ElMariachi wrote:Well frankly we ignore almost everything about Kaworu

If this is about Evageek culture as a whole then I definitely agree that you guys do (and its a little bit suspicious for everyone outside EG). But that's a separate issue I guess.

obliterates wrote:If this is about Evageek culture as a whole then I definitely agree that you guys do (and its a little bit suspicious for everyone outside EG). But that's a separate issue I guess.

I don't get what you mean by "Evageek culture", it's just simple observation: what do we know about NTE!Kaworu? That he's the First Angel, and that he wants to bring happiness to Shinji. Nothing else.

What are his motivations for wanting to make Shinji happy since they never even met? We don't know. If he's the First Angel, meaning ADAM, then what about the three others? Unknown. Does he really cares about mankind like his NGE!counterpart? Unknown, since after all he was still hanging at neo-NERV. What are his allegiances, aside to Shinji, is he loyal to SEELE, how does he sees the HIP? We don't know.

In NGE, although he was much worse at interactions, at least we knew his motivations and reasons for acting the way he did: at first he followed SEELE's plans since he was indoctrinated since his "creation" and because it coincided with his angelic instinct telling him to start an Impact, but then got to experiment the Lilin civilization during his infiltration of NERV, notably through his interactions with Shinji, and in the end decided that the Lilin was more worthy of inheriting the planet than the Angels, even thought they were the "rightful" owners of Earth according to the FAR plans, and thus let himself be killed by Shinji. (all of this somehow being exactly how SEELE planed it)

But in NTE we get nothing of that, of what makes Kaworu acts the way he did. So either Shin Eva will give us some answers about him, or else Kaworu will definitively be the most flat and one dimensional character of the New Eva, a complete and bland satellite character. Hell so far even Mari is more rounded up than him, even though Kaworu got a whole movie being a deuteragonist!

Well, dude, firstly, it's not Kaji's pipe. It's a pipe in the ground that's shown during a very intimate scene between Shinji and Kaji.

Personally, I can't answer why Anno pointed his finger on a list of objects and it just happened to land on "a pipe." That I can't explain. That aside, a pipe is a great representation of responsibility. In the scenes it's portrayed in, it's never on, but it's function is still the same: it gives life to the world around it. It also requires someone else to turn the handle and start this fountain, so it, in itself, is just another link in the chain of responsibility.

"Blowing something way out of proportion" doesn't refute my points. Sorry buddy. Fact is, there was an intimate exchange between Kaji and Shinji in the melon field. The scene had strong messages of responsibility in it. Subsequent scenes of the pipe also showed an importance of responsibility, minus the Kaji(which is a hilariously simple explanation anyways). I never claimed anything was important but merely that some interpretations of the scene were, in my opinion, wrong.

The only thing I really have to suggest to argue against what your saying ElM - what you're saying could be very well correct, it is a solid opinion, the line of reasoning is just a little different for mine - is that it seems like you brush off the melon patch/pipe symbolism as "just something else." Out of everything to be shown on the landscape, to be of interest to us, the viewer, in Q(think about that for a second), we were flashed an image of a pipe. Yes, it may be a stretch to say that a pipe represents responsibility, but surely you can understand why I say that:

An important and discreet scene happened between Shinji and Kaji. Almost every time, up until now, responsibility was thrust onto Shinji through a solid parental figure ex. Gendou "pilot the Eva or leave." However, in this scene, responsibility was thrust upon Shinji, not as an aggressive shout from an unmovable parental figure, but from someone who was scared. This was a child figure, confiding in another child who was positioned to be bigger, in conversation, than the person asking for the request. "Promise me you'll take care of Misato because I can't" is essentially a childlike position: please help me with this because I can't do it myself. It's one boy asking the other boy beside him for help around a campfire. "Pilot the Eva" is a chain mail thrown onto an untrained warrior as he is rushed onto the battlefield.

Ego states are an important thing in Evangelion. It's important to understand the underlying communication going on between two people and happening in various scenes.

I'm only aiming to address the pipe... but perhaps Kaworu was at the melon patch to observe what Shinji had created(with Kaji) and get a better grip of what Shinji wants(in regards to instrumentality). With a blank expression, he would have been in an observant stance. So I'd go with that - Kaworu was indirectly picking up what Shinji wants in this lifetime, through a prosocial behavior Shinji expressed intimately with another person.

