Insubstantial Angel

Three distinct stages define its body. It begins as an enormous larva drifting above the ground, slender legs dangling from its underside and its mass divided into disc shaped segments. The middle stage arrives when the countless spikes covering it lengthen all at once, their tips splaying open into a cocoon that lodges itself between city buildings. Its adult imago form is a vast levitating creature with a faintly insectoid silhouette: a thin body branching in exotic directions, no limbs at all, two wing-like growths rising from its upper section, and wheel shaped structures revolving at its flanks, each bearing three protruding spikes.

The entity carries no true name. Its Bandai Carddass cards label it the Insubstantial Angel, while guide material also records the designation Original Angel. Its life cycle deliberately echoes what Ritsuko Akagi once said about Sandalphon and its chrysalis, the remark the designers took as their starting point.

Each stage fights differently. The larva teleports across short spans, converts portions of its own segmented body into thrown weapons, and answers incoming attacks by scattering into pieces that later regroup into the original whole. The matured imago whips its elastic spikes at enemies, extends the points on its spinning wheel structures into blades, hurls globes of green energy, siphons power from Evangelion units, and slices clean through A.T. Fields. Fighting it is compared to striking a shadow without substance, and it revives even after apparent defeat. Since the core sits inside Mayumi Yamagishi rather than the Angel itself, the creature repeatedly breaks off mid-battle, buying Shinji Ikari and Mayumi time to weigh what should be done about her condition.

Some time after the Ireul incident, the Angel surfaces in larval form on the edge of Tokyo-3. Conventional weapons are tried against it first and fail, so NERV commits Evangelion Unit-01 supported by either Unit-02 or Unit-00, a choice left to the player. Mid-fight, Shinji notices the civilian Mayumi Yamagishi standing perilously near the combat zone. Minutes of fighting later the larva bursts apart in defeat, yet within days the creature reappears as a chrysalis wedged among the buildings. NERV fields its Evangelions again but, facing an inert cocoon, elects to wait, and at dusk the imago tears itself free. The final engagement stretches on past nightfall until, hours in, the Angel finally falls. Mahiro Maeda handled its design.