Rei Ayanami
Rei Ayanami is a main character of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the First Child who pilots Unit-00. She is voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in Japanese and, in the current Netflix English dub, by Ryan Bartley.
About Rei Ayanami
Rei Ayanami is a main character of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the First Child and pilot of Unit-00. Quiet to the point of silence, she lives alone, reads constantly and treats her own injuries as paperwork. The series slowly reveals why: Rei is a clone of Yui Ikari carrying the soul of the Angel Lilith, replaceable by design and kept close by Gendo for his plan. Her small, hard won steps toward having a self at all are among the most moving in the series.
Appearance
Rei is a pale fourteen year old with short, icy blue hair, red eyes and an expression that rarely moves beyond calm. She first appears covered in bandages, moving slowly, in a plugsuit or her school uniform, and her small apartment is almost empty: bare walls, a bed, medical supplies and piles of books. Everything about her presentation is minimal, as if she were a sketch of a person. As the series goes on, small colours creep in, a school swimsuit, a borrowed shirt, a smile she practices, and the audience learns to watch for them like signs of spring.
Personality
Rei is not emotionless. She is under practiced. She speaks when spoken to, follows orders without complaint and does not understand why her own pain should matter to anyone, because nobody ever taught her it could. Books are her company. What changes her is being treated as a person in small ways: Shinji cleaning her room, worrying over her bandages, telling her to smile. Her few lines land like hammer blows because she spends them so carefully, and her final choices in both endings are made freely, which for Rei is the whole victory.
Background & Story
Rei Ayanami is presented as a distant relative under Gendo Ikari's care and the First Child, pilot of Unit-00, raised inside NERV's inner circle. The truth, uncovered piece by piece, is that Rei is a clone: grown from the remains of Yui Ikari and carrying the soul of Lilith, the second Angel. When one Rei dies, another body wakes with her memories partially restored, which she knows, and accepts, with a calm that frightens the people around her. Gendo intends her as the key to his private version of Instrumentality, a reunion with Yui. What he did not plan is Rei developing a will of her own, through Shinji's stubborn kindness, and finally choosing for herself.
Powers & Abilities
- Piloting Unit-00: Rei pilots the prototype Evangelion Unit-00, an unstable early unit that has injured her badly in tests. Her willingness to sync with it despite that is its own kind of courage.
- AT Field and Lilith's Soul: As Lilith's vessel, Rei can generate an exceptionally strong AT Field in the story's climax, and her soul is the key Gendo and SEELE both need for Instrumentality.
- Replaceable Bodies: NERV keeps clone bodies for Rei in a tank in Terminal Dogma. Death, for her, is an interruption rather than an end, at the price of gaps in memory and self.
- Pain Tolerance: Rei functions through injuries that would hospitalise anyone else and reports them like weather. The series presents this not as toughness but as evidence of how little she was taught to value herself.
Key Relationships
- Gendo Ikari: Her creator and guardian, the only person she obeys without question for most of the series. Gendo is fond of her in his way, as a path back to Yui, and that fondness is the problem.
- Shinji Ikari: Her fellow pilot, who treats her as a person rather than an asset. His kindness gives Rei the first relationships that are hers, and her final decisions turn on it.
- Asuka Langley Soryu: Asuka despises Rei's passivity and calls her a doll, partly from jealousy over Shinji and partly because Rei's calm reads as superiority. Rei, characteristically, barely reacts, which makes it worse.
Quick Answers
Who voices Rei Ayanami?
Rei is voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in Japanese. In the Netflix English dub she is voiced by Ryan Bartley. In the classic ADV dub she was voiced by Amanda Winn Lee.
Is Rei a clone?
Rei is a clone grown from Yui Ikari's remains, and she carries the soul of Lilith, the second Angel and the source of human life in the series' mythology. That is why Gendo keeps her close, and why she is central to Instrumentality.
Why are there multiple Reis?
Because Rei has spare bodies. When a Rei dies, a new clone wakes in the tank and receives her stored memories and soul, becoming Rei again, though not identically. The series numbers them: the Rei of most of the story is the second, and a third appears near the end.
In Japanese, ayanami is written with characters meaning twill and wave, a name pattern shared with Imperial Japanese Navy destroyers, like Ikari and Katsuragi. Fans have read meanings into it for decades. Anno has mostly let them.