StrokeMeGoat wrote:Wait, whether instrumentality is a good or bad thing is up for debate? Seriously? It's supposed to be symbolic for losing yourself in fantasy and how it's not much different from being dead in the first place (assuming you let it consume your life or stop you from improving yourself), and that you have to return to reality and grow as a person. I feel like viewing instrumentality as some sort of nirvana is to miss the point Anno was making from the beginning.

I'm sure that Anno meant it to be ultimately a state of failure for the human spirit. But there's plenty of Buddhism in Japan, and so many people there might resist that message (I guess - I admit I've never asked them).

NemZ wrote:It was said before the shattering effect, still within the theater, which the characters directly state is instrumentality.

If the line SUA finds to be the uplifting triumph over depression is actually in the EoTV version that validates my point that it is the good ending, not EoE.

The problem being that we don't know what happened after EoTV, which means nothing is validated one way or the other. For all we know that scene with Rei and Kaworu and Shinji from EoE might have happened in the very next scene.

If you judge endings by what might happen afterwards then on a long enough timeline no endings are good ones. Or maybe you could just stick to the show as presented and not gum up the works by trying to jam in a movie that doesn't fit there.

StrokeMeGoat wrote:I feel like viewing instrumentality as some sort of nirvana is to miss the point Anno was making from the beginning.

Some of us don't much care what Anno had in mind and focus instead solely on the show/film itself. Whatever sort of metaphor he meant for it to be breaks down when the fantasy is a real possibility just brimming with unknowable potential.

NemZ wrote:If you judge endings by what might happen afterwards then on a long enough timeline no endings are good ones. Or maybe you could just stick to the show as presented and not gum up the works by trying to jam in a movie that doesn't fit there.

What doesn't fit is an unreserved happy ending, which is why we got EoE in the first place. And given how readily EoTV and EoE align -- word for word in many cases -- it's perhaps not surprising that many of us find it easy to see how they overlap. There is no one true way, of course, but that applies to you just as much as it does us.

Some of us don't much care what Anno had in mind and focus instead solely on the show/film itself. Whatever sort of metaphor he meant for it to be breaks down when the fantasy is a real possibility just brimming with unknowable potential.

But of course at that point you're talking about what you want the show to be and not what's actually presented.

The thing that still leaves me wondering after all this time is just how far the existence of people "overlap" in terms of Instrumentality. If I recall correctly (And my memory is now extremely fuzzy about exact details, so I beg pardon for any plot butchery), Shinji was told that anyone who wanted to would be able to come back; which I can only assume means that they would be able to reaffirm their individuality and return from that pool of orange soup if they so wished.

But if human individuality is overlapping like crazy inside that primordial sea of souls/blood/goo, would they even be aware that they are stuck in that state? And if not, what would trigger any sense of tipping off a person stuck in Instrumentality that the "reality" they built for themselves is a big fat fake, and that they might want to wake up from it?

Or did I just miss some detail about how Shinji and Asuka returning broke the whole arrangement apart and paved a way out for everyone else who wished to follow?

Markal wrote:Or did I just miss some detail about how Shinji and Asuka returning broke the whole arrangement apart and paved a way out for everyone else who wished to follow?

Possibly. Once AT fields come back the overlap you speak of is no longer an issue.

NemZ wrote:It was said before the shattering effect, still within the theater, which the characters directly state is instrumentality.

Dangnabitation. I will have to reatreat into Mystical Christian Existentialism.

yui-sama wrote: "It will be alright. All lifeforms have the power to restore themselves and the wish to live. If you decide to live, anywhere can be heaven, because you're alive. There will be chances to be happy everywhere. As long as the Sun, Moon and Earth exist...it will be alright."

Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor—one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

NemZ wrote:Some of us don't much care what Anno had in mind and focus instead solely on the show/film itself. Whatever sort of metaphor he meant for it to be breaks down when the fantasy is a real possibility just brimming with unknowable potential.

Alright, well, if we're working within the world of NGE itself... if Shinji's rejection of Instrumentality is what resulted in all of humanity having the choice of returning or not (rather than being forced to stay in the sea of LCL no matter what), is that still not better than the alternative? Nobody is being forced to come back per se, they just need to have the will to live and the ability to imagine themselves. Rei specifically gave Shinji a choice. If he didn't choose what he did, everyone would've been forced to stay one being. How was choosing what gives others a choice of their own, too, bad in any way? How can that be viewed as a failure? I don't remember who exactly said rejecting Instrumentality was another failure, so if it wasn't you, don't take what I say to mean I'm speaking directly to you. No matter how I look at things, I can't see what he wound up choosing as wrong. Maybe I'm just blinded by my own beliefs, but having a choice is better than not having a choice, at least to me.

