An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room (Eva Cosmology)

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An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room (Eva Cosmology)

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Postby CommanderFish » Mon Aug 29, 2016 2:58 am

[Originally titled "Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)", and subsequently changed to reflect the direction the thread went in.]

I apologize if there was already a thread for this, but I couldn't find one.

The 6th part of a video series analyzing all the NGE characters has returned from a long hiatus. I'm hoping at least some people here are aware of these videos already, because they are pretty well-made (albeit with a few factual errors here and there, especially in some of the earlier videos).

Anyways, this one's about Yui. The reason I felt I should post this is because this guy makes some conclusions about Yui, Gendo, and Fuyutsuki's motives for Third Impact that I have never quite heard before. Although I'm sure someone here brought up ideas like this somewhere along the line, I thought that the general consensus was a bit different. Maybe I'm wrong; I don't know.

Either way, I'd sorta be interested in seeing what you folks think. If you don't want to watch the entire 20 minute video you can skip to about 5:30 to hear the stuff I was talking about.
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby Reichu » Mon Aug 29, 2016 3:39 am

Even starting at the time you provided, I don't have enough patience for videos like these to figure out what it is you want to discuss. Given the ephemeral nature of YT links, it's worth providing a text-based summary anyway so that this thread makes quick and concise sense years down the line (something we like to aim for whenever possible).

Whatever I did manage to stick around for sounded like stuff I've heard in countless previous EGF threads, and the video's author seems to be familiar with this place so I wouldn't be too surprised if the discussions provided... inspiration.
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby Gargantuar » Mon Aug 29, 2016 6:48 am

I actually found out about your(?) channel 2 weeks ago and I though that you(?) were dead glad you're back. ^_^
memes

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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby CommanderFish » Mon Aug 29, 2016 1:54 pm

@Gargantuar, Not my channel, but I'm glad it's back too.

Reichu wrote:Given the ephemeral nature of YT links, it's worth providing a text-based summary anyway so that this thread makes quick and concise sense years down the line (something we like to aim for whenever possible).

Understandable.
Here's the part that I was confused about: "... Gendo's, and subsequently Yui's plan, was to use Eva Unit-01 as an ark--a temporary refuge for all of humanity's souls--until Third Impact ended. Instrumentality would then be rejected, and the souls would then be released from this ark, with people eventually re-embodying from the LCL."

The evidence he uses to show that Gendo and Yui were on the same plan was this line:
Gendo (addressing Yui) wrote:Soon, the final angel will appear. If we destroy it, our wish will come true.

And the evidence he uses to support the idea that Unit-01 was planned to be used as a temporary ark is this:
SEELE (addressing Gendo) wrote:We have no intention of giving up our human forms simply to enter the ark called Eva.

..and this:
Fuyutsuki (during Third Impact) wrote:... the Tree of Life has been formed again. Will it become the Ark to save mankind from the nothingness of Third Impact? Or the demon that destroys us all?

My understanding was that Gendo's motive for Third Impact was to reunite with Yui, though I suppose he could achieve both that and the the Ark idea by simply staying within Unit-01's core with Yui while everyone else gets reborn from the LCL. But, I also thought that Yui's plan was to float off into space within Unit-01 as "eternal proof that mankind ever existed" (possibly serving as a new Source of Life--at least that's what I like to believe), while everyone else on earth died in Third Impact. Though, again, I suppose she could have just been planning for either outcome. Either way, during Third Impact people don't even get get absorbed into Unit-01 anyways; they enter the Chamber of Guf/Black Moon (something else, is my point). Was it ever even possible to enter Unit-01 like this to begin with?
So... sorry if this has already been discussed in detail, but what do you think about all this?
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby Reichu » Mon Aug 29, 2016 4:59 pm

NGE itself is incredibly vague about all this, as it is wont to be.

Before Lilith gets involved, Seele seem to be preparing Eva-01 for use as a soul receptacle. The most blatant evidence for this, IMO, is the creation of the stigmata on her palms. As we see later during 3I, the significance of palm orifices in NGE is that they are Gates of Guf. On GNR, they open up on their own, but Rei is also acting autonomously. Seele intended to control Eva-01 with the Spears, so forcibly opening Gates of Guf on her palms seems within reason.

Another thing to at least examine with regard to the Ark business is Eva-01's transformation into the Tree of Life. This has incredible symbological significance with regards to HIP and its ostensible Kabbalistic goal of uniting humanity with God. The Cosmic/Inverted Tree (which the Sephirotic Tree represents in schematic form) has its roots in the heavens and its branches spreading downward into the earthly plain. For humans on Earth to reunite with God in Heaven, they must thus make a spiritual journey through the tree from the bottom (upper branches) to the top (center of root bed). What all of this amounts to is that Eva-01 becomes an object that enables and hence represents the spiritual transfiguration of a soul. In terms of the film, this could signify that the Eva-Tree is something that all souls must pass through in order to be complemented.

And to pass through something, you must first enter it. Perhaps this is precisely what's happening shortly after the Tree is absorbed by Lilith. When Shinji (who is inside Eva-01, who is part of the tree) looks around, we see that he's in the Chamber of Guf and/or the Sea of LCL, a vast domain of Red Space where countless Rei stream toward a red moon and countless nude human corpses float aimlessly. After the Rei make contact with the Tree, Shinji has a weird vision of his head replacing Rei's, and then his experience of Instrumentality begins. Shinji is coming in contact with humanity's souls here one way or another. The chain of events supports the idea that that the Tree of Life is required for Instrumentality to happen, hence it cannot start happening until Lilith sends it to Red Space where all of the souls have been collected.

While on the topic of the ToL, one of the less explicable lines in EoE is when Fuyutsuki says that the Tree of Life is inochi no taiga, which literally means "embryo of life/lives". An embryo, of course, represents the earliest growth stages of an organism. So the most straightforward, to my mind, implication here is that the Tree of Life has the potential to become something else. What is that something, exactly...?

The alternate Third Impact scenarios in Neon Genesis Evangelion 2 (translations are in one of the threads stickied here in Discussion; check it out) provide some possible illumination. In line with the "Eva as Ark" business, the primary "Good" and "Bad" endings of the PS2 game expressly describe Eva-01 being used as a vessel for human souls. Interestingly, the ending that shows Eva-01 in a similar state as she is at the end of EoE -- possessing the Spear and with flowing tresses -- also involves all humanity being complemented as a single being within her. Putting this back in the context of EoE, you could say that Eva-Tree is the embryonic form of the perfect Singular Organism (mentioned by Misato early in the film). With both fruits, Eva has the perfect god body; with a core full of complemented souls, she also has a spiritual existence equal to God.

I'll touch upon the Gendo stuff later if someone doesn't beat me to it.
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby CommanderFish » Tue Aug 30, 2016 12:39 am

Reichu wrote:Before Lilith gets involved, Seele seem to be preparing Eva-01 for use as a soul receptacle. The most blatant evidence for this, IMO, is the creation of the stigmata on her palms.

Wait... when were these stigmata created exactly? I don't recall them at all. Were they part of her original construction, or were they added to her later? The rest of your reasoning that follows makes sense, but I had no idea that those stigmata were there in the first place.

Reichu wrote:The Cosmic/Inverted Tree (which the Sephirotic Tree represents in schematic form) has its roots in the heavens and its branches spreading downward into the earthly plain. For humans on Earth to reunite with God in Heaven, they must thus make a spiritual journey through the tree from the bottom (upper branches) to the top (center of root bed). What all of this amounts to is that Eva-01 becomes an object that enables and hence represents the spiritual transfiguration of a soul. In terms of the film, this could signify that the Eva-Tree is something that all souls must pass through in order to be complemented.

Holy shit, how did I never realize this? I had always wondered if there was a specific purpose to the Tree besides what it symbolically represents, and this explanation makes perfect sense in that regard. Great insight!

Reichu wrote:While on the topic of the ToL, one of the less explicable lines in EoE is when Fuyutsuki says that the Tree of Life is inochi no taiga, which literally means "embryo of life/lives". An embryo, of course, represents the earliest growth stages of an organism. So the most straightforward, to my mind, implication here is that the Tree of Life has the potential to become something else. What is that something, exactly...?

Hmm, that is something to think about... but I think "embryo" in this case just means that it is the single entity that all forms of life (i.e. the Fruit of Knowledge and the Fruit of Wisdom) originate from. Sort of like how in actual embryological development, the cells of the zygote begin as totipotent--able to differentiate into any other type of cell--and then further along the line the cells will functionally specialize more and more until a specific organism is developed. So to answer your question, I would guess that the Tree of Life has the potential to become either an angel or a lilin. But then again, if the Tree is supposedly the source (or passageway, like you said) of all life post-FAR, then I suppose it wouldn't really be an embryo, as that can only develop into one organism. It would be more like a... a tree... I guess. :shrug:

Reichu wrote:In line with the "Eva as Ark" business, the primary "Good" and "Bad" endings of the PS2 game expressly describe Eva-01 being used as a vessel for human souls. Interestingly, the ending that shows Eva-01 in a similar state as she is at the end of EoE -- possessing the Spear and with flowing tresses -- also involves all humanity being complemented as a single being within her. Putting this back in the context of EoE, you could say that Eva-Tree is the embryonic form of the perfect Singular Organism (mentioned by Misato early in the film). With both fruits, Eva has the perfect god body; with a core full of complemented souls, she also has a spiritual existence equal to God.

If it's not clear from what I wrote above, I don't quite agree with you on what the Tree of Life is the embryonic form of. However, I do find it interesting that some of the endings in NGE2 involve all of humanity's souls being stored within the core of Unit-01. I guess my question then is, why didn't all the souls enter Unit-01's core in EoE? Is it because that's where Shinji was, and since he wanted everybody to die they all just went to the Chamber of Guf instead? Or was simply passing through Unit-01's core all that the souls could do? Was it never an option for them to become the Singular Organism within Unit-01 to begin with? But then, why would SEELE and Gendo and Fuyutsuki think it is? And why would those endings be featured in NGE2?
Ugh, I've got to revisit this at a different time. I'm not thinking clearly enough right now.
Or I'm just missing something. I'm probably missing something.

