DatDude wrote:Shin-seiki wrote:DatDude wrote:Two things how do you know it was her intention? I remember his talk with Fuyutsuki aluded to somthing, but I don't trust any of the flashbacks with Yui in them. The people that have them ( flashbeacks of Yui ) have strong feelings for her, and I think they cloud the memory.
I'm frankly a bit mystified where you're coming from with this. Is there any reason at all to suppose that the flashbacks involving Yui are anything but straight-forward narrative? I have never gotten the idea that Anno is ever playing POV games with his presentation of the story; certainly not in the parts that are presented as objective reality, as opposed to the head-trip sequences...
Its the head trip scenes that gave me the idea. Perception defines reality holds true a lot in eva.
If you look at the flashback scene with Yui, Fuyutsuki, and baby Shinji. Every things perfect the day is warm the sky seems blue, Yui looks beutiful, and the old man seems to be stealing a few looks at the young lady. Baby Shinji wants momma breast, lots of imagry their for the kid and the old man. :P
Any scene in the show were your inside some one head, plays the POV game and in this one its Fuyutsuki's.
It's true that coming as they do at the end of EoE, the last scenes with Yui & Fuyutsuki could be said to be perhaps somewhat unreal. Or at least, I can imagine the thought process that leads to this conclusion, since probably over half of EoE, as well as the whole of the TV ending was unreal, or a product of instrumentality.
If this scene was, in fact, a product of instrumentality, then we would be seeing it either from the POV of Shinji, or that of Fuyutsuki, since Yui is not, to the best of my knowledge, able to participate in the complementation of souls as long as she remains embodied in her Evangelion form.
I personally have not seen any cause to regard this scene as unreal so far, but I can imagine the thought process that gives rise to this conclusion. My first question is, even if the scene is from Fuyutsuki's POV, what is to prevent him from having remembered it accurately?
When it comes to the flashbacks which were presented in #21 we have a somewhat different case, I believe. Although the POV presented appears to be that of Fuyutsuki, I do not believe that there is any reason to doubt that these flashbacks represent anything different from the truth.
Many of the events in this sequence are supported by what we see elsewhere in the anime, and I just don't see a reason to doubt this sequence. It is open for debate, naturally, but I think that you'd be hard pressed to find a logical reason to assume that it's not literally true.
The only reason that this material was even presented in the form of a flashback, is that there are no good ways to travel back in time, narratalogically speaking. you can begin at the earliest point in your story which has significance, and do your exposition through some kind of a prologue, or you can tackle it by referring to events prior to the beginning of your narrative. This is sometimes referred to as starting
in media res, or literally, "in the middle".
Having chosen to begin
in media res, there are then several ways that you can build up the backstory of your narrative world. You can have the characters discuss past events, which sometimes feels clumsy, especially when dealing with a large amount of past events. That's exposition through dialog. The other major way employed in visual media, although much less so in prose, is exposition through flashback. They are usually purely a technique for getting across to the audience that which took place prior to the events depicted on screen, and as such, are usually literal, and not interpretive.
There is also another kind of flashback, in which events are presented from the perspective of one of the characters, but the character is an
unreliable witness. By this I mean that he describes a version of events which is not objectively true. It seems to me that this is what you are assuming episode #21 to be, and it is worth noticing that this type of flashback is almost exclusively limited to events occuring during the course of a narrative.
In some cases, the event is something which the audience have not seen occur in objective reality, and this is a useful technique in suspense, or mystery stories, where the key to narrative tension is keeping the audience unaware of the crucial information. In other cases, it is events that the audience
have seen take place in objective reality, and the key to narrative tension in this situation is to place the audience in a position of information superiority over the protagonist. We know something that they do not, and thus we see their situation more clearly than they do themselves. This technique is often employed with tragedy, but also with psychological thrillers.
The events which take place after the begining, and before the end of a narrative have a certain fluidity, it should be noted. They are to be shaped and molded by the actions of the characters, and certain events may not be revealed until the crucial moment. Event which take place outside of the scope of the narrative, however, which take place "in the past" from the perspective of the characters, usually remain concrete, and as such, they are not usually subject to the distorting techniques described above. The only usual exception is when events are related to the audience by a character who has been, or will be, demonstrated to be an unreliable witness. It will usually be the case that the objective truth will be revealed in these cases.
My apologies for rambling on, but my own studies have indicated that flashbacks of this nature, when used for exposition, are not often distorted. Anno is not delivering this part of the plot in this manner in order that he can obfuscate the truth, he is simply relating these events to the viewer in the best way available to him. It is mandated by the narrative structure that these events take place in the past, for who would have wished the anime to begin with 2nd Impact, and move forwards from there?
A beginning
in media res can help to alleviate the problem of long, boring stretches in a narrative where nothing happens, by moving those sections out of the narrative, and into the backround of the story. That's my 2 cents.
Datdude wrote:Also, do we ever get anything close to hard proof to the theory that Shinji knew on some level that Yui was in the eva and thats why it could save him by going beserk? I know the only time/s we see Unit-2 go crazy are when Shinjis in their with Asuka, and in EoE after Asuka realizes her mothers in the eva.
Shinji: Mother!
That line is from EoE, and it is completely 100% undeniable in its meaning. Before that, it is doubtful that Shinji was awere on any conscious level, and it seems to me that even if he became aware of the notion, he would still reject it. It's a notion that takes time to get used to, and for Shinji, there are a lot of things standing in the way of that realisation.
DatDude wrote:This matches my point of view when it comes to Gendo, but can you enlightn me on how Yui has a god complex? Seeing as we se so little of her directly in the show its been hard for be to pin her down character wise ( most of what we see of her is in the form of flashbacks from people with deep feelings of affection for her).
Wanting to live as the Evangelion could be seen by some as a God complex. There is supporting evidence in #21 for this, as well as in EoE
The 'Chu wrote:Yui is certainly mysterious, but I've always viewed her as being too down-to-Earth to be the arch-villainous you see her as. Whatever her exact motives, I think she should be granted some credit for being the very force that puts the lid on Instrumentality and any possibility of it ever happening on Earth again. Of course, Instrumentality being initiated wasn't something she could prevent, being as the forces of narrativium required that Shinji experience and reject the closed world which HIP created, but, without her at the crux of crucial events, Seele would have succeeded and created their own "utopia"
I find this analysis correct, but considerably less detail is required in order to banish all charges of Yui being a villainess.
It seems to me adequate to simply say that she knew that Third Impact could not be prevented from occurring, given the circumstances, so she decided to take a hand in it rather than allowing Seele to have their way unopposed.