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As far as I'm concerned, all the students in Shinji's classroom were
candidates to become EVA pilots. That's all I know, but I don't remember if
this is ever addressed:

**What makes an EVA pilot?** I mean, what special quality makes someone more
capable of piloting an EVA than others? So basically, all the students in
Shinji's classroom had this special quality? What was it?


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What characterizes an EVA pilot?


Since inline spoiler tags are not possible and I don't want 9,001 spoiler
blocks, I'll preface this by saying:

**This answer contains many spoilers for the _Evangelion_ series. If you have
not watched through at least episode 24, this will contain spoiler material
for you.**

As a note: Everyone in Shinji's class had lost their mothers (for potential
soul salvaging for the Evas), and I believe most had relatives working at or
connected with NERV. Each one was also obviously the same age, as a result of
being born in the year of [Second
Impact](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Second_Impact) 14 years prior.

In general, the candidates are chosen by [the Marduk
Institute](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Marduk_Institute), a committee
which selects potential pilots for the Evangelion piloting program. They so
happen to have listed [Tōji
Suzuhara](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/T%C5%8Dji_Suzuhara) at the top of
their list, and so he ends up being the test pilot for Unit-03. According to
an AU, [Kensuke Aida](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Kensuke_Aida) is to be
chosen after Tōji, but since there is an incident with Unit-04, this is never
seen. There are extenuating circumstances for our main cast, though.

[Rei Ayanami](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Rei_Ayanami) was chosen by
Gendo because she is, in fact, one of many clones of Yui, Gendo's late wife.
This was essentially an executive decision by Gendo so that he could use her
for his Instrumentality plans.

[Shinji Ikari](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Shinji_Ikari) was chosen, also
by Gendo, for a different reason: Evangelion Unit-01 has the soul of Yui
Ikari, Shinji's mother, in it, and Yui refuses to let anyone else pilot
Unit-01.

[Asuka Langley Sohryu](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Asuka_Langley_Sohryu)
was chosen because her mother, Kyoko, was in Germany with Asuka, performing
the soul salvaging into Evangelion Unit-02. Obviously Asuka made a good match
for a pilot.

And [Kaworu](http://evangelion.wikia.com/wiki/Kaworu_Nagisa), well... Kaworu
is just the exception that proves the rule: He was sent by SEELE and is
actually an Angel, so he doesn't follow convention. At all.

**In the _Rebuild_ continuity**, this is slightly different. Rei's reason is
the same; Asuka is just a very well trained pilot; Mari has powerful
connections; Kaworu works for SEELE again; and Shinji's reason is unknown as
of _Rebuild 3.0_.


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