much like Shinji, with shades of a Byronic Hero. Unlike him she's less passive than you'd think at first glance.
• Clone Degeneration: It is implied here and there that Rei's Bizarre Human Biology (being a mishmash of Lilith and Yui's DNA), even when she is in peak physical condition, is rather unstable on a cellular level, and that the regular medical check-up she attends and the medication he has in her apartment are meant to prevent her from literally coming apart at the seams. (This also possibly explains her sickly pale skin and unusual hair color) It finally starts happening to her in The End of Evangelion, where one of her arms falls off and Gendo takes it as a sign that her AT-Field is starting to fail. She is apparently able to fully stabilize herself after taking Adam from Gendo and absorbing it into herself.
• Clone Angst: She hates being a clone, especially the fact that she cannot die and will just be replaced if she does.
• Color Motif: Rei's signature colors are blue and white; she's blue-haired, her Evangelion's second color scheme is predominantly blue with white highlights (and the original scheme's dominant color was orange, which is the complement of blue in painting), and in the anime and manga, she's always seen in either her practically all-white plugsuit or her school uniform, which consists of blue overalls and a white shirt. Furthermore, in official artwork and some spin-offs, she's often seen in blue-colored clothing. Her blue motif also manifests in the ending theme of the TV anime, where behind her silhouette is a blue-tinted moon and night sky. Finally, in End of Evangelion, merging with Adam and Lilith into a gigantic humanoid causes her skin and hair to take on an unnatural white for their color.
• The Comically Serious: Several times, especially whenever she interacts with Shinji and/or Asuka.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Calmly accepts the Crapsack World she lives in and the fact she is a Child Soldier who has to make a Heroic Sacrifice against the Eldritch Abomination. In fact she almost looks forward to it, seeking comfort in the idea that another her will take her place in the event she does.
• The Confidant: Towards Shinji. In Episode 22, he is seen having a conversation with Rei, although it isn't heard what he is saying (as the scene is seen from Asuka's POV), Shinji is notably at ease and comfortable when talking with her, and it is one of the very few times in the latter part of the series were he actually appears relaxed.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Shows hints of possessing a rather philosophical side at times, such as the time when Tokyo 3 experienced a blackout that lasted into the night and, when the electricity finally comes back on, she remarks how mankind created fire because they feared the darkness. Then there's her whole monologue while sync testing Unit 01 in episode 14...
• Conveniently Seated: Rei gets the symbolic window seat in class.
• Cosmic Motifs: Rei is associated with the moon, representing her otherworldly nature. She often appears in shots in front of the moon, which in turn is frequently tinted blue to fit with her Color Motifs. Lilith's mask also has what appears to be craters on it.
• Cracks in the Icy Façade: Rei Ayanami, who started as an emotionless doll, only for the first sign of true emotion being when Shinji sees her smiling for Gendo Ikari. She even once states she was ready to die for him. In the course of the series, she reflects more and more on her existence and Gendo, wondering what she really is and being more and more open to her fellow pilots; in End of Evangelion, she outright rebels against Gendo to save Shinji.
• Creepy Child: Regarded as this by Toji, Kensuke, Asuka, and pretty much all others members of Class 2A due to her distant nature and personality.
• Creepy Monotone: Barely speaks above a whisper, and seems to live under a constant state of sadness.
• Death Seeker: Of sorts. Rei finds existence itself to be a painful and disorienting experience, and she is driven by a wish to return to a state of nothingness. As such, she is always the first to volunteer for human shield duty.
• Declaration of Protection: In both the anime and the manga◊, she tells Shinji that she will protect him. Ironically, he ends up saving her after that, but in episode 23, she fulfils her promise by pulling a Heroic Sacrifice for him.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She slowly begins opening up to others, particularly Shinji, and even seeks Toji out when she learns he's a pilot, before hesitating to shoot him when she might have before.
• Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: After the series has Shinji unknowingly defusing her, the second part of End of Evangelion has her try and defuse him when he goes Omnicidal Maniac.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Her eyes are cold and inexpressive most of the time, which make the rare occasions when they aren't all the more beautiful.
• The Dog Bites Back: Gendo had Unit 00's right arm sliced off during the battle with Bardiel without cutting the sync so Rei felt it as if it were her own. The first thing Rei does when she abandons him is rip his right arm out of his shoulder.
• Emotionless Girl: On the surface, Rei is depicted as an emotionless, creepy girl to deconstruct the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype. It's still subverted; Rei has emotions and is only bad at identifying or expressing them.
• Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": Inverted. Rei calls everyone else by their title, such as "Captain Katsuragi" (Misato), "Commander Ikari" (Gendo), "Unit-02's pilot" (Asuka)... and so on. Shinji is the only one whom she refers to with his name "Ikari-kun", and although it's his family name, it's much friendlier compared to the others.
• Extreme Doormat: Perfectly willing to commit suicide if Gendo asks her to. Some of this is because without NERV's technology she'll suffer Clone Degeneration. Though after her death as Rei II and her resurrection as Rei III, she completely changes her mind on him, eventually resulting her rebellion against him in The End of Evangelion.
• Face Death with Dignity: Deconstructed Trope. Her extreme willingness and uncaring to face death regardless of the cost makes her come across as distressingly unconcerned for her own self and feeds into how distressingly lacking in free will or agency she has. This is ultimately reconstructed with End Of Evangelion, where Giant Naked Rei is still physically killed at the end, but it's ultimately based on her own will as an individual actor instead of being coerced onto her by Gendo.
• Fusion Dance: In End Of Evangelion, she merges with Adam and reunites with Lilith, growing into a gargantuan, God-like being who initiates the Third Impact.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Rei attempts this to various characters, even Gendo in Rebuild, to varying levels of success. Shinji she generally gets through to; when she tries with Asuka, Asuka has a meltdown, slaps her, and storms off.
• God in Human Form: Technically speaking, she is Lilith reincarnated as a human. While it's unclear how much she knows of her true identity, by the End of Evangelion it becomes clear she has the same powers as Kaworu and considering the fact she is the creator of humanity, it makes sense.
• Good Is Not Nice: Definitely not and justified due to her having No Social Skills. As long as it doesn't go against her orders, she has no problems or restrictions when it comes to speaking or acting out what is on her mind, and she freely tells Asuka and Shinji they suck when the need arises, going as far as slapping Shinji when he badmouths his father. When first meeting Asuka, she basically says the only way they'll be friends is if she's ordered to.
• Go Out with a Smile: After Giant Naked Rei is killed by Unit-01, she doesn't seem to particularly care, and goes out with a Slasher Smile. Granted, she's not really dead.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: During the battle with Armisael in the manga, Rei realizes that she felt jealous when Shinji went to visit the comatose Asuka every day at the hospital. In Armisael's words during his invasion of Rei's mind, Rei wanted Shinji to only look at her and stay by her side forever.
• Half-Human Hybrid: A clone of Shinji's mother and Lilith.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Rei places herself in greater danger than normal on several occasions...
  • Is the human shield in the battle against Ramiel (the giant blue octahedron) and said she'd be willing to fight it alone if necessary... which would not have ended well for her.
  • Volunteers to be the human shield when fighting the spider angel, but is overruled by Asuka.
  • Nukes herself at point-blank range in a suicide run against Zeruel (the one with the ribbon arms).
  • Self-destructs Unit 00 in order to destroy Armisael, while she is partially merged with both. Unlike the previous attempts, this one actually ends with her dying, albeit a new clone is simply activated afterwards to replace her.
• High-Pressure Blood: Giant Nude Rei/Lilith gets this in End of Evangelion, with blood so high pressure that it paints a stripe across the moon.
• Holding Hands: The manga emphasizes the importance of her holding hands with Shinji, which she describes as making her feel warm and happy. This is later called back to towards the end, when Gendo puts his hand in her body, where she tells him that it's not his hand that she wants. She gets to hold hands with Shinji one last time during Instrumentality, after which they are permanently separated from each other.
• Horrible Housing: Rei's dark origins, Gendo's true opinion of her and cold attitude are highlighted by the squalid one-room apartment she lives in.
• Humanity Is Infectious: Initially a seemingly Emotionless Girl that contains the soul of an Eldritch Abomination operating on Blue-and-Orange Morality and intended to be used solely as an Apocalypse Maiden to fulfill Gendo's plan, her attachment to Shinji eventually results in her betraying Gendo in favor of giving reign to Shinji. She retains her humanoid form even after being ascended to godhood, killed, and turned into a quantum entity outside of the time stream, indicating that the moral considerations of humanity have stuck with her.
• Humanizing Tears: Rei is an iconic Emotionless Girl until she sheds tears for the first time after her conversation with the sixteenth Angel, which forces her to feel sadness and realize the depth of her feelings for Shinji.
• Humanoid Abomination: As the Soul Jar for Lilith, she's technically an Angel herself. Becomes much more pronounced in End of Eva, where a large amount of Body Horror happens to her.
• Identical Stranger: Rei is basically Yui with shorter blue hair and red eyes. This is justified due to her being a partial clone of Yui.
• I'm Crying, but I Don't Know Why: After she tries to destroy Gendō's glasses, having lost her memories of her time as Rei II, she sheds tears, but she doesn't know why.
• Image Song: Several of the main characters have official songs sung by their seiyuu in-character (usually covers of "Cruel Angel's Thesis" and "Fly Me to the Moon"), but Rei has the most by far, with not only the two aforementioned songs but also an entire album sung in-character. One of Rei's songs, "Tengoku no Kioku" also has an official music video focusing on her character.^note Asuka and Misato have equivalent videos, but the songs used aren't their image songs.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Rei appears to have no nudity taboo. Her reaction to Shinji walking in on her naked, falling on top of her, and accidentally groping her was limited to politely asking him whether he was going to get off or not, and then getting dressed with him still in the room stammering out apologies. She also shows no embarrassment at being seen naked by Gendo and Ritsuko during the experiments being performed on her. In the manga at least, she admits to Shinji later on that she actually felt a little "queasy" when he fell on her while she was nude.
• Innocently Insensitive: She has the tendency to express herself very bluntly and directly and lacks emotional understanding. She doesn't even get why people often misinterpret her as being rude.
• Kissing Cousins: Her possible relationship with Shinji in Shinji Ikari Raising Project, where she is his distant cousin.
• Last-Name Basis: She calls and even internally identifies most people by their title and last name. Gendo is "Commander Ikari", Misato is "Major Katsuragi", Ritsuko is "Doctor Akagi", and so on. The only exceptions to this pattern are Asuka, who is pretty much always "The pilot of Unit 02", and Shinji, who is "Ikari-kun". When looking at it the other way around, most people just call her by "Rei", except for Shinji, who calls her "Ayanami", and Asuka, who mockingly calls her "Miss Perfect/Wondergirl".
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The light to Asuka's dark. She's a deconstruction of the Yamato Nadeshiko characterization whereas Asuka is a deconstruction of a Tsundere.
• Loner-Turned-Friend: To Shinji, at least. She starts off friendless before warming up through their shared mecha woes.
• Love Epiphany: While fighting the 16th angel, Rei realizes that she has strong feelings for Shinji and decides to absorb the Angel and sacrifices her Eva to save him. The actual depth of her feelings is never made explicit.
• Luminescent Blush: Displays this a few times when Shinji is particularly kind to her.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Adoptive daughter anyway. Gendo explains her appearance as looking after her for a colleague, but she serves as a daughter to him just the same as he intended to name his daughter Rei.
• Martyr Without a Cause: What she appears to be to other characters, often volunteering for extremely dangerous courses of action with no regards to her own safety.
• Mix And Match Person: She's an Artificial Human made from the combined DNA of Shinji's mother Yui and the Angel Lilith.
• My Hero, Zero: She pilots Unit 00, and her first name means "Zero".
• Mysterious Waif: Introduced as a quiet, oracular young girl.
• New Transfer Student: In the anime's Alternate Universe scenes.
• Nice Girl: Despite her lack of social skills, Rei is generally polite and friendly.
• No Periods, Period: It is Implied that Rei, due to her Bizarre Human Biology, has a literal case of this in Episode 14, where her cryptic internal monologue mentions a "woman that never bleeds", possibly referring to herself. An alternative explanation is that she's referring to Lilith, who oozes LCL instead of blood.
• No Social Skills: To the point where she will ask if there's something she should feel or do in social situations.
