I never really thought about it but... why DID Sachiel suddenly appear out of nowhere and start advancing on Lilith's position 15 years after 2nd Impact? Did it just take that long for Sachiel to mature from whatever Sandalphon-esque "egg" it was gestating in? And then why do all Sachiel's fellow Angels then attack in sequence so closely behind Sachiel?

Unless I've forgotten some PS2 game lore, SEELE doesn't get their hands on an Angel until they create Kaworu [or maybe they'd had him on standby or in cryostasis or something ever since the 2nd Impact?] so it wouldn't be them sending the Angels one after another. Only thing I can think of is maybe Sachiel's been wandering the southern hemisphere [which remember is still totally FUCKED and pretty much uninhabitable after the 2nd Impact even 15 years later] all this time, and once it locks on to Lilith's "signal" [blood pattern?] it beelines for her, then sends out it's own signal to the rest of the Angels that the other Seed of Life that fucked over Adam has been found, so they all start converging on that spot, like a scout ant finding food.

The CI has the following line: "The Angels — Adam-based life — became active under their respective tactics for survival and success." This can more or less be extrapolated from the show, as they suss out that the angels are acting in a somewhat reactive, or adaptive manner. I guess you can take this to mean that in their gestation they might have been developing in such radically different forms as a strategic, hivemind way of ensuring greater chances at success--survival requiring diversity, in a genetic sense. And perhaps you can say they didn't all strike at once because it's the same principle, the idea of avoiding the circumstance of being wiped out all at once, like a sickness become cataclysmic in the face of genetic uniformity. There wouldn't be a chance to react and adapt otherwise.

In the first draft of the show's plot angels were considered to be artificial weapons programmed to become active upon detecting any successful reactivation of evangelions, since they were created to destroy any civilization that discovered how to create them. You can see signs of that perspective in the first episode, where Gendo calls Sachiel "autonomous weapon" and drops "they are here do destroy humanity" a bit later on. As show was rolling, the concept was seemingly abandoned in favor of some less comprehensible explanation, so the final answer is, we have no idea.

Classified information has more on them, but it's basically a fanfic.

Anshin wrote:Classified information has more on them, but it's basically a fanfic.

Isn't the CI from the PS2 game? I thought all that lore was written under direct supervision from Anno... you wouldn't call the First Ancestral Race "basically a fanfic", would you? I'm lost

you wouldn't call the First Ancestral Race "basically a fanfic", would you?

There was only a very long interview with Anno that granted game creators the inspirations they needed, so anything within the game can turn out to be their take on the most basic ideas and images behind the show.

The version where aliens create seeds of life to populate earth seems to be incompatible with the show. What I believe happened is that game creators were told how FAR were aliens that created seeds in a similar manner to Atlanteans from Nadia and misinterpreted it in a "aliens means extraterrestrial" kind of way. In original draft there were two ancestral races, and both of them were simply ancient.

Taking the CI as canon is too far in one direction; immediate and off-hand dismissal of it as "fanfic" is the other. Truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Anshin wrote:The version where aliens create seeds of life to populate earth seems to be incompatible with the show. What I believe happened is that game creators were told how FAR were aliens that created seeds in a similar manner to Atlanteans from Nadia and misinterpreted it in a "aliens means extraterrestrial" kind of way. In original draft there were two ancestral races, and both of them were simply ancient.

This seems like the kind of speculation that you insist renders the CI as non-credible. There's no evidence of a misinterpretation if what exactly was shared by Anno & Gainax remains classified.

You're right that it's spoken of with more certainty exactly because of information outside of the show and is far less clear within the show itself ... but one of the core aspects of the mythos and the foundation for some of the most important terminology is the idea of some kind of impact event. It's true that second and third impacts aren't actually impacts ... but the precedent and trend setter of the event is inferred to be a literal impact. In-universe propaganda text points to this impact as leading to the creation of the moon, and although a lot of this "official" information is debunked by later-revealed, actual truths ... there's no reason to believe all of it is wrong. One can easily infer that there's a connection between the moon and Lilith through the constant leitmotif surrounding Rei, and trace that back to its stated origins as being extra-terrestrial.

What confuses me about alien explanation is how backwards it is in application; instead of neatly falling into empty places it basically overwrites everything we know from the show itself. It's "stop believing your lying eyes" kind of explanation.

Anshin wrote:What confuses me about alien explanation is how backwards it is in application; instead of neatly falling into empty places it basically overwrites everything we know from the show itself. It's "stop believing your lying eyes" kind of explanation.

Given that a not insignificant amount of the DNA of Eva comes from Ultraman and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and those both involve aliens ... I don't really see why aliens should be seen as some out of left-field element. The whole "Lilith wasn't supposed to be there" aspect I find too literal and kind of undermines the idea of a race that's supposed to have god-like intelligence, so I understand the reservation with much of the CIs application of the alien idea. But the idea of extra-terrestrials in general could plausibly be deduced or speculated if the PS2 game never existed, solely based off the in-show references to an impact event not analogous to anything in earth's actual irl history.

I mean "seeds of life" part of it, not "they came from space" part. Atlantians was from space also, and their existence in evangelion universe could have answer a lot of questions without much contradictions.

Anshin wrote:What confuses me about alien explanation is how backwards it is in application; instead of neatly falling into empty places it basically overwrites everything we know from the show itself. It's "stop believing your lying eyes" kind of explanation.

The knowledge that the “Angels” are actually space aliens adds an interesting dimension to SEELE by basically confirming that the so-called “Christian symbolism” is bullshit even in-universe. The fictionalized Dead Sea Scrolls were written by a guy 2000 years ago who came across an eldritch entity he could not possibly understand, and he did his best to interpret the knowledge it imparted on him within the framework of his own religion. 2000 years later, SEELE found his writings and basically just took them for fact.

The Unit-00 test that left Rei injured. The Angels detected it and thought it was Adam.

Gendo's Glasses wrote:The Unit-00 test that left Rei injured. The Angels detected it and thought it was Adam.

I don't think there's any support for this idea, but it's kinda baller.

Gendo's Glasses wrote:The Unit-00 test that left Rei injured. The Angels detected it and thought it was Adam.

Anno could literally come out and say this is the case and I'd be fine with it. Nice, simple theory.