Loop Theory (I Really was born to meet you)

[Jäeger]

It's not about theories, is a about the proper use of the "time loop" concept". In that trope the starting point is always the same, 1:1.

That's not a time loop, that's an alternate universe that starts the same.
Not to mention that this is not the case for NTE, as there are quite significant differences in the lore and setup compared to NGE.

I'm describing The Groundhog Day, time loop 101. Or the infamous suzumiya haruhi arc. Those are not examples of alternate universes, but "resets" : that is a time loop. You end the 4th of march at 23:59 and you wake up again the same 4 th of march.

And, of course never could NTE and NGE be a time loop. When did we disagree about that topic?

[Blockio]

Must have misinterpreted what you were saying, my bad.

Not few people believing in loop theory do argue however that NGE and NTE are different iterations of the same loop, that time resets to the start of the series to allow Shinji to try again, but as you have pointed out yourself, given the events in the backstory, that is implausible at best

[Sailor Star Dust]

I don't understand why fans of media (e.g. FF7 Remake, the Eva Rebuilds) jump to "sequel theories!" just because of remakes happening. In both situations, there's plenty of evidence these new stories are being played painfully straight and they're brand new retellings of those original 1995-96 and 1997 properties.

What, honestly, would either of these stories being a literal sequel serve for the bigger picture, or for the fans?

I mean, I don't know if this is called "Da capo", but it seems that it is designated as a "repeat sign".

Sure, but that particular secret track on Utada's One Last Kiss album is literally "____ (Da Capo Version) ".

[Lacissal]

Yeah, conceptually a time-loop story and something like the Thrice Upon a Time book (where events repeat themselves but there is no time loop) are extremely different.

Time-loops (Groundhog Day, Endless Eight in Haruhi Suzumiya, Edge of Tomorrow)- a set period of time is endlessly replayed, when it reaches a certain point everything resets/the clock is spun back to the same point and starts again, protagonists become aware of this (though not always carrying over memories), entire point of story is to 'break the cycle'

TUaT- use the ability to send messages back in time to correct bad decisions, to a point before those decisions are made, knowing this will erase the current timeline, causing a similar sequence of events to play out, but with different outcomes, but either way, if the protagonists take no action, time will not loop (nor does it ever loop) but the timeline they're in will just continue on.

I'd hazard a guess that if there is 'time travel' in Shin, and it operates like in it's sci-fi namesake, then it's easier to imagine something like the two Spears working together, or something beyond the GuF, allowing you to bend space and time to send a message to particular point-like the Tesseract in Interstellar (not too far from whatever Quantum Rei is) than some grand, cosmic reset that wipes everything and starts over each loop, as more explicable 'in-universe' tech.

[Jäeger]

I don't understand why fans of media (e.g. FF7 Remake, the Eva Rebuilds) jump to "sequel theories!" just because of remakes happening. In both situations, there's plenty of evidence these new stories are being played painfully straight and they're brand new retellings of those original 1995-96 and 1997 properties.

What, honestly, would either of these stories being a literal sequel serve for the bigger picture, or for the fans?

I mean, I don't know if this is called "Da capo", but it seems that it is designated as a "repeat sign".

Sure, but that particular secret track on Utada's One Last Kiss album is literally "____ (Da Capo Version) ".

They would writhe in pain just trying to follow super hero cronologies.....It's like they cannot understand the concept of different continuities being separate works, which is quite usual in other media.

[Sailor Star Dust]

the concept of different continuities being separate works, which is quite usual in other media.

Even anime or manga of something are going to be the same story with different events. *Coughs loudly at differences between NGE anime and Sadamoto's version*

[Blockio]

Honestly I wouldn't say it's "quite unusual in other media", that whole all-timelines-are-connectecd crap is pretty much exclusive to the superhero genre.

Bit of a tangent, but I do feel like people coming from superhero comics to Eva and expecting it to work from the same principles is responsible for at least part of how prevalent this whole thing is.
EDIT: As SSD points out, anime and manga operates quite differently in general. Even franchises like Getter Robo where it's a rare sight that a new series isn't a direct rehash of the first one or "first one, but X" to my knowledge has no business doing time loops; at most, you get something like a "all of these timelines have a one way portal to the same seperate dimension", but that's kinda it

[BernardoCairo]

What, honestly, would either of these stories being a literal sequel serve for the bigger picture, or for the fans?

