Third Impact Initiation

Lore & Background

The event draws heavily upon religious symbolism involving Adam and Lilith, the two progenitors of life in this timeline. While SEELE sought to use Adam to trigger an Instrumentality that would allow them to transcend humanity as they are, Gendo Ikari manipulated the situation using Lilith found beneath Tokyo-3. This divergence creates a conflict over who controls the future of existence, turning the apocalypse into a battleground for ideological supremacy regarding what it means to be human.

Reader's Guide

The sequence begins when Shinji Ikari is forced to pilot Unit-01 into a berserk state after the death of Kaworu Nagisa. Gendo Ikari retrieves the Spear of Longinus from the Eva, intending to control the event himself rather than letting SEELE proceed with their vision using Adam. Once the spear pierces Lilith's chest in the bedrock chamber, the barrier protecting the Geofront dissolves. Massive quantities of red LCL fluid flood the facility and eventually cover the earth as AT Fields across humanity begin to break down.

Individual souls lose their separation barriers, merging into a singular collective consciousness known as Instrumentality. Shinji is placed at the center of this metaphysical shift, holding the power to decide whether individuality returns or remains merged forever. This event marks the definitive end of the Angel battles and the conventional human experience. While SEELE sought a return to primordial unity through Adam, Nerv executed the plan using Lilith, resulting in a third iteration of global catastrophe.

The aftermath leaves humanity in a state of existential limbo until a final choice is made regarding the nature of existence itself.

Did You Know?

• In the original 1993 proposal for the series, the fifteenth episode would have Unit 01 heavily damaged, then remodeled and upgraded, with elements later used in 'Introjection' where Zeruel damages Eva-01 and it absorbs the Angels' S² engine.
• The episode 'Introjection' was first broadcast on TV Tokyo on February 7, 1996, and drew an eight-percent audience share on Japanese television.
• The episode's title 'Introjection' refers to the eponymous psychological concept.
• The episode includes cultural references to the manga artist Daijirō Morohoshi, the Japanese anime series Ultraman, Buddhism, and Christianity.
• The source reports that during the production of 'Introjection', animator Takeshi Honda gave the female characters a youthful touch.