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Darley-Wilkinson
Jun 19, 2007

uuuuiiii

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Like in episode 1, Shinji is totally ready to defy his father and leave until Gendo threatens to push his task off on an injured Rei -- he's motivated by preventing someone else's suffering, not praise-seeking. So later when he claims that's why he pilots, is he lying to himself, or did his motivations change?

That's a great observation and it's something that hadn't occurred to me before. I think it's definitely deliberately meant to show he's lying to himself- one of my favorite things about the series is how it assumes the default state of internal dialogue is like an ongoing, endlessly self-contradicting conversation or argument. Any time Shinji seems to approach an answer to his problems, or some sort of internal reconciliation, he supplies himself with new reasons to doubt it, or skips over to another reason to despise himself altogether. So yeah, I think it's definitely supposed to reinforce the idea that a lot of Shinji's anguish is self-inflicted.

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Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
I could easily see it going the other way too, though, that getting positive reinforcement from his father for the first time in his life really meant that much to him, and that his earlier defiance was partly because he didn't believe it was even possible. It fits in with the idea that piloting Eva is addictive/seductive, which Rebuild plays up even more. I don't know if there's a definitive answer though.

AradoBalanga
Jan 3, 2013

http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2014/04/24/evangelion-x-transformers-collaboration-teased

So...this is potentially a thing that's happening. :stare:

TARDISman
Oct 28, 2011



Neon Genesis Transformers, starring Megan Fox as Asuka Langley Sohryu and Robin Williams as Gendou Ikari.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



TARDISman posted:

Robin Williams as Gendou Ikari.

brb, setting up a tent at Grauman's this weekend.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
I would dig having Robin Williams as Gendo.

TARDISman
Oct 28, 2011



He is a huge fan of the series and this is probably fake, but there's a rumor floating around that he auditioned for Gendou in Rebuild.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

TARDISman posted:

Neon Genesis Transformers, starring Megan Fox as Asuka Langley Sohryu and Robin Williams as Gendou Ikari.

It's too bad Peter Cushing is dead, or we'd have Fuyutsuki..

Szmitten
Apr 26, 2008
While I know a lot about it, and I don't exactly consider Evangelion a sacred cow, but every single insinuation of a westernised Evangelion (live action or otherwise) just completely repells me. I'm not suggesting that I know better than the people involved, but Eva comes from such a specific place and is so inherently Japanese as gently caress that something has to give and completely loving aggravate anybody who knows the franchise (begging the question of "Why use that property in the first place then?").

Especially not (formerly-?)ADV et al.

Assepoester
Jul 18, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
Melman v2
Unicron vs giant Lilith

Stalins Moustache
Dec 31, 2012

~~**I'm Italian!**~~
Somewhat unrelated but I was recommended Bokurano by a friend because she knows I really liked Evangelion and the Rebuild movies. I recommend it as well because it's actually really good and it touches many of the themes that Evangelion had too. The manga is not really long either so if you have a few evenings with nothing to do, it's definately worth a read if you want emotionally hosed up people fighting to their death in a giant robot. I am not sure about the anime since I've only seen a few episodes, but so far I prefer the manga because there's something off about the animations in the anime. It also has a very good opening. Reminds me a lot of Hikaru Utada's musical contribution to the Rebuild movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05p646nlYS0

SethSeries
Sep 10, 2013



So I knocked out episodes six through eight and I was pretty pleasantly surprised. I forgot how cool the concept of operation use Japan as ammo for a giant gently caress off laser was and how neat Misato's little side episode was. Shinji's starting to regrow on me again. I really like him as a straight man to Misato and everyone else with bits of needing confidence. Despite all the creepiness of Rei as a concept, their final interaction after he pulls her out of the smoking entry plug is pretty touching. Asuka is well, Asuka. I know she's really one of the originals of the trope, but years of garbage anime have soured me to the whole angry girl with sweet emotions buried somewhere archetype. I will admit though, her antics aboard the boats were fun to watch.

The Holy Queef
Jul 13, 2003
No, it is not gross, in fact, it's funny, yeah, think of it that way.

Stalins Moustache posted:

Somewhat unrelated but I was recommended Bokurano by a friend because she knows I really liked Evangelion and the Rebuild movies. I recommend it as well because it's actually really good and it touches many of the themes that Evangelion had too. The manga is not really long either so if you have a few evenings with nothing to do, it's definately worth a read if you want emotionally hosed up people fighting to their death in a giant robot. I am not sure about the anime since I've only seen a few episodes, but so far I prefer the manga because there's something off about the animations in the anime. It also has a very good opening. Reminds me a lot of Hikaru Utada's musical contribution to the Rebuild movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05p646nlYS0

I remember reading this manga years ago. Didn't realize there was an anime adaption... Thanks!