My biggest problem with the "Loop Theory" is a thematic one. In my opinion, one of the most important messages from both The End of Evangelion and episodes 25 and 26 is that reality kinda sucks, but it is our ability to keep moving forward that matters. Nothing is perfect, but that's fine. If we keep pushing it through and trying to be better every day, we may indeed find moments of happiness. There's no use in hiding at a world without conflict. I mean, it's the existence of others that helps us to define our own boundaries. In other words, it is worth living and being around other people is an integral piece of this process. You must not run away from it.
With that said, if you take "Loop Theory" into consideration, what happens next? The entire universe is restarted just so that Shinji and Asuka can revisit the same "lesson" they just learned. It is the opposite character development. None of the maturity that these guys gained during the last beats of Evangelion makes a come back. You can literally swap the original series out and plug in Super Mario 3D World and every single NTE character would still act in exactly the same way.
Of course, that would not be a problem if NTE was not a direct sequel to NGE, but rather its own thing. I mean, what would be the point of reusing exactly the same versions of the characters if you have to regress their entire arcs?
I've seen some people argue that in order to become a better person, you must first repeat your mistakes over and over. However that simply does not apply here. To improve yourself, you must first be aware of your past mistakes and this is clearly not happening here. How can you evolve if you continue to relive the same problems again and again? Even worse, in the end, the world is restored so that you can "try again" (crushing the weight of the consequences that your actions should have). This would quite literally be an anomaly in story telling design.
Anyway, let's wait for the release of 3.0 + 1.0 and see what happens.

[hui43210]

Honestly I wouldn't say it's "quite unusual in other media", that whole all-timelines-are-connectecd crap is pretty much exclusive to the superhero genre.

Gudam has it too.

SPOILER: Show

See Turn A

[eldomtom2]

I don't think arguing for/against theories on a thematic level is a productive exercise, since we don't know how anything is going to be executed.

[Shun]

Time-loop paradoxes

Consistency paradox: If Shinji were to modify the past in such a way as to prevent Wille's birth, then how did the Wille in the future come about if the past has changed?
In the case of a single timeline this paradox can be avoided in two ways:
• Cancellation: when Shinji goes back the future is erased (eg Thrice upon a time);
• Predestination: the past cannot be changed and the future cannot be erased, what happened happened (eg LOST).

•This paradox is automatically eliminated if we take into account multiple timelines, i.e. parallel / alternative universes, as any change in the new past affects only the new future relative to the new universe, without creating paradoxes with the old future relative to the old universe (eg Sliding Doors).

The coexistence paradox consists in the physical presence of two Shinji at the same time. However, if we consider that only Shinji's consciousness is transferred from the future to the past, then there would be no problems, as there would be no two physical Shinji but only one.

Finally, there is the paradox of knowledge: if Shinji's consciousness goes back to the past, it would also contain knowledge of the future. Let us therefore consider the three main cases mentioned above:
• Multiple Time-Line: knowledge of the future allows you to change events and determine new realities. There is no paradox and there are no cons.
• Single time-line with predestination: knowledge of the future is not enough to modify past events, on the contrary, it ends up determining the very same events. There is no paradox (Interstellar).
• Single time-line with cancellation of the future: in this case the future knowledge must be canceled when the future is erased, otherwise there would be a paradox of causality because future knowledge would lose its origin, it would no longer be a fruit matured thanks to a complex cause-effect + synchronicity intertwining that develops along a life path, but it would be something self-generated. In this case it is possible to change events by determining a new future, but the price to pay to have this possibility is to erase the future (and all the beings who live there), to erase knowledge from one's memory. Events are not changed by future knowledge (which has been erased), but are changed by a complex interweaving of randomness and new knowledge developed in the new cycle.
The price to pay so that the single person can try again from the beginning (DA CAPO) is the cancellation of knowledge. In NTE the concept of memory clearing is already present on a small scale (1.0), so time-looping would only amplify this side effect on a larger scale. In the movie The groundhog day Bill Murray doesn't lose his memory and this is a logical problem, as I said.