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with you about the importance of the conversations between Shinji and Kaji, since the latter acts like a father figure that talks truthfully to him and is honest about his request without guilt-trip to make Shinji agreed (similar to how Misato was truthful when she showed Lilith to Shinji and explained why they are fighting the Angels, so Shinji could had all the informations to take his decision to continue piloting or not), in complete contrast with Gendo's methods (and Kaworu's while we are on it)

What I'm disagreeing about is about the pipe itself: I know that Eva is full of symbolism, but for me that pipe is just a marker so we could identify the place once its altered: the only distinctive features of Kaji's watermelon path are the watermelons, the wood panel with Kaji's name on it, and the pipe (and yes the pipe is Kaji's, it's the one he uses to water his plants). The plants and wood panel can't possibly survive a nuke and whatever the hell happened with Third Impact, the only element that have a remote chance of surviving this and staying in a recognizable shape is the pipe, so it's the pipe we see.

unitM wrote:I'm only aiming to address the pipe... but perhaps Kaworu was at the melon patch to observe what Shinji had created(with Kaji) and get a better grip of what Shinji wants(in regards to instrumentality). With a blank expression, he would have been in an observant stance. So I'd go with that - Kaworu was indirectly picking up what Shinji wants in this lifetime, through a prosocial behavior Shinji expressed intimately with another person.

I really can't see how Kaworu could know that Shinji and Kaji had a conversation in this melon patch, I think it's just that Kaworu was taking a stroll outside, deep in thoughts, and just happened to stop at that melon patch, so the audience could see another familiar place wrecked.

I can't see it either, but we're talking about perhaps the most observant angel here - so observant that it took the form of a human. Kaworu has shown a keen interest in Shinji's general psychology, so there is some motivation from his side to ascertain more information through indirect, perhaps alien-to-us methods.

I don't mean Kaworu knowing that Shinji and Kaji had a conversation either. Okay. You know how trappers work, right? They follow indirect behaviors tied to animals to identify and trap animals for whatever reason. A trapper studies the footprints of the animals the foliage that has been recently munched on, the poop... you get it. All of these techniques are an indirect way of figuring out an animal's patterns so it can be trapped.

Kaworu can be operating the same way here. Like I said, he's already shown an interest in general human motivations, and not just Shinji's likes and dislikes. In fact, Kaworu really hasn't asked what Shinji is interested in; he basically pushed piano-playing onto him, as if somehow knowing that Shinji required a role model in his life at that very moment. Kaworu has, however, shown interest in Shinji's interest. Nothing specific, but just the psychology of interest, which would be the psychology of the human species.

We certainly have reason to believe Kaworu had ulterior motives regarding Shinji as well; his motivation to "trap" is there. I don't think he was observing a conversation between Kaji and Shinji at the melon patch, but just Shinji's mark on the melon patch. Perhaps he has a 6th acute angel sense that allows him to detect these subtleties in more vivid ways. Perhaps a comparison was being drawn in roles between Kaji and Kaworu - they intersect at several points. Perhaps it's nothing.

You know, you're making Kaworu looks like the creepiest stalker ever here!

unitM wrote:Kaworu can be operating the same way here. Like I said, he's already shown an interest in general human motivations, and not just Shinji's likes and dislikes.

Not even that, from his first appearance in the Moon to his death, his one and only topic of conversation was Shinji, he never once expressed his feelings about the Lilin this time, unlike his NGE counterpart, to the point that I really suspects him of not caring at all about the rest of mankind and even going along with SEELE's HIP because for him it's the key to Shinji's happiness, the rest of mankind be damned.

That would actually make him a more interesting character than if he was this pure and saintly Angel that decided to give everything he has to make Shinji happy for no reasons.

ElMariachi wrote:

What are his motivations for wanting to make Shinji happy since they never even met?

Affinity/Sympathy for someone in the same situation as potential unwilling impact trigger/ "predetermined Child". And then, after actually meeting him, he just found him to be likeable/interesting and, more importantly, got treated with something other than cautious fear for once.

ElMariachi wrote: Does he really cares about mankind like his NGE!counterpart? Unknown, since after all he was still hanging at neo-NERV. What are his allegiances, aside to Shinji, is he loyal to SEELE, how does he sees the HIP? We don't know.

Uh, this is even outright stated. He explicitly says, while trying to persuade Shinji, that he wants to prevent instrumentality/subvert Gendo's plan. Being at Neo Nerv doesn't imply agreeing with them; Likely, SEELE put him there to do their bidding (See Gendo's and Fuyu's conversations), and honestly, where would he go? To WILLE? We've seen how they treated Shinji, and he used to be one of their own.
Would he even have the means to get to them, and isn't being right at the heart of what Gendo and/or SEELE are doing a more useful position that "scavenging out in the desert?"

He says he wants to preserve humanity; He says he wants (together with Shinji) to become their "hope", and he does his fanboying over musical duetts and other Lillim pastimes (such as stargazing), does it have to be spoonfed?

