Reichu wrote:Did NTE’s implied pre-Lilin civilization (“PLC”) in fact originate from the M78 Nebula as well?

Be pretty damn weird if they did, considering that M78 is only two million years old IIRC.

M78 is a giant eliptical galaxy and almost as old as the estimated age of the universe: 13,25 billion years.

Derantor wrote:M78 is a giant eliptical galaxy and almost as old as the estimated age of the universe: 13,25 billion years.

M78 is a reflection nebula 1600 light-years in the constellation of Orion, and from what I've read is only two million years old or so. You have it confused with M87.

Thuktun Flishithy wrote:Be pretty damn weird if they did, considering that M78 is only two million years old IIRC.

According to episode 31 of Nadia, "The people of Atlantis made an emergency landing on Earth 2,400,000 years ago", so... I'm guessing Anno either doesn't know or doesn't care. The Japanese Wikipedia entry for the M78 Nebula claims that this originated as a typographic error during Ultraman's production -- it was supposed to be M87 -- and they decided to just roll with it. No source is provided for the claim, but the tidbit seems pretty well-disseminated across the Japanese Interwebs. Ultimately, it doesn't actually matter. The only reason the "M78 Nebula" has been brought up in the thread at all is because of its entirely fictional relevance to the Ultraman universe -- which gave it significance to Ultraman fans like Anno, which resulted in its importance to Nadia and raises questions about whether NTE will be next -- and splitting hairs over its IRL age is missing the point of my previous post in just about every way.

Apologies for double-post -- doing the responses I promised as a separate post is more aesthetic (i.e., modestly less omnislash-looking) than the alternative.

Mihrdat wrote:Do you think it's possible that Shinji and Asuka are mini-Evangelions now? I wonder if Anno plans to use this tidbit to give them Angel-like abilities.

I suppose anything's possible, since exactly what an "Evangelion" is hasn't been defined for us, and the phrase that's generally translated as "Curse of Eva" could have a double-meaning for all I know. I would personally prefer if the pilots comprised another, intermediate category of being, since if the pilots are "Evangelions" then the term feels all but meaningless. (We already have to contend with flying saucers, drones, and gun-worshipping drill platforms being "Evas", so I suppose it can't exactly get much WORSE, but I don't want it to get worse, either!) But honestly, I can't give you a good answer here. The whole "what the hell are the pilots and what does the curse actually do to them anyway?" tangle is something I'm still picking away at. I have some relevant material planned for later, so we'll see how that shapes up.

Giji Shinka wrote:Reichu, I don't know if I have missed, but have you already covered why Mari and Asuka are seemingly unable to act as impact triggers in some other thread is it something you will address in a future part?
If Mari is related to Mark.06 and Kaworu in a certain way then she should be able to trigger an impact, right?

As a matter of fact, I'm not convinced that they can't act as Impact triggers. The activation of Eva-03 shows several indications of being a pseudo-Impact in a similar vein to what happened to Eva-04, and the reason it didn't amount to more is probably because Eva-03 is not an Adams. Trying to get a solid fix on all of the variables at play in the NTE Impacts continues to be a real pain in the ass, but I should be able to put together a modestly useful post about this in the other thread when I get a chance. (Curse this backlog of mine...)

cyharding wrote:I always thought that chamber was a repository of primordial life or something like that.

The structures are described in the storyboards as "brain neuron-like things", which has some pretty strange implications. I don't want to once again resort to that tired line "I have more planned about that for later", but... yeah, okay, I do have more planned on that for later. ._.

Shun wrote:Finally the second part! Very interesting, I'm waiting the next posts!

Thanks for being so patient! I apologize for taking so long to get anything done and I hope in the end it ends up paying off in some small way. I suppose if nothing else, I have the same approach you mention in your own analysis -- if I took the reader's mind to some interesting places it wouldn't have otherwise gone, and piqued their interest in some topics they might not have otherwise ever considered, then it was a worthwhile journey in the end!

Reichu wrote:and splitting hairs over its IRL age is missing the point of my previous post in just about every way.

I mean I still got what you made in that post; I was just making a comment because the hard sci-fi nerd in me gets mildly rankled when the deep lore makes oversights like that. No need for hostility.

Reichu wrote:As a matter of fact, I'm not convinced that they can't act as Impact triggers. The activation of Eva-03 shows several indications of being a pseudo-Impact in a similar vein to what happened to Eva-04, and the reason it didn't amount to more is probably because Eva-03 is not an Adams.

