Sixth Angel

In its resting state the Sixth Angel hangs in the sky as an enormous octahedron, the same silhouette Ramiel wore in the television series, with a round crimson core buried inside its structure. Nothing about that shape is fixed. The Angel continuously rebuilds its geometry to suit attack or defense, and every configuration carries a mirrored image of the core somewhere on its surface.

Its catalog of forms is extensive. Facing Unit-01 it briefly stretches into an hourglass before spreading into a cross rendered in three dimensions, six arms radiating outward with a small disc hovering over each. Under missile bombardment it becomes a circle of needle-shaped diamonds strung to a central hub by thin wires, and it answers rail gun fire by flattening into the greater part of a hexagonal pyramid before sharpening into a cannon-like shape to shoot back. The first positron hit scatters it into a fan of diamonds of assorted sizes with the core showing through the mass, after which it unfolds into an enormous five-pointed star. When the killing shot lands, it collapses back into its crystal form.

For siege work the Angel wrings its lower tip into an immense drill while the rest of its body keeps its full size and rotates to drive the bit. A sustained choral tone on the note C accompanies the boring, and an A.T. Field assists the drill as it chews through Tokyo-3's defensive armor.

Its energy beam far outclasses the television version, powerful enough to shear away mountainsides and battleship-grade gun emplacements alike, and a screaming howl precedes every discharge. The Angel meters the beam's output at will, as shown in its opening clash with Unit-01, and it can retune its A.T. Field so that an Evangelion has no way to neutralize the barrier. Its durability is remarkable as well: a direct core hit from the first shot of the 2nd Experimental High Power Self-Propelled 460mm Positron Cannon fails to kill it, and it strikes back immediately.

Introduced in Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, the Sixth Angel spends its assault transforming in response to each new stimulus, cycling through its hourglass, cross, diamond-ring, pyramid, and cannon shapes as Unit-01, missile barrages, and rail guns test it in turn. The positron cannon's first firing wounds it, but the Angel survives the direct hit to its core and answers with its most destructive beam from the five-pointed star form. The second shot destroys it, and the Angel and its enormous drill burst apart together in a spray of blood.

The Angel's fame carried into other media. To mark the fourth Rebuild film, the Japanese MMORPG Phantasy Star Online 2 ran an event quest around it from 20 November 2019 to 5 February 2020. Players fight beside Shinji, Rei, Asuka, and Misato, enduring its named configurations, from Hourglass and Cross through Shield, Cannon, and Pentagram, while Shinji charges the positron cannon inside Unit-01, and the Angel even gains an exclusive form styled after the game's A.I.S. mechs. In the pachinko series CR Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Beginning and the End, Kaworu Nagisa destroys the Sixth Angel while controlling Evangelion Unit-04, weathering its beams behind a shield and the Absolute Terror Field before piercing the barrier with the Spear of Longinus, all set to Megumi Hayashibara's song Shuuketsu no Sono he.