If you compare FOI's hand pattern in that picture to Unit-01 hand, the pattern of the " Eva glove" is different....Is it more similar to Mark.06?

The model kits have those plates, it's "legit".

Something that I didn't noticed before in the image of the FoI with the left hand stuck/fused/emerging from the balcony, there is still laundry hanged everywhere, so whatever happened that turned the city into core material, it must have been very sudden.
For me, that transformation into core material could have happened :
- just after Zeruel's fight, while everyone was still hidden in the shelters
- maybe the city was after hastily evacuated after Zeruel's battle and EVA-01's awakening, not letting people time to go back to their houses to retrieve their things, in which case it could have happened anytime between Zeruel and Lilith's awakening
- maybe the people came back after Zeruel, life continued(just with a big hole in the middle of the city), and when the 12th Angel came, people where also hidden in shelters when everything turned to core.

riffraff11235 wrote:[wkimg width=800]Eva3-33 C0804 comp grey.jpg[/wkimg]
If you look closely at the left hand of this FoI, it doesn't look like it's crashed through the top of the building. To me it looks as if the hand got stuck while phasing through the building.

You're right! Great catch! On the large composite and tiles, it looks like the FoI's might be phasing through buildings, but the scale makes it dubious. But the 804 composite here really is showing this phasing close up! In fact, if you look closely, you can see that part of the building is phasing through the Eva's pylon. there's also no rubble on the ground, which in retrospect was indicative all by itself.

So I guess the "phasing" we seem to see in several images in the wider composites are in fact actual instances of FoI's stuck half way though passing though a building.

This brings to mind something K40s put forward a while back, that the FoIs phased themselves into Lilith's chamber. In fact, they're crawling all over the wall of the interior of the chamber, despite the barrier supposedly being in place.

But the question I ask myself now is: Did the FoI's phase into the chamber, or did they phase out of it. Kaworu refers to the chamber as being the centre of Third Impact. Perhaps Lilith was creating the FoI's from here, birthing them headless as its own head lie above in HQ. Perhaps the skulls emerged from Lilith at the same time as the FoI's?

Monk Ed also suggested earlier that the FoI's go through an intermediary ghost phase, similar to GNR in EoE. In fact, GNR later becomes completely solid. This comparision feels right to me. In particular, it would suggest that the FoI's could simply emerge from anywhere, and pass through anything -- for a time at least, which would explain the presence of FoI's in the ruined command center.

A question I'd have though is whether the FoI's can emerge from absolutely nothing, simply appearing anywhere at will, or whether they must be created out of LCL, or "core" dust, some other material. I'm leaning towards LCL myself. Also, do they only phase at the beginning of their creation, or do they retain this ability permanently?

@OMF Furthermore, you can see that the space around that FoI is completely undisturbed: there are still clothes and linen hanging out to dry in the apartments right next to the FoI! This meshes well with the theory that the FoIs are actually transformed humans. In this case, the person in question happened to be inside the apartment complex when the "process started", started phasing through the building as he/she grew, but got stuck when the process was halted before completion. This then raises the question: If each FoI is a human, why are there so few of them? Could it be that they transformed in waves, with the first ones having the time to move and gather near Central Dogma?

riffraff11235 wrote:If each FoI is a human, why are there so few of them? Could it be that they transformed in waves, with the first ones having the time to move and gather near Central Dogma?

It would make sense, the FoI that Kaworu shows Shinji in Tokyo 3 seem to look like they're trying to move to somewhere. Also, when Eva 13 awakens it cuts to Tokyo 3 before it crashes outside, there are no FoI in sight in that view of Tokyo 3, but there are FoI on the surface based on what we saw earlier.

Wait, if the FoI can phase through matter, then why would they bother to climb all the way up to Lilith's head? Shouldn't they just phase again to the Command Room, like GNR did in EoE? Unless they can't levitate.

As for the relative few number, well maybe Tokyo-3 has been evacuated from the civilians after Zeruel(at least that's what the trailer from 2.0 said happened) and only NERV's personnel, or the JSSDF, or whoever the hell was stationed here where remaining and got turned into FoI?
Or worst yet, if the FoI phases through the ground... maybe most of them got "dephased" while still inside the ground, and are fused with the subsoil?!

I'm not comfortable with this idea of the FoI's as humans, especially as individual humans. Being made out of core fallout seems right to me, but for them to be something like transformed humans just doesn't feel correct. Made out of human tang come core material perhaps, but direct human evolution just seems to be a stretch.

Going back to the basics of the FoI's and their introduction during Kaworu's speech, he says that everything they see is a part of the Human Instrumentality Project-- and also that Shinji was the cause, having opened the Doors of Guf. Note that these are only explicitly said to have closed after Fourth Impact ends.

