Episode 14

Episode Information
Episode #14
Title 1: ゼーレ、魂の座 ZÊRE, Tamashii no Za SEELE, Throne of Souls Title 2: Weaving a Story
Written By	Hideaki Anno
Directed By	Masahiko Otsuka, Ken Ando
First Aired	1-03-1996
Video Release Date	8-7-1996 (Japan-Video/LD), 2-13-2001 (US-DVD)
Angel Appearances	None (recap of all previous Angels)
Eva Sorties	none
Episode chronology
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"Episode 13"	"Episode 15"

Overview

This episode is in two parts: The first part being a clip show presented to the Human Instrumentality Committee of Seele, reviewing the attacks of all Angels up to this point. The second part includes a poem in which Rei contemplates her own existence, and a cross-compatibility test between Rei's and Shinji's Evas.

Synopsis

The episode begins with a clip of Sachiel's attack, at first showing how normal weapons prove ineffective against the Angel, before the Evangelion is deployed. Recorded statements by Misato and an excerpt from an essay by Toji Suzuhara (whose sister was hurt in the battle) are included.

Next comes the attack of the angel Shamshel, along with part of an entry from Hikari Horaki's diary. The clip of Shamshel's attack ends with a statement that a final report on the analysis of the Angel's body has yet to be filed.

Ramiel's attack is accompanied by another excerpt, this time from Kensuke Aida, who mentions Rei Ayanami's selfless protection of Eva-01 during the battle.

Gaghiel's attack is notable in deviating from the scenario envisioned by Seele. However, the committee decides that the results were within "the projected parameters" and that "necessary adjustments could be made". A full third of the U.N. Fleet is described as being lost, and it is further mentioned that all the lost vessels are American, but the French committee member comments that the loss was actually minor.

Israfel's attack, Sandalphon's attempted capture, Matarael's and Sahaquiel's attacks all follow in sequence. When it comes to Ireul's invasion, the facts are listed as unconfirmed, although it is rumored that the Angel penetrated Nerv headquarters. This causes a great deal of concern among the committee, despite Gendo's reassurance that no such attack ever took place.

The meeting ends with Lorenz leaving all matters of crime and responsibility to Gendo, and adding that he does not need to create a new scenario.

The second part of the episode contains a poem by Rei Ayanami, contemplating the nature of her own existence, and asking questions about herself and about human beings. After the poem, Rei is seen during a cross-compatibility test with Eva-01, in which her synch ratio is reported to be almost the same as with Eva-00. However, the second part of the test- Shinji's synch with Eva 00, goes bad when the A10 nerve connections are complete. Eva-00 goes berserk in the same way as it did during the flashback in Episode 05, although Shinji escapes with only minor memory loss.

Fuyutsuki and Gendo discuss about the committee, the eleventh angel's invasion and Eva-00's berserk incident, at the end of which Rei is seen back in Eva-00, carrying the Spear of Longinus.