Reichu wrote:I'll touch upon the Gendo stuff later if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Please do, if you can. I need my head cleared by someone who knows more than me about this...
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby pwhodges » Tue Aug 30, 2016 1:49 am

View Original PostCommanderFish wrote:Wait... when were these stigmata created exactly? I don't recall them at all. Were they part of her original construction, or were they added to her later? The rest of your reasoning that follows makes sense, but I had no idea that those stigmata were there in the first place.

They are created while the MPEs are dealing with Eva-01 after her capture; we see Shinji looking at them on his hands (which are mirroring them through synchronisation).
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby Reichu » Tue Aug 30, 2016 3:06 am

View Original PostCommanderFish wrote:If it's not clear from what I wrote above, I don't quite agree with you on what the Tree of Life is the embryonic form of.

That's fine. It's just a possibility I was playing with and not something I'm all that convinced about.

I guess my question then is, why didn't all the souls enter Unit-01's core in EoE? Is it because that's where Shinji was, and since he wanted everybody to die they all just went to the Chamber of Guf instead?

Well, why do you assume humanity's souls never entered Eva-01's core? It was never explicitly shown, but: assuming "Eva + Spear = Tree of Life" is the very means by which HIP is achieved, all souls must enter the Tree to achieve their transcended, unified state. The question then is, where exactly is the "place" to which the Tree "leads"? If the intent is to bring them all together in a state of divinity, then Eva-01's core seems like a logical place for this to happen. The primary function of the core is to act as a "soul jar", plus the film has already repeatedly alluded to the notion of Eva-01 becoming the vessel for Instrumentality.

Interestingly, the core is also where the Spear's tip fused into Eva-01 to make the Tree in the first place! And if you break down what the Tree fundamentally is, it's an overgrown Spear of Longinus sandwiching an Eva and piercing her core. Perhaps it could be conceptualized in terms of a giant soul antenna (it kind of looks like an antenna, doesn't it?), channeling souls from the Tree's lower extremities toward the Spear's tip and on into the Eva's core for further processing.

Now, one thing about all this that is bound to generate confusion is exactly how in the world inner space (for lack of better term) operates in NGE. On that topic, I would suggest you check out my series of posts starting here for a basic primer.
.......Unfortunately, I never got around to making the posts about cores having some sort of link (possibly being a gate) to Red Space / the Sea of LCL. You might be able to put those pieces together just from reading what I have up, though, and consequently get your mind tangled in knots about how the Black Moon interior, the inside of GNR's body, and Eva-01's core can all be physically discrete and yet all seamlessly connect to the same space, and then blame string theory or something for all this nonsense.

As far as Gendo goes, my memory could probably benefit from some forum crawling and other research, but something quick and dirty in the meantime:

SPOILER: Show
Gendo definitely has a personal stake in 3I, but I think his plans are more comprehensive than this. Gendo was clearly motivated by something before Yui was absorbed, and that something still seems to be in effect even as he's trying to reunite with Yui's soul, evident in his interactions with Seele and Fuyutsuki throughout the show. In my opinion, he and Yui were plotting against Seele from the beginning, with Fuyutsuki their mutual choice for a third team member. Where it concerns humanity's future and thwarting Seele, I suspect all three are more or less in agreement, with any disagreement and lapses in communication involving much more intimate details, like the whole "sacrificing my mortal existence to hijack the backup of Lilith" thing (which, while strategically brilliant, Gendo would never have let Yui undertaken if he'd known her intent in advance) and what exactly Shinji's involvement is supposed to be and so forth.

But anyway, there's that whole question of what exactly the original goal was supposed to be. Fuyutsuki and Yui's conversation from 21' seems to establish that 3I is considered, for whatever reason, inevitable. So my best guess here is that Team YGF wanted to make the 3I that would happen happen in the least destructive way possible. Given Eva-01's behavior in EoE, I'm going to go ahead and say that Yui was OK with HIP happening, but only on her terms, with her and her son at the center of it. There has to be some kind of logic behind this decision, so... Perhaps Team YGF came to the conclusion that HIP didn't have to be a bad thing. Rather than use it to de-evolve humanity into an undifferentiated soul blob, it could instead be used to improve humanity, to give it a kick in the rear that, if nothing else, delays for a time this "evolutionary dead end" business that Seele thinks is so inevitable. Perhaps such an approach to HIP is, at least in part, what Fuyutsuki is talking about when he refers to Yui's "ideas".

Gendo himself clearly intended to stick around in Eva-01's core for all eternity. (He has an NGE2 ending that illustrates this. It's actually kind of pitiful, implying that Gendo chooses to retreat from reality into an idealized version of his memories circa 2003. Video here, and you can find elaborative discussion via the search tool.) I don't think he wished the same for anyone else (aside from perhaps Shinji or Rei, who are also present in that NGE2 ending), which is necessary for the "ark called Eva" thing to have any meaning whatever. (Not that you disagree with this particular detail or anything.)

It is quite difficult, at least for yours truly, to figure out how Yui's Space God mission ties into all of this. I've been of the opinion that it just appears out of nowhere at the very end of EoE, with absolutely nothing leading up to it, and absolutely no clarification resulting from the reveal either. However, there have been many other viewers who haven't had this kind of problem. Then again, there are also a lot of viewers who just assume that Yui is a crazy bitch, and according to such a reading an end goal that comes out of absolutely nowhere would sort of make sense.
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby CommanderFish » Tue Aug 30, 2016 6:43 pm

pwhodges wrote:They are created while the MPEs are dealing with Eva-01 after her capture; we see Shinji looking at them on his hands (which are mirroring them through synchronisation).

Oh, now I see them. Thanks, hodges.

Reichu wrote:Well, why do you assume humanity's souls never entered Eva-01's core? It was never explicitly shown, but: assuming "Eva + Spear = Tree of Life" is the very means by which HIP is achieved, all souls must enter the Tree to achieve their transcended, unified state.

I guess I assumed that they didn't just because that's not where the souls funneled into. I agree with the rest of your reasoning that follows, but I can't exactly see how it would work...

Reichu wrote:Now, one thing about all this that is bound to generate confusion is exactly how in the world inner space (for lack of better term) operates in NGE. On that topic, I would suggest you check out my series of posts starting here for a basic primer.

... but now because of this informative and massively helpful read, I can!

Reichu wrote:.......Unfortunately, I never got around to making the posts about cores having some sort of link (possibly being a gate) to Red Space / the Sea of LCL. You might be able to put those pieces together just from reading what I have up, though, and consequently get your mind tangled in knots about how the Black Moon interior, the inside of GNR's body, and Eva-01's core can all be physically discrete and yet all seamlessly connect to the same space, and then blame string theory or something for all this nonsense.

Or I can blame it on le space voodoo magikz...
In all seriousness though, I don't really have a problem with saying that all three of these lead souls to the same Red Space. I mean, quantum Rei can be in literally billions of places at once, so who's to say that this "inner space" can't also be located in multiple places at the same time? We're dealing with space gods here; surpassing the laws of physics doesn't really become that big of a deal at a certain point. Besides, like you said, it's more likely that these three things serve as a gate (portal, if you want to call it), to a different plane that houses the Sea of LCL, the primordial sea of all life. I don't think it's that impossible to consider that the FAR created this realm to house all the original souls... wait. Isn't this Red Space/inner space/Sea of LCL we're talking about just the Chamber of Guf? Am I missing something here? Because if it is, then a lot more stuff would make sense...

But there are still some issues with this. First of all, if it is the Chamber of Guf, then that would mean (based on your findings in that thread you linked), that the Chamber of Guf and the Sea of Dirac are in fact one and the same. I guess this could be the case, and Ritsuko could have just misidentified it, but we can't really know that for sure. Secondly, how exactly would the cores within the Eva units (and the angels for that matter) work? If the core of an Eva leads to the LCL sea/possible Chamber of Guf, then wouldn't the resident soul just be there, not inhabiting the Eva unit? Or maybe because the Eva unit is a life-form itself, it has to have just one designated soul to control it, and all other souls get sent to the (tentative) Chamber of Guf. This is perhaps what occurred in EoE to all the souls that entered Unit-01's core, (if they actually did).

But there's one more problem--one that sort of prevents everything I just said from even witnessing the possibility of truth. If the Black Moon and GNR's hands both lead to the same "inner space", then why do all the souls end up inside the Tree of Life instead of there? I still support the idea that the Tree has to be passed through in order for the souls to merge into a singular organism, but I also think this "inner space" idea (and it being the Chamber of Guf) makes a lot of sense. But unless the Spear somehow expanded Eva-01's core to fill up the entire volume of space within the Tree of Life, these ideas sort of contradict each other, don't they? Hrrmm... :chinscratch:

Thanks for addressing the Gendo stuff to the best of your ability, though. I don't quite know why you put the text for this part in spoilers, but as a courtesy I will do the same:
SPOILER: Show
Reichu wrote:In my opinion, he and Yui were plotting against Seele from the beginning, with Fuyutsuki their mutual choice for a third team member.

I agree with this. Many of the details are different for each of them, but I can see this far more clearly now.

Reichu wrote:Perhaps Team YGF came to the conclusion that HIP didn't have to be a bad thing. Rather than use it to de-evolve humanity into an undifferentiated soul blob, it could instead be used to improve humanity, to give it a kick in the rear that, if nothing else, delays for a time this "evolutionary dead end" business that Seele thinks is so inevitable. Perhaps such an approach to HIP is, at least in part, what Fuyutsuki is talking about when he refers to Yui's "ideas".

