^ Rei's expression changing

So, I have wondered why so much in Eva seems to work by pure accident and chance, while other things seem to be completely deterministic (most blatant example: Asuka's fight against the MP-Evas. No matter what she (or anybody else except the Trinity) does, she is always going to die, one way or another, at the latest point when Instrumentality is started). I also wondered why Gendo seems to not care about anything, and doesn't act as efficiently as one would expect from a master schemer. He instead seems to be a fanatic believer in his eventual victory. I truly do NOT want to start a Nazi discussion or draw any other parallels, but he reminds me of Hitler in his bunker. Right up until the end, no matter what happened, the Endsieg was going to happen. It's even a meme: With the attack of Steiner, everything will work out. That's why it doesn't matter how much Gendo neglects and traumatizes his son, or that he lets him go - twice. He just has to believe strong enough in his Endsieg, and that will make it true. Asuka losing her ability to pilot? No matter, something else will swoop in and fulfill his destiny. I also wondered why SEELE seems to work the same way: Sending Kaworu, for whatever reason, is such a huge risk that only religious fanatics would even consider it. I put that down to the fact that they actually believe in the absolute accuracy of the Dead See Scrolls. Not telling the MP-Evas to kill Asuka outright? Doesn't matter, the outcome has been foretold, they think.

And in the end, everything works out for both of them, by pure accident (SEELE gets their Instrumentality, Gendo gets reunited with Yui) - except it isn't an accident at all, and neither is it some cosmic fate in the traditional sense. Many things in Eva don't make sense on the surface. For example, why don't the angels attack Germany, where Adam is held? Why doesn't Sahaquiel just nuke NERV from orbit? How come Unit 01 manages to kill Leliel two seconds before the UN drops 998 nukes into it? How come Shinjis says "Everybody can just die", yet nobody dies when his wish is "granted"? How come Second Impact didn't make the earth uninhabitable? This all makes sense with a shift of perspective, where we are not seeing the epic battle between the angels and humanity, SEELE and Gendo, or the internal conflict of the characters affecting the whole world, but a mere stage play put on by the Trinity.

I hate the idea that Rei (and Adam as well, since he is a SEED just like her, and possibly the angels) can travel through time, but I can't ignore the tells that she actually is capable of that, so I have to conclude that she can. The implications are far reaching. First of all, it throws causality right out of the window, as there is no "before", "after" or "at the same time" anymore. It also means that there are infinite, parallel realities, since every possibility must play out if you are able to change the past. Flip one single quantum to another state, and you have a new reality, which spawns infinitely many of its own (unless the universe is completely deterministic or Roger Penrose's idea of re-merging realities is true, but that is a little too large in scope to discuss here, and I am not even qualified to do so ).

Since time also ceases to be a limited quantity with time travel, even in the theoretical sense, every possibility, no matter how unlikely, WILL happen. And has already happened, since "before and after" cease to have any meaning. When Yui merges with Unit 01, she suddenly becomes aware of all that. Or rather, she never was unaware of it. It gets complicated. From the Trinity's perspective, everything makes sense now. Everything already has happened (or is happening in this moment, or will happen).

That means that their perspective is just unfathomable to us. Basically all human concepts revolve around causality and time, but none of that matters to them. Cruelty or kindness only matter if they change your future, but if you have infinite futures and infinite time to contemplate, you are already over it before it happens. Death means nothing, as it isn't an event in your future, it has already happened to you. Or rather, you are always alive and always dead. The Trinity can not grasp the human experience of causality and time as a one way street any more than I can grasp being a horse or a dog. I can imagine being one, but I can never experience it. I can not even experience being another human. I can just, as a philosophical exercise, play make believe.

Which is exactly what the Trinity does: They want to get the angels to another planet, so that humanity can have the earth for themselves. (Well, that's in itself loaded language: They don't "want", they already "have". They need no "Why", because there is no way it won't happen. They just amuse themselves by pretending otherwise.) It seems like a coincedence that Sachiel attacks at the same time that Shinji comes to Tokyo 3, but it isnt. It is part of their play. That's why he casually strolls towards the gunfire, without any haste. Since "good" and "bad" are linked to causality, there is no distinction between them anymore. There is just experience and non-experience, with the first being preferable. The Trinity wants Shinji to experience something, so he is welcomed by an angel on arrival. They never wanted to kill him, they wanted to play with him: When he doesn't, Yui finishes the fight. Sachiel embraces her and self-destructs, as that was his goal all along: Free his immortal soul by shedding his body for a little fun and do something good for Shinji: Give him an experience.

