Eva Anatomy & Physiology: 2018 Edition

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Eva Anatomy & Physiology: 2018 Edition

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Postby AdamMalkovitch » Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:37 pm

[Original title: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change]

In episode 2 of Neon Genesis, we're first shown that Evangelions are organic, when the front top portion of Unit 01's helmet slides off
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/eva ... 1216045746
Later in the series, after Unit 01 eviscerates Zeruel and eats her S^2 Organ, she sheds much more armour, but is somehow detained and put back into a cage
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/i ... lAbove.png
There are a few more shots of her bandaged face close up
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/eva ... 0707170253
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/eva ... 0312012543

Comparing her first appearance to that of after she takes in Zeruel's S^2 Organ, Unit 01's face has physically been altered- her eyes are much larger, she's grown a mouth, and the shape of her face is much more human, whereas it originally looked more like the face of a whale. This makes me wonder- what exactly does an S^2 organ alter besides giving something the Fruit of Life? When Zeruel's S^2 Organ is ripped out, she seems to become much less solid, more limp (although this is most likely the result of being completely trashed by Unit 01).
The entire artstyle undergoes subtle changes over the course of the series, characters' faces start generic and moe-y and become more organic and realistic, the biggest difference being Misato in episode 1 and her appearance in End of Evangelion, but none of them underwent the insane, drastic changes that Unit 01 went through, so I highly doubt this is an art style change.
Any thoughts?
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jan 30, 2018 3:03 pm

The face in episode 2 is really poorly drawn. The Evas were never supposed to look like "whales" (aside from the MP Evas, I guess), but creepy humanoids. The drawings that Ikuto Yamashita prepared for the unmasking scene show something very much in line with episode 20. You can even see the line of the mouth right above the jaw piece. (I have no idea what went wrong in the production to screw those excellent concepts up so thoroughly.)

SPOILER: Show
Image


Eva-02's exposed face follows the precedent of Yamashita and #20. So, yeah, this was definitely a change intended to correct a previous mistake. This was even carried over into Eva 1.0, with the brief shot of Eva-01's face being outfitted with a new face piece:

SPOILER: Show
Image


Same part of the face exposed as in episode #2, but episode #20 is used as the reference point for the face. (Kind of annoyed about the bandages, but I guess they could be there because the 5th Angel's heat ray melted the skin off and she's still healing.)

View Original PostAdamMalkobitch wrote:Comparing her first appearance to that of after she takes in Zeruel's S^2 Organ, Unit 01's face has physically been altered- her eyes are much larger, she's grown a mouth, and the shape of her face is much more human

The bugged-out eyes are visible during episode 19 before the S^2 is assimilated. We've known Eva-01 has had a mouth since the opening sequence and episode 2, since, well, she opens it and roars and stuff. The shape of the face is corrected so that it actually matches the contours of the helmet, which always implied that something suspiciously human-like lurked beneath.

over the course of the series, characters' faces start generic and moe-y and become more organic and realistic, the biggest difference being Misato in episode 1 and her appearance in End of Evangelion

The character designs received an overhaul for the theatrical features and the updated versions of episodes 21 through 24. Outside of those, the biggest shifts in art style you'll see are between the episodes that were animated more by Gainax people and adhere closely to Sadamoto's designs, and those that were outsourced, where the characters don't look... quite right...
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby MuscleRobo » Tue Jan 30, 2018 3:53 pm

Sorry may I ask what artbook those screen grabs are from? They look so beautiful!

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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby Reichu » Wed Jan 31, 2018 12:16 am

The two images I posted are a scan from Sore o nasumono and a digicam photo from Evangelion 1.0 Complete Records Collection. (Had to resort to a photo because the image is so close to the binding that getting a good scan is impossible without destroying the book.)
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Mon May 21, 2018 9:52 pm

Looking at these images all I can think is Unit-01 has the same occified mask between its eyes as Sachiel has for a face. What is it supposed to be, her nose?

As for the way it was drawn in Episode 2, it looks to me like the animators decided to give her cheeks of some kind, since later episodes established neither she nor her sister Unit-02 have them. Since the concept drawings seem to show a flat, featureless face with some indication of teeth, I'm guessing the Evas' mouths had not been finalized when the episode went to air. The cheeks appear to have been a one-off though, as in subsequent episodes Evas appear to have mostly exposed teeth and long jaws, which does make some sense since cheeks are an evolutionary adaptation in Homo sapiens.

As an interesting aside, for a while I wondered why Unit-01 seems to have glowing yellow eyes sometimes, and others have her entire eyes visible. The production drawings reminded me she appears to have a nictitating membrane over her eyes (like what crocodilians have), and if it's bioluminescent it may just appear as a solid white/yellow patch. I'm still hazy on what those 3 extra dots around her pupils are though.

