While I have not seen a quality version of 3.33 yet (damn you Funimation), I hope I can contribute something to this subfourm.

Recently when looking at the various topics in the Rebuild subforum and seeing all the posts about the timeskip, a question came to mind: Is it absolutely nescessary for us to know what exaclty happened during those fourteen years? Now there are some of you who would reply "Of course it is you fucking idiot" or something to that effect. But to argue the point, I would like to use as an example another scifi franchise that is more familar to people here in the West: Doctor Who. For those of you who are not familar with it (and for those of you who are, I'll try to keep the exposition brief), there is an event that hangs over a large portion of the series, the Time War. For the most part, we never see the events of this war. Only the aftereffects. And much of the description of the war the the dialogue is often cryptic in nature. While a few things about the Time War have been cleared up, mainly how the Doctor came to be involved and (from a couple different perspectives) the events of the last day, we really don't know what exactly transpired. I read once (and from where I don't exactly remember) that the producers of the show gave two reasons for why they did not show. One was that they did not have the budget to show it. The second reason is that they felt that anything they would show would not match what fans had in their heads already, and that they would be let down from what would become canon.

Bringing this back to Eva, maybe this is the way we are to approach the timeskip. Could it be that we are meant to have our own version of those fourteen years in our heads? That is not to say that there is room for more info to come out. Could some more details come out in Final? I hope so. So, is my question vaild? Are there any good counterarguments to what I have written? I hope there could be an interesting discussion on this.

I do not expect the time skip to be perfectly explained in Final, probably we will know about some events, hopefully get to know a little about Wille's formation and Asuka/Mari's early days but nothing too prolonged.

I don't think we NEED to know about the timeskip, we could very well finish rebuild with only knowing a few key moments about it. But I would LIKE to know more about it anyway.

I'm somewhat familiar with Doctor Who (I've enjoyed what I've seen) and I think you bring up a good point.

As far as I'm concerned, IF there's any information given during Final about the timeskip, it'll be from someone's POV (say, Asuka or Misato) and/or it'll give the basics of what we "need" to know (e.g. key events): at the very least, certain aspects about what happened during Near Third Impact, since Shinji was to blame for it.

Besides that, I don't think the timeskip is absolutely necessary to have the blanks filled in and it wouldn't surprise me if one option for Final to go is to barely address it. Obviously we just don't know how or if it'll be addressed as of right now.

Although, I think an official or semi-official video game/spin off manga (think PS2/PSP's NGE2, but this New Movie version on a current gen system) will try to fill in the blanks sometime down the line. Whether or not Final goes bare minimum, explains everything, or something in between.

cyharding wrote:The second reason is that they felt that anything they would show would not match what fans had in their heads already, and that they would be let down from what would become canon.

I feel like this concept played a part in the original series too, and plays to its advantage since it's creates so much discussion.

To answer your main question though: no, I do not believe it's necessary that we get filled in on all the details. Rebuild is definitely Shinji's story, and his story needs to move forward. Some details would be nice, but I do not believe we need to have the timeline broken down for us. I'm okay with never knowing how Lilith came to be in the state she is in at the beginning of Q; and I'm okay with never know about the formation of Wille. I think a couple things need to be cleared up, but I don't know what exactly. I'm sure we'll be more that satisfied once Final comes out.

No.

Except for what was the emotional journey that Misato went through on those 14 years to turn her from Shinji's greatest supporter into the person she is in 3.0.* THAT I expect we'll get to see some of in Final.

Everything else - Evangelion Unit Whatever, the Who Angel, the Huh Treaty - doesn't matter.

(* - To a lesser extent I expect to see similar reveals made about Asuka.)

Is there an imperious necessity to know everything about the time skip to its minute details? No.

As other members posted above, there are many events that aren't that important to know to continue the story in FINAL and Shinji's personal journey. Also many details can be easily inferred on it's broad lines :
- WILLE's formation? Kaji's spying work finally publicly uncovering SEELE and Gendo's conspiracy, WILLE itself was probably founded by the UN, since the preview mentions that all of NERV personnel was put in custody for interrogation after N3I.

