Evangelion Series Synopses
Episodes 17-24
Episodes 1-8 | Episodes 9-16 | Episodes 17-24 | Episodes 25-26 | Death/Rebirth and End of Evangelion
Episode 17: The 4th Child | Fourth Children
Misato reports to and answers questions of the Committee concerning the last Angel attack. Ikari surmises that the Angels are becoming more intelligent based on the reports.
Suddenly, there are alerts sounding: NERV's Second Branch, located in Nevada, disappears in a freak accident while EVA Unit-04 was being fitted with the S2 organ restored from the 4th Angel. With the Nevada facility having fell victim to another Sea of Dirac, the U.S. government fearfully ships EVA Unit-03 to the Third Branch to offload the risk it'd take in activating the Evangelion in First Branch in Massachusetts. However, with this development, a new pilot must be found, and it is here that Misato first becomes suspicious about the Marduk Institute and how pilots are actually selected. When she questions Kaji about it, he reveals that the Marduk Institute does not exist and that Gendo Ikari is pulling the strings.
It turns out that Shinji's school is primarily there in order to house fourth level candidates for NERV! Toji Suzuhara is selected to pilot because there is personality data already on file with NERV (see the third episode), and when NERV agrees to transfer his injured sister to their in-house trauma ward he agrees to pilot. Misato doesn't tell Shinji so as not to further stress him, but resolves to do so later. However, Asuka finds out while hitting on Kaji, and she's none to happy about it.
Episode 18: The Judgement of Life | Ambivalence
While Shinji and Misato prepare to leave the apartment, she starts to tell him about the selection of Toji as the 4th Child but is interrupted by a desperate Kensuke, who wants desperately to be chosen as the pilot for EVA Unit-03. It's revealed that Toji only accepts the role as the Fourth Child when told his sister would receive extensive care at NERV's own private facility.
When the EVA Unit makes it to Matsushiro, Misato and Ritsuko go there to conduct the activation tests with Unit-03 and the 4th. However, once activation was reached, the Evangelion seemingly goes berserk, setting off a tremendous explosion and taking off for the Geofront. Classified by Commander Ikari as the 13th Angel, Bardiel, the three existing EVA Units are positioned to intercept. However, the angel easily defeats Asuka in a matter of seconds, and Rei's Unit-00 goes down as well.
Shinji can't bring himself to fight an EVA since there is a human pilot inside, so the Commander has his synchronization cut off and the dummy plug activated. Once it roars to life, the dummy plug driven Unit-01 counters Bardiel's attack and proceeds to shred the EVA body to ribbons, even going so far as to crush the entry plug before it stops. Stunned by the ferocity of the attack, Shinji is even more horrified when he sees his massively injured friend being drawn from the mangled entry plug of Unit-03.
Episode 19: A Man's Fight | Introjection
A very angry Shinji threatens to destroy NERV HQ because his father forced him to fight and nearly kill Toji in EVA Unit-03, but he is knocked out when Gendo orders the LCL pressure in the plug to be increased to maximum. When brought before his father, he decides to quit piloting the Evangelion again and leaves NERV instead of facing his responsibilities. Meanwhile, despite his massive injuries, Toji seems to recover and receives a visitor he least expects: the class rep! However, as seen recent episodes, she's revealed her affection for him despite her not knowing how to express it.
With a single shot of it's powerful particle beam, Zeruel (the 14th Angel) demolishes the armor plating above the Geofront and confronts Asuka in Unit-02 inside. While she throws everything she has at it, it extends razor sharp ribbons from it's shoulders and literally disarms her. When she rashly charges in for close combat, Zeruel finishes the job by slicing off Unit-02's head! When Rei attempts to synchronize with Unit-01, it rejects her and she, unbeknownst to the operations commanders (and Ikari himself), heads out in one-armed Unit-00 with an N2 mine. However, the tremendous explosion doesn't do anything to slow the Angel down, and it dispatches Unit-00 by cutting it's head laterally in half.
With the dummy plug unable to activate Unit-01, all hope is lost, but when Shinji encounters Kaji during the battle he realizes that he has a duty to fight for humanity's future and heads back to pilot Unit-01. As the Angel enters Central Dogma, Shinji attacks it and drives it outside before losing power. However, as the angel attacks 01's core, it goes berserk again, unleashing an intense assault that utterly destroys the angel. As the feral Evangelion devours the inert angel, it's found that Shinji's synchronization ratio is at 400%. Kaji realizes that EVA Unit-01 has been unleashed in its full power and that SEELE will take notice, while Ikari and Fuyutsuki's muse that this is only the start of something greater.
