Mana Kirishima

Mana keeps her brown hair cut short. Away from school she favors simple clothes, usually a skirt or a plain white dress, while in class she wears the standard uniform of the Evangelion pilots' school: a blue dress paired with white socks and plain black shoes. Her test-pilot gear is a gray jumpsuit that fastens up the front and carries dark rank markings, completed by a helmet, a chest piece, and stiff beige gloves.

Energetic, forward, and quick to flare up, Mana reads as a deliberate blend of the franchise's two famous heroines while behaving like neither: she has none of Rei's silence, and she channels Asuka's fire into warmth as often as aggression. Beneath the cheer sits a survivor's weight. Having lived through Second Impact, she keeps searching for a reason she was spared, and her inability to do anything about the world frustrates her enough that she envies Shinji his place inside an Evangelion.

Her military past complicates everything. Trained from childhood by the Strategic Self-Defense Force, then planted as a spy, she approached Shinji on assignment and then genuinely fell for him. Her academy years taught her that every kill leaves a grieving family behind, and although her employers stand opposed to NERV, she increasingly wants a path through life that involves killing no one.

Mana was born in Akune, in Kagoshima Prefecture, on April 11, 2001, to a magazine-editor mother and a father who worked on Tokyo reclamation before being lost beneath the water. The military recruited her young, grooming her alongside her friends Musashi and Keita as candidate pilots for the T•RIDEN•T Land Cruiser, its newest weapon. An internal organ injury during training, and her growing horror at what killing means, saw her moved from the cockpit to the Information Division, which assigned her to shadow the pilot of Unit-01 and skim Eva technology to perfect the machine.

In Iron Maiden she enters the story as a transfer student who immediately declares Shinji cute, to Asuka's visible irritation and suspicion. The two grow close and go on a date before the truth surfaces: she and two other teenagers are test pilots for the T•RIDEN•T, a manmade war machine built to rival the Evangelions. The machine eventually runs out of control, and the Evas are forced to destroy it. What follows depends on the player. In Mana's own route she survives the battle, is sheltered by Shinji, and must finally leave Tokyo-3 after Misato intervenes, departing in tears with her heart won; other paths have Shinji promise to wait for her, see her die in the fighting, or let him turn her away entirely for Asuka's sake.

The PSP release adds an elopement ending. Mana finds Shinji drunk and dumped in the rain, cleans him up at a laundromat, and stops his self-recrimination with a hug, telling him she refuses to lose anyone again and asking him to feel how fast her heart is beating. The pair tell Toji and Kensuke they are running away together, collect documents from Makoto Hyuga to ease their exit from a secret organization, with Hyuga admitting his help is really for love of Misato, and share a last odd encounter with a housewife-costumed Asuka before waiting hand in hand for a seaside train and agreeing to build a life together. In the Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga she instead operates as an agent for Yui and Gendo, keeping watch over Shinji's daily life and his relationships with Asuka and Rei.