I'm not disagreeing with you here, but... how exactly would they do this? I don't really see the option with HIP to "improve humanity", but... maybe I'm missing something (again).

Reichu wrote:Gendo himself clearly intended to stick around in Eva-01's core for all eternity. (He has an NGE2 ending that illustrates this. It's actually kind of pitiful, implying that Gendo chooses to retreat from reality into an idealized version of his memories circa 2003. Video here, and you can find elaborative discussion via the search tool.) I don't think he wished the same for anyone else (aside from perhaps Shinji or Rei, who are also present in that NGE2 ending), which is necessary for the "ark called Eva" thing to have any meaning whatever. (Not that you disagree with this particular detail or anything.)

I'm still very murky on Gendo's motives, to be honest. He definitely did want to re-unite with Yui (at least at the end), but the fact that SEELE said that they specifically didn't want to use Eva-01 as an ark while specifically addressing Gendo; it just... is pretty good evidence to be honest.
But all this talk of Eva as an ark is starting to make me rethink how cores work from what I said above. I mean, if Eva-01's core simply lead to the Chamber of Guf for all the souls that entered it, then what would be SEELE's issue with entering it? But on the flipside, how would Eva-01 even be an ark if it would be leading to exactly what SEELE wants (i.e. explicitly not an ark). Perhaps Eva-01's core doesn't lead to the Chamber of Guf, afterall. But then... what is it?
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby Reichu » Wed Aug 31, 2016 12:14 pm

The higher dimensional Red Space voodoo is really difficult to wrap one's mind around (at least speaking for myself), and I'm sure I've barely tapped the surface of what's going on. I guess the first order of business would be to sort out precisely what is what.

Red Space: This is a sort of catch-all for the "red ethereal cosmos" motif that NGE utilizes again and again. In the condensed "tale of creation" from the OP, it seems to be associated with the origins of life and acts as a proverbial Eden. It turns up again most prominently during experiences where the pilot is making contact with the Eva's soul (episodes 14, 16, 20). And then in EoE, we're downright besieged by red weirdness. I expect that Red Space and the Sea of LCL are synonymous, but we'll get to that.

Dirac Sea: To reiterate Ritsuko's conclusions on the matter, "The ultra-thin space is supported by an inwardly-directed AT Field. The inside is an imaginary space, called a Sea of Dirac. I think it's probably connected to another universe." The Dirac Sea cannot be perceived by the Eva's onboard instruments. What is a Dirac Sea, exactly? Wikipedia calls it "a theoretical model of the vacuum as an infinite sea of particles with negative energy". Our former expert in all things occult and obtuse, Zuggy, offers some absolutely fascinating thoughts over here, also touching upon the link between the Dirac Sea and S^2 power and offering up a connection with the Kabbalistic concept of Ain (Void). Very relevant! I haven't looked at the linked thread in some time, so the information there is going to take a while to sink in, now that I have a framework for dealing with it.

Ritsuko's suggestion that the Dirac Sea connects to another universe/space is the biggest tip-off that the Dirac Sea is a distinct concept from the Sea of LCL (Red Space). After all, if the Dirac Sea is the Sea of LCL, then the question of what this other "universe" is remains unanswered. Furthermore, we're told that Leliel's body is incomprehensibly thin, whereas the bullets from Eva-01's gun have a penetration depth that's visible to the naked eye, so the LCL that spouts out is probably not from the Dirac Sea inside Leliel's body but from whatever lies beyond. I'm also under the impression that the concept of the Dirac Sea does not refer to one singular discrete thing -- i.e., Leliel contains a Dirac Sea and not the Dirac Sea -- but we'd need someone more skilled with physics to elaborate here.

Chamber of Guf: According to lore, this is where all the souls that will ever exist are stored before they're incarnated into flesh, and, once the chamber goes empty, Judgment Day is imminent. As for how NGE uses the idea, it does indeed seem to be a place where souls are stored before they're born. However, I'm not convinced that there is only one of them. We know from NGE2 that there were seven Seeds, each with its own Moon/Carrier, and that the FAR "boarded" these seven carriers. This seems, to me, like a euphemistic way of saying that their souls were divided among the Seven Seeds/Moons in a sort of "Zeroth Impact".

I'm not a little confused regarding the exact relationship between Moon (or Egg), Seed, and Chamber of Guf. NGE2's "boarding the carrier" phrasing ties into Fuyutsuki's comment regarding Lilith's egg being a source of human life (read: souls). Both of these, among other things, strongly link the Seed's Moon with the Chamber of Guf concept. However, the Gates of Guf, which indicate by their very name that they open into the Chamber, appear on the palms of the Seed. How does this make sense, exactly? What is the Moon accomplishing here that cannot be accomplished by the Seed alone? We see, after all, that Lilith's body alone is capable of leading into Red Space. This is not necessarily a GNR-exclusive property, either, as such a link would neatly explain Lilith's ability to bleed LCL forever despite her lack of S² engine. (In other words, her body is not actually producing the LCL; instead, it is functioning as an open gate to the Sea of LCL.) EoE adds to the perplexity by showing that the stream of souls going to Lilith splits in three, with two heading into the Gates of Guf and another entering the top of the Black Moon. And all of them end up in the same place anyway. I've pondered the possible significance of the splitting, and it leads me to some pretty strange places. ...Perhaps I should move on! -o-;

In lieu of sorting that mess out, perhaps we can at least say that there is some sort of undisclosed spatial link between the Seed and their Egg. So where does this leave the Chamber of Guf — what is it? Superficially, is doesn't seem especially distinct from Red Space, does it? However, consider: There are seven different Seeds out there, and at least one of them has not colonized a world yet. At the same time, Ritsuko stated that "the Chamber of Guf was empty" (her explanation for why only one Rei has a soul and the rest don't). If there is only one Chamber, this basically means that Lilith opened it up eons ago, drained the chamber completely except for ~14 souls, and then Adam woke up and used the rest, rendering it “empty”.

Does this make any particular kind of sense? Not to my mind, no. I'm inclined to say, instead, that each Seed has a distinct supply, which means that there are multiple Chambers of Guf. Each chamber could feasibly be nothing more than a Seed co-opting part — a bubble or pocket, if you will — of Red Space for temporary soul storage. Being the domain where souls apparently originated, Red Space would presumably possess ideal conditions for storing disembodied souls, provided they can all be kept together. The Seed's ATF would logically be able to accomplish this, since containment is something ATFs are really good at. Each Seed's need for a Chamber of Guf could also concisely explain why Eva cores link to Red Space. Evas are, of course, Seed copies, and they consequently exhibit many of those built-in Seed features whether Nerv has a use for them or not. And right here we have a convenient tie-in to musings from your post ("[the Eva] has to have just one designated soul to control it, and all other souls get sent to the (tentative) Chamber of Guf"). :wink:

Which finally leads us to...

The Sea of LCL: During the late stages of HIP, Rei informs Shinji that this is where they are located, and calls it (approximately) "the sea where life began". The "sea" part is, I assume, to be taken as metaphorical, as this is not an ocean in any way, shape, or form, but potentially a “sea” in the same sort of way a Dirac Sea is. My default conclusion is that "the Sea of LCL" is just another name for the domain of Red Space briefly viewed during the OP. It is that primordial, ethereal Eden — the cosmic womb of life.

The name, confusingly, implies that LCL itself -- not merely souls -- originate from this mysterious plane of existence, which is a pretty bizarre direction to go in. Souls are "mystical", so having them come from another realm of space-time (...or whatever the best description would be) is fitting. But LCL is just a biochemical broth, something altogether mundane...... isn't it? :chinscratch:

Episode 20 wrote:IBUKI:
Yes, the composition of the LCL inside the plug has chemically altered
into something very similar to the sea water of primitive Earth.

If Shinji's dissolution is what has altered the LCL into a primordial soup, then what, exactly, was the LCL before? This tidbit adds additional confusion, since isn't the very thing that Shinji dissolved into LCL itself? How could he alter the chemical composition of the plug's LCL if he turned into LCL? Something to think about...

I'm hesitant to think that the FAR created the Sea of LCL, since this would only create unnecessary complications where it concerns the FAR's own origins. If we don't want an endless recursion of people created by gods created by people created by gods etc., then at some point or another someone has to be created the boring abiogenetic way. And they're the First Ancestral Race, besides, which implies that no one came before. :wink: So, I suspect that their planet developed life via natural phenomena, and the FAR later discovered Red Space's role in the process and, as part of their valiant effort to further propagate life by artificial means, created entities able to access this realm with ease.


Attempting to summarize what we have here:

Red Space = The Sea of LCL: A fluidic red domain from whence souls and LCL — and, hence, all life — originate. It does not exist within “traditional” three-dimensional space. Capable of being accessed by Seed/Eva souls via unknown means, and by Angels via an inverted ATF containing a Dirac Sea.

Chamber of Guf: “Pocket” of red space used for storing unborn souls. Connects to the body, soul, and Egg (Moon) of a specific Seed of Life.

Dirac Sea: "Sea" of negative energy capable of linking our reality with Red Space. Can be generated with the use of an A.T. Field. Plays a significant role in S² Engine function (…the rabbit hole goes ever deeper!).


Despite none of this being exactly “integral” to understanding NGE, I absolutely adore the way that these concepts, seamlessly interweaving (soft sci-fi) physics and spirituality, provide a delicious extra layer of mythological exploration for inquisitive minds. It's all so minimal and unobtrusive, but when you dig in there are so many logical connections that form, clicking together rapid-fire like an Eva synch sequence. So awesome.

OK! Tackling the rest of your post...

If the Black Moon and GNR's hands both lead to the same "inner space", then why do all the souls end up inside the Tree of Life instead of there?

