People who made our World
Number 20 (August 2045)
The Pilot of Unit-01
Angels and Impacts, the official report into the recent "War for Humanity", doesn't name the pilots of the Evangelions which played such a crucial role in the war. For this month's article in our series People who made our World, your interviewer sought out the man who is rumoured to have been the pilot of Unit-01, Shinji Ikari. I found him, with some difficulty, in Porth y Nant[1], an obscure coastal village near the Western edge of Europe.
I started the interview by asking him about his reputation as a recluse:
Shinji Ikari: (laughs) No! I'm no recluse. I have a partner and a family, and we are active members of the local community. I teach in a nearby school, and enjoy it especially when a child comes who shows an interest in music. I value my privacy, but the remoteness of this setting provides enough of that; and as you see, I am willing to talk to anyone who takes the trouble to find me. But in fact you are the first!
Interviewer: I'll get straight to the question my readers will want answered first - were you the pilot of Unit-01?
SI: Yes. Yes, I was. But in the aftermath of the war, it seemed best that the identities of the surviving pilots should be hidden to give them space to recover from their experiences - we were all just teenagers at the start, remember - so I left their names out of the account.
Int: Wait, do you mean that you wrote the report as well?
SI: Yes, I did - but my name was left off the book for the same reason.
Int: Well, I guess that should give me confidence in your answers! Do you have more information that you didn't publish which you could share with us?
SI: Not really. I put everything verifiable into the report. But there are a few matters where I have only a theory, and these I have kept to myself so as not to mislead people into thinking we know more than we do.
Int: I presume from your name that you are related to the arch villain of the war, Gendou Ikari, Commander of Nerv. How do you feel about that?
SI: He was my father, yes. And like all Japanese children I was taught that one should honour and obey one's seniors. But maybe there are circumstances when this is no longer possible. However, I'm not sure that I can describe him as evil; in some ways the decisions he made were better described as tragic, though the effect on the world was no less terrible.
Int: So, if I can go back to the beginning, how, in your view, did the war start?
SI: The responsibility really goes back to Seele, as I describe in the book. They had theories about the development of the human race which led them to plan an event which would transform the whole of humanity into a single being with what they viewed as a higher state of consciousness. The sheer arrogance of this group in attempting to decide the future of the race is breathtaking. The first step in their plan caused the Second Impact, which released the Angels which started to attack sixteen years later[2]; the Evangelions were prepared to be the defence against them.
Int: Where does Gendou Ikari enter the picture, then?
SI: My mother, Yui Ayanami, was employed by an organisation preparing the technology - the Evangelions - that Seele knew they would need for their plans; though Seele kept their connection with the project, and even their identity, well hidden. My parents met at that time and got married.
Int: Do you think that Yui Ayanami was involved in the plans that either Seele or Commander Ikari subsequently tried to put into operation?
SI: No. And here I have to start speculating a bit. It's my understanding that Seele had some ancient documents that they called the Hidden Dead Sea Scrolls, which gave instructions for the plans they wanted to carry out, and details of what would happen at each step - such as the appearance of the Angels. No trace of these documents can now be found. But from a few notes my mother made that have survived, I think that she came to a different understanding of the Scrolls, that they described nothing less than the origin of humanity on Earth.
Int: That's startling, if true! I can see why you didn't write that in your report, if there's no proof.
SI: Just so. Anyway, it seems that using hints in the Scrolls my mother conceived the idea of using the Evangelion that she was helping develop to spread humanity beyond Earth, or at least to act as an ambassador of humanity to the rest of the universe. But this involved her becoming absorbed into the Evangelion now known as Unit-01. It's not clear whether my father knew the extent of her vision (mad as it was when I look back at it); but I'm certain that he did not know that her disappearance would be permanent. The unexpected loss of his wife, with whom he was deeply in love, tipped him into madness; and after failing to find a way to get her back, he planned to use a modification of Seele's plan for merging humanity as a means of getting together with her again.
Int: You have just told me straight out that you think both your parents were mad - how do you live with that belief?
SI: (laughs) I have no choice, do I! If my mother's plan was crazy, it was also visionary - and I can't really criticize her for that. I can't deny, though, that the execution of it was selfish, abandoning both my father and myself like that. And as my father became obsessed with his plan to reunite with her, he could no longer look after me, and I was abandoned again by being handed over to people I barely even knew to be brought up. That is, until he realised he had a use for me, piloting Unit-01.
