I don't know what's so funny about an emotionally manipulative groomer who is so convinced of his own rightness that he easily fools not only the compromised protagonist, but audience members with access to greater amounts of information who really ought to know better. The movies make no secret of whose side Kaworu is really on, and they've allowed him to flaunt his creepy, obsessive nature from the very beginning. When he's around Shinji he can be one hell of a beautiful, delicate lamb, but this Lamb of God has all the cunning and predatory instinct of a wolf. Don't act like you've been tricked or that the story makes no sense when Shin forcibly pulls the wool away from Shinji's eyes. We tried to warn you.

Reichu wrote:emotionally manipulative groomer

In a way. The problem is, how actually not to groom Shinji, when he is what he is and acts as he acts. If he was a 4yo child, things would be clear; however he's a goddamn 14yo teen, who should already have some psychological defensive mechanisms developed and functional. But apparently he has none of those and that's why he just screams to be exploited. So he is exploited, because life is a harsh bitch and there should be some limits in keeping a kid secure from its dangers. Otherwise kid will never mature.

On the other hand however, the last shot of Kaworu in Q is a clean reference to The Sin City, so perhaps Kaworu really is written as a cold-blooded villain. But another question arises from what you are decrypting as Blake'ian mythology. What if it's Shinji's Adamese preincarnation who is actually responsible for breaking that godlike communion of souls? If this is the case, Kaworu could simply seek a way to punish Shinji for that apocalyptic event - and he could be even right doing so.

The last Anno Evangelion story had Kaworu's last appearance be one of him telling Shinji about love and hope for humanity (in EoE). And if anything it seemed like he was manipulated by Seele.

In Rebuild there is a very mysterious air to Kaworu, but I don't think anything indicating he is manipulating Shinji.
(I've watched Q obsessively more times than I'll admit, but maybe I'm forgetting something.)

For all we know, the two Longinus Spears might have actually solved everything, but playing with fire wasn't a good idea.
Plus trusting the unstable Shinji to handle the situation.

Kaworu shows Shinji the outside world, but I think that's because the harsh truth had to come at some point.
If the shot of Kaworu right after the eyecatch isn't him worrying about Shinji, I don't know what its point is.

On the one hand, this is just a story, but on the other, I do find Kaworu apologia to be genuinely unsettling because predators like him exist in the real world and similarly deceive people who refuse to consider that they might be up to something rotten. "He's a really nice guy and he would never hurt anyone!" -- never heard that one before...

We've tried to link you to arguments that go into greater detail on this issue. I even attempted to appeal to you on the basis that Kaworu might be gray rather than sparkling white. You just keep appealing to ignorance over and over again. If you're simply not interested in considering anything else, I do wonder if there is any point in continuing this.

Kaworu isn’t someone who just so happened to have met Shinji and taken a liking to him, slowly building up a relationship with him as equals. He planned and plotted from the start. Non-creepy dudes don’t wander around in the nude going “This time I will make you happy,” weeks or months prior to first meeting the person. That’s clear visual coding in the film signifying to the audience that this guy isn’t all on the up and up. Even if he wasn’t a liar and was merely acting based on false information, the way in which he was acting was still weird and creepy. He can still be a bad person even if he was telling the truth the whole time. Knowledge of and adherence to the truth does not excuse awful, premeditative behavior. He always had the “upper hand” over Shinji as far as information went, and decided to reveal just enough on his own terms, resulting in Shinji being devastating even further, rather than informing Shinji in a tactful and healthy way. That is manipulative, regardless of the truthfulness of his statements.

It just doesn’t help Kaworu’s case that he was either lying or misguided himself as he was being a creepy stalker.

Reichu wrote:We tried to warn you.

