[1] The choice of a term related to the sea allowed him to connect to the names of other series' characters inspired by Imperial Japanese Navy ships and nami (波, lit.

[6][7] Nerv would have allowed the boy to enter its laboratories and, after a clash in which his fellow pilot Shinji Ikari found himself "in the dilemma of having to fight against an anthropomorphic enemy", "the greatest secret of the organization" would be revealed.

[16] In the early stages of production, scriptwriter Akio Satsukawa wrote some drafts of the twenty-fourth episode's script, in which Kaworu's relationship with Shinji would have been expanded upon and presented with less ambiguity.

[53] All data about his past is erased to conceal his true identity, but Misato discovers that he was born on September 13, 2000: the day the first of the Angels caused a calamity called the Second Impact to occur at the South Pole.

[70] Akira Ishida said that the Kaworu who appears in The End of Evangelion is not real or concretely present;[27] in the film, he and Rei say they represent the "hope that people will one day be able to understand each other".

[83] In the third movie, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012), set fourteen years after the previous film, he works for Nerv and is designated to pilot Eva-13 with Shinji on behalf of Gendo,[84] who he calls "king of Lillith".

For this scene, the author took inspiration from the film Betty Blue, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, which is tormented story of two young lovers in which he ultimately strangles her out of love.

In an interview, Sadamoto compared his death to a "contradictory fumi-e", an ancient Japanese ritual consisting of the trampling of Christian icons, in which Tabris would ask Shinji to prove he liked him by killing him.

[18] Unlike Hideaki Anno, who wanted to give Kaworu the image of an "ideal man", Sadamoto, who believes that human beings are the last evolutionary stage of Angels, tried to represent him as a "pre-human", who is innocent and naive.

On it the series' characters, played by their original voice actors, jokingly discuss and prepare a new ending just before the production schedule deadline, breaking the fourth wall.

[114] In addition to video games based on the original animated series, Kaworu has also appeared in media not related to the Evangelion franchise, such as Million Arthur,[115] Hortensia Saga,[116] Keri hime sweets, Summons Board,[117][118] Divine Gate,[119] Monster Strike,[120] Final Gear,[121] Puzzle & Dragons,[122] Puyopuyo!!

[138] Their relationship is depicted in an ambiguously worded manner,[139] as Kaworu uses the phrase suki tte koto sa (好きってことさ) to express his feelings for Shinji; it can be used to denote various types of intimacy or friendship to love.

[147] For Kunihiko Ikuhara, director of Sailor Moon and a friend of Hideaki Anno: "Shinji is bullied by his father, slapped by Ayanami, called stupid by Asuka and Misato yells at him to behave like a man; he doesn't receive much compassion from others, and I believe that in this situation the only one to tell him that it's okay as it is, is Kaworu.

[153][154] Apollonius' Nuctemeron also mentions a demon named Cahor, spelled in Japanese as Kahoru (カホル), referred to as the Angel of lies and deceit, a detail that guidebook Evangelion Chronicle relates to his deceptive anthropomorphic features.

[72] Conversely, Carl Horn, editor of the Evangelion manga in English, compared his comic version to the character Satan in Mark Twain's novella The Mysterious Stranger, for acting with indifference to human morality,[86] while French website Du9 likened the image of Kaworu killed by Eva-01 to Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son.

[156] According to Yūichirō Oguro, who curated contents of the home video editions of Neon Genesis Evangelion, he presents affinities with Lalah Sune, a female character from the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.

[157] Reviewer Toji Aida compared Kaworu to a ghost of the Noh theatre who disrupt the events of the story in the tripartite Jo-ha-kyū structure of the Rebuild series.

According to critic Mario Pasqualini, the Book of Life cited by Kaworu is a reference to a concept of the same name in Christianity, according to which it is a text in which God would have listed in his hand the people destined to go to Heaven on the Last Judgment.

Kaoru turns out to be the reincarnation of Yū, a boy who died by suicide shortly before, who was resurrected to try to win Kazuhiko over, change the story, and give him a new ending.

Perhaps because of that, after Kaworu appeared, the girls who had been watching Eva and who found it interesting but didn't feel the kind of enthusiasm that the boys felt about it were able to finally connect emotionally with Shinji.

[189] For Caleb Bailey of Comic Book Resources the hot spring scene "blazed the trail" on homosexual relationships in Japanese animation, being "ahead of its time".

[194] Her colleague Kenneth Lee criticized Kaworu as "an enigmatic figure that further adds fuel to the fire of confusion, but he just manages to raise even more questions that remain unanswered".

[195] According to Lee, the openness Shinji shows towards Kaworu is implausible and "irrational": "Ultimately, the homosexuality issue seems nothing more than cheap shock value tactics to stun Generation X".

[205] According to the Asiascape site, his last scene, in which he's trapped in the hands of Shinji's Eva-01 and marked by a long sixty-second freeze-frame, represents one of the more prominent uses of creative visual motifs in the series.

[206] Carlo Santos of Anime News Network appreciated the character of Kaworu and the role he played in Sadamoto's manga; he wrote, "the tension between the two boys soon becomes one of the most intriguing subplots".

[159] Kaworu Nagisa has been used for advertising campaigns[210][211] and a wide range of merchandise, including action figures,[212][213] nendoroids,[214] backpacks,[215] perfumes,[216] sweets,[217][218] cosmetics,[219][220] clothing,[221] toys,[222][223] key rings,[224] watches[225] and jewelry.

[228] In August of the same year, Japanese yaoi magazine June published a volume entitled Zankoku na tenshi no yō ni (残酷な天使のように, lit.

The book, whose title is taken from the first verse of the show's theme song, contains two long interviews with Hideaki Anno, the discarded drafts for the twenty-fourth episode, and dojinshi by mangaka from the shonen ai scene, such as Reku Fuyanagi (Gundam Wing: Ground Zero) and Takamure Tamotsu (Umi ni nita sora no iro).

[229] In 2005, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the series release, mangaka Mine Yoshizaki designed an action figure of a female version of Angel Tabris named Tabris-XX.

[232] In 2008 Kadokawa published a fanbook entitled All About Nagisa Kaworu: A Child of the Evangelion, a collection of fan letters, poems, reprinted manga pages, erotic dōjinshi, and interviews with gravure idols.