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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby Reichu » Tue May 22, 2018 12:17 am

There's no indication of a textural difference on Eva-01's forehead, so I always just took it to be a paler patch of skin with a couple of eye-like spots, and not something ossified. As for the nostrils, those are the four holes in front of the eyes. These are positioned higher on the other Evas for some reason. (Eva-02's exposed face, even mutilated, shows that the nostrils aren't in the same place as 01's, so they were probably located on the missing chunk of forehead, thus roughly corresponding to where the holes in the helmet are.)

Image

Eva-01 having mammalian cheeks as of episode 2 seems to be ruled out by the fact that there is absolutely no trace of any when her jaws are open.

Image

Wrt the exposed face later on, it is kind of strange that there's no visible mouth line, but this could plausibly be because the mandibular piece completely obscures it the exposed head in episode #02 is a visually nonsensical and anatomically dubious pile of tripe. (One of NGE's greatest lingering mysteries: "how the hell did Yamashita's lovely concept art get distorted into THAT?!?") In the oblique top-down drawing that Yamashita did, you can see what looks like the line of the mouth. This is kind of visible in the side view as well -- it looks like the armor is tugging on the skin of the upper lip.

"she appears to have a nictitating membrane over her eyes": You mean on the bottom middle-ish sketch, where there almost looks like a crescent-shaped bit of skin partially covering the eye? Not sure I ever consciously acknowledged that, but strangely enough the Evas do have nictitating membranes in my head canon...

I'm not sure there's any real explanation for why her real eyes are only visible sometimes. I honestly think it's just stylistic. (A good comparison might be Batman in Batman: The Animated Series. His eyes are represented as glowing white slits when he has the mask on, but when the mask is off you can see quite plainly that it's just a normal mask with cut-outs for his eyes.) Looking to the show for evidence, NGE is -- surprise surprise -- rather inconsistent about this. The end of Episode 2 shows the yellow slit-eyes persisting on the helmet even after it falls off -- implying that they're part of her helmet and not her actual eyes at all. At the beginning of the episode when you see the front of the helmet being hauled off, however, there are just holes. Further, in episode 19, you can see the stylized slits NARROW, implying they represent the real eyes; and of course the white/yellow slits are simply replaced with the real green eyes during certain close-ups. The illustration that Yamashita did of Eva-01 holding her own helmet (used for the cover of the NGE Newtype 100%) also depicts plain boring eye-holes. (You can sort of see this evidenced in the concept art; cf. the detail for the helmet's maxilla section.)

"I'm still hazy on what those 3 extra dots around her pupils are though." They open up at the same time that the central pupil is shown dilating, so I've always just called them auxilliary pupils. (There's that visually confusing Yamashita sketch, bottom left insert, that almost makes them look like eyeballs within an eyeball...) These things and the four nostrils are what I was talking about in that other thread when I said the Evas have weird vestigial traits that don't make much sense unless they're reflecting the bizarre evolutionary history of a never-seen antecedent.
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Tue May 22, 2018 10:25 am

I always assumed the black line between the tan stripe under the eye and the lower jaw piece was where the mouth was supposed to be on episode 2's Eva. It's a shame that's the only shot of her real uncovered face in the show.

I find it really puzzling that the Evas have all this anatomical weirdness when Yamashita actually drew the exposed head. Unit 02 gets in on the action in EoE, looking misshapen and lumpy with messy jagged teeth when it gets stabbed in the head, but the corpse we see later looks mostly identical to Unit 01, just with different colors and missing nostrils. It also happens to Unit 01 in the movies. In that lovely drawing Reichu shared, it has spaced out slab-like teeth, but in 2.0 and beyond it has a mouth crammed full of red human-like teeth. :???:
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Tue May 22, 2018 11:10 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:There's no indication of a textural difference on Eva-01's forehead, so I always just took it to be a paler patch of skin with a couple of eye-like spots, and not something ossified. As for the nostrils, those are the four holes in front of the eyes. These are positioned higher on the other Evas for some reason. (Eva-02's exposed face, even mutilated, shows that the nostrils aren't in the same place as 01's, so they were probably located on the missing chunk of forehead, thus roughly corresponding to where the holes in the helmet are.)


Ah, so that's what those are. I'm curious as to the purpose a second pair of nostrils would serve, and I'm not aware of any animal (extant or otherwise) with such a feature. That patch does still really look like an Angel Face though. I wonder if that was meant as foreshadowing in some way.

Eva-01 having mammalian cheeks as of episode 2 seems to be ruled out by the fact that there is absolutely no trace of any when her jaws are open.


I didn't mean for the episode as a whole, just for that one particular shot. And in that picture there's no trace of anything inside the mouth armour, even though her teeth should be visible (as they are basically every subsequent time she opens her mouth). Kinda leads me to assume it was a visual cheat to make the eye regenerating the big reveal.