Even after we got explicit statements of "Kaworu was meant to be a likeable character/ideal friend", people go and see how they can twist it around so he's still evil.

Being realistic is about dealing with/doing the best with what is actually available, not to inflict "character building pain" on yourself for the sake of pain; Somehow, people (and the tendency is particularly high in this decade's particular popculture) immediately distrust anything that is ever presented as "good" just for it's own sake, sucking unfortunate implications wherever they want to see them. There must be a catch? Well, isn't the fact that he turns out to be something nonhuman (In NGE, that meant he had to be killed; In Q, their operating on different vocabularies and layers of the big plan results in Shinji not getting the message and severity of much of what he says down in Lillith's chamber) and tragically dies (with our protagonist ending up worse than before) enough of a "catch"?

It's a basic breather episode/hope spot arrangement.

You also have to differentiate between Shinji's PoV/ personal experience ("Someone nice just falls out of the sky and treats me well for no discernable reason") from Kaworu's own PoV and the reality of his situation, as much as such a thing can be found; One of Shinji's defining problems is that no matter what others tell him, he never quite stops doubting wether they really like him/ don't secretly hate him because he's got this idea that there is nothing about him that is worth liking; Hence, when someone makes it glaringly obvious (and that's really the biggest difference between Kaworu and, say, Rei, Misato or the stooges. In part because of his personality, in part because of his position as an "outsider" to the establishes setting and flock of characters, there's no rationalizing him away. ), Shinji gets this huge complex about being so undeserving and inferior to Kaworu; But Kaworu needn't see it that way/ IS acting that way for reasons, reasons that needn't be that different from Shinji's.

It's all there; It's just that as with Rei, you need to pay attention to detail, and as with Mari, you don't need to know the technicalities of whose payroll he' on and how he got everywhere for the character and the way he reacts to and comments on things, and treats others, to speak for themselves.

ElMariachi wrote:What I'm disagreeing about is about the pipe itself: I know that Eva is full of symbolism, but for me that pipe is just a marker so we could identify the place once its altered: the only distinctive features of Kaji's watermelon path are the watermelons, the wood panel with Kaji's name on it, and the pipe (and yes the pipe is Kaji's, it's the one he uses to water his plants). The plants and wood panel can't possibly survive a nuke and whatever the hell happened with Third Impact, the only element that have a remote chance of surviving this and staying in a recognizable shape is the pipe, so it's the pipe we see.

I agree with this, tho; The pipe is just a pipe; It's function is to tie the scenes/ place together. Nothing beyond, "Ohh, connection" without saying anything about the connection in particular;

There was never any indication (interviews, fancy episode titles, flashing text, shoehorned dialogue) to suggest that something relatively modern like ego-state-theory went into making this; It can be an interesting PoV to analyze it from, perhaps but it is not "the intended solution/interpretation for the scene".

Symbolism =/= needless roundaboutness at coveying crucial info. They DO want us to get the point eventually. It's a short scene that is there more for atmosphere/aesthetics than content. Is it contrived that Kaworu would randomly end up on a previously plot-relevant location? Perhaps, but this is a movie, and the patch was previously shon to be close enough to heardquarters.

obliterates wrote:The thing is why can't we see Kaworu's facial expression?

But we DO see it; shadowed eyes frowny face is a basic anime staple. His mouth is there, ain't it? Same position it was during most of his "giving Shinji the unpleasant truth he wanted"; Hence, why I'd interpret this scene as the aftermath of that, and Kaworu sort of thinking about it.

Kendrix wrote:Affinity/Sympathy for someone in the same situation as potential unwilling impact trigger/ "predetermined Child". And then, after actually meeting him, he just found him to be likeable/interesting and, more importantly, got treated with something other than cautious fear for once.

That would work, if it wasn't the first freaking thing he thought about and the seemingly only objective he set for himself since the very second he was "activated"!

All his scenes in 1.0 and 2.0 were teasing about the fact that somehow Kaworu already know Shinji even though it should be impossible since they are literally a celestial body apart!

Kendrix wrote:Uh, this is even outright stated. He explicitly says, while trying to persuade Shinji, that he wants to prevent instrumentality/subvert Gendo's plan. Being at Neo Nerv doesn't imply agreeing with them; Likely, SEELE put him there to do their bidding (See Gendo's and Fuyu's conversations), and honestly, where would he go? To WILLE? We've seen how they treated Shinji, and he used to be one of their own.
Would he even have the means to get to them, and isn't being right at the heart of what Gendo and/or SEELE are doing a more useful position that "scavenging out in the desert?"

