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That black thing Giant Rei's holding? The Geofront, of which NERV occupies a tiny part. (Edit: quote:I was skimming through EoE for the first time yesterday and something confusded me - when Shinji sorties in unit 1 immediately before seeing unit 2's corpse and freaking out, the Eva has already formed these huge wings of light and summoned a thunderstorm and poo poo. Wasn't this just after Lilith and Adam joined? So she'd have been reacting to the beginnings of Instrumentality. Also, abstract symbolism.) Tuxedo Catfish posted:The short version is that, up to 3.33 at least, it makes absolutely no difference. Basically this. Rebuild has scads of references to NGE/EoE, but whether or not they're clues that Rebuild's a sequel is mostly irrelevant; they're a drat sight more interesting as metatextual references to the original, adding layers of meaning that reward (but don't require) familiarity with the originals. Probably the only way Rebuild's actually more accessible to new Eva fans. I think the two main pieces of evidence for the sequel theory are the red oceans and the blood on the moon, but I think these are both, very solidly, references, not consequences of EoE. The bloodstains in EoE are a splash, not a line as you can see in 2.22, and Kaji blames the red oceans on Second Impact in 2.22. Maybe there's something in 1.11 but I haven't seen it. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 20:00 on May 16, 2013 |
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May 16, 2013 19:58
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ImpAtom posted:Scales wrong? In Evangelion? I don't know man, that sounds pretty unlikely. Isn't there some scale chart showing how, if you look at various shots of Unit 01, it ranges from being smaller than a Gundam (so quite small by Anime Robo standards) to the size of the Macross Quarter or Daitarn or some similarly massive robot?
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May 16, 2013 20:01
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House Louse posted:I think the two main pieces of evidence for the sequel theory are the red oceans and the blood on the moon, but I think these are both, very solidly, references, not consequences of EoE. The bloodstains in EoE are a splash, not a line as you can see in 2.22, and Kaji blames the red oceans on Second Impact in 2.22. Maybe there's something in 1.11 but I haven't seen it. I think Kaji says that the oceans used to be blue before the second impact in 2.22, so I think it all comes down to references. Then again, the second impact he refers to could very well be very similar to what happened in EoE, only that it got stopped halfway in the process without killing every single human being.
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May 16, 2013 22:36
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bof_man posted:To add to this, I always saw Kaworu as some sort of Saint/Buddha. This is why he's always depicted with a smile : it's the Buddha smile. It's the smile of someone who has reached enlightement, is offering enlightement, is above the fray, can't loose, and is always serene whatever happens. It's also mocking in a way. It's really striking in the original anime. Hah, I really like this because it says a lot about the nature of Adam's angels compared to humans. Adam's angels appear to be singular, self-contained entities, the sole member of their species, and so don't appear as prone to the psychological foibles of humanity*. Since Adam is the progenitor of these beings, it makes sense he is depicted a Buddha/Saint-figure, completely independent and detached. After all, he doesn't even give that much of a poo poo about triggering Third Impact. Lilith, though, from what we can glean of her nature through Rei, is an aloof but confused being that feels a bond with all things but struggles to express it. It's touching and sort of beautiful, in a way, that the mother of humanity takes a special liking to a particularly damaged member of it (Shinji). *Except for that weird double helix angel that tries to merge with others to alleviate its loneliness. I guess existential loneliness is what unites the two species together.
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May 16, 2013 23:35
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Armisael, Arael, Kaworu and Leliel all could be seen as the Angels attempting to understand the Lilim. Straightforward destruction didn't work so good for anyone but Zeruel, but the attempts to understand, to connect and intermingle, do the most damage. Remember, Leilel is the first Angel we get the weird colors and drugs sequences with, as well as the first one to really shake Asuka and Misato. Arael and Armisael are obvious, and Kaworu breaks Shinji's heart and/or will to live (although Misato helps). It's hedgehogs and poo poo. e: I don't think people appreciate this enough. 
MadRhetoric fucked around with this message at 01:36 on May 17, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 01:21
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MadRhetoric posted:e: I don't think people appreciate this enough. I don't appreciate it at all, it's never been a line of criticism I understood. 'You liked this series and later on in life you still like it!' I still play baseball, hike and really enjoy Catch 22 even though I was introduced to all those things fifteen years or more ago and no one would criticizes me for that. I can understand noting that people get too emotionally attached to the series, or let it spill over into their lives, but that seems different then just following a series over the years. Maybe it's because I was satisfied with the TV show and everything else has just been 'extra' for me, but I don't feel like there's any larger point to the fifteen years thing.
