This is just a thought, but I thought it was amusing to see how Ishida referred to Kaworu appearing in EoE
before it was released:
Akira: Sort of..
Q: Was Kaoru in the emotional scenes?
Akira: Kaoru's scenes weren't that emotional.
Akira: It released a lot of pressure off of my back when I finished. If Evangelion had ended with the TV, I only appeared once and it was all over. But with the movie, there was a lot of pressure on me. When I found out that the movie would be split, it added more pressure.
Q: What do you think was the best scene with Kaoru?
Akira: I would say the scene in episode 24 of the TV series..
Q: What about in the movie?
Akira: He doesn't appear as a person (with a physical body) in the movie. The only person that Kaoru interacts with is Shinji.
Q: Is Rei a shito too?
Akira had a very hard time trying to explain everything (as he was trying not to give away key points of the story). Kaoru and Rei are in some key scenes together. Akira said that the viewers will understand what he is talking about when they see the movie..
There is something called "kuroki tsuki" (black moon). Kaoru is very involved in this, with Shinji.
You can see how easy it is to be misled by interviews when they are not allowed to say much. You could assume he had a far larger role in the movie, as even though Ishida is not outright lying, he is also not allowed to say "he has 2 minutes of screentime". Not that I'm saying his character will have 2 minutes in 3.0+1.0, of course, but I think it's still a safe assumption that he'll also be there in some sort of metaphysical fashion. This reminds me of, BTW, that Q interview excerpt that is cited sometimes for the loop theory, even though it seems quite clear Ishida is referring to his character in a meta sense. I remember someone - probably Reichu - mentioning that the word he used might be better translated as "iteration". Plus, it seems weird he'd say he can't give details about the plot, then apparently let this out, then talk about the spin-offs right afterwards. He doesn't even specify much of what Anno told him besides that it'd be needed for his performance - "how should [he] be". In particular, it reminds me of Anno saying something similar to Ogata:
Ogata: And then he said two things to me which made me really happy. The first was “Thank you, for keeping the character’s feelings unchanged even after 13 years”
Everyone: Oh!
Ogata: And second was “On top of that, thank you, for adding 13 years of your own experience to the current Shinji”
https://www.gwern.net/docs/www/webcitat ... e1fa6.htmlWe'll see, I guess.