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sundin13 on 22 May 2020
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DonFerrari said:
sundin13 said:
Hard disagree with you guys about Rei. She is not a blank sheet, I'd say that she is arguably the most complete character of the main three. What I mean by that is that Shinji and Asuka go into the show in a state where they are heavily dynamic. Shinji, for example, changes heavily and regularly throughout the show as a response to the stimuli around him.

Rei on the other hand, does not. That is because she has already reached a point where she does not believe she has to change. Her worldview and her priorities are largely set. I believe her flat affect is a result of this. She doesn't need to respond to Asuka or Shinji because they don't fall into her priorities. She doesn't have that general desire to be liked, because she doesn't care about what others think of her (for the most part). That isn't to say that she doesn't change throughout the show, but she is not looking to change and change is a difficult process for her.

For all three of the main characters, their absurdities and social struggles define who they are. It is easy to interpret Rei's flat affect as emptiness, but I believe it is simply a symptom of her character, and all of its absurdities. Just as she reflects the absurdities in the others, they reflect the absurdities in her. When interactions happen between characters, she highlights the absurdity of the others in how they are acting purely emotionally (say, in the elevator scene), while others highlight the absurdity in her in how she is acting in an absence of emotion (say, in the groping scene). Her lack of reaction, is a reaction in and of itself, and it tells you a lot about who she is.

She is basically a robot and isn't set, every clone is a reset so she wouldn't be set or complete. The version we see the most was the one that gradually changed due to interaction and affection of shinji.

I'm not really sure what argument you are trying to make. The primary version of Rei that we see is very much a defined character, and she was even before the introduction of Shinji.