is a character from the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series and its eponymous franchise, created by the anime studio Gainax. Rei is an introverted girl who pilots Evangelion Unit-00, one of the giant mecha known as Evangelions, and bears the designation First Child. At the beginning of the series, Rei is a mysterious figure whose unusual behavior puzzles her peers. As the series progresses, she becomes more involved with those around her, particularly her classmate and fellow Evangelion pilot, Shinji Ikari. The series eventually reveals that she is a clone of Shinji's mother, Yui Ikari, and Lilith, an entity known as an Angel. Rei also appears in the franchise's animated feature films and related media, including video games, the original net animation Petit Eva: Evangelion@School, the Rebuild of Evangelion films, and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's manga adaptation.
Hideaki Anno, director of the animated series, conceived Rei as a representation of his unconscious mind. His readings in psychology, particularly Freudian psychoanalysis and the theory of the Oedipus complex, also influenced his conception of the character. Character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto drew inspiration from Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose; Rei's blue hair reuses a design element from the protagonist of Gainax's unproduced animated film . Megumi Hayashibara voices Rei in Japanese, and Amanda Winn-Lee, Brina Palencia, and Ryan Bartley voice her in English.
Rei has received generally positive responses from viewers and critics. The character became popular within the otaku community and inspired homages among Neon Genesis Evangelion fans. Reviewers have praised Rei's mysterious aura, her role in the story, and her character development; other critics have described her as lacking personality and being trite. Rei has also inspired a range of merchandise, including figures and accessories, and has been featured in promotional collaborations between Evangelion and organizations such as the Aonami Line and the Japan National Tourism Organization. Her popularity also influenced the music and fashion industries. Critics have attributed her success to a combination of , or affectionate, traits that appealed to anime fans and influenced subsequent female anime characters.
Creation and conception Original concept and influences
Hideaki Anno, director of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, chose Ayanami's surname after the Japanese destroyer , following the naval naming pattern used for other characters in the series. He took her first name from a character in the anime and manga series Sailor Moon, Rei Hino, also known as Sailor Mars. In Japanese, Rei can mean "zero". According to Patrick Drazen, the name may pun on her role as the pilot of Evangelion Unit-00. Critic Hiroki Azuma suggested that the name may instead derive from Zero, the protagonist of Ryū Murakami's 1987 novel Ai to Gensō no Fascism.
Anno asked character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto to design Rei as a depressed and reticent girl. The song by the band inspired Sadamoto, particularly the line which prompted him to draw Rei. The band also released a song named which features a female monologue; Sadamoto imagined Rei with a similar voice. Ukina, a character from Sadamoto's previous work Koto, served as Rei's model, and Sadamoto gave Rei a messy, layered bob haircut.. "My Thoughts at the Moment" Sadamoto also drew inspiration from The Snow Goose, a novella by Paul Gallico that describes a painting of its protagonist as a thin, pale girl in an empty room.
Anno wanted a melancholic character with short hair, so Sadamoto originally designed Rei with dark eyes and hair. To distinguish her from the other female protagonist, Asuka Langley Soryu, he gave Rei eye and hair colors that contrasted with Asuka's. One of his artbooks also includes, among Rei's designs, a drawing of a dark-haired character named Yui Ichijō, although Sadamoto did not specify her identity. Sadamoto conceived Asuka as occupying the position of an idol in the world of Neon Genesis Evangelion and as representing heterosexual desire; conversely, he conceived Rei as a symbol of motherhood, and as Asuka's opposite.Interview with Sadamoto in Anno also suggested giving Rei red eyes, which he believed would strengthen her personality and distinguish her from the other characters. Sadamoto changed her hair color to blue, echoing the protagonist of , the unmade film sequel to Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987). Sadamoto also gave her black stockings, inspired by a women's handball team he saw playing in middle school.Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's comment in Black also ran counter to fashion at the time he designed Rei.
Development
Anno drew on Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipus complex when developing Rei's role. He conceived the Evangelion and Rei as surrogate maternal figures for Shinji Ikari; Rei's emotional closeness to Shinji's father, Gendo Ikari, added another layer to this Oedipal structure. Sadamoto developed the erotic dimension of this dynamic in a more enigmatic and subdued form, contrasting with Anno's preference for more direct sexual expression. Animator Mitsuo Iso proposed further ideas for the character. In his plans, Rei had a connection to an ancient ruin located deep beneath Nerv headquarters that served as her metaphorical mother. Iso envisioned Rei dying upon experiencing her first menstruation. Rei fed on Arqa's flesh in another scenario inspired by Daijirō Morohoshi's Iso also associated her with a substance called and proposed that only Gendo could touch her. He gave Rei the baptismal name Other proposals connected her existence to Gendo's attempts to recreate Yui and to a covenant with twelve final Angels, which Iso envisioned with a mood reminiscent of Osamu Tezuka's Dororo.
