Tenth Angel

''This article is about the character from Rebuild of Evangelion movie series. For the character from the Neon Genesis Evangelion, see Zeruel.''

Tenth Angel (第10使徒) is the 10th Angel in the Rebuild of Evangelion. It appears in the movie Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance. It is one of the most powerful Angels in conventional combat, and is much more deadly than Zeruel in the TV series.

Story
The 10th Angel appears over Tokyo-3 and lays waste to the city's defenses in short time. It effortlessly breaches the Geofront, then unfolds its body and enters.

Mari Illustrious Makinami deploys inside Unit-02 and confronts the 10th Angel within the Geofront, attacking first with rifle fire and then attempting a melee attack with a Thunder Spear and the right shoulder pylon's needle gun. None make a dent in the Angel's defensive power, and as a result Mari resorts to activating Unit-02's Beast Mode. Despite this boost in strength and mobility, the Eva is still unable to breach the Angel's A.T. Field and is severely damaged by the Angel's counterattack.

Unit-00 attacks with a large N² missile, and, with Unit-02's aid, the Angel's field is finally penetrated. The attack is again ineffective, and Unit-00 loses both arms in the explosion. The pilot makes no attempt to resist as the Angel extends an appendage from its mouth and devours the Eva. The 10th Angel subsequently grows a humanoid body and, due to shifting its pattern to Unit-00's, gains the ability to bypass the automated self-destruct that would otherwise prevent it from reaching Lilith's chamber.

The Angel demolishes the NERV pyramid and invades the main shaft, confronting and nearly annihilating the command center crew before being stopped by Shinji in Unit-01. The fight between both proceeds in much the same manner as the original series until Unit-01 runs out of power, at which point the Angel skewers the Eva and throws it against the remains of the pyramid. The Eva soon revives and quickly reaches incredible levels of power: reconstructing its lost arm from its A.T. Field, blocking all of the 10th Angel's overpowered attacks, and finally taking the Angel down with optical energy beams. Shinji recovers Rei from inside the Angel's body, and its blood-like remains are assimilated into Unit-01 as Near Third Impact is initiated.

Profile
The 10th Angel is over twice the size of an Eva, with a fleshy, arthropod-like body over which a large dark green cowl of undulating prehensile ribbons is draped. When the Angel first appears, the cowl is folded up, giving the Angel a mummy-like appearance. Two of the ribbons are much longer than the others and serve as its primary melee weapon, capable of being coiled up into piercing drills of variable circumference; the Angel also uses them to prop itself up when standing. The face—modified slightly from the original Zeruel—conceals two red eyes and a mouth containing a tripartite jaw and a biting tongue-like appendage that can grow to massive size. Two sets of interlocking "teeth" flanking the core are capable of closing down to provide additional protection to the organ if needed.

The Angel's A.T. Field is the strongest among all Angels in the ROE series, capable of protecting it from multiple point-blank missile collisions with no effort. It can also extend multiple layered barriers outward, which can forcibly push foes away along with making any effort to breach the Angel's field that much more energy-intensive. The 10th Angel's other energy projection abilities are much the same as Zeruel's if superior in both power (penetrating all 24 layers of the Geofronts protection in a single shot) and fire capability (capable of rapidly firing an uncountable number of Cross blasts in a single volley). The Angel's physical armor is also extremely strong. Although Eva-02 succeeds in destroying all the Angel's AT Field layers and allowing Eva-00 to fire the N2 Missile on the Angel, the Angel extends its chest to cover its core, and the explosion is proven useless as it stands before the severely damaged Eva-00 in the ruins of the Geofront.

Upon devouring and absorbing Unit-00, the 10th Angel contains the Eva's core within its own, and the Angel's intrinsic pattern is replaced by that of the Eva's. The Angel's body reconfigures into the form of a distorted human female with ghostly white flesh accented by gray markings, abnormally long and gaunt arms, and lower legs that terminate in stubs, which may represent the pilot of the devoured Eva-00: Rei Ayanami. The humanoid arms replace the primary cutting ribbons but can be instantaneously reverted as need dictates. The Angel also employs two additional ribbons when it battles the reactivated Unit-01.

After being incapacitated by Unit-01, the humanoid extension of the Angel's body becomes a homogeneous mass of ribbons (off-screen, without explanation). Unit-01 forcibly extracts Unit-00's core and kills the 10th. Its body fluid reforms around Unit-00's core in the form of a giant red Rei, which then fuses into Unit-01. Thus the Angel has effectively been absorbed by Unit-01, but whether Unit-01 received a Fruit of Life out of the deal, as in NGE, is not yet known.

In contrast with the other Angels, the 10th is never seen deploying a halo, and a rainbow appears well in advance of its death, when Unit-01 delivers the crippling blow.

Development
Yoshitoh Asari returned to provide an abundance of new ideas for a reworked version of Zeruel, many of which were combined to provide the final design. The premise that the 10th Angel would have two forms—one with a "vestigial" body, the other more humanoid—seems to have been present early on. That the Angel would develop a feminine body was established later in the process, however, at Anno's insistence. The final design for the 10th's second form was prepared by Takeshi Honda, incorporating the mane-like cowl from a drawing by Kazuya Tsurumaki (which incidentally resembled the original Zeruel the most of the published concepts).

The 10th Angel also incorporates Armisael from the original series.

Evangelion New Theatrical Edition: 3nd Impact
Tenth Angel appears in the rythm game Evangelion New Theatrical Edition: 3nd Impact as the last 3 final battles.

Shironeko Project
Tenth Angel appeared as the main threat in the Evangelion collaboration.