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May 17, 2013 03:11
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Fifteen years of arguing red vs. blue and discovering that the series has a message about depression and self worth.
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May 17, 2013 03:33
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Wouldn't there be another clue as to whether Rebuild is a sequel given how SEELE is? In the original series/EoE we see them as flesh and blood humans, but in Rebuild they're sort of a mixture of human souls embedded in technology, given how Gendo simply shut them down in 3.0. (spoilered in case some of you haven't seen 3.0)
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May 17, 2013 03:46
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MadRhetoric posted:Armisael, Arael, Kaworu and Leliel all could be seen as the Angels attempting to understand the Lilim. Straightforward destruction didn't work so good for anyone but Zeruel, but the attempts to understand, to connect and intermingle, do the most damage. Remember, Leilel is the first Angel we get the weird colors and drugs sequences with, as well as the first one to really shake Asuka and Misato. Arael and Armisael are obvious, and Kaworu breaks Shinji's heart and/or will to live (although Misato helps. It's funny how even the Angels, godlike as they are, are supremely lonely beings interested in only returning to their own Source (Third Impact) or understanding their diminutive cousins (their clumsy attempts at communication with humanity). Power is no substitute for love, a platitude we also see illustrated in Gendo, who could probably have taken over the world ten times over with NERV's Evas but still only wants to be reunited with his wife. And Eva is the only franchise I was introduced to at 12, and still love, nay, appreciate more ten years later. loving Anno, man.
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May 17, 2013 03:49
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Spiritus Nox posted:On a somewhat related note - I was skimming through EoE for the first time yesterday and something confusded me - when Shinji sorties in unit 1 immediately before seeing unit 2's corpse and freaking out, the Eva has already formed these huge wings of light and summoned a thunderstorm and poo poo. Well, from what I understand it's a representation that Eva-01 has fully awakened. And I think, based on what has been said at the end of Rebuild 2, i.e. that an Eva's sole purpose is to grant someone's wish, that it's the reason why it entered that kind of state. Now whose wish did it fulfill ? I suppose it's either Shinji's subconscious desires, or Yui wanting to lay the smackdown. I mean in the movie you could practically feel the figurative slap Yui gave Shinji by breaking through the bakelite while he was convincing himself he couldn't pilot because of it. I find that the manga does it a bit better in that regard, in the sense that it's Shinji specifically asking for more power that causes the wings to erupt. I was about to write that you need an Eva to have absorbed an Angel's core/S2 engine, thus making it enter an evolved state that has more power, to make it possible for the Eva to fully awaken and trigger an Impact. So the progression would be: Eva -> Eva + S2 -> Eva + S2 + Wings. It's the reason why Gendo is so smug, in the original series, when he sees Eva-01 eat Zeruel : he now has an Impact trigger. It's also the reason why he's reluctant to use Eva-01 afterwards once Zeruel is defeated : he doesn't want an Impact that he's not in control of. But then Rebuild 2 turns all of this on its head when Shinji makes Eva-01 evolve by having a strong desire to save Rei. All this without an S2 Engine. However it's only when Zeruel/Rei gets absorbed into Eva-01 that you get an Impact proper. It's the same in Rebuild 3. It's only when the 12th (?) Angel is eaten by Eva-13 that you get an Impact. What I'm saying is that, in order to have an Eva-triggered Impact, you need an Awakened Eva that has eaten an Angel. And from what I get of NGE, Whatever happens next (i.e. what type of Instrumentality you get) depends on Lances, other Evas and giant Reis. Edit : And also on Eva pilots, of course.
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May 17, 2013 04:58
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I gave Rebuild 3 another shot since I was watching it with a buddy that likes Eva too, I think I like it a little better. It's easier to understand this time without focusing on the technobabble and somewhat arbitrary symbolism. One thing I still do not like about this movie (and this is somewhat prevalent in 2.0 as well) is how cartoony all the action sequences have become. The Evas are very fluid and deformable, they almost look like they're made of goo sometimes. This is really bad in the part where Unit 2 turns into a tiger and wraps itself around Unit 9 Compare that with this classic scene from the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikRMPeDhoyo The animation is a lot less nice to look at, but everything is really visceral, and Unit 1 is genuinely creepy as it turns into some kind of vicious ape. It lumbers around like what you would expect out of a giant animal.