From his first appearance in EvaTV, Kaworu is a character who understands that his destruction will save humanity from total annihilation. When he considers the destruction of himself versus that of all humanity, it's an easy decision to delete himself, and the reason he adores Shinji is because Shinji is the human that was able to show him the true nature of the species as a whole. In general, Kaworu (Adam) should want to eliminate his competition and remake the planet in its own image, but because Kaworu has a chance to experience humanity from the perspective of a human he becomes obsessed with the idea of saving Lilin from annihilation. SEELE can bring him back to life again and again, and he may be a pawn in their plan, but I believe his intentions are to save Mankind from its own destruction and remove himself from the equation entirely, perhaps to the extent of preventing himself from landing on Earth at all. He shows no desire to want to eliminate Lilith or her brood.
Gendo, on the other hand, can see all of the pieces and is using them to slay God and finalize instrumentality. By the time Gendo erases SEELE in 3.0 they believe their plans will be realized. Perhaps Gendo is following their plans more closely than he knows. Perhaps SEELE understands Adam's intentions better than anyone else. But within his power, Kawory will eventually give humanity a new chance, and has enough rebirths to ensure Gendo's attempts to deny the prospects of 3I are never realized.

writer wrote:From his first appearance in EvaTV

We're talking about the Kaworu from the films in this thread. TV Kaworu isn't relevant.

Also, Seele are dead.

NGE Kaworu was more neutral, though we should remember that he was still okay with meeting Shinji to satiate his own curiosity even though he knew he would have to kill him or be killed by him within a day, which eventually happened. He hurts Shinji not out of malice, but, yeah, innocence. This doesn't mean he doesn't represent escapism and an unattainable, unhealthy ideal. Also, remember that he says that in EoE as Adam and together with Rei as Lilith, in the plural, yet Shinji rejects just having those idealizations because he has realised he needs reality. Hell, we do have to remember that the real "guardian angel" and/or Jesus figure in Eva is Rei after all, not Kaworu.

I think NGE Kaworu is relevant because his Rebuild self seems to me like a thematic response and revision to him and his reception (Rei as well l. All of this is simply amped up and taken to a logical extreme in 3.0, in which Kaworu is okay with manipulating and actively generating more suffering from Shinji because he just cares so much about the idea of a lost little Shinji in his head, that just needs to be guided. Kaworu was an idealised version of Shinji in the series, which allowed Shinji to project onto him and lower his barriers of self defense, but now it is Kaworu that's idealising and even objectifying Shinji. Whereas NGE Kaworu had little to no contact with humanity, 3.0 Kaworu has had 14 years to interact with people, 14 years to grow and change, yet he has chosen to obsess even more with Shinji and his magical quick fix solution. It didn't went wrong because Anno is mean to his characters, it went wrong because it's wrong and dangerous.

Again, read this: https://forum.evageeks.org/thread/14454 ... ntentions/

post/888166/Adams-Children-and-the-Nature-of-the-Cycle/

And Ergo, that is SORT of the angle she's taking, except that Kaworu seems to be trying to force Shinji to return to Adam-hood, which ties in with the Freudian/Jungian "return to the womb" themes, even if they are less present in the Rebuilds. The idea is that Kaworu is trying to "protect" Shinji from the real world and facing his responsibilities, but he does not realise that Shinji needs to face them, and in the process he had no qualms about this manipulation, he distances him from his other friends, enables his self centered-ness, and because his entire idea is fundamentally disapproved of by the story, his plan goes wrong anyway and the end result for Shinji is just more suffering, more guilt and more isolation. Hell, Asuka gives him a little speech on it at end and she has to *physically* remove him from his bubble of escapism.

I'll be open minded. But I doubt anything in Shin will paint Kaworu in that light.

I just think you could say this about any character in the show or films. I don't know what sets Kaworu apart in this sense.
Yes, he's a mysterious guy, and it's not normal that he'd care that much about Shinji before meeting him, but the films also imply he HAS met him before (I doubt it'll be important what this means exactly).

There really was no way to show Shinji the state of the world and not have him be devastated. That was an inevitability.

The guy is trying to cheer Shinji up till the seconds before his head goes boom, come on.
I would need stronger evidence to believe this guy has ulterior motives than him being kinda weird and obsessed. He is to me, even outside the interactions with Shinji, charmingly weird, not creepy.

Edit: @Reichu
I somehow missed your first answer to me. I gave your posts a read. While it was interesting, it still doesn't work as evidence for me.
Even his attitude in 2.0 which you describe as possessive, I would see more as strongly determined.
Though this is very subjective too.

