Barong wrote:As for the regulation itself: Misato did drop a line in the series about being able to "end the world" now when Eva 03 arrived in Japan. Maybe 4 of them were just enough for a certain 3I scenario that was never further elaborated on - but old thread is old, this has all been done before. ;)
That's a pretty good point. We've not had a full 2nd Impact flashback yet: what's to say that the 'white giant' isn't 'white giants' this time round?
Regardless, what do we actually KNOW about the Vatican treaty?
* It's public, at least as much as anything to do with the Evas is.
* It prohibits more than 3 ACTIVE Evas in proximity
* Administration of the treaty is performed by a third party under direction of the Eva's owning/originating country
That's it. We can guess a few extra things about it though:
* SEELE is probably behind it (as they are behind pretty much anything Eva related)
* NERV Japan don't appear to have any specific problems with the treaty's enforcement. Either having more than 3 active Evas was never even considered useful, or having more than 3 was
undesirable.
What follows is Wild Guessing territory.
SEELE probably aren't held to the treaty, as nobody except a few of the highest of NERV's top brass even know they exist. Thus, SEELE can churn out as many Evas as they want with impunity. This gives them the incentive to back the treaty. NERV may also have an incentive in the idea that it may trigger 3rd Impact (may or may not be true, could be a convenient lie disseminated by SEELE to NERV's mid & lower echelons). A public face of "preventing proliferation of Evangelions" works as an agreeable and plausible public cover for preventing out-of-the-know countries from demanding Evas.
As for it being a plot-point to get Asuka into unit-3 and get Mari on the scene? Probably. It's not as if that's a bad thing; there's no requirement to maintain the same cast as the series. Is it a plot-hole? Not really; there are plenty of possible explanations out forward already, and it's so far only been mentioned in a few seconds of the actual film!