I think I missed a thousand threads about this so feel free to ignore this one.
I can't link a picture of the new unit design because this phone is crap but iIrc it's 8+2+half helm from either 01 or 013. Kind of forgot but it's purple and having it on the right side of the head has some meaning I don't really care about; I'm taking the preview as a tease just like the Q one but with something more solid like the setting (the sword moves animations are not that convincing and I wouldn't be surprised to have them cut but it's mainly the enemies not putting a fight). It's about wild guessing but still based on something familiar.
For example: I'm assuming things like each eva part corresponds to its own kid piloting the whole thing at the same time despite a single core, which is bonkers and calls for all kinds of problems.
Is 3+1 a call to 3 pilots and the 01 core (on wunder?)?
Will they explain how mari pilots different evas (how much of a give away the beast mode is?)?
Have all reis and yui merged and has wille decided to not taking risk again by giving Shinji a dss choker AND putting him on the combined eva unit because of safety (just why and who triggers the choker)?
Is it a call back to mari's song in Eva Ha and the dynamics between characters (Asuka leading but ending up in need of support mari can't fully deliver ironically leaving Shinji as last hope, except the choker disappoints him and with no Asuka left he kills everything)?
Is mari's agenda to have people fail not so subtle assuming is there anything like that?
I'm confused

8+2 shows half of Eva-02's head being added onto 08. Not 01 or 13.


It's kinda right in the name.

HUH, awkward.
Too bad I can't even load the pic.

I've evaluated the preview to be a joke based on how 3.0 turned out. If the fourth part of 3.0 actually was cut for a more dramatic ending worthy of being called "quickening", then the fourth movie will be the end of the third plus one more (3.0 + 1.0). There were even toys put out of 8+2 just for fun.

It kind of implied what happens to the units but yeah it's this 8+2 acting excited and jumping in a sea of at fields and mari promising fanservice (toys?:0).

1. Toys are merchandise. They exist because they know people will pay good money for them. A toy of the preview version of Eva 8+2 means very little because if the official film version is drastically different they can just sell a new one & make more money. Merchandise is not a part of the film. It's just there.

2. The Eva 8+2 in the preview is not going to be the Eva 8+2 that's in the final movie. The teasers aren't "jokes", they're just done very quickly at the end of the production schedule with a skeleton crew & give vague, large brushstroke hints of where Anno AT THAT MOMENT thinks the story is going to go next. Since this isn't a TV series where the next week's episode is 95% complete but a film franchise where the next sequel is usually a few sentences written down in a notebook anything that shows up in that preview is subject to change. Regarding Eva 8+2, based on what we saw of the two units at the end of 3.0 they don't have enough left of Evangelion Unit 02 to make up half a body. If it does end up in the final movie it'll be a more Frankenstein-esque patchwork creation.

3. I hate the "next time" previews in the Rebuild films. They are really the only things in the films series so far I absolutely can't support. They're useless & only do more harm then good. We saw that with the the teaser at the end of 2.0 & people losing their minds because the third film didn't follow "the teaser".* I figure that's why for the teaser at the end of 3.0 they decided to only show one sequence - clearly a big central action set piece that has a high probability of not being cut out.

*Funny thing about the teaser for 3.0 is those thirty seconds feature more Kaji then the actual movie it's promoting does.

^ Plus, Unit 02's left side was the one with the prosthetic arm, so even if they did combine half of each they'd have to grow an entirely new arm.

I don't think 8+2 will literally be a combination of the two Evas. Unit 08 wasn't badly damaged, just some core erosion on the arms and whatever fall damage it took hitting that building. We've seen worse damage on the older Evas so there's no reason they shouldn't be able to repair that. Plus, Unit 02 doesn't really have any useful parts left.

I have a few guesses what it might be:
1. Unit 08 is refit as a dual-entry Eva, repainted and given some of Unit 02's spare parts to placate Asuka.

2. It's an entirely new Eva given the same treatment (8+2 instead of 10?)

3. It's just a visual representation of Units 8 and 2 working together, like the brief Eva 1+2 from the Israfel episode. That would mean Wille has the technology to rebuild Unit 02 from a head and torso, but I don't think anything about this strange new future will surprise me.

I guess that, thinking about it, going berserk would regenerate bodies (assuming the better the sync is the more creational female power you get from growing flesh back to changing reality) and that's system failure because of multiple parts linking to each other instead of one single body.
More parts= complex system, 1part= fast.
So combining evas for two pilots isn't a genius idea unless the eva is designed for that from the beginning and the pilots get to be very intimate (for high sync?).
Plus at the end of the day kaworu and Shinji didn't really get each other so one pilot may take the lead which kills the very idea of having two pilots in one eva.
Dunno wish I realized this is ship material, Mari does pilot different stuff but she's passive/agressive with Asuka. They are in competition and never in sync with mari bailing out all the time.
So it's not just the preview but useless dedicated mechanics applied on evas which are not simple enough to let elegant complexity emerge. The whole point of having kaworu and Shinji pilot together was to grab two spears which apparently only accept souls (does it mean Shinji was fine for both the spears and kaworu just took a lot to realize it? Was that some ironic thing on the piano lead in the form of a trap? Kaworu plays the lead part of the sheet by sitting on the right). Dunno what Asuka and mari would work together for.

The fact that 8 + 2 is more like Unit 8 with red paint than an actual "8 + 2" reminds of me of this one line in 2.0. Before 03's activation test, Asuka says something along the lines of, "If I like Unit 03, have it painted red"

Now, this is something that always bothered me about Unit 8+2. It would be one thing if EVAs were machines, with interchangeable parts, but they're not. They're living creatures. How are Unit 2 and Unit 8 being combined and still kept alive. And more importantly, whose soul does this new FrankenEVA contain?

