Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby honsou » Mon Mar 05, 2018 6:23 pm

So while looking up some info on Gendo I found that Gendo is actually 32 when he meets Yui at the university. The first time we ever see him he is released into Fuyutsuki's custody where Fuyutsuki never refers to him as any sort of colleague or even a student, just that he had "heard of him". This leads to one conclusion and one conclusion only

Gendo was the janitor at the university when he met Yui.

We seem to have no indication of what his skill set is at any time during the series other than this vague sense of him being a leader. From what we know he had only been able to get truly professional work after he met Yui, who's father was in SEELE. His position with the Katsuragi research team was that of a statutory auditor (Or kansayaku), which is a job that only exists in Japan and is only for a private corporations in Japan, why would the UN need such a person? It seems probable that SEELE was able to get him that job as a favor to Yui to make sure that he had professional work. From there he showed his cunning and skill to the higher ups to be trusted with higher level projects. But even at NERV he seems to show no real technical skills in any field but does seem to have the ability to get close to people who do know what they're doing. Gendo changing his name to Ikari now makes sense because he wouldn't want anyone else to know that he was originally just the janitor at a major university.

So to recap here is the evidence
1)Gendo is way too old to be a college student or even a graduate student in 1999 and there is absolutely no evidence that he was any kind of professor
2)Fuyutsuki seems utterly shocked that Yui would be dating him
3)At no point in the show does Gendo present with any sort of technical skill at all

Therefore Gendo was originally some sort of janitor or a maintenance man

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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby one-eyed » Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:20 pm

In the manga, the chapter 32 mentions that Gendo was a bioengineer, but he was probably a average or even mediocre scientist. To formulate a theory as the Theory of Relativity would require the genius of an Einstein, but to use it and understand it even a average scientist could be successful with adequate time and resources.

http://mangafox.be/neon-genesis-evangel ... chapter=32

So, in college, everyone thought he approached Yui to steal her ideas and make connections with Seele, although Yui was a very attractive woman. No one thought he loved her, not even Fuyutsuki at the time.

When he was chosen as auditor, he conveniently confiscated Katsuragi's incomplete research, conveniently left a day before of the Second Impact, conveniently earned a lot of money from Seele, conveniently entered the Seele Inner Circle without absolutely no special talent after the SI, conveniently was chosen as NERV's Supreme Commander despite not being military and knowing nothing of military strategy, conveniently became involved with Naoko during the creation of Magi (the other Project Genius as Yui), conveniently invited Fuyutsuki to the project and finally, when Yui was absorbed, disappeared for a week, and conveniently when it reappeared she had solved the Equation/Formula of Instrumentality that Seele had been trying to solve for years. In. A. Freaking. Week.

I think he was a natural parasite. He stuck at Yui, then stuck at Seele. He stuck and stole Katsuragi. He turned over some of Katsuragi’s research to Seele and hid the rest for personal use. After Yui was absorbed, he handed over more parts of Katsuragi's research and hid the Forbidden Union from Adam and Lilith for personal use. He stuck to Naoko and Fuyutsuki after Yui "died". He stuck in Ritsuko after Naoko died and technically stuck in Misato, Fuyuytsuki. Kaji and the pilots during NGE. What's your opinion?

P.S .: I still do not know what a Supreme Commander is. Is the position more than general? Or less? What does it mean?
Last edited by one-eyed on Mon Mar 05, 2018 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby Reichu » Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:52 pm

View Original Postone-eyed wrote:In the manga, the chapter 32 mentions that Gendo was a bioengineer

The localization of the manga takes an unusually loose approach to translation, and inserts "extra" information at regular intervals in an attempt to be "helpful". Most of this information is entirely fan-based guesswork and not remotely official, and its insertion just muddies the waters and often creates problems that did not originally exist; but so much priority is given to it that I've found at least one instance of Sadamoto's words being completely erased in favor of "being helpful". (Specifically: all of the captions accompanying the spread of Misato looking at Adam's wings are replaced with information pulled from a textbook page in the show, which naturally is about the COVER-UP version of Second Impact and not the real thing!)

Unless you can find a Japanese version of that bio that mentions his bioengineering creds, I wouldn't believe it for an instant. I checked my tankoubans and, of course, it isn't anywhere in sight.

On top of that, the manga version of Gendo is a very different character who just happens to share the same design. So whatever Sadamoto may or may not claim as true for the manga doesn't apply here, since we're talking about the anime Gendo.
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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby one-eyed » Mon Mar 05, 2018 8:18 pm

Hey! I was specific! I said it was in the manga! I know canonicity is a serious matter here!

I deduced that he had some scientific knowledge because Seele had been trying for years to solve his Equation/Formula of Instrumentality and failed continually, perhaps they were failing to this day and for the next 4, 40 or 400 years if Gendo was not meddling. He was the one who confiscated Katsuragi's research. He gave the means to Seele's Instrumentality. He came with the idea of the forbidden union of Adam and Lilith. He had to have some know-how and even some scientific backing to do so. Did no one find it bizarre when a Janitor came up with genetic engineering and quantum physics theories?

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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby honsou » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:09 pm

In the anime there seems to be no indication that he came up with the union of Adam and Lilith. Also as Reichu has said the English translation of the manga added additional information that seems to not actually be in the source material. In the anime specifically it seems that Gendo has no real scientific knowledge and even his final plan is simply "let me merge with Adam, get into Lilith and hope for the best."

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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby Reichu » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:12 pm

@one-eyed: Your ideas about Gendo seem like they're formulated exclusively from Sadamoto's cartoonishly villainous version (this post is quite the dead giveaway) rather than the subtler and more ambiguous Anno one, so I have no basis to think you have mental partitions between manga and anime actually in place.

