Ah, Ideon talk makes Quiddity happy.
Yes, episode 34 makes a pretty blatant observation about the true nature of the Ide although they have made some passing references to it earlier (end of ep 27 for example). And that is...
SPOILER! (highlight to read):That the Ide is in fact the entire 6th Civilization, hundreds of millions of people, evolved into a single perfect entity
Even though it doesn't want to admit it to Bes, the Ide is purposely putting the Earthlings and Buff Clan against each other by generating meteors to launch at both planets. And the fact that the whole point of the fighting (obtain or destroy the Giant God which possesses the infinite power Ide) is the Ide itself.
Bes comments that he'll go against the Ide's will if necessary. Interesting parallel to Shinji going against instrumentality in EOE. Will Bes be able to go against the Ide's will? Won't tell you!
It's a little repetative but is still very entertaining in contrast to something like Noir which is repetative and boring.Though I've felt that they haven't really done enough with the time so far. There's only six episodes left and the plot doesn't really seem to have developed much.
I'd agree that if there's one big flaw in Ideon, its that they don't handle their time good enough. There's too much concentrated in the last 6 episodes in comparison to the first 33 episodes and even then, the show pretty much blows up with a 'deus ex machina' ending due to it being cancelled. Luckily the movie fixes the ending. Its a lot like MS Gundam where many of the early eps can't come close to the later ones, reducing their re-watchability (even I admit that the first 10 eps of Ideon are way too slow)
That said, the last 6 episodes are a blast. The only real downer is ep 35, although even that one includes some great action (Buff Clan and the Earth Military launching an entire moon at the Ideon & Solo Ship)
However in terms of the EVA connection I haven't really seen one yet and as I understand it all that is really taken from Ideon are a couple of plot devices. It's literally just two things which really only come into play at the end of both series.
I'm not trying to hijack the thread by going off on a rant but it seems a false comparison to compare Eva's similarities with Ideon to Eva's similarities with RahXephon.
Well they're pretty big 'plot devices'!
SPOILER! (highlight to read): Eva's themes of Instrumentality, Human Evolution, End of the World, Over the top gruesome deaths of beloved characters, and the need for kids to pilot the mecha(with much more of a reason than the teen suddenly finds a giant robot, so prevelent in anime) all key themes in Eva, were all done in Ideon. Plus calling the mecha a God, the Barrier/AT Field, tons of nudity, real life footage (although admittingly Eva used a heck of a lot more than Ideon did!) and Kasha's behavior is very similar to Asuka's.
This post from a discussion we had about Eva on AnimeOnDVD.com a while back probably says it better than I could although he gets it wrong about
SPOILER! (highlight to read): Cosmo "choosing" to destroy the world, Cosmo did not "choose" to do what ended up occuring.
Basically, the premise of Ideon was that Earthlings on their space
colonisation conquest came across a planet that had many alien artifacts,
that's where they uncovered the mecha of Ideon. Shortly upon uncovering it,
another alien race came in and tried to take hold of Ideon, our hero, Cosmo
and his friends managed to make the Ideon move, and they fought against the aliens. Afterwards they gathered all the survivers and tried to ran away
from the aliens while the aliens continues to persue them.
Now, later we found that the aliens were in persude of Ideon because of the
promise of the mysterious power of Id, while some of them want the power to themselves, others also knew that the aliens that discovered the power of Id were destroied because of the power of Id. So inside there, they are
actually two groups torn between obtaining the power, and destroying Ideon.
(A parallel would be between SEELE and NERV in EVA).
Back to our heros, as they continues the battle, they discover that the
power of Id actually feeds on the souls and emotions of the pilots (geez
where have I seen that before ), and the more in danger the pilots becomes,
the more powerful Ideon becomes. They also found that Id is partically
sensitive to children and infants, and many times response to the fear of
them and help them fought off the enemies.
Finally coming to the end, there finally came the clincher. We were told
that the alien race that discovered Id did not in fact got destroied, but
rather after tapping into the true power of Id, they evolved to a soul-like
existance that became part of Id itself, where everyone can co-exist
peacefully. And that Ideon and Id where in fact leading both the Earthlings
and aliens into this bloody tag war of power to destory/evolve them all into
Id itself and rid the universe of hate and misunderstanding, and start
afresh! And with that our hero Cosmo, suffering from the trauma of losing
almost all his friends and love ones during this war, choose to obey the
will of Id, tapped into the true power of Ideon and actually destroied the
whole universe, and everyone died.
Finally, the viewers were treated to all the characters, Earthlings and the
aliens, in their soul-like form, floating towards the centre of universe and
watching over the new birth of the universe......
Now that I've pretty much summarized what happened in Ideon. It's not
difficult to see that the whole idea of EVA, Unit 1 as the key, the human
completion project, and the whole of the EVA movices etc were pretty much
the same as the themes in Ideon. Human completion project rids humans of
their AT Fields (psychological barrier) so that there is no more
misunderstanding between humans, hence people can evolve to a god-like
existance, compared to the idea of Ideon where Id using itself as a bait to
neutralise the universe of hate and misunderstanding by breaking down the
barrier between these people and let their souls lay bare to each other,
hence come together as one and become a spiritial existance.
Regardless, I've never made the argument that Eva is a ripoff of Ideon. Infact Eva is better than Ideon, no questions asked with me. Eva's a much more polished show that uses its time a lot better (although I've got quite a gripe with the time management in Eva, compared to early 80's mecha shows that wasted so much time on those battles? Can't compare them). But you can't denied that Eva was influenced by Ideon. And I don't deny that Rah was influenced by Eva. That said, any notion that Rah is a ripoff of Eva as a recent over the top fan tried to make with his website is utter nonsense. The vast, vast majority of that fan's similarities are utter garbage, as pointed out in that recent large thread here.
I made an attempt to watch "A Contact" some time ago but couldn't get into it at all, probably because of how poor the translation was, Prons said it was a bootleg, and I believe him. Do you guys plan on subbing both "A Contact" and "Be Invoked"?
Wasn't even aware there was an 'A Contact' bootleg out there (only one I know of is the series, 1-19). A Contact and Be Invoked will immediately follow the series. And luckily A Contact has already been fansubbed by someone (not to mention as a compilation movie a good 90-95% of the stuff in there was already translated in the series) so it should be real quick when that time comes. Be Invoked is another story, gotta take a while with that masterpiece...
Originally posted on: 08.01.2006, 07:30 PM