Wrt the exposed face later on, it is kind of strange that there's no visible mouth line, but this could plausibly be because the mandibular piece completely obscures it the exposed head in episode #02 is a visually nonsensical and anatomically dubious pile of tripe. (One of NGE's greatest lingering mysteries: "how the hell did Yamashita's lovely concept art get distorted into THAT?!?") In the oblique top-down drawing that Yamashita did, you can see what looks like the line of the mouth. This is kind of visible in the side view as well -- it looks like the armor is tugging on the skin of the upper lip.


See, the shot of Unit-01's bandaged face in Episode 20 makes it look like she doesn't have any lips either, unless the bandages are prying them open to reveal her teeth for some reason. Absent a completely unobscured view of her closed mouth I'm unsure exactly how it should look, whether she does have fleshy but thin lips that simply lack a prominent ridge or her skin just stops at the gums like a crocodile.

"she appears to have a nictitating membrane over her eyes": You mean on the bottom middle-ish sketch, where there almost looks like a crescent-shaped bit of skin partially covering the eye? Not sure I ever consciously acknowledged that, but strangely enough the Evas do have nictitating membranes in my head canon...


Not that one, no. Both Yamashita's concept art and the finished episode depict the eye regenerating, opening with that he'll of labial eyelid, and then another piece of tissue folding away by splitting along the top half and then wiping around. I can't think of what else that would be besides some kind of protective but translucent membrane.

I'm not sure there's any real explanation for why her real eyes are only visible sometimes. I honestly think it's just stylistic. (A good comparison might be Batman in Batman: The Animated Series. His eyes are represented as glowing white slits when he has the mask on, but when the mask is off you can see quite plainly that it's just a normal mask with cut-outs for his eyes.) Looking to the show for evidence, NGE is -- surprise surprise -- rather inconsistent about this. The end of Episode 2 shows the yellow slit-eyes persisting on the helmet even after it falls off -- implying that they're part of her helmet and not her actual eyes at all. At the beginning of the episode when you see the front of the helmet being hauled off, however, there are just holes. Further, in episode 19, you can see the stylized slits NARROW, implying they represent the real eyes; and of course the white/yellow slits are simply replaced with the real green eyes during certain close-ups. The illustration that Yamashita did of Eva-01 holding her own helmet (used for the cover of the NGE Newtype 100%) also depicts plain boring eye-holes. (You can sort of see this evidenced in the concept art; cf. the detail for the helmet's maxilla section.)


Ah yes, I forgot about that brief shot of the helmet having yellow lenses in the eyeholes. Most likely that's another bit of animation that got mucked up from the concept art. The only way I can even vaguely reconcile it would be to suggest the helmet has yellow lenses lit only by her eyes and recessed deep enough to not be visible under most lighting... But that's a bigger stretch than Unit-03's arms.

"I'm still hazy on what those 3 extra dots around her pupils are though." They open up at the same time that the central pupil is shown dilating, so I've always just called them auxilliary pupils. (There's that visually confusing Yamashita sketch, bottom left insert, that almost makes them look like eyeballs within an eyeball...) These things and the four nostrils are what I was talking about in that other thread when I said the Evas have weird vestigial traits that don't make much sense unless they're reflecting the bizarre evolutionary history of a never-seen antecedent.


I wouldn't doubt they're some FAR-derived trait, though again based on how eyes work I can't see how extra pupils would work biologically.

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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Tue May 22, 2018 12:23 pm

View Original PostACGT-Samael wrote:See, the shot of Unit-01's bandaged face in Episode 20 makes it look like she doesn't have any lips either, unless the bandages are prying them open to reveal her teeth for some reason. Absent a completely unobscured view of her closed mouth I'm unsure exactly how it should look, whether she does have fleshy but thin lips that simply lack a prominent ridge or her skin just stops at the gums like a crocodile.

In the side-shot she does have a protrusion above her top teeth that looks like an upper lip being pulled back, but it's not evident in the front shot.

I double-checked the shots of Unit 02 and it's not really clear either. In some shots the teeth are just embedded in the upper jaw with no gums, but in the very last one it has gums but seemingly no lips.

I think Sadamoto drew Unit 01 with embedded teeth when she was stomping around after the Zeruel fight. I seem to recall a vision of Unit 01 appearing to Shinji and trying to molest him or something, but I can't remember what she looked like.
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby Reichu » Tue May 22, 2018 1:19 pm

The Evas' under-armor design is an inconsistent mess from beginning to end. No two ways around it.

- I'm sure the forehead patch is meant to look like the "Angel Face". In-series, yeah, this serves the purpose of foreshadowing, along with arguably Adam Kadmon-y sorts of things. (Check out that "Big Red Room" thread I linked you to recently?) If that marking is a FAR trait, it also means the "Angel face" iconography was originally just a feature of the FAR face. It covers the same spot we Lilin associate with the Third Eye, so maybe it had similar spiritual significance in our fictional forebears.