The fact that he's *presented* as flawless to the audience and by extension Shinji is just another example of Eva contrasting Shinji's limited perspective with the larger reality, and trying to naif a point that he's often simply wrong. Shinji latches on to Kaworu to very unreality degrees and deposits all of his hopes onto him just knowing everything and being perfect. He's setting himself up for disappointment.

Everyone in Eva is multifaceted, sure, but the whole problem is that Kaworu is interpreted by some people as just being perfect and pure and awesome, hence why the movie is introducing these nuances, to dispute that. The point is, nobody is just gonna be this cool and like you (or Shinji) so much without there being a catch. It's literally too good to be true, egufv is why it's neither good or true. You do have a point with the revelations being hard to take anyway, but here's the thing: because Kaworu needs Shinji to feel responsible, he implies he's at fault for everything, despite this not being at all true, whereas Wille, being human, are having trouble disclosing this and couldn't know Rei would just show up to take him away. Kaworu is actively making things worse for Shinji because in his head it's all worth it to let Shinji run away again. But the story punishes them both, and Kaworu is proven wrong. Hell, even just before he's killed (and it's not a sacrifice, it doesn't even stop the Impact, it's Mari ejecting Shinji that does that) he must keeps enabling Shinji's bullshit. Contrast that to Asuka, who keeps demanding him to grow the fuck up instead of just isolating himself in a corner. That is the lasting result of Kaworu's influence on Shinji, the same cycle of misery and escapism as always.

Kaworu was never there to help Shinji. Everything he did to Shinji, every way in which he told Shinji information only lead to Shinji questioning his mental stability. In fact, the filmmakers punish Kaworu by having it backfire on him. Kaworu gaslit Shinji really well, drip-feeding information to him so strategically that once Kaworu figured out too late that Gendo had the upper hand the whole time, nothing he could do or say could turn Shinji back from the path he had set out for him.

If Kaworu had simply leveled with Shinji from the very start, looking out for his mental well-being instead of simply making every info bomb take the biggest devastating toll on Shinji, Shinji wouldn’t have been gaslit into desperately reaching out towards his own downfall. They both could have ditched the mission as soon as Kaworu learned the truth for himself. But instead Kaworu presented everything in such a way that Shinji didn’t have the ability to think straight once Kaworu figured out what was really going on.

ErgoProxy wrote:What if it's Shinji's Adamese preincarnation who is actually responsible for breaking that godlike communion of souls?

Read the rest of the thread. I already covered that. ;p

Even on the Spears' case Kaworu was questionable. When I watched it, I thought the goal was to heal the environmental damage on Earth (I think it was those plants growing in Geofronte that induced me to think about it! I never thought the goal was to rewrite the entire reality, change the course of History or something alike.) The pillars can do that too. Fixing the world may take longer, but it would be safer. Kaworu lied because he said that spears were Shiji's last hope. They are not and probably never were.

In addition the pillars have been around since Ha, 14 years earlier. So, everyone (except Shinji, of course) already knew about them. I'm sorry, but I think he was manipulating Shinji from the start and a big liar can fool himself.

He never said they would fix the world, just that it could be changed again. Kaworu's ultimate goal seems to be Instrumentality, not fixing the world. I could be wrong but I'm also pretty sure Kaworu never said they are his last hope, but rather it's Shinji that says that to Asuka. She asks him if he's trying to start another Impact, since she and Kaworu know that pulling them will start an Impact no matter what. Kaworu has, thus far, spent the entire movie trying to get Shinji to pull the spears. He only changes his mind because in that particular configuration it won't go according to his plans. Asuka meanwhile is flabbergast that Shinji would even suggest such a thing, because as far as she knows that means Shinji has sided with the enemy. But she still seems to be aware that Shinji is being used by NERV/Seele, because at this point she just leans back and says "You really are a brat."

Kaworu leaves things open and Shinji projects both his guilt that makes him think he's responsible for everything as well as his wish not to be chastised into his hopes. It's quite clever writing.

This still brings up the question of what would have happened had Unit 13 pulled out Longinus and Cassius instead of pulling out twin spears of Longinus immediately before being commandeered by the 12th Angel.

