>>3844055(Part2/2) With this having been said, let's turn to Rei and "Rei Q". Let's put aside her physical appearance (accidents) and let's focus on the core aspects of her character. In NGE, Rei's central conflict is her being a goddess in human flesh trying to understand her humanity. She struggles to understand things such as love, happiness, pain, gratitude and other concepts. She wants to understand what it feels and means to be truly human, although Gendo tries to keep her solely as a means to his ends. Her virtues- she is dutiful, resilient, understanding, pure and intelligent. Her vices- she is too inexperienced with human affairs and is too willing to throw her life away because she knows she can be replaced. She acts according to her duty, but always in a way which is thoughtful and cogniscent of her growth; and sacrifices herself for her love of Shinji. "Rei Q", on the other hand, is another story. She lacks all the real virtues Rei has, instead replacing them with shallow copies at best- she seems unthinking, literally the doll Asuka always claimed she was. She is not a goddess, not Lilith, but literally just a clone, most likely with no soul of her own. The NGE Rei (I, II and III) had the same soul from the very beginning, just transferred in different bodies. In the Rebuilds, she's "One of the Ayanami series", and Rei II is still trapped in Unit 01's Core, so clearly it isn't her soul in "Rei" Q. Q has been reduced into a mere tool of Gendo, having no idea of her identity in any way. Her conflict is that of a lost wanderer in a game far too big for her. She is not the same character, though I will admit that like Faramir there are some faint echoes of the real character, which makes the mockery even worse.
