Mr. Tines wrote:That is more obviously not a body...

I'm still wondering how it ever did... Granted, that was my first thought, but it led to the next step. "Thing floating in the water... Spherical item attached to a larger thing..."

And interesting that it is paired with the giant-of-light image.

Maybe because this show actually makes sense if you give it a chance?

BTW, in case you're wondering what happened to the right-hand part of the mandorla (the part going off the page), there is a wave in the process of washing over it.

Let's stop making excuses, kids. Either this photograph actually has some significance to Second Impact and includes, like the Sho/Lilith and Adam/Spear images, a major tidbit about the backstory that actually ties into and buttresses everything else we're told -- or it's of no consequence whatsoever and will never make any sense. If I get any more lip, I swear I will go absolutely mad.

Slight exaggeration, but sometimes I get as frustrated as those guys who tried to tell everyone that the Earth wasn't flat or the center of the universe.

Originally posted on: 10-Jan-2006, 22:40 GMT

Seele08 wrote:I thought Gendo and Misato were the only survivors of the expidition.

Gendo didn't so much survive as much as "bailed out before things got out of hand". Misato was actually there when all hell broke loose and survived.

Originally posted on: 10-Jan-2006, 22:53 GMT

OMF wrote:Prodding around with varous filters seems to produce slightly better results. Here's a montage of a fairly small selection of decompositions and blurring, which seems to mask the Rei's quite well.

Actually just shrinking the image seems to have done a lot of good - the Rei-tachi get lost in the gaps between pixels, and the remainder seems crisper, as its blur scale approaches screen resolution.

OMF wrote:At this point, I'm fairly certain that the background images have a different colour "signature", which is facilitating analysis.

The Rei-tachi are definitely all orange; much redder than the overlays which are neutral, perhaps slightly cream colour.

Seele08 wrote:Whats worse, is there are NGE, Bond cross-overs floating around out there.

"The name's Kaji - Ryoji Kaji."

Reichu wrote:Maybe because this show actually makes sense if you give it a chance?

Maybe because this is the first time I've consciously looked at the image in its full context, I finally got to hit myself upside the head with the clue-stick. That this is the only image that changes from the "clean" version shouts significance and a connection of whatever it is to the giant of light.

Originally posted on: 10-Jan-2006, 22:54 GMT

Things look a little different when the mandorla image is rotated upside down. Slighly more "bodyish"



Originally posted on: 10-Jan-2006, 23:26 GMT

Jesus H. Christ. I don't know what we're going to do about you. Let me know when you figure the series out, mmkay? Honestly...

Sorry if I come across as a jerk here, but you have demonstrated a decided fondness for ignoring/brushing off as many of the in-show clues as possible, neglecting to take the entire picture into account, and... well, I could go on. At least consider the possibility that you are being needlessly dense/stubborn. My mission is to make sense of this show, after all, and I am intent on taking things to a whole new level -- not bringing them down to well-trodden and stagnant territory. Le sigh.

Fixed the links in my original posts, BTW.

Originally posted on: 10-Jan-2006, 23:37 GMT

I first thought of the shot Ritsuko in LCL from #25. I paired both and it's not the same, although similar. Yet, t'would make no sense if it was.

Originally posted on: 11-Jan-2006, 19:02 GMT

The mandorla theory makes sense, and is backed up by the show. Kaworu's origins are quite plausabily tied in with Adam's "retrieval". Everything about the "mandorla" retrieval is reasonable. The only I'm having trouble with is the image itself. It's very, very obscured.

Originally posted on: 11-Jan-2006, 19:54 GMT

Sometimes you just need to stop thinking. I don't think the image is "obscured" at all. You can see an egg. You can see a mandorla. You can see water. You can see a wave washing over the mandorla. Any resemblance to a body is entirely superficial. This is not in my head, it is there in plain sight. The identity of this photo is on rock-solid ground.

The only perplexing thing here is why it was ever removed. A storytelling travesty from Hell, I tell you.

EDIT: I think that my "detail compositing" technique definitely ought to be applied to additional images to obtain maximum clarity. You guys can continue with the E-Rei-ser, and I'll mess around over here as I feel so moved. The shot of the embryos in the scrolls is, I have no doubts, of incredible significance, so that is what I'll do next.

Originally posted on: 11-Jan-2006, 22:10 GMT

At this point I'm to afraid to argue, even if what I see is a picture of my dead great aunt.

Originally posted on: 11-Jan-2006, 22:14 GMT

Mr. Tines wrote:As the overlays aren't on platinum, then we can do a real frame for frame diff between those and the previous DC with the overlay, and not have to worry about parallax between views. One unexpected bonus of the omission.

Foolish me. I had thought that platinum would have enough artistic integrity to leave the images in in the on-air versions. However, I was clearly mistaken. There's nothing. Less than nothing. I currently have no way of getting my hands on the original broadcast version, beyond sending off to Japan, something the credit card-less can never hope to achieve.

But I can produce "clean" Rei screens for anyone that needs them. Mr Tines, I can't seem to get that app to work. Does it need extra libraries?

Originally posted on: 23-Jan-2006, 19:07 GMT

OMF wrote:Mr Tines, I can't seem to get that app to work. Does it need extra libraries?

It will need Java 5 (=1.5) installed; it shouldn't need anything else beyond that.

When I get a chance I shall have to capture some 23' shots with the all important time attached, to reduce the amount of manual hunting for matching images in the Platiunm version. Why the overlay is only present on pre-Platinum DC is one of the unsolved mysteries, deeper even than what the heck these images are of.

Originally posted on: 24-Jan-2006, 08:40 GMT

Mr. Tines wrote:Why the overlays were removed from the Renewal version of episode #23' is one of the unsolved mysteries, deeper even than what the heck these images are of.

Fixed.

They were obviously added to explicate upon some of the geeky plot points (Spear in Adam, EVA-01's grotesque birth, SDSS & Apostles, Kaworu Mandorla, Yui in Plug Suit, etc.) in the cruelest manner possible. We just don't know why the hell they were ever taken out, because they are still as relevant as ever...

Originally posted on: 24-Jan-2006, 08:50 GMT

Reichu wrote:They were obviously added to explicate upon some of the geeky plot points (Spear in Adam, EVA-01's grotesque birth, SDSS & Apostles, Kaworu Mandorla, Yui in Plug Suit, etc.) in the cruelest manner possible. We just don't know why the hell they were ever taken out, because they are still as relevant as ever...

Could what you say be true? Are we chasing more Red Herrings?

I'd choose to think otherwise, and put the reason down to laziness. It must have been hard to complete that sequence. Perhaps the originals were lost?

Originally posted on: 24-Jan-2006, 08:53 GMT

OMF wrote:Could what you say be true? Are we chasing more Red Herrings?

How would what Reichu said add up to "we're chasing Red Herrings", in your mind? I think perhaps you misread the post, and should look it over again.

Originally posted on: 24-Jan-2006, 08:58 GMT

The mentioned images are obviously not red herrings (they are all quite relevant, as I said), and at least some of the originals were not lost, or else they wouldn't be in this sequence from the FULL OP, made in lieu with Renewal's advent...

Originally posted on: 23-Jan-2006, 21:00 GMT