So: if the fruit of life is a metaphysical energy, the fruit of knowledge of human beings is the ability to learn things by living life from the past to the future. Kaworu is an angel, so he remember something from the previous cycle.

Each time the cycle is restarted destroying the future, people, relationships and knowledge, you can try again, but you don't know if this time it will be better or worse than the previous time. In every cycle there will always be positive and negative things, and every time you would like to try again to change the new negative things.
Kaworu is an angel, so he remembers more things and can "observe" the cycle from above and try multiple times in order to change the old negative things (piano metaphor), however he may not be able to predict the new negative things (Gendo's trap).
Shinji is a human, so he loses his memory in the time-loop. Trying again several times doesn't give him the awareness of what to do a priori, so during his life he must learn from the positive and negative experiences he has had, and even the new negative things bring with them new teachings from which it's possible learn things.

---

In my opinion it might be interesting to combine parallel universes, forward repetitions, time-loops, reality simulations in one big scenario. But we'll see, I'm ready to accept what Anno has decided to do, the important thing is that it is interesting and meaningful.

[BernardoCairo]

I don't think arguing for/against theories on a thematic level is a productive exercise, since we don't know how anything is going to be executed.

I disagree immensely. The core themes of a story are usually its most important aspect. Therefore, I think that it is valid to discuss about them. A bunch of theories out there would easily be dismissed if people simply stoped for a moment and thought "does that make any thematic or narrative sense?"
That said, I agree that we cannot completely rule out the theory until the release of the last movie. That's why I wrote "let's wait for the release of 3.0 + 1.0 and see what happens."
Anyway, I just can't see how the writers could implement this idea into the narrative (even more so at such a crucial point in the story). Even if they made the "Loop Theory" work in the context of NTE, that would not change the fact that NGE's storyline would incalculably lose weight.
The End of Evangelion, for example, would no longer be a conclusion, but rather a mere "stopgap" for something else. The entire weight of Shinji's decision to end Human Instrumentality, alongside his and Asuka's personal growth, would be completely thrown away. Besides that, the "reset" would absolutely devalue the consequences of Shinji's actions during the last bit of NGE. I mean, what's the point of accepting the nature of reality (even though it is not perfect) if you can just restart the whole universe over and "try again" (without having any previous memory about your past mistakes).
I'm not saying that you can't theorize about it, nor am I saying that I'm completely right. But, as of right now, that's simply how I feel about it. Again, let's wait for the release of 3.0 + 1.0 and see what happens.

[eldomtom2]

The assumption that you are making is that the loops are somehow voluntary on Shinji's part, or that this isn't a case of a chain of universes with similar events happening.

[Blockio]

Gudam has it too.

SPOILER: Show

See Turn A

I'm aware, but that has never come up since, hardly matters to the show itself and was only done multiple timelines in, so the way it's done is not really relevant to the discussion at hand; you don't see people arguing that maybe the reason there is a hole in australia in IBO is because it's in the loop after UC and there hasn't passed enough time for geological activity to fill it back up, or something.

Admittedly poor wording on my part, but I'm talking specifically about the notion that all timelines are connected with direct way of influencing each other, which in my experience is fairly unique to super hero stories

I don't think arguing for/against theories on a thematic level is a productive exercise, since we don't know how anything is going to be executed.

I quite strongly disagree. NTE in general, but Q in particular has had quite strong undertones of not being mired in the past, so there is no reason why Shin would packpaddle on that and itself be mired in the past by forcing a connection to NGE

[CSPAN]

If loop theory has any grain of truth in it, I would imagine it is centered more on Rei, based on her inexplicable presence in Ep1 of NGE and the beach scene in EoE. Her strange ghostly presence in these scenes, bookending the continuity of NGE, along with her similar presence in the beginning of NTE, suggests she is omnipresent or at least some essence of her is. Rei showing up as a ghost at various points in both the original series and NTE suggest to me she is experiencing many possible versions of events, maybe looking for an optimal outcome, or maybe she is powerless through it all to do anything and it's simply part of her nature as a quantum entity to be here/not-here at all points in time and space. Or maybe I'm losing it and letting my ideas run away with me.

