I'm pretty positive we're gonna have a big emotional reconciliation of sorts with Misato opening up to Shinji. Asuka... maybe not so much.

But we'll see in 2015. Or 2016? Or 2017? 2027? 2227?

Hey, if it's just Misato who reconciles with Shinji, and everyone else still hates Shinji's guts when the credits roll on Final. I'll consider that a happy ending.

@Gendo'sPapa
It's likely coming out next year for the anniversary. . . so should we really expect a long runtime? Unless Anno was working on Final and Q simultaneously (unlikely, but possible) it seems rather unlikely.

Guess I'll just have to cross my fingers, and hope that Anno knows what he's doing.

I want to see some kind of confrontation with Gendo and a completion of Shinji and Rei's narrative arcs. NGE's greatest weakness, in my mind, is its utter lack of resolution of the conflict between father and son.

I don't know if time will be a problem in Final, as long as they keep up the pace when it come to revelations of past events.

I just played the scene in Q where Shinji plays Shogi with Fyutsuki. It literally take 3 minutes. In that time we're offered quite a bit of information;

1. We see the photograph and can clearly see that Yui looked like Rei. We also see that other mysterious woman in the photo.

2. We learn about Yui's maiden name and her relationship with Fyutsuki.

3. We learn why/how Yui was absorbed by Unit 01.

4. We learn that Shinji was there and he saw what happened and we also learn why he doesn't remember it.

5. We learn Rei's origins as a clone of Yui.

6. We also learn what happened to the Rei that Shinji saved and why Rei Q is so different.

7. We're told flat out that all of this is part of Gendou's master plan. We also learn that what ever that plan is, Gendou is sacrificing everything to achieve it- including himself.

8. It also shows that Fyutsuki has great respect for what Gendou is doing and he's 100% behind it.

9. And one last little tidbit at the very end of that scene implicates Yui herself as being part of it all; is this what she wanted?

All that information revealed within the space of 3 minutes.

If they take no time at all to explain some of the events that shaped the world during the 14 year time skip, I will be annoyed. But given how much stuff was explained within 3 minutes, all it should take is a 10 minute scene where Shinji snaps and goes into a nihilistic rant about how much he screwed up, Asuka kicks his ass, and explains about all the crap she and the rest of the world had to go through these past 14 years. Whilst Shinji tries to set his broken nose back into place that is.

As for Shinji reconciling with the characters; I wonder if we don't already see some of that at the end of 3.33. Whilst she's a little bit of a dick about it, Asuka does go back for Shinji after N4I is all over; she could have left him to die of exposure or be recaptured by NERV but she didn't. You could say she was just following orders to retrieve him, but it didn't look like she was only there to detain a prisoner. Asuka is a military woman after all and an enemy prisoner would be treated a lot more roughly- she didn't even restrain him.

Those that knew him, don't hate Shinji as much as they let on in 3.33; to maintain a unified front, Shinji has to be treated with suspicion- Misato and Asuka may know N3I wasn't his fault, but how would it look for the commanding officer and senior Eva pilot to treat the harbinger of N3I as an old friend.

The reconciliation phase of Final may not take more than 20 minutes overall. Then you have a whole 60 minutes of Unit 08/02 killing NS Evas and Unit 01 breaking out of the Wunder to go f**k Gendou's s**t up.

I also hope for a happy ending but I am totally stumped on how it will happen; will they reset the world, will instrumentality take place or will they just take out Gendou and allow the survivors to live in peace and rebuild their lives?

I think we need to take everything Fuyu says with a grain of salt, considering he's a bad guy and could very well be outright lying or fudging the truth to push Shinji over the edge, (and they succeeded more or less). Then we'd need even more runtime to explain that!

Me? I'd want it to be at least "Disappearance Of Haruhi" length. But again. . .unlikely given its probably coming out for the 2015 anniversary celebration. Production is probably wrapping up around the beginning of next year, in which case. . . likely 90 minutes -120 minutes tops if Anno doubled his staff and budget.

Ray wrote:I think we need to take everything Fuyu says with a grain of salt, considering he's a bad guy and could very well be outright lying or fudging the truth to push Shinji over the edge, (and they succeeded more or less). Then we'd need even more runtime to explain that!