• Not So Stoic: It's eventually revealed that she's far more of an emotional and complex person than she is initially presented as. Despite keeping a cold face, she gradually is forced to reckon with human emotions. Perhaps best exemplified in the early episode where she has her second synch test with Unit-00. She remained completely calm beforehand and claimed she had absolute confidence that it would work, despite having been grievously injured the last time it was attempted. The moment the experiment ends and the cameras are off, she leans back and exhales a massive sigh of relief.
• Not So Weak: Despite her stoic Extreme Doormat nature, bad-mouthing someone she cares about will lead to either a "The Reason You Suck" Speech or Bitch Slap.
• Not Quite Dead: Despite her physical body that has ascended to a Physical God by the end of the series being destroyed, it's indicated that she still exists as an entity from a non-corporeal sense. Additionally, she will eventually resurrect into a physical form as Lilith. This is also the case in a philosophical sense, as the form she shows to Shinji at the end of the series is the one she had through the rest of the series despite him already knowing her to be a Humanoid Abomination, indicating she's retained her individuality.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: She normally regards the people around her, other than Shinji and Gendo, with cold indifference and barely pays any real attention to them, but when she encounters Kaworu, she immediately becomes on-guard and eyes him with suspicion.
• Out of Focus: Happens to her around the introduction of Asuka, and though she still has a bit of prominence afterwards, she doesn't truly take center-stage again until the secrets of her origin and her role in Gendo's plans start getting unveiled near the end of the series. Anno would later acknowledge this, admitting that it was a result of him not being entirely sure what to do with her character after Episodes 5-6, as he felt the Character Development she had underwent in those episodes was a rather tough act to follow.
• Parent-Child Team: Maybe. As a partial genetic clone of Yui, this technically makes Yui a kind of mother, and her actions feed suspiciously conveniently into Yui's plan, and she explains things in tandem with her to Shinji in way that makes it seem like she would recognize her intent, and despite Unit-01 killing her physical body doesn't particularly seem to care. (Granted, Rei doesn't care much about dying in general, but the times before this it was because she was doing so for a purpose.) Even if this wasn't the case, she ended up being this with Yui by accident.
• Person of Mass Destruction: overlaps with Apocalypse Maiden
• The Philosopher: "Mankind has always feared the darkness".
• Phlebotinum Girl: She's vital to Gendo's plans for the Assimilation Plot, which run at odds with SEELE's.
• Physical God: Though she only uses her powers near the very end of the series, she is shown to easily match Kaworu, the most powerful Angel by far, in terms of power.
• Quest for Identity: A running motivation for her character.
• The Quiet One: Rei says little, and almost never initiates conversations with anyone whose last name is not Ikari.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: ZigZagged. From about episode six she displays a willingness to help (outside of her obsession with self sacrifice that is), but things get complicated through her difficulty in associating with people and lack in tact, and even with character development she flip-flops between genuine kindness and telling others they are wrong.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue Oni to Asuka's red. Asuka is loud-mouthed and aggressive whereas Rei is quiet and passive. Their hair colors reflect this. As it happens, Rei dislikes the color red for unrevealed reasons.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: She's the Trope Maker; her unique combination of physical and personality traits would go on to spawn a huge number of similar characters.
• Replacement Goldfish: Rei is a clone of Gendō's dead wife Yui. While Gendō appears to care about Rei, it's only because he's reminded of Yui whenever he sees Rei's face.
• Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: She's a mecha pilot and one of the main characters of a sci-fi anime, so she'd naturally have this hairstyle.
• Series Mascot: Rei is well-known for being possibly the single biggest icon and most successful Breakout Character in the show, and (formerly) a symbol for Studio Gainax as a whole, with her (unintentional) popularity defining the company's approach towards marketing and merchandise. Case in point: an official group artwork of many of Gainax's characters at the time◊ has Rei front and center.
• Shared Family Quirks: Her stoic mannerism and body language are discernibly copied off from Gendo, to the point that she sports his hand pose a few times and shares his tendency to stare out of windows.
• Shy Blue-Haired Girl: To the point where her choosing to interact with anyone is greeted with either shock and/or fear.
• Skewed Priorities: Shinji enters her apartment without her knowledge, and he first notices her as she steps out of the shower naked after trying on his father's glasses. What bothers her? Shinji touching the glasses. She tries to take them off him, ignoring her own nudity.
• Slasher Smile: Gives several of these, particularly after becoming a Physical God during End Of Evangelion, with the face she chooses for her (physical) death being such. This is subverted in that it's not intended to demonstrate that she's villainous or ill-intentioned, but rather that she's incredibly strange and uncanny.
• The Spock: The stoic and inhuman Rei forms the cold and logical part of the main trio.
• Spock Speak: Rei is pretty quiet most of the time and tends to not really say anything more than she needs to, but her normal way of speaking is highly formal and dispassionate.
• Split-Personality Merge: At the end, Rei realizes that her Death Seeker tendencies are not really based in a wish to return to a state of oblivion or nothingness, but rather a wish to return to Lilith and be made whole again, but by that time she is also struggling with several doubts, both about whether she actually wants to end her existence as an invidual, and whether she should to do what she was created to do and help Gendo fulfil his plan. Ultimately, it is realizing that Shinji needs her help that pushes her to finally make a decision, and she determinedly turns her back on Gendo and returns "home" to Lilith, effectively reclaiming her old identity and becoming a complete being again.
• Shrinking Violet: Played with and more nuanced than Shinji's case. Much to Shinji's surprise, belying her aloof and composed exterior is an extremely bashful and awkward person who cannot process so much as a single compliment.
• Soulless Bedroom: She doesn't require very much for living conditions; her bedroom is just as emotionless as she is. The room is little more than a hospital bed, a mobile hanging from the ceiling to dry out clothing, a mini fridge whose surface has medicine and a glass of water at the ready, a small mirror on the wall, a 3-drawer dresser that can double as a desk if needed, a chair, and a fold-open closet. Because of the injuries she frequently sustains from piloting the EVA units, the most distinct features the room has are the blood stains on the sheets and pillows, along with a box of bloody bandages next to the fridge.
• The Stoic: Rei's default expression consists of an intense stare with a straight mouth. Emotions are not Rei's strong suit and it's very surprising when she displays anything other than calmness.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Although she initially comes across as emotionless, aside from the aforementioned scene with Gendo, in truth she's so disconnected from meaningful human contact that until Shinji enters her life, she doesn't really know how to emote, something she more or less admits at the end of episode 6. She shows brief flashes of emotion in a handful of episodes afterward, culminating in episode 23. She also reacts with a Luminescent Blush to being told that she would make a good mother. Quite funny when she is a main inspiration for the real Emotionless Girls (at least the modern ones). She's even more so in the manga, which explores her feelings in more detail.
• Technicolor Eyes: Her red eyes are the most distinctive sign that she isn't completely human, which becomes even more clear once Kaworu shows up with the same eye color.
• Terse Talker: Rei communicates mostly in monosyllabic words, and rarely resolves to say anything more than what is expected of her. It is very evident that it is a habit she has picked up from Gendo.
• Tragic Hero: She's an Expendable Clone, is Conditioned to Accept Horror to the point it seems she wants to make a Heroic Sacrifice, and is part of an apocalypse plot she as good as states she disagrees with.
• Tranquil Fury: Rei III's attitude toward Gendo. While she doesn't have all of her memories from her previous time around, she knows that she has been resurrected and struggles in her own subdued way with existential angst over this, most visibly when she is seen squeezing Gendo's glasses almost to the breaking point, something the previous Rei would've likely never even thought to do.
• Two-Donor Clone: She is a clone created from a mixture of the DNA of Yui Ikari and Lilith. This gives her the capability to merge with Adam like other Angels.
• Tyke-Bomb: Gendou's intention was to use her to set off the Assimilation Plot on his terms. It backfires to the point where The Bad Guy Wins.
• Unexplained Recovery: Subverted. Rei dies twice over the course of the series; first, when she was strangled by Naoko Akagi, then again, when she self-destructed her EVA. Both times, she seems to have made miraculous recoveries. Everyone soon learns this could be accomplished because each Rei is actually a clone replacing the ones that died.
• Unkempt Beauty: It's debatable whether she even knows what makeup and hair care products are, settling for only the most basic of hygiene products. Despite this, she remains one of the most attractive female characters.
• Unknown Rival: She's both on the receiving and the initiating end of this, with the circumstances sometimes differing between the anime and manga:
  • Regarding Asuka: In the anime, Rei is on the receiving end of a mostly one-sided jealousy and hatred from Asuka. Rei does mention "Red, the color that I hate" but it's implied that's more a distaste for blood or the color in general. She does find Asuka irritating at first, visibly so, but restrains herself for the most part. In the manga, while Asuka is the one initiating the rivalry at first, it's eventually flipped in that Asuka's ultimately nowhere near as antagonistic to Rei as in the anime, while Rei comes to become jealous of Asuka for Shinji's affection.
  • Regarding Naoko and Ritsuko: Rei is on the receiving end of this in both the anime and manga - both women despise Rei for 'stealing' Gendo's affection.
  • Regarding Kaworu: No rivalry exists between them in the anime (though Rei is instinctively uncharacteristically distrustful and on-guard around him); but in the manga, Kaworu one-sidedly dislikes her because, in his view at least, Shinji likes her more than him.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Shinji. They have an unusual attraction to each other, but neither is open enough to communicate their feelings. This unspoken attraction is even more emphasized in the manga adaptation.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Justified, since everybody except Shinji knew her for years, and the strangeness of her blue hair and red eyes are nothing special by the start of the series.
• Vague Age: She's stated to be fourteen years old. However, Rei was first created sometime between 2004 and 2008. (Keep in mind, she had the body of a small child at this point.) The first incarnation of Rei died in 2010, meaning the second incarnation (the one we see for most of the series) is, at most, 4 years old. The third incarnation is only a few weeks old by the time of The End of Evangelion, but she still appears as a young teenager.
• Weak, but Skilled: The lowest synch rate and the worst EVA, but she makes up for it with her piloting ability, her efficiency and strategy in fighting, and her capacity to follow the plan.
• We Have Reserves: Gendo and Ritsuko have dozens of spare Rei bodies in the depths of NERV, so should Rei die, her soul can simply be transferred into a new body. Thus, there's few qualms raised about putting her in life-threatening danger, at least on their part.
• What If God Was One of Us?: Begins the series as The Oblivious, and ends it as a mixture of The Rebel and The Shepherd (at least towards Shinji.)
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: While fighting the 16th angel, she asked herself what love is.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Rei thinks there is worse than none, placing her welfare and safety at basically zero. This doesn't change throughout the series, and she places the welfare of others (Shinji in particular) and the human race in general (the Angel attacks, Instrumentality) far and above her own.
• When She Smiles: Shinji tells her at the end of Episode 6 to try smiling. She complies◊, in what may be the first smile she every gave anyone that isn't Gendo (and possibly even more sincerely happy than the ones she gave him), and Shinji is awestruck by the result.
• Wistful Amnesia: After she sacrifices herself to defeat Armisael, Rei gets replaced by a clone with no memories of her previous incarnation. However, Rei's clone subconsciously preserves her attachment to Shinji. In the manga, she ends up abandoning Gendō because she could tell that the hand she wanted to join with wasn't his, but Shinji's.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: An incredibly pointed Deconstruction. She is calm and never shows any animosity towards anyone (even to Asuka, whose dislike of Rei is very evident) unless they insult the Ikaris, either of whom she would die for at any given moment. However, her appearance and mannerism, while charming in a strange fashion are also rather uneasy, as well as her lack of individual will or passions. It's eventually revealed that her sole purpose in life was to serve as an Apocalypse Maiden for Gendo's plan, which she ultimately rejects at the end, tearing his arm off before allying with Shinji and Yui.
• Younger Than They Look: Having been created at some point after 2004 and prior to 2010, Rei's age in purely physical terms is actually somewhere between 5-10 years old, but her biological age has been artificially accelerated to give her the appearance of a teenager, probably to prevent her from sticking out amongst the other teenaged pilots. Of course, if Rei's age was to be determined by the age of her soul, it would actually be a case of Much Older Than They Look.

