Otakon 08 Ikari wrote:If Mari is Adam then what is Kaworu?
Is Mari Adam this time around and Kaworu is Adam from then and Kaworu from then is now and now is here and -Beep-
=We are sorry, your Otakon has uncounted a problem and must be shut down=
But what of 05...Berkserking and what not.
Simple. (And I am inviting a lot of flak for this...)
Kaworu isn't Adam. Technically, he never
was Adam, even in the original series. Kaworu was
Tabris. Granted, Tabris in NGE is the soul of Adam in a Lilin shell (what does that make Rei, then?), but the rules for Tabris's existence may yet be different in this continuity.
As for Eva-05 Berserking... well, I got nothing at the moment. I'm replying in the stolen moments before my first class this morning, and I don't really have time to review that scene before African-American Lit.
AuraTwilight wrote:"Minor nitpick: Adam is not the "Big Bad" of the Evangelion series.
Major nitpick: This theory really fucks up Kaworu's identity by leaps and bounds, requiring you to make Kaworu the FAR or something, in which case there's little reason to reverse things around.
Who says that Adam
can't be the Big Bad of the
Rebuild of Evangelion series? The Rebuild series
is supposed to be more accessible to new fans, right?
Again, Kaworu is Tabris. Tabris may yet be different in the Weva continuity. I personally do not really know
what Angel Kaworu could be if Mari is Adam, but it's significant that Kiel contacts Kaworu at the end of 1.0 to "fulfill the contract". The contract with Lilith? If Kaworu is Lilith, then what is Rei? I don't know, but that's not what I am theorising about.
SaltyJoe wrote:First and foremost: though it could be argued that the rules of the original series no longer apply, i always got the impression that an Angel/S.o.L taking the form of a Lilin is an unnatural occurence. That is, it requires "outside help", manipulations by some sort of organization that has the proper equipment to make something like that possible (Nerv with Rei, Seele in Kaworu's case). And if that's still the case, then a S.o.L can't just sneakily turn verself into a Lilin.
I guess I failed to address that. I imagine that Adam becoming a Lilin WAS forced on her; in the Second Impact contact experiment. Legendary's Evangelion 3.3 speculates the exact same origin for Mari: Seele was intending to create an Angel in a human shell, and the result was Makinami Mari Illustrious.
SaltyJoe wrote:-During Mari's first sortie, i recall that she said something along the lines of "Piloting Eva is just as good as they told me it would be." To me, this suggests that she was instructed on how to pilot an Eva, that is, it doesn't come to her completely naturally. Kaworu, on the other hand, as far as what we have seen of him, lurches out of his coffin, sits around naked on the Moon a lot, and still he is basically ready to pilot an Eva on the word "Go!".
She could well be faking it. As I said before, adults are terribly canny folk. Kaworu didn't seem like he was going to wait a terribly long time in the original series to try to initiate Third Impact (or let Eva-01 pop his head off), so he had little reason to hide his proficiency with controlling an Eva, even with the core not reconfigured to his wavelength.
SaltyJoe wrote:Amras Felagund wrote:the entry plug is filling out in the rough shape of Angel wings behind her. Here:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y1/Amras_Felagund/NGE/MarisWingsofDigitalCode-IsThisFores.png?t=1259625155
Nice! Maybe it's just your brain playing pattern recognition tricks on you, but if you look at this picture the way you suggested, it still looks pretty cool. Though i still found the way Kaworu was sitting on the tip of one of Mark06's fingers to be more evocative of the image of him sitting on a statue.
Maybe. But still, Kaworu's moment could be a callback to how Gendo's son first met Kaworu in NGE. A little tidbit for us oldtimers.
SaltyJoe wrote:-I must say, regarding Mari having maternal feelings for the Angels: you're forcing human concepts of maternality on the Angels. We know nothing about how they view such things as kinship.
That I may be. I cannot comprehend the mental processes that would be going on in a FAR like the mother of the Angels. But then again, it may yet be established, ala EOE, that Angels are simply humans that cast off human form.
SaltyJoe wrote:-On glowing eyes: IMHO, the glowing eyes are a result of high Synch Rates, pure and simple. There is even a color correspondence between pilot an Eva:
Unit 02's eyes glow green->Mari's eyes glow green
Unit 01's eyes glow red->Shinji's eyes glow red
During the Unit-03 slaughter scene and when Yui was rejecting the Dummy Sytem afterwards, it was shown that Unit 01's standard, erm, "glowing eye color" is red, so i don't think the coloration is caused by the pilot.
I guess I didn't emphasise one thing enough: Mari's
pupils glowed green in "The Beast" Mode; Shinji's
irises glowed red in Awakening. Why the distinction? Also, as far as I know, Shinji's eyes only glowed red for one, maybe two, shots. Mari's eyes glowed for the whole duration of "The Beast" Mode. Also, I noted that they filmmakers showed her "core" glowing first. Make of that what you will.
