I guess I needed to quote the section I was addressing?

HIP is to overcome this incompleteness, so HIP regards all humanity there, as even Seele suggest.

The suggestion that perhaps the members of Seele were to merge with the MPE's, which you seemed to counterpoint with, "but the rest of humanity wouldn't be part of HIP, which is supposed to involve everyone", and which I am responding by saying such a suggestion doesn't necessarily have to preclude everyone else outside of Seele, and gave an example of a possible explanation of how. Whether the example is true or false, doesn't mean that the initial premise from the suggestion is wrong.

Ornette wrote:The suggestion that perhaps the members of Seele were to merge with the MPE's

As I already said, there are few quotes, you can justify with this suggestion only by introducing assumptions, which are not supported by facts.

The main one is Keel's words about that everything is going well. Because there are not enough MPEs, everything could not be well. But everything is well if MPEs are needed only to generate anti AT-field.

The second is the meting with Seele at the beginning of EoE where Seele explain their goal (to kill and then resurrect all lifeforms) and it opposes to the goal of Gendo. Gendo wishes to use a Eva to evolve humanity into a new form. Seele say that humans should not abandon their human nature and cling to Eva as Gendo proposes. They see MPEs just as tools to kill and resurrect all lifeforms [using anti AT-field, they probably think that they restore Adam Kadmon from the souls of all Humanity and depart to heaven then, they may not know that actually they will transfer all the souls to the egg], and nothing suggests in the show that they want to merge with them, they would not depart to heaven in this case. Moreover, in the series they directly state that they do not intend to create a man-made god [they are religious society and operate their religious beliefs all the EoE].

As you see, nothing supports this suggestion in the show, and you need to introduce unfounded assumptions to justify it there. Because you consider CI as the second or third tier, you should prefer facts from the show.

If you were expecting all the members of Seele to stamp their feet on the ground and pout incessantly because Instrumentality wasn't going exactly as they planned, you're painting them as too much the stereotypical "Evil Inc.", I think. Besides, we really only get to see Keel's reaction to everything that's going on in the end.

I think Seele's main goal was the Human Instrumentality Project, in any form. Being able to inhabit the Mass Production Evas as "gods" would have been a bonus, but it wasn't an indispensable part of their plans. That's how I interpret Keel's final line in EoE. It wasn't "This is how I wanted things to go from the beginning. All is well.", but "I would have liked things to go a little differently, but this will do. All is well."

I believe that thing about "people showing their true colors just before dying" applies here. (Can't remember the actual quote....) You shouldn't be wondering how Keel's last line contradicts his character development from the rest of the series. Instead, one should consider how that line sheds new light on the rest of his actions. I think Keel may have been the most altruistic of all the members of Seele - if that word can even be applied to what they were they were trying to do.

riffraff11235 wrote:I think Seele's main goal was the Human Instrumentality Project, in any form. Being able to inhabit the Mass Production Evas as "gods" would have been a bonus, but it wasn't an indispensable part of their plans. That's how I interpret Keel's final line in EoE. It wasn't "This is how I wanted things to go from the beginning. All is well.", but "I would have liked things to go a little differently, but this will do. All is well."

The thing I want to say, that there are absolutely no reasons to think that they intended to embark in MPEs. Seele was a religious group, who had a certain goal: the path to Adam Kadmon. This implies complementation of souls of all the humanity, and we see exactly this in the show.
You may believe that they wished to merge with MPEs (CI does not imply this directly in any way), but because there are no reasons for this, you just get an unfounded assumption.

riffraff11235 wrote:I believe that thing about "people showing their true colors just before dying" applies here. (Can't remember the actual quote....) You shouldn't be wondering how Keel's last line contradicts his character development from the rest of the series. Instead, one should consider how that line sheds new light on the rest of his actions. I think Keel may have been the most altruistic of all the members of Seele - if that word can even be applied to what they were they were trying to do.

I'm not wondering, I think that Seele's plain was completely accomplished (they wished to complement all Humanity include themselves to depart to heaven, as they believe).
Was he altruistic? He wished to do a great favor for humanity as he believed, but does humanity wish such a favor? The drama of Evangelion is in that this would be not a heaven but a hell of eternal solitude, because Seele actually converts humanity into a single complete angel-like being.

