Gendo has an appearance of a typical middle-aged man. He has short, dark brown hair with a beard. His usual attire is a NERV black commander's uniform with gold lines sewn on the edges of the jacket, and green triangular identification pieces sewn at the sleeves and the necklace. Beneath the uniform, Gendo wears a red sweater. Gendo wears a pair of white gloves to conceal his severely-burnt hands caused by the Unit-00 berserk incident. Gendo also wears a pair of glasses with squared lenses during that time, but later on changes to round-shaped-lenses glasses with a red or brown filter, which reflects light on large screens. In NERV, Gendo is responsible for the research done on the Evas and the Human Instrumentality Project. He is the father of the Third Child, Shinji Ikari. At the start of the series, he is the only person having an effective connection to Rei Ayanami. Gendo is a brilliant scientist and politician (the master of puppets in the series) who works diligently for his organization; however, he is an extremely cold and distant father towards his son and has no qualms about using and discarding people to achieve his goals. Gendo does not seem to have any sort of interest in contrast with other NERV crew members, but has a habit of crossing his hands whenever he sits down, hiding his mouth. He is mostly calm and does not react visibly in alarming situations. He rarely smiles or laughs, but is however seen occasionally smiling at Rei, and one time during the battle against Sachiel. Gendo is the type of person who can see & think about the welfare of an organization as a whole. In other words, he'd do anything to succeed. He takes drastic and extreme measures, by fair means or foul, or by hook or by crook, in order to accomplish his own purpose. In some ways he's mean, he hardly cares about people. Following the disappearance of his now dead wife, Yui, Gendo abandoned his son and became emotionally detached, pouring all his energy into reuniting with Yui's soul. This obsession ultimately drives the events of the majority of his actions.