He talked about thwarting NERV's plans, Gendo's plans, he never said anything about SEELE, hell he didn't mentioned SEELE or even informed Shinji of their existence, and they are mankind's main antagonists for 14 years, the one behind all this madness since 2I, the ones from who Gendo takes his orders, the ones Kaworu is an agent of, that's an awfully big omission to make.

Kendrix wrote:He says he wants to preserve humanity; He says he wants (together with Shinji) to become their "hope", and he does his fanboying over musical duetts and other Lillim pastimes (such as stargazing), does it have to be spoonfed?

Not quite, and that's where it gets interesting: in NGE he was flat out fanboying over the Lilin and their accomplishments, notably songs, and explicitly tells it more than once, even outright stating in the end that Instrumentality is a dead end for mankind and that SEELE are wrong, but in NTE, the movies supposed to be much more streamlined and direct to the point, he never states that he admires the Lilin or their accomplishments, only that piano sounds nice when it's played by two people (and it was later revealed that the purpose of the piano was to train Shinji to synchronization to activate EVA-13's special abilities, although I have no doubt that Kaworu genuinely enjoyed his plays with Shinji), only likes stargazing because Shinji likes it (hell, he spends most of the time looking at Shinji than the stars!), and while explaining the HIP to Shinji, tells him it's something programmed since almost forever and what let the Lilin overcome their inability to naturally evolve, at no point does he states that it's not a good thing for mankind.

Add to that the canyon-sized holes in his account of what happened 14 years ago, information that by all logic he's supposed to know since he was there when it happened, and you understand that I might thing that there's more to him than what looks like at first glance.


But...

Kendrix wrote:Even after we got explicit statements of "Kaworu was meant to be a likeable character/ideal friend", people go and see how they can twist it around so he's still evil.

I'm not saying that Kaworu is evil, I really think that his concern and love for Shinji are genuine, and maybe he does also find the Lilin accomplishments fascinating, but that his first and only objective is Shinji's happiness, and that everything else is secondary, you can't deny that the only thing that's on his mouth is how he'll make Shinji happy (even adding "at any cost" at the end of 2.0), and that if what he perceives being Shinji's happiness passes by Instrumentality, so be it.

Kendrix wrote:Being realistic is about dealing with/doing the best with what is actually available, not to inflict "character building pain" on yourself for the sake of pain; Somehow, people (and the tendency is particularly high in this decade's particular popculture) immediately distrust anything that is ever presented as "good" just for it's own sake, sucking unfortunate implications wherever they want to see them. There must be a catch?

Yes.
Yes, because in NGE even if Kaworu's behavior is explained by his "otherworldliness", there is a logical progression that explains why he finally decided to forfeit his race's right over Earth to pass it to the Lilin: first he's an agent of SEELE, that finally was sent out of whatever SEELE base/laboratory he was confined to go infiltrate NERV, and get to experience Lilin culture for the first time, and find it fascinating, but is still determined to accomplish his duty as ADAM, then he mets Shinji Ikari, and through their interactions, finds him (and the rest of the Lilin) ever more fascinating, then once arriving at Terminal Dogma and realizing that it was Lilith down there and not ADAM, and thus that SEELE has tricked him, he decided that it was the last push he needed to not pursue his instinct and duty as an Angel (that and Rei ready to get serious against him), and instead let EVA-01 crush him.
Here you could see the pathway that led the progenitor of the Angels to betray his kin.

But in NTE, from the get go he goes wanting to meet and make Shinji happy from the get go even though he's on the freaking Moon and thus couldn't possibly experience any of the Lilin culture, and in a franchise where it's kept hammered that interaction between people is complicated (Hedgehog Dilemma and all that) and that a relationship is something that you have to build through exchange and that you won't get everything of someone else no matter what, having a living saint coming out of nowhere wanting the joy and happiness of others by virtue of the cosmic powers that be is Just. Not. Believable.

Kendrix wrote:You also have to differentiate between Shinji's PoV/ personal experience ("Someone nice just falls out of the sky and treats me well for no discernable reason") from Kaworu's own PoV and the reality of his situation, as much as such a thing can be found; One of Shinji's defining problems is that no matter what others tell him, he never quite stops doubting wether they really like him/ don't secretly hate him because he's got this idea that there is nothing about him that is worth liking; Hence, when someone makes it glaringly obvious (and that's really the biggest difference between Kaworu and, say, Rei, Misato or the stooges. In part because of his personality, in part because of his position as an "outsider" to the establishes setting and flock of characters, there's no rationalizing him away. ), Shinji gets this huge complex about being so undeserving and inferior to Kaworu; But Kaworu needn't see it that way/ IS acting that way for reasons, reasons that needn't be that different from Shinji's.