- I agree that the real teeth being covered by the jaw armor doesn't actually make any visual sense. It's certainly a visual cheat, but since they keep doing this until the moment in episode 19 when the red interlocking "teeth" are abruptly gone and the real teeth are visible, I'd assume it has less to do with the reveal about the eye than the reveal about, well, the teeth.

- The lips issue is tricky. For all intents and purposes, I assume they're meant to exist, since the gums are clearly set apart from the regular skin. (Also note how Eva-01 bares her teeth without opening her jaws when applying Zeruel's arm to her stump. This could just be another cheat, but technically what she did there should be impossible unless the helmet is bolted onto retractible lips or something.) Eva-02 provides a little assistance here: while she goes through at least three(!!!) different naked head designs, the only one that shows a distinct demarkation between gums and regular skin also suggests that she simply has very thin lips that can be fully retracted to impressively expose the chompers. I would personally prefer a little more muscle tone in the retractor muscles, but... oh well, beggers can't be choosers. Compare this, anyway, to the croc-style version, where the gums are the same color as the rest of the skin. (A third variation is too mutilated to be helpful here.)

- @ eye membrane, I don't think that corresponds to any kind of permanent structure. It encloses the eye when it first regenerates but then it splits open and is never seen again. Probably just to make the reveal more visually interesting, but kind of mirrors embryology in a fashion (structures developing temporarily then getting broken back down).

- Extra pupils: The only fanwank I have for those is that they're not pupils in the same sense as the central one, but pits that perceive a different kind of electromagnetic radiation. Maybe they were separate structures at one point but, kind of like the weird four-nostrils situation, vestigiality resulted in them getting smaller and smaller until they got engulfed by the eyes. In a social species, this sort of pupil-enhancing weirdness could conceivably end up getting a second life as a social signal -- making certain emotions easier to read and so forth. The Evas (thus FAR) clearly have limited facial muscles, so doing interesting things with their eyes like parrots (cf. "pinning") would make sense. End fanwank. :D

- I'm still trying to come up with some sort of explanation for the nostrils. The best I got is that there was a fully separate set of head holes with a distinct purpose at one point. This need was either lost or greatly simplified over time, so a lot of the internal plumbing was gradually combined. This together with the truncation of the snout that invariably occurred in the march toward the humanoid form forced the two openings together more and more until, voila, inexplicably four nares! (For my Heledi, which were obviously born from the accumulation of Eva/FAR-related head canons, I think I just went with "one of the head holes is for salty waste excretion or something", which was inspired by penguins and lets them have a form of crying that is similar enough to be recognizable but weird enough to be off-putting.)

I need to dig up one of the better Eva anatomy threads and merge this, but... later.
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Tue May 22, 2018 9:49 pm

View Original PostReichu wrote:- I agree that the real teeth being covered by the jaw armor doesn't actually make any visual sense. It's certainly a visual cheat, but since they keep doing this until the moment in episode 19 when the red interlocking "teeth" are abruptly gone and the real teeth are visible, I'd assume it has less to do with the reveal about the eye than the reveal about, well, the teeth.


I meant less the reveal of the eye in its own right and more the broader implication of "Oh scheiBe it's organic under there" since that was the real wham moment of the episode. Showing the teeth would have given the game away too soon.

- The lips issue is tricky. For all intents and purposes, I assume they're meant to exist, since the gums are clearly set apart from the regular skin. (Also note how Eva-01 bares her teeth without opening her jaws when applying Zeruel's arm to her stump. This could just be another cheat, but technically what she did there should be impossible unless the helmet is bolted onto retractible lips or something.) Eva-02 provides a little assistance here: while she goes through at least three(!!!) different naked head designs, the only one that shows a distinct demarkation between gums and regular skin also suggests that she simply has very thin lips that can be fully retracted to impressively expose the chompers. I would personally prefer a little more muscle tone in the retractor muscles, but... oh well, beggers can't be choosers. Compare this, anyway, to the croc-style version, where the gums are the same color as the rest of the skin. (A third variation is too mutilated to be helpful here.)


Every time I see Unit-02 torn apart like that I can't help but think her brain is made of couscous.

That third picture almost creates the impression the pink stuff isn't gum tissue but the soft tissue under the skin, which would mean Unit-02's skin was partly peeled off her face. Definitely hoping that's not what's happening there.

@BlueBasilisk: Given that lumpy texture appears whenever Unit-01 and I believe Lilith use their healing factors, I'm inclined to believe the bumps on Unit-02 are her attempting to regenerate her wounds and failing.

