BiQ wrote:Honestly, if she just lets it all roll off her back I'll be really baffled. Because that would just be NGE!Shinji-level of lack of self-worth (minus the whining), maybe even worse, and I just can't see Shikinami being THAT far away from Soryu...

I can, and have. I saw it for about ninety minutes, at which point Anno aborted her right out of the movie. Shikinami is basically Shinko + tsuntsun for additional moe value. Part of why I dislike her so much is just that: so far, she's utterly redundant. She confronts exactly the same issues as Shinji, only in an even more boring and forced form - right down to having the portable game player, she's aping Shinji on the surface to disguise the fact that all the important parts of Soryu's character have been choked out of her. I would hope that she's going somewhere different, but at this stage she's so far behind Soryu in terms of character that they're going to have to devote huge swathes of Q to her just to bring her up to speed, let alone do anything interesting with her.

The interesting thing is that really, Shikinami is more like the original Shinji, desiring to please everyone and win everyone's admiration, than she is like either Soryu (who cared more about being treated like an adult) or ReShinji (who cares about his dad and avoiding pain and fuck all else.) Anno could go somewhere with that, I guess - I still think it's important that he chose to equate Shikinami with Shinji by way of the video-game-thingy and only time will tell if she's being equated with the boring Shinji or the interesting one.

Something that bugs me about the Unit 03 scene, both in 2.0 and in the original, is that Shinji clearly sees the entry plug sticking out of the Unit 03's back/neck trapped in blue Angel goo, but he makes NO effort to try and cut it out. He just sort of stands/lays there and lets Unit 03 throttle him. That's not to say it would work, what with Unit 03/Bardiel having rubber arms and apparently being quite strong, but it still seems bizarre that he never tries it, and that nobody in HQ suggests it.

On the subject of Asuka in 3.0, I wonder if it's possible that her left eye might have turned red like Rei/Kaworu's? There's certainly some wishful thinking involved here, but it seemed like something worth considering since that actually happens to Shinji at the end of the movie when Unit 01 freaks out. They're the same color as Rei's throughout that whole sequence. Maybe a side effect of the plug going too deep or contact with an Angel's core? Ritsuko does say it's bad for their humanity :P

There's obviously no way to know if the red eyes thing was an actual lasting effect or just a stylistic thing since Shinji doesn't show up in the Q teaser >.<

BlueBasilisk wrote:Something that bugs me about the Unit 03 scene, both in 2.0 and in the original, is that Shinji clearly sees the entry plug sticking out of the Unit 03's back/neck trapped in blue Angel goo, but he makes NO effort to try and cut it out. He just sort of stands/lays there and lets Unit 03 throttle him. That's not to say it would work, what with Unit 03/Bardiel having rubber arms and apparently being quite strong, but it still seems bizarre that he never tries it, and that nobody in HQ suggests it.

On the subject of Asuka in 3.0, I wonder if it's possible that her left eye might have turned red like Rei/Kaworu's? There's certainly some wishful thinking involved here, but it seemed like something worth considering since that actually happens to Shinji at the end of the movie when Unit 01 freaks out. They're the same color as Rei's throughout that whole sequence. Maybe a side effect of the plug going too deep or contact with an Angel's core? Ritsuko does say it's bad for their humanity :P

There's obviously no way to know if the red eyes thing was an actual lasting effect or just a stylistic thing since Shinji doesn't show up in the Q teaser >.<

All the pilots become angels, NERV rounds them up in the backyard and shoots them, credits roll. Now that would be "trolling".

BlueBasilisk wrote:On the subject of Asuka in 3.0, I wonder if it's possible that her left eye might have turned red like Rei/Kaworu's? There's certainly some wishful thinking involved here, but it seemed like something worth considering since that actually happens to Shinji at the end of the movie when Unit 01 freaks out. They're the same color as Rei's throughout that whole sequence. Maybe a side effect of the plug going too deep or contact with an Angel's core? Ritsuko does say it's bad for their humanity :P

I'm just going to remind everyone, in case I haven't done enough already: four pilots + Kaworu, four Adams + Lilith.

