I am talking about this.



I have heard different theories ranging from Kaworu and Kaji working together while Kaji was digging dirt on Seele and that Kaworu is reflecting on Kaji.

Plus the rusty pipe



Some say this means Kaji is dead but with Takao Kohji's comment about Kaji that does not seem likely. Could it maybe mean that Kaji is alive but injured somewhere? Does it even represent him?

I recall that there was a quick flash to the charred melon patch near the end of 2.0, around the moment that Shinji decided he was going to fight after all. Probably more so than Kaji himself, the patch may embody whatever it is that Shinji internalized from his time there.

Shinji:
The scent of the earth...

[...]

Kaji:
Making and growing things　are great hobbies.
You see and understand new things.
Stuff you didn't know before.
Fun things, for instance.

Shinji:　　　　　
And hurtful things, too, right?

Kaji:
You don't like being hurt?
　　　　　
Shinji:
I don't care much　for it.
　　　　　
Kaji:
Have you found something you enjoy?
　　　　　
Kaji:
Don't worry about it.
Knowing about hurtful things makes a person more caring.
That's not the same as being weak.
Do you like Katsuragi?

Shinji:　　　　　
Ms. Misato?
I don't dislike her.
　　　　　
Kaji:
Protect Katsuragi for me.
I can't do that. Only you can.

I always took it as simply a filling scene, Kaworu just wanted to take a stroll, maybe after making Shinji suffer by revealing to him what happened he wanted to be left alone.
The fact we see him in the melon patch is more for the audience, to hammer the devastation that befell on the city by showing us the sad an sterile remains of a familiar place from the previous movies.
Which makes me kinda sad that we didn't see Misato's apartment core eroded, that would had been a very powerful image, especially since we never saw it ruined, even in EoE. But now that the Black Moon completely obliterated what little remained of the ruins of the city, it's doubtful that we'll get to see the ruins of the apartment during the trio's wandering in FINAL.

^
The only thing that could have that scenario even more sad would be seeing PenPen's skeleton among the debris

^
I have even sadder: have Shinji manages to enter in Misato's apartment and see it turned to core and thus "preserved" exactly as it was before: the cuisine and its utensils, the big TV, Misato's futon, Shinji's old room with his old radio, his posters and magazines about astronomy... all turned to core, just symbolizing how the past Shinji longed for so desperately is but a sterile and monochromatic dream, an echo of the past that's so close from his point of view, but so far in the past for everyone else, and he'll realize that he belongs more in this ruins of a the past as a ghost of a forever lost happier time, and he'll be able to do nothing but fall on his knees and cry and scream and curse for what he became, for his damnation, as he became Death, the destroyer or worlds.

Okay now bring me that fucking Oscar!


In all seriousness, seeing Misato's apartment turned to core as if everything was frozen in time (which it actually did) would really be an extremely impacting image.

I just took it as Kaworu doing unexplained Kaworu things. Not a very deep interpretation, I know, but the simplest one.

Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:I just took it as Kaworu doing unexplained Kaworu things. Not a very deep interpretation, I know, but the simplest one.

Knowing Anno and how he fills every second of precious movie time with meaningful scenes that doesn't seem likely at all.

I don't think it has anything do do with Kaji's physical whereabouts, more than a 'symbolic' connection to previous scenes on the field - Shinji's conversation with Kaji, but also when he finds the burnt melons after Zeruel's rampage.

Beyond another reminder that Kaworu can breathe contaminated air perfectly fine, it is yet another familiar place (like the EVA 01 cage, the room with the vending machines, Gendo's office and the launching pad roundells ) that we're shown a ruined version of.

Kaji was also the one who brought Shinji to the environment preservation lab, and obviously, all of their efforts, and Kaji's own efforts, be it to grow melons, to prevent another impact or to protect Misato have gone to waste just like those melons. It's an aknowledgement/reminder that he existed, so we can be sad about whatever presumably happened to him/ at least worry even if he turns up alive.

As for Kaworu himself, I wonder if despite his affection for humans, being in his native element of angel-y destruction just comforts him in some low, instinctual way. In any case, with his head lowered like that and his usual smile absent, he looks a little regretful.
Shinji asked him to see what happened to the city, and the fair thing for a true friend to do is to show Shinji the ugly, unfiltered truth, because he needs to know what basis he's operating from to formulate any meaningful strategy - specifically, he has to know why everyone in WILLE treats him the way they do.
So Kaworu did that, but he still doesn't like to see the first person to treat him like a person and not a lab experiment going through such a painful experience, and I guess that's why he's got that expression...

Also, he probably imagined that he'd swoop in and comfort Shinji, but unlike in ep 24, his problems aren't just personal but planetary scale, and 'You torched the biosphere' isn't gonna be remedied with some cuddling. He waited a long time (although years probably don't mean as much to an ageless FoL organism as to us), thinking they'd have a good time, and now he's got Shinji all but falling to bits on him and doesn't really know what to do - which is perhaps why he hastily promised that he had a solution without ascertaining the situation first, and why he freaks out so much - "I brought him here, I convinced him, I said I had a way to fix it, and now we're in a trap he will so obviously walk right into."
Their perceived experiences are prbably rather symmetrical towards the finale; Kaworu was just the one who snapped out of his shock first and came up with some course of action... which was only slightly lmore efficient than Shinji's, in that it didn't horribly backfire, but in the end, it was Mari who made the impact vortex go away.