Asuka Langley Soryu

See here.

Toji Suzuhara

Voiced by: Tomokazu Seki (Japanese); Joe Pisano [ADV, eps 3-18], Michael O'Connor [ADV, 19-20], Brett Weaver [ADV 21-26 and films], Johnny Yong Bosch [VSI] (English)^note Other Languages: Enrique Mederos [Locomotion], Luis Daniel Ramírez [Animax], Carlos Hernández [VSI] (Latin American Spanish); Ángel de Gracia [TV series, Death & Rebirth], Jorge Saudinós [VSI] (European Spanish); Vagner Fagundes (Brazilian Portuguese)

"Hey, bigshot! What're you starin' at so intently?"

A hardheaded, rough-edged, and tough guy with an Osakan accent and a short fuse, Toji appears on the outside to be a stereotypical jock, but underneath it all, he has a big heart and a strong moral compass. He forms a steadfast duo with Kensuke, sort of playing the role of the brawn to his friend's brains. Seemingly "just" an average student in the pilots' class for much of the first half of the series, fate soon conspires to give him a very significant role, with tragic consequences.

In his first appearance, Toji punches out Shinji because his little sister was injured during Unit 01's fight with Sachiel. However, after experiencing firsthand what Shinji has to go through as an Eva pilot, he becomes sympathetic to Shinji. He has Shinji pay him back with a punch of his own, and he, Kensuke, and Shinji become friends. Later, he is selected as the Fourth Child, only to have his Eva taken over by the Angel Bardiel. During the ensuing battle, Asuka and Rei are quickly defeated by the Angel-possessed Unit 03. Shinji balks at orders to attack, wanting to try to save the pilot, and Gendō orders Unit 01's Dummy Plug to be activated. Out of Shinji's control, Unit 01 tears Unit 03 apart, then rips out and crushes the Entry Plug, crippling Toji.

There are a few noticeable differences between Toji's portrayal in the anime and manga. In the manga, Shinji's payback for his punch is different, and their out-of-classroom antics are shown more. He also reveals to Shinji that he is Unit 03's pilot prior to its activation/takeover, and is killed when his Entry Plug is destroyed.