During Evangelions production and first broadcast, Anno struggled to write the character because he lacked personal interest in her and found her difficult to understand or relate to. He nevertheless regarded Rei as a representation of his unconscious mind, and originally conceived her as "the unconscious Shinji". Even in the fifth and sixth episodes, "Rei I" and "Rei II", which center on her character, Rei speaks only sparingly. Anno's lack of affinity with Rei led him to neglect her personality for much of the series and give her limited narrative space. Rei appears in only one scene in the seventh episode, "A Human Work", after Anno remembered to add her. Conversely, she never appears in the eighth installment, "Asuka Strikes!" As with other Evangelion characters, he incorporated aspects of his own life into Rei, including his vegetarianism and avoidance of meat. Early in production, Anno said that uncertainty about his company's future left him unsure what would happen to Rei and the other characters.. "What were we trying to make here?", an essay by Hideaki Anno. The character's backstory also changed during development. According to Sadamoto and assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki, the staff originally conceived her as an alien entity before making her at least genetically human. In an interview, the two described Rei as possessing Yui Ikari's human genes, and ; Tsurumaki compared her condition to that of a Devilman, the human-demon hybrid from Go Nagai's manga Devilman.
During production of the fourteenth episode, "Weaving a Story", Anno decided to explore Rei and her emotions through a monologue. When he was writing it, he sought to take her character in a schizophrenic direction and considered how to portray madness. Someone lent him an issue of about mental illness that included a poem by a person with a mental disorder; the poem stimulated his imagination and helped him write the monologue. In the original script for the twenty-first episode, the first Rei clone survives Naoko Akagi's strangulation; after briefly losing consciousness, she awakens alone in an empty command room. Instead, the released episode shows Naoko killing this Rei and then herself. During production, Ikuhara, frustrated by fans' idealization and fetishization of Rei, suggested subverting their expectations by portraying her as an ordinary girl who marries and becomes pregnant by the end of the series, but Anno rejected Ikuhara's idea. Anno's original plans for the finale did not include the giant Rei who later appeared in The End of Evangelion (1997); he conceived the idea afterward. Anno considered Rei's character arc essentially complete after her smile in the sixth episode because she and Shinji had connected with each other in that scene.
In "Rei III", one of the series' final episodes, the second Rei dies and a new clone replaces her, behaving similarly to a stranger toward Shinji. Anno planned the second clone's death from the beginning. He compared Rei's development after the scene in which she smiles at Shinji, followed by a regression in interpersonal communication, to that of Hideki Gō from Return of Ultraman; Gō grows closer to the other members of the Monster Attack Team, only to become estranged from them soon afterward. Anno attributed this pattern to his own mistrust and fear of communicating with others.
Voice actresses Megumi Hayashibara voiced Rei in the original series and all of the character's subsequent appearances, including the later films, spin-offs, video games, and the Rebuild of Evangelion film series. In 1995, Hayashibara said Rei's laconic personality intrigued her and presented a new challenge. Hayashibara also auditioned for Asuka and Misato Katsuragi. Anno cast her as Rei after hearing her performance in the original video animation believing her voice better suited the character. Hayashibara recalled that few taciturn, emotionally cold characters existed in anime before Neon Genesis Evangelion; lacking models to imitate, she developed her own approach to Rei. During the recording sessions, Hideaki Anno guided Hayashibara and instructed her to deliver her lines in the flattest tone possible. She recalled his explanation: "It's not that she doesn't have emotion, but that she doesn't know what it is".. "The Voices in Your Head That You Pass Without Hearing", an essay by Megumi Hayashibara. According to Hayashibara, Rei's inability to understand emotion leaves no distinction between her words and feelings. She also attributed Rei's appeal to her lack of calculated pretense, arguing that her beauty stems from the fact that "she has feelings", and said that discovering the warmth hidden beneath Rei's detached exterior allowed her to relate to the character.
When Hayashibara was voicing the mahjong game she said she came to understand the difference between "lack of intonation" and "absence of emotion" in speech. She interpreted a lack of intonation as a sign of "self-confidence"; in her view, insecure or insincere people tend to emphasize their words, whereas Rei speaks plainly because she is honest and truthful. Hayashibara reprised the role for the Rebuild series. During production of the third film, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012), she recorded scenes before the animation was complete and therefore asked Anno to explain the action to her. She had to voice Rei as indifferent and take care to convey her feelings of happiness with the right nuance.