Rei Ayanami
Every great team needs a member who is cool and graceful-calm under pressure. Rei Ayanami takes that philosophy to the extreme. Rei doesn't talk much, and almost never shows any emotion at all. The only person she really opens up to is Gendo Ikari, and later to his son, Shinji. Only rarely will you ever see Rei upset about anything, even when she should be. All this aside, she is completely dedicated to piloting her Evangelion. In battle, she is even willing to sacrifice herself in order to complete the mission. This tendency can almost be called suicidal, but if you understand her past, this tendency can easily be explained.
Rei, like all the other pilots, was born in the year 2000. Unlike the other pilots though, she was created in a laboratory through experimentation with cloning technology. Rei looks human, but she is actually a hybrid; her DNA was sampled from Yui Ikari(Shinji's mother)and Lillith(the first captured Angel). This strange mixing of genes helps to explain many odd events surrounding Rei, and why she is so close to Gendo. After she was born, the scientists of the time were still working on the Evangelion project and no suitable pilots could be found. Rei was born for one thing-to pilot an Evangelion. To ensure that she would not be killed in action, she was cloned-many times over. These clones were kept in storage, and their memories updated from time to time using information from the original.
In the year 2010, the original Rei was killed in a fit of rage by Dr. Naoko Akagi. Moments later, after realizing what she had done, Dr. Akagi killed herself. Left with no alternative, the decision was made to release the second Rei-this one a clone. Since all the clones grow at the same rate, no one was able to tell that the original Rei had been replaced.
This is the driving force that makes Rei Ayanami so calm about everything-no matter what happens to her, she can be replaced. In her mind, her life doesn't matter. It is only when she begins to open up to Shinji that she begins to realize that life is worth living-even if you can spare to die a few times.
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