Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:There's an interesting note where Shinji's suit starts beeping with a low battery warning right before Kensuke comes to pick them up-- what does his suit need to be powering? Is it what's letting Shinji live through the 3I-ified landscape? He's probably not fine in it, because they stick him in a suit later, so maybe it's providing some sort of protective function? The village is called Village-3, which makes me chuckle.
That recalls me that Shinji also needed to wear a hazmat suit in Q when Kaworu brought him to the exterior of neo-NERV HQ, so indeed, maybe he (and the other pilots) are not immune to the L-Barrier effect but merely more resistant, that's why he, Asuka and Rei Q can go through their walk without a helmet while the WILLE crew in Paris needs to wear an additional sealed helmet?
Village-3 is an obvious reference to Tokyo-3, the little scenes of people walking around with upbeat music playing that I saw in the TV ads make it even more obvious that Part A is Shin's equivalent of the first half of 2.0, and I wonder if it can even be considered a mirror version of it: it's in a small countryside village instead of a sprawling city, Shinji and Asuka stay isolated while Rei Q quickly finds her place (the reverse of 2.0), I've even read that Rei Q goes to the village school! (and that hilariously, they use the same uniforms as the Tokyo-3 middle-school the pilot used to go!
)
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:HUGE thing I missed the first time around: remember how Shinji pukes every time he sees Asuka wearing the DSS choker or remembers she's wearing it? She puts on a scarf! She wraps a scarf around her neck whenever she's around Shinji so he doesn't have to see her wearing it! It's a touching gesture that I honestly didn't pay any attention to on the first viewing. It's sweet.
That's something I suspected too: she lives apart from the rest of the village, seems fine to running around essentially naked except with panties and a jacket, yet the only other piece of clothing she wears is that scarf. I supposed that between Shinji's reaction at seeing hers, and the facts that he doesn't wear his one anymore yet it transmitted the status that it detonated and that EVA-13 was a dual-entry plug, she put two-and-two together and guessed that he probably saw the other pilot's head explode.
That's a hint that she still cares about him, and well, it's hard to make someone get a hold of themselves if you trigger their PTSD everytime they see your choker!
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:Also, some more nuance to Asuka's line "this isn't a place I belong, it's a place I protect" that I translated from her character intro uploaded to youtube. She says this line in response to Rei III asking if Asuka worked in the village when she first arrived, so I would actually edit my translation to the following. (Memory may not be exact, forgive me slight inconsistency, but the feeling is accurate.)
Rei III: "Did you work when first came here too?"
Asuka: "Are you stupid? This isn't a place I live. This is a place I
protect."
Isn't there an implication that Kensuke's place is her house when she's not in the Wunder? Does she implies that she don't live as in "not being part of the community" because she isolate herself, or is the implication that she
never comes in Village-3? (which wouldn't make sense if Kensuke has been her father figure for the past 14 years, unless his jacket with the Wunder/WILLE logo implies that he worked in the Wunder before moving to Village-3)
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:Shinji goes back to the Wunder, pink-hair bridge bunny complains about stuff,
Sakura and Shinji have some moments, Mari and Asuka reunite and Mari's all over her like white on rice, we get the halfway point.
Does Sakura and Shinji say something interesting, like Shinji apologizing for not listening to her pleas to not pilot again, or keeping her updated on her brother and his family?
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:Not much to unpack in the bridge bunny scene. Pink girl aims the gun first, but Sakura actually
shoots first, hah. Misato and Shinji do get to talk, and combined with
the conversation between Ritsuko and Shinji earlier in the film, it feels satisfactory enough.
You mean the conversation between Ritsuko and Misato, or does the former and Shinji also have a talk?
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:Misato delivers the Spear of Gaius to Shinji in the middle of his conversation with Gendo. She has the picture of Shinji and her son on the dashboard as she flies into GNR's eye (I guess they're the windows to the soul, hah) and then the Wunder explodes. RIP Misato.
Is the rest of the Wunder crew with her, or did they evacuated first?
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:Rei II is holding a cobbled-together doll that has a piece of tape with "Tsubame" written on it, which is the name of Hikari's kid. You really have to be looking for that one, it's nearly blink and you miss it if you don't have a pause button.
Wait a second, does that implies that Rei Q's memories fused with Rei II and that in a way the former is still "alive"? That would explain why Rei decided to live in Village-3 at the end.
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:Mari and Shinji meet on the beach, and then Shinji "wakes up" at the train station when Mari comes to get him, and they're both aged up. I've mentioned before my interpretation is that Shinji creates the world as it is, fully-formed, and everyone appears in it to populate it from that exact moment. NOTE: Mari says before she sends Shinji off to wait for her, because she'll come for him.
So two question :
- Is the meeting in the beach still in Instrumentality/Minus space, or are they already back in the real world?
- When exactly does she says to Shinji to wait for her: when she first brings him to 01 through the Doors of Guf, or in the beach scene just before Shinji wakes up in the train station?
I remember reading about something that Shinji says to Kaworu during Instrumentality that could explain why Shinji comes back as an adult (if the train station scene indeed chronologically happens right after the beach scene): Shinji tells Kaworu that now he remembers all the times they met before, as in in all the previous loops internal to Rebuild (I'm not talking about Sequel Theory), can you confirm that Shinji indeed says that?
So could it be that Shinji received the memories of all his lives in the other loops, and that put all together that made him feel more like an adult than a teenager who still knows nothing of life, and that's why he came back as an adult? (and, conformist as he is and since he's still mainly a person from the pre-3I world, his vision of an adult is a guy dressed like a Japanese salaryman!
)
Similarity, if Rei and Rei Q merged, depending on how much time Rei Q has been alive before Shin, added to Rei 2's 14 years of life it might adds to an age closer to adulthood. Since IIRC we only see her from the back and she's smaller than Kaworu, it's hard to know for sure if she's a short adult (but IIRC Yui was a tall woman), if she's an adult but Kaworu is a tall adult or if she's still a teen and Kaworu is an adult. (again IIRC in the size chart Kaworu is supposed to be slightly taller than Rei, and in this scene he's like one head and half taller!)
Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:I'm not sure how earned anything with Mari is, and her background is still very murky, but I don't completely hate it, because who else is Shinji supposed to end up with? I guess the answer could be "nobody", but I dunno, I'm okay with this.
I've seen a lot of interpretations about those two in the last scene. Apparently Shinji's answer to Mari when she goes "guess who?" ("Nice lady with big breasts") is a call-back to Mari's formal introduction to him just when Asuka and he had their last conversation before the final battle: she covers his eyes, says "guess who?", then adds "Hint: Rooftop, glasses,
nice lady with big boobs", which is the main hint that there wasn't a complete reset of everything, memories included, like it was in the manga.
I've seen others go even deeper and say that, due to Anno's love for repeating shots and situations, since in Gendo's flashback it's revealed that Gendo met Yui thanks to Mari (can you confirm?), then history might repeat itself and Mari will play matchmakers between Shinji and Asuka, like she teased each others already in Q and Shin.
Or, if we take my theory that Shinji remembers his lives from other timelines, maybe in those he didn't ended inside EVA-01's core for 14 years but ultimately ended with Mari, and in that last scene it's them rekindling their relationship.
Or maybe it's only a metaphor of Anno leaving behind Evangelion (represented by the DSS Choker) with the guidance of his wife (represented by Mari) and we're all uselessly fanwanking, wouldn't be the first time!