[ElMariachi]

Sure, I think an internal time loop could be happening (but any weirdness could just as equally be metaphysically happening, in Shin Eva's version of Instrumentality). Though when it comes to Rebuild and EoE Sequel Theory or whatever else? I don't really think that's the case, because any evidence has so far been explained in-universe thanks to Rebuild's First/Second Impacts, etc. Or will be a mystery explained in Shin Eva.

That gave me a funny idea: what if Shinji mulls during the movie about what he could had been doing differently and how it would had made life better for everyone, and when (if) Instrumentality happens, whoever is inside with him (Yui/Rei/Kaworu..) let him gaze upon all the different possibilities... and none of them work out:

• leave for real after the 9th Angel and don't get involved in the next battle? Zeruel manages to reach Lilith before Kaworu could intervene, killing everyone.
• fight Zeruel but don't awake EVA-01 when it ends out of battery? Kaworu stops Zeruel in time, but he still had the time to massacre Misato and her staff on his way down, and Shinji dies of his internal injuries soon after. Without them, the WILLE rebellion fails and SEELE or Gendo win.
• manage to hold down Zeruel long enough for Kaworu to arrive without being mortally wounded nor Misato and co dying? Congratulations Shinji, you found the Golden Ending! Except that it's not really golden, yes Shinji survives, live the next 14 years alongside the rest of WILLE and become a respected member of the organization like Asuka and Mari, but without an awakened Eva, WILLE never manages to make the Wunder take off, and without that mobility, victory comes at a horrendous cost: even more people are killed around the world by the Mark/EVA-04s, even most of WILLE dies (including Misato, Ritsuko, Sakura, Asuka...)

Then in Instrumentality Shinji would learn that he can actually chose one of those possibilities and make it real, so of course he'll be tempted by the last one: sure a lot of people will die but hey, no one would hate him, and no one will ever know, not even himself! But at this point of Shin he would had matured enough to understand that the world doesn't revolve around what he wants and that his actions has consequences (even if he won't remember them afterwards) and refuse to pick any of those possibilities, because it wouldn't be right to change the past just to benefit himself and if there isn't another path that leads to a better world, well tough luck, but that's how life is. At which point Yui/Rei/Kaworu will reveal that they expected such a decision from him, because he already took it before: another Shinji from the "golden" timeline already came to this point, and saw a possibility to change things ultimately for the better and chose it, that possibility being NTE as we followed it since the end of 2.0! Yes, it cost him 14 years of his life and the bonds he forged while in Tokyo-3, but the result was to give everyone a better chance for the future, so for him that sacrifice was worth it. And this "Prime Shinji" even left a message for the current Shinji, that yes it sucks to have lost all those years but hey, this isn't the end of everything! He's still alive and can move forward, build a new life for himself, try to mend the damaged relationship with the others and if it doesn't work, well he can make new bonds, he has all his life in front of him. That would also explain how Kaworu talks as if they already knew each other, because he remembers what happened in the first possibility.

Something like that would make Anno play with the Time Loop theory while also subverting it, and it would be beautiful!

The problem with sequel/loop theory in particular is that the premise of it undermines the premise of Rebuild. Q goes out of its way to show that there is no way to undo the past, and that you shouldn't cling on to things that lay in the past; Fuyutsuki and Kaworu both tell Shinji and, by extension, the viewer.

Little nitpick, but on the contrary, Kaworu made Shinji believe that it was possible to undo the past, and even if that wouldn't had been what happened had the two spears been in Lilith's Chamber, that doesn't change the fact that Kaworu misled him.
If anything, it's Gendo who indirectly showed his son the impossibility of undoing the past by thwarting Kaworu's plan.

[CharPenPen]

Gudam has it too.