- Extra pupils: The only fanwank I have for those is that they're not pupils in the same sense as the central one, but pits that perceive a different kind of electromagnetic radiation. Maybe they were separate structures at one point but, kind of like the weird four-nostrils situation, vestigiality resulted in them getting smaller and smaller until they got engulfed by the eyes. In a social species, this sort of pupil-enhancing weirdness could conceivably end up getting a second life as a social signal -- making certain emotions easier to read and so forth. The Evas (thus FAR) clearly have limited facial muscles, so doing interesting things with their eyes like parrots (cf. "pinning") would make sense. End fanwank. :D


Oh, that's an interesting possibility for sure. Kind of reminds me of the Yautja and how they're depicted as having infrared natural vision. Perhaps Evas can see light beyond the visible wavelength and the pilot simply can't because human eyes can't.

On the subject of eyes, I still find it weird how the Evas have such a varying number of eyes on their heads, given they're all supposed to be clones on Adam. Unit-01 has 2, Unit-02 has 4, the MPs have none apparently, and I've heard conflicting accounts of whether Unit-00 is actually cycloptic or has two eyes. That's a lot of variance even for the genetic accumulation of a single race, and the only way it makes sense to me is if the FAR represented not a species but a genus (like Panthera, which includes lions, tigers, Jaguars and leopards), and so Adam and Lilith have way more genetic information than Homo sapiens.

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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Wed May 23, 2018 7:47 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:"I'm still hazy on what those 3 extra dots around her pupils are though." They open up at the same time that the central pupil is shown dilating, so I've always just called them auxilliary pupils. (There's that visually confusing Yamashita sketch, bottom left insert, that almost makes them look like eyeballs within an eyeball...) These things and the four nostrils are what I was talking about in that other thread when I said the Evas have weird vestigial traits that don't make much sense unless they're reflecting the bizarre evolutionary history of a never-seen antecedent.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but aren't most of the Evas' internal organs vestigal? They appear to have all the same pieces inside that a human does, including a digestive and respiratory system. We've seen Unit 01 breathe and eat but I never got the impression that any of the Evas need to since we never see them being fed and they're able to go into the vacuum of space, under water, into magma and wherever else they want to go with no evident breathing issues. Since the Evas are made from the Seeds, I think it makes sense that those things are carry overs from being modelled after their ancestors.

The variations seen in the head and eyes could be the result of Nerv tampering during the growth process, couldn't it?
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby Reichu » Wed May 23, 2018 2:47 pm

View Original PostBlueBasilisk wrote:I hadn't really thought about it before, but aren't most of the Evas' internal organs vestigal?

I'm sort of hesitant to use the word "vestigial" in this particular context. In the normally understood evobio sense, a vestige is a remnant of a previously more "complicated" or "more developed" structure. In the present day, the vestige is not necessary FUNCTIONLESS, and there is always the chance of it getting reused for a new purpose; just, comparatively, it ain't what it used to be. The Evas have by all indications fully developed, fully functional organ systems. If everything is still there and it is still capable of working the way it always did, is it actually "vestigial"? In terms of being "unnecessary", it's hard to say how unnecessary, exactly, since not a whole lot is known about how their physical upkeep works in the absence of an S2 engine. I agree that cellular respiration isn't the crutch for them that it is for us, but similar or identical metabolic processes sound like they're invoked during repairs at least. One example off the top of my head; there might be others.

Episode 22 wrote:WOMAN (OFF):
Mitosis in Unit 02's left arm has cleared the target value.

MAN (OFF):
Necrosis is currently under point zero five percent.

WOMAN (OFF):
The apoptosis process is operating normally.

WOMAN (OFF):
Unit 00's morphogenetic system is currently stable.

WOMAN (OFF):
Please connect receptors to Signal 2.


So anyway, that's why I went for the low-hanging fruit of bizarre extra nostrils and pupils first. Though, you're quite right that "why do these things that are supposed to be superpowered psychokinetic gods have full intestinal tracts?" makes the point about "they were TOTALLY based on non-godly beings that breathed and ate and shit; take one guess as to who those might have been!" much better and more directly. Come to think of it, I'm sure that's where I got the idea of the FAR being little Evas in the first place...

The variations seen in the head and eyes could be the result of Nerv tampering during the growth process, couldn't it?

I don't think there's any way to explain the variation in the Evas if not Gehirn/Nerv tampering. Okay, the migrating nares are no big deal. Even the extra two eyes on Eva-02 are no big deal, since body part doubling is a known phenomenon in embryological mishaps; it could have been a minor deformity that Gehirn decided they could live with, or something that was induced deliberately for, uh, reasons. It's Eva-02's skin and blood and the harpies' heads that throw a huge monkey wrench into proceedings. Eva-02 has blue-gray skin where all others have tan or brown (I'm going to ignore Eva-01 temporarily going from chocolate to peach in episode 19 for no discernible reason). This might be acceptable if not for the indigo-colored blood, which could feasibly look like way because the regular red blood has been augmented with something bluish*. The MP Evas, of course, have cranial morphology with ZERO resemblance to anything Evangelion or even humanoid. They look like someone converted one of the kaiju-sized Audrey 2s from Little Shop of Horrors into a mammal and grafted the resultant head onto an Eva's neck. I have no idea how you would even explain that crap with genetic engineering.

