Should the 14-Year timeskip remain a mystery? [Split]

[Sherbert]

[Split from Do You Dislike Q?. - Monk]

Number 1: we need a 14 year filler. Missing those details affected the movie for me.

I personally think some sort of filler that explains what happened during those 14 years would defeat the purpose of 3.0. The purpose being that it's "supposed" to shock the audience with the premise. Having a filler series later on for the 14 year gap would seem like a cop-out (to me) and would make 3.0 lose some of it's uniqueness. Yes, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but I think it's best to leave it that way for now. Ambiguity was always a huge part of NGE's atmosphere so I personally accept these new ambiguous traits 3.0 has brought to Evangelion.

[ElMariachi]

Well, fillers long after 3.0 is released is possible : Evangelion is something huge in Japan and past some time everyone in the country will know about the 14 years time skip twist, even if they didn't saw the movie proper, like everyone know that Darth Vader is Luke's father even if they didn't saw Star Wars.

Once FINAL is released and Shinji's arc is over(since Rebuild is, per Anno's word, "Shinji's story" and thus extremely Shinji-centric), Anno will be able to work on that.

Besides many people asks for a spin-off about those 14 years, and I really doubt that Khara and Gainax will let pass the opportunity to make even more money!

[TheFriskyIan]

I personally think some sort of filler that explains what happened during those 14 years would defeat the purpose of 3.0. The purpose being that it's "supposed" to shock the audience with the premise. Having a filler series later on for the 14 year gap would seem like a cop-out (to me) and would make 3.0 lose some of it's uniqueness. Yes, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but I think it's best to leave it that way for now. Ambiguity was always a huge part of NGE's atmosphere so I personally accept these new ambiguous traits 3.0 has brought to Evangelion.

Except that the ambiguity doesn't explain anything. I'm not asking to be spoon fed an entire flashback that shows us in every little detail what went on in the 14 year gap. However, giving us 14 years of important details and not showing us ANYTHING from those 14 years is bad story telling.

[Sherbert]

Except that the ambiguity doesn't explain anything. I'm not asking to be spoon fed an entire flashback that shows us in every little detail what went on in the 14 year gap. However, giving us 14 years of important details and not showing us ANYTHING from those 14 years is bad story telling.

Well the actual problem lies with the decision to have a time-skip in 3.0. Evangelion is pretty heavy when it comes to sci-fi mechanics and character development, so having a 14 year time-skip would have drastically changed the Evangelion universe we're all familiar with. On my part, I will hold my final opinion on what I think of Anno's decision to go with the 14 year time-skip until I watch 4.0/Final...when it's out. My decision comes from the fact that I really did enjoy 3.0 and have high hopes that 4.0 will blow me away.

I'm not trying to defend that the time-skip was a good decision, I can obviously and clearly see why anyone would not be pleased with it. Hopefully we get something similar to the Classified Information files in NGE2 in the near future that gives us some insight on what went down during the 14 year gap.

[TheFriskyIan]

I'm not trying to defend that the time-skip was a good decision, I can obviously and clearly see why anyone would not be pleased with it. Hopefully we get something similar to the Classified Information files in NGE2 in the near future that gives us some insight on what went down during the 14 year gap.

Well we'd have to get a sequel to the Evangelion: Prelude game that came back shortly after 1.0's release if we're gonna get something like that.

Take the hint Anno....

[ElMariachi]

There was a Rebuild video-game?

[TheFriskyIan]

There was a Rebuild video-game?

Only for the first movie. It would be cool if they made another game add had files for story like the NGE Game did.

[Sherbert]

Well we'd have to get a sequel to the Evangelion: Prelude game that came back shortly after 1.0's release if we're gonna get something like that.

Take the hint Anno....

With all the money 3.0 has made, it seems pretty likely. Maybe after 4.0 has its theatrical run . I really do doubt Anno will stay quite about all the new and crazy mechanics 3.0 brought to the series.

There was a Rebuild video-game?

There's also that rhythm game that came out for the PSP and some other mobile devices a while back. "3nd Impact"

[Warren Peace]

Only for the first movie. It would be cool if they made another game add had files for story like the NGE Game did.

God, I hope not. That's one of the cheapest things they did for the original series, just info-dumping things in list form. If you can't find a way to convey something in the work itself, it should go unsaid. But hey, at least we now know that Kaji's killer was... someone completely unrelated to the story that we've never met. Glad they cleared that up.

The idea of them listing the events of the timeskip on a Playstation or something really makes me nervous. Do it dramatically or don't do it at all.

[Monk Ed]

But hey, at least we now know that Kaji's killer was... someone completely unrelated to the story that we've never met. Glad they cleared that up.

Are you talking about the CI? Because Kaji isn't even mentioned in the CI.

[Warren Peace]

Alrighty then. It's beside the point -- dumping that stuff outside the work itself sets a bad precedent for storytelling. I hope they don't try it again.

[Sailor Star Dust]

But hey, at least we now know that Kaji's killer was... someone completely unrelated to the story that we've never met.

Just to clarify: You're thinking of Secret of Evangelion which is a totally different game from NGE2. Although in NGE2's TV series/EoE scenario, we do see 2 random guy in suits shoot Kaji.