Short Answer? Symbolism!

I don't know how people are connecting Kaji to the rusty pipe; the rusty pipe doesn't represent Kaji. It represents Shinji's responsibility. The message of the scene with Shinji and Kaji was one of just that: responsibility. "Protect Misato" while learning to cool down and give life to another being. The pipe itself is a symbol of responsibility: it's a pipe, silver or rusty, but it's not turned on. There's no water coming out but it's function is pour water onto the soil to nourish it. It is another's responsibility to turn the handle however, and "light another candle" if you will.

To further this thought, the pipe is shown in moments of responsibility with Shinji. It's first shown when Kaji spoke to Shinji about responsibility and protecting others. It then popped up when Shinji picked himself up and ran back to NERV base to load into 01 and fight the angel that swallowed Rei. Lastly, the third time I remember it is in 3.33. The pipe is rusty and bent out of shape. Not only that but it's unlikely that it's even useful anymore - it's function is altered. Other characters - Misato, Asuka - have it right: your shit is getting old, Shinji. This responsibility of yours has served it's purpose, yet you keep chasing after it.

Either that or it represents Shinji's promise to Misato. I severely doubt a pipe represents Kaji.

The connection with Kaji is simply because the pipe was in what was his melon patch.

unitM wrote:This responsibility of yours has served it's purpose, yet you keep chasing after it.

What do you mean?

In the end, I think it's just another shot of a place familiar to us that was destroyed and twisted by whatever happened 14 years ago, to show us that there's nothing remaining of the warmth and familiarity that was present in these place 14 years ago, now everything is a giant silent tomb. Maybe it's a subtle way to convey that this place isn't where Shinji belongs anymore and that he should move on to somewhere else? (that place where he'll find hope)

ElMariachi wrote: Maybe it's a subtle way to convey that this place isn't where Shinji belongs anymore

...or alterntively, it is exactly where he belongs as a living relic or "ghost" from the past.

Kendrix wrote:...or alterntively, it is exactly where he belongs as a living relic or "ghost" from the past.

I said Shinji, not Gendo.

Hell at the end of the movie, he leaves this place behind toward a place that, according to the preview, will bring him hope, even Kaworu told him that it's where he should go. (ie instead of staying in this giant tomb awaiting death)

Gendo was a ghost of the past even before the time skip, with his obsession with Yui, only living in the past and doing whatever he can to come back to said pas (reuniting with Yui)

ElMariachi wrote:The connection with Kaji is simply because the pipe was in what was his melon patch.


What do you mean?

In the end, I think it's just another shot of a place familiar to us that was destroyed and twisted by whatever happened 14 years ago, to show us that there's nothing remaining of the warmth and familiarity that was present in these place 14 years ago, now everything is a giant silent tomb. Maybe it's a subtle way to convey that this place isn't where Shinji belongs anymore and that he should move on to somewhere else? (that place where he'll find hope)

Yeah. But that connection is meaningless, because the pipe is shown in a number of scenes without Kaji. The message of that scene had much less to do with Kaji than it did to express Shinji's learning abilities.

It could be that. But really, think about it.
-The pipe was shown when Shinji was genuinely having an intimate learning process with Kaji(learned about responsibility, different people, different timelines, very expansive).
-The pipe was shown when Shinji ran back to base to pilot 01 against an angel that devoured Rei. This scene had a lot of prominent visuals and symbols related to repsobility: Mari's conversation with Shinji was about roles, Shinji also visually got "blood on his hands", he was shown a barren wasteland where Rei was swallowed in front of him, and he personally decided to hop off a 30 foot Eva and run a mile while an Angel blew shit up around him and flung him around like a plastic bag in a Michigan Wal Mart parking lot. Despite tumbling and seeing Shinji push really hard, we're still shown a pipe. Now the earth is greyed out... but Shinji still persists. It's his role.
-Q ended up asking us about Shinji's role after he initiated 4I. Pipe around climax of movie.

I think it's more simpler that that: the pipe is the melon patch that Kaji takes care of, Kaji is nice and fatherly to Shinji, so this pipe is a nice place.
In 2.0 we see it blackened by the N² mine: the nice place is threatened (we could also extrapolate to the rest of Tokyo-3), in 3.0 it's completely twisted, rusted and in a sterile ground: the nice place (and Tokyo-3 as a whole) is dead and empty, time to move on.

Also I would like that you answer that question:

unitM wrote:This responsibility of yours has served it's purpose, yet you keep chasing after it.

What do you means here, I'm genuinely interested?

ElMariachi wrote:I think it's more simpler that that: the pipe is the melon patch that Kaji takes care of, Kaji is nice and fatherly to Shinji, so this pipe is a nice place.
In 2.0 we see it blackened by the N² mine: the nice place is threatened (we could also extrapolate to the rest of Tokyo-3), in 3.0 it's completely twisted, rusted and in a sterile ground: the nice place (and Tokyo-3 as a whole) is dead and empty, time to move on.

