how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby lily liver » Tue Jul 04, 2017 1:17 am

how much of her personhood is retained?
how often is she lucid and in control of her new body?
if she isn't lucid usually, then what triggers it?
when she isn't lucid, is it like she's in a coma?

i can't think of any more questions at the moment. you are welcome to think of, and answer, your own questions.
if there are any canonical answers then those take precedent, but i guess most of this will probably just be interpretation.

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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Sachi » Tue Jul 04, 2017 9:25 am

It's important to note that she never tends to go Berserk unless the Unit is otherwise inactive (due to lack of power, damage, etc). When Shinji is trapped in Leliel, he waits the full sixteen or so hours for his life support forum out, and only then does Yui take over. The other notable example is during the fight with Zeruel, where Yui goes berserk after the Eva has run out of power and is sustaining heavy damage. One of the odd balls to consider is episode 1, when Unit 01 raises it's arm to protect Shinji from falling debris. She does this without power source, or even an entry plug. This suggests that she's always aware of her environment. Maybe it requires a strong force of will on her part to take control of the body, and that it's easier when there isn't power running through it, commanding it to other things.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby lily liver » Tue Jul 04, 2017 9:34 am

When she went berserk during the zuriel fight, she behaves like an animal and eats the angel.

If a regular human womans mind is in control, it begs the question - why?

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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby thewayneiac » Tue Jul 04, 2017 10:17 am

View Original Postlily liver wrote:When she went berserk during the zuriel fight, she behaves like an animal and eats the angel.

If a regular human womans mind is in control, it begs the question - why?


She ate Zeruel in order to ingest its S^2 Engine. Now she can fight indefinitely without being plugged into an external power source.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jul 04, 2017 10:39 am

View Original Postlily liver wrote:When she went berserk during the zuriel Zeruel fight, she behaves like an animal and eats the angel. If a regular human womans mind is in control, it begs raises the question - why?

Because humans are animals, silly.

Your behavior is shaped by things other than just whoever your soul happens to be. Look at Rei or Kaworu for case in point. A soul is reshaped, like a fluid, by the shape of the vessel containing it. NGE also stresses the importance of socialization in shaping who we are. Placing unthinkably ancient creation gods amidst mortals for a mere decade has dramatic results. Imagine what removing Yui from her social life and letting her marinate in the body of a god for ten years would do to her. After suffering from locked-in syndrome for so long and finally waking up here and there to life-and-death circumstances that require drastic measures, I don't imagine you'd be acting very civilized either.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby lily liver » Tue Jul 04, 2017 10:50 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:Imagine what removing Yui from her social life and letting her marinate in the body of a god for ten years would do to her.


i believe the implication you're going for is that it would drive her completely insane and reduce her mind down to most basic primal form that a human mind can exist as. correct?

when she communicates with Shinji while he's stuck in the dirac sea, and at the end of EoE when she is talking to Shinji as he floats upward toward the surface of the sea of LCL, she doesn't seem too insane to me.

the show seems to use this logic of "being in an eva reduces a human consciousness down to the level of a feral animal" only when its convenient for the plot. yui is a feral animal when the plot requires it, and she is contradictorally a coherent and psychologically functional developed human when the plot requires it.

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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jul 04, 2017 11:38 am

That's not quite what I'm going for, no. It's a bit more subtle than that. More like Yui's experience of being an Eva has forced those previously suppressed aspects of her humanity (the "primitive" parts) into expression. Combined with the preexisting elements of her personality, the end result is a more complete being -- something befitting a god.

There are weird -- and probably entirely unintentional -- parallels between the Evas and this novel/movie called Altered States. This was about an anthropologist with a Christian background who pursued ultimate spiritual knowledge by inducing his mind into altered states of being, whether through psychoactive substances, sensory deprivation (...by weird coincidence, what the Evas are subjected to most of the time!), and so on. Intriguingly, his journey goes both backwards and forwards: at one point, he physically embodies a primitive anthropoid (don't ask how, it's silly) and goes on a rampage out of the lab and into a local zoo, where he kills and feeds on an animal. (Might remind you of somebody...) He's reverted to normal by the next day. After that, his experiences become much more transcendent and ineffable... I recommend seeking it out, since it might give you a new way of looking at the relationship between primitivity and transcendence, and between humanity and the divine. It's quite intriguing if you can get past how much a product of the times it was.

Also incidentally, if you've seen enough fictional races, you should have, at some point, seen human-level sapience combined with bestial ferocity -- wherein no conflict whatsoever exists between the two. (The gargoyles from Disney's Gargoyles are a good example of this. They even have the glowing eyes down.) Such exercises make me wonder exactly what is stopping humans themselves from attaining this kind of peace with their animal sides. And also make me wonder if there's really anything contradictory at all about how Yui the Eva behaves.

Also also, you should read Berserk if you haven't, for its depiction of a complex, thoughtful character who happens to go on bloodthirsty killing sprees on a regular basis.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby pwhodges » Tue Jul 04, 2017 11:40 am

View Original Postlily liver wrote:yui is a feral animal when the plot requires it,

Yui is a feral human when the plot makes that the most obvious way for her to behave (we all have some form of survival instinct), and being human retains her capacity for intelligent discourse with her son when that's a useful option.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Cybermat47 » Tue Jul 04, 2017 5:58 pm

A Mother will do anything for her child. That's how I view 01's beserk incidents, anyway.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Kendrix » Tue Jul 04, 2017 9:27 pm

Perhaps Yui's mind/will gives the orders, but EVA 01 carries it out according to its instinctiual, bestial nature, like, she says, "save Shin-chan, grab s2 engine" and the rest is EVA 01 the creature (that, perhaps, without her, has no such motivating will of its own).