No. Exposition like that cannot just be ignored unless there's significant reason to dismiss it; as in, you need an actual canonical explanation for why the prior exposition is no longer acceptable as truth. What reason should we have to believe he's lying, when in fact everything he says lines up with everything else we've been shown. You cannot just close your eyes and ears to what the writer is trying to say just because he's saying it through a character you personally don't like or trust.

I think this question of needing a lot of runtime to tell the story when Anno's the guy who made heavy use of montage in the original series and EoE is silly. The guy can pack a staggering amount of information into a very small runtime, so I really don't think that will be an issue. And, frankly, we have no idea where he wants to go with the story. The only thing we know for certain is that it won't be conventional, meaning it's impossible to predict.

tl;dr -- don't worry about it. Final will split the fanbase, have us all screaming at one another for years, and then we'll ultimately get over it and accept it and start to unpack it same as with all the rest. No point to dwelling on it past that.

I guess its time we all accepted it. Evangelion will likely never get a proper ending, and we will be forced to settle for poorly written Fanfic and Manga spinoffs.

Ray wrote:I guess its time we all accepted it. Evangelion will likely never get a proper ending, and we will be forced to settle for poorly written Fanfic and Manga spinoffs.

What are you talking about? It's had two proper endings already. That's why I'm not worried about Final, the guy has a proven track record of delivering quality material even if it's not what you might want at the time.

I don't think, we can do simple math here. Like in "he needs that much time to explain this and do that". I don't think, that Anno will give us another Otaku's-wet-dream-Evangelion like Ha was. And that is the only thing I am sure about, especially after Q. And I'm quite happy with that decision.

Ray wrote:I think we need to take everything Fuyu says with a grain of salt, considering he's a bad guy and could very well be outright lying or fudging the truth to push Shinji over the edge, (and they succeeded more or less). Then we'd need even more runtime to explain that!

Well, considering his remark about "the wretched role he's playing in all this", there might be some truth to it. Then again, maybe he just meant the timing of the revelation, since he can see, that Shinji is obviously stressed out.

@robersora

Would you personally prefer a long or short runtime for Final?

Long enought to give us the END we need and deserve


What NEEDS to bloody happen is immediately after final they need to do a new Eva tv series that covers the events of the time skip that way final can just focus on telling the END And let that stuff and most of those questions lay for the time being.

^
That is my kind of sandwich

I've changed my mind, I want a solid 180 minutes. One hour for them to talk about their feelings, one hour to explain the back story, and one hour for balls to the walls action.

ChaddyManPrime wrote:^
That is my kind of sandwich

I've changed my mind, I want a solid 180 minutes. One hour for them to talk about their feelings, one hour to explain the back story, and one hour for balls to the walls action.

OMG
O... M... G...
Your a freaking genius!
I still want the tv show, BUT if that definitively will not happen, then yes your idea is absolutely perfect.
The 3 elements mixed of course not literally separated by the hour.

^
Maybe just separate them by Beginning, Middle, and End Broham.

movieartman wrote:Long enought to give us the END we need and deserve

SPOILER: Show

No harm in wishful thinking I suppose. . .

A full 180 minutes? Impossible, Anno would bankrupt his studio in the process!

^
Bankrupt them then Good Sir! They'll recover, all that merchandising and Oscar winning will save them. My God the DVD sells alone would be enough to fund a small nation.

Ray wrote:A full 180 minutes? Impossible, Anno would bankrupt his studio in the process!

I wonder. For the sake of entertaining the possibility, I really do think Anno could do a three hour movie if he so chose to do so. EoTV is the grand proof that he can deliver on a small budget, and while I'm not saying we need a 180min rehash of the EoTv method, it certainly serves to show how far creativity can go when faced with limited resources and having to spread yourself thin.

But what am I saying? Anno's got plenty of money. Even if he runs out, we're still going to get to see insane amounts of production quality behind it, at least in the parts that matter.

^
Indeed Good Sir

Final better be longer than the original series.



But seriously, Final doesn't need to be long, 20 minutes of flashbacks would be enough to explain everything, which then leaves 70-90 minutes of plot development, more than enough to resolve all the relevant plot threads.