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!

Eh, I don't know. "Give Me Your Face!" Optimus vs. an Eva would probably be a fun fight to watch. I agree with the one comment there that it should only happen in an SRW game, though.

SethSeries
Sep 10, 2013



So I'm still working on making my way back through the series but I remembered something someone here may answer for me. So was there an explanation for why during Asuka's rampage in End, that even once her Eva lost it's operational power, she still felt the effects of the full sync ratio such as losing her arm?

SHISHKABOB
Nov 30, 2012

Fun Shoe
Her mom's soul was inside the evangelion

super spoiler: shinji's mom was inside unit-01

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Cardboard Box A posted:

Unicron vs giant Lilith

Giant Nakee Shockwave

Squallege
Jan 7, 2006

No greater good, no just cause

Grimey Drawer
I watched End of Evangelion again and it still remains one of my favorite anime things for some reason.

Sakurazuka
Jan 24, 2004

NANI?

The Instrumentality sequence with 'Komm, susser Tod' playing is probably my favourite animated sequence of all time, dodgy early 2000's CGI and all.

SethSeries
Sep 10, 2013



SHISHKABOB posted:

Her mom's soul was inside the evangelion

super spoiler: shinji's mom was inside unit-01

I'm well aware of both. Didn't know that caused magical super sync rates to apply to a powerless machine.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

TheManSeries posted:

I'm well aware of both. Didn't know that caused magical super sync rates to apply to a powerless machine.

Asuka finally related to / reconciled with (what was left of) her mother's soul. They die together which is what her mother wanted in the first place, except the first time around she was delusional and couldn't tell her daughter apart from her doll. The sync ratio effects, shared pain, etc. are just another way of expressing that; it's a horrible, depressing monkey's paw granting of Asuka's wish, not unlike Shinji's apocalypse in Rebuild.

Your mistake is assuming that Evangelions are machines and not, in fact, magic. :v:

SHISHKABOB
Nov 30, 2012

Fun Shoe
tuxedo catfish you explain evangelion so well

TheManSeries posted:

I'm well aware of both. Didn't know that caused magical super sync rates to apply to a powerless machine.

Well I mean, it's her mom, so I think that explains high sync rates. And even though the evangelions run out of power and don't work normally, they do go berserk when the soul inside takes over (or the monster just plain goes crazy).

SHISHKABOB fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Apr 30, 2014

SethSeries
Sep 10, 2013



Works for me. I haven't made my way back to End yet , but it's coming. I'm banking on it still being horrifying but I understand it more.

GulMadred
Oct 20, 2005

I don't understand how you can be so mistaken.

SHISHKABOB posted:

And even though the evangelions run out of power and don't work normally, they do go berserk when the soul inside takes over (or the monster just plain goes crazy).
My understanding is that the Eva unit doesn't go crazy - it simply awakens and lashes out because (A: there's a horrific monster in front of me and it's trying to kill me) and/or (B: I'm surrounded by vivisectionists and there are thousands of bits of metal hammered through my body and there's a voice in my mind that I don't recognize and I'm in horrific pain). Remember: the whole point of the Gehirn-Nerv-Evangelion project was to enslave and weaponize a sapient being.
  • Here's this living organism which possesses enough power to glass a planet.
    • Okay, that's scary. Maybe we should leave it alone.
  • But! There's some kind of vague threat mentioned in an old Jewish story. Also hubris. Therefore we should harness this power.
    • Okay, we've managed to clone a few parts of it via <abomination> and <war crime> and <NSFW>. But if we put the whole thing together it will probably just go on a rampage and kill us all.
  • Okay then, let's implant stuff into its brain and keep it permanently asleep.
    • Ummmm... if it's permanently asleep then how will it defend us from <vague thing mentioned in Dead Sea Scrolls> or help us to achieve <poorly-understood transcendence plan>?
  • No problem; we'll implant more stuff into its nervous system so that we can access its sensory apparatus and send signals to its muscles, while the creature itself stays dormant. It'll basically sleepwalk through combat deployments.
    • Ummm... we're not talking about jamming electrodes into a frog brain; that thing's enormous. The activation potential is, like, 60MV.
  • Yeah, and we can't risk tapping into the actual bio-electrical system because there's too much risk of accidental brain stimulation. RTGs don't provide enough power, and the brass isn't willing to put a reactor into an urban combat platform. We'll just implant some big LiON battery packs and hope that they don't run dry during combat.
    • Okay. We can access the sensorium and force it to move. But the data is very complex and the inverse kinematics are a gigantic bitch. Even our best supercomputer can't puppet-master the thing well enough to succeed in simulated combat, and there isn't actually enough room (or power, or cooling) to fit a supercomputer inside the thing. Remote control isn't an option because a combat-strength AT-field will deflect radio waves.
  • No problem, we've discovered a <sin against nature> process which allows us to bind a human soul into the organism's core. It should serve as a real-time translation layer which can make the sensorium understandable while also interpreting human motor neuron signals into kinematics which are compatible with our battery-stimulation gear. We just need to stick a human pilot into a cylindrical MRI/EEG chamber filled with amniotic fluid (because REASONS) and get the pilot to wear a dorky headband. The pilot cylinder ought to fit neatly into the cavity where the organism's upper spine used to be. The pilot just needs to mentally bond with the resident soul. There's nothing mushy or philosophical about that - it takes place via a loving numbered checklist!
    • Hey. We did all of that, and we put a test pilot inside, but we can never get past step 108 and the organism remains inert. What gives?
  • Yeeeeeeah... It turns out that human souls retain identity and autonomy even after they've been subjected to the <techno-soulflay-mindrape> procedure. Also, the <techno-soulflay-mindrape> procedure seems to imbue the soul with a completely inexplicable hostility towards Gehirn/Nerv personnel. We'll need to find a pilot that the soul wants to bond with and protect.
    • <sarcastically> You mean, like abducting the already-traumatized children of the ladies we soulflayed and forcing them to work for us?
  • Great idea, Jim! Also, you know too much so you've been volunteered for early retirement into a lime-filled grave in the desert.

Mindblast
Jun 28, 2006

Moving at the speed of death.


Wait that checklist that comes up multiple times throughout the show is actually about the pilot linking up with the soul? I thought the whole soul-absorption thing was an accident and the original plan was for pilots to link up more directly with the nervous system of the bipal wmd.

SALT CURES HAM
Jan 4, 2011

Squallege posted:

I watched End of Evangelion again and it still remains one of my favorite anime things for some reason.

You say "for some reason" like End of Evangelion doesn't kick loving rear end. :colbert:

e: It actually doesn't make a lot of sense to me that Asuka's mom ended up in Unit 02. Yui, fair enough, Unit 01 absorbed her. Lilith in Unit 00, also fair enough, because obviously if they could make Rei they could put bits of Lilith in there too. But Asuka's mom killed herself on the other side of the world from NERV, in a way that had nothing to do with Evangelions (as in, she wasn't eaten by one she piloted). How the hell does that work? :psyduck:

SALT CURES HAM fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Apr 30, 2014

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
That part's easy, her mind/sanity was absorbed by Unit 02. So what was left in her original body was so unstable she pushed Asuka away and eventually killed herself.

GulMadred
Oct 20, 2005

I don't understand how you can be so mistaken.

SALT CURES HAM posted:

But Asuka's mom killed herself on the other side of the world from NERV, in a way that had nothing to do with Evangelions
Unit-02 was constructed in Germany (NERV 3rd branch), just as Unit-03 came from Massachusetts and Unit-04 from Nevada. These things are supposed to be phenomenally expensive to build and support. The first time that we see Unit-02, it's on a ship being transported to Japan where it will begin its combat assignment.

It's reasonable to assume that they ran a contact experiment on the Unit-02 core early on during its development (5+ years before the TV series began). Kyoko's soul gets eaten, Asuka gets mentally scarred/motivated, Marduk Institute shenanigans occur, Asuka gets trained as a pilot, Unit-02 passes its initial trials, and the deployment schedule gets accelerated because "oh poo poo, angels!" In fact, given that Unit-02 ate only part of Kyoko's soul, we can hypothesize that:
  • they were applying lessons learned from the Yui incident, but also that
  • the bosses understood the risks (whether they actually warned Kyoko is less certain)

Szmitten
Apr 26, 2008

GulMadred posted:

Unit-02 was constructed in Germany (NERV 3rd branch), just as Unit-03 came from Massachusetts and Unit-04 from Nevada. These things are supposed to be phenomenally expensive to build and support. The first time that we see Unit-02, it's on a ship being transported to Japan where it will begin its combat assignment.