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• Accent Adaptation: The manga gives his Kansai dialogue the Brooklyn rendition.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Toji has black hair in the anime and light brown hair in the manga.
• An Arm and a Leg: In both the anime and manga, Toji loses his left leg as a result of the Entry Plug being destroyed. Of course, the difference is that one continuity sees him having to live with this injury; the other doesn't.
• Apologetic Attacker: When he first meets Shinji and slugs him. Inverted an episode later when he has Shinji hit him so he can apologize for the earlier incident.
• Beta Couple: Forms one with Hikari. In keeping with the trope, Toji's romance arc with Hikari develops in a more stable and straightforward manner than the great big mess of misunderstandings and complicated emotions Shinji finds himself embroiled in.
• Big Brother Instinct: The entire reason why he has a beef with Shinji to begin with is because his younger sister got injured during the battle with Sachiel and he felt he had to avenge it. His sister, however, wasn't happy to learn that he had punched out the hero who saved the city, giving quite him the scolding for it.
• The Big Guy: He has the muscled look and boisterous personality to fit, though the one time he gets to pilot his Eva leads to him getting incapacitated before he can do anything.
• Brains and Brawn: He acts as the Brawn to the more technically-minded and nerdy Kensuke's Brains. However; the dynamic is played with slightly, in that Toji often proves to have quite a bit more common sense than Kensuke.
• Break the Comedian: Toji, especially in his dynamic with Kensuke, quickly establishes himself as a frequent source of comedic relief after befriending Shinji. Following his selection as an Eva pilot, however, he instantly becomes very subdued and anxious, and remains that way for pretty much the rest of his screentime.
• Bully Turned Buddy: He goes from raging bully to Shinji's friend over the course of two episodes.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: In the anime, his last scene is of him talking to Hikari when she visits him in the hospital. He is mentioned a few times here and there, but, aside from some brief moments in episode 26 and End of Evangelion, he doesn't make any more on-screen appearances.
• Covert Pervert:
  • In the manga, Toji tries to teach Shinji how to turn cleaning the stairs into a peeping opportunity, but gets caught by Hikari, freaks out, and ends up knocking Shinji down the stairs.
  • Played straight in the anime in Episode 5 when he and Kensuke ogle the girls during swim practice, then inverted when he gives Asuka her "change" after she takes her "viewing fee" in episode 8.
• Custom Uniform: Toji always wears the same tracksuit ensemble. It's clearly not the school's uniform, either for standard class or gym activities, but for some reason he never gets in trouble for it. There is one episode that is memorable for being the only time he's ever shown in the regular school uniform.
• Death by Adaptation: In the manga, he's killed during the Unit 03 incident instead of just being crippled.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Actually justified. After his traumatic accident, he spends the rest of the series in the hospital, and Shinji is too guilt-ridden to want to see him.
  • Also applies to him in merchandising and spin-offs, where his position as the fourth child is generally ignored in favor of Kaworu.
• Dies Wide Open: The last thing we see of Toji in the manga is his eyes-open face as his body is being removed from the entry plug.
• Dumb Muscle: Downplayed. As the resident class jock, Toji is the most physically imposing of Shinji's friends, but he is not "dumb" per se; it is more that he has a short fuse and a tendency to act before he thinks.
• Foil: To Shinji. He's more or less a prideful, hyper-masculine jock with a heart of gold who, though unhappy about the idea, never hesitates when it came to piloting EVA; meanwhile, Shinji is an effeminate, shy, awkward musician. Toji enjoys typically masculine hobbies like sports while Shinji is content in a more feminine gender role and is always questioning whether he should pilot EVA.
• Four Is Death: He's the Fourth Child and pilots the fourth created Eva (counting Unit-00). He only dies in the manga adaptation, but it doesn't end well for him either way.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: In the manga and the Rebuild dub, he freely calls Asuka a bitch, but in the series dub he opts for "she's a real female dog if you know what I mean." Done more for Rule of Funny, since the dub includes harsher profanity even in the TV version.
• Healthcare Motivation: One of the first clues that conclusively points to his identity as the pilot of Unit 03 is when some characters are heard discussing the fact that he only agreed to do so if his sister got medical care with NERV. Toji is seen walking through the hospital while this dialogue is playing.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Kensuke, which he later extends to include Shinji.
• Hidden Depths: His later appearances show him to be an insightful, sensitive, and most importantly stable person in comparison to the rest of the cast. When he and Rei are talking on the roof, alone, Rei describes the emotions she's been feeling towards Shinji, and Toji simply says, in a very matter-of-fact tone, "Yeah, that's love."
• The Idiot from Osaka: Subverted. He fits the stereotype in quite a few ways, having the accent and being a brash, short-tempered guy, but his more stable mental state compared to other characters and strong moral compass sets him a bit apart from it.
• Jerkass Realization: After witnessing first-hand the trauma Shinji experiences as an EVA pilot, Toji regrets beating Shinji up earlier and strives to redeem himself, resulting in him becoming Shinji's friend.
• Jerk Jock: Subverted. He initially comes across as one when he beats up Shinji, but it turns out he has a very good reason for being angry, and later on becomes friends with Shinji. In fact, he proves afterwards to be quite the Lovable Jock, being unquestionably loyal to his friends and family, having a friendly, down-to-earth demeanor most of the time, as well as proving to be one of the show's more mentally stable characters.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's loud-mouthed and rough, but he's one of the most moral characters in the entire series, even more so than Shinji himself; though to be fair, Shinji receives much harsher tests of moral character a lot more frequently than Toji does.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After being chosen as pilot, Toji feels guilty for having punched Shinji for landing on his sister, realising he had no idea what he was going through.
• Missing Mom: As with all of Class 2A. While it is never mentioned directly, it can clearly be inferred from when he laments that his sister is often all alone in the hospital because of his father and grandfather's work hours, with any references to his mother being conspicuously absent during this.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He has a moment of this when he witnesses the heavy emotional toll being a pilot puts on Shinji firsthand, after having punched him. Afterwards, a guilt-ridden Toji comes to the conclusion that he Must Make Amends, although it takes him some time (and some prompting from Kensuke) to actually get around to it.
• Oblivious to Love: Downplayed. Toji starts out rather ignorant of Hikari's obvious crush on him, but he appears to have cottoned on to her feelings by Episode 18. However, it's by this point that Toji slips Out of Focus, so it's not really explored.
• One Free Hit: Feeling bad for punching Shinji earlier, he tries to apologize in part by offering Shinji one free punch in return.
• Only Sane Man: He's at least the most mentally stable of the Children.
• Optional Party Member: Several spin off games allow for the player to save him, which allows him and Unit 03 to become usable in later fights.
• Out of Focus: Hits him hard after Episode 19. While Hikari and Kensuke still have some limited on-screen appearances in the latter episodes, Toji is from that point on effectively The Ghost, and he only (sort of) comes Back for the Finale to guide and congratulate Shinji during Instrumentality in Episode 25 and 26, and has an even briefer appearance in End of Evangelion where he only appears in a still image.
• Resigned to the Call: Toji quietly accepts his selection as the Fourth Child, but it is evident from his very apprehensive mood afterwards that he is not the least bit happy about it, and that he does it mostly out of a sense of duty and obligation and to help his sister. In the manga, he has an exchange with Shinji where he admits that the prospect of being a pilot terrifies him.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Manly man to Shinji, and to a lesser extent Kensuke's, sensitive guy.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: His dynamic with Asuka has elements of this. Though many other members of the cast take issue with Asuka's abrasive personality, Toji is in absolutely no mood to be polite about it. From their first meeting he butts heads with her, with most of their interactions being petty squabbles and insult-slinging. The whole thing gets an even more poisonous and bitter edge once Asuka discovers, to her outspoken displeasure, that he has been chosen as the Fourth Child (though the fact that he soon after falls victim to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome means that it's ultimately not explored in any real detail). This dynamic tends to be especially expanded on in the various spin-offs.
• The Team Normal: He's the only pilot that could be considered a completely normal person (although no one at Shinji's school is truly normal), and even then he still has his problems.
• Those Two Guys: He and Kensuke frequently hang out together. Though they later form a trio with Shinji, they are still operating as a duo on many levels.
• Token Good Teammate: The only child who never performs any morally reprehensible act beyond punching Shinji during their first meeting. He supports his friends through thick and thin and only pilots his Eva out of his love for his sister.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Shortly after meeting Shinji, he slugged him in the face because his sister was badly injured as collateral damage when Shinji fought the Angel Sachiel in the first episode. After witnessing the toll Shinji's life as a pilot puts on him up close (and getting an earful from the aforementioned sister for beating up the hero who saved the city), Toji comes to feel guilty about his earlier behavior and offers Shinji a free punch so they can be even. And that was how they became friends.
• Tragic Bromance: His steady friendship with Shinji is permanently strained after the latter's inaction led to him getting crippled following an Angel possession. Though Toji's reaction to the incident isn't examined in depth, in the little that is seen of it he doesn't appear to be particularly angry at Shinji or even really blame him at all for what happened. Shinji, on the other hand, very much blames himself and keeps a distance to Toji afterwards out of guilt. Played more straight in the manga, where he is killed during the incident.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Kensuke. Toji often complains and questions his judgement and intelligence at length when it comes to his more harebrained and, admittedly, dangerous schemes and plans, but he always ends up following his lead.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Toji's acceptance of the offer of becoming a pilot may have allowed his sister to be transferred to the higher standard NERV hospitals, but at the cost of his leg (along with his life in the manga).

Kaworu Nagisa (Spoilers)

Voiced by: Akira Ishida (Japanese); Kyle Sturdivant [ADV], Aaron Krohn [films], Greg Ayres [Director's Cut], Clifford Chapin [VSI] (English)^note Other Languages: Ernesto Lezama [Locomotion, Renewal], Edson Matus [Renewal, Sony dub], Alberto Bernal [VSI] (Latin American Spanish); Jordi Pons [TV series and films], Mario García [VSI] (European Spanish); Olivier Jankovic [first dub], Alexis Tomassian [redub] (French); Yuri Chesman (Brazilian Portuguese)

"You know, I might have been born so I could meet you."

"Singing brings joy and revitalizes the human soul. I think that song is the highest achievement of the Lilim culture. Don't you agree, Shinji Ikari?"

Bishounen, as fey and mysterious as Rei, and possessed of an unnatural calm, Kaworu is the last major character to appear in the anime, puts in only 13 minutes of screen time in one episode, yet is a critical character for a variety of reasons, and marks a significant turning point in the plot.

Kaworu is sent by SEELE as the Fifth Child in order to replace Asuka when her synchronization ratios fall too low, a task he handles with startling ease. He shows a strong interest in Shinji, showing him more physical and emotional affection than probably any other character, which Shinji appears to accept, to a degree he shows to none of the other characters. Kaworu even goes as far as to tell Shinji that he loves him and was born to meet him. He also expresses an appreciation for humans and their achievements, particularly music. The next morning, however, Kaworu reveals his true nature as Tabris, the 17th Angel, and attempts to invade Terminal Dogma. After failing to achieve his goals, he concludes that because his success would cause Shinji to die, he cannot be allowed to exist and asks Shinji to kill him, which Shinji reluctantly does after spending a full minute paralyzed with grief. Shinji later admits to loving him as well and he shows up in The End of Evangelion to talk with Shinji during Instrumentality.

A homosexual subtext clearly exists between him and Shinji, and is carried through to both Alternate Continuity works and some official artwork. However, how much this particular aspect of Kaworu's personality is emphasized, and how Shinji reacts to him, varies greatly depending on the work in question.

In the manga, Kaworu is much more prominent, showing up well before the battle with Armisael, and fighting against the Angel in Unit 02. His personality is also noticeably different, making him more inhuman and unsettling, and drastically changing his interactions with the cast, especially Shinji. His fate is ultimately the same, but plays out in a more complex fashion than in the anime. As a final note, he does not return to guide Shinji through his instrumental introspection in the finale, his pivotal reappearance initially thought to be a foregone conclusion.

