Evangelion Unit-03

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

Creation

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, Eva Unit 03 passed through a bizarre cloud which was in fact the next Angel. The Angel infected and mutated Eva 03, and seconds after activation at the Matsushiro facility she went berserk and destroyed the base. 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.

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 Unit 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.

This article bears the unpleasant designation of "Stub." This is a Bad Thing. Provide a great service to NGE fan-geeks everywhere by making it awesomer!

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