9 Characters Inspired By Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Rei Ayanami

Highlights

• Rei Ayanami’s character has inspired a multitude of homages in various forms of media, including anime, video games, and Hollywood films.
• These iterations often share characteristics such as short blue/white/gray hair, stoic personalities, and nonhuman origins.
• Some notable examples of Rei clones include Ruri Hoshino from Martian Successor Nadesico, Ayase Kishimoto from Chaos;Head, and Noel Kannagi from Sound of the Sky.

Rei Ayanami clones don’t just exist in the Neon Genesis Evangelion universe. Since its release in 1995, Evangelion has become one of the most influential anime ever, both in Japan and internationally. Therefore, it’s no surprise that one of the series’ most popular characters, Rei Ayanami, would inspire a legion of “expies,” i.e. exported characters, to the point it spawned a whole new trope.

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The expy is not just limited to anime either; plenty of Hollywood movies and video games have their own versions of the Evangelion Unit-00 pilot. The following characters exhibit many of Rei’s characteristics, including short blue/white/gray hair, a stoic personality, and nonhuman origins.

9 Ruri Hoshino

Martian Successor Nadesico

Ruri Hoshino is perhaps the earliest example of a Rei clone since Martian Successor Nadesico debuted only a year after the release of Neon Genesis Evangelion. As the series’ Science Officer, Ruri is the smartest of the Nadesico crew, with a cold demeanor to boot. While she’s a lot sassier than Rei, her gray hair, quiet disposition, and the fact that she’s an artificial human make it obvious who she’s based on.

While there’s no official confirmation from the creators, Japanese cultural critic Hiromi Azuka, taking notice of the Rei clone phenomenon, believes that Ruri Hoshino is directly based on Rei Ayanami.

8 Ayase Kishimoto

Chaos;Head

Ayase Kishimoto is almost too perfect of an example of a Rei Ayanami expy, down to her appearance and strange behavior. She’s a high school student and fronts the goth-punk band Phantasm with the stage name FES, and she has the uncanny ability to predict the New Gen murder cases through the band’s lyrics, hinting at her possibly having supernatural powers.

Like Rei, she’s icy and distant at first but soon warms up to the main character. Other similarities include a dark past, mysterious origins, and eventual hospitalization.

7 Noel Kannagi

Sound of the Sky

15-year-old Noel Kannagi is one of the members of the 1121st Platoon, serving as their main pilot and mechanic. She’s a quiet introvert who spends most of her time by herself, repairing the platoon’s tank (called the Takemikazuchi). She speaks in a monotone similar to Rei and has a seriously depressing past.

As a child prodigy, she was sent to a special academy where she became the top student. Still, unfortunately for her, the military used her for their own benefit, creating bioweapons that destroyed thousands of lives. As a result, Noel was traumatized, and for a while, refused to speak at all.

6 Iona

Arpeggio of Blue Steel

Arpeggio of Blue Steel is all about warships, and those warships have anthropomorphic representations known as Mental Models. The warship I-401’s Mental Model is named Iona, and she is another character based on Rei Ayanami. As the oldest Mental Model in existence, Iona developed emotions by hanging around human beings. She comes off as quiet and stoic at first, but she soon develops affection for the ship’s captain, Gunzou.

Fun fact: Rei Ayanami and Iona were both named after real warships. One can say Iona literally is a warship, as she is the anthropomorphic representation of the very real Imperial Japanese submarine, the I-401.

5 Yuki Nagato

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Meta humor is baked into the Haruhi Suzumiya series, including parodying various character archetypes prevalent in anime, including the average everyman Kyon, the shy moeblob Mikuru Asahina, and, of course, the stoic, Rei Ayanami-type, Yuki Nagato.

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Yuki is an alien with various superpowers, including super strength, a photographic memory, and psychic abilities. She and Rei Ayanami even have similar names, with both ‘Yuki’ and ‘Rei’ meaning snow and ice respectively, and ‘Nagato’ and ‘Ayanami’ being names of warships.

4 Mako Mori

Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim is a big-screen tribute to mecha and kaiju anime, so the Neon Genesis Evangelion influence is pretty obvious. One of the film’s main protagonists, Mako Mori, bears a striking resemblance to Evangelion‘s resident blue-haired girl.

Mako Mori is more pleasant and sane than Rei, but she pilots a mecha, is Japanese, mostly keeps to herself, and is loyal to her adoptive father and leader of the story’s military organization, the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, not unlike Rei with Gendo Ikari and NERV.

3 Io

Code Vein

As a healer and a member of a race of vampiric fighters known as the Revenants, Io is a mysterious, white-haired girl who accompanies the protagonist on their journey, and like him, has a case of amnesia. As expected, she’s meek and aloof at first, but forms a special bond with the player character, pouring out her frustrations and worries to them.

Her origin story is also similar to Rei Ayanami’s, having been created artificially. The endings of the game heavily reference The End of Evangelion and, as a bonus, Io’s English voice actress, Brina Palencia, also voices Rei from Rebuild of Evangelion.

2 Bronya Zaychik

Honkai Impact 3rd

Honkai Impact 3rd has its own shout-out to Evangelion in the form of one of the three main characters, Bronya Zaychik. Raised to be a cold-blooded killer, she was sent to assassinate a woman named Cocolia, but she failed. Cocolia, taking pity on her, took her in and raised Bronya in her orphanage. Due to brain damage, Bronya rarely, if ever, shows any emotion, speaks in a flat monotone, and speaks in the third person.

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Interestingly, when the game collaborated with Neon Genesis Evangelion for its 4.5 update, Bronya played the part of Rei Ayanami in the limited-time story event. In contrast to her Honkai Impact 3rd self, her alternate version (named Bronya Rand) in Honkai: Star Rail is much more emotional and headstrong.

1 Kanade ‘Angel’ Tachibana

Angel Beats!

Short and petite with white hair and superpowers, Kanade Tachibana is so emotionless that the main characters in the anime’s afterlife wonder if she is human at all. She was, for a good part of the show, suspected to be an evil angel working for a cruel God, which was a horrible misunderstanding, to say the least. However, by the end of the series, viewers may consider her to be an angel regardless.

Kanade’s similarities to Rei Ayanami are numerous: little is known about her past, she gets injured frequently, has clones, and by the end of the series, she opens up and becomes more emotional with the protagonist, Otonashi.

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