The Tree of Life is brought into Red Space, where the souls have already been collected, and shortly after this Shinji's experience of Instrumentality begins, producing the eventual result of “everything becoming one”. When Rei tells Shinji this, their surroundings support the idea that they're “everywhere and nowhere”; I mean, look at this:

Image

And yet, Shinji still has Misato's pendant with him. Which means that he's everywhere, nowhere, AND still inside the entry plug, all at the same time. The last one is important, in that it highlights that despite all of these temporo-spatial paradoxes, someone can still have an “actual location”, in the way we normally think of it. We see this sort of thing elsewhere, as you've noticed, with the way that Rei manages to appear in times and places that make so sense. In a similar vein, this explains a lot about how Gendo could talk to Kaworu and Yui then get half-eaten by Eva-01.

The exact mechanics are probably beside the point, and can be explored more thoroughly later on if you're so inclined. I suppose the takeaway here is that, by NGE's rules, we can have this happening:

- Lilith's body leads to Red Space.
- Black Moon leads to the exact same “coordinates” within Red Space.
- An Eva core intrinsically links to Red Space, but the whole Eva — core and all — can also be dragged into Red Space without creating some kind of spatial paradox.

I'm not entirely sure how the interplay between our space and red space is supposed to work. I mean, does Eva-01 simply “teleport” to the Sea of LCL, only to come back when she bursts out of Lilith's eye, or is she simultaneously within the Sea of LCL and Lilith's physical body? ¯\(°_o)/¯ I guess all that really matters is that, within the Sea of LCL, Eva-01 is able to interact with whatever's there.

And so, once the Tree of Life arrives, it presumably starts to take Lilith's ghastly collection of soul-corpses into itself, concentrating them into Eva-01's core. An interesting question is, does Eva-01 have a Chamber of Guf that's involved? Well, there's a possible visual clue... Right before Eva-01 merges with the Spear of Longinus, her core exhibits an unusual gradation (a detail noted specifically in the script), and, when it opens, there is something round and dark inside.

Image

The very next shot focuses upon one of Eva-01's hands, with its gaping stigma:

Image

Taking the context — Eva-01's transformation into the Tree of Life — into consideration, it seems reasonable to interpret the strange black sphere as the Chamber of Guf manifesting itself. The focus on the palm is, of course, to draw attention to Eva-01's Gates of Guf, being as they've suddenly become relevant. Where the Chamber is concerned, the visual and functional parallels with both the Black Moon and Leliel's shadow are fairly straightforward.

A yummy Easter egg:

SPOILER: Show
Image

Image

At least one of these images depicts Adam on the surface of the base, which happens, chronologically, after the Katsuragi Team says that Adam's Chamber of Guf is opening. So there we go, an actually good reason for the core to be black, and a precedent for what happens to Eva-01 much, much later. The black shape looks on the small side to be the entire core, anyway. (For fun, Here's the thread that came up when I searched for previously uploaded images. Hard to believe I was rambling about this stuff all the way back in 2007.)


If these conclusions are acceptable, then we can say that humanity's complementation actually occurs within Eva-01's Chamber of Guf, despite the apparent contradiction of Lilith's Gates/Chamber being involved in the process. Perhaps this can be reconciled if we consider that Eva-01 is Lilith's legacy. She was created from Lilith's body and can act as her proxy. The sequence wherein Instrumentality is brought to a close visually establishes that Lilith is "passing the torch" to Eva-01, as Lilith's wings fade away and she dies, while Eva-01 spreads twelve wings for the first time, etc. Perhaps this means that Lilith's Chamber of Guf is shared with and eventually gifted to Eva-01. I'm not sure I'm 100% on this idea, just considering the possibility.

I don't really see the option with HIP to "improve humanity", but... maybe I'm missing something (again).

Human Instrumentality works by eliminating all separations between individuals. Bodies, mental partitions, all that is gone. You can't keep your thoughts to yourself, and conversely you can't keep the thoughts of others out; there is no way to maintain your identity. In the long term, this process, of course, leads to the undesirable outcome of everyone becoming a homogenous blob. Is there anything potentially desirable this could accomplish in the short term, though?

NGE places heavy focus upon the divisions between people, the difficulty of communication, the importance of understanding, the pain of intimacy, and so forth. So many human problems arise because of the separation between Self and Other. We are fundamentally incapable of overcoming this, no matter how hard we might try. (This is probably the whole basis of Seele's pessimism.)

What a temporary HIP achieves is allowing every single human mind to genuinely experience being the Other. No extrapolation or guesswork involved; you have actually been in everyone else's head. It's not unreasonable to think that a global experience of this nature would have immense repercussions. Yui, ever the optimist, seems to have high hopes. But I guess we'll never know what ends up happening.

(I feel like we need a more descriptive title for the thread. Permission to change it?)
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby CommanderFish » Wed Aug 31, 2016 4:55 pm

Wow. Before I say anything--amazing post. Soooo much cool stuff here.

The Dirac Sea makes far more sense to me now that I know it connects to another universe instead of actually being one. And thanks for the link, too! It amazes me that people were talking about this 10 freakin' years ago. I also completely forgot the the Dirac Sea is a real thing in science... oops.

Reichu wrote:We know from NGE2 that there were seven Seeds, each with its own Moon/Carrier, and that the FAR "boarded" these seven carriers. This seems, to me, like a euphemistic way of saying that their souls were divided among the Seven Seeds/Moons in a sort of "Zeroth Impact".

Aaahh, I forgot about this! That NGE2 thread was one of the first things I read when I first started lurking here, and I completely disliked that idea from the moment I saw it. I mean, with the FAR sending out hundreds/thousands/millions of white moons and hundreds/thousands/millions of black moons, it would make sense that the two would conflict with each other at least once. But if they only sent out seven seeds total into the vastness of space and two out of these happened to land on the exact same planet? That's just... it's statistically unlikely--sure--but am I really to believe that a race as technologically proficient as the FAR would allow that mistake to happen under those circumstances? Ugghh, sorry for the rant... I suppose this isn't the place to talk about this anyways...

Reichu wrote:However, the Gates of Guf, which indicate by their very name that they open into the Chamber, appear on the palms of the Seed. How does this make sense, exactly? What is the Moon accomplishing here that cannot be accomplished by the Seed alone? We see, after all, that Lilith's body alone is capable of leading into Red Space.... EoE adds to the perplexity by showing that the stream of souls going to Lilith splits in three, with two heading into the Gates of Guf and another entering the top of the Black Moon. And all of them end up in the same place anyway. I've pondered the possible significance of the splitting, and it leads me to some pretty strange places. ...Perhaps I should move on! -o-;

First of all, isn't the Moon there to help transport the Seed through space? I'm not saying that the Seed couldn't survive within the vacuum space all by itself--Eva-01 does this just fine--but wouldn't a much larger object help with gravitational pull (to the planets) and whatnot? Also, I honestly think that the splitting of the soul streams is one of those cases where there's not too much extra significance; the main objective was likely just to get a pretty-looking shot (and it certainly was). Sure, you could connect it to all the other patterns of three that we see within NGE (killer rhymes, I know), but that's about all I can really think of off the top of my head... Still though, I can empathize with your inquisitiveness!

Reichu wrote:I'm inclined to say, instead, that each Seed has a distinct supply, which means that there are multiple Chambers of Guf. Each chamber could feasibly be nothing more than a Seed co-opting part — a bubble or pocket, if you will — of Red Space for temporary soul storage. Being the domain where souls apparently originated, Red Space would presumably possess ideal conditions for storing disembodied souls, provided they can all be kept together. The Seed's ATF would logically be able to accomplish this, since containment is something ATFs are really good at. Each Seed's need for a Chamber of Guf could also concisely explain why Eva cores link to Red Space. Evas are, of course, Seed copies, and they consequently exhibit many of those built-in Seed features whether Nerv has a use for them or not. And right here we have a convenient tie-in to musings from your post ("[the Eva] has to have just one designated soul to control it, and all other souls get sent to the (tentative) Chamber of Guf"). :wink:

:clap: This explains everything so incredibly well! Each Seed has their own Chamber of Guf, and their objective is to empty that Chamber once they land on a planet! Genius! Surely you didn't come up with this just now?...
I guess this is only semi-related, but...if this is the case, then why do Adam-based life have cores and Lilith-based life don't? If they can all connect to the Chamber of Guf anyways (without the use of cores), then what's the point of having one, exactly? Is that... is that where the S2 engine goes? (Sorry, I should know this stuff. I guess I could just look it up if I really wanted to know. :um: )

Reichu wrote:If Shinji's dissolution is what has altered the LCL into a primordial soup, then what, exactly, was the LCL before? This tidbit adds additional confusion, since isn't the very thing that Shinji dissolved into LCL itself? How could he alter the chemical composition of the plug's LCL if he turned into LCL? Something to think about...

That's a very good point. Hrmm... maybe he only partially dissolved into LCL? As in, most of his body turned into LCL, but some of the basic molecules got left behind? This would certainly explain why the LCL's composition was altered; did they ever explicitly say that Shinji--all of Shinji--had completely dissolved into the LCL?
Your argument in the next paragraph makes sense, but I would think that the FAR simply evolved (naturally or artificially) to the point of being able to access the Red Space. But, that's all pretty inconsequential anyways, isn't it?

Thank you for that concise summary as well. I've got to make sure to remember this thread in the future!

Reichu wrote:Despite none of this being exactly “integral” to understanding NGE, I absolutely adore the way that these concepts, seamlessly interweaving (soft sci-fi) physics and spirituality, provide a delicious extra layer of mythological exploration for inquisitive minds. It's all so minimal and unobtrusive, but when you dig in there are so many logical connections that form, clicking together rapid-fire like an Eva synch sequence. So awesome.

I'm right with you here. The more I dig down into the lore behind Eva, the more fascinating it becomes.