Notes

• This episode is basically a clip show, done to save production costs for other episodes. The first half is purely clips from old episodes with some voice over narrations, while the second half is still created mostly just by recycling animation from previous episodes.
  • The clip-show recycling of scenes is most obvious in the scene of-Eva 00 going berserk: the animation of Eva-00 going berserk from Episode 05 was clearly just reused and recolored to change Eva-00's armor from orange to blue, and it is not equipped with shoulder-armor pylons, because it didn't have those yet in Episode 05. Eva-01 and Eva-02 are also animated in this episode without shoulder-armor pylons to try to stay consistent about this, as if there was a reason that they were taken off of each Eva for the test; presumably it was cheaper to draw a new shot of the stationary Eva-01 and Eva-02 without shoulder pylons (one frame each), than redo the entire complex scene of Eva-00 going berserk. However, the end shot of Eva-00 bashing its head against the wall is entirely new.
  • A conceit of this episode's clip show format is the explanation that it is a "review" of reports on all Angel attacks by Seele. However, this quickly runs into complications as the episode is obviously just reusing footage from past episodes, much of which could not possibly have been captured by surveillance cameras i.e. looking at the Evas from the Angel Israfel's viewpoint, getting a view inside Gaghiel's mouth from the inside looking out, shots showing both Sandalphon and Eva-02 in the same frame while they are in an active volcano and nothing else can be holding a "camera", etc. etc.
  • Oddly, the "recap" footage of Sahaquiel exploding in Episode 12 is actually noticeably different from the animation of the same scene which was originally used in Episode 12.
• In this episode, we first learn the names of the Angels, from the Third Angel (Sachiel, which Shinji fought in the first episode) through the Tenth Angel, named Sahaquiel. Presumably, the names of the Angels are derived from the prophecies in the Dead Sea Scrolls about the coming of the Angels.
• Ritsuko's "mutual compatibility experiment" marks the first time that it has been attempted to switch Eva pilots between Evangelions. Rei could synch with Eva-01 fairly well, but when Shinji tried to synch with Eva-00, it went berserk. Evangelions are thus permanently associated with exclusively one pilot, and while Ritsuko considered the experiment enough of a success to begin work on the Dummy Plug system, pilots are never really switched between Evas in the series.
• First mention of Seele's use of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a guide for their "scenario".
• Misato's narrated report on Eva-01's fight against Sachiel commends Shinji on his performance under duress in his first battle. However, Shinji himself didn't really defeat the Angel; Eva-01 went berserk and he wasn't in control of it. This might be a hint that Gendo is hiding information about the Evas and their ability to go berserk. At the least, Misato is "out of the loop" and doesn't seem to understand that Shinji wasn't really controlling Eva-01 when Sachiel was defeated.
• In Seele's briefing, it is said that one third of the UN naval fleet in Episode 8 was destroyed by the Angel Gaghiel. Their dialogue also reveals that the "green"-colored Committee member represents the United States. According to the Instrumentality Committee, Gaghiel's attack "deviated from scenario", although the Committee comfortably writes off the massive naval losses in the encounter as "fortunately minor". This betrays the extreme callousness of the committee towards anything but their own project. Critically, the committee have failed to realize why the attack deviated from their scenario - Gaghiel was attracted to Adam, who was being smuggled aboard the convoy. It seems that according to Seele's "scenario", the Angels would only ever attack Tokyo-3.
• Ireul's invasion of Nerv in the previous episode was a genuine cause of concern for the Committee, who feared it might cause Third Impact. Gendo invites them to examine the Magi's data recorders, but they know he can fabricate those. Ultimately, Seele chooses to wave off Gendo's smokescreen, ignoring it as Gendo saving face.
  • The committee members are extremely distrustful of Gendo, the Russian (blue committee member) going so far as to say "distorting the truth is your specialty". Chairman Kiel appears to be the only one willing to trust Gendo for any length of time.
  • Fuyutsuki is just as antagonistic towards the Committee, saying that they have nothing to do but complain. Gendo, however, is willing to test their patience.
• This is the second time that Eva-00 has gone "berserk" for no clear reason (of course, this is because the animation of Eva-00 going berserk here is just a re-use of the footage of it going berserk back in Episode 05). Rei's simulation body, connected to Eva-00, was also infected by the Angel Ireul last episode, and in similar fashion the simulation body Rei was in raised its hand towards the control box, but Ritsuko blew its arm off with demolition charges before it could do anything.
• Asuka sarcastically taunts Shinji by asking if being in Eva-00's Entry Plug is like being in his mother's womb.
• After mentioning the Eva-00 berserk incident, Fuyutsuki himself feels that Gendo is too concerned with Rei.
• The Spear of Longinus is first referred to by name, and this is the first time it is seen outside its wrappings. When it first appeared in Episode 12, it was wrapped in tarmac and it was unclear what it was.
• According to the radio broadcast heard in the background when Asuka is laying in bed, political unrest is still taking place in the Nansha Islands in the form of terrorist suicide bombings, 12 years after China and Vietnam went to war over control of the island group's resources in 2003 as a result of post-Second Impact tensions.
• The shoulder-armor pylons on Evangelions do not actually contain any biological part of the Eva, underneath the armor. The entire pylon is just an extension of the Eva's outer armor. As seen here, the pylons can actually be removed should the need arise, in this case to fit them into external restraints; besides Eva-00, both Eva-01 and Eva-02, which always had shoulder-armor pylons, are here seen without them.
• Ritsuko and Maya discuss how the "mutual compatibility experiment"'s relative success means that they will now be moving forward with the development of the "Dummy Plug" project, though Maya expresses trepidation about it...
• Animation goof: briefly when Asuka is taunting Shinji, when the shot is focused on Asuka again and she's asking aloud why everyone always pampers Shinji, the visual intercom box with Shinji displayed inside says that he is broadcasting from "Eva-01", even though for this episode only, he's actually in Eva-00.
• During the clip-show montage of images from earlier in the series, a shot is shown of when Shinji fell on Rei in Episode 05 with his hand directly on Rei's breast. When this episode aired on Adult Swim, this shot was edited out of this episode. Of course, the brief shot of Shinji's hand on Rei's breast was edited out of Episode 05 as well when it originally aired on Adult Swim, so the flashback to a removed scene was simply not used.