WTF did Cassius go and could its presence and the lack of the 12th Angel's presence have radically changed the outcome?

Kaworu explicitly states that he was expecting Longinus and Cassius to be the two spears, not twin spears of Longinus. Is it that the two opposing spears could have canceled one another out and averted destruction while having two of the same spear instead amplifies the effects? (This would be lent credence by the fact that there are everything in the scenario exists in twos: twin spears of the same nature, twin "angelic entities" (Unit 13 itself and the 12th Angel) and two souls (Shinji and Kaworu)).

The way Kaworu was talking about it, things could have gone completely differently than they did, and what happened was not what he was expecting nor wanting for Shinji or the rest of humanity.

We aren't too sure yet, but many details indicate that pulling the Spears as he expected them to be would start Instrumentality in his/Seele's version of it, which of course was not Gendo's. He changed then to thwart Seele's plans and to get rid of "Seele's Boy", laying a trap for him as he knew Shinji wouldn't go back (as he closely watched their interactions) and, somehow, he also accounted for Wille's interference. I'm guessing he changed the spears without Kaworu knowing about it. Still, Fuyutsuki says almost everything went according to Seele's plans so it's hard to know what happened for sure. Some people suggest Kaworu wanted to be "fused" with Eva 13 but I think that's unlikely. Notice Kaworu never actually mentions anything about fixing the world, that's what Shinji expects.

Read Reichu's thread: post/888166/Adams-Children-and-the-Nature-of-the-Cycle/#888166

FelipeFritschF wrote:We aren't too sure yet, but many details indicate that pulling the Spears as he expected them to be would start Instrumentality in his/Seele's version of it, which of course was not Gendo's. He changed then to thwart Seele's plans and to get rid of "Seele's Boy"

I think, in a sense, Seele's plans had already been thwarted through the loss of Mark.06. There is some reason why Seele chose that Adams specifically for their initial plans, and we see how much Third Impact screwed things up. It forces them to wait another 14 years, use Eva-13 instead of Mark.06, and entrust Gendo of all people with their wishes. Wait... If "Kaworu" is their boy, what the heck do they need Gendo for?

GENDO:
I shall carry out your cherished
Human Instrumentality Project,
as well as the deicide
that you were resigned to.

Well, there's your answer. Deicide means "god-killing". Lilith is already dead, whereas the events that follow end in Kaworu's death, so it must be him. If Seele are merely "resigned" to it, that means it wasn't what they really wanted, but at this point they have no other choice. The gist of all this is, even Seele had betrayed Kaworu.

and, somehow, he also accounted for Wille's interference. I'm guessing he changed the spears without Kaworu knowing about it.

Kaworu seems to believe that the Spear of Cassius changed to become a Spear of Longinus. When it comes to these sorts of things -- random lore details that don't matter to Shinji even a little -- Kaworu is probably trustworthy for the most part. The Spears are capable of metamorphosis anyway, and their metaphysical properties haven't been fully established in the new films, so why SHOULDN'T they be able to switch between Longinus and Cassius forms? And keep in mind, Gendo makes far stranger things happen through completely unknown means -- inducing Kaworu's "fall', for instance......

Some people suggest Kaworu wanted to be "fused" with Eva 13 but I think that's unlikely.

In my own Adams/Children thread, I suggest that getting fused with Eva-13 was always part of Kaworu's plan. It's just that Shinji was supposed to be part of that.

ArvisTaljik wrote:This still brings up the question of what would have happened had Unit 13 pulled out Longinus and Cassius instead of pulling out twin spears of Longinus immediately before being commandeered by the 12th Angel. WTF did Cassius go and could its presence and the lack of the 12th Angel's presence have radically changed the outcome?

I'm not sure if the 12th Angel was necessarily the problem there. Asuka talks about the need to kill it before Third Impact can restart -- but I find it hard to believe that whatever Kaworu wanted to do wasn't to cause one of those anyway. The 12th was going to be freed no matter which set of Spears got pulled. (I'd hesitate to say it "commandeered" anything, also. It might actually be protecting Eva-13.)