This continues with the other angels: Ghagiel swallows the battleships, because why not? Seems fun. Yui bursts out of Leliel to offer a little surprise; she would have survived anyway, along with Shinji, as that was the plan, and she can freely choose a timeline where she does. Maybe she just likes the aesthetics? Sahaquiel wants the trio to feel like they achieved something, that's why he lowers himself to be killed. I can totally see him singing "Why did this happen to meeeee?", feigning surprise while he explodes.

But what does this look like to Gendo and SEELE? It looks like, no matter what, their plans work out, as if some divine intervention makes their hopes come true. Except that their plans don't matter at all, and neither do their actions. When Gendo sends Shinji away before Zeruel attacks, it seems totally counterproductive and dangerous. But there was no danger at all. He possibly just believes that Yui will save him, like she did many times before when she took over, to protect Shinji or whatever plans she has. Except that she doesn't even need to, as the Trinity already decided what will happen in this little pet reality of theirs.

It seems strange that Yui only reacts after Asuka dies - why would she put Shinji through the extra pain? So that he triggers Instrumentality? Well, no. She knows the eventual outcome. She's just offering him a new experience. This isn't cruel in her eyes, since in the end, he will wake up with Asuka on the beach, and thanks to her perspective, he already IS on the beach while Asuka gets skewered. She also sees him living infinitely many lives, so it really doesn't matter if she screws up one of those, as there is also one where Asuka confesses her love for him directly after Kimochi Warui and he is happy ever after as everything is sunshine and roses. Rei doesn't grant Shinji's wish to let everyone die because, in his future and her now, that specific Shinji regrets it. In essence, his wish doesn't even matter: Instrumentality was happening either way, since it wasn't his decision at all, but the Trinity's. When Yui asks Shinji if he will be alright, she is not asking out of concern: She is curious how that specific Shinji in this specific timeline sees things, since she forgot how to have a limited perspective. He has no choice anyways. In his future and her now, she already is on another planet playing angel-kindergarten while her son is rotting away on that beach (but he is also fine).

Ah, I mentioned the shifting of earths axis. There are infinitely many pasts that lead to Second Impact, and infinitely many futures that spawn from it, but humans can only experience one timeline. When Second Impact occurs, the Trinity shifts earth to a new timeline where the earth always was aligned the way it is in NGE. The south pole still melts and sea levels rise, but the causal chain leading to that happening has nothing to do with the timeline humans remember. There just happens to be one timeline out of infinitely many where everything stays the same (people, history) except for the alignment of the earth, giving the impression of continuity of some form, even though that continuity violates physical law and causality. The obvious objection is that humans would then remember that timeline, not their original one. But if you have infinite realities, there is also one where humans remember a timeline different from the one which is actually their past. Well, ALL of them are their past anyways ...

Same goes for Third Impact: As Mr. Tines likes to point out, there is no way that the earth is inhabitable after that, for many reasons, from Rei impacting the earth, to even microbes being tanged and the implications of that. But thankfully, there is one reality where only humans get tanged, where Rei impacts the earth but nothing too serious happens, yet everything still looks like that's what should have happened. If you can navigate infinity, that means that "likelyhood" or "chance" become meaningless. And we, as the audience, get a glimpse of the perspective of the Trinity, which watches and plays with that specific timeline, as there is stuff happening there, and experience is better than non-experience. If something doesn't work out like they want, they can just go back and change it - or rather, they already did, infinitely many times, and we get to see one end result.

It also explains why Rei self destructs: She is replaceable, in more than one sense. There always is a Rei, in the past or in the future, which is the same as "now" for her. It seems like a big choice for her, but it isn't: She is acting. Even if she isn't, and that specific Rei is unaware or her nature, there are infinitely many other Rei's in infinitely many realities influencing infinitely many parameters infinitely many times so that Rei II self destructs in that specific timeline - because why not?

I'll have to write that up in it's own thread, I fear, as it takes too long to explain here, and I am not even sure I can. I am not so immersed in all the lore as you are, so it might be flawed anyways. But the gist of it is that Gendo wants Yui back - literally, the flesh-and-blood Yui that was lost, and he wants to live with her in the real world, but in a state where he can just be himself, the kind, hopeless romantic. In essence, he wants to turn back time. He doesn't want Instrumentality or the forced evolution of humanity, he wants a mundane world where he loves Yui and Yui loves him and they are happy ever after and live until they die, without any religious nut-jobs like SEELE interfering. I know, nauseatingly sweet. Edit: So, "Getting Yui Back" implies certain other stuff which must also come true for him to be happy, like a world that is inhabitable and preferably not destroyed.

Completely by accident, looking into this 'pregnant Lilith' thing unearthed some creepy parallels with Shin's likely trajectory. Check it.