Episode 20: Form Of The Mind, Form Of The Man | Weaving a Story 2: Oral Stage
Continuing the events of the previous episode, the final moments of that episode are replayed to set up the appearance of a concerned SEELE meeting who weren't at all happy with the recent occurances concerning Unit-01. Meanwhile, NERV has successfully restrained Unit-01, whose pilot remains inside, inside the decimated NERV Headquarters while operations are relocated to a secondary control base. The truth of a 400% synchronization ratio is discovered when NERV finds Shinji's mind and soul merged with the Evangelion and his body absorbed into the entry plug's LCL, changing it into a primordial soup similar to that of primitive Earth.
Using data culled from the previous incident (see Episode 21), Ritsuko makes a plan to restore Shinji's ego border and thus coalesce his bodily form once again. However, their efforts fail, as Shinji apparently doesn't care to return. However, following a number of surfacing memories and a direct confrontation with himself, Shinji decides to come back and is ejected from Unit-01's core.
Following this bizarre chain of events, Misato and Kaji find each other in the bed again. But it isn't just sex, as Kaji gives Misato a very special gift....
Episode 21: The Birth Of NERV | He was aware that he was still a child
Since the endowment of an S2 organ/engine to Unit-01 (by virtue of it's ingesting of Zeruel in Episode 19) and Gendo's seeming ulterior motives, SEELE runs out of patience with NERV and has Vice Commander Fuyutsuki abducted in hopes of learning of Gendo's full plans. Conversely, NERV Intelligence investigates his kidnapping and believe Kaji was the one behind it, and take Misato into custody due to their relationship.
During his questioning, Fuyutsuki reminisces about past events that brought them to this particular future...how he as a college professor took on a promising biology student named Yui Ikari as an assistant as well as her future husband by bailing him out of jail...how he discovered that Second Impact didn't happen due to a meteorite but because of experimentation on a "white giant"...how Gendo and Naoko Akagi (Ritsuko's mother) introduced him to Gehirn and the Evangelion project...how Yui Ikari died within the test type Evangelion, Unit-01...and how Rei was introduced and Gehirn was dissolved and replaced by NERV.
Kaji locates Fuyutsuki's location and facilitates his escape from SEELE's clutches. While he's been unable to uncover all the secrets of NERV and SEELE and the Human Instrumentality Project, Kaji continues to pursue the truth. However, having played both sides against the other, he is mysteriously murdered, but not before he left his findings to Misato (see Episode 20).
Episode 22: At Least, Be Humane | Don't Be.
Asuka's history is revealed, showing how she had discovered her mother dead by suicidal hanging and how her family was unable to break through her shell afterwards. It is now easy to see why it is that she's so independent-minded and mixed up. But now, with her ability to synchronize with Unit-02 slipping and having been severely defeated in her recent battles, she's under more stress than ever.
Misato hears that SEELE has authorized the creation of EVA Unit-05 through -13 at installations throughout the world. Given that SEELE has been difficult to deal with in the past when it comes to NERVs expanding budget, and that they've now committed to the construction of nine more Evangelions, she begins to suspect SEELE of altering their scenario without NERV's involvement. However, this is placed on the back burner when Arael, the 15th Angel, is sighted in orbit above Tokyo-3. With Unit-01 frozen due to the events of Episode 20, Asuka demands to spearhead the attack knowing that if she fails that she'll be replaced. When she confronts the Angel, it bombards her with a devastating psychological attack, forcing her to relive the horrible memories she'd supressed all these years and subdues her.
Gendo orders Rei to retrieve the Lance of Longinus and launch it at the Angel, as it has the power to rend AT Fields. However, he does so without authorization from the committee, who'll not be happy with launching the Lance into orbit. And, when Misato's plea to prevent EVA contact with Adam is ignored, she realizes that it isn't Adam in Terminal Dogma nailed to a cross. Rei throws the Lance at the orbiting Angel and destroys it, leaving the lance to float somewhere near the moon.
