Armisael

Armisael first presents as a spinning ring of light wound into a double helix, a form some link to a plasmid. Its detected pattern flickers between blue and orange, leading Ritsuko Akagi to conclude that the Angel holds no fixed shape. For combat the two helices knit together and the ring breaks at a single point, unwinding into a whip-thin thread many times longer than an Evangelion is tall. While eroding Unit-00 it later sprouts a monstrous growth from the unit's back, a mass jumbling together the shapes of every Angel from the Third through the Fifteenth, unofficially nicknamed the Angel Tower.

The ring materializes without warning on the fringe of Tokyo-3 and simply hovers there. Unit-00 launches to investigate, finds the Angel apparently dormant, and is on the verge of pulling back when Armisael snaps into its thread form, spears the Eva's core with one end, and starts fusing into the unit. Gunfire into its body accomplishes nothing. The Angel's mind then reaches Rei's, and the two briefly speak, remarking on the loneliness they share. Unit-02 cannot even activate, Asuka's synchronization having collapsed to critical lows, so the freeze on Unit-01 is suspended; the moment Shinji launches, Armisael lunges to merge with his unit as well, and he narrowly evades. Unit-01 seizes the thread's free end and drives a progressive knife into it, drawing a howl of pain voiced like Rei.

Fearing for Shinji's life, Rei raises her A.T. Field to its maximum to pull the Angel wholly into herself and hold it there, then triggers Unit-00's self-destruct. The detonation erases Armisael along with a broad swath of Tokyo-3, gouging out a new artificial lake. The Director's Cut expands the battle: the thread blooms into a glowing white figure of Rei that strokes Unit-01's face, the moment she recognizes her innermost wish to be with Shinji, and in the instant before the blast Unit-00 itself briefly takes the shape of a giant luminous Rei. Commentary in the Renewal release attributes the Angel Tower to genetic data of the earlier Angels, though the show suggests Angel forms flow from A.T. Fields rather than genes, and an alternative reading holds that Armisael gathered its dead siblings' souls and tried to resurrect them through Unit-00.

Armisael specializes in bio-fusion, pushing its own biomass into another body through vein-like growths that widen and multiply as the merger deepens, until psychological contact with the host becomes possible. Its thread form moves at extreme speed and slides through Unit-00's A.T. Field without effort. Point-blank rifle fire cannot harm it; a progressive knife makes it bleed and visibly hurts it, yet leaves no lasting wound. The Angel also commands advanced metamorphic properties, and its behavior hints that it senses targets through their A.T. Fields, striking Unit-01 only once the unit's field goes active.