Reichu wrote:Right before Eva-01 merges with the Spear of Longinus, her core exhibits an unusual gradation (a detail noted specifically in the script), and, when it opens, there is something round and dark inside.
[...]
Taking the context — Eva-01's transformation into the Tree of Life — into consideration, it seems reasonable to interpret the strange black sphere as the Chamber of Guf manifesting itself.
[...]
At least one of these images depicts Adam on the surface of the base, which happens, chronologically, after the Katsuragi Team says that Adam's Chamber of Guf is opening. So there we go, an actually good reason for the core to be black, and a precedent for what happens to Eva-01 much, much later.

Ohhhh man. Nice catch! (and thanks for the pics, too!) The little details are so crazy... but even if someone else caught them they would have to have prior knowledge about all this stuff beforehand to even begin to understand why it is the way it is.
Anno is truly a madman genius.

Reichu wrote:If these conclusions are acceptable, then we can say that humanity's complementation actually occurs within Eva-01's Chamber of Guf, despite the apparent contradiction of Lilith's Gates/Chamber being involved in the process. Perhaps this can be reconciled if we consider that Eva-01 is Lilith's legacy... (cont.)

I agree with your reasoning, but if instrumentality did occur within Eva-01's Chamber, then the Chambers would have to be shared between Yui and Lilith before Third Impact occurs (which I see no problem with, I'm just making a note of that). Otherwise, instrumentality would be occurring within Eva-01's Chamber of Guf within Lilith's, which would just be... weird and seemingly unnecessary.

Reichu wrote:What a temporary HIP achieves is allowing every single human mind to genuinely experience being the Other. No extrapolation or guesswork involved; you have actually been in everyone else's head. It's not unreasonable to think that a global experience of this nature would have immense repercussions. Yui, ever the optimist, seems to have high hopes. But I guess we'll never know what ends up happening.

It would be an out-of-this-world experience (and I mean that in the most literal and serious way possible), but I'm hesitant to say that the effects would be positive (especially considering the consequences on Earth due to Third Impact). But ultimately, you are correct; we'll never really know for sure...

Reichu wrote:(I feel like we need a more descriptive title for the thread. Permission to change it?)

Absolutely--go right ahead. I would think that, as an admin, you would actually be able to do that without permission. But I suppose you are just being kind. ^_^
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Re: Evangelion Analysis Project (Video Series)

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Postby pwhodges » Wed Aug 31, 2016 5:26 pm

View Original PostCommanderFish wrote:why do Adam-based life have cores and Lilith-based life don't?

Apart from Eva Unit-01?
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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby CommanderFish » Wed Aug 31, 2016 8:48 pm

pwhodges wrote:Apart from Eva Unit-01?

Well, Eva-01 is an artificial creation, not a natural one. So I guess that would make it an exception, right?

Eva-01 is an odd beast for sure--to my understanding it is made from Lilith's tissue (directly ripped from her legs), but constructed following the anatomy of Adam (hence the core). I'm starting to hypothesize that Adam-based life (or just Adam himself; I suppose there's no evidence to support every angel having a Chamber of their own), access their Chamber of Guf strictly through their cores, while Lilith can access her Chamber through her entire body--or perhaps more specifically--her hands. Hence, both these areas of the body being open to the Chamber of Guf would signify a pen-ultimate Adam/Lilith being, which would serve as a great reason as to why both of those openings were distinctly showed in those gifs that you posted, Reichu.

Hrrmm...could I be on to something? Or, should I assume that this exact idea was already brought up 10 years ago? :rolleyes:

P.S. I love the new title. ^_^
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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby Reichu » Thu Sep 01, 2016 12:13 am

CommanderFish: That post took helluva long to write and edit, so I'm glad it's appreciated! :kawaii: The entire enterprise reminds me of how badly most/all of this information needs to be memorialized onto the wiki. A project, I suppose, for whenever I get a lot done on my fanfic and can therefore feel less guilty about writing Theory & Analysis pages. :-3

@ Seven Seeds: I assume the number was chosen because of the pre-established Seven Eyes of God symbolization. If the FAR are "God", then the Seeds being their "Eyes" is symbolically logical. Consider that the Seeds contain the souls of FAR individuals, presumably in the same way that Evas contain the souls of Lilin, and so they are the only part of the FAR's existence that continues uninterrupted into the present. They also "look after" the interests and legacy of the FAR and "watch over" the FAR's reincarnated forms (Lilin, Angels, etc.).

That said, the contrivance of two Moons landing on a single planet is terribly... contrived. The only way it could possibly be justified, IMO, is if it's not actually "bad luck" as the CI implies, but instead happened because someone wanted it to happen. If a fan were so inclined, a soapy tale could be written about Adam and Lilith's previous lives, involving some sort of altercation that would motivate Lilith to put personal vengeance (spiting Adam) above the interests of her species. This would also require further negligence on the part of the FAR, being as those in charge of ensouling the Seeds would have needed to be completely unaware that two of their candidates had a volatile personal history. But, perhaps, it would have been an easier mistake to make than, say, botching the Moons' navigational systems so thoroughly that one Moon heads to exact same frickin' solar system that another is already charted for, then manages to violently impact the exact same planet that the other Seed has already tenderly implanted in.

This reminds me that Rei's storyline in NGE2 (PSP version) involves her inner Lilith telling her to get the Fruit of Life, and Rei eventually telling herself to go fuck herself and melting in a gross marshmallowy mess. I cannot say at this time whether or not a full translation of the relevant cut scenes would provide any clarification regarding the aforementioned contrivance. I look forward to eventually finding out. Someday.

@ Black Moon & Chamber of Guf: The Moon's function as an interstellar transport isn't what I have issue with. I'm wondering what its actual function is with regard to all the metaphysical / extradimensional nonsense. I guess I should take this step by step. This will involve some repetition, but I just want to be comprehensive.

Even before Lilith gets involved in 3I, Seele have their flying monkeys expose the Black Moon. Relevant dialogue:

SEELE 08/09:
With the Purification of the Red Earth...
That bespeaks time eternal...

SEELE 11:
First, return the Geofront...

Keel:
To its true form.

(Pull-back shot of the Earth and Lilith's Egg)

Fuyutsuki (off screen):
The egg of Lilith, the source of human life: The Black Moon.
I have no desire to return to that empty shell.
(on screen) But even that depends on the will of Lilith.

Later on, the entirety of the Black Moon rises into the upper atmosphere and becomes an object of focus for GNR. She embraces it between her hands, which then develop the Gates of Guf. Roughly a third of all souls received are directed into the Black Moon rather than the Gates of Guf...

SPOILER: Show
Image


...but, after the Tree of Life enters Lilith and is transported to Red Space, we're shown that this division seems to have made little difference.

SPOILER: Show
Image


If my speculation holds, GNR's "inner space" and the Black Moon's "inner space" are identical. They both lead to this same tract of the Sea of LCL, where you can (if you squint really hard) see humanity's souls represented as naked corpses. The three streams of Rei, to my mind, correspond to the three streams of incoming souls. (Explanation: As we know, every human was visited by a Rei so the soul could be collected. What if each of the Rei that liquified a specific person also took that person's soul back to Lilith? If so: here in red space, these messengers have released their cargo, and are filing methodically toward a central point, depicted as a red moon, which could be a representation of Lilith's "over-soul", perhaps her core even! Once there, they will presumably all become one again.)

But I shouldn't get too carried away here, since the most important indication that the Black Moon and Lilith lead to identical coordinates is the very fact that the souls "become one" within (the Chamber of Guf inside) the Sea of LCL despite being seemingly divided between the Moon and the Gates.

So, the money question: what exactly is the function of the Moon here? It seems, to me, entirely redundant. It's not doing anything that Lilith and Eva-01 aren't already doing. Passage into the Chamber of Guf? Check. Both of them have that covered. Ability to manifest Chamber of Guf? Both Adam and Eva-01 can seemingly do this right inside their bodies, assuming that IS a Chamber of Guf manifesting within their cores. Unless Lilith is somehow unique from both fellow Seed and her own daughter, then she should be able to do this, too. A self-contained system -- Gates of Guf that open up on the hands, linking to a Chamber of Guf that manifests within the core (or next best thing) -- seems efficient and completely sensible.

Why in the name of the FAR, then, would the Seed's Egg be required to provide redundancies on these functions? I can't think of any (in-universe) possibility here that makes an iota of sense. Why can't HIP be achieved without the use of the Black Moon?

(After running a few web searches in Japanese, I've seen it mentioned more than once that the Moons ARE the Chambers of Guf. This explanation seems simple on its surface, and simple is usually good, but with the pile of monkey wrench observations that I've accumulated I don't think I can settle for this idea very easily.)

Each Seed has their own Chamber of Guf, and their objective is to empty that Chamber once they land on a planet! Genius! Surely you didn't come up with this just now?...

Naw, the majority of these ideas have been years in the making. ;) I don't think a Seed necessarily empties their Chamber the second they land, since, well: Adam. The geological spans of time involved make it just a little unlikely that Adam had absolutely no opportunity to do anything before Lilith slammed into Earth. But considering that Earth at the time would have still been a molten ball of rock, it would make sense for Adam to lie low. I mean, sure, the Angels could survive that sort of environment — but if you're their Progenitor Being and have all the time in the world to wait for environmental conditions to improve, why wouldn't you? (After that long journey through space, what's a few more hundred million years?) Lilith, in turn, would likely have waited for Earth's oceans to develop before letting the floodgates (both Guf and uterine) open.

why do Adam-based life have cores and Lilith-based life don't? If they can all connect to the Chamber of Guf anyways (without the use of cores), then what's the point of having one, exactly? Is that... is that where the S2 engine goes?

The core does indeed contain the S² engine in those beings that have one. The question of why cores are absent in the life that developed from Lilith's LCL is more tricky. I do have an answer to this problem up my sleeves, though I wouldn't hesitate to classify it as "fanon". And as Reichu fanon, it will almost certainly sound rather strange, but you might find it useful regardless, so here goes!

To keep things simple, I won't explain all of the steps of the thought process. That can always come later.

