Evangelion Unit-03

Evangelion Unit-03
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Model Type	Production
Pilot(s)	Toji Suzuhara
Soul(s)	Probably Toji Suzuhara's mother (name unknown)
First Sortie	Episode 18

Creation

Evangelion Unit-03 is the fourth Evangelion completed, the second "Production Model" Evangelion. Eva-03 and her sister unit, Eva-04, were constructed in the United States of America. Eva-03 was constructed at Nerv's first branch base (Nerv-1) in Massachusetts. After Nerv's second branch in Nevada (Nerv-2) and Eva-04 suddenly disappeared, the US government panicked and demanded that Eva 03 be transported off of its soil, to Japan.

Toji Suzuhara was selected as the pilot of Eva-03, and sent to Nerv's secondary testing facility at Matsushiro to conduct Eva-03's first activation test, supervised by Ritsuko Akagi and Misato Katsuragi. However, while suspended from a cargo plane during its flight to Japan, she passed through a bizarre cloud which was in fact the next Angel. The Angel infected her and took control of her body, and seconds after activation at the Matsushiro facility it went berserk and destroyed the base in an explosion. Upon discovering what had happened, Nerv HQ redesignated Eva-03 as the 13th Angel: Bardiel.

Purpose

Ostensibly, like all the Evangelions, Unit-03's stated purpose is to defend Tokyo-3 and the whole world from the Angel threat.

Abilities

Eva-03 is described as a "Production Model" Evangelion, just like Unit 02, but her head design is clearly different, with two eyes instead of four. Apparently there were some minor tweaks to the design made between Eva 02 and Unit 03 and Unit 04, but all are considered "Production model" Evangelions. As Eva 03 was infected and taken over by an Angel almost immediately after activation, any new features she may have been designed with remain unknown.

Armor Design

Eva-03 is a "Production Model" Evangelion and uses the same armor arrangement as her predecessor, Eva-02 and her sister unit Eva-04, as well as the repaired Eva-00. All Evangelions using this arrangement have five armor plates on their torso. The lowermost segment is elongated downwards to also cover the crotch, above this are two more segments, and all three wrap around the sides of the Eva's body to meet a vertical line of armor segments that cover the spine. The fourth segment from the bottom is the central chest plate, which is somewhat larger than the other segment, and instead of going around the back, terminates where the arm meets the bottom half of the shoulders.

Towards the end of this chest segment section on each side, near the shoulders, are small recessed cavities, painted an off-color from the majority of the armor. Above the central chest segment, the fifth and last armor segment is smaller than the rest and is essentially in the position of the collarbone. Above this, there is a throat-armor region which is not composed of segments like the rest and is colored purple in the Production Model (while light orange on Eva 01 and pink on the MP Evas). The throat region is covered with several sections of flexible material.

Soul

It is never directly stated whose soul resides in Unit 03, but the soul of Shinji Ikari's mother, Yui Ikari, resides in Evangelion Unit-01, and the soul of Asuka Langley Soryu's mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, resides in Eva-02. It is stated that Shinji's school class is actually a secret pool of potential Eva pilots, all grouped into one place. Also, it is gradually revealed or implied over the course of the series the mothers of all of Shinji's classmates are dead; (Kensuke Aida directly states this, and Hikari Horaki and Toji also heavily imply this). Thus it seems to be implied that there is some connection between all of the potential pilots having "dead" mothers.

Then, consider this, from the Classified Information (Translation):

"D. In-Depth Information

A unit called a core is used to eliminate the discrepancies in Eva, a human being with the body of a god and a soul. The soul of the pilot's mother, which is placed within the core, acts as a medium and makes piloting possible.

Due to difficulties encountered in the development of Eva-00, the core's system is poorly constructed, and she falls behind in performance capacity as a result. Another reason for her inferiority is that Eva-00's pilot, Rei, does not have a mother."

This makes it plain that with the exception of Rei, the pilot's mother is always chosen as the Evangelion's soul.

Following this chain of evidence, the inescapable conclusion is that Evangelion Unit 03 contains the soul of Toji's mother, which was extracted either some years before in another "contact experiment" that happened off-screen, or recently from her preserved remains.

Notes

• Toji's usual attire has a striking resemblance to Eva Unit-03, perhaps foreshadowing (along with just about every other hint) that he was the pilot.

Evangelions

Evangelions (general)

Failed Evangelion Prototypes | Simulation Bodies

Eva-00 | Eva-01 | Eva-02 | Eva-03 | Eva-04 | Mass Production Evangelions (Evas 05~13)

Rebuild of Evangelion: Mark.04 | Eva-05 | Mark.06 | Eva-08 | Mark.09 | Eva-13

Eva 8+2 | Mass Production Evangelions | Failures of Infinity

Other: Extracanonical Evas