Analysis

• What causes Rei to recite her internal, self-examining poem while in the Entry Plug of Eva-01? Is it possibly somehow related to the fact that Rei is a physical clone of Yui Ikari, and Yui Ikari's soul is contained inside of Eva-01?
  • Rei asks "Anata dare?" - "Who are you?" as Eva-01's exposed head is shown, implying that Rei is asking the Eva the question. In Episode 19, it is heavily implied that Rei physically does not dream. So if Rei isn't dreaming or having a "day dream" of sorts, what is this vision-poem she seems to have? Rei is normally totally stoic, but she actually seems surprised at the end of her poem - was it because Ritsuko roused her or is it because she came to realize what the Eva truly is?
• What does Rei mean in the middle of her poem when she refers to "a woman that doesn't bleed"? No corresponding image is displayed on the screen when she says this, just a shot of a tunnel formed by tiny red dots receding to infinity, etc. Is this meant to imply that Rei does not menstruate?
  • It's not really clear what it is referring to. Certainly, Rei has been seen to "bleed" normal human blood from wounds (she doesn't just have LCL running through her veins). Episode 19 did heavily imply that Rei doesn't dream; it's possible that there are other things normal humans experience that she doesn't.
  • However, this line could also be referring to Lilith, who "bleeds" LCL, not human blood.
• In her poem, Rei says that she doesn't like the color red. Asuka pilots Eva-02, which is red, and wears a matching red Plug suit; is it possible that this means Rei doesn't like Asuka?
• Eva-00 and Eva-01 are said to have "very similar personal data patterns"; Rei's synch rate with Eva 01 is almost the same as it was with Eva-00, and Shinji's synch ratio with Eva-00 is only slightly lower than what it normally is with Eva-01. However, Misato says that she thinks Eva-02 would definitely be incompatible: why? Further, it is strange that Misato is the one thinking this: Misato does not really understand the true inner workings of the Evangelions, that they each contain a human soul. If Rei, hypothetically, is synchronizing well with Eva-01 because she is a clone of Yui Ikari, who's soul is contained in Eva-01, Misato wouldn't know it at this point. So if Eva-02 probably wouldn't be interchangeable because its soul would be unrelated to another pilot...why is Misato, who doesn't know Evas contain souls at all, the one thinking this? There is always the possibility that the director for the episode just wanted to vary up the dialogue and gave Misato a line which was actually better suited to Ritsuko: technically, Ritsuko is the only person in the room who knows the true nature about Evas and the souls they contain, and only giving relevant dialogue like that only to Ritsuko would have basically amount to a monologue by Dr. Akagi.
  • What makes it even stranger is that Misato was with Asuka and Shinji in Episode 08, where both of them broke their synch records with Eva-02. Aside from the initial problems with Shinji "thinking in Japanese", there seems to have been no problem at all with Shinji synching with Eva-02, and if Misato herself noted it, why would she suddenly dismiss Shinji as being incompatible with Eva-02?
• It is of course ironic that Asuka compares Shinji being in an Evangelion to being in his mother's womb, because when Shinji is (normally) in Eva-01, he is in a sense literally "inside" of his mother because his mother's soul is bonded to Eva-01.
• When Ritsuko is shocked that Eva-00 is out of control, she lets slip a comment saying "The same thing as before...is it going to try to absorb Shinji?" which seems to be the first reference to the fact that Yui Ikari was absorbed into Eva-01. Of course, it's not clear if Eva-00 really was going to absorb Shinji, this was just Ritsuko's conjecture, and the line before she simply thought that it was rejecting Shinji. In either case, neither Misato nor anyone else noticed what Ritsuko let slip, because their attention was held by the out-of-control and dangerously violent Eva-00.
• Is Eva-00 trying to kill Shinji, because he's not the normal pilot? When Eva-00 went berserk in Episode 05, it didn't start damaging itself by bashing its own head into a wall as it does now. Is this just a sign of Eva-00's revulsion at someone other than its normal pilot being inside of it?
  • Was the soul contained inside of Eva-00 horrified at its current state trapped in an Eva, and thus Eva-00 was trying to destroy itself?
  • The Eva might have just been using its pointed helmet to bash a hole in the control room wall, to attack somebody inside.
• What was the vision that Shinji saw when he began to synchronize with Eva-00? Was it some form of mental imprint left behind by Rei, or was it a clue as to the soul contained inside of Eva-00?
  • This adds another layer: perhaps the montage of images that Rei saw while in Eva-01 were not internal, but the "mental imprint" left behind by Shinji, and she just composed her "poem" on the spot in response to what she was seeing. Indeed, many of the images during Rei's montage were images from when Shinji ran away to the countryside around Tokyo-3 in Episode 04 (of course, they could just be reusing those images here for economical reasons, but it does raise the question of if the production team made conscious choice to use those specific scenes and not just another one).
    • Rei didn't see a floating image of Shinji the way Shinji sees a vision of Rei. Rei's montage of images was probably not meant to be an "impression" of Shinji the way Shinji sees a vision of Rei.
    • Shinji's reaction to the visions of Rei he sees is: "What is this? Something's trying to get directly into my brain. Ayanami? Rei Ayanami? This impression is Rei Ayanami, isn't it? Ayanami?...or maybe not?" This could be interpreted several ways, one for example being that it's "maybe not" because it is really "Rei I" that he is seeing and not the "Rei II" that he knows.