So Asuka and Mari can be impact triggers, but the reason why Shinji is always chosen to be part of these impacts is because of his connection to Kaworu/Rei/Gendo/Yui, the fact that he can be easily manipulated and because he is supposedly Luvah?

Reichu wrote:I suppose anything's possible, since exactly what an "Evangelion" is hasn't been defined for us, and the phrase that's generally translated as "Curse of Eva" could have a double-meaning for all I know. I would personally prefer if the pilots comprised another, intermediate category of being, since if the pilots are "Evangelions" then the term feels all but meaningless. (We already have to contend with flying saucers, drones, and gun-worshipping drill platforms being "Evas", so I suppose it can't exactly get much WORSE, but I don't want it to get worse, either!) But honestly, I can't give you a good answer here. The whole "what the hell are the pilots and what does the curse actually do to them anyway?" tangle is something I'm still picking away at. I have some relevant material planned for later, so we'll see how that shapes up.

I wouldn't consider them "mini-Evangelions" per se but they are no longer human in a conventional sense (you mentioned this before) so, for lack of a better word, I dare say they have acquired some quasi-demigod status. Consequence of going to the EXTREME plug depths in the entry plug, they "ceased" to be human. Ritz-chan pointed this out twice in 2.0/Ha. I'd say we should add Mari to the mix. She never went through anything Asuka and Shinji did but I think mental contamination via Beast Mode must have had some serious repercussions we've yet to see. The "Curse of the Eva" may seem like some cheap, lame cop out to prevent the children (mostly the girls as Shinji was in suspended animation for 14 years) from aging but really, in the universe, how much does Ritsko and NERV really know about the Evangelions and their shenanigans? Entities with insane God-like powers and these movies REALLY take up a notch with their otherworldly-ness (yes, it's not a word, I know). Who knows the physical and physiological aftereffects of getting in and out of the Evas.

Perhaps the context is different but I believe "the Curse of the Eva" is mentioned before in episode 23, when Rei's dark, unpleasant origins is revealed to Shinji and Ritsuko has her meltdown. It could very well be I'm totally misinterpreting (and misremembering) on my part on what's actually being said or perhaps it's a translation error but Misato comments on a "Curse of the Eva" and the gist of what she's saying, if I remember correctly, is how people's livelihoods who revolve around these giant cyborgs that are mistaken for robots, to the point of obsession, seemingly in the end ruin them and how she is no different. In NTE, we see that Shinji's intense desire to save Rei "awakens" Unit-01 and becomes absorbed with her into it's core where he remains suspended animation for 14 years, hasn't aged a bit and maybe not even "human" as we know it. Rei needs no explanation. Asuka and Mari we can assume throughout most of the duration of time skip (14 years) have in combat mode. That would mean they've spent most their lifetime in the Evas. For that, I'd say the children have lost something, maybe their humanity being overexposed to God-like entities.

Of course it be I'm desperately reaching and pulling things out of my ass but nevertheless, it's fun to crack knuckles and fanwank something.

Reichu wrote:Thanks for being so patient! I apologize for taking so long to get anything done and I hope in the end it ends up paying off in some small way. I suppose if nothing else, I have the same approach you mention in your own analysis -- if I took the reader's mind to some interesting places it wouldn't have otherwise gone, and piqued their interest in some topics they might not have otherwise ever considered, then it was a worthwhile journey in the end!

I had noticed these things about languages ​​(Atlantis etc) , but I have to admit that removing NGE from the mind is difficult, involuntarily there are things that I consider obvious in NTE, but instead they may not be. For example about NTE Evas which, as you wrote in the first post of part II, may have a different background than the NGE Evas. Until now I thought the only specials were the Eva created by the Adams, instead all the Evas could be special (less than the Adams, but still specials).
Regardless of what Anno's solution will be, your theory is very detailed and interesting, I would never have noticed all these details, so keep it up!

B.2. N-Nautilus vs. AAA Wunder

AAA Wunder is a sort of spiritual descendant of the flying battleship N-Nautilus (the “N” is spoken as “New”) from Nadia.


The ships’ respective designs are not terribly similar, but a parallel between them is invited through other means. As of Q, Misato has become the hardened captain of her own futuristic ship and her own crew, and estranged from her surrogate son Shinji. This along with some visual cues invite comparisons to Nadia’s Captain Nemo, who leads the crew of the N-Nautilus and has a… difficult relationship with his daughter Nadia.



Both “parents” spend over ten years away from their respective “child”, and when they finally meet again, it’s after the child is brought on board the overwhelmingly high-tech Nautilus/Wunder. Much fish-out-of-water syndrome, and a great deal of parent-child tension when their very different perspectives — influenced by the fact that they’ve effectively been living in different worlds — come face-to-face.