Anyway, I think the timeskip should be left unexplained (some brief Asuka, Misato, or even Mari flashbacks in Final could be interesting) but if it were done in a video game, NGE2's Classified Information files wasn't a bad format at all.

[Blue Monday]

Alrighty then. It's beside the point -- dumping that stuff outside the work itself sets a bad precedent for storytelling. I hope they don't try it again.

I agree with you, as usual. But I actually really dig the CI from a mythos/lore perspective - Because, you know, it only confirms, supports or expands upon what was already shown or hinted at in the series.

Definitely don't want the same kind of situation again however.
Let's keep it insular of the movies.

[Gendo'sPapa]

I'd prefer the timeskip left a mystery. At most 4.0 should cover the important mysteries from the timeskip: what were Misato & Asuka's emotional journies over the course of those 14 years & how did they feel, regret, or disregard Shinji over that period of time.

Leaving the timeskip vague has been one of my favorite things about 3.0 since I first saw it. Shinji doesn't know what happened in those 14 years, (nor did he know what happened in Tokyo-3 before his initial arrival in Episode 1 of the show & no one complains about those many mysteries being untouched for 20 episodes or in some cases- NEVER) & the film puts the audience in that mindspace. It's not a pleasant mindspace, but I think it makes 3.0 a more emotionally involving movie for it's protagonist than an overly expostional "here's the facts" version would have been.

Either way, if the timeskip ever is explained in detail I'm gonna take a wild guess that Hideaki Anno & the other core Eva staff - Kazuya Tsurumaki, Mayasuki, etc - probably won't be involved with telling it. The merchandising team will.

If I can fankwank for a second: I'm thinking 4.0 will open with an action heavy flashback to a period during the timeskip - possibly when the 12th Angel inside Mark 06 reached Lilith - & we'll see the event through Misato's eyes. Maybe.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Leave the time skip a mystery? But that goes against Evangelion's tendencies to over-explain everything!

Yeah, I agree with Gendo'sPapa. No one ever really complains about how we never knew how or why Lilith was nailed to a cross in their basement in either the original TV series or the New Movies, but they'll want to raze Khara to the ground if 4.0 doesn't explain how or why she got off.

[BC Baron]

Shinji doesn't know what happened in those 14 years, (nor did he know what happened in Tokyo-3 before his initial arrival in Episode 1 of the show & no one complains about those many mysteries being untouched for 20 episodes or in some cases- NEVER)...

Not sure if I would consider this a valid comparison. The main reason Shinji, and by extension the audience, doesn't know what's going on when he first shows up in Tokyo III (both NGE & Rebuild) is because that is supposed to be the beginning of the story. The scenes immediately following the fourteen year timeskip however, are not. If there are to be a total of four Rebuild films, then 3.0 actually takes place sometime just past the midpoint. I think there's a difference.

For the record, I'd like to submit that there were some plot elements from the original tv series which took place chronologically before Episode 1 that are touched upon well before Episode 20. Both Unit-00's first activation test (the one which demonstrates how Rei was injured) and Misato's experience surviving Second Impact are shown via flashback sequences. We find out about the environmental effects of 2I from the teacher's lectures in Class 2-A. Plus, when Gendo and Fuyutsuki travel to Antarctica to retrieve the LoL, the audience is able to actually see what ground zero looks like while their conversation references what happened fifteen years ago. When Asuka joins the cast, we learn that Misato used to be one of her handlers in Germany and that Misato and Kaji have history which dates back to when they were in college together. I'm pretty sure there was also a brief conversation at NERV early in the series where Ritsuko discloses to Shinji how the cover story of a meteor causing 2nd Impact is not true and that an angel was responsible. She goes on to state that NERV created the Evas in order to prevent a possible 3rd Impact initiated by the angels (paraphrasing).

Although it's true Shinji spent the first fourteen years of his life living in some part of Japan outside of Tokyo III and, as a result, cannot instantly replicate NERV's secret handshake from the second he steps off the train in 1.0, he was still a card-carrying resident of the post 2I world since birth. It's not quite the same thing as spending his next fourteen years in a non-corporeal state, locked in Unit-01's core while orbiting the planet, completely unaware of the goings on below.

[ElMariachi]

Guys, you're not seeing big enough : if the mysteries of the 14 years time skip are to be revealed in a video-game, it can't be with a simple pseudo-dating game with infodump in a text format, that would be a waste of the HUGE potential the time skip give us!

The problem with NGE is that there was only an handful of Angels and the 9 MP-EVAs to fight, all of this in a limited time span. So any video game had to be about killing the Angels(and most of them weren't even fighting material, I mean how do you transpose Leliel in a game sequence?) in an alternative universe, or must be fillers with invented Angels that are always inferior to the originals.

