Mr. M wrote:Just for curiosity, why do you think he'll go in "Gargoyle Mode" and how?
I think the whole train of thought was inspired by the combination of (A) NTE turning into a stealth Nadia remake starting with Q, and (B) Fuyutsuki
looking uncharacteristically evil in trailer #2. To expand a bit...
We know that Misato, on some level, is a proxy for Captain Nemo, and the Wunder stands in for the N-Nautilus (pronounced "New Nautilus"). Nemo's nemesis is Gargoyle (who real name is Nemesis Ra Argol -- a bit on the nose), i.e. this dapper gentleman.
Nemo used to be the king of Tartessos (a kingdom of Atlantis), but Gargoyle, who was his friend and prime minister at the time, plotted a coup, overthrew Nemo while corrupting his male heir Neo, and founded "Neo-Atlantis". Nemo thwarted Gargoyle's attempt to take control of Tartessos' Babel Tower (a communications beacon that can be commandeered into a WMD) and escaped to became the captain of a high-tech Atlantean submarine (the Nautilus) and its loyal crew from around the world. Nemo intends to defeat Gargoyle and his legions of advanced war machines, prevent him from harnessing the "Light of Babel" against the world, and keep the other heir of Tartessos (Princess Nadia) and her power safe.
Or something like that -- Nadia is a bit all over the place and the backstory is somewhat difficult to follow... Gargoyle, with his stylish black and red attire, always-gloved hands, tendency to pocket them, and casually commanding demeanor, is somewhat reminiscent of Gendo. However, his voice actor is Motomu Kiyokawa, who most of you might know better as Fuyutsuki. (Nemo's VA, Akio Ohtsuka, joins the
Eva crew much later on, playing Koji Takao in
Q.) While it's tempting to try, looking for 1:1 correspondences between
Nadia and
Eva characters is ultimately a sucker's game. Nothing is quite so simple as that: for example, Gendo has elements of both Nemo (see their respective relationships with Shinji & Ritsuko and Nadia & Electra) and Gargoyle; elements of Nadia herself can be found in Shinji, Asuka, and Rei; much of Electra makes its way into Ritsuko; Rei inherits Electra's N-Nautilus uniform as a plugsuit; and Sumire Nagara feels like a hybrid of Electra from
Nadia and Elvy from
RahXephon. With the
Nadia character parallels that already existed in NGE being enhanced by new forms of intertextuality as of
Q, it's not entirely out of the question for this to continue on into
Shin, and for the glimpse of "evil Fuyutsuki" in the trailer to be a harbinger of things to come...
So to start with, Gargoyle and Fuyutsuki don't just share a voice actor: they actually kind of resemble one another. Gargoyle isn't seen much without his mask, but when he is...
^ This is a combination of multiple screenshots -- where Gargoyle is
turning into salt -- hence why it might look a little weird.
I didn't feel like editing out all of the blue streaks, don't @ me.^ Here's Nemo and Gargoyle when they were younger. Gargoyle is the tall bloke on the right, because of course he's the tall bloke.
Second, Gargoyle's real name is "Nemesis", as mentioned. In NTE, there are mysterious varieties of Evas that seemingly originate from Eva-04 in some way. One of these is designated Code.4C, "the Nemesis Series". On its own, this wouldn't mean much, but at the beginning of 3+1, Wille are attacked by two other Eva types from the "04 Series", 44B and 4444C. When they appear, Ritsuko offhandedly mentions, "The Vice Commander must be testing us" -- in other words, Fuyutsuki is somehow in control of these Evas, and we can apply this information backward to Q, where the Nemesis Series similarly seemed to "test" Wille. And far less lethally that time -- despite their ability to instantly vaporize Wunder and its fleet, they formed a lattice around the ship and then... simply waited.
Speaking of lattices, it's perhaps worth noting also is that in
Q, it becomes apparent that grids are an important visual motif in the films, implicitly linked to Fuyutsuki via his shogi board. (If you happen to do a rewatch of the films, keep an eye out for this motif -- it's there from the very beginning, albeit easy to dismiss before its significance is rubbed into our faces. I hope to take a closer look in the appropriate thread when I have opportunity, but if you have any thoughts please do share them!)
And, uh, funny thing about the Nemesis Series... Look at Gargoyle again.
The "pillars of light" that make up the Code.4C lattice are stacked, interlocking units; each "individual" comprised of an eye with four extending 'arms' in a cross-shaped formation. This is visually similar to the symbol of Neo-Atlantis on Gargoyle's forehead, and the colors also basically match: yellow eye; black and red arms.
For another thing, recall that Misato and the AAA Wunder provide NTE counterparts to Captain Nemo and the N-Nautilus, which prompts the question of whether any similar parallels exist on the antagonist side. Gargoyle goes through many vehicles over the course of the show, including a Garfish submarine and a Carcharodon zeppelin, but his final two "rides" are a sky ship (a type of aerial Atlantean battleship) and the Red Noah (one of the three Atlantean Arks).
And it's not too hard to find counterparts for these in NTE, either. New HQ is a twofer of sorts, since in its initial form atop the main shaft it's a visual reference to Gargoyle's weapon of choice, the Babel Tower; but once Eva-13 destroys the shaft, the inverted pyramid is revealed to be a levitating colossus containing all of the old Nerv facilities. Gendo and Fuyutsuki are seen on a Wunder-esque bridge near the end of the film, as well, pointing to the very real possibility that the inverted pyramid is a flying ship much like the Wunder. Gargoyle's sky ship is of course not a pyramid per se, but its main body has a triangular cross-section and there are three pyramidal spires on the top. (The Neo-Nerv pyramid has twelve such spires on its upper surface.) As for Red Noah, the Black Moon fits the bill quite nicely: the former is a flying saucer, whereas the upper section of the Black Moon is shaped a bit like a rather thick saucer. There are many other, much more substantial points of comparison, but I'll save these for my next post to the deep lore thread.
