Glossaries _ Characters _ Rei Ayanami

Name: Rei Ayanami
Designation: First Child, Pilot of Eva Unit 00
Age: 14
Relations: Yui Ikari (Clonee), Lilith (Source of life)
Episodes: 1-6, 9-26

Japanese Voice: Megumi Hayashibara
English Voice: Amanda Winn Lee

About Rei Ayanami: People ask me a lot of questions about the characters in Eva, many of them are very obvious, people tend to have a general idea about what is to be learned from or understood about any given character.  But when it comes to Rei, I find that a lot of people are at a loss about her character.  People seem to find her to be very unimportant in the greater scheme.  There are many of Rei Ayanami fans out there, but I find that many of them seem to lack a well defined reason for liking her so much.  But overall, I find that many people miss, or simply don't understand Rei's importance as a character.

From our first encounters with Rei, we find her to be a character who has suffered greatly.  In the first few episodes she has few lines, fewer than normal in fact.   However she plays a very crucial role.  Her misery is what prompts Shinji to shoulder the responsibilty that he will have throughout the rest of the series.  The other characters get injured at points in the series, but Rei is usually the one who is worst off in that respect.

Rei is a tool, in many senses, of Gendo Ikari.  She is used to pilot the Eva, even at times when it is dangerous, when the pilot's survival is questionable, she is always the one to take that spot.  She is the martyr within the group of pilots.  She has little value for her life, because she lacks an understanding of the value of life.   Aside from her role as a pilot, she is very much a tool of Gendo Ikari.  The first Rei was used to trigger Naoko Akagi into a rage that resulted in her death, as well as Naoko's subsequent suicide.  And she was to be used to initiate Third Impact in The End of Evangelion.

More importantly than all of that is what Rei is as a character.  Rei, like most of the characters in Eva, is a reflection of an aspect of Hideaki Anno.  Rei is probably the most confused and questioning part of Anno.  It is subconscious, and deeply rooted.  She is the part that searches for the meaning of existance.  She doesn't know her place in life, and feels at odds with everything.  She lacks a self determined sense of purpose in life, and seeks purpose from those around her, or more importantly, those above her.  She accepts any order she is given by her superiors, as a false sense of purpose.  She lacks a concept of humanity, but nevertheless searches for the meaning of humanity, human existance, and her own humanity, at an unconscious level.  It is not until her encounter with Armisael that she becomes aware.  She encounters the mind of the angel, and is shown emotion, for the first time in her life.  Up until that point she viewed self sacrifice as something to be done to fullfill a purpose.  She sacrifices herself to save Shinji from Armisael.   It was then that she understood her role in the world, and it was then that she understood the value of human life.

In Evangelion, Rei is an enigma to the viewer.  She is simply "there".   She is an expendable generic character who is used to achieve an outcome, however she is much more than that.  She endeavors to find her place in the world, in the same way that I would say that Anno did.  She doesn't understand what value her life has.  And she is constantly searching for answers to the great questions of her existance.  I would say that though it is subtle, she is one of the easiest characters to relate to, and she shows a very important aspect of the human mind, the questioning, analytical part of us that seeks purpose and meaning in our existance.   And more importantly, that we can find ourselves, even in an insane and painful existance.

Relevent Resources:
Wang, Jonathan - A Personal Essay: Rei: Why I Find Her Beautiful
Anime Academy Profile of Megumi Hayashibara