Neon Genesis Evangelion megathread: Death & Rebirth of the author

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Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

House Louse posted:

I really don't understand how that theory makes any sense at all, considering how the hell you'd have to get from the ending of EoE to the beginning of Rebuild without time travel or something.

The "or something" is probably just cyclical history. But really, in a series like Evangelion discounting an explanation just because you're not sure what the exact mechanism would be isn't the most useful technique; if someone described 3rd Impact to you, responding that you can't believe that because you don't see how it could work (which is certainly true!) misses the point.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2013 02:27

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 05:42

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

House Louse posted:

Anno's said that he wants it to be more accessible for people who haven't seen the original - how will it do that if it's a sequel?

The two aren't mutually exclusive; the film can work on multiple levels at the same time for different target audiences.

Regarding alternate explanations, though, some things just line up too well (especially the line of blood on the moon, which we saw happen in EoE and doesn't seem like something that happens terribly often)to not at least consider the idea, given that it walks/talks/quacks like a duck.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2013 22:12

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Dr_Amazing posted:

Is there a good source that explains what was going on at the end?

Authoritatively? No.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2013 23:52

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

I've seen a rip packaged with a sub script, but nothing that's a unified product.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2013 02:30

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

As always, there's a hell of a lot to process.

Gainax still puts on a son et lumiere like no one else, and I still love all the stuff they do with the support systems for Evas. They completely throw traditional narrative structure out the window, though, and that makes it a bitch to get a good handle on.

I still get the feeling that if anyone in Wille had bothered to tell Shinji anything at all about what had happened and what they knew about what was going on, things would have turned out differently. "Brat Shinji!" is not a very good way to convince someone to stop what they're doing.

It felt like some of the characters were primarily there to make room for some big-name VAs to get in on the fun.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2013 00:01

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I don't really agree but considering it's going to be at least a year until we have any chance whatsoever of resolving this argument

Resolution of mysteries? In Eva?

# ¿ Apr 28, 2013 01:32

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

It seems like people are looking at what Shinji did in 2.22 as making a choice to save Rei at the cost of dooming everyone else. I never really saw that Shinji was explicitly or even implicitly presented with such a choice. The Evas and things like Instrumentality are so outside of his (and similarly just about everyone else's) understanding that I don't see how he could have been aware that what he was doing would cause Third Impact. If you shoot someone who's taken a family member hostage and it detonates a nuke because his heart was triggered to a deadman switch that no one knew was there, you aren't choosing to kill anyone who dies to the nuke, you aren't being reckless, and you aren't even negligent, because the result is utterly unforeseeable.

Saying that he doesn't care what happens to the world as long as he can save her isn't the same as choosing to drat the world; as far as he knew getting Rei out of there was the same as saving the world because the Angel would be defeated.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2013 03:56

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

ImpAtom posted:

I don't think it was a case of "Shinji could save Rei but doom everyone else" but "Shinji was willing to do whatever it takes to Rei, regardless of the consequences, and didn't consider or understand what the consequences might be." As we see in 3.0, he doesn't agree with that on retrospect, as most people don't. Hindsight is 20-20 and Shinji wouldn't make the same decisions in the same situation. But as we see, he makes the same mistake in a new situation because he didn't actually learn from his mistake.

Given that his desire to save Rei seemed to be what reactivated Unit-01, I'm not sure that him not taking that position would have been any better, as it might have just meant that Zeruel would win. It happened differently in the series, of course, but things are different this time and who knows whether Unit-01 would have gone berserk on its own and what that would have done. And I wonder if him reactivating Eva with the intent to save the world at the cost of Rei's life would have changed anything.

This is all hugely complicated by us not really understanding exactly what he did, the manner by which his choices were translated into action, and the extent to which the result was actually a result of his choice and not other factors he had no knowledge of or control over.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2013 04:22

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Sindai posted:

Wow, I totally missed that the canyon is lined with gigantic teeth when I watched.

That is one hell of a vagina dentata.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2013 20:01

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Khanstant posted:

I see why their version of it seems so bleak. I imagine it less as death and more of an evolution. More in line with a super-organism type thing where all individuals share a collective "body" and have access to everything, everyone's memories, experiences, ideas, etc.

Do you really want everyone in existence to be aware of your every thought and to constantly judge you for them? Imagine the worst parts of high school, amplified by a billion or so. Forever.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2013 21:54

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

cafel posted:

The idea that anyone would see it as the preferred outcome is a little shocking to me. All it is is suicide, the end of your consiousness to escape from pain.

