Kaworu Nagisa

Kaworu Nagisa, also known as Tabris, is a character from the Neon Evangelion Genesis anime and manga.

Kaworu is the Fifth Child and the seventeenth Angel.

Sent to NERV by SEELE as a replacement pilot for Unit-02after Asuka's synchronization ratio falls below usability, he breaks into Terminal Dogma in order to return to Adam, but after he discovers the being there is actually Lilith, he allows Shinji to destroy him.

He appears in The End of Evangelion during Third Impact, communicating with Shinji in regard to the choice of whether to accept or reject Instrumentality.

Appearance
Kaworu has pale skin and red eyes. His silver hair is long and somewhat untamed.

Personality
Unlike Rei, a being like him that mostly emotionless and less comfortable in her nature and identity, Kaworu is more comfortable with his true nature as Adam as well as warmer and more emotionally open. However he does show a detachment from human protocols and shares Rei's tendency to speak in universal rather than personal terms. Though he seems to have been sent to destroy it, Kaworu shows a marked interest in human culture, as well as human issues of pain and loneliness.

In manga, his personality is more or less same, but portrayed as being ignorant of human emotions and taboos regarding social interaction and personal space, creating some comic relief. The already eerie aura that he have even worse than in anime series due to him calmly killed a starved kitten whom followed Shinji.

Abilities
Kaworu seems to know a lot more than he should, all the damn time. He is able to form an AT Field capable of blocking a giant prog knife and all particles of sound and light to the molecular level. He can levitate. He is capable of technopathy (hacking and disabling electronic devices). Any other abilities remain unclear.

Trivia

 * In early designs, Kaworu was depicted as a school boy with a pet cat who could switch to an "Angel form". In vol. 9 of the manga, one of Sadamoto's artworks is a portrayal of Kaworu dressed in black and holding a black cat.
 * Kaworu was named by screenplay writer Akio Satsukawa. Kaworu's surname "Nagisa" comes from the Japanese word nagisa, meaning "waterside" or "shore", concerned with sea. It also comes from Japanese movie director Nagisa Oshima. Adding to these, the character, when divided, can be read as "shi-sha". The title of episode 24 is "The Last Shisha" ("Saigo no Shisha") includes two Japanese words read as "shisha" (the character only represents the sound "shi"). The first is "messenger" or "apostle" ("shisha"), while the other is "dead (person)".
 * Gainax renders his name in Romaji as "Kaworu," not "Kaoru" as would be given by most romanization schemes. The reasons for the difference in the naming have not been explicitly detailed by the series' creators; one theory is that the name is based on the original kana of the name Kaoru Genji, from The Tale of Genji.
 * As a promotion for its 10th Anniversary Special Edition of Evangelion, ADV Films published a humorous bumper sticker which reads "KAWORU DIED FOR YOUR SINS" ("Kaoru wa anata no tsumi no tame ni shinda")). Mania Entertainment's Chris Beveridge described Kaworu's death in the anime as an "extremely powerful moment" due to the fact that after a minute without dialogue, his head's shadow appears touching the water.
 * Kaworu Nagisa was the second most popular male character in the 1997 Animage poll. In a Newtype poll from March 2010, Kaworu was voted as the second most popular male anime character from the 1990s.
 * The possibly homosexual undertones of Kaworu's interactions with Shinji has been a persistent topic of debate among fans of Evangelion since the series' first run as discused in the Patrick Drazen's book Anime Explosion! The What? Why? & Wow! Of Japanese Animation. Patrick Drazen's self-admittedly minority view is that Kaworu's offer of love for Shinji is a tactic that Kaworu as the last Angel used to disarm Shinji. Gainax is clearly aware that the audience associates Kaworu with bishounen tropes, and have produced artworks such as splash pages for their website in reference to Kaworu's ambiguity and the audience's reaction to the character.