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• The Ace: Kaworu is a deliberate deconstruction of this. He is intentionally designed to be what Shinji sees as the perfect human being and is the best of the pilots, kind, handsome, intelligent and capable of reading and understanding others like books. Anno has specifically stated that Kaworu was designed to be so perfect that it would be impossible for Shinji not to develop a complex just by spending a few moments around him. However, as an Angel Kaworu is anything but human, and he has his own existential torments to boot.
• Adaptational Badass: Zig-zagged. Manga-Kaworu actually gets to be shown piloting Unit 02 to battle Armisael and proves to be exactly as skilled as the anime had implied, but at the same time is presented as a far more flawed character than he was in the anime, as well as being ultimately in less control of the events around him.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: Kaworu's hairstyle in the manga is a little different from his anime self, being more ruffled, spikier and longer rather than smooth and short. This subtly shows that they are not that similar in reality.
• Adaptational Jerkass: The manga plays up his Blue-and-Orange Morality to the hilt and abandons any expectations of him playing the role of the Nice Guy, enough to be nicknamed "Evil Manga Kaworu" by fans. Kaworu is portrayed as a creepy, almost hedonistic sociopath whose attraction to Shinji is implied to be a consequence of accidentally linking with Rei during the fight against Armisael. He also lacks his introspective nature and his intimate relationship with Shinji (who acts much more abrasive towards his advances despite still showing some attraction to him), and his Heroic Sacrifice is removed; instead, he allows Shinji to kill him because it will somehow prove in Kaworu's weird mind that Shinji loves him back.
• Adaptational Villainy: Certain spin-offs cast him in a much more straightforwardly villainous light. Examples include Puchi Eva, which casts him as a Harmless Villain who runs around trying to scare people as a Bed Sheet Ghost; the Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga, which makes him a Yandere Stalker with a Crush for Shinji; and Detective Evangelion, which makes him The Rival and much more openly antagonistic.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: His hair is steel gray in the anime, but more of a silvery white color in the manga. In the original script for episode 24, his hair is described to be honey-colored, although whether this is because he really is meant to be blond or it is just an effect of the sun shining on his hair is unclear.
• Adaptation Personality Change: His personality varies slightly depending on the material, with the manga interpretation of his character and Evangelion Anima version being the biggest departures from the originals personality. In the manga's case, Word of God describes this version of Kaworu being pre-human emotion, which explains why he acts the way he does. His attitude toward Shinji also changes when Rei's feelings for Shinji begin to flow into him, causing him to become jealous and rash as he attempts to force Shinji to reciprocate his feelings, which in turn causes Shinji to push him away. When asked about the inconsistencies of his character, Word of God acknowledges that Kaworu is always evolving.
• Advertised Extra: While he's pivotal to the show both story-wise and thematically, Kaworu only appears in one episode and yet is featured in more advertising and tie-in products than most of the rest of the cast combined. His comparatively small role can come to a surprise to viewers who were attracted to the show through advertisements prominently featuring him.
• Affably Evil: Kaworu is absolutely genuine with his kindness to others, although his ultimate goal (at least at first) is to further SEELE's Assimilation Plot. When Shinji confronts him, he never raises his voice and is consistently polite. Then, when he realizes that SEELE deceived him about Lilith, he abandons the "evil" part entirely in favor of a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Albinos Are Freaks: Kaworu has grey hair and blood red eyes, reminiscent of an albino. However, character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto stated that he isn't one, and that his hair and eyes are simply a way of cuing in the audience that he's an odd character. His episode's draft also implies that his hair might actually be meant to be pale blond.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Implied, though subtlely, to be at least part of the reason he seeks Shinji out so much. Literally every other character is immediately suspicious of Kaworu and thus avoids him, while Shinji is eager to talk to him. Indeed, NGE 2 directly states loneliness is Kaworu's greatest fear.
• Alternate Identity Amnesia: Sort of. While Kaworu knows that he has the soul of Adam in him, he doesn't remember being Adam. The NGE 2 "Broken Wings" ending features a scenario where Kaworu regains Adam's memories and takes his children out of there (including the EVA Units), effectively ending SEELE's plans for Third Impact and the war between Lilith and Adam's progeny.
• Ambiguously Gay: Kaworu's and Shinji's interactions have romantic undertones and, while Kaworu obviously cares a lot for Shinji, it's intentionally left ambiguous if the feelings are simply platonic or romantic. The relationship is strong enough for Kaworu to be officially recognized as a love interest by companion books, and his character overview in the officially-sanctioned NGE 2 video game describes his romantic affections (愛情) towards the opposite sex as being "weak". Shinji can pursue him romantically in said game, including confessing his love to him. Due to not being a human, however, it can be hard to say if his sexuality can be categorized at all. In the manga, though, Kaworu's feelings for Shinji are unambiguously romantic. In the Shinji Ikari Raising Project, he outright states that he's "tried his whole life to be attracted to the opposite sex."
• Anti-Anti-Christ: Has stated that his life purpose is to continue existing (at the price of eradicating humanity), but defies this fate and asks Shinji to kill him because he wants him and the human race to live.
• Anti-Villain: A definitive type IV example. Born with the sole purpose of being used to bring about the end of humanity, he fulfills said purpose without a hint of genuine malice, but ultimately decides he values humanity and its existence more and sacrifices himself.
• The Ark: Just like Rei, Kaworu is the soul of Adam, one of the seven last members of the First Ancestral Race tasked as carrier and progenitor of the dead members of his species; originally Earth belonged to Adam and her children, but Lilith crashed as a mistake of coordinates. Unfortunately, SEELE's incarnation process erased Kaworu's memories, because if he had remembered his original purpose, the battle between Angels and the lilin would have been averted.
• Ascended Extra:
  • He only appeared in one episode of the original anime but is a more major character in all other adaptations. The original drafts of 25 and 26 show that he was meant to play a larger role, and he does in the movie versions of the intended ending, making him more of a case of Demoted to Extra in the anime.
  • Zig-zagged in the manga. He shows up earlier, has a lot more screentime, but after his death, he's kind of just... forgotten, to the point of not showing up during Instrumentality like he had in the anime.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: The infamous scene in the manga where he strangles a kitten under the twisted logic that it's "kinder" to give it a quick death than leaving it to starve to death.
• Becoming the Mask: In the manga, where it's more clearly shown in the first place that he is sent by SEELE to destroy NERV, at first he is rather focused on what he is commanded to. However, after slowly developing feelings for Shinji due possibly to accidentally linking with Rei, and finding his new human emotions fascinating and confusing, Kaworu's motivation shifts dramatically from obeying SEELE to get Shinji to love him back. And even when Shinji pretends not to love him back, he still chooses to die by Shinji's hands rather than, in his own words, "be detonated by those old geezers".
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Compared to the immediate friendship the two develop in the anime, manga-Kaworu's relationship with Shinji is built around tension and the uneasiness Shinji feels around him. Kaworu is also no less interested in Shinji, but is presented as far more naive and a rather big Jerkass. Sadamoto described their relationship as two schoolboys who are constantly bickering but secretly desire to impress the other.
• Betty and Veronica: In the anime, he is the most Betty one out of the three love interests for Shinji, due to having managed to get closer to Shinji and made Shinji feel more loved in just one single episode than the others in the entire series. However, in the manga, he is instead the most Veronica one, as lacking understanding of human emotions leads him to act very insensitive and uncaring of how Shinji feels at times, which drives Shinji away from him, even though they are both attracted to the other.
• Big Man on Campus: In the original scripts where he actually attends Shinji's school he almost immediately becomes this due to his good looks, athleticism, brains and kindness. His only interest, however, is still Shinji. Alternate Universe adaptations where he attends school tend to stick with this depiction as well. Interestingly, the final version of his episode almost reverses this, making him out to be something of a pariah to all people besides Shinji despite all his perfection.
• Bishōnen Line: The last Angel is also the most human.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • He's an incredibly selfless and kind person, but he's incapable of fully understanding human emotion. While his sacrifice certainly saves Shinji's world, his obliviousness to the repercussions of having Shinji kill him are directly responsible for a large part of the conflict in End of Evangelion, which almost brings the same exact scenario he was trying to avoid. Taking into consideration that he was raised by SEELE, whose philosophy seems to be "life is pain", and that he is implied to have been alone for most of this existence, this is hardly surprising. In fact, given that SEELE seems to be manipulating him to an extent, they might have deliberately instigated this inability on him in order to make him easier to control.
  • In the manga, he's frustrated and upset by Shinji's negative reactions to him, and his lack of true understanding of emotion doesn't allow him to even realize why Shinji reacts that way.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: In the original script for Episode 24, Shinji confesses his love to Kaworu, but Kaworu immediately rejects him, apologizing and saying that he doesn't feel the same way. It is clear later on that he does love Shinji, but knows that he is supposed to be Shinji's enemy and didn't want to hurt him any further in the sacrifice he was already going to do.
• Breakout Villain:
  • He only appeared in one episode in the original series (though cameos briefly in the episode following). Then Death and Rebirth advertised him heavily, he made an important appearance in End of Evangelion, was among the main cast in several AU spin-offs, and has become a more prominent character in the manga version and the Rebuild movies. Whether or not he's portrayed as a villain at all in them varies, however. After the End parodies this, where he is brought in specifically as a ratings stunt to keep the show on air.
  • Similarly to Rei, his popularity has spawned some expies, usually in the form of white haired boys that are more often than not tied to an emotional dark haired boy. Said dynamic is popular in the shipping community (most obviously for Boys' Love, though this dynamic is mirrored for some Yuri and heterosexual pairings as well). He’s also managed to dethrone Rei Ayanami in a popularity poll that ran during the Rebuild era (and definitely post-3.0), coming in second just behind Asuka while Rei followed him in third.
• Bury Your Gays: Subverted. His relationship with Shinji always has heavily romantic undertones, and he almost always ends up meeting a tragic end regardless of the continuity. Averted in some of the supplemental material, though they may be non-canon. For example, in Neon Genesis Evangelion 2, the player can have Shinji convince him to return with him.