@gchristnsn What's clear from the CI is that the members of Seele had something grander than joining with the rest of humanity planned for themselves, be it through the MPEs, Eva-01, or some other means. There being 12 (planned) MPEs for 12 Seele members just fits really well is all. What I'm saying is that this isn't necessarily contradictory to the rest of the show.

riffraff11235 wrote:@gchristnsn What's clear from the CI is that the members of Seele had something grander than joining with the rest of humanity planned for themselves, be it through the MPEs, Eva-01, or some other means.

I don't want to argue on this, because I already said what I can say, and showed that you can not justify this without unfounded assumptions. But, generally, if you believe that it's clear from CI that they had something grander, you at least should point where it is. If we assume that section D is Gendo's scenario, there are no such places, and there are no reasons for this in the show anyway.

riffraff11235 wrote:There being 12 (planned) MPEs for 12 Seele members just fits really well is all. What I'm saying is that this isn't necessarily contradictory to the rest of the show.

At the same time this may be just a sacred number which symbolizes 12 apostles of Christ symbolized by crucified Lilith. Seele refers MPEs nothing more than their servants.

gchristnsn wrote:But, generally, if you believe that it's clear from CI that they had something grander, you at least should point where it is.

CI wrote:Seele's intention for this man-made god is to guide the elite (themselves) to state near that of God's.

Looking at it again, there are some places in the CI which seem to say that Seele's treatment would be equal to that of the rest of humanity, but I don't think this line would be there without a reason. It seems to me that Seele planned to enter Instrumentality just like other humans, but they would somehow put themselves in a position to take advantage of the process in a way others could not. I know you don't particularly like the idea of Seele using the MPEs, but I still think it fits. They could have used them in the same way that Shinji used Eva-01 to pilot the process. This is why Seele wasn't too keen on the idea of Gendou possessing an Eva with an S2 Engine: it would allow him to potentially initiate Instrumentality on his own terms. It might have some holes in it, but that's my interpretation of things as it is now.

...I'm still not quite sure what the point of this thread is. Are you trying to have your theory be the main one included in the wiki or something?

riffraff11235 wrote:...I'm still not quite sure what the point of this thread is. Are you trying to have your theory be the main one included in the wiki or something?

The point of this thread was:

- To remove speculations about the Third impact from angels from the wiki [done]
- Correct information about Seele's goal of instrumentality, wiki contained information which directly follows CI (that they intend to complement only themselves), as you see, there are no reasons for this belief [done]
- To fix phrase that "CI completely reconciles with the show", but if to assume that section D on HIP describes Gendo's scenario, CI completely reconciles with the show and there is no need for this.

So, the objective of this thread is completely fulfilled.

gchristnsn wrote:The point of this thread was:

- To remove speculations about the Third impact from angels from the wiki [done].

I still have some objections to this theory, but I've already put all the main points up on the wiki so there's no point continuining the argument here.

Shinoyami65 wrote:I still have some objections to this theory, but I've already put all the main points up on the wiki so there's no point continuining the argument here.

Wiki now contains only facts from CI and the show which allow to interpret this the both ways. This was the point.

gchristnsn wrote:Wiki now contains only facts from CI and the show which allow to interpret this the both ways. This was the point.

Both sides of the argument are now present on the wiki to provide a fair and balanced perspective for readers. Readers are free to interpret it as they wish. Objective accomplished, case closed.

Shinoyami65 wrote:After re-watching the scene with the Platinum Edition subtitles, I can't find any trace of the dialogue you describe. Perhaps you are using a faulty translation or one in a language other than English?

He's not. This is in the Japanese language track at around 1:24 into the scene. It was translated in a number of fansubs (which gchristnsn appears to be using) but much of the background chatter was eliminated from the Platinum Edition subs. But I checked with Symbv to confirm and he says the line gchristnsn quotes is indeed there.

I bring this up mainly to remind folks that we're working with translations here, and that that means we might miss pertinent details in dialogue-heavy scenes (such as the 2I sequence). It also means that we necessarily miss a lot of context that would be obvious to native speakers; as such we should be careful when speaking about the "facts" and their implications.