of many "extraordinary moments" in the series where battles "artfully embellish, rather than overwhelm, the subtlest of character interaction". Critic Dani Cavallaro similarly praised Anno's tendency to foreground "delicate character interactions": "The action element, therefore, unquestionably enriches yet never threatens to asphyxiate the affective import of events". Ramiel was particularly well received by fans, being considered one of Evangelion's best enemies, while Operation Yashima became one of the most popular fights in the series. In July 2020, Comic Book Resources reported an 8.3/10 rating on IMDb for the installment, ranking it ninth among the highest-rated Evangelion episodes. Comic Book Resources' Devin Meenan praised Rei's smile scene as "one of the most touching moments" of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Film School Rejects's Max Covill similarly described "Rei II" as "one of the more exciting episodes in the series' run", praising a shot depicting the dark silhouettes of Misato, Shinji, and Rei for the usage of negative space and hard lines. The Animé Café's Akio Nagatomi praised the parallels between "Rei I" and "Rei II" as "interesting", the acting of voice actresses Megumi Ogata (Shinji Ikari) and Mitsuishi Kotono (Misato Katsuragi) and Rei's reaction towards Shinji: "Even though the outcome is entirely predictable, it's fairly well written". Comic Book Resources and Screen Rant listed the battle against Ramiel among the best Neon Genesis Evangelion fights. SyFy Wire's Daniel Dockery listed Operation Yashima as one of the "most awesome non-depressing" moments in the show. Animator Yūichirō Oguro eulogized the sense of sci-fi romance as Japan's lights go out and the archipelago goes completely dark, while 25 Years Later's John Bernardy praised the scene in which all the lights of Japan go out to power the Eva-01 rifle and its "simple melancholy in the piano arpeggio". Dennis Redmond similarly lauded the shots of the sequence of Tokyo-3 going dark as "magnificent" and the "brilliant sequence of frames" shown during Shinji and Rei's conversation, while Multiversity Comics' Matthew Garcia positively commented on the use of traditional animation for the Operation Yashima. For Kotaku'''s editor Peter Tieryas the episode "epitomized what makes the series so mesmerising"; he also praised the tactical element to the battle and its realism. Legacy The episode inspired a line of official T-shirts. In 1996, an Evangelion-inspired role-playing game entitled was released. Operation Yashima was later used for the movie Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007) and a pachinko named , released