If Shinji is the cause, then forced evolved humans seem even weirder. If he was somehow responsible for converting masses of innocents into Eva-01's, then it's hugely unlikely Misato would simply have him walking around the ship, guaranteeing his safety.

That said, since the FoI's are copies of Eva-01, signs do point to Shinji here. We have a mass of Eva-01's, madly reaching out for a Rei shaped head. Are they all re-enacting Shinji's rescue of Rei in 2.0?

When Eva01 reacted with Zeruel / Rei we see small Reis at the core:

Perhaps this is repeated when the impact reached greater proportions but this time with Eva01giving rise to Eva01 clones sprouting from the soil, which now would be a "giant core" (huh?)

That is, rather than people transformed, it can be made ​​of the same material from a core, or perhaps they are "living statues" (red earth, lol).
Some of them remind me of the angelic statue linked to Kaworu in NGE: Kaworu is decapitated and the statue bleeds. In NME Lilith is decapitated and the same happens with FoIs.

I am writing in a hurry, my english should be more terrible than usual in this post

ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:If he was somehow responsible for converting masses of innocents into Eva-01's, then it's hugely unlikely Misato would simply have him walking around the ship, guaranteeing his safety.

Shinji's actions are heavily implied to have resulted in countless deaths, with or without an accompanying rebirth into red Evas. Any which way, Misato is letting someone guilty of mass manslaughter walk around her ship, granted Wille's protection.

I'm quite uncertain why the "transformation" aspects sits so poorly with you. It seems like the logical conclusion to draw from both dialogue and visuals. Shinji asks what happened to all of the people in the city. Kaworu proceeds to describe forced evolution through death, i.e. the Human Instrumentality, while the Failures of Infinity are emphasized onscreen -- his answer to "Where did everyone go?".

Reichu wrote:Shinji's actions are heavily implied to have resulted in countless deaths, with or without an accompanying rebirth into red Evas. Any which way, Misato is letting someone guilty of mass manslaughter walk around her ship, granted Wille's protection.

Not quite : Misato is keeping in custody someone allegedly guilty of mass manslaughter : we don't even know what are WILLE's official charges against Shinji, maybe they think that he didn't had any control of what happened, but as he's the trigger of the initial event that triggered the rest, he as to answer for it. And I doubt that Shinji would had been often out of that little cell had Mark.09 not retrieved him.

Anyway let's not go into a Shinji's responsibilities debate...

Reichu wrote:I'm quite uncertain why the "transformation" aspects sits so poorly with you. It seems like the logical conclusion to draw from both dialogue and visuals. Shinji asks what happened to all of the people in the city. Kaworu proceeds to describe forced evolution through death, i.e. the Human Instrumentality, while the Failures of Infinity are emphasized onscreen -- his answer to "Where did everyone go?".

Truth be told, Kaworu tends to be so cryptic when he talks that we are not even sure that the FoI are what HIP intended mankind to evolve into, N3I and 3I don't seem to have anything to do with it, since the former have been triggered by Shinji, and we don't have any idea about how was performed the latter, for all we know maybe that was an attempt of HIP using Mark.06 and the 12th Angel that had gone horribly wrong, or maybe its just an Angel that reached Lilith, or Lilith herself that tried to double-cross SEELE...
We don't know either how does that "forced evolution" works on a soul level : did one soul = one Infinity, or is everyone fused into one giant metaphysical soup and the resulting mix split to the Infinities.
Or maybe they are just mindless drones psychically controlled by whatever summoned them and started to slaughter everyone on sigh in their quest to reach Lilith's head.

The prospect that everyone of these FoI are an individual soul is freaky : for all we know that FoI stuck into a building or growing from it could be Hikari!

ElMariachi wrote:Truth be told, Kaworu tends to be so cryptic when he talks that we are not even sure that the FoI are what HIP intended mankind to evolve into, N3I and 3I don't seem to have anything to do with it, since the former have been triggered by Shinji, and we don't have any idea about how was performed the latter, for all we know maybe that was an attempt of HIP using Mark.06 and the 12th Angel that had gone horribly wrong, or maybe its just an Angel that reached Lilith, or Lilith herself that tried to double-cross SEELE...

I found most of his comments to be fairly simple when he was showing Shinji the red Tokyo 3.

"Blah Blah Blah, Evolution....NERV calls it the Human Instrumentality Project."

"The result of Third Impact that came to pass when you were in Unit 01....The Lilin call it Near-Third Impact, it was all initiated by you."

"All I did was save Ayanami!" "True, but that was the catalyst."

What I find curious is how, at least in the panorama shots of the city, we see some FoI converge into larger ones, with the legs of the smaller ones still partially sticking out, Lillith Style.

...maybe the end resuld would have been them all merging.