Kaworu attributes both the two Longinus Spears and his fall from 1st to 13th to Gendo's subterfuge, so maybe the phenomena are connected, and the Fall simply would not have occurred if the Spears were of opposing types.

FelipeFritschF wrote:ElMariachi wrote the original thread dealing with analysing all of that back in 2013:

https://forum.evageeks.org/thread/14454 ... ntentions/

Man, 2014, that brings me back.

Giji Shinka wrote:If Shinji knew what Kaworu was really up to (we don't know what Kaworu's plan was with the spears yet, but it likely wasn't something that would have benefited Wille and the rest of the world), he may have agreed to brainwash Shinji.

Yeah, that's the crux of the problem I think, we don't know what exactly Kaworu intended to do with those two spears if they were the correct combination.
Yet, for me the facts that he purposefully keeps vague his explanation of the plan to Shinji ("everything is possible with the spears, even changing again the world", the hell is that supposed to mean?!), that WILLE was very adamant to stop EVA-13 and that in the end Fuyutsuki said that SEELE came dangerously close to winning points that Kaworu's plan wasn't just to restore the world and leave it at that.

Giji Shinka wrote:It's actually pretty impressive how Anno managed to make a lot of the audience buy into this, I read discussions about 3.0 quite often on other sites and people still believe these surface level "facts" about the near 3rd impact and other things.

Well to be fair, we collectively obsessively analyzed every frame and line from Q (and with the density of information, we had a lot of material to dig up!), while most people only saw it once or twice and moved on to something else, so it doesn't surprise me that many people didn't caught on the fact that a lot of what Kaworu says doesn't add up with the last part of the movie, especially since he never outright lies to Shinji, but tells him incomplete facts that Shinji interprets.

ErgoProxy wrote:In a way. The problem is, how actually not to groom Shinji, when he is what he is and acts as he acts. If he was a 4yo child, things would be clear; however he's a goddamn 14yo teen, who should already have some psychological defensive mechanisms developed and functional. But apparently he has none of those and that's why he just screams to be exploited. So he is exploited, because life is a harsh bitch and there should be some limits in keeping a kid secure from its dangers. Otherwise kid will never mature.

People can still be easily impressed and manipulated at 14 years old.
Also context is important here: he's a 14yo boy yes, but a deeply insecure 14yo boy that lived most of his life isolated and traumatized by the absence of his parents (which is strongly implied in 1.0 to have been planned all along by Gendo and even Yui), and not only that, but he's a 14yo boy that was suddenly catapulted in a completely alien and batshit crazy situation that he might as well ended in another planet. It's one thing to have difficulty to adapt to the post-2I environment he was familiar with (and we see mid way in 2.0 that he was actually starting to mature and get along with people, getting closer to Rei, making friends with Touji and Kensuke and hanging out with them...), and from here suddenly being thrown into a post-apocalyptic wasteland straight out of a Salvator Dali fever dream on acid with everyone you know being a decade and half older hardened veterans with conflicting information and then mind shattering revelations thrown in rapid fire such as that his brain made a BSOD.

ElMariachi wrote:


People can still be easily impressed and manipulated at 14 years old.
Also context is important here: he's a 14yo boy yes, but a deeply insecure 14yo boy that lived most of his life isolated and traumatized by the absence of his parents (which is strongly implied in 1.0 to have been planned all along by Gendo and even Yui), and not only that, but he's a 14yo boy that was suddenly catapulted in a completely alien and batshit crazy situation that he might as well ended in another planet.

You forget the dinner scene between Gendo and Rei in 2.0 in which the former has a flashback of Yui asking him to take care of Shinji. So no, only Yui had plans to leave leaving Gendo with a broken promise to be with her son.

To get this out of the way, Kaworu's no predator. Gendo is a predator, especially in this continuity.

Kaworu doesn't understand enough about how humans work to be that kind of manipulative bastard. There's no indication in the actual movie that he wants anything horrible from Shinji. He's the last Angel, he could turn Shinji inside-out if he wanted to, and it's not like there's anyone around to stop him if or when he decided to do so.

Shinji just latched on to the one person in the series to treat him as something other than a disposable tool, who offered him a chance at fixing what he broke. No more, no less.