• Character Exaggeration: Generally always has an aspect of his personality exaggerated in spin offs, although which aspect it is tends to vary depending how the author perceives him. Some drop the subtext entirely and make him a Shinji-obsessed Stalker with a Crush while some others make him almost cartoonishly villainous (Evangelion Anima, in particular) in comparison to his actual Blue-and-Orange Morality. Puchi Eva switches between the two depending on what's funniest.
• Chick Magnet: Not in his actual debut episode, in which he barely interacts with females, but the original scripts and officially licensed spin offs show him to be one around girls his own age.
• Color-Coded Character: A somewhat subtle case. Kaworu wears the same school uniform as Shinji (white shirt and black pants), but he wears an orange undershirt under it to contrast with the blue one Shinji wears, signifying his role as Shinji's (positive) Shadow Archetype.
• Cooldown Hug: A vision of Kaworu performs a fairly disturbing and definitely heartbreaking version of one during End of Evangelion, wherein the Lilith/Adam hybrid takes on his form and embraces Unit 01 in order to calm down the raving Shinji inside of it. Shinji is reduced to a tearful smile by the action, relieved at the sight of the person he believed himself to have killed. The "disturbing" part comes from the fact that "Kaworu" is in this instance actually a towering Eldritch Abomination who is putting Shinji's mind at ease in order to grant him the power to cause The End of the World as We Know It.
• Closet Key: Seemingly is this for Shinji, though it's muddled somewhat by the fact that Shinji was so severely starved for any form of affection that it's unclear if his attraction to Kaworu would have still occurred if he had approached him in a more stable emotional state.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: In the Manga version of the Armisael fight, when Kaworu gets invaded by the Angel as well he privately notes he could easily free himself by deploying his own AT field, but doing so would give away his true nature.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: In the manga. Kaworu's outright sarcastic toward Rei and is annoyed by the fact that Shinji would be affected so much about her death. He's also very mad and hurt at how Shinji considers Rei, Asuka and the others his friends, but not him.
• Creepy Child: Considered one in-universe as well as out. His ever-present smirk, universal way of speaking and lack of any social skills make others incredibly suspicious of him almost immediately. The manga plays this to the hilt; even Kensuke, looking at him from their classroom while he and Shinji are on the street, sees that something isn't right about the new boy.
• Crush Blush: He blushes at Shinji in the anime. In Neon Genesis Evangelion 2 he becomes flustered after Shinji kisses him.
• Dark and Troubled Past: In the manga, Kaworu officially woke up from his creation tube mere days before the events of the series, but nothing of this is ever mentioned or suggested in the anime, so it can be presumed he has really lived for 15 years in the latter's continuity. However, given his lack of social skills, perceivable loneliness, and personal quest for freedom, it is implied he had to live through these years with all the isolation and sheltering of being nothing more than a human weapon for SEELE. Early drafts of his episode made it even clearer by implying he attempted suicide at some point of his life.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Zigzags with Dark Is Evil. While he's technically a villain who causes a lot of damage during his appearance, he's a genuinely nice and well-intentioned guy who ultimately chooses to do good. His plugsuit also happens to be colored with sinister blacks and dark blues.
• Death Seeker: Subtly implied. Early drafts mention scars on his wrists, which the actual episode doesn't debunk, and he mentions to Shinji before dying that "death is the one true freedom."
• Devil in Plain Sight: Pretty much everybody is immediately suspicious of him as soon as he arrives, with Misato going so far as to have Hyuga run a detailed background check on him while she monitored his movements. The only exception is Shinji, who doesn't seem bothered, similarly as to how he was open and friendly with Rei. This is further shown in the manga, where, just by seeing him several yards away from him through a window, Kensuke is immediately able to realize that something about Kaworu isn't right.
• Dissonant Serenity: Not only does he smile a lot despite the fact that he is introduced at a moment in which events have taken a turn for the tragic, he even manages to smile as he asks Shinji to kill him.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He seems to have initially been SEELE's trump card, but is in the end only working for himself. It is fitting seeing how he is the Angel of Free Will.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He appears at the very end of vol. 7 of the manga, a full two volumes before his actual introduction. Also, pay close attention to the opening credits and you can very briefly see a sketch of his face.
• Enigmatic Minion: The Trope Codifier. He is sent, possibly even created, by SEELE to infiltrate NERV, but because he is essentially a human Angel, he also has thoughts and desires beyond the whims of his creators. During his brief storyline, he struggles to make sense of the situation and decide what stance he wants to take towards humanity.
• Escaped from the Lab: It's implied that the reason why he behaves like a jerk in the manga is because he has literally only been outside for the mission SEELE gave him. Before that, he was shown being in a test tube, and Sadamoto confirmed that he was only alive for 9 days in the manga, therefore the interactions with Shinji were pretty much the only human interactions he got. No wonder he has No Social Skills.
• Even the Guys Want Him: The spin-off materials generally depict him as popular with girls, but Shinji's attraction to him always is consistent. In NGE 2, male characters like Toji will blush around him as well, especially if the player chooses to have him make eye contact with them.
• Fate Worse than Death: NGE 2 explores one of Kaworu's psychological motivations to choose death: his fear of being forever alone. He already felt lonely in the regular human world before meeting Shinji, and therefore would be unable to endure the infinite desolation of an empty Earth if the lilin were erased and he found himself alone again.
• Final Boss: He's the final Angel featured in the anime (not counting End of Evangelion), and the rest of the series after is Shinji finishing up his Character Development.
• First Kiss: His attempt at giving Shinji mouth-to-mouth CPR in the manga ends up being closer to a kiss. According to Word of God, he pretended to be doing CPR on Shinji to hide his embarrassment. They can also kiss in the video game Neon Genesis Evangelion 2 if the player chooses it.
• First-Name Basis:
  • Shinji and Kaworu reach this phase on their first meeting. From then on, they tend to call the other's name a lot.
  • In the manga, where he is shown interacting with SEELE, they address him as "Tabris", as a reminder of his mission. However, Kaworu's growing feelings for Shinji and the fact that he betrays SEELE in the end so he can die by Shinji's hands seems to subtly imply that he doesn't like his Angel name that much.
• Forceful Kiss: In the manga, when Shinji is hyperventilating in the middle of a panic attack, Kaworu gets the idea to give Shinji a kiss in place of a paper bag. Obviously, Shinji only gets pissed at Kaworu.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: He is shown in the opening, just before we see Rei in moonlight.
• Gay Option: In many of the Eva side games, Kaworu acts as a Third-Option Love Interest for Shinji. Downplayed in Girlfriend Of Steel where his route ends abruptly, but played straight in the other side games, but especially in Shinji Ikari Raising Project where he not only is a love interest to Shinji in the main game, he also has his own route with multiple endings (2 Good, 2 Bad).
• Go Out with a Smile: Whether it be his death scene in the anime, the manga or Rebuild, Kaworu always accepts his demise with a soft smile.
• God in Human Form: Kind of Downplayed, considering he is still called an Angel, but the fact that he is technically Adam, the creator of the Angels, in human form counts.
• Gory Discretion Shot: His death; aside from the sound of him being crushed, all that's shown is his head falling into the lake of LCL, and that is heavily shadowed.
• Guile Hero: He betrays SEELE's orders and follows his own agenda.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • He lets himself die to give humanity another shot at survival. Deconstructed to a degree in this case, as his actions end up hurting Shinji more than anything else in the series prior and it eases SEELE's work in having him conduct their plan.
  • His cryptic comments also led Rei to figure out her true identity and reject Gendo in End of Evangelion, which, although they didn't directly save the world, asserted Rei's own free will and independence, which ultimately allowed Shinji to opt back from the Instrumentality and makes the apocalypse that has occurred reversible.
• Hey, You!: In contrast with the frequent name-saying in the anime, he and Shinji almost never refer to each other by name in the manga and the times they did can be counted on one hand (to elaborate, Shinji refers to Kaworu by name only three times, and Kaworu only one time when they first met), showing their more strained relationship.
• Hope Bringer: In spite of everything that Shinji had suffered immediately prior to Kaworu's appearance in his life, the pure, unconditional love and affection that Kaworu provides him still allows him to find some happiness in his circumstances. Unfortunately, this means that his death (at Shinji's hands, no less) is the final action that strips Shinji of every remaining shred of hope in his being.
• Humanity Is Infectious: In the manga, he pilots Unit-02 and fights Armisael along with Rei, and they both end up connected through the Angel. During Rei and Armisael's dialogue, he actually sheds tears after she does, much to his shock, and it's then that he learns about her attraction to Shinji and everything it entails. Afterwards, he starts to show himself attracted to Shinji as well.
• Humanoid Abomination: He is the human vessel for Adam, and he is by far the most powerful of the Angels, being capable of manipulating Evangelions based on Adam and produce an AT Field that is stronger than anything NERV has previous encountered. He was initially supposed to have an "Angel form" that he would turn into during his fight, but it was ultimately decided to be more meaningful for him to look human even when using his powers.
• Humans Are Special: Believed that humanity, and Shinji, should control the future, not Angels or SEELE's plots.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Why he asked Shinji to kill him. Seeing as an early draft of episode 24^note See here for the Japanese version shows that Kaworu has scars on his wrist, it is possible that Kaworu has attempted suicide before.
• I Know You're Watching Me: When Misato spies on him, from several kilometers' distance through a pair of binoculars, Kaworu is still aware that she is there and makes direct eye contact with her through said binoculars. Misato is extremely spooked by this, but quickly dismisses it as impossible that he should be able to know she was there over such a distance.
• I'm Crying, but I Don't Know Why: In the manga, after his Unit-02 was linked with Unit-00 through Armisael and Rei's feelings were transferred into him, he sheds some tears, not understanding why.
• Innocently Insensitive: Although Manga Kaworu's behavior is rather mean compared to his anime self, he's actually not being evil for the sake of it, but rather because he genuinely understands little to nothing about human culture. He operates entirely on his Angel logic, which baffles Shinji very much.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: If NGE 2 is to be believed, he wants to be a make-up artist when he grows up.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: An Alternate Character Interpretation. Canon for Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse, and for Rebuild.