SPOILER: Show

See Turn A

I'm aware, but that has never come up since, hardly matters to the show itself and was only done multiple timelines in, so the way it's done is not really relevant to the discussion at hand; you don't see people arguing that maybe the reason there is a hole in australia in IBO is because it's in the loop after UC and there hasn't passed enough time for geological activity to fill it back up, or something.

Oh it's come up since. Fukui's light of life short outright confirms that the Gundam meta narrative is a strange loop of history repeating itself between moonlight butterfly 'wipes'. His Unicorn novel also heavily hints at it in the sequence in which Banagher sees time. Western Gundam fans are very resistant to the idea, but it's clearly how Fukui views things, and he's one of the main Gundam writers right now.

None of this makes it more likely in Eva, of course.

[BernardoCairo]

The assumption that you are making is that the loops are somehow voluntary on Shinji's part, or that this isn't a case of a chain of universes with similar events happening.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all (although I've already seen some loppers defending this idea). It simply devalues Shinji and Asuka's growth at a fundamental level. It doesn't really matter if he is the one resetting the world. Narrative wise, it doesn't make any sense for those two to be thrown at a new reality right after accepting the nature of their own world. I mean, what's the point of turning something that was clearly made to be a conclusion into a mere stopgap? What's the point of regressing your characters right after concluding their arcs in a marvelous way? What's the point of holding your new story back, for the sake of connecting it to the previous one? These are all valid questions to be made, in my opinion.

[Blockio]

Little nitpick, but on the contrary, Kaworu made Shinji believe that it was possible to undo the past, and even if that wouldn't had been what happened had the two spears been in Lilith's Chamber, that doesn't change the fact that Kaworu misled him.
If anything, it's Gendo who indirectly showed his son the impossibility of undoing the past by thwarting Kaworu's plan.

Not quite true!

SPOILER: Show

Shinji:
No...
How was I supposed to know?!
It's all too much!
I can't do anything about this!

KAWORU:
True, it's a horrific past that you can't do anything about.

KAWORU:
Shinji Ikari-kun.
Your hope rests with the two spears left at ground zero inside the Central Dogma.
They are the key to the activation of the Human Instrumentality Project.
All we have to do is take those spears.
That way, Nerv won't be able to bring about a Fourth Impact.
And when used with Unit 13, the spears will allow us to repair the world.

Oh it's come up since. Fukui's light of life short outright confirms that the Gundam meta narrative is a strange loop of history repeating itself between moonlight butterfly 'wipes'. His Unicorn novel also heavily hints at it in the sequence in which Banagher sees time. Western Gundam fans are very resistant to the idea, but it's clearly how Fukui views things, and he's one of the main Gundam writers right now.

None of this makes it more likely in Eva, of course.

That is also true, but the world in the individual timelines is still considered to be independent of each other, barring cases like Mars Century or Reguild Century that are just a rebranded timeline later on; and even in the case of RC, the power the timelines hold over each other is minimal to nonexistent, compared to the "actively being able to influence each other"-style that is the case in superhero books.
But anyway, this is getting offtopic; if you want to, I'll gladly discuss this more in the Gundam thread

[mastafishere]

I don't understand why fans of media (e.g. FF7 Remake, the Eva Rebuilds) jump to "sequel theories!" just because of remakes happening. In both situations, there's plenty of evidence these new stories are being played painfully straight and they're brand new retellings of those original 1995-96 and 1997 properties.

What, honestly, would either of these stories being a literal sequel serve for the bigger picture, or for the fans?

I agree, nothing is to be gained. I hate the idea personally, but just to correct you in Final Fantasy VII Remake's case it's not a theory. It's actually integrated into the story. Which was a shame because I was enjoying the game quite a lot up until that reveal. I can't take the story seriously anymore and it's all wrecked because they really wove it into the narrative. Fans defend it as "Brilliant!" for it's meta commentary on remakes, but I feel like it's the kind of plot twist a 12 year old who thinks they're smart would come up.

I'm hoping Eva doesn't make the same mistake. I know that they've all been debunked and the fandom generally doesn't believe in it, but I'm still afraid that it'll be confirmed true next week. I don't want any Loop or sequels or any other BS. Just finish the story that you started as satisfying as possible.