I think the metric people use to want something like that is that it appeals to a certain aesthetic sense that they presently have. The actual experience that would result from it isn't nearly as relevant as how the overall concept makes them feel right now. It's an end to war, hate, and suffering, and that would be a good thing, right? Once you start thinking that way, the appeal can make you blind to the problems associated with it. That it would be the end of human existence and the very things that would make a lack of war, hate, and suffering meaningful falls by the wayside.

It's sort of similar to the more misanthropic strains of environmentalism (i.e., "humanity is a cancer on the natural world and it would be better if we were gone") or utopianism that focuses on the ability of an all-powerful entity to completely control society. The focus on a particular concept as a goal subsumes the reason you had that goal in the first place.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2013 01:03

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Abalieno posted:

The ending of the TV series represented the ideal of the story Anno wanted to tell. It represents Anno's wish and desire: that Instrumentality works and Shinji fixes his issues because the message of the series itself was understood. But then the sequel movies became for Anno a way to THINK on the series itself and its message. They become meta-commentary: whether or not the message actually was understood and worked.

On BOTH levels, it didn't. The message failed if you think about the public's reaction (the message of the show). And then Anno realized that Shinji also wasn't ready for Instrumentality. He wasn't through his personal issues, as shown in EoE before Instrumentality. His character didn't grow, it actually regressed. Hence the acknowledgement that the TV series "happy end" on one side wasn't possible because rejected by the public, and then Anno made that into the truth of the story. As with the public, Shinji wasn't ready for Instrumentality.

I'm not sure to what extent the Instrumentality seen in ep 26 is the same Instrumentality that EoE suggests, where everyone's identity would be dissolved. "I can learn to love myself and my life is worth living here" requires an "I" that the Tang End doesn't seem like it could support.

edit: beaten by something similar.

# ¿ May 1, 2013 01:54

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Nate RFB posted:

It's just so absurd how all of that came to be in one show/movie, and it's hard to think of many other anime that underwent such a trial by fire approach and still came out of the other side.

Not to mention managing to break out of the normal life cycle of a show and still be notable and relevant over a decade and a half later without being in continuous production.

# ¿ May 1, 2013 03:16

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

MadRhetoric posted:

Besides, Anno is too bugfuck crazy to ignore, especially when the metatext points to aspects of the work being reflections of the man's own psyche.

It is a bit hard to claim that what Anno was trying to say doesn't matter when he just barely stopped short of having a little animated Anno in the corner who occasionally points emphatically at things and yells "I am trying to tell you something with this!"

# ¿ May 3, 2013 03:23

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Ka0 posted:

Perhaps the same could be said of all science fiction.

Your words are as empty as your soul-that-somehow-exists-in-a-series-that-it-turns-out-was-all-about-aliens-and-not-mysticism.

# ¿ May 6, 2013 20:54

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

SPICE MUST FLOW posted:

Then who is this supposed to be?

Based on the mask, Adam.

# ¿ May 8, 2013 03:01

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

WickedIcon posted:

Shinji, at the end of 2.22, takes the exact opposite approach from that and consciously chooses to sacrifice anything and everything in the name of bringing Rei back. The only reason he doesn't go through with killing all of humanity for her is because he gets speared by Kaworu in the stinger.

As I've said before, it really didn't come across this way to me. He didn't actually know what he was doing, only what goal he was working towards. He disregarded possible consequences, yes, but those consequences weren't something he (or, for that matter, anyone but Gendo and Seele) could have known about.

# ¿ May 8, 2013 16:11

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

WickedIcon posted:

I'm not saying he deliberately started Third Impact (from what I understand, 3.33 directly contradicts that assertion), just that he consciously decided he only cared what happened to Rei, even if it meant his death or the death of everyone else. In fact, he straight up says that.

Right, but that's not the same thing as actively sacrificing them.

# ¿ May 8, 2013 16:49

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

In 3, sure, but back in 2 he was tearing apart an Angel just like he was supposed to (and was being encouraged to do so by those he trusted), and by the time actual third impact stuff started happening he was already well beyond any awareness of the outside world.

# ¿ May 8, 2013 19:09

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Also pushing for an emotionally confused and distressed 14-year-old who is desperately seeking some sort of validation from others to actually have sex is kinda :pedo:

# ¿ May 11, 2013 17:26

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Sloth Socks posted:

I always ignored the other garbage - the sludge of games, manga, and what-have-you that followed NGE

The manga actually started running before the TV series, and I'm not really sure why you'd call it garbage in comparison.

# ¿ May 12, 2013 01:39

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

ViggyNash posted:

It's a theory as far as I know. The reason for it is the lake water.

In the original series, all bodies of water shown except for the remains of Antarctica were the normal clear blue. But in Rebuild, all water has become blood red, hence the purification plant. This can be connected to the end of EoE where all of the water on the planet was now red because Shinji cancelled the instrumentality apocalypse. Another connection is the giant Rei head that Gendo has in Rebuild (if I'm remembering correctly) that must have been the head of the giant Rei in EoE from the ending.

