Ritsuko Akagi

Background

She is the daughter of Naoko Akagi, who developed the Magi supercomputers that run NERV and was head scientist on the Evangelion project before her death. Ritsuko carries on her mother's work on the Evas and the Magi, living in the shadow of a mother she both admires and despises, and like Naoko she becomes romantically involved with Gendo Ikari. Highly intelligent, dedicated and coolly detached, she is often contrasted with Misato's hot-headedness. She loves cats and is a heavy smoker. In The End of Evangelion, after holding off SEELE's hacking of the Magi, she confronts Gendo and Rei in Terminal Dogma and tries to set off the self-destruct to stop Gendo starting Third Impact, but Casper, the Magi personality modelled on her mother as a woman, overrides the command. Gendo then shoots her dead, and her body falls into the lake of LCL beneath Lilith.