Which Character Should Kill Gendo?

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:06 pm

You give Gendo too little credit.

In NGE/EoE, he was shown to have an overriding agenda at the root of his master plan: unconditional love for Yui. And he sacrificed far too much for it (including arguably her love for him).

In Rebuild 2.0, he showed a few glimpses of a softer side behind his cold exterior. In Rebuild 3.0, Fuyutsuki's remark about "how you [Gendo] live" could be interpreted as Gendo making tremendous personal sacrifices as well, or keeping mementos of his lost family in his private living quarters.
Finally, let's not rule out the possibility that Gendo's master plan in the Rebuild continuity (for which he betrayed SEELE) may actually be the salvation of humanity, while the horror scenario that WILLE is fighting tooth and nail to avert were SEELE's (and never Gendo's) all along.

Gendo is the ultimate consequentialist: the end justifies any, any, ANY means. Including being hated and reviled by the rest of mankind. Including having his innocent son being hated and reviled by the rest of mankind.

My point is that Gendo is never totally irredeemable; no matter how evil he may appear, he always retains a tiny little bit of humanity. In the end, I fully expect him to be tempted by a kind offer of forgiveness and redemption, only to turn away in the last second and embrace eternal guilt/solitude/oblivion instead. Either as self-punishment for his sins (which may count as redemption at some level), or as self-punishment for his failures (which counts as cowardice/"running away"). And I also expect this to remain ambiguous.

Anyone actually killing Gendo just does not fit the tragedy of his character. He is a man who in his own ruthless, desperate perseverance is burning all bridges behind him in order to reach his goals. In order for a cathartic conclusion to his part of the story, his undoing must come from the results of his own actions, and never the actions of another. An act of betrayal by the only one he still trusted on an emotional level was his undoing in EoE (i.e. betrayed by Rei III). Since Rebuild-Gendo does not appear to even care about his Rei clone, and is seen talking to Lilith's disembodied head as if it was Yui, I expect him to be betrayed by Yui herself somehow.

In the end, Gendo should not be a character to be hated. He is to be pitied.

@Ray:
You appear to have a very polarized view: You hate Gendo, while you pity Shinji. Instead, you should pity Gendo. Shinji may overcome his suffering and may find a little bit of happiness. If he does, he is to be admired instead of pitied.
Last edited by Jornophelanthas on Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Postby ChaddyManPrime » Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:09 pm

If they were indeed together in this Universe Ritsuko should shoot him like he did to her in the last Universe.

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:13 pm

View Original PostChaddyManPrime wrote:If they were indeed together in this Universe Ritsuko should shoot him like he did to her in the last Universe.

No reason to assume they ever were.

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Postby ChaddyManPrime » Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:23 pm

View Original PostJornophelanthas wrote:No reason to assume they ever were.


Meh, just thought she deserved a wee bit revenge.

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:31 pm

View Original PostChaddyManPrime wrote:Meh, just thought she deserved a wee bit revenge.


Throughout Rebuild, Ritsuko only has meaningful interactions with Misato. Other characters just speak at her, rather than with her. As such, she appears to represent little more than the cold, rational, impersonal and ruthless mirror image of Misato. Over the course of the first two movies, Misato frequently opposes Ritsuko. In Rebuild 3.0, Misato appears to have been groomed into a cold, rational, impersonal and ruthless commander in all ways. Except when Misato refuses to activate the DSS Choker to kill Shinji, and starts to show signs of reverting back to her pre-timeskip self.

If Ritsuko is going to (try to) shoot anyone in FINAL, it will be Misato.

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Postby ElMariachi » Thu Apr 10, 2014 2:52 am

View Original PostJornophelanthas wrote:If Ritsuko is going to (try to) shoot anyone in FINAL, it will be Misato.

Let's no go that far : sure she urged Misato to activate the Choker, but when she couldn't do it, Ritsuko didn't showed anger, but a sympathetic look, she perfectly understands what Misato was going through.

As for Gendo, even if he did kept mementos of his families in his room and showed signs of a more caring side in 2.0, for me consciously and methodically breaking his own son to near-insanity to make him break after he put him on a fight to the death with his former friends in 3.0 made him go past the moral horizon by far.
He's way past any kind of redemption that doesn't include a pitiful and lonely death, like what happened to him in EoE.
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Postby Kendrix » Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:09 am

I'm hoping for a redemption equals death/heroic sacrifice.
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That, or somethin like what happened in EoE. His own "madness" getting him. Whatever angelic add-on he got disagrees with him. A machine explodes on him.

He's certainly amassed too much bad karma to live with NTI and everything.



One of the things I liked about the original EVA was that there wasn't an epic confrontation or revenge porn sequence. Because there rarely is in real life.
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Postby Monk Ed » Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:14 am

View Original PostKendrix wrote:One of the things I liked about the original EVA was that there wasn't an epic confrontation or revenge porn sequence. Because there rarely is in real life.