Int: Your time as the pilot of Unit-01 is described in detail in the book; but is there more you can tell us about it?
SI: Not really. I didn't hold back anything I knew, not even my failure when I should have tried to save the pilot referred to in the book as "S"[3]. S and I eventually came to terms over what happened then, and we are now firm friends. As we've grown up we've been able to see more clearly what a hard time it was for all of us as mere teenagers.
Int: Can you tell us more about growing up? I came here expecting to meet a man in his mid forties, and was startled to find myself talking to someone who seems barely thirty.
SI: We called it "The Curse of Eva". It turned out that being within an Evangelion, even just for piloting, stopped the aging of the human body for a while. The other pilots, S and M, also appear to be about fourteen years younger than you'd expect (being the length of the war during which they were piloting regularly). But they were active during that time, and so they continued learning, and their minds continued maturing, which made for some awkwardnesses for S and M when they rejoined normal society. Fortunately normal physical development resumed a little after they stopped piloting. T only piloted once, so didn't show the effect significantly. In my case, I was fully absorbed into Unit-01 for most of that time, and had no consciousness, though I subsequently had one dream which I believe was an awareness of something Unit-01 did while it was being fetched back from its exile in space. Anyway, as a result I returned mentally still 16 when the others had grown to be mentally 31. I think S in particular found that hard to cope with at first.
Int: How did you return from Unit-01 after all that time?
SI: I don't know, and nor does anyone else. My belief is that my mother threw me out, so that she could continue with her plan when the opportunity arose, while I could continue what would eventually become a normal life again. The pilot of Unit-00, R, who had been absorbed with me, I learnt later was a clone of my mother, and so I suppose they decided they would be best together. I'd grown rather close to R, so it took me some time to accept that, even when I knew that she was - what to call her? my sister?
Int: You have a very mixed-up family, it seems!
SI: Had; the family I have now is delightfully normal I'm relieved to say.
Int: So, on your return from Unit-01, you found yourself again piloting for your father - on the wrong side, as we would now say.
SI: I had no idea of sides at that point. Previously I had simply been fighting angels, and now I found myself being blamed for the wreckage of the world caused by Third Impact, and being offered a way to repair it. How would you expect any traumatised 16-year-old to respond to that? But it was wrong - it was all wrong. I had been fooled by Nagisa, whom I had accepted as a friend when there was otherwise no one - apart from A, who seemed almost brain-dead at the time.
Int: But in the book you describe Nagisa as an angel - what did that mean?
SI: When Seele had first released the angels in Second Impact, they had managed to keep some material from them. This enabled them to create a human body - cloned presumably - with the additional properties of an angel. That was Nagisa. He was intended to trigger the last part of Seele's plan; however, my father had his own plans which included destroying Nagisa at the last minute so that he would then be free to do things his way. But I was needed as the second pilot for Unit-13; and it fell to Nagisa to groom me for the role. Afterwards, when he was dead, and the way he'd fooled me became obvious, I hated him - more than I've ever hated anything. Later, once I'd studied the background, and when I came to write it up, I understood that he was merely a tool created by Seele. The hate belonged to Seele, not to Nagisa, and though his friendship was fake, for a time it helped me when I was confused and lonely. I even wonder sometimes if he himself felt confused and hollow, having no life other than that programmed for him by his creators; perhaps his friendship with me even gave him a little pleasure - in retrospect I hope it did.
Int: And then you write that you slept through the last battle. Presumably everyone had expected you to pilot Unit-01 again, and ride out to save the world like a knight-errant.
SI: I suppose they did. But I never liked to fight. It had brought me a great deal of pain; and on some occasions I'd only survived because of unexpected help from Unit-01 - from my mother, I now presume. Instead, I acknowledged this, and talked to my mother and to R, and although I couldn't tell if they heard me they responded by giving the necessary help without me having to pilot. And I told them they could leave afterwards, so that my mother could complete her plan; I did this without permission, but at that point I think no one would have dared to cross Unit-01 by trying to overrule me. She went first to the ruins of Nerv to find my father. We don't know if she killed him as a punishment for what he'd done; I prefer to think that she realised that what had happened was to some extent her fault in the first place, and so she forgave him and took him into the Evangelion with her and R - but there's no way to know now.
Int: That, of course, is where the book ends. What happened next?
