50793


We know that an Evangelion needs a soul at it's center to operate normally,
such as Yui being the soul of EVA Unit 01, and part of Asuka's mother being in
EVA Unit 02. If the EVA Unit does not have a soul, then it would start
bezerking like EVA Unit 00 during the testing phase of the EVA Series.

Now, for me, this raised another question, did the EVA Series (Mass production
EVAs) use souls as well? Or were they "soulless"? Like how they were
pilotless, and were "reliant" on the Dummy Plug system?


CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-17T11:17:17.800
50477
2019-02-11T20:06:53.813
2019-01-17T11:39:10.233
1587
42786
question
neon-genesis-evangelion
Did the Mass Production EVA Series make use of souls, like "normal" EVAs?


The only kind of answer for questions like this is "nobody knows for sure"
(probably not even Hideaki Anno). While there is a precedence for souls being
in an Eva's core, it's not definitively stated or implied that the mass
production Eva's all have souls. We know in the case with Eva-03, that it's
likely there was a soul put into the core that was "compatible" with Toji
(Episode 17, Ritsuko and Gendo's conversation about the test at Matsushiro),
perhaps his mother's? We also know that when the dummy system was activated in
Eva-01, that there was a soul (Yui's) in that core, we know it can work with
souls but we don't know for sure whether the soul is required.

One theory supposes that based on Kaworu's statement about the AT Field being
the "light of the soul", which seems to imply that a soul is required to
produce an AT Field. In the case with humans, the AT Field simply keeps the
body together (otherwise we turn into orange goo) but in order to generate
large/strong AT fields that can block weapons and make you levitate at an
Eva's scale, there needs to be a soul in the core. Taking this into account
however, we can see that none of the mass production Evas seem to display any
ability to generate that kind of AT Field (though they do generate an Anti-AT
Field later), so who knows.

If I had to make an unsubstantiated guess, I'd say there were souls there but
we'll never know whose they were. One particularly sadistic theory, using the
Toji + Toji's mother's soul in Eva-03 lead, says that the souls in the mass
production Evas are that of the mothers of the students in class 3-A and that
the bodies in side the dummy plugs are those of those students. There's not
that much to back up such a theory, though.

EDIT:

Something that I forgot to mention, during the 2nd half of the End of
Evangelion, during part of the instrumentality ritual the Mass Production Evas
pierce open their own cores:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fg9F6.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fg9F6.png)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CJEMO.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CJEMO.png)

This happens during the sequence where the rest of humanity are getting turned
into LCL and their souls released, which is in the form of a red glowing orb.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XGbQk.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XGbQk.png)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ok8DJ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ok8DJ.png)

Some people believe that the piercing of the core is to release the soul
that's inside it. In one couple of frames you can see that it glows red after
the core is pierced:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SgiKK.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SgiKK.png)

So in a sense, this is their way of letting the human souls that are trapped
inside their cores free in order to take part in instrumentality.
Additionally, afterwards, the MPE's are all seen completely immobile, either
because their role in the ritual is over, or without the resident soul inside
the core, there is nothing for the dummy plugs to sync with.


CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-02-10T23:33:14.407
50793
2019-02-11T20:06:53.813
2019-02-11T20:06:53.813
91
91
50477
answer