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May 17, 2013 05:01
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notZaar posted:I gave Rebuild 3 another shot since I was watching it with a buddy that likes Eva too, I think I like it a little better. It's easier to understand this time without focusing on the technobabble and somewhat arbitrary symbolism. One thing I still do not like about this movie (and this is somewhat prevalent in 2.0 as well) is how cartoony all the action sequences have become. The Evas are very fluid and deformable, they almost look like they're made of goo sometimes. This is really bad in the part where Unit 2 turns into a tiger and wraps itself around Unit 9 The part where Unit 1 goes berserk in that clip is probably one of the best segments in all of Eva, except maybe for the part in Rebuild 2 where Shinji is replaced by the dummy plug. Unit 1 really does seem like a feral beast acting on fundamental instincts. It doesn't simply kill, it utterly destroys.
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May 17, 2013 05:15
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So I rewatched parts of Rebuild 3 and it's clearly a 3 acts movie. First act is on the Wunder, second act is at Nerv headquarters and third act is at Near-Third impact. Not sure how I missed this on my first watch. I have a couple of questions that I hope will get answered in Rebuild Final. Or at least, questions that will get throwaway lines so we (I) can all  over them for years to come.1) Why is there that flash image of Rei at the beginning when Shinji is on the phone just before the Angel attack. The image also appears during the Rei Q tube scene in Rebuild 3. From what I can tell it's never been explained and there's nothing but the most basic of ideas to conjecture from. 2) How did Kaworu become a fallen angel. I suppose that's the symbolism of going from 1st to 13th ? How does that even work ? Why did the creators (Anno) feel it was important to include this concept in the story ? 3) Where did Evas Mk 7 to 12 go ? Destroyed by Wille maybe ? 4) If Eva-13 does not have an AT field, which means it probably doesn't have a soul like Yui's in Eva-01, does that mean it's some kind of Zombie-Eva, same thing with Rei Q's Eva that got blown up along with Eva-02 ? 5) Why are there 4 Adams and 4 Spears ? Are those the Vessel of Adams used as Evas during Rebuild 3 ? Did I just answer question 4 ? Oh who am I kidding, nothing above is going to get answered.  Edit: Yeah I knew I should have double-checked the movies a bit. Eva-08 is Mari's and Eva-09 is Rei Q's, based on their plugsuit number. Still wondering where the rest of the Evas are. bof_man fucked around with this message at 07:58 on May 17, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 07:43
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Scyantific posted:Wouldn't there be another clue as to whether Rebuild is a sequel given how SEELE is? In the original series/EoE we see them as flesh and blood humans, but in Rebuild they're sort of a mixture of human souls embedded in technology, given how Gendo simply shut them down in 3.0. (spoilered in case some of you haven't seen 3.0) Not necessarily. SEELE were mucking about with weird cybernetics as early as EoE (Keel Lorenz leaves a disembodied biomechanical spine behind when he gets tanged) and once you strip all the bullshit out, what Gendo says to them in the scene where he turns them off is "Guess what jerks? You're still human.  "(Don't get me wrong: you could definitely also take it as this SEELE being a select evolution of the old one, for the reasons you mention, the decrease in numbers, and the whole "everything we ever wanted has already been achieved" thing. But nothing's conclusive.) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 11:47 on May 17, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 11:42
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cafel posted:I don't appreciate it at all, it's never been a line of criticism I understood. 'You liked this series and later on in life you still like it!' I still play baseball, hike and really enjoy Catch 22 even though I was introduced to all those things fifteen years or more ago and no one would criticizes me for that. I can understand noting that people get too emotionally attached to the series, or let it spill over into their lives, but that seems different then just following a series over the years. Maybe it's because I was satisfied with the TV show and everything else has just been 'extra' for me, but I don't feel like there's any larger point to the fifteen years thing. It's been a long, strange, frustrating, amazing trip; as well as noting the fanbase has been running in circles about the same things over and over. It's funny man, chill.