There's also other stuff, like the blood spatter on the moon from when Mega-Rei's head fell off in EoE.

# ¿ May 16, 2013 18:10

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Popcorn posted:

The subway particularly resonated with me. The kids swiping their tickets on the ticket machines, and the complex networks the Eva units get routed through to get to the surface... Nerv's just the Tokyo subway really.

Which is part of why the series had to undergo a sudden rewrite partway through, because whoops Aum Shinrikyo.

# ¿ May 24, 2013 01:14

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

bof_man posted:

Underage is in regards to the comments earlier in the thread that finding Asuka sexy could be considered normal. She's 13. Unless you're in the same age range, well, I don't know what to tell you besides that you're giving off a bit of those pedo vibes. I'll give you though that she doesn't have the curves of a 13 years old, and that she looks older. But looks can be deceiving and ultimately this brings me to...

Part of it is that some of us first saw the series ~15 years ago, when we were maybe a year or two older than the characters nominally were (and probably several years younger than they were by apparent level of development). There's some obvious arrested development/"curse of eva" jokes one could make, but it's not surprising that present opinions of the characters would be informed by the original impressions of our hormone-soaked brains back when we first saw it and the gap in ages was minimal.

# ¿ May 24, 2013 02:30

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

As a side note to the hand chat, the booklet that came with the S2 Works soundtrack (which contains a ton* of alternate versions and unused tracks from the series and movie, and basically everything except versions of the OP or ED) has on the front cover Shinji's hand covered in blood. The back cover? Take a wild guess.

*Seriously, the thing is 7 discs jam packed with tracks that often don't even have proper titles aside from alphanumeric designations, some of which seem like just test versions of eyecatch accompaniments, versions with or without certain instruments, tempo variations, etc. Some of the unused stuff, especially "Everything You Ever Dreamed" or the variations of "Komm, Susser Tod," are fantastic and it's a shame they didn't make it in.

# ¿ May 24, 2013 04:22

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

MadRhetoric posted:

Eh, I'll bite. In my personal opinion, EoE abandons the attempt at resolving the themes that the series sets up in an attempt to literally "end" the thing that is Eva. The theme, at least as I see it, is the importance of communication; internal and external. Communication kills, it hurts, it betrays, but it's necessary. Bringing about perfect communication is the surface ideal of Instrumentality until it shifts into oblivion halfway through the series. The last two episodes are all about perfect communication. They're communicating with each other, with themselves, and with real people. The characters are working through their issues vis a vis a shattered fourth wall Instrumentality and the creators working through the issues of making Eva vis a vis a purposefully desperate projection of the show's core. It's not like there isn't precedent for that sort of thing with GAINAX; they made Gunbuster's ending more expensive to do the black and white sequences. With Eva, the cases and the weird animation bits are an explanation of what is, what was and what could have been to both the audience, the characters and themselves. It's active deconstruction of itself that doesn't come off as completely masturbatory (to me). That's like performing successful open heart surgery on yourself and I will always respect it for that.

EoE, on the other hand, is a well-put together movie, but it is a middle finger to the fans. Especially taking into account some of the stuff that got cut out. Since the message and the messengers are also fans, it feels like a middle finger to itself. The imagery dances on the line between shocking and puerile (it is way too easy to joke about the hospital scene and the sexual allusions within Instrumentality). It also doesn't really say anything that the series didn't, just harsher and with ultrasex/hyperviolence. The main thing that separates it from the end of the series is the last scene and it basically exists in a vacuum. It's an amazing shot in a vacuum and people have probably driven themselves mad trying to justify it with their own views of Eva and the series as a whole, but to me, it isn't mature. It isn't realistic. It's just sort of there. It's sort of there because Shinji clutching Rei's severed arm was too mean-spirited and Yukio Okamura couldn't hit the line "As if I'd be killed by the likes of you" well enough to satisfy Anno. So that scene is a compromise. A good enough. And "good enough" isn't good enough when it's the capital-E End of Evangelion. Saying that's mature always feels like conflating "edgy" or "grim" with mature to me.

Any teenager can see and say the world sucks, it takes deftness and maturity to explore, acknowledge and move past that.

I agree with a whole lot of this. The TV ending felt like it had earnest hopes for the audience to be receptive to its message, while EoE feels like an exasperated attempt to re-explain it by someone maybe about to run out of patience and hoping shock therapy will work. And trying to fit "One More Finale" into everything really does complicate the entire endeavor in such a way that I've never felt like I've pulled it off.

