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Sachiel (サキエル), Hebrew זכיאל, is the Third Angel in the original anime, and the first one to appear fifteen years after Second Impact. First emerging out of ocean east of Tokyo-3, the Angel makes it way towards the fortified city and engages in combat with the Evangelion Unit-01 during its first operational mission.

Story
Sachiel is first seen swimming through the flooded ruins of a city just east of Tokyo-3 before emerging from the ocean and engaging the JSSDF forces that attempted to stop it and, in spite of Sachiel's apparent lack interest in the combat, failed to cause any damage, and were unable to slow its advance toward the city.

While on its way to Tokyo-3, Sachiel was knocked back by a missile barrage from the JSSDF VTOL crafts that happened to surprise it. However, the Angel soon got used to the attacks and pressed forward without flinching. Instead of counterattacking, Sachiel simply shot down a VTOL with the attitude of swatting a fly with curiosity, before using its A.T. Field to do a huge leap away from its aggresors.

After all of their tactics resulted innefective against the Angel, the JSSDF lured Sachiel to the region of Mt. Takanosu and detonated an N² Mine underneath its feet, creating a huge explosion that suceed in causing damage to Sachiel, melting approximately 18% of its mass. However, it didn't take long before the Angel started to regenerate the damage, spawning a new facial plate that pushes the old one upwards slightly. While this fails to stop Sachiel, it does slow down the Angel long enough for NERV to prepare Evangelion Unit-01 to be sent into combat against Sachiel.

Upon arrival to Tokyo-3, Sachiel takes on a much more aggresive behavior, revealing a new trick up his sleeve by casting a cross-shaped pillar of light in the middle city that penetrates into the GeoFront below. As he proceeds to wander through the city, he stumbles upon the recently activated Evangelion Unit-01, piloted by Shinji Ikari, however, the Unit soon fell flat on its face, giving Sachiel the opportunity to get a hold of the Evangelion's head, and proceeds to break its left arm. Shortly after, the Angel proceed to smack Unit-01 head with the lance-like structures hosted inside its forearms, impaling the Unit's head, and flinging it against a building.

Following a period of silence, however, Unit-01 reactivated, becoming berserk before jumping on top of Sachiel, ripping a piece of the Angel's face plate apart, revealing a lower, more organic-looking layer. As Unit-01 charges against the Angel once more, its stopped by Sachiel's A.T. Field, but the Evangelion promptly regenerate its previously broken left arm, and easily tears through the Angel's barrier. Before Unit-01 could continue its assault, Sachiel retaliate by casting a cross-shaped explosion at point blank to it, but it proved to have no effect in stopping the berserk Evangelion, who grabbed both of Sachiel's arms and break them with a sharp snap before kicking it into a building, Unit-01 soon charging at it.

As the Evangelion landed on top of the Angel, it proceeded to punch its core, before breaking off one of Sachiel's ribs and used it to repeatedly stab the Angel's core, slowly cracking it. Realizing its existence neared its end, Sachiel jumped on top of Unit-01, and wrapped around its head while its core glowed brightly, self-destructing shortly after and raising a cross-shaped explosion high into the sky. However, even this last resort proved useless, as shortly after the explosion, Evangelion Unit-01 emerged from the destruction with only moderate damage.

Profile
Sachiel's body is a tall and thin humanoid body, slightly larger than an Evangelion, which functions on both land and in water. Its proportions do not match those of a human; its arms are long enough to reach below its knees and its legs and feet are elongated and disproportionate. It lacks a proper humanoid head and neck, but like other Angels, contains a core in the center of its solar plexus. Its head, barely mobile, appeared to primarily be made of bone and is structured much like a bird's, even having a long beak. After the Angel regenerates from the mine, a second head emerges from its body, with a shorter beak than the first, pushing the first one slightly upwards. Sachiel has red irises, which are able to be seen deep within its head in the eye sockets. Sachiel possesses blood of a bluish-purple color, making it unique among Angels for whom blood has been observed.

