Gaghiel

Sheer scale defines Gaghiel. The Angel matches an Iowa-class battleship in length, roughly 270 meters, and towers over any Evangelion. Serrated teeth crowd its enormous jaws, and unusually, its core sits inside the mouth. The hide is a tan shade edged in black, and a bone face-plate juts from it much like the one Sachiel develops after taking an N2 mine. No A.T. Field is ever visible around it, yet the field clearly operates at some level, since naval firepower cannot scratch it.

Mahiro Maeda designed the Angel, whose silhouette evokes the Leviathan, the giant sea monster of the Book of Job that tradition compares to the crocodile or the whale and sometimes links to Lucifer. In the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Gaghiel is called the Angel of the Fish.

Gaghiel runs on instinct rather than intellect. Its real quarry is the embryonic Adam hidden aboard the convoy, and everything between it and that prize becomes collateral; it batters warships apart with its own mass and clamps onto Unit-02 the instant the Eva hits the water.

The Angel strikes while the UN Pacific fleet transports Unit-02 to NERV along with, in secret, Adam's preserved embryo. Because that cargo was concealed, apparently even from SEELE, NERV's official account claimed Unit-02 was the lure. Nearly a third of the combined fleet is damaged or destroyed in the assault.

Asuka Langley Sohryu brashly sends Unit-02 against it wearing B-type equipment never meant for marine combat, with Shinji Ikari sharing the entry plug in what becomes the pair's first joint battle. A collapsing flight deck elevator dumps Eva and Angel into the sea, where Gaghiel locks the immobilized unit inside its jaws. Misato Katsuragi improvises the counterstroke: the two pilots, moving and thinking in unison, pry the mouth open so a pair of scuttled battleships can wedge inside, an impact that strips away most of its teeth. Fired by remote against the exposed core and then self-destructed, the ships' assault makes the Angel inflate and burst. In the attack sequence of the series, Ramiel comes before Gaghiel and Israfel follows it.