There wasn't even an epic fight sequence between Unit 01 and the Harpies, which a lot of people I've read have said they were expecting when they saw it coming.

But all bets are off this time around. Shinji got a long, dramatic goodbye from Kaworu, after all, and there was climactic action and all that hoo-ha. Rebuild has been more traditional in many ways. But I can say that I think I'll be disappointed if there is some cliched final showdown with Gendo.

Also Seele's dead, how exactly is Shinji going to "stop" them?
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Postby pwhodges » Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:24 am

View Original PostMonk Ed wrote:I think I'll be disappointed if there is some cliched final showdown with Gendo.

That was the point of my suggestion of an incidental death.
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Postby Jornophelanthas » Thu Apr 10, 2014 4:45 am

View Original PostJornophelanthas wrote:If Ritsuko is going to (try to) shoot anyone in FINAL, it will be Misato.

View Original PostElMariachi wrote:Let's no go that far : sure she urged Misato to activate the Choker, but when she couldn't do it, Ritsuko didn't showed anger, but a sympathetic look, she perfectly understands what Misato was going through.


I'm not convinced that Ritsuko will point a gun at someone. (Hence my "if".) However, I am struggling to see any relevance to Ritsuko's presence in Rebuild so far, other than "Misato's sidekick", "familiar background face" and "generic infodump". As vice-commander of WILLE, she has the potential to impact the story, either through conflict with Misato (or commanding Wunder while Misato is absent), or by acting as gatekeeper preventing access to Unit-01.

The only thing I can say with certainty about Ritsuko is that in Rebuild 3.0, she was the one person in WILLE who had the least amount of compassion for Shinji. Not only did she explain to him matter-of-factly that the DSS choker was "a symbol of his sin, and his punishment", but when the alarms started going off, she shut down the communication window with Shinji without even looking at him. And finally, she was the first one to urge Misato to activate the DSS choker.

Anyway, enough of this side-topic. Back to Gendo.

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Postby ElMariachi » Thu Apr 10, 2014 5:57 am

^
In that respect, Ritsuko is still fulfilling her role of the cold, rational and often ruthless pendant to the more emotional Misato (remember Ritsuko's comment that Asuka won't be terminated after Bardiel because she's a "invaluable specimen"?), and that dynamic still holds in Q : even if Misato is colder, her emotive side made her spare Shinji while Ritsuko immediately urged her to detonate the DSS Choker.

Finally, to get back on topic, besides that role of foil for Misato, Ritsuko's only importance besides info-dump distributor came from her relationship with Gendo, here in Rebuild that relationship don't seems to exist (or at least here doesn't have any focus), meaning that Ritsuko will probably stay in the same role than she had in the three previous movies, and thus having her killing Gendo wouldn't be "meaningful", unless Anno goes for the "randomly killed without ceremony" route.
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Postby Nuclear Lunchbox » Thu Apr 10, 2014 11:01 am

If we're talking about who we think would kill Gendo, if anybody, it would probably not be Misato. As seen in 3.33, she can get to the point where she very much would have killed somebody, but doesn't wind up following through in it. If anybody kills Gendo, he'll probably go out on his own terms
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Postby ElMariachi » Thu Apr 10, 2014 11:22 am

^
Misato didn't got through it because it was Shinj, I really doubt she would hesitate half a second to put a bullet between his eyes or a railgun shell on his face if given the opportunity.
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Postby pwhodges » Thu Apr 10, 2014 11:32 am

But will Gendou get a personal AT field this time, like in the manga?
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Postby Nuclear Lunchbox » Thu Apr 10, 2014 11:57 am

That I would be very interested to see. A very nice way to further show him shedding his humanity.

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Postby El Squibbonator » Wed Sep 03, 2014 3:17 pm

I actually think Gendo should kill himself. It's the closest he'll come to redemption at this point.
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Postby hui43210 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:28 pm

Sakura..... :tongue:

Srsly, I'd like to see him smashed by Asuka, that'd be cool.
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Postby Sailor Star Dust » Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:39 pm

If Gendo's going to be killed by anybody, Misato makes the most sense.

She killed Gendo in her NGE2 Scenario to stop his version of Third Impact ("For my father and for Nerv, I can't forgive you!" *Bang*).

Of course she'd stop him by any means necessary since the stakes are so high in NTE. Explaining it to Shinji would probably be extremely difficult and emotional. He already has mixed feelings for his father, finding out his former surrogate mother/guardian had to kill him might fuck Shinji up even more.
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Postby El Squibbonator » Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:54 pm

In all honesty though, I think it'll be either Shinji or suicide.
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Postby xyz346 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 5:16 pm

It would probably be a stretch to suggest Shinji killing Gendo...considering how he reacted the last time he was faced with the prospect of killing another human.

But back on topic...I actually feel it would be more appropriate if Gendo didn't die, but instead, gets a fate worse than death.
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