While Gendo has some Gargoyle traits, as previously noted, he also is partly Nemo, a role he's now sharing with Misato. The fact that
Nadia character roles can be split between
Eva characters in this way means there is plenty of potential for Fuyutsuki to "go full Gargoyle" wherever Gendo has been slacking off. The most tantalizing possibility being presented is that Fuyutsuki will go rogue -- not merely in the way we already know about (both he and Gendo becoming the enemy to former members of Nerv, lead by their former comrade Misato Katsuragi), but in the sense that he will betray the man who remains his direct superior. Trailer #2 is not exactly being subtle about what will probably happen to Gendo...
The writing is on the wall: Gendo will most likely use the Key of Nebuchadnezzar on himself and enter Eva-13 using the old control system, fulfilling the self-sacrifice we were told he intended to make. (The composition of the shot helps "seal" Gendo's fate here, as he is rather pointedly standing between Eva-13's splayed legs, with the top of his head slightly yet suggestively overlapping the bottom of the Eva's pelvis and-- Well, I'm just glad that Anno hasn't lost his psychoanalytical edge and we've been given such flagrant "unbirthing" imagery in promotional materials.)
This anticipates a reprisal of a familiar
Eva moment, which plays out twice in NGE. (These screenshots should probably include subtitles, so just pretend I remembered to do that.)
It has also appeared once so far in NTE, in
Ha during the equivalent of episode 19.
So if all goes according to
keikaku, we can probably expect NTE to reprise the "Gendo's sleeping on the couch tonight' moment with its own version of "Take care of the rest, Fuyutsuki-sensei" / "Give my regards to Yui-kun" -- but presumably with its own uniquely NTE twist. In NGE, the point of the scene was to lay bare the relationship between Gendo and Fuyutsuki: for all the strife between them, they actually
are 100% loyal to one another, and Gendo views Fuyutsuki as a mentor (he calls him "sensei" here, after all) and trusts him unconditionally to handle all remaining commander's duties. So, with the unexpected spotlight that
Q put on Fuyutsuki, and that even less expected visage of menace from Fuyutsuki in trailer #2, what could we expect NTE's play on their relationship to be?
Well, Fuyutsuki tells us that Gendo intends to "sacrifice everything, including his very soul", so conceivably this will also include any sense of agency Gendo has. "Nebuchadnezzar's Key" doesn't bode well for Gendo's sanity, besides. So once he's inside Eva-13, the remaining responsibilities -- making sure Final Impact happens, the way it's supposed to -- will be on Fuyutsuki's shoulders. Gendo will be part of the "Impact machinery", and Fuyutsuki will be the manager, the orchestrator. In other words, Gendo will be completely laid up inside Eva-13 and entirely at the mercies of Fuyutsuki and the rather substantial forces that seem to be at his command: the 04 Series; a mass-produced Eva series, presumably to be manned by the Ayanami clones being similarly mass-produced; and who even knows what else.
So, if Fuyutsuki were
not completely loyal to Gendo this time around, and intended to go his own way once Gendo was incapacitated, he absolutely could. He
could become the Gargoyle to Gendo's Nemo. The
Nadia parallels could potentially take on yet another layer here, as well. In
Nadia, Gargoyle corrupted Nemo's son as part of his original coup and coronated him the Emperor Neo. The boy was always a puppet, but this became even more pronounced when Gargoyle had Neo extensively cybernetized, enslaving his loyalties and powers to Gargoyle's designs. Gendo in NTE is treated as a royal by Kaworu -- "King of the Lilin" -- which likens him to both Nemo and Neo. But if Gendo becomes trapped in Eva-13, and becomes a puppet to Fuyutsuki's own desires in turn, that would push his storyline toward Neo's: i.e., Gendo similarly becomes an enslaved cyborg.
If this parallel ends up playing out in any way, Gendo's relationship with Shinji could easily become involved, riffing on the dynamics of Tartessos' royal family. Emperor Neo is the older brother of the main protagonist Nadia, who only finds out she's an Atlantean royal (and technically not human as we know it) toward the end of the series. When she and Neo are reunited, Neo is still under Gargoyle's influence, and soon thereafter Nadia is placed under mind control as well. Ultimately, Neo is able to break free of this, and he sacrifices himself to lift the shackles off his sister.
(Funny enough, this involves him being "unplugged" by Gargoyle and willfully reactivating in a moment that gets channeled both visually and musically into Yui's awakening in episode 19.) I'm not exactly sure what to expect from Gendo and Shinji's relationship in
Shin, and I personally don't want a "sacrifice" from either one, but there are a lot of interesting possibilities that could play out here. I'd especially like for them to achieve a reconciliation (much
unlike what happened in EoE).
If Shinji ends up helping the imprisoned Gendo somehow, perhaps Gendo could reveal some things to Shinji that would enable him to "liberate himself" in turn?Rei IV wrote:I've never seen Nadia so I can only guess this means Fuyutsuki will be some sort of harbinger of truth, revealing uncomfortable "things" (truths) about the First Girl and her latest iteration.
Go watch it! It's got evil Fuyutsuki in it!
Plus it's basically proto-
Evangelion and lots of fun to watch.
Even without the Gargoyle parallels, I don't doubt that Fuyutsuki will be doing precisely as you say. But with said parallels, it works even better, since Nadia (part of whose character got recycled into Rei) spends most of the show ignorant about herself, and much of the truth-slinging comes from Gargoyle, especially in episode 37.
Given how detailed this ended up being, I should probably do a thread split just for Gargutsuki...