- The First Ancestral Race were a humanoid species that created gods in their own image. These gods are the Seeds of Life.
- All of the Seeds of Life start out exactly the same, as giant god versions of FAR individuals, with the potential to go in either Fruit of Life or Fruit of Knowledge direction depending on personal choice.
- The Evangelions, in terms of both anatomical and metaphysical properties, represent the Seeds that they were copied from, excepting clear genetic manipulations introduced by the Lilin (ex.: Eva-02 eyes, blood, skin color; MP Eva head morphology).
- Lilith, for reasons not entirely known, abandoned or lost her original form, with her current one being the product of A.T. Field manipulations (similar to how the Angels metamorph). This transformation resulted in the loss of a traditional core. There might be some connection between this and Lilith's ability to channel the Sea of LCL with her body; that is, her body in its present state could be described as a “full body core”.
- Eva-01, as a presumed genetic duplicate of Lilith, replicates Lilith's congenital rather than derived state. This results in an appearance like Adam and the other Evas, rather than how Lilith currently appears. (N.B. If Lilith and Adam are fundamentally identical anyway, then the only detail that ultimately matters, insofar as determining Eva-01's ability to be used as a Lilith proxy, is the fact that Eva-01 was grown from Lilith's flesh. That is, Eva-01 could be an Adam clone that was experimentally grown using Lilith, and the end result would be exactly the same as if she were a Lilith clone.)
- Adam's children are described as humans who abandoned their human form. This “human form”, being something that they start with, must come directly from Adam (and from the FAR, in turn). If the Angels never metamorphed, they would logically look much like Adam and the Evas.

All of this is to say that, in my fanon, the Seeds, Evas, and Angels are a “divine bloodline” derived directly from FAR flesh. They have cores, accordingly, because this is a feature that the FAR possessed. (Possibly via an endosymbiotic event in their distant evolutionary past, with the core's original form perhaps being some sort of “crystalline” lifeform that needed to combine with more traditional organisms in order to remain viable) The life that Lilith grew in her LCL petri dish, on the other hand, developed gradually with indirect supervision until a lineage (anthropoid apes) achieved humanoid form, whether by evolutionary convergence, predestination, or some combination of factors. By virtue of how evolution works (giant game of selective pressures and random chance), life that developed on Earth did so without the core feature and gets by perfectly fine without.

If one finds all the conclusions required to get to this point acceptable, then the solution to the core problem might also be acceptable. (I find the idea of the FAR being a race of little Evas completely irresistible. :-3) If not, then alternatives are possible, though I do not have any in a developed form at the moment.

I won't respond to your response to my LCL tangent for the time being, for the reason that the properties of LCL probably deserve their own discussion, which, upon reflection, is best not piled onto the rather diverse material we already have going. That is to say, if I did respond, it would be so long and rambling I'd be better off just making a new thread to contain the mess. -o-;

Your argument in the next paragraph makes sense, but I would think that the FAR simply evolved (naturally or artificially) to the point of being able to access the Red Space.

If it was unclear, I was responding to this:

View Original PostCommanderFish wrote:I don't think it's that impossible to consider that the FAR created this realm [the Sea of LCL] to house all the original souls...

...and why I thought the notion was unlikely. Your response above seems to be agreeing with what I said, despite the inclusion of a “but” clause.

if instrumentality did occur within Eva-01's Chamber, then the Chambers would have to be shared between Yui and Lilith before Third Impact occurs (...). Otherwise, instrumentality would be occurring within Eva-01's Chamber of Guf within Lilith's, which would just be... weird and seemingly unnecessary.

Maybe I just need to work on the specifics more thoroughly with visual aids, but so far I'm actually struggling to NOT fall into this nesting doll of contradictions!

Lilith's Body > (Chamber of Guf within) Red Space > Tree of Life > Eva-01 > Eva-01 core > Chamber of Guf

The tentative parentheses may be unnecessary, given that Eva-01 is in the same place that the collected souls are, and since most of these souls got here by passing through Lilith's Gates of Guf, they are logically now inside a Chamber of Guf. And this must accordingly mean that when the souls enter Eva-01 they are moving from the Chamber of Guf into … the Chamber of Guf. Does this make more or less sense if Eva-01 and Lilith have separate Chambers? I'm honestly not sure!

Any way it works out, we interestingly do not see any souls escape from Eva-01, but we do see souls escape from both the Black Moon and, to a much lesser extent (assuming her blood doesn't have souls dissolved in it, which is the assumption I prefer because it doesn't entail souls being sprayed into space before HIP has even ended), Lilith's body. This kind of sort of makes me wonder if Yui isn't telling us something really important at the very end...

I'm hesitant to say that the effects would be positive (especially considering the consequences on Earth due to Third Impact). But ultimately, you are correct; we'll never really know for sure...

Third Impact was taken as given anyway (and we'll never know why, so I just go with it), so not much to do on that front. My gut feeling is that Anno wanted the rebirth imagery (life crawling out of the oceans = baby emerging from the womb) so much that what it took to get there was ultimately irrelevant. Humanity is resilient! A humanity reborn with knowledge of the Other will surely manage! Trashed ecospheres, pfffft! :wink:

View Original PostCommanderFish wrote:I'm starting to hypothesize that Adam-based life (or just Adam himself; I suppose there's no evidence to support every angel having a Chamber of their own), access their Chamber of Guf strictly through their cores, while Lilith can access her Chamber through her entire body--or perhaps more specifically--her hands.

Adam's Gates of Guf are mentioned in episode 21' ("Begin thermal dampening treatment as soon as the Gates of Guf open."), so probably a “no go” on that. Also, as Adam's Children aren't intended to go out there and colonize worlds, I wouldn't think they'd have “Guf Access” capabilities; they have no actual need for it. They access the Dirac Sea (probably de facto simply on account of how S² engine probably work), but can they actually go beyond? The world may never know!

Hence, both these areas of the body being open to the Chamber of Guf would signify a pen-ultimate Adam/Lilith being, which would serve as a great reason as to why both of those openings were distinctly showed in those gifs that you posted, Reichu.

I know you're referring to the palm apertures (Gates) on the one hand, but what's the other thing you're referring to?
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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby CommanderFish » Thu Sep 01, 2016 5:50 pm

Another day, another great Reichu post...

@Seven Seeds: Your comment on the "seven eyes" symbolism has got me thinking: were the FAR ever even mentioned within the actual series itself? I know they're implied if you think about it hard enough but... were the words "First Ancestral Race" ever used in the show? (Sorry, I could try to figure this out myself, but I don't really know where to look.)

The idea of Lilith having a personal vendetta against Adam has potential to make sense of things, but ultimately I would still be very disappointed if the reason for that contrivance was just a squabble amongst Gods. The only way I would not be unsatisfied with that FAR backstory is--I think--if they didn't send out only seven seeds after all, and instead they just fit my initial conceptions of them. Which I may get to pretty soon here...

@Black Moon & Chamber of Guf: Well, everything you said here certainly makes logical sense... :ehh:

I guess this might be relevant: did SEELE know that GNR was going to be a thing (or, more specifically, did they have plans to reawaken Lilith) as they were starting Third Impact--blowing up everything to unearth the Black Moon? Because... that would be a good reason for SEELE to need it, right? They didn't want to enter Eva-01 for whatever reason (you know, I still have yet to figure that out), so they would need something else to house their souls in, such as the Black Moon. And actually, maybe that's why they couldn't accept their souls entering Eva-01; because of their obsession of "returning to the beginning" and whatnot, they would only tolerate, (or at least prefer) the Black Moon instead, as that is literally where life on Earth started. AND, perhaps they also didn't desire to be in Eva-01 because they knew that if all the souls of humanity were inside Yui, floating around in space, she would basically become a seed herself, eventually unloading these souls onto a planet she lands on, to which those souls would be living, individual entities once again--something SEELE really doesn't want. Did I just answer my own question, or did I miss something glaringly obvious once again!? Find out on the next episode of: REICHU CORRECTS STUFF!!!

Sorry for the tangent; I got a little carried away. Anyways, that is one possible reason for the Black Moon being there. Since SEELE already unearthed it, when GNR grew off the Earth she could've just been like "oh sweet I can use this too" and then used it, too. There's also just the whole "threes" symbolism going on there again, which I think I pointed out earlier (you know: three pilots, three MAGI, three Rei's--you already know this stuff), and this was just a reinforcement of that symbolism. Perhaps the FAR actually planned for this event (somehow), and--for whatever reason--made it so it could only happen if both the Gates of Guf and the Moon were present (okay, that one's a stretch; but really what other options are there at this point?)
lel maybe GNR was just impatient and wanted the whole "soul-collection" part to go down faster...

Also I agree; the Moons being the actual Chambers just doesn't really make sense to me. BUT, if it's canon...

Reichu wrote:I don't think a Seed necessarily empties their Chamber the second they land, since, well: Adam. The geological spans of time involved make it just a little unlikely that Adam had absolutely no opportunity to do anything before Lilith slammed into Earth. But considering that Earth at the time would have still been a molten ball of rock, it would make sense for Adam to lie low.

Fair enough. Certainly, they are both pretty patient.

Your "fanon" makes sense and explains all the "core" elements pretty well (ha, see what I did there?), but if you don't mind, I'd like to hear your thought process on: A. why the FAR created gods instead of being the Gods themselves (this was always my perception to be honest: basically a race of beings who all have the abilities of GNR), and B. why you think that Lilith "metamorphed"? The first one especially, though, I'd like to hear on.

Reichu wrote:Your response above seems to be agreeing with what I said, despite the inclusion of a “but” clause.

.... yeah. Sorta messed up there :hahaha:

Reichu wrote:And this must accordingly mean that when the souls enter Eva-01 they are moving from the Chamber of Guf into … the Chamber of Guf. Does this make more or less sense if Eva-01 and Lilith have separate Chambers? I'm honestly not sure!

