UrsusArctos wrote:But no one makes any mention of the 12th Angel when talking about Shinji's involvement in Third Impact. My guess is that Kaworu merely put the impact into suspended animation when he threw the Spear of Cassius at Eva-01.

The 12th Angel comes along and finds a battered, wrecked Nerv, breaks into Dogma and starts to fuse with Lilith, starting the "frozen" 3I again.

But at that point, N3I was frozen, and even if the twelfth angel just restarted it, is this really different from the impact which we have been led to believe an angel would have started in any case? So why blame Shinji at that point when the result of the angel getting in would have been the same with or without what had gone before? I suppose he'd weakened their defences by taking Unit-01, and maybe still Asuka, out of the loop - is that enough to blame him for everything?

Hmm, now I've written it that way, probably yes!

And yet, almost the last thing he did was stop the tenth angel (Zeruel-Q) from getting in to do the exact same thing - fate is a cruel thing.

Part of the blame is out of the old desire to find a scapegoat, and what better scapegoat than the one who unwittingly started this apocalypse? Also, I suppose they worked out that Shinji had wished to get Rei "no matter what happened to the world" - Shinji starts screaming out as much when he finally dissects Zeruel with his eyebeams. It wouldn't have taken long for them to realize that Shinji's selfish desire had manifest itself in the world around them, and that would really have hurt.

ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:What if Rei isn't in Lilith, and never was. What if Rei is the 12th angel, or in Mark.06's core? I feel we need to think outside the box like this if we're ever to make sense of Rebuild's world.

I know this post was written more than a year ago but I'm also one who always supported the idea that Rei isn't even in Shogouki and was possibly extracted before sending the Eva to outer space in the tesseract. I'm one who believes that's it possible a new Rei clone and her respective Eva, with her soul in place, was "eaten" by the 12th Angel (a la 10th Angel/Zeruel style) in attempting to stop it and then merged with Lilith with disastrous results and that's where Mark.06 comes in.....It could help explain the military vehicles down in Terminal Dogma.....there was full blown war that helped pave the way for Third Impact.

Rei IV wrote:I'm also one who always supported the idea that Rei isn't even in Shogouki and was possibly extracted before sending the Eva to outer space in the tesseract.

So Fuyutsuki was plain lying to Shinji? And if they could get Rei out, why not Yui while they're at it (let alone Shinji!)?

^
Well, Fuyu does remark, that he's playing a wretched role after Shinji's leaving...

robersora wrote:^
Well, Fuyu does remark, that he's playing a wretched role after Shinji's leaving...

Yes, the wretched role of burdening Shinji with the sudden info dump and leaving the poor kid even more stressed and confused in his situation. Not the wretched role of feeding false information for the sake of some half-assed twist that involves retconning prior exposition and blatantly lying to the audience.

pwhodges wrote:So Fuyutsuki was plain lying to Shinji?

Yeah, it looked like Fuyutsuki was being very honest there, I don't think he lied about anything. There's also the theory that Rei II was the one telepathically talking to Shinji from inside Eva-01 when the Wunder was attacked and Rei Q's entrance at that moment was just a coincidence, that makes sense since Rei II is shown to have become some sort of ethereal being in 3.0 and there is no explanation for ReiQ being a telepath.

Man, the more I think about Q, the more this house of cards if falling apart. But I guess this was the intended effect. Considering that everything what's transpiring, no matter how convoluted or twisted, is according to Gendou's plans, Anno must have made a basic layout of what happened in the timeskip. That much faith I have in him. Also, if Anno tried to go full Utena on Q, he wouldn't have left so many hints and ambiguities in this movie. Except for the case, that he did that deliberately to confuse the viewers into thinking there was a plan to this mess.

I don't even know anymore.
Q's an awesome movie though.

Rei IV wrote:I'm one who believes that's it possible a new Rei clone and her respective Eva, with her soul in place, was "eaten" by the 12th Angel (a la 10th Angel/Zeruel style) in attempting to stop it and then merged with Lilith with disastrous results and that's where Mark.06 comes in.....It could help explain the military vehicles down in Terminal Dogma.....there was full blown war that helped pave the way for Third Impact.