@topic: NGE2 is the source of Gendo being a statutory auditor for the Katsuragi research team, so MAYBE it has some additional info buried in it regarding what exactly he was doing before marrying Yui. I'm going to comb through the script files and see if anything interesting comes up.
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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby one-eyed » Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:08 am

Reichu wrote: @one-eyed: Your ideas about Gendo seem like they're formulated exclusively from Sadamoto's cartoonishly villainous version (this post is quite the dead giveaway) rather than the subtler and more ambiguous Anno one, so I have no basis to think you have mental partitions between manga and anime actually in place.


No, it's your impression because I started mentioning the manga and you probably do not enjoy this job very much. I only mentioned in the first paragraph of the post the part that was about Manga! Gendo,all the rest was extracted from NGE. In addition, the other post was in another segment. And I think you're being unfair to Sadamoto. He was present in the process of creating Eva and he may have had the same impression as I did in Gendo's development. There was something extremely wrong with him. His obsession with Yui was not love, it was an extremely odd kind of addiction and there was a high degree of his competitiveness with Shinji from the first episode: in a situation like a critical attack does he come with a staredown match? Why the hell did he come up with that in that situation? And every time they meet, the bastard restarts the duel. Looks like a bully from high school! It was compulsive rather than rational.

In EoE, he was even worse, namely, the JSDF would try to kill the pilots and did not even bother to send Shinji to safety. He only cared for himself so I always thought his final scene was ridiculous and childish. He's never cared for the son and at the time of death with the fucking pile of bullshit? I think it was the lie he wanted to hear and it was no more real than Misato's passionate kiss on Hyuuga or Maya and Ritsuko's "I need you."

There is nothing subtle and ambiguous about Gendo. He was an accomplice of premeditated genocide and did so for a bank account and a position in Seele.

honsou wrote: In the anime specifically it seems that Gendo has no real scientific knowledge and even his final plan is simply "let me merge with Adam, get into Lilith and hope for the best."


I even think Gendo was a mediocre scientist and probably could not tell the difference between a Golgi complex and a complex number or between an Erlenmeyer flask and a petri dish or between a Charm Quark and a Charm Person, but he was the one who gave the secret of Instrumentality for Seele despite the organization being for years trying to decipher the secret and that it would be absurd if he simply decided to implant (or swallow!) the embryo of Adam for his version of the ritual. The bastard was a genocidal lunatic, but I think he should have some scientific or even occult basis for him to believe in this Forbidden Union. It would be ridiculous that his whole plan was based on a night with lots of crack, vodka and LSD.

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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby Reichu » Tue Mar 06, 2018 9:19 am

View Original Postone-eyed wrote:And I think you're being unfair to Sadamoto.

I don't think so at all. It's no secret that Sadamoto changes up the characters, and Gendo is no different in this respect. His version of Gendo spells everything out for the audience rather than letting them come to their own conclusions. The result is one I know you "like": Gendo is evil, no ifs, ands, or buts. Sadamoto gives Gendo new evil things to do and plenty of new opportunities to sneer ominously just to make sure you absolutely know he's bad. A caricature, through and through.

There is nothing subtle and ambiguous about Gendo.

You seem to treat your own incredibly black and white view of the character as the only possible one, so I'm a bit puzzled as to what you think there is to even talk about in any of these threads. Practically every other post of yours has been some borderline Poe's Law regurgitation of how this made-up person is the second coming of Hitler. Is this really the best you can do, one-eyed? Really? You're not going to any efforts to make an argument for why you're right -- you're just ranting.
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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby Blockio » Tue Mar 06, 2018 12:08 pm

View Original Postone-eyed wrote:P.S .: I still do not know what a Supreme Commander is. Is the position more than general? Or less? What does it mean?

Probably a bit offtopic, but in military terms, there is only one Supreme Commander, while there can be plenty of generals. So - in the case of Gendo/NERV probably not universally, but whenever Evas/Angels are involved - Supreme Commander is higher in the hierarchy than a "mere" general
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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby Julius » Thu Mar 08, 2018 11:03 am

Didn't Fuyutsuki mentioned in an episode, of his supposed economic background? Also, this theory doesn't explain Gendo determination and attitude of a leader, which is something you don't expect from a humble janitor.

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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby viperzero » Sat Mar 10, 2018 2:08 pm

He would really have to have some STEM background to run NERV, connections be damned, without some formal training he wouldn't even know what was going on or how to delegate. I mean look at the Manhattan project as the closet analog. At the high levels you wouldn't find anyone without "Doctor" or "General" in front of their names (those Generals by and large trained being Engineers from the military academies). Its also worth pointing out he does do quite a bit of lab work in the flash backs.

32, at least in the US isn't that old for a graduate student in engineering. Most people have some time in industry and then go back on the companies dime to get a masters or PHD if its really research related work. Its also not uncommon for say, someone with a Bsc in Chemistry to work for a few years as a chemical engineering and go to graduate school for chemical engineering. I don't know how it is in Japan though I do hear the sciences are one of the few areas people actually bother with graduate education.

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Re: Grand unifying theory of Evangelion: Gendo the Janitor

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Postby Shinji Ikari Expy » Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:36 pm

^^Best answer. There is no way Gendo had no training in the sciences, or else he wouldn't have any idea how to lead a team of bioengineers and technicians. It is ridiculous to say 32 is "too old" to be in graduate school — 32 is actually the average age of grad students in the US.

Fuyutski's initial disapproval of Gendo has to do with Gendo's abrasive personality, not his position.


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