NGE: Gendo merges with the degenerated Adam (=embryo), with intentions of merging with the Adam inside Lilith
NTE: Gendo merges with a degenerated Adams (= Key of Nebuchadnezzar) and plans on merging in some way with an Adams that has Lilith inside it (= Eva-13).
Goal of both: (1) Advance humanity; (2) Hot god sex with wife (probably)

Even more insane: unbirthing is pretty implicit in the idea of Gendo merging with an embryo and then with the unborn baby inside Lilith, and it's also very bluntly coded in one of the few shots of Shin we've been given.



Look at the pose Eva-13 is in. Now look at where Gendo is placed within the composition. I shouldn't have to say any more.

I don't think any of this is coincidence, either. It's corroboration. Lots of ideas in NGE that got fairly little playtime have been expanded upon greatly in NTE. This would just be yet another one.

-Is Adam's soul involved?-
NGE: Ambiguous if Adam's soul is necessarily part of keikaku
NTE: Kaworu is trapped inside Eva-13, therefore NTE equivalent of OG!Adam's soul will probably be involved

With the souls issue, we have some basis to work with. Sexual reproduction can create more, yes, but we only know this is true with normal mortal beings. Kaworu was born from the union of Man and God in what seems to have been quite literally a sexual manner (they talk about genes "diving" into Adam and "fusing"; does that sound like a faintly disguised way of referring to anything? anything at all? ). By all indications, however, Kaworu was an empty shell, despite the donor being spiritually linked to Adam (indicated by the fact that an Impact was triggered) at the time of conception. They collected whatever had been produced by the experiment and "salvaged" Adam's soul into it. The use of this word is significant in that it links Kaworu to the Evas, who we know for a fact start out as empty shells into whom souls must be "salvaged".

Perhaps more to the point, Lilith has produced a giant baby once before -- Eva-01 -- and she was soulless. There would be no reason to expect another giant baby to come out of Lilith suddenly having its own soul.

As for what exactly this baby is, genetically: it being all-Adam feels the simplest to me, since the whole problem we're trying to address is why Kaworu would mistake something in Terminal Dogma for Adam. The less Adam that baby is, the less useful the solution is. If you look at the flowchart, also, Lilith's pregnancy is effectively sandwiched by Adam connections: the Spear impaling Adam, Adam being absorbed into Rei, Adam coming out of Lilith. What would make this baby special compared to the other clones, then? Both of the components being used to create it are original FAR tech. A Spear, and a Seed. The FAR are the ones who made the Seeds in the first place, so obviously FAR tech can make Seeds. The need for Seeds to be able to create Seeds in turn is pretty necessary to keep the human franchise an ongoing sort of thing, as well. As for why more Evas weren't created this way -- maybe this is the real reason why Eva-01 is the hardest to control? She is intrinsically the most powerful Eva because she wasn't made with shitty Lilin technology; she was grown right from Lilith. As a "Test Type" who acts as a Lilith backup, one is enough; Seele are cowardly patriarchs who want to be able to actually control their enslaved giant women.

I'm not precisely certain why the pregnant belly disappears when Lilith takes on Rei's form. Kaworu womb-bursts out of GNR later regardless, so I'm not sure if the pregnancy is "terminated" so much as... transformed, somehow? Maybe the original (Gendo) idea was for the baby to be a fully separate entity (the better for Gendo to renew his marital vows, if you know what I mean), but with the way things played out, a true birth doesn't need to happen. Adam's resurrected body becomes fully internalized except for the moment when it's needed, at which point the way in which Kaworu emerges (directly out of the abdomen) links the affair to the birth that never was. A possible point of comparison here is something weird that happens when Lilith's legs regrow: the miniature legs (stillborn Reis?) get reabsorbed, and then emerge again further down, on Lilith's regrown legs. The mini-legs are kind of similar to the baby in that they're (presumably) things that grow from Lilith as a result of non-Lilith DNA injected through some means; and, when Lilith undergoes a "transformation", they are reabsorbed and then manifested again.

As for the Spear being a "suppressant", I don't think it actually suppresses Lilith at all. Keep in mind, Lilith hasn't been doing ANYTHING on that cross for ten years. Like, compare how much of her is missing around 2004 to how much of her is there when she's impaled in 2015. Then contrast with how much mass she regains INSTANTANEOUSLY when the Spear is pulled out; the cause and effect is pretty clear. The Spear is what lets her heal, like it's charging her the entire time it's stuck in. And naturally, Lilith only gets pregnant once the Spear is pulled out because it would be kind of weird and gross to get pregnant while the man (equivalent) is still inside the woman.

