Quote:Not really. It just means that souls aren't one-size-fits-all...or at least, they need a bit of retooling at the Cosmic Soul Recycling Center between uses.
I don't like the idea that Rei's soul is inherently 'different' and/or 'incompatible' with human life as we know it. For one thing, it implies predestination, which is a loathesome concept to apply to any sort of sentient being.
Quote:She's the biological and metaphysical fusion of human and hostile, otherworldly other. If that isn't the very definition of "incomprehensible" and "eldritch", I'd like to know what is.
Yes, Rei is biologically a bit, well, wierd, but that doesn't make her some kind of incomprehensible eldritch horror.
And "horror" is entirely subjective.
Quote:We can't even clone a sheep and have it last more than a couple of years, and you'd be suprised if they made a little "oops" when creating some strange human/angel hybrid just three or four years after retrieving Adam? Second Impact EVA-verse tech level appeared to be on par with our own -- they just managed to drum up a shitload of funding.
A big part of her problem, I think, is that she's been told all her life that it does - that she is a monster, an alien, a clone, a doll.
Bullshit. She's injured, damaged, yes - but she wasn't defective straight out of the box!
Quote:Utter bullshit. There are any number of purely physiological conditions which result in an inability to comprehend normal human relations, regardless of "healthy developmental environment" -- and I feel quite certain that Rei most definitely did not have said environment.
Now, the argument that her 'differences' include sufficient changes to biology, developement, and sensorium to produce a very different experience from the standard 'human' mold might have some validity - but in a healthy developemental environment, that wouldn't make any more difference than, say, growing up with six fingers or an extra joint on your thumbs.
Quote:I'm assuming that Nerv would want their dummy plugs to be able to create a functional AT field.
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If they did, they'd have managed to shoehorn something into the rest of the Rei-quarium that could at least do more than giggle and look creepy.
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You're assuming that Nerv would -want- them to do more than they already do.
Quote:I'm pretty sure that Lilith woudn't have hung around after the Lance of Longinus was removed from her chest if Rei hadn't been playing steward for her soul, as I'm not aware of any other necessary bits of Lilith that Rei has.
Oh, and an assumption everyone else seems to be making - that the act of patterning from a soul is neccessarily destructive to the source-soul. Given the existence of the Eva's synchro systems, this strikes me as a little unlikely.
Quote:All I know is that Shinji explicitly recognizes his mother's soul in Unit-01, as does Asuka in Unit-02. Seems more a case of soul-osmosis to me.
Why do Evas occaisionally eat their pilots like that? Well, they have their own 'souls', but creating the things requires a bit of a jump start...