It's worth considering giving that her reactions are usually triggered by something & that Shinji mostly experiences a dream-like state when dissolved, but then again he had no ideawhat was happening whereas Yui may have known what to expect and had years to get used to it.

Maybe the pilot's will normally overrides Yui's imput but its different when he's knocked out or there's no electricity to power the machanical components. Or I guess there's my old theory that a berserk state actually involves the pilot somehow in a kind of 'triune' state.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jul 04, 2017 10:59 pm

View Original PostKendrix wrote:Perhaps Yui's mind/will gives the orders, but EVA 01 carries it out according to its instinctiual, bestial nature, like, she says, "save Shin-chan, grab s2 engine" and the rest is EVA 01 the creature (that, perhaps, without her, has no such motivating will of its own).

Why would an Eva's actual soul be incapable of ever truly controlling its own body? Do any other beings in the Eva universe have to go through an "intermediate" like this? Why would the Evas be different? And aside from a refusal to accept that Yui would act like that, where is there actually any evidence that the Evas have a weird fractured life force?
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Cosmo11 » Wed Jul 05, 2017 4:03 am

I think Shinji's experience while he was absorbed in Unit 01 gives the best example of what the normal conditions are for a soul in an Eva.

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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Reichu » Wed Jul 05, 2017 4:24 am

View Original PostCosmo11 wrote:I think Shinji's experience while he was absorbed in Unit 01 gives the best example of what the normal conditions are for a soul in an Eva.

He was a soul without a body, whereas the Evas have bodies -- they're just not allowed to use them most of the time. Comes as little surprise, then, that the Evas are cognizant of their surroundings (to the point of being able to react immediately should necessity dictate), but Shinji shows no conscious awareness of anything outside the plug except when Yui gets involved. Shinji's experience might be similar to what it's like to exist as an unborn soul in a Seed's Chamber of Guf.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Mr. Tines » Sun Jul 09, 2017 4:25 pm

My head-canon is that she is essentially asleep/dreaming most of the time, only truly waking when it's important (like taking over the Third Impact Divide-by-Zero Ceremony). There's not really much call to be actively conscious while preparing to be simply evidence long after the Sun has gone out.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby TheCarkolum » Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:07 pm

View Original PostReichu wrote:Why would an Eva's actual soul be incapable of ever truly controlling its own body?

I agree with Kendrix in this one. The way I see it is not like Yui can't control her body, but she is influenced maybe by the physiology of the EVA, so her instincts and ways to proceed take the wild road. Still she does what she wants tho.

However, the EVA by itself doesn't have a will.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Kendrix » Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:50 pm

That saif if she had too little influence (ie, the "motly asleep" theory) it would really take away from the "Barely constrained demi god" factor of the EVAs.

I mean Yui knew what to expect (at least more so than Shinji did) & while he was just having vague dreamlike visions at first he did seem to piece together some degree of half-awareness as time went on, even reacting to Misato's bawling though this might have been precipitated by Ritsuko & the others trying to get him out.

Yui had 10 years to adapt to her new form - I'd imagine that her current mindset would be more detached from human understandings of time.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Reichu » Sun Jul 09, 2017 11:32 pm

View Original PostTheCarkolum wrote:I agree with Kendrix in this one. The way I see it is not like Yui can't control her body, but she is influenced maybe by the physiology of the EVA, so her instincts and ways to proceed take the wild road.

I'm not really following your logic here. Every last one of us is influenced by the body we inhabit, so of course Yui would be as well. What gives you the idea that she's not "in control", any more than, say, you're not "in control" of your body any time it does anything against odds with your own sense of volition?

For a useful thought experiment: prove that Lilith's soul actually controls Rei, rather than being a passive slave to the animal instincts of a Yui-clone body. I actually think Yui might come out ahead here...
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby TheCarkolum » Mon Jul 10, 2017 6:36 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:I'm not really following your logic here. Every last one of us is influenced by the body we inhabit, so of course Yui would be as well. What gives you the idea that she's not "in control", any more than, say, you're not "in control" of your body any time it does anything against odds with your own sense of volition?

For a useful thought experiment: prove that Lilith's soul actually controls Rei, rather than being a passive slave to the animal instincts of a Yui-clone body. I actually think Yui might come out ahead here...


You got the idea wrong. I'm saying Yui IS in control. You are in control of your body, but it doesn't contradict the fact your will can be influenced by your hormones and such (in fact it IS). That's the only thing I'm saying.

Well, Rei's soul is a bad example, because Rei's behavior and soul is more complex than almost anything in the show. Moreover, that example doesn't even apply properly. Lilith's soul doesn't control Rei, but it doesn't mean that is totally inhibited within Rei's ego. She in some way notice Lilith, but doesn't understand her, so instead of accept her total ego, she hides it, because she is afraid (episode 25). So, you chose the most confused and complex experiment. How all of that compares to the Yui case? Yui's entire ego was prisoned within the EVA, and because the EVA has no soul she IS in control. It's a lot more straightfoward and a total different case.
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Cybermat47 » Mon Jul 10, 2017 8:55 am

View Original PostReichu wrote: I actually think Yui might come out ahead here...


Given that Yui is a brilliant scientist who successfully became a kaiju, tore apart several other, arguably more powerful kaiju, helped her son mentally, then went into space to become evidence of Humanity's existence, I would actually be very surprised if there was ever a case of Yui not coming out ahead :)
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Re: how conscious is Yuis' soul, within unit 01, or souls trapped within evas in general

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Postby Reichu » Mon Jul 10, 2017 10:26 am

The Carkolum: Gracious! Yeah, I'm a dummy and totally managed to misread what you wrote. Apologies.
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