Episode 23: Tear | Rei III
Gendo faces SEELE to explain the use of the Lance of Longinus, and the loss of this seemingly key component of their vision of Instrumentality tells them that Gendo has his own vision for Human Complementation. With the damage Tokyo-3 incurred with the attack of Arael's attack, most of the population, including Shinji's friends from school, has evacuated. Armisael, the 16th Angel, arrives in short order, appearing as a giant strand of DNA with its floating, white double-helix form.
As Rei approaches the Angel in Unit-00, she is attacked and contaminated by it. When Asuka proves unable to synchronize and start Unit-02, Cmdr. Ikari orders the release of Unit-01 and its launch to Unit-00's aid. During Unit-00's contamination, Rei encounters a strange apparition; a dialog with the angel ensues, where they discuss becoming one. However, when Shinji comes under attack by the Angel, Rei takes his side, turning her AT Field inward to destroy the invading Angel, at the cost of Unit-00 and, apparently, her own life.
However, it is learned that Rei wasn't actually killed in the encounter, but she's not the same either, with no memory of what's happened to her over time and a markedly different perspective on her role in the story. However, she does mention that she thinks she's "the third one", cementing the fact that the Rei of Episode 20 was the first, that the Rei known throughout the series was the second, and now this one is the latest, third copy. Unit-00's loss, combined with that of the Lance of Longinus, incite the committee to interview the pilot to determine just what Gendo had going on behind their backs. However, instead of Rei, Gendo sends Ritsuko to be interrogated, turning her against him. Thinking her more helpful released than in custody, they release her.
In retaliation for Gendo betraying her for Rei (thus, Yui herself), she reveals the mystery of Rei to Misato and Shinji, as well as the secret of the dummy plug system. In summary, mankind found a god (Adam) and created god-like humans based from it, called EVA, based on Yui Ikari's genetics research. Earlier, nonfunctional/dead Evangelion prototypes were kept within Terminal Dogma in a huge EVA burying ground. Additionally, Rei is revealed as a product of the same genetic experimentation, that she has multiple clones kept by NERV as spare parts for her, and that the core of the dummy plug is actually a spare Rei body. However, since they are only the conduits or receptacles for souls, Ritsuko thought they were nothing but dolls to be disposed of, which she did.
Episode 24: The Final Messenger | The Beginning and the End, or "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
When she runs away due to her feelings of uselessness and that she is to be replaced, NERV Security locates the despondant and nearly comatose Asuka and takes her into custody. It's during this time that Cmdr. Ikari interrogates Ritsuko as to why she destroyed the Dummy Plug System, to which she replies that it was Rei she was destroying, since despite being Gendo's lover she didn't mean as much to him as Rei. SEELE determines the identity of the 5th Child and sends him to NERV. This child, Kaworu Nagisa, has a similar past as Rei's in that it was erased. NERV's, and particularly Misato's, suspicions are aroused once again, particularly when they discover that he can almost effortlessly synchronize with Unit-02.
With Asuka in a vegetative state, the third Rei pondering her future, Ritsuko behind bars, and Misato researching information previously gathered by Kaji; Kaworu and Shinji become fast friends. Unprecedentedly, Shinji finds himself trusting Kaworu enough to share his most heartfelt feelings about his life and his father. However, after checking into Ibuki's records, Hyuga shows Misato that Kaworu has been arbitrarily setting his synchronization ratios, proving that he's the seventeenth Angel, Tabris! Taking control of Unit-02, he descends down, toward Terminal Dogma, looking for Adam.
Scarcely comprehending how SEELE could send an Angel into the midst of NERV, a distraught and unbelieving Shinji is dispatched to take his friend down. As Unit-01 duels a Kaworu-controlled Unit-02, Kaworu informs Shinji that the AT Field is the light of the soul which no one can pierce, that which separates each individual from that which surrounds him. He also mentions that since the soul of Unit-02 was hiding itself that he could effortlessly take control over it. While Shinji is busy fighting, Kaworu breaches Heaven's Door that barricates the White Giant of Terminal Dogma and approaches it. However, Kaworu notices that this isn't Adam at all, but Lilith, the creature from whom humanity had sprung! Realizing he had been used by SEELE, he allows Shinji to capture him, explaining that humanity isn't the existance which should be allowed to die, that only one form of life could move forward, and that death was no different than life for him. Given this information as well as a long, suspenseful pause, Shinji kills Kaworu.
Episodes 1-8 | Episodes 9-16 | Episodes 17-24 | Episodes 25-26 | Death/Rebirth and End of Evangelion
~ Shwiggie