The Soul in Evangelion Unit-00

Every Evangelion actually contains a human soul. Eva-01 is later revealed to contain the soul of Shinji's mother Yui, and Eva-02 is later revealed to contain (part of) the soul of Asuka's mother Kyoko. So whose soul is in Rei's Eva, Evangelion Unit-00? It was never directly revealed, and is one of the major mysteries of the series. However, several clues have been dropped on the subject.

For more in-depth analysis, see "Eva-00's soul"

Quotes

• Chairman Keel Lorenz: "We won't let you rewrite our scenario, Ikari!"
• (Rei Ayanami recites a poem over a montage of images passing across the screen):
  Rei: "Mountain. Heavy are the mountains, Something that changes through the ages. Sky. Blue sky. Something visible, something invisible. Sun. Something unique. Water. Something agreeable. Commander Ikari. Flowers. Many of them alike, many of them useless. Sky. Red, red sky. Red color. Red color that I hate. Water flow. Blood. The smell of blood. A woman that does not bleed. Made from the red soil are humans. Made by Man and Woman are humans. Town. Something that humans made. Eva. Something that humans made. Humans are what? Something that God made. Humans are things which humans made. The things I possess are my life and mind. The vessel of a mind. Entry plug, the throne of a soul. Who is this? This is me. Who am I?..." (A new image is inserted, not from a previous episode, of an endless line of multiple copies of Rei, stretching out into infinity)"...What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? I am myself. This object is me, the figure which forms me. This is the me that is visible, though it feels as if this is not me. A strange feeling. My body seems as if it is melting. I cannot see myself. My figure is fading away. I am aware of someone else. Who is there before me? Ikari-kun. I know this person. Major Katsuragi. Dr. Akagi. People, my classmates. The pilot of Eva-02. Commander Ikari. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?"
• Ritsuko: "So, Rei, how does it feel to be piloting Eva-01 for the first time?",
  Rei: "It smells like Ikari"
• Ritsuko: "Shinji, how do you feel in Eva-00's Entry Plug?"
  Shinji: "It feels kind of odd."
  Maya: "Are you uncomfortable?"
  Shinji: "No, it's just that...it smells like Ayanami."
  Asuka: "What does he mean, smell? Is he a pervert or what?"
• Shinji: (Shinji sees a vision of Rei Ayanami when he synchronizes with Eva-00): "What is this? Something's trying to get directly into my brain. Ayanami? Rei Ayanami? This impression is Rei Ayanami, isn't it? Ayanami?...or maybe not?"

Episodes & Films
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Movies	Death | Rebirth The End of Evangelion: Episode 25' | Episode 26'
Rebuild of Evangelion	Evangelion 1.0 | Evangelion 2.0 | Evangelion 3.0 | Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0