It's reasonable to assume that they ran a contact experiment on the Unit-02 core early on during its development (5+ years before the TV series began). Kyoko's soul gets eaten, Asuka gets mentally scarred/motivated, Marduk Institute shenanigans occur, Asuka gets trained as a pilot, Unit-02 passes its initial trials, and the deployment schedule gets accelerated because "oh poo poo, angels!" In fact, given that Unit-02 ate only part of Kyoko's soul, we can hypothesize that:
  • they were applying lessons learned from the Yui incident, but also that
  • the bosses understood the risks (whether they actually warned Kyoko is less certain)

It gets shadier.

All of Shinji's classmates' mothers are dead, and that entire class consists of potential pilots with mother-bound Eva cores ready to go.

SALT CURES HAM
Jan 4, 2011
Oh. Huh, seems like a rewatch is in order, then. :v:

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

Mindblast posted:

Wait that checklist that comes up multiple times throughout the show is actually about the pilot linking up with the soul? I thought the whole soul-absorption thing was an accident and the original plan was for pilots to link up more directly with the nervous system of the bipal wmd.

Souls in Eva are mechanistic enough that NERV can copy them for the dummy plugs, there's :techno: about souls and ego barriers, and bombs can break through "the light of the soul".

Wachter
Mar 23, 2007

You and whose knees?

For me, that was always the biggest "religious controversy" in Evangelion. Never mind all the co-opted Judeo-Christian symbolism - the human soul is something that can be quantified and digitized.

Mindblast
Jun 28, 2006

Moving at the speed of death.


Yeah it seems I forgot a lot of details over time. Like, I can't even remember where we learn about unit 2's soul other than Asuka's monologue during her final moment.

SHISHKABOB
Nov 30, 2012

Fun Shoe

Mindblast posted:

Yeah it seems I forgot a lot of details over time. Like, I can't even remember where we learn about unit 2's soul other than Asuka's monologue during her final moment.

I think that's pretty much exactly when we learn it (though I could be mistaken).

Sakurazuka
Jan 24, 2004

NANI?

That's where it's confirmed, but it wasn't exactly a stretch considering what we knew up to that point.

Babysitter Super Sleuth
Apr 26, 2012

my posts are as bad the Current Releases review of Gone Girl

Wachter posted:

For me, that was always the biggest "religious controversy" in Evangelion. Never mind all the co-opted Judeo-Christian symbolism - the human soul is something that can be quantified and digitized.

Its not so much that you can quantify the soul as it is that NERV's whole schtick is that they try to categorize and box poo poo that cannot really be categorized and boxed. It's no coincidence that a lot of the technobabble and diegetic explanations either don't hold up or are actively contradicted by later events. Leliel is a good example, Ritsuko cooks up some bullshit technological explanation that involves a misunderstanding of a Dirac sea because she refuses to admit that Leliel is a living shadow that eats things and she does not have the knowledge or context to explain that poo poo. Nobody in the series that tries to talk about souls knows what the gently caress they're talking about except maybe Yui, which is why all the rules people put down for them end up being broken all the time.

Babysitter Super Sleuth fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Apr 30, 2014

The MUMPSorceress
Jan 6, 2012


^SHTPSTS

Gary’s Answer
I wonder if Anno read a lot of Kierkegaard before making Eva. Kierkegaard basically thought that the correct relationship to have with the divine is "I don't understand you and it leaves an incredibly empty place in my soul that fills me with sorrow." If you thought you understood what God wanted or was thinking, you're doing life wrong and will be punished. Eva seems to have a lot of that going on.

Zenzirouj
Jun 10, 2004

What about you, thread?
You got any tricks?

Szmitten posted:

Eva comes from such a specific place and is so inherently Japanese as gently caress that something has to give and completely loving aggravate anybody who knows the franchise (begging the question of "Why use that property in the first place then?").
I'd agree, but we're also a country that took the Hachi story and made it about an old white guy in Rhode Island, so

Wachter posted:

For me, that was always the biggest "religious controversy" in Evangelion. Never mind all the co-opted Judeo-Christian symbolism - the human soul is something that can be quantified and digitized.
Even though I know it's probably an exposed hard disk, I like to think that it was actually a cd-rom. The human soul is less than 700mb of data.