NemZ wrote:If you judge endings by what might happen afterwards then on a long enough timeline no endings are good ones. Or maybe you could just stick to the show as presented

But any number of novels, films, etc, end at the point of setting up potential for an unknown future - which it would be bizarre not to contemplate, even though it is no more certain than one's own future. Even if the obvious story arcs are completed, there's often an bigger over-arching one to think about.

I have just read Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage which ends in just this manner - the protagonist has accumulated uncertainties and doubts, but has gained an inner peace, and we leave him just before he goes off to try to resolve all the other issues.

StrokeMeGoat wrote:How was choosing what gives others a choice of their own, too, bad in any way? How can that be viewed as a failure?

When he rejected instrumentality Rei ended it for everyone, thus not giving people that option anymore... Now it's just exist or don't. That's twice in the same film Shinji unilaterally makes selfish decisions that have drastic effects on the future of the rest of humanity.

There's a certain inconsistency that comes to mind, it seems to me. When Instrumentality is invoked, it's clearly a step change in the world which draws everyone in; but then leaving it seems to become an individual choice.

In the end, my feeling is that getting too detailed in one's thoughts about this is shying away from the point, which is almost solely about Shinji's journey - that's why he gets to make a choice.

pwhodges wrote:When Instrumentality is invoked, it's clearly a step change in the world which draws everyone in; but then leaving it seems to become an individual choice.

Leaving it isn't an individual choice. Shinji ended it for everyone. There's no Instrumentality left to leave. What IS an individual choice is deciding to return to physical form.

This has been a point of confusion again and again, and I'm not sure why... The movie makes it quite clear that Instrumentality is over. The Anti A.T. Field dissipates, the Black Moon is destroyed, and humanity's souls are ejected from Paradise and returned to Earth.

It's true that Rei calling the place where HIP takes place "the Sea of LCL" doesn't help matters, since there's a literal ocean of LCL on Earth when all is said and done; but the Sea of LCL is clearly an otherworldly place that doesn't exist in normal space, along the lines of Leliel's Dirac Sea. (Both Lilith's body and the Black Moon provide pathways into it.) I've written a number of posts going into this if anyone is interested.

NemZ wrote:I don't think that at all, which is why rejecting the option was listed among Shinjis many failures. EoTV is the good ending for precisely this reason.

The impression I got is that instrumentality was supposed to be simultaneously analogous to being dead, having never been born, and spending all your time watching anime instead of going outside and meeting people. Am I to believe those are all good things?

Squigsquasher wrote:I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking this. People who say EoE is "uplifting" or "a good ending" are either off their rockers, clinically retarded, or both.

Don't most people who like Evangelion fall into the "off their rocker" category?

Arcadia's legacy wrote:I think many of us would prefer if you didn't insult other forum members like that

I tend to assume people are hyperbolic when they make those kinds of insults about art or fiction. Now, when it's about politics..

I always felt Instrumentality was somewhat analogous to something like this

Arcadia's legacy wrote:I always felt Instrumentality was somewhat analogous to something like this

I kekked internally.

Tumbling Down wrote:The impression I got is that instrumentality was supposed to be simultaneously analogous to being dead, having never been born, and spending all your time watching anime instead of going outside and meeting people. Am I to believe those are all good things?

That's one view, sure, and the one that matters for people who don't live in a depressing mecha anime.

However if you do (Like Shinji) and the only people you might hope to meet are already in instrumentality then leaving it is the true act of running away from interpersonal contact. Why must the real world be the only place where life can be lived? What makes you think instrumentality isn't the more fundamental state of existence in that universe and that 'real life' is actually the dream when it's clearly demonstrated in both endings that new worlds can be created within it? How can we even be sure in EoE that Shinji really did leave rather than just creating another 'bubble reality' to act out his feelings of guilt and isolation for self-imposed crimes?

It seems to me that when "anything goes" reaches that level of interpretation, it starts to become pointless to write (or possibly even read/watch) stories at all!