What? It looked to me that they were all about the same size.............the size of a regular eva, that is.
It seems to me that the whole Earth surface has been altered into some kind of enormous core, a huge vessel or a womb for the new type of life form that would emerge as the result of Human Instrumentality.

Mbryo wrote:What? It looked to me that they were all about the same size.............the size of a regular eva, that is.

In one shot, you can see that some were much larger than others, also thinner IMO.

A little detail I noticed thanks to OMF's grey version of the FoI panorama :
[wkimg width=1000:p5b36ib7]Eva3-33 C0804 comp grey.jpg[/wkimg:p5b36ib7]

Look closely between the right hand and the spaghetti stub of the neck of the FoI. You can see a truck.
During an emergency evacuation, people tends to let their things behind, hence all the laundry still hanging, but a truck, not so much, it's too useful to move supplies to be left abandoned around.

That could indicate that whatever happened that turned the ground into core material and created the FoI, it happened so suddenly that people didn't even and the time to flee, unless that happened during the 12th Angel attack, and the population was already in the shelter, which seeing how the entire flattened landscape has been flattened with the exception of Mount Fuji and how the inside of the Goefront seems to have become extremely toxic, musn't have been much better for the inhabitants...
For me, unless the whole population was so hastily evacuated after Zeruel's attack that they had to left behind all their belongings, everyone in Tokyo-3 and the vicinity died that fateful day...

Kendrix wrote:What I find curious is how, at least in the panorama shots of the city, we see some FoI converge into larger ones, with the legs of the smaller ones still partially sticking out, Lillith Style. ...maybe the end resuld would have been them all merging.

Or maybe they were in the process of separating?

Mbryo wrote:It seems to me that the whole Earth surface has been altered into some kind of enormous core, a huge vessel or a womb for the new type of life form that would emerge as the result of Human Instrumentality.

That about sums up my feelings on it, as well. It's like a giant "nursery" grounds for the Evas to "bud" out of.

....hm. That's the problem with still images, there's no way to make sure which way stuff is going; But your version does make sense.

Mbryo wrote:It seems to me that the whole Earth surface has been altered into some kind of enormous core, a huge vessel or a womb for the new type of life form that would emerge as the result of Human Instrumentality.

Reichu wrote:That about sums up my feelings on it, as well. It's like a giant "nursery" grounds for the Evas to "bud" out of.

Maybe the most faraway places from Japan weren't so affected : if the entire planet became a core, then that would mean that the Third Impact succeeded?
It's a shame that the only proper landscape we saw if of Tokyo-3 and its surrounding to confirm or infirm that, because I really can't see ho the interrupted Impact triggered by for some minutes did so monstrous damages while four ADAMs who were at it for probably hours "only" terraformed the Antarctic and turned the oceans red.

Or maybe they were in the process of separating?

Maybe the enormous ones were growing out from the corified Earth and the smaller ones were 'branching out' from them?

Maybe the most faraway places from Japan weren't so affected : if the entire planet became a core, then that would mean that the Third Impact succeeded?
It's a shame that the only proper landscape we saw if of Tokyo-3 and its surrounding to confirm or infirm that, because I really can't see ho the interrupted Impact triggered by for some minutes did so monstrous damages while four ADAMs who were at it for probably hours "only" terraformed the Antarctic and turned the oceans red.

Well, judging from what we see at the end of 2.22, it seems that Tokyo-3 was the only area that was properly core-ified, and judging from the size of the Door of Guf that opens up during the near-Third Impact (tiny compared to the globe-scale door that opened during Second Impact and even to the door that Eva 13th opens during the Fourth Impact, which is at least twice as large as that of Eva 01's) I think it is safe to say the Near-Third Impact covered only Tokyo-3 and was not a global disaster.
Also another thing I observed about the FOI's- All the FOIs growing out from the surface of the city have their shoulder pylons off and instead all have the red crystalized-wing appedanges growing out from their shoulders, identical to the ones Eva 13th grows at the beginning of the Fourth Impact. However, the FOIs plugging up Lilith's chamber all have their shoulder pylons intact (see the pans of the earlier posts).
Which leads me to think that at least some of the FOIs, the ones left on the surface of the city, had enough time to undergo transition into the 'awakened' state; that is, achieving Godhood, similar to that both Eva 01 and 13th enters, which may also be the 'Infinity' that Kaworu mentions. (That'd be scary-thousands of glowing God Evas ascending into the sky..........)
My questions are, why were some of the FoIs left at the surface while others were rushing down to defend Lilith? Why would some have time to start to enter the awakened state while others did not? Perhaps some were created during Unit01's awakening and others during Lilith's awakening?
And why would the Eva 01-based FoIs want to protect Lilith anyway? Maybe because Unit 01 is a 'bunshin' of Lilith in the rebuild continuity as well?