Fourth Angel

Stretched proportions keep the Fourth Angel from ever reading as human. The body is a lean giant a bit bigger than an Evangelion, equally able to operate on land or under water, with arms hanging past the knees and legs drawn out well beyond human ratio. In place of a proper head and neck sits a barely mobile mass of what looks like bone, built along the lines of a bird's skull and tipped with a long beak; red irises glint from sockets set deep inside it. A core sits at the midpoint of its chest, in the solar plexus, and its blood runs a bluish purple, a color recorded in no other Angel whose blood has been seen. After surviving an N2 mine, it grows a second face whose shorter beak shoves the original slightly upward.

Its anatomy hides an odd respiratory layout: intake gills along the thighs and exhaust openings at the crotch, an arrangement that doubles as propulsion when submerged. For weapons it extends a bone lance from each forearm, structures that anatomically serve as its outer arm bones and can be charged with energy for greater destructive force. The regenerated second face adds a long-range beam fired from its eyes that erupts in cross-shaped bursts. Though it cannot fly, the Angel harnesses its A.T. Field to launch enormous leaps, and it can also alter its shape, packing on muscle mass when strained.

Nothing in its screen time suggests a mind that speaks or bargains. The Fourth Angel behaves as a single-minded weapon: it advances on its objective, repairs and augments itself when hurt, bulks up under pressure, and holds one closing move in reserve for a lost fight, curling into a sphere around its opponent and detonating itself.

Its part in Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone tracks closely with Sachiel's storyline from the television original, and the design carries over nearly untouched. The film adds small flourishes: a halo flickers above its head during its A.T. Field-assisted leap, its second face's eyes burn bright red at key moments, and its blood is now red like other Angels' rather than blue. It marches on Tokyo-3 and becomes the first opponent of Evangelion Test Type-01, which sorties against it on the unit's maiden combat mission.

Evangelion: Hakata Angel Attack Alternative stages a different battle. Detected off the Genkai Sea, the Angel assaults the NERV Fukuoka branch in New Fukuoka City, shrugging off the city's defensive fire. Asuka charges it in Evangelion Production Model-02 carrying an N2 missile, only for the Angel's A.T. Field to stall the weapon until it explodes and hurls her Eva into a building. Rei arrives through underground tunnels in Proto Type-00' and cracks the Field with a Positron Cannon shot, wounding it, but the newly emerged second face answers with a beam that Shinji blocks using the Enchanted Shield of Virtue. When the Angel seizes Test Type-01 and tries to drill a bone lance through its head, the unit reactivates, bites the lance apart, and slides into a Pseudo-Awakening that lifts it skyward and sets an Impact event in motion. Mari, piloting Custom Type-08β, hurls the Spear of Longinus into the Angel's paired heads; Unit-01 pulls the spear free and drives it through the core. In its death throes the Angel envelops Unit-01, swells, and blows apart in a cross-shaped rainbow that both kills it and halts the Impact.

In the crossover story Transformers Mode "EVA", the ghost of Starscream possesses the Fourth Angel during its Tokyo-3 assault after the Autobots arrive, and Optimus Prime finishes the creature by tearing out its core.