Linking 2.22's ending to 3.33

[Eliaskar]

I'm slightly confused as to why Kaworu stopped what became known as Near-Third Impact at the end of 2.22, and then claim he will bring Shinji true happiness? I assume he didn't know the forthcoming events of whatever happened between 2.22 and 3.33 afterwards, but I wonder why he would stop Third Impact? I assume it just wasn't going to be the scenario of what Seele would want Third Impact to be, but i'm not sure.p

Slightly rusty after such a long hiatus of fanwanking. Any idea's?

[BlueBasilisk]

He stopped it because the conditions were all wrong for Seele's desires. To carry out Seele's plan for Instrumentality, all of the Angels have to be defeated and some kind of important rituals carried out before Lilith can be resurrected and the true Evangelion born/awakened. They want Kaworu and Shinji together, not Shinji and Rei. Unit 01 was not the right Evangelion and it lacked the Spears, which are supposedly the keys to Instrumentality. None of the requirements had been met when Unit 01 awakened, so Seele had to intervene.

There's a really helpful scene around the middle of 2.0 where Seele spells out most of their plan to Gendo. It just sounds like more of their occult vagueness at the time, but it plays out point for point in 3.0!

3.0 doesn't say much on the matter, but I think the real Third Impact was one of those rituals Seele was talking about. Unit 01 didn't have either of the Spears, but Mark.06 did, and that makes me wonder how much damage N3I really could have caused without them.

[Eliaskar]

He stopped it because the conditions were all wrong for Seele's desires. To carry out Seele's plan for Instrumentality, all of the Angels have to be defeated and some kind of important rituals carried out before Lilith can be resurrected and the true Evangelion born/awakened. They want Kaworu and Shinji together, not Shinji and Rei. Unit 01 was not the right Evangelion and it lacked the Spears, which are supposedly the keys to Instrumentality. None of the requirements had been met when Unit 01 awakened, so Seele had to intervene.

There's a really helpful scene around the middle of 2.0 where Seele spells out most of their plan to Gendo. It just sounds like more of their occult vagueness at the time, but it plays out point for point in 3.0!

3.0 doesn't say much on the matter, but I think the real Third Impact was one of those rituals Seele was talking about. Unit 01 didn't have either of the Spears, but Mark.06 did, and that makes me wonder how much damage N3I really could have caused without them.

Ah that makes sense then. I'll have to go back and watch that scene again. I'm planning on watching all the Rebuild films again once 3.33 comes out here in the UK in two weeks so i'll probably notice little things like that. Gonna show them all to my friend as well who's seen NGE but not any of Rebuild yet.

There is one other issue however, why would Kawory expect the Spear of Cassius in Terminal Dogma if he is the one that used it on Shinji in the first place? Surely, if it had been removed during the timeskip, then wouldn't Unit-01 start up Third Impact again? Why does the impact in Seele's scenario require two Spears of Longinus? Unit-01 didn't need them.

[gatotsu911]

It's so abundantly clear that 3.33 took a radical unplanned turn during development. It feels dissonant with 2.22's ending completely. But I don't even mind, because I didn't care all that much for 2.22 and I think 3.33 is a far more interesting piece of work anyway.

[BlueBasilisk]

There is one other issue however, why would Kawory expect the Spear of Cassius in Terminal Dogma if he is the one that used it on Shinji in the first place? Surely, if it had been removed during the timeskip, then wouldn't Unit-01 start up Third Impact again? Why does the impact in Seele's scenario require two Spears of Longinus? Unit-01 didn't need them.

They must have taken it out of Unit 01 some time before sealing it in the Tesseract. Cassius is longer than Unit 01 is tall and the Tesseract is much too small to hold it. Unit 01 seems to go into a dormant slumbering state after being impaled the first time. It floats around in space for 14 years doing nothing until the opening of 3.0. It's safe enough for Wille to go spelunking inside and to install it in their engine without the spear.

Seele wanted Longinus and Cassius for their scenario. That second Longinus spear Shinji and Kaworu find is some kind of trickery on Gendo's part and it upends Kaworu's plans. How he pulled that off is a total mystery.

I'm not sure what the spears do in this continuity. Kaworu says they'll enable Unit 13 to change the world and that they're the keys to start Instrumentality. They seem to acts as control rods or some kind of focus for an awakened Eva's power. The spears glow white hot during Unit 13's awakening and the Eva completely bypasses the second pseudo-evolution phase Unit 01 achieved, entering "phase 3+ (estimated)" according to the model kit.

They also seem to effect the Gates of Guf. The spears are present during Second and Fourth Impacts, and the Gates are massive, have rainbow-colored rings, and there some cross-shaped objects in the black vortex in the center. Unit 01's is much smaller, completely red, and there's nothing inside of it that we can see. Who knows what that means?

[Gendo'sPapa]

I get the feeling that 3.0 was always meant to be the "pull the rug out from beneath the fans" moment ever since the series original conception back in (gulp) 2005 or 2006. I'm pretty positive the general outline of 3.0 - Shinji is punished for his actions at the end of the second film, is ostracized from those he was once close too, enters a dependent relationship with Kaworu, becomes seduced by the idea of redemption and foolishly attempts to correct things only to inflict more self punishment - has been out laid out since the start. I do think Anno might have increased how drastic the dissonance between "Old Eva" (1.0 & 2.0) and "New Eva" (3.0 and Final) during production.