I'm not sure we need the Twelfth Angel to have merged with any version of Rei in order for to explain the state of affairs in Central Dogma (remember, NGE's Terminal Dogma is called Central Dogma in the Rebuilds).

It is by all means possible that Mark.06 was one of the Adams. Kaworu tells us that at some point after its initial sortie at the end of 2.22, the Eva was remodeled into an "autonomous type" -- possibly with a Rei- or Kaworu-based dummy plug, but not necessarily.

I can't help but wonder whether the Twelfth Angel merged with Mark.06, took partial or total control of the Eva, and then descended to Central Dogma in order to (re?)initiate an Impact event. Commandeering an Eva may have allowed the Twelfth Angel to get down there without triggering any of the automated self-defense mechanisms (e.g., self-destructing Nerv HQ) that might ordinarily trigger if an angel made it down that far. (Think of Kaworu commandeering Eva Unit 02 in NGE.)

The helicopters and tanks that we see in Nerv HQ and Central Dogma may have been deployed in an attempt to prevent Mark.06 from making it to Lilith.

Once the commandeered Mark.06 reached Lilith and began to merge with her, an Impact event presumably would have been triggered (Angel + Adams/Eva + Lilith). It may very well be that the Spear of Cassius was not removed from Eva Unit 01 until this point. Possibly, the Spear was removed by a Rei clone in Mark.09, or perhaps even by Mari or Asuka in Unit 02 or Unit 08, and taken to Central Dogma to stop the unfolding Impact event. Presumably whoever came to the rescue impaled Mark.06 and Lilith -- or perhaps the dummy system in Mark.06 was able to regain sufficient control to impale itself once the Spear had been provided.

Meanwhile, with the Spear of Cassius removed, Eva Unit 01 may have resumed Third Impact back on the surface, bringing about the total destruction of Tokyo-03, the creation of the Failures of Infinity, and the other topographical changes we see in the surrounding area.

Whichever Eva stopped the Central Dogma Impact event may have then beheaded Lilith (or perhaps beheaded Lilith prior to spearing her and Mark.06?) and taken the head to the Command Center, where it was accosted by Failures of Infinity.

Of course, that only begs the question of how the re-initiated Third Impact was stopped. So that may, admittedly, throw a kink in the timeline presented above. This also doesn't explain why Lilith is kneeling on a mountain of Eva-sized skulls. But I nonetheless think that some version of the above timeline is plausible.

Anyway, fast forward to 3.33. Shinji pulls the Spears, Lilith explodes, Rei!Q chops off Mark.06's head, and the Twelfth Angel encompasses Eva-13.

Note that the Twelfth Angel doesn't begin to morph into something resembling Rei/Lilith until it comes into contact with Lilith's juices. Perhaps the angel not only came into contact with Lilith's remains, but began to absorb them -- similarly to how Zeruel absorbed Eva Unit 00 and Rei II in 2.22.

Recall that in 2.22, the Door of Guf did not open -- and Third Impact did not really get underway -- until the awakened Unit 01 merged with Zeruel's core (which had absorbed Rei II).

In 3.33, Fourth Impact did not get underway until the awakened Eva-13 ate (absorbed) the Tweflth Angel, which by this point had begun to absorb Lilith's remains.

Assuming that Rei II was the vessel for Lilith's soul, as was the case in NGE, then we have a pattern emerging: Angel + part of Lilith + awakened Eva = Impact

UrsusArctos wrote:The 12th Angel comes along and finds a battered, wrecked Nerv, breaks into Dogma and starts to fuse with Lilith, starting the "frozen" 3I again. So while the Third Impact in question is the one started by Shinji and with EVa-01 as the trigger, the 12th Angel starts to hijack it.