Also I would like that you answer that question:

What do you means here, I'm genuinely interested?

I think it's more important than being a nice comfortable place. The aquatic zoo that the cast visits is a nice place. The melon patch is a place of learning, where Kaji teaches Shinji about responsibility.

In 2.0 it's blackened, yet about the same time the scene snaps to the pipe, we are shown Shinji's extensive struggles to reclaim his responsibility - piloting the Eva. It's not shown because a place "isn't nice" anymore; that's way too vague to even be relevant. Even if it were to represent a comfortable spot, Shinji is literally being tossed around by the explosions of an Angel. That's basically out of the question. What is the underlying message in the scene is that Shinji is picking up his responsibility.

It's the same as the watermelon patch scene. This scene was a genuine intimate moment between Shinji and Kaji. Kaji opened up to Shinji and almost thrust the responsibility of Misato onto Shinji. The underlying theme here was the same: in terms of ego states, Shinji was a child for almost the entirety of the scene, up until Kaji told him to take care of Misato. Here, Kaji exchanges roles, taking one of a child, while speaking up to Shinji as a parent figure to protect Misato. It's simple transactional analysis. The scene is about responsibility.

Again, 3.0 is the same way. 3.0 is about repeating. We've seen this shit happen again and again and we're getting tired of it, Shinji. We're getting tired of you hopping into an Eva like an obedient dog. We're tired of you teetering the Earth on your fingertip of apocalypse. We're getting tired of your stubbornness, your misguided responsibility.

The topic of responsibility is easily explained. NGE Shinji expressed serious attachment issues with various members of his intimate circle of people who knew. At a young age, Shinji(NGE/NTE) was abandoned by his father. This undoubtedly fucked with his mentality. In 2, Shinji directly states that he does not know what it be a grown up. A lot of Shinji's inner struggles are ones of responsibility. Yet one responsibility he has accepted, if only to please his father, is piloting a giant robot. This is Shinji's responsibility under NERV's command.

So the pipe, representing responsibility, is shown, again. This time, it's all old and bent out. And, likewise, is Shinji's responsibility to piloting an Eva. In Q, he's aggressively swept into an Eva. However, he keeps piloting it out of his own responsibility - this time, he wants things to go back to normal, and naturally this thought is accompanied by an immense guilty feeling. We, the viewers, know he's impulsive and is rushing into bad news again. But the pipe still stands out in the scene because Shinji still holds a valid grip on his identity with an Evangelion robot - it's his responsibility to pilot it, even if he shouldn't be.

Why would they choose Kaji's pipe to represent responsibility though?

Because unitM is blowing the pipe's importance way out of proportion, hell, its importance was so low that the scene of Kaworu in the devastated melon patch was cut from the TV airing version to gain screentime!

unitM wrote:I think it's more important than being a nice comfortable place. The aquatic zoo that the cast visits is a nice place. The melon patch is a place of learning, where Kaji teaches Shinji about responsibility.

Sure the aquarium was also a nice place where Kaji acted in a fatherly fashion to Shinji, but the melon patch has the advantage of being right here in the middle of the Geofront, where Shinji could see it, and of course in the range of destruction to Rei's N² missile blast.

Now don't get me wrong, indeed the scene with EVA-02 bursting through the bunker where Shinji was, the imagery of the blood in his hands, seeing Rei dying and the devastation in the Geofront (melon patch included), all of this represent the factors that made Shinji picking up his responsibility to get back to the Eva to try to save Rei, but the melon patch was just one element of the symbolism.
In 3.0 it was just "hey, here's another familiar place reduced to ruins for extra angst after seeing what's left of the landscape", and to rub even more salt to the wound, unlike the rest of the ruined NERV, that was impersonal, here that melon patch is a place that had a personal relevance to Shinji as it's a place where he had an important conversation with someone, and again it had the advantage to be right here, as it would be weird to see Kaworu venturing all the way to the remains of Misato's apartment or even worse, the Aquarium!

ElMariachi wrote:here that melon patch is a place that had a personal relevance to Shinji as it's a place where he had an important conversation with someone, and again it had the advantage to be right here, as it would be weird to see Kaworu venturing all the way to the remains of Misato's apartment or even worse, the Aquarium!

The thing is why can't we see Kaworu's facial expression? Why is Kaworu there at all if all that's needed to convey the "familiar place that has now been damaged" idea is just to have a shot of the melon patch without Kaworu, like the shot of the destroyed Nerv doors with bullets or the row of unused Nerv bicycles.

I think Kaworu being there has meaning. Kaji and Kaworu may have known about each other but it's hard to say why and how because we have no idea what Kaji's doing in 3.0 and what his role will be in the next movie.

Well frankly we ignore almost everything about Kaworu, even what the hell he's doing at neo-NERV, so it's impossible to have an answer, the only thing we can do is to wait to see if Shin Eva gives us some answers to understand a little more Bishonen Space Jesus.