A Guf within a Guf, huh.... *cue Inception noises.
Honestly, I'm sort of fine with this. I mean--and I know I just said this somewhere--but we're dealing with Space Gods here. The laws of physics/space/all de sciencez don't really matter. That's the way I look at it, at least...

Reichu wrote:Third Impact was taken as given anyway (and we'll never know why, so I just go with it), so not much to do on that front. My gut feeling is that Anno wanted the rebirth imagery (life crawling out of the oceans = baby emerging from the womb) so much that what it took to get there was ultimately irrelevant. Humanity is resilient! A humanity reborn with knowledge of the Other will surely manage! Trashed ecospheres, pfffft! :wink:

I actually think that the reason that Third Impact couldn't be averted is pretty simple: SEELE is waaaay too powerful (like, don't they own the UN?) for anyone to stop their plans. Also, Anno and birth-imagery is like... well I'm not smart enough to think of an analogy right now, but what I'm trying to say is that yeah; Anno definitely wanted that rebirth imagery, for sure.
And yeah; absolutely humanity can manage! I just, don't know if they're better off than they were before...

Reichu wrote:Adam's Gates of Guf are mentioned in episode 21' ("Begin thermal dampening treatment as soon as the Gates of Guf open."), so probably a “no go” on that. Also, as Adam's Children aren't intended to go out there and colonize worlds, I wouldn't think they'd have “Guf Access” capabilities; they have no actual need for it.

:shoot2kill: RIP my pitiful theory. Never had much faith in you to begin with, but... I'll miss you. Maybe. Probably not.

Oh, and the gif I was talking about was this one:
SPOILER: Show
Image
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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby Reichu » Sat Sep 03, 2016 4:02 pm

This response will mostly pertain to the divergent-y sorts of things, due to the fact that my brain needs more processing cycles on the other stuff.

Alas, no, the First Ancestral Race was never namedropped in the final script. Anno came very close in episode 20 (see here), but omitted the line from the finalized screenplay. For the best, really. The final stretch of NGE is already crammed enough without having to worry about directly addressing the existence of an ancient progenitor race.

As far as your dissatisfaction goes, I definitely know them feels. I think most fans who are sufficiently into something have those items that never sit well for whatever reason. This is the very reason that head canon exists. :emogendo:

Given the relative dearth of information, the fan ideas about the FAR conflict thoroughly. It is, indeed, common for them to be regarded as literal gods; that they possessed both Fruits seems to be assumed by default, despite not being actually stated anywhere. (OK, our own Wiki seems to be partly to blame for this, but I finally gave that bit of misinformation the fate it deserved. :devil: ) Here's my reasoning for a more humble interpretation...

First off, the CI comments:

Within a carrier known as a "Moon", the First Ancestral Race fabricated a perfect cavity (also referred to as a "Moon"), at which point the Seed, or "Progenitor Entity", would be placed inside and sent out into space. That was their technology, and, from the perspective of Angels, humans, and others, they might be called gods.

This is fairly straightforward, indicating that the FAR aren't called “gods” because they were an actual race of literal gods. Rather, their technological capabilities were so mind-boggling as to metaphorically render them “gods” in the eyes of their descendants.

On top of that, the very fact that the FAR were technological in the first place implies that they were a limited, mortal species, not unlike us. If the FAR were, as you suggest, a race of beings with the power of GNR (meaning: both Fruits, infinite energy, boundless ability to manipulate matter and energy, existing outside of traditional space-time, and even more!), there wouldn't have been anything motivating them to pursue science and invention. They would have already "been set" in every way that mattered. You don't need to create things to do stuff for you when you can already do everything yourself. Speaking of which...

From the “Broken Wings” (NGE2 PSP Kaworu scenario) info dump:
Knowing we would lose our home world, we embarked on a journey into the midst of space in search of other planets...


A being with both Fruits is one capable of surviving in deep space indefinitely (or so Yui implies). If every single member of the FAR had this capability, they could have fled their home world without any issue. So, then, why create Seeds, Moons, or Spears? Why reduce the entire species to slumbering souls awaiting rebirth on other worlds? The logical answer, to me, is that the FAR did this because they couldn't just pick up and leave -- because they weren't gods. They were just people.

On top of this, it's my understanding that the progenitor race who creates God(s) in their own image is an old sci-fi staple. And a quite logical one for exploration. Scientific advancement pushes old-fashioned religion further and further to the sidelines, yet humans still yearn for the almighty. And since pretty much all deities are a direct reflection of those who worship them, artificial gods would, naturally, embody their creators (physically, culturally, psychologically, etc.).

NGE pays homage to many of the classic authors and their works. Unfortunately, I am not as well-read here as Anno, so I probably shouldn't say a whole lot more on which if any of these contain the trope, at least without doing further research. I can at least say that Hayao Miyazaki uses the trope prominently in his manga Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which is one of Anno's many significant influences. This could spoil the plot, so only click if you've either read it already or don't care:

SPOILER: Show
The God Warriors are giant biomechanical humanoids created by a previous civilization to act as gods and reign over their creators as supreme arbiters. This goes about as well as you'd expect, and the GWs end up razing human civilization to the ground.

Now look at that Project Meeting again...

The idea that Lilith is never seen in her original form is something I came up with, in part, to reconcile the weirdness of Eva-01 apparently being her clone/copy/whatever. Their physiques don't watch, their very physical properties don't match. Eva-01 just looks like any other Eva, to the point that she represents the group despite supposedly not being an actual part of it.

One possibility is that Eva-01 is actually an Adam clone after all, and Lilith was experimentally used as a “growth medium”. Y'know, just to see what would happen. This does seem to be something Lilith's body can do (for whatever reason), given the leggy byproducts that imply she was also used to manufacture the Rei clones. I honestly like this idea the most, since Eva-01 is associated with Adam repeatedly, from the OP sequence all the way into EoE (her wings visually resemble Adam's, not Lilith's). Lilith being just a “surrogate mother” explains Eva-01's ability to act as a proxy without rendering the accumulation of Adam associations abruptly moot.

However, some folks have no problem with Eva-01 having nothing to do with Adam. So, trying to see things from their POV, I've looked for a way to make this work. I've heard a lot of weird ideas about why Eva-01 and Lilith look different and most of them don't do it for me. (Stuff like “they all start out looking blobby and it's the restraints that make them sleek and muscular”.) The whole question of why Lilith looks and (physically) behaves so strangely felt like an interesting one, regardless of Eva-01's involvement.

Probably the most blatant tip-off that ATF wackiness is involved can be seen in EoE. Namely, the MP Evas. These start off as — aside from their ugly mugs — very traditional, physically. If you cut them with a knife, you predictably wound and sever the flesh. Contrast with Lilith, whose flesh stretches and snaps when it's punctured. Eventually, the MP Evas “merge” with Lilith by virtue of resonating their ATFs with hers. Immediately, their heads mutate into deformed, rubbery stalks. When they pierce themselves with their Spears, you can see stretched-out flesh from their backs clinging to the shaft:

SPOILER: Show
Image


Also a lot of gooey white weirdness here:
SPOILER: Show
Image


So, knowing that Lilith's weirdness can be replicated via ATF, it doesn't seem like such a... stretch... to think that maybe this is very origin of her weirdness. Not to me, anyway. It would also work nicely with this bit:

NGE2 PSP Broken Wings wrote:???:
You and I were designers to the people whom we had brought with us.
After implanting into a world somewhere, we either bestowed upon them shapes as any form of life, or acted as representatives and chose the forms.

Kaworu: 
(…) Is your world out there prospering...?

???: 
We're still in the midst of our journey. To which planet are we struggling onward, and what kind of life will originate there? I still don't know...

The unnamed Seed seems to be admitting that it doesn't know which of the two fruits its offspring will have. The stuff about being “designers”, furthermore, implies to me that there is a choice involved. The Seed doesn't know what its offspring will be because it hasn't made that choice yet. Probably a good call, if you don't know what planetary conditions you'll be dealing with.

All this is to say that if every Seed has the option of deciding what kind of Seed it will be, then it would make sense for all of them to start out the same. Further change can occur on an as-needed basis.

One thing we know about Lilith that is distinct from everyone else, including Eva-01, is that she has LCL for blood. It's not just oozing out of her womb; even when Eva-00 pulls the Spear out, a little LCL spurts from the wound before it seals up. What if this is an intentional “adaptation” to the path of creation she chose? Get as much LCL into Earth's oceans as quickly as possible to accelerate the development of life. Channeling the fluid just from her core alone, however that would work, wouldn't have been anywhere as efficient as, say, turning her entire body into a gate to the Sea of LCL and bleeding everywhere. However, for reasons I could not even begin to speculate upon, turning her entire body into a core (effectively) resulted in a few... er... changes. Seems kind of ironic that a core is hard and unyielding, while Lilith's body is the very opposite.
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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby CommanderFish » Sun Sep 04, 2016 7:03 pm

Reichu wrote:This response will mostly pertain to the divergent-y sorts of things, due to the fact that my brain needs more processing cycles on the other stuff.

Take yer time, please. I could always do my own research for my questions and such (though in all likelihood I wouldn't; but I could theoretically), if I get curious enough.

I'm actually starting to favor your depiction over the FAR over my own. Not only does it make a lot more sense (for all those reasons you listed), but it's actually pretty interesting from a narrative perspective. If this image of the FAR is indeed close to accuracy, then it would make for a cool connection between the FAR and the Lilin: both species created Gods in their own image (Lilin with Eva-01 and the FAR with the SoL). The difference in circumstances between those two creations aside, this is a pretty solid correlation, I think. And honestly: even though the FAR being Gods was always a really cool-sounding idea to me, them being technologically advanced to create Gods is pretty cool too.

I did give some thought into why the FAR would've sent out Seeds in the first place if they were an omnipotent species, but I always just reasoned it with: "they're Gods, so their reasoning for doing anything is beyond our comprehension" (which is just the perfect little scapegoat). Suffice to say, NGE2's explanation is far more cohesive. Though I'm still peeved with that whole "7 seeds" thing. I don't know if that wil ever sit well with me.