My problem with this is that the 12th Angel is made out to be trapped inside Mark.06. It possibly always was. Mark.06 with the 12th angel inside, appears to have been sent down by humans (Nerv/Seele/ or Wille) -- as Kaworu says the Eva was "exploited by the Lilin".

One point about the triggers though: Asuka states that the 12th Angel being alive could start up Third Impact again -- but Kaworu states that Lilith is dead. So perhaps the 12th Angel was the ultimate trigger for 3I. Unless Asuka expected the 12th Angel to try to merge with Eva-13 -- but she says all this before Rei-Q releases the angel. Third Impact appears to depend on the 12th Angel simply being alive and "unspeared", perhaps because of Shinji in N3I. ... Perhaps we're getting off track

A.T. Fish wrote:Yeah, it looked like Fuyutsuki was being very honest there, I don't think he lied about anything.

I agree. One very important rule of Eva analysis is that we should accept what is literally stated and shown in the show itself, unless we have evidence to the contrary. If Fuyutsuki says that Rei is in the core, then she is. If Kaworu says that "all this" was started by Shinji, then it was. My feeling is that Fuyutsuki's infodump in particular is likely to be the most rock solid information source in all of Eva. I think we can trust what he says here.

Ah Q wrote:Commandeering an Eva may have allowed the Twelfth Angel to get down there without triggering any of the automated self-defense mechanisms (e.g., self-destructing Nerv HQ) that might ordinarily trigger if an angel made it down that far.

Excellect point. We're directly told in 2.0 that Angels cannot enter Lilith's chamber (Dogma) without security measures blowing the whole thing up. We're also shown that Angels can "absorb" Evas to bypass this. While my feeling is that the 12th Angel was always inside Mark.06, I feel this is an important point which establishes that an Angel did not -- by itself -- gain access to Lilith. It could only go inside Mark.06.

Ah Q wrote:Assuming that Rei II was the vessel for Lilith's soul, as was the case in NGE, then we have a pattern emerging: Angel + part of Lilith + awakened Eva = Impact

The ingredient missing here is a "trigger". In fact, I think a trigger might be all that's required. But we're getting off track into "Impact Mechanics" territory and from experience I think we know that a such general threads tend not to lead anywhere definitive.

ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:Excellect point. We're directly told in 2.0 that Angels cannot enter Lilith's chamber (Dogma) without security measures blowing the whole thing up. We're also shown that Angels can "absorb" Evas to bypass this. While my feeling is that the 12th Angel was always inside Mark.06, I feel this is an important point which establishes that an Angel did not -- by itself -- gain access to Lilith. It could only go inside Mark.06.

My pet theory is that since Mark.06 was one of the four ADAMs, like EVA-13 it lacked the capacity to raise an AT-Field, but probably compensated with other tricks (flying, maybe some eye beams, extreme resilience albeit not to the ridiculous point of Mark.09), which worked fine against the 11th Angel.
But then came the 12th, that acted like Armisael in NGE, with the power to take possession of an Eva, but it's possible to keep it at bay by raising an AT-Field... oops.
So the 12th take possession of Mark.06, which then proceed to go down the Main Shaft to Lilith herself, but the 12th couldn't leave Mark.06 even a second, since it would then be detected and NERV's self-destruct mechanism would be activated, so it decapitated Lilith and made the Mark.06 fuse with her neck stump, that way the 12th could start to fuse with Lilith without having to poke its head out. During all this time the JSSDF desperately tried to stop it or at least stale it enough time so NERV would think of a solution, explaining the tanks and VTOLs inside Lilith's Chamber.

At which point someone brought the Spear of Cassius down there and impale Mark.06/12th Angel with it, stopping the Impact (but not before it made some serious damages, probably leading to what we saw in Q)

ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:The ingredient missing here is a "trigger". In fact, I think a trigger might be all that's required. But we're getting off track into "Impact Mechanics" territory and from experience I think we know that a such general threads tend not to lead anywhere definitive.

If "Impact Trigger" is a catch-all term for anyone having the power to open a Door of Guf, then yes, then the Angels and SoL are too Impact Triggers, because an Angel entering in contact with Lilith is enough to start an Impact.