Ritsuko claims that Shinji's losing his human form, but he still seems recognizably human for most of that sequence...except for the sudden appearance of red eyes and white hair. Perhaps by "losing human form" she doesn't mean disintegrating into LCL. Perhaps she means that his true form is showing through.

Azathoth wrote:Perhaps by "losing human form" she doesn't mean disintegrating into LCL. Perhaps she means that his true form is showing through.

His true form, as in a guy with red eyes and white hair and an assertive personality?

What I don't get is like, when he reaches through that wall of blue gooey stuff (with an exuberant "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!!!!!!") what happens to him? Does his skin like, peel off or something? Cuz that's kinda what it looks like when he turns all red, he doesn't seem to mind too much tho.

Shinji wrote:His true form, as in a guy with red eyes and white hair and an assertive personality?

As a being capable of asserting his own will on the world: in other words, not a human.

Shinji wrote:What I don't get is like, when he reaches through that wall of blue gooey stuff (with an exuberant "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!!!!!!") what happens to him? Does his skin like, peel off or something? Cuz that's kinda what it looks like when he turns all red, he doesn't seem to mind too much tho.

He's raping his way through Zeruel's AT field, stands to reason it would have an adverse affect on his own.

I'm just gonna throw my 2 cents in here.

On the topic of favoritism between Rei and Asuka well yeah, Shinji's know and been through more with Rei this time around then Asuka so has a closer bound with her and the last time I checked it was basic human nature to show more concern over those you are closer to so ahhhh..... yeah. Is this professional? No but since when has Shinji even been that? Now this isn't 't to say he didn't care for Asuka but he just didn't have the time to build up a link with her like he had with Rei

But with that said I think there's more to this then just favoritism though and while I really don't feel like going very little detail here I'll try to set up somewhat of a case here: in very broad strokes

First off during the Unit 03 fight Shinji didn't know what to do, he didn't want to hurt her but didn't know how to take down the rogue Eva with doing so so he locked up under the stress and then the whole bloody affair happened.

After that however Shinji changed just a bit, got a bit more violent and was clearly upset so I'd think that outside of just the fact he was closer to Rei the reason he fought harder for her was he also would of been determined not to lose someone else so soon after what happened with Asuka so when Ol' Z brought the smacketh down he was a bit more focused in makeing sure he didn't lose someone close to him.

It's not really possible for Shinji to be both a creep who saves or kills his co-workers based on hotness points and a hero who attacks Zeruel "So no one else will have to die! Rocket punch!"

"Sorry about your eye, but I've known Ayanami for three weeks longer and she's got bigger boobs," is a piss-poor excuse.

Lucretius wrote:It's not really possible for Shinji to be both a creep who saves or kills his co-workers based on hotness points and a hero who attacks Zeruel "So no one else will have to die! Rocket punch!"

"Sorry about your eye, but I've known Ayanami for three weeks longer and she's got bigger boobs," is a piss-poor excuse.

okay, what version did you watch, because I clearly saw nothing resemble that at all

and as far as Shinji finding Rei "hotter", when did Shinji explictly state that?

I never saw him ever making a statement like that at all in 2.22, gee wiz


also...three weeks? there's no way the events of 2.22 or even both films could've happened in just a month, let alone the events of 2.22 spanning three weeks

what happened to...ummm...time compression?

Azathoth wrote:He's raping his way through Zeruel's AT field, stands to reason it would have an adverse affect on his own.

So that's how he did it... I don't really get it tho when it shows him very briefly ripping apart the controls of the Eva in front of him. Like, did he rip the whole thing apart and then crawl down there?

Lucretius wrote:As for Shinji, if a drunk driver ran you over and you lost an eye, would you blame the guy in the driver's seat, or the socioeconomic factors that put him there?

In any event, I don't want to see any more cringing matyrdom on Asuka's part. Her inexplicable goodwill towards humanity in 2.0 was bad enough.