- Asuka and Mari's relationship? Both got to work for WILLE and are the best Eva pilots available, so of course they would end in Misato's fighting force, which is the spearhead of the war against SEELE. From here they probably got a rocky start, many screams and fights, but got through so many hardships together that a genuine bond of trust and friendship finally emerged.

- The 11th Angel? Save a plot twist it appeared before the 12th and was dealt with, end of the story.

- EVA-01 ending in space? Well everything we need to know is already here : Gendo and SEELE's original plan had gone FUBAR and Unit 01 was shot in space because it was too dangerous.

- NERV HQ floating above ground? Third Impact weirdness from the Black Moon starting to rise but stopped before it could fully emerge.

- The Wunder? It could be explained in FINAL by a simple throwaway line : "It was SEELE's pet project, but we managed to steal it from under their nose!" or "The AAA Wunder, the Ship of Hope and symbol of mankind's inventiveness and will to survive, made form the dug up remain of the *Insert name of the thing* and adapted through Lilin technology"

- Same with the missing Evas(7, 10, 11 and 12) : just a throwaway line that they were other pilots working for WILLE and who died meanwhile, or who are still alive and deployed in other WILLE battle groups or important sites. Maybe see one if Shinji ends in a big Lilin settlement protected by one of them.

- The 14 years war? Well 14 years of WILLE and its fleet dodging NS and EVA-02 and 08 occasionally sortieing to kick the ass of the ones they couldn't escape from or which were attacking important installations/settlements, with Mark.09 appearing from time to time when Gendo was bored or wanted to make sure than an objective will be completed.


Sure seeing it in more details via a TV series/OAV/manga/video-game would be really nice, but ultimately not that important for Shinji's story.
But nonetheless there are some events that we(and Shinji) must know and that are of vital importance in Shinji's story : the most important being of course the events surrounding Third Impact, and more precisely what exactly happened between the end of 2.0 and the events involving Mark.06, the 12th Angel and Lilith, since they are closely tied to Shinji's situation in Q and FINAL : how he's supposed to learn a lesson from his past acts in 2.0 if he's not even sure of what he did?(of course, the errors he did in 3.0 that he'll need to make up for are obvious, mainly losing his calm and ignoring everyone about not pulling out the spears)
Besides the big discrepancies between what Kaworu said happened and what we saw in 2.0 and later in Lilith's Chamber(being the Epicenter of 3I, presence of the 12th Angel) is a big warning that there's something wrong around these events and that it'll need to be cleared up in FINAL, or else Shinji trying to gain redemption will fall flat since there will be the lingering suspicion that it's not his fault(or at least not entirely)

artesox wrote:I don't think we NEED to know about the timeskip, we could very well finish rebuild with only knowing a few key moments about it. But I would LIKE to know more about it anyway.

This. Generally speaking a small exposition scene would suffice to give us the necessary details from the timeskip, but I would appreciate more in the form of a movie/series/manga/whatever.

No it isn't. But it wouldn't harm to know more details

It isn't required, no, but the lack of explanation does leave a lot of the new setting feeling incredibly hollow. Without more information it's hard to take the 'it's all Shinji's fault' claim seriously, and as such it's nearly impossible for me to give even half a shit about anyone other than him.

I certainly don't think that we need to know everything about the timeskip, but I do think that Khara should give us enough information so that we can understand what happened during the past 14 years, and also to let us sympathize with the other characters. Hell, we can already sympathize with Shinji, since everybody was such a raging asshole to him. Without justification for their actions, everybody in the cast of 3.33 just remains omniscient douchebags.

It's like asking if we need EoE or episode 24 or something similar. You don't "need" anything. You could also ask yourself if you really needed 3.33 when barely anything of importance happens during that movie while all important events happen during the time skip.

NemZ wrote:It isn't required, no, but the lack of explanation does leave a lot of the new setting feeling incredibly hollow. Without more information it's hard to take the 'it's all Shinji's fault' claim seriously, and as such it's nearly impossible for me to give even half a shit about anyone other than him.

