[EVA] The soul in Eva 00 belonged to Rei's miscarried child.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Evirus Aevrus wrote:
> I'm opposed to soul splitting on principle. That's why I mentioned the
> empty Rei spares. If Reis remain completely soulless until they are
> ready for use, then there's no reason why Rei II couldn't have gotten
> the same soul Rei I was using (meaning 100% Lilith's). The partial
> soul theory is a cop-out that does not pass the sniff test.
>
>   
I would have to confess that soul splitting has never sat well with me 
either. However, if we instead consider that sould in NGE are based more 
on shinto animism rather than western ideas of the soul, then splitting 
becomes more paletteable. The word translated into soul in NGE is 
"tamashii", which apparently has an alternative translation "spirit". 
Considering "spirit splitting" is perhaps not so indigestible as soul 
splitting.

> If Nerv can cram Lilith's soul into a clone at its leisure, can it put
> souls into Evas as easily? If so, why involve Rei I at all? Whether
> you argue for full souls or partial souls, it seems having a layover
> in Rei I is just a waste of time.  At least Yui and Kyoko's
> transferences were caused by activation experiments themselves.
> Whether deliberately or as tragic accidents, they at least suggest
> soul transferences have to be done a certain way.
>   
I would suspect that the neccessity of souls in Evas did not become 
apparent to Nerv until _after_ Yui's contact experiment. Following this, 
and possibly Kyoko's accident, the project suffered a setback. The death 
of Rei I offered a convenient way to "fill" one Evangelion without the 
messy sacrifice of another project member. As to where the final 
decision to use parent/child pairs comes into this, I don't know, but it 
may have had to do with the fact that parent/child links were inherently 
easier to engineer than using shards of Lilith.

> Nobody
> prepared an internally consistent explanation prior to animation
> production.
>
>   
That's what fandoms are for!