Chuckman wrote:Midway through the battle, he pops up on Shinji's view-thingy.

"Hello, Shinji. It's like I'm wearing nothing at all."

[wkimg]File:M26 Shinji Manic 1.jpg[/wkimg]
FINAL IMPACT HAS BEGUN!!!


More seriously, I still maintain that in FINAL Gendo will inject himself with the the Key (since the 1.0 CRC showed it being a syringe) as a parallel to his grafting ADAM's embryo in his hands in NGE to somehow have direct control over Instrumentality so he could make sure that it goes exactly as he wants, making Rebuild!Gendo a far more dangerous foe than his NGE counterpart, if his actions in Q weren't already proof enough.

MY MIND! MY POOR MIND! Bleach! I need bleach!

Lets try and keep this semiserious.

No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva. No plugsuit necessary since he IS the Eva. It would be a nice parallel to the story of nebuchanezzar, who himself was turned into a beast by God for his mistreatment of the Israelites. Gendo becoming the beast of the bottomless pit. . . that would be badass.

Gendo in a plugsuit isn't the worst image of Gendo in Final thats come about. There was one where Gendo joined with Lilith and became the Giant Adam/Lilith Hybrid. But in the shape of Gendo, not Rei. Giant, naked, bleach white Gendo. . . try erasing that image from your mind.

Ray wrote:No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva. No plugsuit necessary since he IS the Eva. It would be a nice parallel to the story of nebuchanezzar, who himself was turned into a beast by God for his mistreatment of the Israelites. Gendo becoming the beast of the bottomless pit. . . that would be badass.

While the idea is very cool, I'm not sure how well it fits. If Gendo plans on reuniting with Yui, then the only Eva he would fuse with is Unit-01. Iunno. I'm not sure I see it. Maybe his Eva could fuse with Unit-01 to cause an Impact.

I do think the syringe on the Key indicates it might be absorbed again, a la Adam with Gendo in NGE. Perhaps it'll grant Gendo ATF power like in the manga, but that was sorta silly so maybe not.

Ray wrote:
No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva. No plugsuit necessary since he IS the Eva. It would be a nice parallel to the story of nebuchanezzar, who himself was turned into a beast by God for his mistreatment of the Israelites. Gendo becoming the beast of the bottomless pit. . . that would be badass.

This is brilliant and if it doesn't come to pass I'm going to be upset.

Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending, but I don't see the latter part happening unless Anno et. al. decide not to be douchealiciously seriousmode about their giant robot movies and their hamfisted "moral".

Chuckman wrote:This is brilliant and if it doesn't come to pass I'm going to be upset.

Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending, but I don't see the latter part happening unless Anno et. al. decide not to be douchealiciously seriousmode about their giant robot movies and their hamfisted "moral".

Ah, I can see it turning out as a punishment for him. Trapped to live forever and alone in a powerless machine. That could be nice.

Fate worse than death FTW! It would serve the Cold hearted bastard right!

Shinji in unit 01 fighting Gendo in unit 13 is what I want to see. The only thing that really bugged me about EOE. Was the lack of a final confrontation between Shinji and Gendo. I really wanted Shinji to get Catharsis of some kind, by calling the old man out. An epic father vs Son Final battle would be a great way to deliver this, and in spades.

Ray wrote:No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva.

Now that is a fascinating idea... Gendo wants to reunite with Yui not by bringing her back to humanity or creating a virtual world where everyone is one, but rather by following her into eva's apotheosis. That's very similar to an idea I had suspected in another thread that his was what the Yui/Gendo/Fuyu conspiracy was trying to accomplish in response to Seele's attempt to keep all the godliness for themselves. Everyone an eva, everyone a god unto themselves.

Chuckman wrote:Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending

I would love this for another turned on its head NGE-into-NME-reversal/change. Plus, it'd be nice to see a "happy" ending for Yui. Back when 2.0 hit, I was hoping that Final could have a happy family ending (of sorts) between Rei, Shinji and Gendo, but considering 3.0's direction I doubt this. Maybe a happy family ending between Shinji and either Rei (I'd assume Tentative Rei instead of Rei-2), assuming that's a route they go.

About the Key of Neb, I like the speculation going on in here. It certainly seems plausible, I just hope it'll be used for something instead of a forgotten element!

Gendo can't find happiness. He's the epitome of the classic tragic figure that destroys his own happiness out of arrogance and greed.

That's where NTE is going, anyway. OG Gendo is almost as much of a victim of Yui's madness as Shinji.

Sailor Star Dust wrote:About the Key of Neb, I like the speculation going on in here. It certainly seems plausible, I just hope it'll be used for something instead of a forgotten element!

Since half of Gendo's scenes in Q has a close-up shot of the case containing the Key, it's really doubtful that Anno forgot about it.
It's like in NGE : ADAM's embryo appeared in episode 8-9 and was seemingly forgotten until suddenly reappearing in Gendo's hand in episode 24.

