The message I was referring to was the one others here have mentioned , the whole You won ' t get anything out of an empty shell thing and how Rei was meant to be creepy . The idolization of Rei that has came about would be indicative of how Anno failed to convey that . I think her love and caring for Shinji was supposed to materialize at the same point as her seeing she isn ' t Gendo ' s tool . Instead , it happened in 6 , while her seeing she isn ' t just Gendo ' s tool comes about much later . I could be wrong in what I said , since it ' s just how it sounds like to me based on Anno ' s words . The reason a quicker than planned development wouldn ' t be great is because , for a writer , once a character ' s arc has peaked there isn ' t much left you can do with the character . You either have to shift their arc in a new direction , kill them . Which I suppose Anno does do , or just sort of leaving them floating around until needed . That ' s why Rei appears less frequently after Asuka ' s appearance , a trend that continues IIRC until Eva ' s end game . I personally think that she still gets some nice bits that show there was still more you could do with the character , stuff like her telling Shinji Thank You for example , and there was certainly room for her to open up more to others , though I suppose that ' d be counterproductive if the point of Rei was meant to be Creepy empty shell . Overall , I think it ' s a combination of him just not really caring about Rei and Rei ' s popularity level that ' s resulted in the apparently , since I have yet to watch Rebuild questionable handling of her character , so I do agree with you ultimately that it ' s stemming from her popularity .