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May 17, 2013 12:33
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Not necessarily. SEELE were mucking about with weird cybernetics as early as EoE (Keel Lorenz leaves a disembodied biomechanical spine behind when he gets tanged) and once you strip all the bullshit out, what Gendo says to them in the scene where he turns them off is "Guess what jerks? You're still human. One thing I noticed in the rebuild series is that Adam isn't an embryo, but more a collection of nerves. Instead of SEELE being a bunch of guys projected through whatever those voice only slabs are, they seem to be brains suspended in those floating slabs. Also, there's no Magi system this time around either, which were 3 views of Naoko Akagi's personality, at least for the NERV branch; in rebuild, each member of SEELE is seen as the outline of a brain being burnt into those slabs when they're shut off. I figured SEELE is the personalities of a single person seeking instrumentality, split up to (ironically) form a brain trust to ensure its successful, which for some reason are contained wholly within NERV this time, instead of the Magi system being created by Gehirn who was backed by SEELE. I dunno if that was worth spoilering, most of the fun of evangelion after all is endless speculation about the endless symbology present that might or might not mean anything, and sometimes a fish is just a fish. I hope 4.0 will clear up...something at least.
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May 17, 2013 13:31
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ATM Machine posted:One thing I noticed in the rebuild series is that Adam isn't an embryo, but more a collection of nerves. That isn't Adam. ATM Machine posted:Instead of SEELE being a bunch of guys projected through whatever those voice only slabs are, they seem to be brains suspended in those floating slabs. The slabs are just an abstract visual projection, they aren't literally SEELE. We have no idea where the actual dudes are or what their physical status is, apart from the fact that Fuyutsuki has access to their life support. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 13:47 on May 17, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 13:41
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People have mentioned a couple times that (in the series at least), it's odd that there's only ever one of each type of angel. To me, it made perfect sense. Each angel represented a possibility, a type of life that could be created by an angel+Adam impact. In such an impact (where an angel successfully mergers with Adam), humans would disappear from the earth and be replaced with lots of the type of angel that triggered the impact. In other words, the relationship between lilim/lilith and angel/adam is similar to that of a sperm and egg. This might help go toward explaining why everyone in Tokyo 3 appeared to be in the process of turning into Eva in the Rebuild version of 3rd Impact. An impact event creates a form of life from the materials available + the god being. When an Eva triggered 3rd Impact by touching Lilith, impact literally took the raw materials (humans) and began remaking them in the image of the sperm (the Eva). Because the impact was interrupted, these proto-Eva all died, thus the condition of Nerv HQ in 3.33. With this in mind, there's a bunch of different ways for an impact event to be triggered that we don't ever see or hear discussed. What if Adam merges with an Eva? What if a human merges with Adam? What if an Angel merges with Lilith? I'd be willing to bet these can all happen and all differently, and this accounts for the unpredictable results when an impact occurs. Seele and Gendo each thing they have a perfect scenario crafted, but there's actually way more variables than they're aware of. This is all getting away from the textual analysis side of things, but I think it's fun to speculate about the mechanics of what we're seeing on screen too. You can perceive the whole series as a battle between various factions to determine what life on Earth should look like, and they are basically gaming Punnet squares of various existing beings to define it. Hell, the whole "everyone's tang" thing in EoE could full well be an interrupted impact. The raw materials are broken down into a form that can be used to build the new life form, but Shinji asserts himself and interrupts the process before it can be reshaped.
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May 17, 2013 17:03
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:This might help go toward explaining why everyone in Tokyo 3 appeared to be in the process of turning into Eva in the Rebuild version of 3rd Impact. An impact event creates a form of life from the materials available + the god being. When an Eva triggered 3rd Impact by touching Lilith, impact literally took the raw materials (humans) and began remaking them in the image of the sperm (the Eva). Because the impact was interrupted, these proto-Eva all died, thus the condition of Nerv HQ in 3.33. Now that makes a boatload of sense to me. With this in mind I'm hoping that we get in Rebuild Final the "Starchild" of 2001, A Space Odyssey's, when a lifeform goes all the way. Imagine the trippiness of the Instrumentality that we would get with that. 
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May 17, 2013 19:11
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Whoever said the MAGI weren't present in Rebuild, go back and watch the first movie. The scene where Shinji sees Gendo speaking to Rei before they run the re-activation tests on Unit 00, they mention transferring test data over to Melchior.
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May 18, 2013 07:31
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I'm afraid I have an incredibly boring newbie Eva question. Can someone explain to me SEELE's motivations vs Gendo's? I don't get what Gendo was actually trying to do or how it differed from SEELE's secret plot. Also: if SEELE were planning to trigger instrumentality and turn everyone into soup all along, why did they waste all that time killing angels and preventing it? The same goes for Gendo.