I love the filmmaking of 2.0's ending and think it's one of the best recent examples of a filmmaker playing with presentation vs. text. The way everything is presented to the viewer at the end of 2.0 is cathartic, heroic and up lifting. The music swells, the hero plowers past his obstacles, the girl is saved, etc. On a primal and emotional level we get charged up. Yeah! He's saving the girl! The common observation by the casual viewer after 2.0 came out was "Shinji's FINALLY grown a backbone."
Meanwhile, the text we're plainly given is "The Eva & all this other grand scheme gobbly gook is granting this one kid's wish" and it's a wish that Shinji outspokenly says is "I don't care about the world! Fuck everything else! I just want to save Rei! This one person is all that matters!". It's the exact kind of thing a hero has said in a thousand stories before - Gainax's Gurren-Lagann panders to that mindset - only in the traditional narrative when a hero says that they end up saving their object of worship - almost always a girl - AND they save the world too. Not so in Eva.

Very curious to see where things are taken in the final movie.

[Reichu]

The way everything is presented to the viewer at the end of 2.0 is cathartic, heroic and up lifting.

Eh, I wouldn't say "everything". Eva-01 is as frightening and out of control as ever, the Geofront is a mess, Misato's enthusiasm turns to wide-eyed horror, we see Tokyo-3 get destroyed, etc. The audience must willfully ignore all of the super-obvious cues saying, plain and clear, "THIS IS NOT GOOD". Maybe it's just because my brain always worked on an offbeat wavelength, but I never really got how the majority was so easily suckered into Shinji's delusion. The popularity of 2.0 and the sheer number of people who didn't see 3.0 coming, in spite of ample warning, seem to speak loudly for how most of Eva's viewership fundamentally doesn't understand it and/or likes it for the "wrong" reasons.

[gatotsu911]

2.22's ending is as tonally confused and confusing as the rest of the movie.

[BlueBasilisk]

The audience must willfully ignore all of the super-obvious cues saying, plain and clear, "THIS IS NOT GOOD".

You'd think that would come through loud and clear when the last thing before the credits is "The Third Impact has begun. The world is about to end."

I get the feeling that 3.0 was always meant to be the "pull the rug out from beneath the fans" moment ever since the series original conception back in (gulp) 2005 or 2006..

Kaworu's VA did say Anno let him in on some secrets about the future while filming 1.0, and that he wanted to see how the others reacted to what he already knew when they made 3.0. It sounds like that's probably the case.

[TheFriskyIan]

Kaworu's VA did say Anno let him in on some secrets about the future while filming 1.0, and that he wanted to see how the others reacted to what he already knew when they made 3.0. It sounds like that's probably the case.

Source? That sounds interesting.

[BlueBasilisk]

Here you go. It's from a cast interview pamphlet that came out in 2012.

[gatotsu911]

Unsurprising seeing as pretty much every single line of dialogue Kaworu has in 1 and 2 (and much of 3) is some cryptic allusion to yet-unexplained plot elements.

[Bagheera]

Eh, I wouldn't say "everything". Eva-01 is as frightening and out of control as ever, the Geofront is a mess, Misato's enthusiasm turns to wide-eyed horror, we see Tokyo-3 get destroyed, etc. The audience must willfully ignore all of the super-obvious cues saying, plain and clear, "THIS IS NOT GOOD". Maybe it's just because my brain always worked on an offbeat wavelength, but I never really got how the majority was so easily suckered into Shinji's delusion. The popularity of 2.0 and the sheer number of people who didn't see 3.0 coming, in spite of ample warning, seem to speak loudly for how most of Eva's viewership fundamentally doesn't understand it and/or likes it for the "wrong" reasons.

This is kinda bizarre for me too. It's like no one was paying attention to the fact that an Impact was occurring, or to Ritsuko explaining exactly that, or to Misato going from cheering Shinji on to being utterly horrified, or to the fact that Kaworu dropped a Spear into Unit 01, or to the next episode preview that indicated everything would be locked down and very much not happy fun times, and yeah, the fact that it says right there on the screen that the world is about to end . . . I mean, where's the disconnect here? How can anyone feel betrayed by Q, or feel like the show has switched gears, when the setup is right there? I get the confusion due to the timeskip but c'mon.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Really all that GAR Shinji stuff ends right when the music changes. The first half of the battle was tremendously epic. After that it was all "No, Third Impact can't be happening this soon, can it???"

[WunderBah]

The popularity of 2.0 and the sheer number of people who didn't see 3.0 coming, in spite of ample warning, seem to speak loudly for how most of Eva's viewership fundamentally doesn't understand it and/or likes it for the "wrong" reasons.

All these, especially with the infamous Misato cheering segment which gets constantly thrown in as a cring-inducing argument to shit on Misato's behavior at the beginning of Q, as frustrating as it may be presented.