Postby Orgeston » Wed Jan 06, 2016 4:13 am
On the subject of the rebuild being a sequel:
During NGE ep26, the concept of Shinji being able to shape his universe is explored. At the end of it all he is able to make the decision of whether he keeps living his current life, or starts a different one. This is paralleled in EoE, when Shinji makes the decision to return to his physical form instead of blissfully swimming in tang. Then the rebuild, which starts the same but diverges into an alternate timeline where different decisions were made (Yes, there were completely different characters and angels introduced). There are vague callbacks to the previous iteration, such as Kaworu promising Shinji to make him happy "this time", and the already blood-streaked moon. A repeat sign ( :|| ) is also present at the end of the title of the next movie. In musical terms, that would denote 3+1 as the last measure, followed by a repeat.
Throughout NGE it is explored how the versions of other people in your mind are products of your own perception. This is similar to a concept in dream analysis. Because the dream only takes place in your subconscious, everybody in it is a representation of aspects of yourself. According to dream analysis, a nightmare is your subconscious trying to tell you something very important, and a reoccurring nightmare is communicating a problem that you haven't solved yet.
A huge part of Evangelion is the characters' dire need for self improvement, and their occasional inability to function during life-or-death situations due to their own psychological hang-ups and selfish interests.
Putting together these underlying themes, I propose that perhaps the multiple iterations of Evangelion are in-universe do-overs of the same scenario. Each character lives through this brutal reality with the eventual goal of competently maneuvering the events to their best outcome, and becoming a functional human being through interaction and introspection (So far, of course, the characters seem to be failing at that miserably). Then the end of the timeline is reached, the final impact being the catalyst to starting the world anew, and shadows of elements of the previous iteration are subconsciously internalized within the characters. Meanwhile Kaworu transcends this system, or at least he thought he did.
I'm not saying that the entire scenario is present specifically for these characters, and their personal development. It's just that the events need to unfold properly, and for that to happen the characters need to get it together.
Alternatively, the rebuild is just a whole bunch of nonsense, akin to Lost and its phantom polar bear, and there will never be a sufficient explanation as to why Kaworu said what he did, why the moon is streaked with blood, why Kaworu was in that moon coffin, what's in the other eight coffins, why Lillith looks like Rei, why the Failures of Eternity are all on the surface but their heads are underground, where their helmets went, why Lillith is on top of the skulls as if the FoE died before her but her head is in HQ being lifted up as if she died afterwards, what drilled the hole through the FoE, where Wille got the money and resources to construct AAA Wunder, how they designed the system for the whole crew to sync with AAA Wunder, how Unit-01 got into space, where they got the S2 cores for (apparently) every EVA in the series now, what a Success of Eternity would look like, how anybody still gets LCL if Lillith died, why NERV's finest technology is only coming out now that they're operating with a skeleton crew in a bombarded and elevated HQ that shouldn't have electricity, and other pressing questions. (Excuse me if some of these questions have already been answered, I haven't done a ton of looking around yet)
Reading over this, I'm not sure why I posed these as alternatives. They're certainly not mutually exclusive. I guess this sort of turned into two topics.
EDIT: Woah, I missed pwhodges's link to the thread cataloging alternate reality threads the first time around. This has all been talked about already. Also, Higurashi. That is exactly what I've been mentally comparing this to the whole time. I love that series.
Last edited by
Orgeston on Wed Jan 06, 2016 5:21 am, edited 3 times in total.
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