• I Let You Win: Clearly had no intention of killing Shinji during their battle, generally only blocking his attacks and performing a few minor body blows throughout it. Considering his truly massive power and the fact that he barely pays any attention to the fight, it suggests he could've done far, far more but didn't want to.
• Inconsistent Dub: The French translators cannot seem to agree between Kaworu or Kaoru.
• Innocent Fanservice Guy: Like Rei, he doesn't have awareness of the nudity taboo. In the manga, he moves even closer to Shinji after the latter moves away from him in the bathroom scene, not getting why he avoids contact with him and even thinks that Shinji hates him, when Shinji is just embarrassed due to getting to close proximity with a naked person.
• Intrigued by Humanity: He finds humanity's ability to persist even in the face of despair and hopelessness incredibly admirable, and considers Shinji to be the defining example of this. It's heavily implied that this admiration comes from his own inability to do so, as side materials give out his belief that he could not endure the worst case scenario of his own fears. He also expresses a deep appreciation for music, calling it mankind's "crowning achievement".
• Jerkass Has a Point: In the manga, when Shinji wants to go out and rescue Asuka while she is being tortured by Arael, Kaworu condescendingly says that Shinji would just meet the same fate as her. Shinji protests, but Gendo agrees with Kaworu.
• Just as Planned: He's just as unflappable as Rei, though he replaces her stoicism with an omni-present knowing smirk. The few times we see him change his expression from this terse smile are the only times we can be completely sure that he is being genuine (and even in those cases, he's usually still smiling too, only with a different nuance).
• Lack of Empathy: His manga incarnation is devoid of any ability to understand and empathize with human emotions. He makes a nonchalant smile when Arael Mind Rapes Asuka, noting it to be "interesting". After Rei pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to save both Shinji and him, he gets irritated that Shinji feels sad over it and snidely calls Rei an idiot. This causes his relationship with Shinji to go badly because Shinji is undergoing a bad depression as he keeps losing his friends and Kaworu can't offer any form of comfort when he doesn't even get why Shinji keeps rejecting him.
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: SEELE's equivalent of Rei Ayanami, until he either decided to deny them their victory or reveals that he was never going to in the first place.
• Leitmotif:
  • Beethoven's ninth symphony, fourth movement. Oddly, they even get the mood right, going to the largo parts just before he dies. Fittingly, he earlier described music as one of the greatest achievements of human culture, which is part of what he's dying to preserve.
  • Before he enters Heaven's Door, the choir's singing "Und der Cherub steht vor Gott/Steht vor Gott/Vor Gott!" ("And the cherub stands before God/Stands before God/Before God!"). Just replace "cherub" with "angel".
• Love Confession: "I mean I love you." While the exact connotations of Kaworu's declaration of love to Shinji are ambiguous, the fact that he was able to do so as bluntly as he does stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the cast, who spend the entirety of the series unable to be open with each other about their feelings. It is the only instance in the entire series where one character professes their love for another.
• Love Hurts: His brief but intense relationship with Shinji abruptly ends with Shinji being forced to kill him.
• Manipulative Bastard: In the manga at least, where he's a completely different person.
• Meaningful Name: Tabris is the Angel of Free Will—very appropriate for a character who decided to Screw Destiny, even at the cost of his own life. Also, as the name being so different indicates, Tabris is from a different tradition/version of Christian mythology than the other Angels, which marks him as very different in nature from the previous ones shown in the series. His name and surname contain a pun as well (see Punny Name below).
• Mellow Fellow: His calm but warm serenity stands in stark contrast to most of the other characters.
• Mercy Kill: Two instances in the manga:
  • Shortly after he and Shinji meet, Kaworu kills a starving kitten that was following Shinji around, reasoning that a swift death was kinder than letting it die of starvation. It comes full circle when he asks Shinji to do this for him, because no matter what he does he will die or cease to exist as an individual, but he wants to choose the terms on how he dies.
  • Kaworu actually compares his situation to the cat back then: similar to the cat, he has only two options: either abandon the mission and have SEELE kill him (like how the cat would have died of starvation), or being killed quickly by Shinji right there. It's obvious which option Kaworu prefers: he asks Shinji to kill him like the cat, because if he has any feelings for Kaworu, he would let him die a quick and more pleasant dead, rather than have him killed by the "old men". And as Shinji complies—with Kaworu happily smiling, we get to see a scene of Shinji strangling Kaworu like Kaworu did to the cat.
• Mirror Character: Analyzing his character a little closer heavily suggests that he was just as lonely and miserable as Shinji was during their first encounter.
• The Mole: Infiltrates NERV per SEELE's orders, though it's ultimately subverted in three different ways: almost everyone immediately becomes suspicious of him and he never really bothers trying to hide his conspicuous nature; he has his own agenda opposing both SEELE and NERV's; and it's implied SEELE had actually predicted this agenda and only intended for him to die in action.
• Monster of the Week: This is essentially what his role in the series amounts to, sticking around for one episode before being killed off at the end just like the other Angels, but the impact he leaves on the series both in and out of universe makes him one of the most iconic characters by far.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Intentionally done for Kaworu to act both as a Foil and a love interest to Shinji. The scripts (all of them) detail his ethereal beauty and how it takes Shinji's breath away. Masayuki (storyboarder of episode 24) wanted to make him "erotic" and "dazzling." Sadamoto has also stated that he had the Bishōnen aesthetic in mind when designing his character to make him "sexy". It should be noted that, brief though his screen time may be, they still managed to give him an extended Shower Scene. When he stands, the viewer gets a full uncensored shot of his naked behind.
  • Outside of the anime, he's this even more, as he's had several figures and official arts displaying him topless, being touchy feely with Shinji and even himself in suggestive poses in his body hugging plugsuit. This figure◊ puts a lot of emphasis on his butt. It's safe to say he gets about as much fanservice treatment as the female characters in the cast.
• My Own Grampa: Technically. He is Adam's soul in a human vessel, but he's still an Angel born of Adam.
• Mystical White Hair: He's an Angel, so his hair color serves to indicate he's not human to begin with.
• Nice Guy: Hands down the nicest person Shinji meets in the entire series, showing him open and immediate affection and kindness at all times. Anno has stated that he created Kaworu to be an incredibly good person, someone who could be loved by anyone.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kaworu making Shinji kill him, while an act of kindness on his part, inadvertently destroys Shinji both mentally and emotionally, which causes major problems during End of Evangelion.
• No Sense of Personal Space:
  • Yet another thing Kaworu doesn't get about humans or willingly ignores. Especially noticeable in the scene where he reaches for Shinji's hand while they're bathing, to say nothing of what he does in the manga.
  • To elaborate, in the manga, he steps into the female restroom only because he hears Asuka complaining to herself. And then he steps naked into the bathroom stall Shinji is taking a bath in to borrow soap. When Shinji steps away from him, he misunderstands that Shinji dislikes him.
• No Social Skills: Although he is easy around people and looks very confident overall, his knowledge of human social mores is pretty much non-existent. Given his fear of loneliness and background, one can assume he hasn't had much human contact before the events of the series. Justified explicitly in the manga, as it's implied that he's been kept in stasis his entire life.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After spending all of his screen time as a Perpetual Smiler with a seemingly omniscient awareness of everything, his shock at discovering Lilith in Central Dogma instead of Adam and the cold, emotionless frowning look he gives to Unit 02 as he makes his final decision to allow Shinji to kill him show that things really didn't turn out like he had expected they would. Earlier, the genuinely heartbroken look he gives Shinji before he makes his final move to Lilith's chamber makes it pretty clear that he's only doing what he's doing because he has to.
• Optional Party Member: NGE2 allows Shinji to convince him to remain alive through a Guide Dang It! skill tree conversation, which allows him and Unit 04 to become usable in the final few fights. Notably, however, the Super Robot Wars series, which loves undoing character deaths, has never allowed the player to spare him to increase the impact of his sacrifice.
• Perpetual Smiler:
  • In the anime, he always has a calm, open and friendly (and, at least in some adaptations, smug) smile on his face. The very small handful of occasions where he doesn't are the few instances where he's not completely in control of the situation, and even so, a lot of what he expresses is done through variations of the same smile.
  • Played with in the manga. Although he still often smiles, there are many times he drops his smile in favor for a frustrated (out of not understanding why Shinji seem to hate him) or melancholic expression (when he watches Shinji crying over Rei's death).
• Physical God: If he hadn't surrendered, they wouldn't have had a prayer of stopping him from causing Third Impact.
• Poor Communication Kills: In the manga, and very much Played for Drama. The scene where he approaches Shinji at the lake and demands to hear Shinji's true feelings about him implies that, had Shinji been honest and told Kaworu that he did consider him a friend, Kaworu would have had no problem betraying SEELE completely and joining NERV's side, as he now has someone who cares about him for that. However, Shinji lies to him because he doesn't want to lose any more of his friends, so it's better to not have any, which leads to Kaworu pulling a painful expression◊ and going away. And then Shinji has to kill him anyway, which still leads him into a Heroic BSoD.
• Power Floats: The moment he's revealed to be an Angel.
• The Power of Love: What he represents in Shinji's subconscious mind. What he and Rei symbolize, and the bonds he had with both of them, are what make Shinji decide to break free of Instrumentality and go back to living as a human.
• Present Absence: While he plays a major role in the final scenes of End of Evangelion as one of Shinji's Spirit Advisors, his appearances outside of them are brief and sporadic. Despite this, there are many allusions and references to him throughout the film that make his presence and impact heavily felt despite his absence.
• Punny Name: Nagisa (渚) looks like a combination of katakana シ (shi) and the kanji for person 者 (sha). Shisha (使者) means "messenger", the same as the Greek angelos. Additionally, shisha (死者) also means "dead person". Also, Nagisa (渚) means "shore", following Evangelion's theme of names from sea places and objects.
• Really Was Born Yesterday: In the manga continuity at least, Kaworu has spent most of his existence as a soulless dummy body, and by the time he is introduced, he has only been a "truly" alive being with a soul for nine days, explaining why his worldview and some of his behavior comes across as rather strange.