Completely not-serious fanwank: The FAR kept pets, you see, that had heads like the harpies do. These were at best very distant evolutionary relatives, hence the big luscious lips. We'll call them fardogs. The FAR greatly admired their fardogs, and while they couldn't do a whole lot to ensure their pets would live on into the future, they at least made sure some shrines to them existed within the Moons of the Seeds. Gehirn of course found at least one of these shrines, where the genetic sequence of the fardog was discovered in a special preserved form. At first, they had no particular use for this. Later on, however, when having their special Evas constructed, Seele asked if it might be possible to splice the Evangelion with the fardog to get something more... obedient. They were told that the simplest and most efficient way to achieve this was a simple head swap. Still retaining the body of Adam, the Evas would retain most of Adam's powers, but with the fardog's brain, they would become good, dimwitted, docile bitches.

*(For fanfic purposes, I made up some nonsense about this being an artificial protein that was originally intended for super-soldier applications, but ended up getting trialed in Eva-02 to make it more "combat-hardy". It resulted in some rather expensive complications and was never used again.)
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Wed May 23, 2018 7:33 pm

View Original PostReichu wrote:I'm sort of hesitant to use the word "vestigial" in this particular context. In the normally understood evobio sense, a vestige is a remnant of a previously more "complicated" or "more developed" structure. In the present day, the vestige is not necessary FUNCTIONLESS, and there is always the chance of it getting reused for a new purpose; just, comparatively, it ain't what it used to be. The Evas have by all indications fully developed, fully functional organ systems. If everything is still there and it is still capable of working the way it always did, is it actually "vestigial"? In terms of being "unnecessary", it's hard to say how unnecessary, exactly, since not a whole lot is known about how their physical upkeep works in the absence of an S2 engine. I agree that cellular respiration isn't the crutch for them that it is for us, but similar or identical metabolic processes sound like they're invoked during repairs at least. One example off the top of my head; there might be others.


So anyway, that's why I went for the low-hanging fruit of bizarre extra nostrils and pupils first. Though, you're quite right that "why do these things that are supposed to be superpowered psychokinetic gods have full intestinal tracts?" makes the point about "they were TOTALLY based on non-godly beings that breathed and ate and shit; take one guess as to who those might have been!" much better and more directly. Come to think of it, I'm sure that's where I got the idea of the FAR being little Evas in the first place...


Fair enough. Possibly redundant organs, then? I'm frankly kind of puzzled what the S2 organ really does for Unit 01. She was able to regenerate and move after expending all her power even without it. That discussion's surely been had in another thread. -o-;

View Original PostReichu wrote:I don't think there's any way to explain the variation in the Evas if not Gehirn/Nerv tampering. Okay, the migrating nares are no big deal. Even the extra two eyes on Eva-02 are no big deal, since body part doubling is a known phenomenon in embryological mishaps; it could have been a minor deformity that Gehirn decided they could live with, or something that was induced deliberately for, uh, reasons. It's Eva-02's skin and blood and the harpies' heads that throw a huge monkey wrench into proceedings. Eva-02 has blue-gray skin where all others have tan or brown (I'm going to ignore Eva-01 temporarily going from chocolate to peach in episode 19 for no discernible reason). This might be acceptable if not for the indigo-colored blood, which could feasibly look like way because the regular red blood has been augmented with something bluish*. The MP Evas, of course, have cranial morphology with ZERO resemblance to anything Evangelion or even humanoid. They look like someone converted one of the kaiju-sized Audrey 2s from Little Shop of Horrors into a mammal and grafted the resultant head onto an Eva's neck. I have no idea how you would even explain that crap with genetic engineering.

Fan wank's as good an explanation as any! :lol: You also have to wonder why anyone would specifically design the MP units to have eyeless elongated heads. What possible purpose would that even serve except to look creepy? It's hard to see any practical reasons for it. But the fact that they do all look alike backs up the idea that Nerv is responsible for their odd appearances.

It might help if we knew how the Evas were grown. We saw Unit 01 bud off of Lilith, of course, although her turning brown when momma Lilith is chalk white is a bit of a head scratcher. But how do they engineer the ones made from Adam's samples? Do they create an embryo like Adam and nurture it to full size? The remains from the Eva graveyard suggest they start with the head/helmet, spine and arms. That would mean they grow the organic tissue around the artificial components? :???: I can see Nerv/Gehirn experimenting with different set-ups to make a better Eva, but at the same time it's a little odd they wouldn't shoot for a perfect 1:1 copy of Adam. Surely the Katsuragi expedition had some record of what Adam really looked like. And I don't think they would have metamorphosed like Sandalphon did without having a soul or an ego...
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby pwhodges » Thu May 24, 2018 3:12 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:I'm sort of hesitant to use the word "vestigial" in this particular context.