The drunk driver analogy can't really be applied in this case, what with mysterious beings and paramilitary organizations and shadwoy conspiracies at work. You seem to be singling out Shinji as the one and only one responsible for what happened to Asuka, when that is really not the case. Plus, not putting Shinji at the top of her "things to murder" list doesn't automatically include being totally complacent and cool with what happened. Yeah, yeah, i know (all too well) that Shinji is the real focus of this crummy affair so ultimately, everything has to tie into him somehow, but what if,... things won't, just this once?

It's not really possible for Shinji to be both a creep who saves or kills his co-workers based on hotness points and a hero who attacks Zeruel "So no one else will have to die! Rocket punch!"

His motivations for trying his best to spare Rei from the fate Asuka suffered earlier aren't as pure and noble as some want to make it out to be, though. His biggest reason to do so is to avoid feeling pain, again. This is literally handed to the audience on a silver plate, this time in the form of dialog: he whines quite a bit about how "this world causes him pain and WAAAH!", and later, he proclaims that he "doesn't care about this world". Rei is just a convenient outlet for his frustrations and desires in this case.

What i'm trying to say is, trying to protect another life to avoid pain doesn't really make him a hero. He is more like a sensitive, emotional, sappy douchebag.

Azathoth wrote:She confronts exactly the same issues as Shinji, only in an even more boring and forced form - right down to having the portable game player, she's aping Shinji on the surface to disguise the fact that all the important parts of Soryu's character have been choked out of her.

Eh, internal similarity between Shinji and Asuka is nothing new, though i agree that having them set up as externally similar takes a lot of the fun out of Asuka's character. I actually hope that from here on, Re!Shinji and Re!Asuka will diverge, instead of converging. I wouldn't mind if Shikinami were to diverge further from Soryu too, if the direction she goes won't be a total bore.

Aslo, one more point about why i don't want Asuka to be only be able to think about offing Shinji: come on, as i said earlier, almost everything already revolves around the git. I fear that Rei will bawl her eyes out when (if) Shinji turns his back on her, and i don't think there's anything that will save us from another "i failed to be a mother, boo hoo hoo" soliloquy from Misato.

Lets think about Asuka springing back to life in Q: her enviroments and circumstances will be radically different from how she remebers them. I think it's one of the safer bets to make that Seele will directly overtake Nerv (if Nerv as such still exists at all) very early on in the movie.

So she wakes up, and thinks "Hey, what happened, why am i feeling [insert something caused by Bardiel here], why is this place busted, why is the city abandoned, who are these new people at the base, who's that weird albino kid babbling nonsense, who's that weird chick with the glasses, why does my Eva look like it was shat out by Godzilla and ASFDSFGSDSASDAS Shinji, YOUR BLOOD SHALL BE MINE!". Seriously, how one track minded can a girl get?

Shinji wrote:So that's how he did it... I don't really get it tho when it shows him very briefly ripping apart the controls of the Eva in front of him. Like, did he rip the whole thing apart and then crawl down there?

Difficult to say what he's doing exactly, but the answer to your question is basically no: Shinji can't have physically crawled into Zeruel because Unit 01 is not in contact with Zeruel at any point during this sequence, it's simply that its AT field and Zeruel's are interacting above Zeruel's core (which contains Unit 00's core, apparently, which contains Rei's re-merged soul, apparently).

Shinji's destruction of Unit 01's controls make for an okay parallel to the earlier instance where, under the Dummy System's influence, Unit 01's controls rose up to literally bind his hands and defy his intent...but I think more importantly it marks the point where Shinji's actions should stop being understood as physical actions undertaken with a physical body. It's comparable to the kitchen scene in End of Eva: neither Shinji nor Asuka has any physical body to speak of during this scene, and the kitchen in which it takes place does not actually exist anymore. However, what's happening in the scene is still an accurate and meaningful representation of interaction between two persons; more importantly, actions taken there have crucial repercussions for the real world.