SI: Well, I had some catching up to do. My friends were fourteen years older than me, for a start! Most of all I wanted to find out for myself what had really happened, and so I threw myself into the research which I wrote up as a report for Wille before they finally disbanded. The new body, Hoffnung, then decided that it should be published as a book for the world to know how and why it had been so damaged and then saved from the last disaster. I also spent a lot of time with A, the pilot I rather rudely referred to earlier as "almost brain-dead". It turned out that she was also a clone, and that she had not even been programmed with an upbringing - just instructions for piloting. So I took it on myself to start teaching her, like a young child, and eventually persuaded my friend T and his partner to give her a home, which is where she lives to this day.
Int: But what about you, and your family?
SI: After Nagisa had died, and it seemed that I had started Fourth Impact (which mercifully was stopped by M removing me from Unit-13), I went more than a bit mad myself. But T's sister looked after me and gently brought me back to sanity, though without sparing me the need to face some of the mistakes I'd made on the way. Afterwards as I was studying and writing she kept an eye on me, and eventually we became partners. Once the book was published, and the old Wille base we had been living on became a Hoffnung centre, we moved away; I didn't want to be involved with the recovery effort, because I felt that it would make those I would work alongside uncomfortable to have me there, at least those who knew who I was; and for myself, I wasn't sure I could face being so closely involved with what I had done - even if I had merely been my father's tool. Instead, I felt that I could become a teacher, and that was as useful a job as any other - teachers are always required, right?
Int: That's true. But then how did you come to live here?
SI: Initially we went to a small settlement in another part of Japan, and there our first child was born. We called her Yui, for my mother. However, fate decided that it hadn't quite finished with me yet, and little Yui died in infancy. We were devastated, as any parents who lose a child must be, and to try to escape our misery we decided to get right away, to the other side of the world, which is why we are now here in Western Europe. My partner's strength was again a great help in getting us both through this, and after a while we were privileged to gain a pair of healthy twins, who are now five and just starting school - though that's not much change for them, as I will be their teacher! Their names are Kensuke and Kyoko. Kensuke's named for a school-mate of mine who became a weapons technician on the Wunder, though I didn't happen to meet him there; and Kyoko is in memory of S's mother, which she greatly appreciated.
Int: So you keep in touch with your friends from back then?
SI: All those of us who have survived try to meet every year, usually in different parts of the world. Generally somewhere arranged by S, in fact, because her job as a project manager for Hoffnung involves her regularly moving to new places - and she likes telling people what to do! M joins us, and Kensuke, but A prefers not to travel, and so usually T and his partner can't get away either. I try to get to see them at their home instead. Misato Katsuragi and Ryoji Kaji, the leaders of Hoffnung, also try to join us, though understandably quite often they are unable to manage it. And, of course there are plenty of ways of keeping in touch remotely.
Int: And what of the future?
SI: All I want now is to live quietly, and to be as useful as I can in the hope that the next generation will be able to have a better life than we have been cursed with. I am hopeful for the future; but now it's theirs, not mine.
Int: Thank you, Mr Ikari, for your time, and for sharing so much intimate detail of your life with us.
AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTES (not part of the interview)
[1] Porth y Nant is a real village in North West Wales that I came across in its abandoned state while a student. It has since become home to a community, but is still very isolated. I realise that in the world of Evangelion it would probably have been flooded after Second Impact, but it can stand for whatever similar village survived.
[2] A note on dates.
While I was writing this, I had in mind the conventional thought, carried over from the series, that the angels came in 2014 when the children were 14, and so Q must happen in 2028. But a beta reader pointed out to me that the dates are not given in Rebuild, and an article in the Evageeks Wiki gives evidence of calendars pointing to Jo being in 2016 and Ha being in 2017, thus placing Q in 2031.
I decided off my own bat that the ages worked best with Shinji being born in 2001 and Asuka being born in 2000. The Curse of Eva is already distinctly less squicky if Asuka is a 31-year-old with a 17-year-old body than the often-mentioned 28/14 combination.
[3] In the book and the interview the pilots were coded as follows:
I = Shinji [I]kari
S = Asuka [S]hikinami
M = Mari [M]akinami
R = [R]ei Ayanami (pilot of Unit-00)
T = [T]ouji Suzahara
A = Rei [A]yanami (pilot of Mark-09)
Kaworu Nagisa, being both dead and an angel, was named; there was considered to be no reason to protect his identity.