A remake or a sequel?

Going back to an earlier point of this thread, it seems to me that there are two main schools of thought with regards to making sense of Kaworu's lines: the "they met before" camp and the "sequel" faction. Either these or bust. Well, allow me to fanwank not one, but two exciting(?) alternatives. One is pretty straightforward, the other's a bit whack.

1., This is the less convoluted version: rather than remembering the past of the original NGE series, Kaworu sees the future of the NME timeline. Some form of prescience that allowed him to know of Shinji and his nature before they've actually met. And that's it.

2., The loopy version: okay, so now we presumably have four Adams that were awoken on Antarctica. Well, what if this means that there were four donors for contact instead of one? Further, what if one of these donors, the "Third" one who "never changes", was Yui Ikari? She was there on the South Pole, having given Shinji birth before (not that much of a pain for the timeline), then she mindmelded with some supreme being who later took the form of Kaworu.

The being learned of Shinji and whatnot from Yui, there was some battle of wills, Yui somehow managed to keep the form of "her" Adam together which ended up on the shores of Japan (chalk outline), later to be made into Eva-01. I'll admit this idea makes a bit of a mess of the timeline for the production of Eva units.

Why Yui and not Gendo? If Kaworu was some kind of derivative from Gendo (clone, surpreme mindmeld, whatever) and become his own person while retaining Gendo's memories?

That would give the "Father" line from 2.0 some substance.

I picked Yui because i wanted to come up with a way of bringing her into the story in a manner that would be suprising to those who have already seen NGE. Also, to me she's just more suited for this whole "touched by the divine" business than anyone else.

Or Kaworu calls Gendo father because Gendo had a part in triggering second-impact purposely - which led to the birth of Kaworu. If this is true, all second-impact scientists to Kaworu should be fathers.

They poked Adam with a stick, and out pops a baby.

Father line was discussed here: http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/7076/Father/

I have not engaged in this discussion before, but I have recently had a thought that went into the topic of sequel theory. So here it is.

During Third Impact in EoE, Rei/Lilith achieved quantum-physical omnipotence, with her being able to manifest as ghostly appearances throughout space and time. (Argued by others here: http://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_Analysis:Rei%27s_Ghostly_Appearances_and_Quantum_Mechanics)
So, what if this caused ripples in the fabric of cause and effect towards another reality-shaking event: Second Impact? Specifically, what if a (number of) ghostly Rei apparations interfered with whatever happened during Second Impact? Considering that Rei/Lilith also included Adam in body (Gendo's hand), soul (Kaworu) and human identity (Kaworu again)?

Well, anything could have happened, of course. Like Adam splitting into multiple cores and other assorted weirdness. But those specifics are not important to me right now.

What could be taking place is a different course of history starting at Second Impact, and in that sense the Rebuild continuity could be exactly that: a headache-inducingly paradoxial temporal rewrite taking place in the same universe, in the same places and at the same time as NGE/EoE. Possibly culminating in a new Third Impact that will either shake reality up again to reset the cycle to something else again*, or it will be a Third Impact where Shinji's final decision will reaffirm the reality that just occurred, and the space-time continuum will finally be at rest.

(* The number of four "Adams" could be the number of iterations in which reality has been rewritten, with each reimagining of Third Impact resulting in an additional "Adam". Kaworu's soul could then indeed hold the memories of NGE-Kaworu, because (parts of) Adam and Lilith are the only consciousnesses with the ability to remain unaffected by temporal paradox.)

Disclaimer: I have not read this thread all the way through (nor any of its predecessors), so I don't know if I'm being at all original here.

I'm inclined to the fact that it's a sequel, Red sea, giant humanoid marks on the ground, ''This time at least I'll make you happy'' and many aim towards it.

But then again, it might just be a little wink to the people who watched the original sort of ''Hey, we know you watched it, so here's some stuff in your name'', sort of like an easter egg in video games, but then again, this is Anno we're talking about.

Although it does seem like some kind of continuation I'm beginning to believe it's more like an added layer of complexity, not necessarily a complete "OMG, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!" type of situation but rather "that's really awesome and I love this show even more now".

Ok?

Because Angels explode into "blood" now, providing both:

(A) More Pointless Religious Symbolism
(B) LCL analogue (homologue?)

The red ocean in NME is caused by an altered version of Second Impact, and has nothing to do with Third Impact and GNR and Red Earth Purification. The resemblance is completely superficial. The production is winking at its origins in NGE, yes, but through the visual parallel ("wow, this looks a lot like that beach in EoE") it is also drawing attention to a major change between NGE and NME. And maybe that's (part of) the point.

Like I said, there's a non-sequel, in-universe explanation for the red sea, not disputing that. But why start the film with a shot that's damn near identical to one from EOE? Winking at NGE? I don't see why a film called "Evangelion" that's mostly a carbon copy of episodes from a series called "Evangelion" needs to add more winks. Anno went out of his way to create this new complication when he was streamlining everything else. Maybe it's as arbitrary as you say. But maybe not.

Why does the shot's placement there involve "going out of the way"? Creative decisions don't work like that.

Since there is already an in-universe explanation for the red ocean, persisting in the thought that it MUST be hinting at something MORE ("zomg sequel!!!") is flawed reasoning. If you want something "meta", then the shot could simply be there because (A) Anno had a boner for the 'waves on shore' animation to begin with, and (B) it lets us "visually re-enter" the Evangelion universe where we left it (but it cleverly takes us back to square one in the process).

It's the concept of the red oceans, not that single shot, that is going out of the way. Anno didn't need to add all that stuff, he could have kept the old rules. You used the word "must", not me. I wouldn't say that. You're closer to insisting that these things MUST be mundane, and they may be. All I know is, Rebuild shoves two visual references to EOE at us in it's first minute that it really didn't need to. Later, the film shows us a familiar-looking moon that, again, they went out of their way to include. That this too has an in-universe explanation does NOT change the fact that it is also an explicit EOE reference. Why? Why the heavy, unnecessary homage? I maintain that it, combined with Kaworu's statements, is odd enough to possibly be something more than a random callback. That's all.

^I already mentioned this yesterday in another thread, but I think the point of shoving these references into the first scene is to show that they're not planning to let the human instrumentality project happen this time around. After all it would be hard to make the seas even redder.

It would be pretty cool if instrumentality was stopped forever by Kaworu's spear, if only because that means a drastically new ending.