The reason Gendo wants to get rid of the Spear as soon as possible is because the original Spear is for some reason necessary to using Lilith directly for HIP, as explained at the beginning of EoE. By putting it out of reach before Seele can pull any funny business, Gendo ensures that Seele is forced into using Yui for their plans instead. Why he would want to do this is straightforward enough.

The exact details of how Gendo's and Adam's souls are supposed to work in this scheme will require a few headaches to contemplate properly.

I am not sure if the Seeds are creations of the FAR, or the FAR themselves - but thankfully, this can be ignored in this theory, it works either way. The Seeds being an artificial life form just adds one more step.

The angels are described as if they were biomechanical - and even if they aren't, it would make sense for a highly advanced race to blur the distinction between biology and technology. Hence the combination of the Seed, the female, biological part, and the spear, the male, technological part. This also makes sense on a symbolic level, with motherhood and female traits being close to nature, while masculinity is associated with emotionally distant technology - it also mirrors real life concerns, in that male DNA seems to degenerate, which evokes fears that the male part of the species will die out before the female part, requiring a technological solution. This makes the FAR a mono-gendered species; all the male functions were replaced by technological means.

The spear is in this case a tool, it has no DNA of its own. Its first purpose in this context is to manipulate the Seed into gestation. Once it has done that, the Seed then produces a body; this can either be done by relying on the Seed's own DNA, any foreign genetic material the spear introduces to it (that way, we get the pure-Adam-being we need) or a combination of the two. The Seed is in this case a universal recipient: No matter which genes you put in, there always comes SOMETHING out of it - this explains why introducing human DNA to Adam creates Kaworu, and why the Angels are so completely unique: They are combinations of Seed DNA and samples from the FAR-homeworld. The stranger examples like Leliel might be combinations of Seed-DNA and artificially created pseudo-genetic samples: An equation for the creation of pocket dimensions which somehow got turned into genetic code which will produce a being capable of creating those pocket dimensions.

So, why is all offspring soulless? Because the FAR lost their male gender. It is thus impossible for them to create new souls by natural means. The FAR could theoretically reverse-engineer male FAR-DNA to get the missing gender back - but for some reason or another, that would require the female part of the species to take a step back in evolution, costing them much of their powers which they are not willing to lose (temporal- and spacial manipulation capabilities, being universial genetic recipients, etc). So instead, all new FAR souls are artifical creations. That explains why they need to create a Chamber of Guf with spare souls inside. It also explains why we only see female souls inside the Evas: Being clones of the Seeds, or rather, the FAR themselves, an entirely female species, there is just a fundamental incompatibility with male souls at play.

The spear comes in again when the embryo inside the Seed has matured enough and can be ensouled (given that Seeds seem to be capable of temporal manipulation, the length of pregnancy can be chosen freely!). It takes one of the souls out of the chamber of Guf (or any other suitable source) and places it in the offspring. At that point, the "pregnancy" is over. And here we come back to why Lilith seemingly terminates her pregnancy when Rei III enters her: Kaworu's/Adam's soul did NOT end up in the baby growing inside Lilith. It returned to its original body, which is in Gendo's hand. When Gendo tries to merge with Rei, she takes his hand to get Adam's soul. She then takes over the function normally performed by the spear: She merges with Lilith, and at that point, Adams soul moves to the new body and the pregnancy is over. Adam is born and stays inside Lilith until he shows himself to Shinji.

Why doesn't Adams soul return to the baby right away? This is could be a safety feature: Souls linger after death - for how long is not clear, but lets say you have a pregnant Seed on an inhabited world. There are possibly billions of stray souls whizzing around - you do not want one random soul to end up in your carefully crafted designer-baby, so souls can not enter a Seed-body on their own, which would be necessary to get to the foetus inside. They need a form of transportation to get them through the AT-field - a spermium, so to speak - which can be accomplished by use of the spear or a merger like that of Rei III and Lilith.

All this is entirely unrelated to how the FAR seed planets with new life: All they need to do is introduce some basic genetic material, which will then evolve on its own. That it happens to evolve humans who are 99,89% similar in some way to angels might be an accident or something they planted in those basic genes from the start.

I came up with a (very shaky) possible limitation regarding bodies and souls, borrowing from a concept of quantum mechanics: Entanglement. Once a soul enters a formerly soulless body, those two become entangled. This means that that body will only take that specific soul, and that soul can only inhabit that specific body - until either is destroyed and the entanglement is broken. Adam's soul has no choice but to return to his original body, since that is still around. The obvious question is: Why can he inhabit Kaworu's body, then? The answer lies in the fact that Angels and Evas have cores, but humans don't - and neither do seeds. As far as I know, Lilith is never shown with a core. That's because she doesn't need one: Lilith's soul inhabits Lilith's body directly, while Yui's soul inhabits the core of Unit-01, but not the body.