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May 18, 2013 18:57
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Third Impact is heavily influenced by the method of ignition. Angels turn it on, Humans get wiped out. If SEELE does it, the real instrumentality begins. Gendo's twist puts it in his court.
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May 18, 2013 20:12
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Popcorn posted:I'm afraid I have an incredibly boring newbie Eva question. Gendo wants his wife back. He tried extracting her from Unit-01 using the Magi (the same way they succesfully extract Shinji) but that method requires the willing cooperation of whomever you're trying to retrieve; Yui didn't want to come back. So instead he tries to hijack Instrumentality to re-unite with his wife. We don't know the mechanics of how he would do this because Rei III doesn't let him finish. At one point he remarks (of Instrumentality) "destruction creates nothing," which makes it sound like he's skeptical of or even opposed to any version that would include the whole world. SEELE's motivations are only ever explained in indirect bits and pieces via their arguments with each other and Gendo, but it boils down to two things: they don't want to die, and they regard Instrumentality as a means of personal survival. At one point they talk about using Unit-01 as "their own private ark," which probably explains part of their conflict with Gendo -- they both want Unit-01 for mutually exclusive purposes. None of this explains why SEELE is content with the version of Instrumentality they get in EoE. Possibly they didn't realize what Yui was up to, or their motivations had changed, or Keel Lorenz wasn't speaking for the entire group. Rebuild SEELE is an entirely different ball of wax because they frequently refer to a "contract" with Lilith, don't care at all about dying, and claim only to want "the purification of all human souls," which based on Fuyutsuki's comments means Fourth Impact and the Kaworu + Shinji-based Instrumentality that doesn't quite go off. Popcorn posted:Also: if SEELE were planning to trigger instrumentality and turn everyone into soup all along, why did they waste all that time killing angels and preventing it? The same goes for Gendo. An Angel reaching Terminal Dogma isn't Instrumentality, the two have nothing to do with each other aside from both being apocalyptic events. An Angel reaching Adam would erase all Lilith-based life on the planet, and while they never really specify what an Angel reaching Lilith would do it's probably not conducive to anyone's plans either.
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May 18, 2013 20:13
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Seele wants to tang themselves, merging them all into one being, and transfer that into an Evangelion equipped with an S2 engine. They'd then destroy the Lance of Longinus somehow thus becoming an immortal god-like being. Screw everybody else. Gendo wants to merge into one being, but only to reunite with Yui. If the rest of humanity gets tanged in the process so be it. The Angels are constantly attacking NERV HQ because they think that's where Adam is, and they want to merge with him. It's actually Lilith though and if an Angel(of Adam) merges with Lilith the instrumentality would kill all humans leaving only Angel life, as Earth was originally supposed to be. EDIT: I may be wrong about angels merging with Lilith. Humans, and all life spawned from Lilith are pests screwing up some incredibly advanced race's Master Plan. Tuxedo Catfish is correct, all this stuff is based on info from the Eva Wiki. It's a really interesting read if you're into the series but it is compiled from many sources: the show, the mangas, the games, and interviews with staff. Because of this it isn't always reliable, but it's what I base most of the backstory on. bring back old gbs fucked around with this message at 20:39 on May 18, 2013 |
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May 18, 2013 20:15
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Also none of what ACanOfPepsi is referring to comes from the show so if you didn't get any of that don't feel like it's your fault.
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May 18, 2013 20:17
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If an Angel merges with Lilith, would that start a process of converting all lilim based life into Angels? That might explain all the giant eva-like skulls in 3.33.
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May 18, 2013 20:28
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Hmm...so what you're saying is they really just want some Tang. Man, this whole poo poo could have been solved in 5 minutes with a trip to the grocery store!