Unusual among Angels, Sachiel possesses a respiration system based in the thighs and crotch, breathing in through gills in the thighs and exhaling through a set of nostril in the crotch area. Said gills also serve as an underwater propulsion system. The Angel's natural weaponry consist of two lances-like bone structures that extend from its forearms and are shown to be able to be energized to increase their destructive capability. These are physical structures that serve as the Angel's ulna or outer arm bone. After the Angel regenerates from the Mine attack, it develops the ability to fire a long-range energy blast from the eyes of its second face, which results in crucifix-shaped spikes of energy. While not a flight-capable Angel itself, Sachiel demostrates the ability to use its own A.T. Field to enhance its jumping ability to great extents. Sachiel is also capable of altering its body shape and muscle mass, increasing it when under strain. As a last resort, it can wrap itself into a ball around its opponent and self-destruct.

Development
The more refined version of Sachiel's design, labelled "Version A", depicts the ribs and scapular carapace structures as three separate units, although many cuts in the anime use a different version, labelled "Version B", where they form one combined structure. This "Design B" is also used by Sadamoto in the manga. One other discrepancy is that, in B, both right and left "ribs" possess an upper bone-spur, whereas in A this feature is only present on the left, and visibly absent from the start.

The Neon Genesis Evangelion Proposal presents an earlier concept for Sachiel's design, although it bears little resemblance to the final version beyond the basic tall and thin humanoid motif. It possessed a more crustacean shell, with notoriously longer claws and two antennae protruding from his shoulders. His leg an arms appeared to be covered with patches of gills, and he sported a different face design with a mouth, and a giant blue eye in the middle, surrounded by what appear to be six smaller orange ones.

Rebuild of Evangelion
Sachiel's role in Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone is largely the same as its role in the anime. Its design is almost identical with few apparent modifications; however, some minor differences can be seen. Most obviously, when making its A.T.-Field-assisted jump, a large halo appears briefly above its head. Additionally, upon revealing its second face, casting its A.T. field, and prior to dying, the eyes of Sachiel's second face glow a bright red. Another minor design change includes a blood color change from blue to red to correspond with the other Angels.

Manga Adaptation
While Misato retrieves Shinji by car, Rei pilots Unit-01 and confronts Sachiel. During this encounter, Sachiel is depicted as being fairly nimble, however the Angel loses the ability of enlarging his muscles. It's battle with Unit-01 changes aswell: after the berserk Eva jumps in front of it, the Angel uses it's right lance to strike the foe once more. However the unit stops the lance between its jaws and hits Sachiel's face with his feet. The Angel gets his arm free from the grip of the Eva and starts slashing it against the opponent wich evades the attack by jumping away from it. After dodging more lance slash, the Eva charges at Sachiel, wich reacts by using its A.T. field. After restoring its left arm, the unit destroys the barrier, only to be hit by the enemy cross beam. The Eva reflects the attack, sending the Angel against a building. With another leap, the unit hits the Angel's core with its knees. It then proceed to smash the core with its right hand, but it gets captured by Sachiel's self-destruct attack. Even after getting engulfed in the explosion, the Eva doesn't get any significant damage.

Girlfriend of Steel 2
In the PC game, Sachiel is part of the mass Angel attack.

Battle Orchestra
Sachiel is one of the playable characters in the "brawling" game Neon Genesis Evangelion: Battle Orchestra. He's the first opponent in Unit-01 Story mode.

Petit Eva
Sachiel appears in one episode of Petit Eva: Evangelion@School. Here, it is portrayed as a giant monster terrorizing the city. While doing so, it is struck on the forehead by a bogey thrown by Unit-01, who is at NERV Academy at the time. Realizing what it was and where it came from, Sachiel rushes towards the school, demanding to know who threw the bogey at him. Unit-01 then decides to fight him; however, he is way smaller than Sachiel, who proceeds to repeatedly stomp on him. This continues until Shinji plugs Unit-01 into an outlet, which recharges him and increases his height until he is taller than Sachiel. Realizing that it cannot win, Sachiel tries to run away, but is grabbed by Unit-01, rolled up into a ball, and thrown far away. It is later found, now way smaller than it was, by Rei III, who washes it in a nearby stream and hangs it up to dry.

Trivia

 * The "ch" in "Sachiel" is pronounced as a hard "K".
 * Sachiel is one of the few Angels to appear in more than one episode. It also makes a brief cameo reappearance as a holographic shooting target in Episode 03's training simulation.
 * Sachiel's energy explosions blatantly resemble a Latin cross. One cross-explosion penetrates the GeoFront, but how is not known: Sachiel's blasts are supposedly weaker than the similar explosions Zeruel sets off, at the very least incapable of damaging Unit-01. How the blasts are formed is unexplained.

Sachiel