If it is actually meant to be understood as some kind of genuine physical form crawling into Zeruel and actually tearing through him, then Shinji's an angel or something and Rebuild makes even less sense than it did. So I prefer to assume for the time being that the end of Rebuild 2.22 takes place in a kind of metaphysical hammerspace that holds the souls found in Unit 01's core (or maybe just its plug? Yui is absent...yet Ritsuko suggests that the plug is submerged in the core by this point) and the souls in Zeruel's core. Shinji visualizes Zeruel as an unbreakable wall of inscrutable black muck that he has to endure unendurable pain to force his way through; you kind of have to wonder if Zeruel is actually shrieking "god damn it fuck you humans you sick motherfuckers jesus christ i preferred when i was being eaten alive aghghggagagaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah please let me dieeeeeeeeeee" or something. Despite there being a complete lack of spatial continuity between these things in the real world, they are clearly interacting and their interactions reverberate into real life. Badly.

Haha wow, I wasn't expecting a response that would be so informative or humorous. But yea I agree. There are definitely points in the series and the movies that aren't meant to be taken as something that's literally happening. I.e. the sandbox scene and the Shinji seeing himself nursing from his mother and being asked to join them. ...that one still kinda weirds me out.

I remember watching End of Evangelion for the first time (with only a partial understanding of the plot of the series after seeing it just once) and when it got to the kitchen scene I thought it was a flash back or something. But then Shinji started strangling Asuka and I was like wtf when did this happen?!?!

Shinji wrote:I.e. the sandbox scene and the Shinji seeing himself nursing from his mother and being asked to join them. ...that one still kinda weirds me out.

Me too, yeah. It really adds nothing to the movie, either; we already know that Shinji feels separate from other people and is turning to belligerent hatred of everything else owing to mommy not paying any attention to him, because he just had a big fuckin' breakdown about it. Waste of time imo, although I'm sure I can get dogpiled for saying so.

Shinji wrote:I remember watching End of Evangelion for the first time (with only a partial understanding of the plot of the series after seeing it just once) and when it got to the kitchen scene I thought it was a flash back or something. But then Shinji started strangling Asuka and I was like wtf when did this happen?!?!

Well, that's the interesting thing, it sort of is a flashback - Shinji and Asuka's earlier bitchfest when he told her that Kaji was dead is without a doubt one of the strangest scenes in the series even before it gets repurposed during pre-Instrumentality. Unlike in Rebuild 2.22, where the environment is more a symbolic representation designed for an easy visual understanding of what's going on in the scene, the kitchen is apparently meant to be understood as Shinji trying to understand his interactions with Asuka by grounding them in his prior memories of her.

Shinji wrote:the kitchen scene I thought it was a flash back or something.

Just as the kiss scene in episode 15 gets a replay where Asuka kicks Shinji instead, this is a replay of a scene added in 24' where Shinji only metaphorically slays Asuka.

If you watch EoE without having seen 24', like I did, then it is a real WTF-inducer -- you have to try and guess what it was like in the original, before it got distorted.

And Asuka totally calls him out about choking his chicken next to her. Man that would be an awkward situation. So was that another one of her "pretending to be asleep" spells? Or is it really true that people in comas can hear what's going on around them?

Hopefully it's one of those and it's not like, one of those everyone is everyone and knows everything everyone knows, things... could that would be pretty embarrassing.

Shinji wrote:everyone is everyone and knows everything everyone knows

That's exactly what's going on in Instrumentality.

Gendou, episode 25 wrote: No,
It's not that everything returns to nothingness.
It's nothing but returning everything to the beginning.
Nothing but returning things to the mother which
has long since been lost.
All the minds become one mind, obtaining peace forever.
Nothing but that.

Mr. Tines wrote:If you watch EoE without having seen 24', like I did, then it is a real WTF-inducer -- you have to try and guess what it was like in the original, before it got distorted.

It's a real WTF-inducer anyway. That scene is bizarre even in its original form.

Mr. Tines wrote:That's exactly what's going on in Instrumentality.

I figured as much. But then, if during instrumentality they're still interacting with each other (in some, sub physical dimension or something) than doesn't that mean that they're still identifying themselves from other people? So how could their consciousnesses already be linked? Is it because they're in some half-way in half-way out transitional part of Instrumentality that depends solely upon GNR's and then Shinji's decision of whether to continue or not?

I think the process was still beginning and ongoing at that point, in a way. From what's said and implied about instrumentality, it seems that once it were actually completed, it would be wholly impossible to depict any narrative of individual characters within it at all.