SaltyJoe wrote:-Mai's plugsuit design: Kaworu has her beat n that department. His plugsuit features six wing like stripes on his torso that heavily resemble the wings of Adam.
I'll give you that. Although, Kaworu's plugsuit design could be a red herring for us old fans.
SaltyJoe wrote:-Air drop: that's a funny thing. Every new character in 2.0 was introduced via aviation: Kaji arrives to Japan on a jet, Asuka is dropped of from a giant transport plane, and Kaworu literally descends from the heavens. Air drop seems to be 2.0's thing.
Now... that I hadn't noticed before. Good point.
SaltyJoe wrote:-Scary Shiny Glasses: i might be wrong on this, but didn't Kensuke had a S.S.G. shot at a certain point in the series?
I believe he did. That's what makes Mari's moment rather inconspicuous in that regard.
SaltyJoe wrote:-A convinient fellow: i guess she was just referring to the fact that it was convinient of Shinji to drop in in the right dramatic moment and kick Zeruel's ass.
That is a rather valid interpretation.
SaltyJoe wrote:-Illustrious: my personal theory is the the name refers to the fact that Mari has some pretty huge gazongas on her.
Or it could simply be a reference to the HMS Illustrious. Or it could be
SaltyJoe wrote:And finally, if Kaworu is not THE Angel, he is kinda pointless.
Not necessarily. Kaworu could simply be Tabris in Rebuild. And who said Kaworu
had to be Adam specifically to be a significant character?
I think I have replied to (so far) everyone's points. I got to hurry to class now!
EDIT (12-02-09): So as to avoid a double-post, I would like to elaborate on the glowing-eyes part of my theory. Hear me out:
Mari's eyes
do glow green, but for the entire duration of "The Beast" Mode. As far as I know, Shinji's only glow red for a shot or two.
Specifically, though, Mari's
pupils glow. This would indicate that the light is coming from inside her eyeballs. This, to me, represents an inner power that is being partially exposed by the adrenaline rush of "The Beast" Mode.
(Basically: if Mari had activated "The Beast" Mode using Eva-01 instead, her pupils would have glowed
red instead.)
Shinji's
irises glow red as Eva-01 undergoes her Awakening. The distinction, IMO, is that this is only an external power exerting influence upon her pilot. A sort of give-and-take, is the best way I can put it. I imagine Shinji actually had a modicum of control over Shogouki in that moment, and in the act of manually "activating" Berserker mode, Shinji experienced a case of Red Eyes Take Warning.
Also, one last little thing I forgot to address:
SaltyJoe wrote:-During Mari's first sortie, i recall that she said something along the lines of "Piloting Eva is just as good as they told me it would be." To me, this suggests that she was instructed on how to pilot an Eva, that is, it doesn't come to her completely naturally. Kaworu, on the other hand, as far as what we have seen of him, lurches out of his coffin, sits around naked on the Moon a lot, and still he is basically ready to pilot an Eva on the word "Go!".
Who says Kaworu
wasn't educated about how to pilot an Eva at some point between awakening at the end of 1.0 and sitting on Mark.06's finger, or between greeting "Father" and donning his plugsuit, or even
after putting on his plugsuit (though this seems a tad unlikely)? Even in the original series, we don't see a whole lot of Kaworu doing anything but humming Beethoven and hanging off of "Shinji-kun". He may have received basic Eva training at Seele, or even before his first plug depth test. We don't know. But still, even Mozart had to be taught how to play the piano (even if he did end up teaching himself pretty much).
[If this is true, though, I hope that the 365-Day March is not used as Adam's leitmotif, like Ode To Joy was for Kaworu. It would be more Narm-tastic than the "LCL *pop*" in EoE.]
Of course, this theory could be complete bunk, and I could be reading too deeply into meaningless symbols. Even so...
SaltyJoe wrote:Amras Felagund wrote:the entry plug is filling out in the rough shape of Angel wings behind her. Here:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y1/Amras_Felagund/NGE/MarisWingsofDigitalCode-IsThisFores.png?t=1259625155
Nice! Maybe it's just your brain playing pattern recognition tricks on you, but if you look at this picture the way you suggested, it still looks pretty cool.
This is actually what makes me most suspicious about Mari's status as a human being. It's her first appearance in the series, and she has (at the very least, something [resembling[/i]) angel wings behind her back in her debut. Again, like Kaworu sitting on the angel statue in Episode 24 (which, of course, received its due callback later in "You can (not) advance.".)
It could all be bunk, though. I don't really know. And that is really the key (of Nebuchadnezzar?). We don't
know yet whether or not Mari is Adam, a non-specific FAR, or Shinji and Asuka's future child come back in time. Right now, we can only guess, based off of the sparse clues left in 2.0. We won't know for sure until 3.0, or Final (if it takes that long to reveal who or what Mari is), are released. [Assuming the answer is even
comprehensible; we might be in for a mind-trip-fest.]
I am confident in my theories about RoE, though.
Further thoughts?