Unit 01 is the only Eva confirmed to have a mother's soul or a human soul inside of it at all. As far as we know, none of the others do. It could be that they simply have souls of their own this time around.

Wille could probably graft some of Unit 02's biological parts onto Unit 08 if they need to, but Unit 02 got messed up pretty badly by the explosion and none of the surviving parts match the damage on Unit 08. If 08+02 has anything of Unit 02 in it, it's probably armor or mechanical parts. Hopefully they'll be able to just install a new core in Unit 02 and rebuild it. I'm still not sold on 8+2 yet!

Edit: If Wille hypothetically can't fix Unit 08's organics, then why not just replace them with cybernetics like Unit 02? The whole thing is peculiar.

^ Yui is said to be the control system of Unit 01. Not exactly sure what the means soul-wise. It could be that Yui is the control system for all the Units via cloning. (Maybe adding more to Rei's backstory?) Or it could be that each Eva needed a unique control system. Who knows?

I thought I had read something about how the souls in Eva units were interchangeable in Rebuild, since Unit 02's core is seen being removed from it before being placed in containment, though I don't remember if her core made it out by the end of 3.0.

Unit 02's core is kept in the containment silo with the Eva and put back in when Mari pulls it out of cryo. They change the designated pilot, their data, and some kind of passcode. It isn't with the remains at the end of 3.0, but it looks like the housing that links to it is still intact.

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:^ Yui is said to be the control system of Unit 01. Not exactly sure what the means soul-wise. It could be that Yui is the control system for all the Units via cloning. (Maybe adding more to Rei's backstory?) Or it could be that each Eva needed a unique control system. Who knows?

Well she entered the core directly, so her soul should be in there somewhere, but it doesn't seem like she can control Unit 01 herself anymore. Maybe they figured out how to make that prototype control system work for the other Evas? We know so little about them in the movies.

If it works the same way as NGE then Kyoko went byebye already.

If there even is a Kyoko in this timeline.

I was just thinking about whether the Rebuild EVAs have souls or not. The Rebuild displays a lot of pilot and unit interchangeability that seemingly wouldn't have been possible in NGE, with no drawbacks to performance.

Assuming that they have their mother's souls:
A piece of Kyoko's soul was moved to Unit-03 for testing. Not the entire thing, or they wouldn't be able to run Unit-02 after 03 was destroyed. Unless, of course, Asuka's angel contamination allowed her to use Unit-02 without Kyoko, similarly to how Kaworu controlled 02 in NGE through his link as Adam. Or Kyoko's soul wasn't destroyed. I dunno. It would help Asuka's whole emo thing she's got going on if she never had the EoE revelation, because her mother's soul was destroyed.
A part of Mari's mother's soul could been in Unit-02 the whole time, and she unlocked it through Beast Mode. If this is true, though, that would mean her mother's soul has been in Mark.05, Unit-02, and Unit-08.
NERV is still using Yui's soul, obviously, and it has been divided multiple times, as there is still Unit-01 powering Wunder and Mark.13(Maybe her soul is in Mark.13??).

Something about this puzzles me, though. Unit-01 is a vessel of Adam, so I assume it's made from Adam instead of Lilith. That makes sense within N3E, as Unit-01/Adam bonded with Rei/Lilith to cause it. So we can assume that 01 is made from Adam and 00 is made from Lilith (If Zeruel consumed a Lilith based EVA, would that cause an impact?). If Asuka pilots Unit-02 through her angel contamination, though, that would suggest that 02 is made from Adam as well. So 00 would probably be the only Lilith based EVA. This of course fits with Mark.13, as Kaworu would be compatible with it. (Excuse me if they explicitly stated the origins of the EVAs in 3.0, and it doesn't match.)

So, am I way off on this one?

Unit 02 in Q had a really good detachable arm for a quick change in strategy. Not to mention the overall design for the Eva's in Q seemed to go for a more mechanical role rather than the one of a living creature. Evangelion 13 which was an Adam, had a lot of techno-babble to it. And other than being made with mostly LCL, there is almost nothing bio about The Nemesis Series.

El Squibbonator wrote:Now, this is something that always bothered me about Unit 8+2. It would be one thing if EVAs were machines, with interchangeable parts, but they're not. They're living creatures. How are Unit 2 and Unit 8 being combined and still kept alive. And more importantly, whose soul does this new FrankenEVA contain?

Considering these three next time previews are the only ones in the series, it's hard to make that claim when only one hasn't panned out exactly that way and another is for a movie we haven't seen yet. Judging by what we saw in both Ha and Q and what we in the preview in between, that preview could still very well be a part in the story. Like a 3.0 that never was. Unfortunately I find it very hard to believe we'll actually get to see that, especially since there's been no word on a 3.0 CRC. I understand Anno's absence before and now leaves that state of the last movie in limbo, but I don't think it warrants the absence of a CRC for Q. I mean, they clearly have kept themselves busy on other works, I don't see why this would fly over their heads.

3. I hate the "next time" previews in the Rebuild films. They are really the only things in the films series so far I absolutely can't support. They're useless & only do more harm then good. We saw that with the the teaser at the end of 2.0 & people losing their minds because the third film didn't follow "the teaser".* I figure that's why for the teaser at the end of 3.0 they decided to only show one sequence - clearly a big central action set piece that has a high probability of not being cut out.