Rei Ayanami

Rei Ayanami is a fictional character from the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise. She is the First Child, (referred as the First Children in the Japanese version), the pilot of Evangelion Unit-00 and one of the central characters. At the beginning of the series, little is known about Rei and her stoic personality puzzles her peers. As the series progresses, her personality evolves and she becomes more involved with the people around her, particularly her classmate and fellow Eva pilot Shinji Ikari. In the concluding events of the storyline, the audience learns that Rei's mysterious origins tie into the story's resolution. Her role in this conclusion is not made clear in the TV series, but is one of the principal plot points of The End of Evangelion. Rei has short pale blue hair with bangs centered to the middle and has red eyes. At the beginning of the series, she would wear bandages such as her arm and her eye one. She wears the same school uniform but wears white loafers instead, and black ankle socks. At the start of the series, Rei is socially withdrawn, seemingly emotionless, and rarely interacts with anyone, except for Gendo, to whom she initially displays loyalty but with whom she has a generally distant relationship. She lives by herself in a dull sparsely-furnished apartment in Tokyo-3. Toward the end of the series, Shinji comments that her apartment is very similar to the place where Ritsuko says Rei was born. Rei is also shown to have an interest in psychology and genetics, including reading a book in German on the latter subject in Episode 09. As the series progresses, she begins to develop relationships with others and to show moments of genuine emotion, to even become sad and cry. Her English voice actor, Amanda Winn-Lee describes her saying, '"Rei is not totally devoid of personality, otherwise she would not be interesting." There is a small spark of humanity, but it is "clouded by this huge sense of negative self-worth and the realization that she is expendable." The joy of playing Rei is exploring that small spark.' And also said: "I got into a weird mode - I can't describe it. It's a good thing I'm in a little padded room when I'm doing it because that's where she belongs. She knows she's expendable, but the thing is, she's still human so you can't do her totally catatonic."