Robotnik Nudes
Jul 8, 2013

GulMadred posted:

My understanding is that the Eva unit doesn't go crazy - it simply awakens and lashes out because (A: there's a horrific monster in front of me and it's trying to kill me) and/or (B: I'm surrounded by vivisectionists and there are thousands of bits of metal hammered through my body and there's a voice in my mind that I don't recognize and I'm in horrific pain). Remember: the whole point of the Gehirn-Nerv-Evangelion project was to enslave and weaponize a sapient being.
  • Here's this living organism which possesses enough power to glass a planet.
    • Okay, that's scary. Maybe we should leave it alone.
  • But! There's some kind of vague threat mentioned in an old Jewish story. Also hubris. Therefore we should harness this power.
    • Okay, we've managed to clone a few parts of it via <abomination> and <war crime> and <NSFW>. But if we put the whole thing together it will probably just go on a rampage and kill us all.
  • Okay then, let's implant stuff into its brain and keep it permanently asleep.
    • Ummmm... if it's permanently asleep then how will it defend us from <vague thing mentioned in Dead Sea Scrolls> or help us to achieve <poorly-understood transcendence plan>?
  • No problem; we'll implant more stuff into its nervous system so that we can access its sensory apparatus and send signals to its muscles, while the creature itself stays dormant. It'll basically sleepwalk through combat deployments.
    • Ummm... we're not talking about jamming electrodes into a frog brain; that thing's enormous. The activation potential is, like, 60MV.
  • Yeah, and we can't risk tapping into the actual bio-electrical system because there's too much risk of accidental brain stimulation. RTGs don't provide enough power, and the brass isn't willing to put a reactor into an urban combat platform. We'll just implant some big LiON battery packs and hope that they don't run dry during combat.
    • Okay. We can access the sensorium and force it to move. But the data is very complex and the inverse kinematics are a gigantic bitch. Even our best supercomputer can't puppet-master the thing well enough to succeed in simulated combat, and there isn't actually enough room (or power, or cooling) to fit a supercomputer inside the thing. Remote control isn't an option because a combat-strength AT-field will deflect radio waves.
  • No problem, we've discovered a <sin against nature> process which allows us to bind a human soul into the organism's core. It should serve as a real-time translation layer which can make the sensorium understandable while also interpreting human motor neuron signals into kinematics which are compatible with our battery-stimulation gear. We just need to stick a human pilot into a cylindrical MRI/EEG chamber filled with amniotic fluid (because REASONS) and get the pilot to wear a dorky headband. The pilot cylinder ought to fit neatly into the cavity where the organism's upper spine used to be. The pilot just needs to mentally bond with the resident soul. There's nothing mushy or philosophical about that - it takes place via a loving numbered checklist!
    • Hey. We did all of that, and we put a test pilot inside, but we can never get past step 108 and the organism remains inert. What gives?
  • Yeeeeeeah... It turns out that human souls retain identity and autonomy even after they've been subjected to the <techno-soulflay-mindrape> procedure. Also, the <techno-soulflay-mindrape> procedure seems to imbue the soul with a completely inexplicable hostility towards Gehirn/Nerv personnel. We'll need to find a pilot that the soul wants to bond with and protect.
    • <sarcastically> You mean, like abducting the already-traumatized children of the ladies we soulflayed and forcing them to work for us?
  • Great idea, Jim! Also, you know too much so you've been volunteered for early retirement into a lime-filled grave in the desert.

This is a great distillation of why I love Eva/NERV. They manage to combine Mad Science and Blasphemous rites. They're Mad Biotheologists. Their science is the most abominable science.

Though you did leave out that the angels all came form harnessing the Monster God in the first place, and the Dead Sea Scrolls weren't prophecies, but mroe of an Operator's Manual for Ye Olde Alien Terraforming god Monsters.

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SHISHKABOB
Nov 30, 2012

Fun Shoe
Where the angels come from is the greatest question in evangelion because holy poo poo I mean where the gently caress are they coming from??? Space I guess but I mean like jeez that means they're aliens, giant monster aliens coming to destroy us and poo poo. Somehow that whole aspect of the show totally got missed by me the first time I watched it, but jeez it's a pretty terrifying prospect.

And what does the show say to you about it? Who cares, they're the enemy!!! It's like a kids parents, or shinjis dad to be specific, where does he come from, who is he, what does he want. The first two are like who the gently caress knows who cares, and the second one has a really straight forward answer: pilot the eva (breach terminal dogma).

When you're a kid you don't know anything about your parents, they're just big monolithic beings that control your life and sometimes are scary. If you don't try to connect with them then they remain GIANT ALIENS WHO WANT TO DESTROY YOU. Your enemy!

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