Matarael is a minor antagonist in original anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion, appearing as the main antagonist of episode 11.
The Ninth Angel to appear, Matarael is a colossal arachnid-like creature with ability to cry acid from its central eye. While physically fragile, the Angel attacks during a power blackout at Tokyo-III, intending to burn a hole in GeoFront to make its way towards Lilith and subsequently cause the Third Impact.
Biography[]
Shinji calls his father about a career fair at school, which predictably annoys him. However, he notices that the phone call ended in a way that did not seem like a hang up. Meanwhile, Misato and Ryoji become trapped in an elevator together at Nerv HQ, because the backup power supply did not come back on as Misato had been optimistic for. While they are stuck in the elevator, Shinji, Asuka, and Rei walk to HQ, and find that their cards are not working.
With Rei's guidance, they manually infiltrate Nerv HQ, and along the way, overhear that there has been an Angel attack. Once inside, Shinji finds that his father had ensured that the Evangelions would be prepared manually, which earned him silent admiration from Shinji.
The three pilots enter their Evangelions and being their assault by entering a shaft directly underneath Matarael. The Angel counters their attack by dropping corrosive acid down the shaft, which immediately damages them and causes them to drop their weapons. The three pilots escape into a horizontal shaft within their vertical one, and come out after Asuka devises a plan. As she acted as a dummy for the Angel to attack, Rei travels down the hatch to retrieve the weapons, and Shinji fires at Matarael, killing it. The power is coincidentally restored immediately afterwards.
Profile[]
Matarael in Tokyo-3
Matarael is a gigantic opilinoid-like entity with four immensely long legs. Unlike an actual spider however, Matarael has just a central body with no cephalothorax or abdomen, that almost looks like a flying saucer, and looks small in comparison to its legs, which are taller than skyscrapers even in the bent position they are always in. Its central body has several fake eyes and one real one, which can secrete a highly corrosive acid capable of destroying Evangelions in large enough amounts.
Despite its large size, Matarael is only taken seriously due to the fact Tokyo-3 was having a power outage, which severely compromised their ability to react to its presence. It is essentially a giant spider droid with the ability to trample things and drop acid below itself, and it was able to be defeated with merely a single burst from an ordinary Eva rifle. This makes it by far the weakest Angel in the series, as it is the only Angel to even be harmed by a standard rifle. Many Angels are powerful enough to survive bombs and fight Evangelions in hand-to-hand combat, and Matarael shows no combat ability or durability. It is possible the Angel was aware of its weakness and chose to attack when Nerv was weakened, or that the Angel was designed specifically to attack Nerv when its power was out.
Trivia[]
- Matarael is the first Angel to be defeated by the main trio working together.
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 Villains
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