Some questions regarding the anime...

[Avril]

Hi !!

(Excuse me for my english, I'm French, so I'm not very used to any other language...)

I finished the anime a few days ago, but I've got some questions about the plot, about which I can't find any answers by myself (but I've spend the afternoon reading the wiki! And it's so great, thanks guys!!!!!)

- I don't understand the requirements for 3rd Impact : During the show, it is stated that 3rd Impact will occur if an Angel enters in contact with Adam (who is in fact Lilith, as Kaworu later reveals). In other sources, it seems that 3rd Impact will occur even if an Angel enters in contact with Lilith. I don't really understand : Adam or Lilith, that doesn't matter ?

Moreover, I think 2nd Impact was created by human contact with Adam (If I remember well)... Then... Does 3rd Impact happen when :

- An Angel makes a contact with Adam or Lilith or a Human makes a contact with Adam or Lilith ?

I just don't understand that. In episode 22, Misato seems to doubt about the origin of second impact, when Gendo asks Rei II to take the Longinus lance from Adam's (in fact Lilith's) body.. She says that it's dangerous to bring an Eva near (to) Adam. I suppose this is because Evangelions are like Angels, but in reality, they are based on Adam, so... I don't really understand Misato's fears of 3rd Impact. Evangelion are more like Adam than Angels, no?!

(My english really is horrible, sorry again...).

And a last question : what is the role of Rei? I mean, I don't understand why she's "the spirit of Lilith" (when do Liliths' spirit and body split?) and why Gendo needs her to perform 3rd Impact (after all, if 2nd impact was initiated by human contact, why doesn't Gendo simply "touch" Lilith to initiate it?). And, in the end of the anime, we can see Gendo's hand after incorporating Adam : same question here : how can Gendo "incorporate" Adam without provocating the 3rd Impact?

I'm truly sorry for all these questions... Many of them are stupid, I suppose... So excuse me, but I really want to understand a little more, this serie really moved me!

Thanks a lot!!!

A bientôt ! :p

[pwhodges]

I suppose this is because Evangelions are like Angels, but in reality, they are based on Adam, so... I don't really understand Misato's fears of 3rd Impact. Evangelion are more like Adam than Angels, no?!

Except Unit-01 is based on Lilith. So if it is Lilith-based and Adam-based lifeforms that must be kept apart, how dangerous is it for the Evas to work together?

The actual requirements for impact are not clear. Nor is it clear what the aims (if any) of the angels are - they seem to differ. But in the end, these things don't really matter much. The important thing is the way people react to their situation, to each other, and to their own problems. The larger-scale world-building is just a hook to hang these things on and provide some compelling excitement to keep the audience engaged.

[Mr. Tines]

I don't understand the requirements for 3rd Impact

This is one of those areas where it's clear that the series was somewhat making things up as they went along, and doesn't bear too close an examination. During the series, the whole premise was of needing to stop the Angels "capturing the flag", else GAME OVER, with the last two episodes involving some tangentially related conspiracies, Instrumentality rather than 3rd Impact, coming to fruition; in EoE, it had to occupy the bulk of the film's running time, and it became complicated ritual involving the union of Adam and Lilith as but one step of the process, albeit a crucial one.

If you squint just right, the two can be made to look like sort of the same thing, but there's no good overall unifying model.

when do Liliths' spirit and body split?

The original salvage experiment that attempted to recover Yui Ikari would have been the point where Lilith's soul was (at least in part) separated from her body. Other points where some metabiological engineering would have taken place and shuffled parts of her soul around would be the construction of Eva-00 and the deployment of the second Rei.

this serie really moved me!

That is really the most important part -- it is unsparing and unsentimental, to the point of emotional brutality. The science-fictional trappings provide a bonus extra puzzle where most of the gaps can be filled in, but a few don't have shapes that fit any reasonable pieces.

[Avril]

Yep. I felt that the story was some sort of pretext for developing complex themes such as depression or psychosis...
And that was the important part for me ; I really enjoyed the end of the show, where the story literally dissolves into some sort of metaphysical and psychological reflexions. I also love Utena and Mawaru Penguindrum for their similar approches (although different since more progressive). That was great and Anno's depiction of depression seems quite accurate to me (having experienced it some years ago...).

Anyway, I thank the two of you for your answers!

[Reichu]

Avril: Presumably more is required for an Impact to occur than mere physical contact. I would forward that some element of the metaphysical (i.e., spiritual) is involved.

- Eva-01 ends up being the medium or vessel (yorishiro) for 3I. Shinji, undergoing synchronization within the plug, is making spiritual contact with the Eva's soul. By the will of Yui, and eventually Rei and Kaworu as well, his own soul provides the key to the HIP engine.

- Gendo, attempting to awaken Lilith, begins by merging with Adam's flesh and making contact with Rei's soul. His provocations succeed, aside from the fact that Rei rejects Gendo's will for that of his son.

- In the Angel-triggered Impact depicted in the game NGE2: We see the Angel cast off its body before Lilith and reduce to a "bundle of light", seemingly a pure spiritual form. Rei inexplicably appears out of nowhere and embraces the Angel, and both fuse into Lilith's body. Lilith balloons into GNR and starts acting upon the Angel's will, collecting Lilin souls to be transfigured into Angels.

- The specifics of Seele's scenario and how they intended to accomplish it, if left to their own devices, are not precisely known.

- As for Second Impact, we know it was triggered by physical contact between Adam and a Lilin, but the rest is a mystery.