THIS.
Knowing what happened isn't strictly necessary to understand what will happen in FINAL, but it's necessary if the movies want to make us actually care about the characters, even Shinji since his struggles to be redeemed don't seem even necessary in the first place.

Jinroh wrote:It's like asking if we need EoE or episode 24 or something similar. You don't "need" anything. You could also ask yourself if you really needed 3.33 when barely anything of importance happens during that movie while all important events happen during the time skip.

Well, SEELE was destroyed for good and Gendo got his awakened Evangelion and has free reign to build his army of MP-Evas which will completely change the face of the war, that's not little events.

El Mariachi (+1) as usual being excellent on explain certain details that we NEED and DON'T NEED to know! Also i totally agree with you

Is always a pleasure to hear your thoughts and ideas! Keep up !

Later

I agree with Gendo’sPapa. There isn’t any need to expound upon anything that isn’t emotionally relevant to Misato and, to some extent, Asuka.

I mean, this isn’t The House of Cards here. We don’t need to know the specific politics of any sort of Treaty. We just needed to know that they existed. And even Anno being a Mech/Kaiju otaku doesn’t mean that he’s gonna go into the history of every single one of the Eva Units in his movies. He’s a very emotionally-centered story-teller. Even his lesser works have a solid emotional core to them. (Cutie Honey was probably the more surprising example of one of his works having an emotional core. One moments it’s all flashy colors and humorous choreography, and the next minute Honey’s bitterly screaming in an elevator before discovering a fast friendship with the ex police chief.)

You mean relevant. An emotional revenant would be a weepy vampire.

Sorry.

Personally I imagine whatever happened during the time skip is more interesting than what followed, in a storytelling sense, but given the track record of prequels (midquels?) as a concept I'm sure it would never live up to my expectations.

What we really need to know about the timeskip will depend on how Final resolves the story; and presumably we will be given what we need for that. Not knowing more at this stage is part of the power of 3.33 - and you can choose to like it that way or not.

Whether we would like to know more that is not crucial to the main story is another matter - as is whether Khara will do anything about that need, if they perceive it, by means of an OVA series or whatever.

Evidently not. If it were a need, we wouldn't be at this stage in the series. But it definitely could help lift a lot of the anxieties we have about what happened - which is precisely why we aren't getting any info on it. ;)

Hey we didn't get Star Wars: The Clone Wars until after Episode III. Virtue rewards the patient. Maybe part of the reason Anno chose to have the time skip was to give other writers something to play with once 4.0's done.

A Lot of people complain that the biggest weakness of the original series IS Shinji (I don't agree with them but I can understand where they are coming from). What better fanservice to those naysayers than a spin-off OVA? Why not give the haters what they want, Evangelion without Shinji?

Ray wrote:Hey we didn't get Star Wars: The Clone Wars until after Episode III. Virtue rewards the patient. Maybe part of the reason Anno chose to have the time skip was to give other writers something to play with once 4.0's done.

A Lot of people complain that the biggest weakness of the original series IS Shinji (I don't agree with them but I can understand where they are coming from). What better fanservice to those naysayers than a spin-off OVA? Why not give the haters what they want, Evangelion without Shinji?

Yeah, again, that's a BIIIIIIIIIG stretch to what people "say" what the "weakest" element of Evangelion is. Heck, Shinji is basically the crux of the story, about a boy who's struggling, falling and rising to find his place in the real world. Basically, he's the audiences surrogate. Without him, as much as people "say they hate him", Evangelion wouldn't exist. He's polarizing, yes, but he's what makes the story so compelling and sympathetic. :)

So, these people basically saying that Evangelion is better off without Shinji, even though he's the audience's surrogate? What's that basically saying about "these people"?

You could have Touji or Hikari fill the role of audience surrogate in this theoretical spin off anime. They have quite a few fans despite not being main characters. Shinji is Annos self insert, him being an audience surrogate is simply symptomatic of that. If it were intentional he'd be a lot more boring.

Again, can we get a 13 episode anime series filling the gap? Seriously Anno, why do you torment us? An Eva TV series set in the time gap would be perfect to air on something like Toonami or SyFy.