• Rebellious Spirit: In contrast to his more gentle and obedient anime self, Kaworu has quite a rebellious streak toward SEELE in the manga. He has a "yeah yeah sure whatever" kind of attitude when talking to them and when Shinji confronts him after the reveal, he snidely admits to loathing the "old geezers". The act of allowing Shinji to kill him is also partly to spite SEELE.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Not in the anime, which features no ripples to be effected by, but it's become an integral part of Kaworu's Expanded Universe appearances that he retains awareness of the events of the original series, and sometimes other works, whenever he appears. Works that feature Kaworu sporting multiversal awareness include Campus Apocalypse which may provide an origin story for the ability, every Super Robot Wars he's appeared in since Alpha 3, and Rebuild of Evangelion.
• Satellite Character: In the anime, aside from a short cryptic conversation with Rei, a meeting with SEELE, and an exchange of stares with Misato, his interactions with characters other than Shinji are either offscreen or non-existent. Justified in that he's only around for a single episode focused on his relationship with Shinji. He has a handful of additional brief exchanges with other characters in the manga, but the focus of his character is still entirely on Shinji.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Wears Shinji's school uniform throughout his appearance despite the fact that the school has been long destroyed and abandoned by that point. In the manga, he arrives early enough for the school to be in one piece, but immediately decides to skip it with Shinji before he actually gets to go to it.
• Screw Destiny: Third Impact, the point of an Angel's existence (supposedly) was within his reach and he decided not to go for it. He is the Angel of Free Will, after all.
  Kaworu: But people must act of their own free will, or nothing will change at all.
• Self-Harm: Episode 24's drafts show that he had scars on his wrists, possibly implying he had attempted suicide in the past (see I Cannot Self-Terminate above). We never get see clearly his wrists throughout the actual episode, so this trait might be still on.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • A rare non-villainous example. Kaworu is an embodiment of all of the qualities Shinji lacks (if not the qualities most characters in the series lack, period), but this does not result in him being his Evil Counterpart or The Rival. Rather, because Shinji has such an exceptionally low opinion of himself, he immediately deems Kaworu much better than he is because of this, and the two get along extremely well. More tragically, this also covers Kaworu's obvious Death Seeker nature, something that has plagued Shinji since the start of the series. Kaworu simply had the courage to go through with his suicide.
  • On a less plot-relevant note, it's worth noting that where Shinji passively learned the cello and never really brings this skill up, Kaworu actively enjoys music and openly delights in his appreciation of it. Even in the more mundane aspects of their lives, they're opposites.
  • Kaworu could be seen as the Shadow Archetype for all of humanity, as his human appearance is contrasted by his openness about his feelings, something no one else in the cast is capable of doing.
• Ship Tease: Primarily with Shinji (obviously), but in some of the material where he does interact with Rei, there’s a bit there too. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, he calls Rei a cute person when Kensuke asks about her.
• Significant Birth Date: September 13th, 2000, the day of the Second Impact.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The spin-offs generally run with the idea that he is only interested in Shinji. This is best seen in his Raising Project, which only has one romantic route: Shinji. In comparison, all other character RPs have multiple routes.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Spin-offs tend to portray him as being this with Asuka. Asuka regularly refers to him as "homo boy" and seems to be bothered by his closeness with Shinji, while Kaworu becomes somewhat uncharacteristically snarky when in her presence.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: Subverted. He was intended to be this to the other children and NERV, but he instead betrays SEELE by not causing Third Impact in the moment of his/their victory.
• Small Role, Big Impact: In the original series, he's around for only a single episode, in which he basically serves the role of the Monster of the Week, but he's absolutely pivotal to Shinji's development, iconic for the series as a whole, and generally seen as a main character (often moreso than major characters who appear in every episode). Later adaptations and remakes would dramatically expand his role.
• The Smart Guy: He's the most well-informed and intellectual of the children by far.
• Smug Smiler: While his actual smugness varies depending on the adaptation, his signature expression is a smile that screams "I know something you don't know."
• Spanner in the Works: To SEELE, and since Gendo's goal involved Shinji accepting Instrumentality...
• Spared by the Adaptation: If the player plays their cards right in the video game Neon Genesis Evangelion 2, Shinji can convince Kaworu to go back with him without him having to kill him.
• Spear Counterpart: Superficially one to Rei. Both are albino-looking genetic clones with unisex names containing the souls of godlike aliens and the trump card of their respective organizations who grow to love humanity due to Shinji's influence. In terms of actual character, however, the two are quite a bit different, which Rei notes when they talk to each other.
• Spirit Advisor: In End of Evangelion, along with Rei, he appears to Shinji after Third Impact. They, and what they represent, are what convince Shinji to leave Instrumentality and give life another try.
• Stealth Pun: In the anime, he says that Shinji is in need of "koui" (好意). While the "koui" he uses here means "kindness", it also sounds similar enough to "koi" (恋, "romantic love"). Considering that he's the first one to tell Shinji that he loves him and that he represents "love" in Shinji's mind...
• Stepford Smiler: He almost always has a smile on his face, but taking a deeper look makes it pretty clear he's incredibly melancholic and passively suicidal.
• Super-Senses: That or Hyper-Awareness: he's easily (and eerily) able to pick up on Misato's spying on him from a substantial amount of distance away. Misato even wonders how it is possible.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Subtly serves as one to Kaji, likely due to the two of them being the only male characters that Shinji substantially opens up and looks up to throughout the series. Several of his scenes directly parallel earlier ones featuring Kaji, and multiple shots (most notably during each of their respective Last Words) are framed in a way so that Kaworu is in the same position that Kaji was in.
• Take a Third Option: In the manga, this was the biggest reason for asking Shinji to kill him. Since SEELE would have done it anyway if Kaworu hadn't initiated Third Impact, and if it had he'd cease to exist as an individual, he decides to choose the terms of his death, instead of letting SEELE do it for him.
• Technicolor Eyes: Like Rei, his red eyes are a sign of his inhuman side.
• Technopath: He is able to open Heaven's Door locking system with just a glance.
• Thanatos Gambit: He is opposed to the Third Impact, and ensures his own death so it would not happen, at least by his hand. Ironically, the emotional damage this causes to Shinji almost ensures later on the very thing he was trying to avoid. It is even possible Kaworu already knew this and was unable to do anything about it from his position.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: A pure-hearted, open and sincere young man who shows boundless love and kindness to a person in dire need of both, only to give his own life in order to ensure that humanity would be able to continue existing.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Some of his comments and actions in the manga are very cold and indifferent to the emotional impact they have on others - which is understandable because unlike his emotionally experienced anime counterpart, his manga version was simply never taught better.
• Tragic Bromance: Forms an incredibly intense relationship with Shinji in a very short amount of a time, but circumstances force Shinji to kill him just as quickly. His death is directly responsible for Shinji's final and greatest breakdown.
• Tragic One-Shot Character: He appears in a single episode, bonds deeply with the protagonist, dies in that very episode, and his death causes an equally deep wound on the latter.
• Two First Names: His surname "Nagisa" is more commonly used as a first name. Doubled as a Gender-Blender Name since "Nagisa" can be given to both girls and boys.
• Ungrateful Bastard: In the manga, Rei sacrifices herself to save Shinji and him. He just thinks she was being stupid and doesn't feel a shred of gratitude. Granted, her main motivation was to save Shinji and not him, but still.
• The Unreveal: While his body is a cloned human vessel for his soul like Rei's is from Yui, we never find out who Kaworu's is cloned from. Given that Kaworu doesn't physically look like anyone in the cast, the original is likely a true Unknown Character.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His intended Heroic Sacrifice resulted in Shinji crossing the Despair Event Horizon, causing him to be completely useless during SEELE's raid on NERV and resulting in him choosing to go ahead with Third Impact when the choice is left in his hands. More indirectly, clones of his body are used to pilot the Mass Produced Evangelions, which end up killing Asuka, the only other Eva pilot available to stop SEELE, and assist Lilith in causing Instrumentality. On the other hand, the love he showed Shinji ends up being one of the two things that motivate him to end Instrumentality and kill Lilith, meaning some good did come from his decision, but in a much less ideal way than he probably intended.
• Unwitting Pawn: Kaworu is described as "a child who was manipulated" in the book All About Kaworu Nagisa. He might have thought that his defiance of SEELE's orders and his assisted suicide would save humanity, but it's implied that, for whatever reason, that's what they wanted him to do all along. After Kaworu begins his attack, Keel says "I will be praying that Unit 01 will accomplish its task", and that's exactly what ends up happening when Kaworu dies by Unit 01's hand. This implies SEELE was already aware of Kaworu's disloyalty and was sending him to NERV to die in order to dispose of him, if not a more sinister reason.
• Walking Spoiler: Since his entire role in the series is to serve as the catalyst for Shinji's final breakdown, it's more or less impossible to discuss him without spoiling the end of the series.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: In the manga, after ironically having Rei's love for Shinji essentially Xerox'd onto him by the 16th Angel, he asks Shinji if what he's feeling is love and tries to romantically advance on him after kissing Shinji while he was hyperventilating (though it was actually just because he couldn’t find a bag, not a case of Dude, She's Like in a Coma).
• White Hair, Black Heart: One of the earliest quintessential examples in anime history, although it's ultimately subverted: Kaworu is the only one who shows Shinji unconditional love, and ultimately sacrifices himself for humanity, making him one of the purest characters in the series. And while the manga seems to play this straighter, it's also eventually subverted in that Kaworu is just Innocently Insensitive rather than truly malicious and his feelings for Shinji are genuine.
• Wild Card: He essentially does whatever he feels is right while ignoring the objections of NERV, SEELE and even Shinji. Very appropriate seeing how he is the Angel of Free Will.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: His calm, detached atmosphere, eloquent way of speaking, and ability to understand others straight away make it hard to believe he's in the same age group as Shinji and Asuka. Then again, like Rei, he is technically much older than he looks.
• Yandere: In the Angelic Days manga, Kaworu is Shinji's childhood friend, and is severely possessive of the boy when Asuka or Rei get too close.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: What he helps Shinji realize. Unfortunately, this development is turned on its head after Kaworu's death.
• Your Head A-Splode: Inverted; his head is the only part of his body that isn't turned into a pulp.

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