Reichu wrote:All this is to say that if every Seed has the option of deciding what kind of Seed it will be, then it would make sense for all of them to start out the same. Further change can occur on an as-needed basis.

This. Yes. Logic.
I had always wondered exactly what that NGE2 line about "bestowing upon them any form of life, or acting as a representative and chose the forms" meant. It's pretty obvious in hindsight (the former=Fruit of Life; the latter=Fruit of Wisdom), but now with your added insight it all makes sense. Lilith probably chose the latter, than used A.T. field magic to transform into the Lilith we know today; the representative of the Lilin. Then--like you said--when she is cloned through Eva-01, it's her original form that arises instead of the A.T.-field-altered "representative".

I like all of these ideas very much. ^_^

P.S. Also I just realized where I had heard the term "full body core" before, (or something like it). Never imagined Q would help to explain much of anything, much less something from the original series!
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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby StrokeMeGoat » Tue Sep 06, 2016 10:43 am

I have a few things important to point out about Lilith and Eva-01 looking different. First are foremost: it says on the Wiki that it is hypothesized that none of the Evas are perfect matches, DNA-wise, with Adam (and in the case of Unit-01, Lilith) because they exhibit their own unique physical characteristics (Unit-02 having four eyes rather than two, etc.), and I've seen multiple people on the site contend this. I don't believe it's true, however. Genetics and cloning are both highly complex. It is quite often the case that real life clones wind up looking different than their original. There are several reasons for this, far too many with even more tiny details each to even attempt explaining all or even most of it.

I have some quick info to help wrap your head around the idea of a clone turning out to have a different appearance than the original, though. First and foremost is genetic expression. You express different genes throughout your lifetime, and there are a myriad of factors that affect gene expression--many of them environmental. Take for example, a critical period during development (doesn't apply directly to Evas in any strict sense, but this is just an example): growing in the womb. It is common practice for a clone to be placed in her original's womb to develop. The mother's hormone levels (which include reactions to stress, their own gene expression, all kinds of stuff) and other factors affect which gene expression to a certain degree during development in the womb, meaning some genes that weren't expressed in the original, or at different rates and during different periods of time, during development could all culminate from a baby clone already turning out quite different from her "sister". Then you have this clone's own life experiences and exposure to other factors that affect gene expression during its life time, all leading to a possibly significantly different looking clone. Then there are other major factors, like how DNA has tons of redundant data. Genes can have entirely different functional roles, despite being 100% identical, based solely on their position along the strand. This ties into gene expression again in a somewhat roundabout way, leading to some less than predictable results. There are many, many more things that go into a subject as deep as this, but I've spent enough time on it to get my point across.

Now, when it comes to Unit-01 looking so different from Lilith, I have to ask: do the Adam based Evas really look all that similar to Adam? Sure, they do look a lot like the Giant of Light, but let's not forget Adam transformed into the Giant of Light after being "activated" or awoken. Let's look at the picture of Adam as he was discovered, impaled with the Lance of Longinus and covered in snow:
SPOILER: Show
Image

Now compare to the Giant of Light (I find it weird the GoL actually had shoulder pylons considering those aren't a part of the Evas shoulders):
SPOILER: Show
Image


So, the GoL looks a lot like the Evas, or rather, the other way around. However, pre-awoken Adam doesn't look all that dissimilar from Lilith as we've seen her, prior to awakening. The only time we do get to see an awoken Lilith is when Rei takes Gendo's arm with Adam inside it and forms the forbidden union of Lilith and Adam, so we don't ever get to see what an awoken Lilith looks like. That's not to say she'd necessarily look like the GoL, but in both cases, the progenitor's look remarkably humanoid (they refer to finding Adam in Antarctica as finding a giant human, and Lilith basically looks like a giant human with a mask once she grows her legs back, even if she is a bit blobby). I know Rebuild continuity is different from NGE TV series, but even the Lilith fusion with Mark 06 impaling itself with both spears looks a lot like that picture of Adam before waking up:
SPOILER: Show
ImageImageImage


I'm sure that, given what an immense undertaking Project E is, and how advanced they'd have to be in order to pull something like that off, that NERV were able to make Evas into more humanoid forms through subtle genetic manipulation (which doesn't necessarily entail altering the source DNA, although it doesn't rule it out either).

To wrap things up, I think what Reichu was touching upon in her post about blobbiness reflects what I think about the differences in how Angels and Lilith/Lilin utilized AT Fields . Angels use AT Fields defensively and for protection, as they are whole and complete, "perfect" beings. They use it to prevent outsiders from encroaching upon their souls, which are housed in an exoskeleton of sorts (not literally an exoskeleton, just a simile used to describe how their bodies function with respect to their soul). Lilin are flawed, incomplete, separate beings who utilize AT Fields in such a way that it allows their souls to form how they view themselves in their hearts, to mold the proverbial clay that is LCL to reflect how they perceive themselves separately from others. I think this might help account (sort kinda) for Unit-01's difference in appearance from Lilith, although I think the reasons I've already stated make a better case for it.

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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby Reichu » Tue Sep 06, 2016 12:33 pm

The Wiki has any number of conjectural asides scattered throughout the articles that don't really belong there. A clean-up is needed badly.

I am familiar with epigenetics, though I think there comes a point with the Evas where even that has to work too hard as an explanation. So... Adam has the genes for stuff like four eyes / indigo-colored blood / blue skin and an eyeless, thick-lipped whale head, they just needed to be put into expression? I dunno, man. Even if it were possible, calling the result a "clone" in earnest would be like, I dunno... calling something that was reverse-engineered from chicken genes to look like a dromaeosaur a "clone" of the chicken whose genes were used as a template. You might have been arguing that things like Eva-02 and the MPs just sort of happened on their own, as opposed to being deliberately engineered. But when you have a whole nine Evas that diverge wildly from their predecessors, all in the exact same way, that are also being grown at several different facilities -- well, something tells me they all look like humanoid lipstick belugas because someone actually wanted them to look like that.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume that it's "genetic engineering" even IF the genes were already there. I'm not seeing any real way to avoid the idea that Gehirn/Nerv was (if not at first, then by Eva-02's creation at the latest) actively modifying Adam's genome. Such tampering would, to my mind, make the term "clone" meaningless (as per the chicken example). Is it possible that NGE is using the term incorrectly? IMO: yeah, it totally is, but I guess the question then becomes "so what?"

***

In many previous discussions on the "why don't Lilith and Eva-01 look similar?' matter, I've seen the claim made that Adam looks like Lilith in that excavation image in a way that holds some kind of significance. Couple of problems, though (keeping in mind that "similarity to Lilith" is not just about physical proportions and "chubbiness", but the actual behavior of the flesh itself).

1) Adam is still covered in a sheet of ice there, obscuring her actual contours (e.g., muscle definition).
2) The flesh does not sink in where the Spear enters the back, which would totally happen if this were Lilith.
3) Body proportions being different from the Giant of Light is, IMO, being given FAR too much meaning. It might at first seem significant because there are so few depictions of Adam, but when you include all depictions of giant humanoids in the series, a tendency toward visual inconsistency becomes quickly apparent...

I just think it's way simpler to assume that GoL!Adam is depicted as a lanky humanoid because that's how the Evas, who are eventually revealed to be clones/copies/whatever of Adam, look; therefore, the Evas look like that because Adam looked like that. (The "giant of light" is nothing more than Adam with an out-of-control S^2 engine, besides. The glowing therefore makes sense as a consequence of the uncontrolled energy output. Suddenly becoming spindly and noodly? Not so much.) I speculate that Adam and Eva-01 look weird (i.e., "rather mannish") in the Reiquarium images because the illustrator was influenced by the artistic decision to give the Evas more ordinary proportions in EoE. This is hypothetically possible because (as far as I can tell) the production of the DC footage overlapped with EoE's production.

The pylons are there because of their power-binding function, though you'd think that they would look at least a little different when they don't have to store armaments...
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StrokeMeGoat
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Re: An Ark, a Tree, and a Big Red Room

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Postby StrokeMeGoat » Tue Sep 06, 2016 5:27 pm

You have some good points Reichu, I don't have tons of time to get into everything, but I want to address the more normal proportions for Evas in EoE. I think I remembered reading somewhere that this redesign was influenced by the fact that they wound up rotoscoping a lot of the action scenes where Unit-02 fights the MP Evas. The designs they use change quite a bit during scenes where there isn't much complex action and where there is a lot of fighting. If they really did rotoscope the Unit-02/MP Eva fights, then it would've been pretty difficult to correct the proportions to match those used in the TV series, so the overall design on a whole changed to make it all more consistent. In short, I think the design change wasn't one that came about for aesthetic reasons, it was more of a necessity due to the way a significant portion of the animation was created. Therefore, I don't know how much weight your idea about EoE design changes influencing the reiquarium images holds. It could still easily be true, but it's not exactly necessary either. The change wasn't so striking that it required other bits of art to change along with it nearing the end of the series so they appeared to match up. I think they were close enough already, personally, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen either.

I can concede to your points about how loosely they use the term cloning. After all, it's entirely too easy to view the series from a perspective where everything has meaning or follows intense lines of logic. It's equally easy to write something off as simply looking or sound cool as well (such as the subject of NGE's religious aspects--the name itself was chosen because it sounded complicated and cool, but the religious symbolism and parallels are quite real, albeit not as quite as deep as we like to think they are). It's tricky to find that balance between something intentionally having deep or otherwise intrinsic meaning, where artistic liberty takes over, and where functionality and production restraints are the main influence. Cloning is probably one of those subjects in NGE whose science functions only at a surface level and serves more as a convenient plot device.
Last edited by StrokeMeGoat on Fri Sep 23, 2016 3:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.


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