I'll be brief with this question, has anyone speculated that the spears impaling the mark.06 and Lilith might have been from the inside out?
Another theory I'm adding if not already disputed is that when Lilith had been resurrected with the merger with the Mark.06, she assimilated Eva-01, complete with the spear still impaling it, only for Eva-01 to awaken inside of Lilith and tear her apart from the inside out.

^
But how could had EVA-01 awoke again if it was still impaled with the Spear?

ElMariachi wrote:^
But how could had EVA-01 awoke again if it was still impaled with the Spear?

I didn't have time to elaborate, extremely busy schedule as of late. I'll keep it brief and to the point so it can be dissected later.

The Mark.06 descends down into level eee, it removes the spear and merges itself wholly into Lilith with spear in hand and with the 12th angel contained within it. Lilith begins to regenerate and begins to ascend towards the geofront. A vortex begins to form atop of tokyo 3 resuming third impact. Lilith, or the Mark.06 controller her still regenerating body, reaches for unit 01 and absorbs it into herself.

Whilst the two Evas have been absorbed, the Mark.06, inside Lilith along with unit 01, removes Cassius. The vortex above tokyo 3 becomes larger. In the last step for Lilith to be resurrected, the Mark.06 reaches into unit 01s core and attempts to retrieve Lilith's/Rei's soul. Shinji, who of course still remains in the core along with her, discovers the attempt by a foreign entity to take Rei away from him, reacts, violently.

I need to end it here as my lunch break has almost finished, I will try to add more to theory unless someone comes along and debunks everything I've just said.

Interesting thoughts, but how would Shinji react, assuming he was unaware of what was happening the past 14 years in Eva-01? I could see Yui as the control system reacting violently, and people naturally assuming it was Shinji's doing.

@Wiser

This or something similar to this is my theory too.

I prefer to think that Unit-01 was put into orbit before 3I, and that the blame attached to Shinji for the angel being able to restart it is indirect (by causing their main defence to become unavailable, as brought up in another thread recently). Highlighting this connection might also have been some deliberate FUD in the reporting of the event, which Kaworu then passes on to Shinji without analysis.

If Unit-01 restarts the impact, how is she then restrained again while leaving Mk-6 where we find her in Q?

wiser3754 wrote:I'll be brief with this question, has anyone speculated that the spears impaling the mark.06 and Lilith might have been from the inside out?

The imagery suggests that Mark.06 at least has impaled itself. This is reinforced by the later imagery of Eva-13 doing the same. We have no definitive evidence but I'd bet on this being Mark.06's own doing.

wiser3754 wrote:A vortex begins to form atop of tokyo 3 resuming third impact....

This is actually a fairly intriguing point in and of itself. A vortex appears in N3I and in 4I, so what about 3I? How did this vortex open? It's worth noting that in both N3I and 4I, an awakened trigger with two souls inside it was used to open the vortices. Maybe the fusion of Mark.06 and Lilith in Central Dogma represents an attempt to artificially create such a two-soulled construct? Prior to the later creation of Eva-13 that is. The question is, how does Shinji and N3I fit into such a story?

I'm not certain about the idea that Eva-01 was absorbed into Lilith, but perhaps Eva-01 was used in some way during the removal of Lilith's head? I don't think Eva-01 necessarily needs to be launched straight into orbit.

pwhodges wrote:I prefer to think that Unit-01 was put into orbit before 3I,

Oops - I got this wrong. The tesseract has the Neo-Nerv logo on it, so presumably comes after the split with Wille.

pwhodges wrote:Oops - I got this wrong. The tesseract has the Neo-Nerv logo on it, so presumably comes after the split with Wille.

I could of sworn it has the IPEA logo on it along with the Nemesis' horde.

Anyway my posts in this thread I was trying to bridge the correlation between the Foi and Unit-01. Despite all the theories that I've read in this forum it was the latest one I could come up with and is probably going to the last.