Before reading this topic, somehow it had not even occurred to me that Gendo might inject the Key of Neb in Final, even though I already knew about the syringe. Now I'm convinced that's exactly what's going to happen.

But not just because of this topic.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but my reaction to Q was far different from that of I think most of the audience in the sense that I didn't interpret it as going in a wildly different direction at all, in fact I was more than a little disappointed that it was essentially just a repeat of the heart of episode 24. The major beats are all there: Shinji has become alienated from Asuka, Rei, and Misato, then finds Kaworu only to lose him and wind up even worse off. The only thing Q really changed was to crank the contrast on those basics up hard enough to finally make them stand out, so hard Shinji's feelings seep through the screen and into the audience ourselves. The world becoming ruined, Misato et al's changes... It's all really designed to put us in Shinji's shoes, getting us to empathize with where Shinji was by this point in NGE better than NGE could (at the cost, in my opinion, of a lot of what kept my emotional interest in NGE, but who knows yet if the payoff will be worth it?).

So the reason I would expect Gendo to inject the Key of Neb is not just because the Key of Neb happens to be a syringe, but also because it is Rebuild's obvious parallel to the Adam embryo, simplified to the essence of its role, and after Q proved to me that we should still expect to see a lot of things that remind us of what we've seen before, that leaves me expecting at least a little of the same in Final.

That said, I don't expect Final to be as much of a retread of EoE as Q was of ep 24. Q winding up being such a retread reminds me of something Anno (I think) said at the beginning of the project: that it would be essentially a retelling of NGE but ending with a brand new conclusion. With Ha we all assumed this original plan had been discarded, but in the new perception I have that was given to me by Q, we have (to me) still been watching little more than a retelling of the same basic story as NGE, hitting the same beats. So if that's the case, Final will be where it diverges "for real".

Sachi wrote:While the idea is very cool, I'm not sure how well it fits. If Gendo plans on reuniting with Yui, then the only Eva he would fuse with is Unit-01. Iunno. I'm not sure I see it. Maybe his Eva could fuse with Unit-01 to cause an Impact.

Ooh, ooh, I know. What has fused with Eva to cause impacts in the past?

Angels. Specifically, Zeruel (with Eva-01) in 2.22 and the 12th (with Eva13) in 3.33.

If Gendo sticks himself with the key and pulls the trigger, what if it makes him into an Angel ... haha no way, could this result in a GNG (giant naked Gendo)? With his plan being to find Wunder, rip it's belly open, and fuse with Eva-01. It would be even funnier (creepier?) if he incorporates/merges into Eva-13 (which has "ascended" already thanks to 3.33) because of the striking visual similarities between Eva-13 and Eva-01. Adam and Eva.

Eva-01 I imagine would have a different preference. She did bite his head off in EoE...

Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending, but I don't see the latter part happening unless Anno et. al. decide not to be douchealiciously seriousmode about their giant robot movies and their hamfisted "moral".

Wow. This. Imagine if Eva-13 ends up floating through space (in parallel to EoE) while Eva-01 remains on Earth.

I'm actually kind of liking this. It also manages to explain what Gendo is actually doing in 3.33. He's laying the groundwork with Shinji and Eva-13, but once the prep work is done he casts him aside. Then he can use the key to merge with Eva13, go find Yui (which WILLE also helpfully retrieved) and live forever. Or so he thinks. And he's got an army of MP Evas to help him make it happen.

Here is how I imagine the Final battle going between Shinji and Gendo each in their Evas.



Gendo's Eva should match his color scheme, so i'm thinking black with Red accents. Who here wants to hear Gendo scream for mercy when Shinji rips his core out and feeds it to him?

That's not high concept enough for me.



I'll be dissapointed if Final isn't at least on some level centered on the reckoning between Gendo and Shinji. Their relationship was a bigger focus or rather, a more direct focus; Shinji's relationship with him in the series is still vital, but there's only a few points of cofrontation and it fades into the background towards the end, and is never really resolved.

^
Yeah no, that would be really disappointing :
I agree that the relationship between Shinji and Gendo plays a much bigger role in Rebuild, if only because this time around Shinji was a vital piece of Gendo's plan, but your scenario would turn him into a Villain Sue, and after everything he has done, he's way past the point of deserving such a fate.

I'm sure it'll be high concept enough. . . I imagine after the whole high concept philosophical thing happening with the key of Nebuchanezar to happen right after the battle between Shinji and Gendo.

Starts out as a physical battle, then it turns into a psychological one during instrumentality.

Gendo in a plugsuit. They did that before.

Made the plugsuit black and red, add the cyborg glasses, age up Fuyu and Gendo, and voila! we have a Final spoiler.

Bah, clearly Gendo and Fuyu will have to tandem pilot 13. just as Asuka and Mari will team up in that frankeneva while Shinji and ReiQ will almost certainly both end up in 01 again.

You guys are setting us up for disappointment when Final isn't "You know what? Fuck this plot shit, here's everything fighting for an hour and a half"