But here, not only we have a very long time span(14 years boys!) but thanks to the Nemesis Series and who know what other madness SEELE created you can have all the fights you want! Then just use the 11th and 12th Angels and later Mark.09 as bosses, and you have everything you need for a complete videogame!
And you can mix the genres if you want : RPG when the pilots are on foot, that's where you interact with the other characters and see them change with time to become the people they were in Q, where the plot advance(you have to talk with the good people, ask the correct questions to obtain informations, hack in computers, led a secret investigation about Gendo and SEELE...), and for the fighting phases, it becomes a Tactical RPG or better yet, a real-time mecha simulation a la Mechwariors!
Then Gendo's and SEELE's plan are uncovered and the proper 3rd Impact happens, the split between neo-NERV and WILLE happens, and the "between the missions pahse with interaction with the characters are in the temporary bases WILLE have, and alter it's in the AAA Wunder that you can roam at will!


Or maybe make a strategy/management game were you have to manage the installation of survivors settlements, salvage as much as you can from the ruins to build an army, make sure that supply routes are numerous enough so the WILLE army or the Lilin settlement don't starve or are under-equipped against the Nemesis Series or some other groups of bandits and other warlords.
You will have diplomacy where you have to convince what remains of the nations or the scattered cities that survived 3I to join WILLE in the fight against neo-NERV and SEELE, where you will ahve to accomplish some "quests" to gain their trust and later allegiance : destroy that bandit stronghold, bring us 3000 units of food, help us to destroy that other city-state(of course you can side with the other city if they have more to offer, but beware of your reputation among the troops of WILLE), these phase could be with more mundane military gear(soldiers, tanks, VTOLs, choppers...), since an Evangelion can't be dropped everywhere(remember that they don't have a fying Wunder yet).
You will also have to made researches and found some datas and technologies among the ruins in special quests to have the capacity to research better technologies for both the Evangelions and the rest of WILLE : better battery time, portable battery pod(making the EVA deployable farther), ATF generation to protect bases and settlements, technology to prevent a zone to be infected by core erosion(you can install settlements in more points of the map and even install outposts near neo-NERV's base)... on of these special mission will have you to found/build/steal the AAA Wunder, wiving WILLE a flagship and a mobile base of operation for the EVAs.
You will have to manage the Wunder, building new quarters for it, making specific researches for making it even more lethal... like in XCOM.

Yeah in short, it's like a Total War, but with Evangelions, and X-Com for the base(NERV at the beginning, AAA Wunder later).
Or a RPG-Mechwarrior game where you're an EVA pilot, you can be the pilot of one of the missing EVAs(7, 10, 11 or 12), maybe even Toji!

In both case that would be awesome!


And yeah, I know that I'm dreaming and that there far much chances that they made dating-sims and Visual Novels of Rebuild than that...

[xdiesp]

I was there when EOE was being bashed all day long by people who downloaded fansubs of the first loli anime, so I kinda agree it's just all white noise whose lasting power in history is the usual "at first, the ignorant masses didn't get it" on wikipedia.

That the ignorant, and unwashed masses had a hard time with it is completely understandable, as they were not prepared, and this was all-new material. You can't just read or watch anything without having some background preparation to interpret it: it's like watching a Simpsons episode without getting any of the references, it's dull. And new material is always very difficult to analyze, because you can't just rehash the consensus, like those "film critics" who spit random nonsense upon watching a new movie, and need to inform themselves on the large community consensus to take a stance.

[Charsi]

I'm fairly convinced that whatever happened over the 14 years, the vast majority of that timespan is actually not worth seeing.

There's a small number of major events that punctuate a big sea of relative boredom (and the number more or less depends on where you think 2.22 actually ended: pre or post-credits). All they really need to do is explain what happened to the GeoFront/Mark.06 and they could actually glosss over that pretty quickly.

What I am more curious about is the people side of things. Mostly Kaji and Asuka, and to a lesser degree the rest of the WILLE staff. There are enough hints in 3.33 that WILLE is a relatively new separation so I don't care all that much about the specifics of how it came about, there's enough to indicate that it was brewing even way back when. To me Evangelion has always been character driven, and that's really what i'm looking forward to in 4.0, and what was missing from 3.33 (because it was basically Shinji-centric, and that has pluses and minuses).

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Ambiguity was always a huge part of NGE's atmosphere so I personally accept these new ambiguous traits 3.0 has brought to Evangelion.

Reading this, I realise that this is probably the reason I ended up liking 3.0 as much as I did. Ambiguity is what makes Evangelion mysterious and compelling, and is what makes theories, analysis and discovery of the show so much fun. Despite there being almost no old content whatsoever introduced in 3.0, I felt if was closer to the original series than ever 1.0 in overall mood and construction. Evangelion does not dwell on details. It 's focused on human emotions. Starting "fresh" 14 years laters allowed the film to do that and do it well.

We only need the smallest of morsels to make things make sense anyway, so the slightest new information in Final will tell us mountains. For example: Suppose the Wunder returns to its home base? That alone will tell us legions. We're told what's essential in Evangelion. If it's essential that we know about those intervening years, then something will point towards them in final. If not, they will be unimportant.

Certainly, there are some details which could have done with clarification. Why exactly everyone treats Shinji so coldly is something which needs to be cleared up. Did he cause Third Impact or not? Where is Yui? What happened to Rei? But questions like: What is Gendo doing, or what are the FoI's are ultimately not going to receive complete answers. The best we can hope for is enough information to form a coherent theory.