Adam does have a core, though, when he emerges after the contact experiment in the Antarctic - that is because somebody (lets call him Akira ) made contact with Adam, trying to take over the body. The core manifests as a way to circumvent the entanglement without breaking it: It allows an incompatible soul to control a foreign body, suppressing or driving out the resident soul. The Evas are all controlled by souls which had a previous body; Yui, Kyoko, Rei, and presumably the people inside the MP-Evas. Kyoko's body is still around after her contact experiment, so her case is clear cut. Rei's is as well, as Lilith's body is around the whole time (which means that all Reis have a core, as does Kaworu!).

Yui is iffy: I can only assume that her body did not disintegrate prior to her soul making contact with Unit-01, which means that she was still entangled with it at that point. Alternatively, the special way in which Unit 01 is born comes into play: It was at that point still connected to Lilith, so there is no distinction between their bodies, which means that Lilith is entangled to Unit-01, and Yui can not control it without a core. A third option is that the entanglement is only broken when every last bit of the original body is destroyed: If some nail clippings of Yui survived beyond the contact experiment, she was still entangled with them until they ceased to exist.

Adam and Akira are a very special case. You mentioned that they were spiritually linked, but also that genetic material was exchanged. This means that there were not one, but TWO experiments going on at the same time. The introduction of genetic material triggered the pregnancy of Adam, which produced Kaworu. But at the same time, the spiritual connection was a contact experiment, just like Yui's! The contact experiment produced the giant of light, which is NOT simply Adam. It is Akira's soul trying to control Adams body, while Adam's soul is still entangled with it and Akira is still entangled with his own body. So the core manifests, Akira's soul is suddenly in control of Adam's body (and possibly fighting with Adam's soul for control over the body!), and, being totally unprepared for that, triggers Second Impact by accident. (Later contact experiments restrain the angelic body; thus, no Impact is possible. These restraints then get incorporated into the armor of the Evas.)

For the angels, it simply means that they are controlled by FAR-souls which agreed to leave their original bodies behind and stored them for later, entered Adam's chamber of Guf to be able to control the angels, which function as additional vessels for the FAR to control, should any complications arise. While the angel bodies themselves are unentangled and could take a soul, the FAR-souls are still entangled to their bodies, hence the need for a core.

This also allows the mass-production of cores for later use: After a contact experiment with an entangled angelic body, a core is created, which is then physically removed from the body and stored. The process can than be repeated indefinitely with the same angelic body but different humans. This explains why NERV can replace Asuka with a different pilot without needing to create a new Evangelion: They just need to remove the core from Unit 02 and replace it with a new one. (The "We need to reconfigure the core" line is then just misdirection by Ritsuko - nothing too far fetched, as she doesn't tend to spill the beans regarding the actual truth about the Evas.)

To bring this all back to Kaworu: When Rei takes in Gendo's hand, Adams body is destroyed for good, breaking the entanglement. Adam's now unentangled soul can then undergo the normal process of inhabiting a new body; the one Lilith is pregnant with.

Now, while I realize that my idea about "only female souls can enter Seeds/Evas" isn't gospel or anything, imagine if it were true in this instance. I mentioned up-thread how Gendo was visually "maternalized" via his fusion with Rei, which may or may not have been anticipating some Pretty Weird Shit to come. If Gendo DOES need to have a "maternal" component to his soul in order to inhabit Adam successfully, how would he get around this? Are he and Rei standing there doing seemingly nothing for so long because Rei's soul -- which is a mother's -- is somehow transforming Gendo's?

Souls can't be copied, true, but that doesn't mean that spiritual "components" cannot be transferred. Seeds of Life have especially potent egos, as well (an AATF is just them expanding their sense of self to such vast proportions that all other egos get annihilated), and we see that this continues to hold true even in such tiny and frail bodies as Rei and Kaworu (they generate the most powerful ATFs on record). So is there any good reason why the comparatively weak soul of a successor, like Gendo, couldn't be reshaped or added onto?

tl;dr: Gendo undergoes a spiritual transition so he can become a Seed of Life. Despite this fanatical level of spousal devotion, Rei ditches the poor asshole and lets the wife determine his fate.
Come to think of it, this might actually provide a perfect tie-in for why Gendo's lower body is left behind. His man parts are abandoned to signify that he himself has abandoned maleness. (Also, remember how Kaworu says that Gendo is like him? )