Gendo Ikari

White gloves are the most revealing part of Gendo's wardrobe. They cover hands that were badly burned when he wrenched open the superheated hatch of Unit-00's ejected entry plug to pull Rei to safety, and he almost never removes them. His eyewear changed over the years as well: squared lenses early on gave way to rounder ones carrying a red or brown tint that catches the glow of NERV's giant displays.

Middle-aged and bearded, he wears his hair in a shape close to his son's. On duty he stays in his black commander's uniform, the jacket edged in gold and marked with green triangular identification pieces at the sleeves and collar, a red sweater visible beneath it. Other clothing rarely appears on him.

Series creator Hideaki Anno described Gendo as a man who weighs everything against the good of his organization and will reach his goal by fair means or foul. On screen that translates into a chess player's coldness: he maneuvers NERV, SEELE, and the people around him like pieces, discarding anyone whose usefulness has run out, and toward Shinji he is a father in name only, distant to the point of cruelty.

His self-control is near total. Seated, he habitually folds his hands in front of his mouth, and crisis after crisis fails to move his expression. Smiles from him are rare enough to be events; Rei draws a few, and the battle against Sachiel earns exactly one.

The End of Evangelion finally strips the armor away. Every ruthless act has served one purpose, using Third Impact to restore Yui, and in his last moments he grasps that the effort defeated itself: Yui's real wish was a brighter future for Shinji, the very son Gendo spent to get her back. Dying, he confesses that he kept away from the boy because he feared hurting him just as much as Shinji feared him, a symmetry that makes him read as his son's dark adult mirror, with Ryoji Kaji often cited as the positive counterpart. His final words ask Shinji's forgiveness.

He begins life as Gendo Rokubungi, a surname meaning sextant, with almost nothing recorded of his youth beyond hints of a difficult upbringing. As a student he meets Yui Ikari and befriends Professor Kozo Fuyutsuki. Gossip holds that Yui's SEELE connections are what drew him, though the story gradually shows the bond ran far deeper. Marrying her at the start of the twenty-first century, he takes the Ikari name, and their son Shinji arrives in 2001. Gendo rises to head Gehirn, but Yui is lost during Unit-01's failed activation test, and the loss remakes him: he sends the toddler Shinji away to live with a teacher, freezes over emotionally, and enters loveless affairs, first with Naoko Akagi, then with Ritsuko, Naoko's daughter, relationships he exploits for leverage and silence.

As NERV's commander he plays the obedient servant of SEELE while quietly building his own road to Third Impact. Adam's embryo ends up grafted into his hand, and his plan is to merge with Rei before Lilith so the event unfolds entirely under his control. In The End of Evangelion the scheme collapses: Rei declares she is no puppet of his, takes Adam from him, and joins with Lilith to begin Instrumentality on her own terms. Confronted by visions of the Reis, Kaworu, and Yui herself, Gendo admits his terror of the invisible bonds people form, and a spectral Unit-01 bites him in two as he speaks his apology to Shinji.

The manga sharpens his cruelty. There he triggers Unit-01's Dummy System against Bardiel with fatal results for Toji Suzuhara, swallows Adam rather than carrying it in his hand, and tells Shinji outright that he never loved him and envied Yui's attention to the boy. After Rei destroys Adam and rejects him, a dying Ritsuko shoots him through the neck; in his final vision Yui prompts him to recall holding the newborn Shinji, the first time love for his son ever touched him, and he dies redeemed by that memory. Lighter spin-offs recast him wholesale: Shinji Ikari Raising Project plays him for comedy as a husband routinely swatted by a living Yui, while Gakuen Datenroku reveals its Gendo as a doppelganger from another universe who replaced a dead original and is finally crushed by falling debris, implied to be Yui's doing.