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May 18, 2013 20:42
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I get that Gendo wants to be with Yui again, and that SEELE just want to turn into soup because they're a sinister death cult (though the stuff about hitching a ride in 02 is new to me). What I don't get is how those ideas are different or mutually exclusive. Instrumentality is supposed to form all beings into a single consciousness or something, right? (Very movingly expressed by all the Nerv staff seeing their loved ones before they pop?) So how did their plans differ?Tuxedo Catfish posted:None of this explains why SEELE is content with the version of Instrumentality they get in EoE. Possibly they didn't realize what Yui was up to, or their motivations had changed, or Keel Lorenz wasn't speaking for the entire group. Did you mean Gendo here? Popcorn fucked around with this message at 00:50 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 18, 2013 23:41
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Popcorn posted:I get that Gendo wants to be with Yui again, and that SEELE just want to turn into soup because they're a sinister death cult (though the stuff about hitching a ride in 02 is new to me). What I don't get is how those ideas are different or mutually exclusive. Instrumentality is supposed to form all beings into a single consciousness or something, right? (Very movingly expressed by all the Nerv staff seeing their loved ones before they pop?) So how did their plans differ? Instrumentality turns people into other things, but what the other things are depends on the specific manner by which Instrumentality is brought about. In EoE, we got gestalt soup. In Rebuild, Evas.
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May 18, 2013 23:50
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Gendo wants his wife back. He tried extracting her from Unit-01 using the Magi (the same way they succesfully extract Shinji) but that method requires the willing cooperation of whomever you're trying to retrieve; Yui didn't want to come back. My memory is hazy... When was this presented ? As for Rebuild SEELE, I got at the end of Rebuild 3 that they are no longer relevant, and that the head oncho is now Gendo. It's even hinted at when Kaworu calls him King of the Lilim. Also, like it was mentioned in an earlier post, he's now wearing Keel Lorenz's visor, which could be thought of as the high-tech version of a crown. With Kaworu gone, there's no conscious SELEE agents left, so the conflict is firmly between Wille and Nerv now. We are at the end game with Gendo holding most of the cards, i.e. an Awakened Eva+Angel Core, the Key to the Nebuchadnezzar (Adam's embryo probably) and lots of Mass-Produced Evas (judging from the previews). All he's missing is Shinji, or a compatible Eva pilot of Eva-13, to trigger last Impact and start Instrumentality. That's why Gendo says the situation is within acceptable parameters. Come to think of it, if he had also taken control of Wunder, it would have been checkmate, with no one to oppose him. I'm not expecting SELEE to be relevant at all in Rebuild Final. And my guess on why SELEE or Gendo didn't want to trigger Instrumentality when there were still Angels around, is that they didn't want an Angel popping out during Instrumentality and mess things up. Popcorn posted:I get that Gendo wants to be with Yui again, and that SEELE just want to turn into soup because they're a sinister death cult (though the stuff about hitching a ride in 02 is new to me). What I don't get is how those ideas are different or mutually exclusive. Instrumentality is supposed to form all beings into a single consciousness or something, right? (Very movingly expressed by all the Nerv staff seeing their loved ones before they pop?) So how did their plans differ? I think that Gendo wanted to be in control of Instrumentality. He wanted to be absolutely certain that he would be reunited with his wife. By being rejected by Rei, he lost that control. In the end, Rei gave control to Shinji, and look what happened. Yui was sent into space with Eva-01, firmly out of reach, and Instrumentality was a failure. Good job Shinji ! Edit : Didn't address your question directly. My take is that in the end it was all about who was in control. SELEE didn't want Gendo in control, so they forced Instrumentality to be on their terms, in part by using the MP Evas. Gendo, doing 11-dimensional chess as usual, foresaw this and used Adam's embryo and Rei to get enough power to hijack Instrumentality for his own ends. bof_man fucked around with this message at 00:48 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 00:38
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Popcorn posted:I get that Gendo wants to be with Yui again, and that SEELE just want to turn into soup because they're a sinister death cult (though the stuff about hitching a ride in 02 is new to me). What I don't get is how those ideas are different or mutually exclusive. Instrumentality is supposed to form all beings into a single consciousness or something, right? (Very movingly expressed by all the Nerv staff seeing their loved ones before they pop?) So how did their plans differ? It isn't shown how Gendos version would differ. It could be assumed it would give Yui a physical body again, but how that version of Third Impact would affect everyone else remains to be seen in Rebuild and wasn't elaborated on in the show/EoE. His plan differs from SEELEs in that he doesn't seem to want it to affect everyone, he just wants to be with Yui again. Terminal Entropy fucked around with this message at 00:57 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 00:54