Now, here's a question. Is it possible that what happened at 2I wasn't an anomaly, but actually followed the same pattern seen in the other cases for which we have a modicum of data? What if the contact experiment with Adam, say, required some form of ATF manipulation in its execution? (All that stuff about DNA "diving" and "fusing" is just a wee bit strange, no?) Consequentially, the souls of the donor and Adam came in contact, and something in the donor's soul enabled Adam to "awaken" and mess shit up.

One might wonder, why would contact between a Seed* and Seed descendants be an Impact trigger in the first place? Why would they have this feature? Intense speculation follows:

[* Note that this is, for purposes of simplification, tacitly including Eva-01.]

Seeds of Life are designed to colonize lifeless planets autonomously. Once they are finished, they don't die, but instead seem to go dormant. Even an "unnecessary" Seed like Adam is left alive in an immobilized state. One obvious reason for hanging out would be to recolonize if the first attempt doesn't take off, but there's another, isn't there? Well, think about it: this whole Seed colonization business started because the FAR felt their world was doomed and had their souls harvested by seven Seeds, to be recycled on other planets. Planetary evacuation via Impact. In order to keep life going, Seeds need to be able to repeat this process: reduce the planet's inhabitants to easily-stored spiritual form, and vacate the premises.

However, the destruction of an ecosphere, even for a constructive purpose such as evacuation, doesn't seem to be something the Seed can do on its own. The ability needs to be unlocked through the willpower of one of the planet's Seed-descended inhabitants. Perhaps this is the FAR's way of ensuring that the next generation have some say in whatever eventually happens to them. Perhaps it is meant to invoke a sense of ritual, requiring return of "child" to "womb" before anti-genesis can commence. Who can really say.

Since the mechanics employed in "evacuation via impact" are essentially the same as those used for genesis, such events can, as we've seen, be manipulated for a purpose other than the intended one. This is what happens in NGE as a result of having both fruits on the same planet. Earth is ultimately reformatted not with the intention of moving its population elsewhere (though how cool would that have been?), but to take advantage of the combination of Fruits and transform humanity in a way that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. Adam and (at least some of) the Angels, if they'd had their way, probably intended the rather simpler end result of a full FoL ecosphere conversion.

[Avril]

Hey, thanks a lot for your answer, Reichu!

I agree with you about the spiritual contact ; after all, in my opinion, all the show is about that... And as said before, the story dissolves itself to let the viewer experience pure and complex feelings. Shonen-stereotypes progressively fade away ; one example of that (for me), is the 24th episode where Shinji feels homosexual feelings towards Kaworu ; that was miles away from the fan service of the first episodes. And it really was well done.

Sorry again for my english, I feel like I'm making a lot of mistakes here...
I'm using the "bold" thing to be sure I'm a little comprehensible...

Moreover, something in your post made me cogitate.

In the Angel-triggered Impact depicted in the game NGE2: We see the Angel cast off its body before Lilith and reduce to a "bundle of light", seemingly a pure spiritual form. Rei inexplicably appears out of nowhere and embraces the Angel, and both fuse into Lilith's body. Lilith balloons into GNR and starts acting upon the Angel's will, collecting Lilin souls to be transfigured into Angels.

I know it's about NGE2 and not NGE but still... Maybe that can help us a little bit. After all, Anno has been working on it too.

Then, according to that ending, if an Angel make a contact (spiritual, let's say) with Lilith, Lilith can favor Angels over Lilins. That's quite interesting. I said Lilith and not Lilith and Rei because I consider Rei to be Lilith's soul.
Then, I wonder... During the show, contact always takes place between Angels(Adam) and Lilins(Lilith), not between Lilins and Lilith or Angels and Adam. If Angels made it to Adam, will there really be a Third Impact (we never actually see or experienced it during the show)? I'm not even sure. I think you need the two different organisms (Lilith and Adam) to engage a contact.
That would explain why Gendo took Adam's body to his hand and why only Adam's body would suffice : maybe he was planning to make a contact with Lilith using Rei, as EoE states (Rei being Lilith's soul), and since he was a Lilin, he needed to have the caracteristics of an Angel to make a contact with Lilith. So, he uses Adam's embryo on himself, on the hand which should do the contact. Rei, being Lilith's soul, can then initiate 3rd impact (Gendo's hand with Adam's embryo and Lilith's soul).

But then Rei would have another utility : being separated for the body of Lilith, her soul (Lilith's soul) lives in a Lilin corpse and knows Gendo. Then, Gendo maybe have hoped that his hand, despite being Adam and so able to create a 3rd impact, will not trigger 3rd Impact to the advantage of Angels (as is NGE2), since Rei knows him and that spiritual contact bewteen the two instances seems rather important.

For example, as we know it, 2nd Impact took place between a Lilin and Adam ; nevertheless, it was not to the advantage of Lilin's (as it should have been refering to NGE2), but to the advantage of Angels. There so seems to be some kind of spiritual requirement to be sure Third Impact will happen as predicted by the person who make the contact. And that would be the utility of Rei ; she's an arbiter than Gendo could use, being Lilith's soul but at the same time separated from Lilith's body and so in contact with Gendo and the other Lilin's.

[TrumpetsGo]

ahm can you tell me where is the best part of the anime?.. I'm new here..

[Director Black]

ahm can you tell me where is the best part of the anime?.. I'm new here..

I would list my top five...but that would require MASSIVE spoilers. Depends on how far you're in the series though.

[Reichu]

can you tell me where is the best part of the anime?

Watch the whole thing and decide for yourself...?

[pwhodges]

There are already threads where people are listing their favourite characters and scenes. You will observe that they make different choices.

[sephirotic]

ahm can you tell me where is the best part of the anime?.. I'm new here..

Episodes 22 and 19 for me are the apex for the series IMHO, I like rewatching them frequently.
Episode 16 is also very good, it's a shame they have lost the original master for it.