What's the bit about Rei's severed arm and Yukio Okamura, though? Searching for the latter just turns up a bunch of Ao No Exorcist stuff.

# ¿ May 27, 2013 05:26

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

WitchFetish posted:

Once this is done though, I will no poo poo buy a plane ticket to Japan and murder the first rear end in a top hat who tries to make a remake/alternate universe story/anything because seriously.

I don't think you can do a "darker and edgier" remake of Evangelion without violating obscenity laws, though, and remakes these days only come in "darker and edgier" flavor.

# ¿ May 30, 2013 20:51

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

House Louse posted:

I think you can see why I asked about Mari and Rei earlier. The one seems more or less pointless and the other's had her characterisation dicked about with to the point where I'm not sure what's going on; in Rebuild 2 she's an unrecognisably different person to the series. I get that 2 uses the original series as shorthand for its characterisation, but I'm still confused.

I think her characterisation there might have drawn on the manga version, where she's a bit more talkative, or at least gets more screen time. The manga does a much better job with Rei as a character than the series, and its version of Shinji is less prone to make people break out in seething rage over his supposed wussiness.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 22:12

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Captain Invictus posted:

If only she was Mari Tsukinami. Maybe that would be too transparent though.

Was there a Tsukinami ship during WWII, though? Gotta stick with conventions, after all.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 02:17

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

There was a lot of stuff in the early and middle parts that I think the manga handled in a more satisfying manner in a story sense, but for a lot of the later stuff (basically anything after Zeruel) it seemed like Sadamoto was just phoning it in, as reflected by the glacial pace. The end really feels like a fizzle.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2013 02:03

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Popcorn posted:

It's kind of pedantic, but it particularly bothers me that Asuka's German is so bad. Her foreign-ness is a big part of her character, especially in a culture that's as homogenous as Japan's. When she swears in German, or calls Shinji a dumkopf, that's an important signal that she's deliberately isolating herself, if only momentarily, from her peers, so the accent should be perfect!

She should really have had a German accent when she spoke Japanese (or English in the dub), to emphasise her otherness. I prefer the idea that she just learnt Japanese because she has an IQ of a trillion, rather than speaking it natively.

Neat idea, but what VA are you going to get to do it?

# ¿ Jun 5, 2013 22:41

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Spiritus Nox posted:

I wish. I really wish. Super Robot Wars is nice, but my kingdom for a decent mech action game that makes me feel like a mech pilot instead of Lu Bu or whoever.

I don't know whether it qualifies as decent, and it's not exactly recent, but Steel Battalion was certainly a thing.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2013 03:41

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

ACanofPepsi posted:

Steel Batallion sounds super fun with that huge controller and no save games. Maybe verging on the frustrating side but definitely a cool risk to take on a game.

I've seen it actually played, and it has a lot of neat things about it. There's a long startup sequence that involves flipping a number of switches (which you may need to do in combat if something makes you shut down), you have to run windshield wipers if your mech falls on its face and gets dirt on the screen, there's no music until you buy a tape player for your cockpit and also buy tapes (these are the only things saved if you ever have to eject*, you have to buy a whole new mech if your mech blows up), and walking, aiming, and looking are all controlled independently. I have no idea whether it's actually fun to play, though.

*The eject button even has a safety cover, and you'd better not forget to flip it before you try to eject because if you don't do it in time that character is fully dead.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2013 05:56

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

One thing that can be said about Cowboy Bebop is that its soundtrack was a masterpiece that has yet to be matched, nearly 15 years on.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2013 16:45

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

The R in R. Dorothy Wainwright stands for Rei.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2013 00:58

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Smoking Crow posted:

I liked the rest of the ending, it's just my blood pressure spike when Asuka said that she was Shinji's best childhood friend. It just seemed so...anime, you know?

That part was intentionally as cliche as possible.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2013 08:14

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

I said come in! posted:

PenPen, pilot the eva.

I mustn't wark away...

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 03:10

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Not to mention Rei's line about "the scent of blood from a woman who does not bleed" from when she's having her trip.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2013 07:54

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Regalingualius posted:

Hey, at least it's not just "everything is penises" exclusively for once.

The entry plug can be seen as both!

# ¿ Aug 2, 2013 16:44

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 05:42

Paracelsus: Apr 6, 2009; bless this post ~kya

A Pinball Wizard posted:

I love this thread

EoE question: During Instrumentality, right after Gendo gets eaten by Unit 01, and before the piture of the 3 Reis standing around, there's a scene with Gendo's glasses sitting on the ground, and someone standing in the background. Who is that person?

I'm reasonably certain it's Gendo's headless body, after the less-armored image of Unit-01 goes chomp.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2013 02:19

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > Neon Genesis Evangelion megathread: Death & Rebirth of the author

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