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You're putting the cart before the horse. We don't know why SEELE considered NERV and Gendo such a threat to their desired outcome that they needed to murder them to the last man, woman, and child, just that they did. Personally I suspect that despite whatever the hell the writers of the PS2 game came up with, Gendo's version of Instrumentality didn't involve tanging everyone. He deliberately arranges to have the Lance of Longinus thrown outside of SEELE's reach, despite it being a necessary component of Instrumentality as-performed in EoE. He's dismissive of SEELE's religious attitude towards the Evangelions and the project. His closest friend and confidant, Fuyutsuki, hates the idea of a world purged of human life and would rather have us live on even if we're "stained with sin" -- and he cooperates with Gendo literally to his last breath. There's also this sequence from the director's cut of Episode 24: quote:Kaworu: Suggesting that Gendo wants only an incomplete Instrumentality. (Which, amusingly, he achieves not only once but multiple times in Rebuild.) bof_man posted:My memory is hazy... When was this presented ? It's the episode of the original series where Shinji is trapped in the Angel's shadow and absorbed into Unit-01. They eventually recover the Eva but find that Shinji's been dissolved into LCL, and Ritsuko talks at some length about the process they're going to attempt and how it's only been tried once before and failed, and how Shinji has to want to return. Yui wanting to stay in Unit-01 comes up in EoE for sure and possibly in episode 21 -- or at least there's some relevant background there. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 04:14 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 01:00
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:You're putting the cart before the horse. We don't know why SEELE considered NERV and Gendo such a threat to their desired outcome that they needed to murder them to the last man, woman, and child, just that they did. So this, like, a plot hole, or what? I realise I'm missing the point of Eva by asking these questions. I'm just trying to work out what I'm meant to make sense of (perhaps with a bit of detective work), what informs the actual messages of the show, and what's just anime noise. I've seen the whole series three times now, plus the Rebuilds, and I still have no idea what's happening.
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May 19, 2013 01:27
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Popcorn posted:So this, like, a plot hole, or what? No, a plot hole is where the narrative contradicts its own internal logic. This is just the show making the motives of adults alien and incomprehensible because that's how they seem to the protagonist(s). The only people whose lives we're totally privy to without massive chunks of information deliberately left missing are Shinji and Misato. (And in Rebuild's case, not even Misato.) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 02:02 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 01:59
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I thought it was obvious that Gendo and SEELE's plans for Instrumentality were almost certainly mutually exclusive and that's why SEELE decided to wipe NERV out. Gendo had outmanoeuvred SEELE to such an extent that they had no option except the application of overwhelming force.
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May 19, 2013 02:05
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These posts are a bit old but I'd love to hear some more expanding on them:Tuxedo Catfish posted:Shinji has the choice between accumulating all of mankind into a godlike hive-mind with no individuality (but also no suffering or fear), or going back. He almost commits to the former but realizes at the last moment that it's wrong and backs down. He goes back to being human, and therefore angry, terrified, hosed up, etc. Tuxedo Catfish posted:I said something like this in the old thread: the remarkable thing about the scene where Shinji strangles Asuka isn't that he tries to kill her. The Instrumentality sequence itself has at least one scene where they express their loathing for each other, IIRC Asuka even says she'd rather die than erase the boundary between them. (Well, not explicitly, the scene's constructed so she could be talking about anything from Instrumentality to sex to simply co-existing. But they're degrees of the same thing, at least for this purpose.) This really resonated for me because I remember, when I first watched the series and then EoE ten years ago, feeling somehow that the EoE ending was the "happy"/"correct" ending. The TV ending felt like a cop-out, like Shinji had given up somehow, but I didn't know why, whereas what you beautifully call the "smallest possible optimism" of EoE really moved me. It was an Adam and Eve situation: cast out of Eden, everything seemed lost, but everything necessary to continue was there. So a few weeks ago I watched the video that got posted where the nerd puppet explained that the EoE ending is actually the "bad" ending and thought oh, I guess I misread those endings. But it's been years since I watched them and I don't remember any details beyond these vague emotional responses I had as a teenager. Popcorn fucked around with this message at 02:08 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 02:06