This led me to check up on my knowledge of the human appendix, and I found (somewhat to my surprise) that research since the time I learnt about it has pointed at the possibility of it having genuine functions.

If everything is still there and it is still capable of working the way it always did, is it actually "vestigial"?

We know that Eva-01 can operate (go berserk) when she no longer has her normal power source (i.e. no umbilical connection and battery is flat); I have always presumed that at this point her fundamental biological functions have activated, and she is operating as a fully biological entity.
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Thu May 24, 2018 10:23 am

^ :facepalm: Of course that's a possibility. If the Eva have a complete set of functioning human organs then it totally makes sense that they'd be able to function like a human does even without an S2 organ. Lilith doesn't have one either, after all. I would assume they'd need something to metabolize for energy in the absence of external power or an infinite energy organ. I can't imagine the calories they'd burn. :lol:
Last edited by BlueBasilisk on Thu May 24, 2018 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Thu May 24, 2018 12:37 pm

Re:Unit-02's blood: I've always just assumed the Doylist answer of "red blood wouldn't show up on red armour so they used purple based on that common misconception deoxygenated blood turns purple".

Genetic modification is definitely a possibility with the Evas, though based on what we see of Gehirn and Nerv I'm not sure if it's an intentional cultivation of traits through genome manipulation or imperfections in the cloning process. Of course, I still like my fanwanky idea that the number of eyes and the variations in skin colour could just be down to natural variance within a genus or species. Look at Homo sapiens for a great example of how eyes, hair, skin, and even body size can vary based on small genetic differences. It also creates the possibility of Eva development being like animal husbandry.

The MP Evas' heads I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if their design is meant to present them as "faceless", "blank canvases" in a literary sense, but then I suppose if you write everything off as stylistic meta choices a show doesn't mean anything anymore. That said, Unit-03 and its twin Unit-04 did have distended jaws so it's not impossible for some FAR to have had longer heads. And since some sources say Unit-00 has 2 eyes under its helmet, maybe the MP Evas do as well and the helmets just don't reflect it.

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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby Electreel » Thu May 24, 2018 2:28 pm

View Original PostReichu wrote:The Evas' under-armor design is an inconsistent mess from beginning to end. No two ways around it.
- The lips issue is tricky. For all intents and purposes, I assume they're meant to exist, since the gums are clearly set apart from the regular skin. (Also note how Eva-01 bares her teeth without opening her jaws when applying Zeruel's arm to her stump.


I've always assumed that Eva 01's teeth were "sprouting" rather than being exposed in that scene. I mean, it happens at the same time she assimilates Zeruel's arm to regenerate her own. It makes sense that she would use the extra matter to grow other missing organs and structures, especially considering what she intends to do next... :harpy_liplick: That would also explain why her teeth are nowhere to be seen before episode 19. As to why she would have originally lacked teeth, I've got no clue. Remember that she also grows long, sharp claws and pressumably hair for no apparent reason during EoE, so maybe certain aspects of Eva's biology are just not meant to be understood :lol:

EDIT: I've since rewatched the scene and I noticed that the teeth appear as soon as Eva 01 places Zeruel's arm against her stump. Immediately after, she starts twitching and an A.T. field is deployed (is this Eva's innate reaction to extraneous tissue, or an active effort to incorporate it into her body?); it is then that the arm is assimilated. However, I'm still under the impression that the teeth are growing, rather than being exposed. So maybe it isn't the absorption of angelic tissue that causes the teeth to appear, but the contact with it? Dunno...
Last edited by Electreel on Thu May 24, 2018 6:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Taking in Zeruel's S^2 Organ caused Unit 01 to physically change

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Postby Neepa » Thu May 24, 2018 4:19 pm

All in all I wouldn't take the word clone in regards to the Units not at face value.
They are copies but not hardcopies. I would imagine a hardcopy wouldn't really fit what Gerhirn or Nerv were seraching for at the time.
The most logical and easiest solution would be that the Units in general are copies of Adam/Lilith with some genetic engeneering in them to make them useable and handleable.

Humanity is arguably the most understood advanced species. So when you are making a giant biological machine of war, that has to operate relyably when you need it, you better not use a body structure you barely understand at all.
You alter it into one you understand the most of to keep it running and operating. Not to forget you have to integrate electronics and mechanical parts into the monster which will present nightmares of its own in terms of doability.

Even though this takes a step away from canon this is the most likely thing we would do.

Regarding the digestive system: It could be used to transfrom the elctrical energy of the batteries into other forms of energy the biological body can actually use. The same goes for the lungs.
I would imagine there two possible ways to use them:
1. In the normal mode of actually breathing just as a human does.
2. Use them to refurbish the oxygen in the cells and feed the oxygen back into the whole system. With a given amount of oxygen and a perfect system to refurbish it inside the body breathing becomes uneccessary.