Here you're mixing NGE and NTE, in NTE Shinji's situation is vastly different: here it's not just in his head, people really seems to hate him for some reason, and Kaworu is not just someone nice treating him well for no reason, he's someone his age that doesn't threatens to murder him at the first misstep, and aside from Rei who doesn't talk to him, the only living being for kilometers around, it's impossible for them to not interact.
So they interact, and it turns out that Kaworu had a plan for Shinji since the beginning, which is to make him trust him and train him to synchronization so Kaworu could bring Shinji his happiness, although there's no doubt that Kaworu also simply wanted to spend time with Shinji and genuinely enjoyed every moment of it.

I almost get Homura Akemi vibes when i read parts of your analysis on NTE Kaworu, ELMariachi.

I think Shinji is closer to Homura, personally. After all, he would destroy the world to get what he wanted-- and Kaworu would sacrifice himself for Shinji's sake. Kaworu seems more like Madoka in this case.

WunderBah wrote:I almost get Homura Akemi vibes when i read parts of your analysis on NTE Kaworu, ELMariachi.

Yes, that's something I realized sometimes after I made that topic about Kaworu's intentions back then, especially in the light of what happened in Rebellion!

@ Nuke: IMHO, the Kaworu/Homura comparison is more accurate, both are obsessed by someone else and ready to do anything to protect and made said person happy, including sacrificing themselves, Madoka and Shinji also have some similarities by both being good natured people that suffer from a big lack of self-esteem and desire to be useful to others, the main difference being that Madoka had a loving family that mitigated her issues, while Shinji was left all alone, I'm sure that had Madoka not benefited from her family, she would had ended as cripplingly insecure and introverted as Shinji.

ElMariachi wrote:Yes, that's something I realized sometimes after I made that topic about Kaworu's intentions back then, especially in the light of what happened in Rebellion!

[s]Just had to.[/s]

But yeah, agreed lol.

What I find completely polarizing in the image of Kaworu in that field is the core eroded buildings that have fallen into the geo-front and yet the melon patch and a collapsed power pole/transformer laying desolate nearby. Why are buildings 'core' and yet the power transformer that had obviously been in Tokyo3 remained unscathed?

wiser3754 wrote:What I find completely polarizing in the image of Kaworu in that field is the core eroded buildings that have fallen into the geo-front and yet the melon patch and a collapsed power pole/transformer laying desolate nearby. Why are buildings 'core' and yet the power transformer that had obviously been in Tokyo3 remained unscathed?

If you look closely at the background in this scene, you'll notices that the fallen buildings and blast shields are still of their original material, and not turned to core, this with the power pole, ground and pipe also being normal indicates that the Geofront was somehow spared by the core erosion, and that only things on the surface level was affected.

Let's see, now... what if Kaworu is Kaji? They are both incarnations of the same being?

Nah, couldn't be - but I wonder if anyone will try running with it...

pwhodges wrote:Let's see, now... what if Kaworu is Kaji? They are both incarnations of the same being?

The similarities between Kaworu and Kaji (particularly expression and pose) are unmistakable both in NGE and in NTE.


However, this doesn't mean they must be in any way related to each other.
There's a theory that has been running for quite some time which proposes that the DNA used during the Contact Experiment with Adam was actually Dr Katsuragi's, which resulted in Kaworu being a "clone" of him with a SoL soul, a la Yui-Rei. We don't know what Dr Katsuragi looked like, but we do know that Kaji resembles him in personality and maybe appearence, as stated by Misato during the series. This could explain the similarities between Kaworu and Kaji in NGE. NTE's explanation could be vastly different.

Combining NGE and NTE is currently a big no-no, Electreel.

I'm not combining them, that's why I said NTE's explanation could be vastly different from NGE's one.

@Nuke: Bringing up NGE in an NTE discussion is no no-no, bro, it's pointing to a fact in one series and pretending like it's true in the other that's the fallacy. And I didn't see Electreel doing any of that. He might as well have been discussing the origin of the character designs.

ElMariachi wrote:That would work, if it wasn't the first freaking thing he thought about and the seemingly only objective he set for himself since the very second he was "activated"!

All his scenes in 1.0 and 2.0 were teasing about the fact that somehow Kaworu already know Shinji even though it should be impossible since they are literally a celestial body apart!

Uh, he read Shinji's files. He's affiliated with SEELE, set to carry out some plan for them - a plan that involves stopping Gendo from doing something with unit one. Is that really such a mystery?