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A lot of comes down to "who do you trust." Of the three forces gunning for Instrumentality, one is a bunch of creepy old fossils who already rule the world and think they have the right to end it if they please; one is a broken, selfish man who does nothing but abuse and neglect his son; the last is a woman who's willing to bind her soul to a ravenous beast and endure eternal loneliness if it means her child has a hope at a happy future. None of them are exactly perfect, but I know who I'd side with. Yui's soul is the one in Unit-01 at the time of Instrumentality; her son is piloting it; her clone is the psychopomp who directs all human souls to her; she's the one who asks Shinji what he wants to do in his moment on the cross and Rei is the one who carries it out and shows him the result. We know from episode 21 that she has a plan opposed to SEELE's, that she knew about Third Impact from the Dead Sea Scrolls almost a decade in advance, that her vision of SEELE and NERV's purpose was "preventing the final tragedy." In EoE SEELE are the ones who initiate Instrumentality (what with the Mass Production Evas seizing Unit-01) but what I get from all of this is that Yui is the one who takes control -- and between her and Shinji, what should have been the "forced evolution of mankind" instead becomes voluntary, the apocalypse still happens but isn't final. The part of EoE that actually depicts this is full of warm light, gratitude, and optimism -- everyone who was screaming in terror when they were getting tanged gets to come back! So on the grand scale, I just can't see that as a bad ending, unless it's in comparison to no Third Impact at all. If EoE ended right there, with Unit-01 beatifically pronouncing humanity's right to self-determination and standing as eternal proof that we lived, I don't think it would be controversial to call it a good ending. So that just leaves the scene on the beach, and whether or not it contradicts episodes 25 and 26. Because 25 + 26 are totally happy and portray Shinji as fixed and whole again, while the beach scene is neurotic and ugly. Except... they're not really that far apart. Episode 25 has Asuka and Shinji both begging not to be abandoned and killed, and at a later point a sequence of voices all tell Shinji that they hate him. It's intimated that some of this is just an illusion, that people don't really hate him as much as he thinks they do, but the idea is still that he will have to overcome these obstacles, with difficulty, before he can be happy. And the realization that leads to everyone congratulating him? It's "But maybe I can learn to love myself!" Not a guarantee; just hope. My personal spin on it is that every time Shinji hallucinates inside Unit-01 and goes to the train station for a chat with Rei or some weird hybrid blur of Misato/Rei/Asuka, it's not really them he's speaking to -- it's his mother, communicating her intentions to him through his subconscious. Episodes 25 and 26 are her intentions for him (and for everyone), blended together with the actual events of EoE. Not contradictory, just theory and practice. The scene on the beach happens after she and Shinji have separated and therefore after 26 chronologically, but everything they've said still applies: "Maybe I can learn to love myself," "I believe he can be happy anywhere, if he tries," etc.
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May 19, 2013 03:17
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Popcorn posted:So this, like, a plot hole, or what? Here let me try to make a literal explanation of SELEE vs. Gendo. It's mostly inference and conjecture at this point, but hey, isn't that half the fun of NGE ? So, SELEE is going to sacrifice Eva-01 (Yui), along with Shinji as the pilot, to complete Instrumentality. Or, even if they weren't going to sacrifice Eva-01 (if let's say Eva-02 went berserk instead and ate Zeruel), Eva-01 would still have been impervious to Instrumentality's tangification process. In all cases, Eva-01 (Yui) is going to become out of reach if SELEE's scenario plays out. Gendo doesn't want that, he doesn't want to be tangified and be reunited with everyone minus his wife and son (mostly his wife). He probably understood this from the day Yui got absorbed into Eva-01. So he devised this plan where he would absorb Adam's embryo and use its power to control Instrumentality and make sure Yui would be safely restored from Eva-01. And like Tuxedo Catfish mentioned, he also tried to trip SELEE's plans by making the Lance of Longinus thrown out of reach. This act surely tipped SELEE off that Gendo was up to no good concerning their own version of Instrumentality. This makes SELEE and Gendo sorely at odds with each other. I think the files in the PS2 game helped a lot to make sense of NGE's backstory (it's all aliens and stuff). Still, NGE is deliberately obtuse and there's a lot of room for interpretation. Maybe what I wrote above is right, maybe I got it partially right, maybe it's all wrong. Who knows ? Ultimately it's part of the fun of NGE.
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May 19, 2013 03:25
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The long and short of it is, as long as it makes sense to you and comes from watching the show, whatever you think the thing is supposed to mean, it means. Outside of the basic skeleton of the motivations (Gendo wants wife, SELEE want apotheosis and/or oblivion, Yui wants to be the giant robot, everybody is desperate for affection) the rest is mostly filling in the blanks with personal readings based on internal lenses, sperg, and an understanding of ~Japanese Culture~.
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May 19, 2013 04:00
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| # ? May 24, 2024 18:44 |
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 I don't remember this happening! is it actually in Eva somewhere or is this some fan thing?
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May 19, 2013 15:00
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