The latter could be the one normally used when under the thrall of the piloting system.

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Postby Reichu » Thu May 24, 2018 6:42 pm

Hard to keep up with this thread at the rate it's been growing. I've given it a more proper title, at least.

View Original PostACGT-Samael wrote:Re:Unit-02's blood: I've always just assumed the Doylist answer

I don't doubt that something like this (visual contrast) was the initial motivation, but as of EoE they did go all the way in making her actual skin a bluish color, when a shade of brown would have contrasted against the armor as well. So in-universe, there is undoubtedly something weird about Eva-02 (above and beyond the easier-to-explain extra eyes), so it still requires an explanation from properly motivated fans.

And since some sources say Unit-00 has 2 eyes under its helmet, maybe the MP Evas do as well and the helmets just don't reflect it.

Regarding "some sources":

1) The "eye" that's on the helmet is actually a camera. (This is what it's labeled in production art. The equivalent five structures on the prototypes are also labeled "cameras" in-show.)
2) Eva-00's bio read-out indicates there are left and right eyes.
3) The only prototype with an exposed skull shows two eye sockets.

Hence, two eyes beneath the helmet.

The MP Evas don't have helmets per se -- their heads are covered in the same rubbery material that covers the arms, so if a feature as obvious as eyes isn't indicated it probably isn't there (unless we're talking really tiny eyes).

Electreel wrote:I've always assumed that Eva 01's teeth were "sprouting" rather than being exposed in that scene.

"Exposed" because the red interlocking "teeth" that have laid within the jaw armor until this point are suddenly, mysteriously gone (where did they go? why?), and real teeth are shown in their place. Note the previous discussion on the stylization with the eyes. I haven't seen anyone make an argument that Eva-01's eyes actually physically alternate between yellow slits and green orbs, so it feels simpler to attribute the sudden appearance of the teeth to mere stylization: they were being "hidden" by the red pegs in the jaw armor, and not revealed until it was dramatically appropriate to do so.

Consider that this is immediately before she regrows her arm not because Zeruel's tissue is somehow triggering the teeth to form, but because the reveal of the Eva's organic human elements are being deliberately juxtaposed for maximum impact on the audience. Someone seeing this for the first time may well have forgotten the earlier mysterious glimpses of a face and a hand. Here, within three tightly organized cuts, you get a pearly white snarl and an impressive morphing animation that ends with a fleshy human arm forming. The best first reactions are the stunned ones: "Why's it got teeth? Why'd it grow a human arm???" Poor suckers have no idea what's coming...

Note that the teeth again vanish behind the red pegs for episodes 23 and 24, and the teeth return for EoE. Are we really meant to think that this is because the teeth were somehow "reabsorbed" (or something) after the events of 19 and 20, and suddenly decided to manifest again in time for the apocalypse? Does this really make sense or add anything to the mythology? I like (LOVE) Watsonian explanations when possible, but I simply don't think one exists here. There's no mechanical logic*, and while it would have been nice if that were the case, it is what it is.

So: what do 19 and EoE have in common? Yui is the one manning the Eva. At these times, the Eva breaks away from being a piloted mecha, and its true identity as a giant person under a bunch of armor comes to the fore. The teeth are made visible to reinforce this point. People have a pretty visceral reaction to teeth. Human teeth are very recognizable, and the Evas play on both that recognizability AND the fact that their teeth are fully exposed in the ways our only are when we're dead, so unconscious forces of dread and fear get activated in our minds.

* Well, correction. It's possible that the red peg-teeth retreat INTO the jaw armor when the real teeth are visible. There's one cut in EoE, the close-up of Eva-01 barfing up the Spear of Longinus, that lends some credence to this. Yamashita's illustration for the cover of Newtype 100% also depicts the mandibular peg-teeth as being nested within the armor, as opposed to extending above the "lip" as expected -- further suggesting that the things can shift up and down. This still leaves the question of how exactly the peg-teeth go about retreating out of sight when it's dramatically appropriate -- as in, what causes it to occur. Maybe there's a little switch that Yui can push with her tongue... :nyao:

Remember that she also grows long, sharp claws (...) for no apparent reason during EoE

Drawing Evas with really sharp nails isn't exclusive to that one cut where she grabs the Spear; she's also inexplicably taloned when she's pulling apart Sachiel's ATF. The MP Evas similarly get long nails when they're disemboweling Eva-02 (they also lose all of their injuries for a couple of cuts, only to gain them back later -- I'm serious). There are other examples as well. It's a stylistic flair that some (only one? no idea) animators seem to drop in almost randomly.

Neepa wrote:All in all I wouldn't take the word clone in regards to the Units not at face value.

For the record, the Classified Information in Eva2 does very specifically use the term クローン再生 (clone saisei). For real life context: bringing dead pets "back to life" through cloning is clone saisei. (Another name for Project E is the Adam Resurrection Project. Yeah...)
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