This initial parallel in turn invites us to compare Misato and Nemo’s respective crews. Ritsuko in NGE was one big reference to Electra, Nemo’s second-in-command, and that relationship has been maintained into NTE by making her Misato’s XO.



The crews are less directly comparable, though there are some similarities. The bridge crew of both ships wear jumpsuits with vests on top, with the exception of Electra and Sumire, swarthy women in skintight outfits.


Musical references are utilized to really hit the parallel home. Preparations to launch the N-Nautilus are made to “Back From The Brink” (起死回生); the Wunder is readied for launch to an arrangement of said track, “Dark Defender”. N-Nautilus’ initial deployment and later battle against the Red Noah are set to “The Almighty Battleship N-Nautilus” (万能戦艦Ｎ・ノーチラス号), rearranged into “The Anthem” for Wunder’s launch and battle against the Nemesis Series in Q.

Many other references are made — here’s a sampling. (Some of these are more definitive than others, but this section is mostly just for fun.)














While this comparison mostly involves the N-Nautilus, the original Nautilus submarine gets a little love, as well. Both the Nautilus and the Wunder have a bridge section with many large, conspicuous portholes that create a sort of eye-like impression.



(The N-Nautilus, in contrast, has three large windows, and it’s… not quite the same.)


Having established to an excessive level of detail that we’re meant to compare the N-Nautilus and Wunder, what is the relevance to this thread specifically? Well, both of Captain Nemo’s ships (the original Nautilus submarine and the flying battleship N-Nautilus) are, in fact, ancient Atlantean technology. Their real names are Eltreum and Exelion (yep, just like the Gunbuster ships) and they originate from the massive Ark spaceships Red Noah and Blue Noah respectively. (Not 100% sure about this in the Eltreum’s case, but several ships with an identical make are found in Red Noah, implying “our” Eltreum may have sourced from there as well.)

The applications for NTE probably go without saying. The Wunder’s origins haven’t been directly suggested in any way beyond the infuriatingly cryptic line about Mark.09 being its “original master”. I made an initial attempt to start unpacking what this actually meant here (sections 9~13 are all relevant to the issue), but I was missing a big part of the picture at the time, which is what Part II of this thread is working to establish. That is, the relevant mythology surrounding Seele and Adams and so on extends back into a “deep timeline” of the sort that Nadia has. Given the high probability that Evas are an ancient form of technology in NTE’s universe, at least one aspect of the Nautilus-Wunder parallel neatly falls into place: the Wunder itself is bound to be ancient technology, as well.

How to reconcile this with the fact that the Wunder’s technology is a clear reference to the research done on the Third Angel? Well, that’s fairly simple. While the technology that produced things like Evas and the Wunder in the first place is very old, the technology used to CONTROL the Evas and Wunder is very new. (This is implied with the primitive Eva control system and Yui’s experiment. “Piloting” Evas presumably was not a thing until the Artificial Evolution Laboratory came up with a method, and doing so required novel experimentation.) We can see with Mark.06 how its “construction” basically entails laying shit on top of a preexisting giant. Whatever Wunder originally was, whatever it originally was called, presumably its true form is similarly hidden beneath all the armor plating and instrumentation and other stuff.

But this is putting the cart in front of the horse a bit. I’ll come back to all this once I’ve laid more groundwork. It will be easier to properly (attempt to) place a lot of these mysteries once all the place-setting is done.

I’m definitely letting myself get too carried away with this Nadia-related material, so I’ll force myself into more breezy coverage for the rest, much as it pains me.

I feel it should be of note that while Wunder is a pretty clear reference to the N-Nautilus, the N-Nautilus is an even more blatant reference to the Space Battleship Yamato https://youtu.be/qxJRD-ESQd8
Also of note is that Space Battleship Yamato is another story involving a ruined red Earth and the lone warship's mission to turn it blue once again

How did Nadia & Yamato end?

Thinking about the mysterious "cycle" in NTE I had an idea, so I thought I'd write it here. The idea that I like most is the backward time travel, because to avoid temporal paradoxes are necessary some constraints that impose limitations. However, there is a way to reverse the time which avoids paradoxes, and which perhaps could fit in with the theory of Reichu and BlueBasilisk. If I understand correctly, in your theory the cycle is not backward in time but is forward in time, it is a progression of events that have things in common, and the ultimate goal is to restore the "world of harmony" through a synthesis.
Time is a primitive concept that we have in mind because we see events and things change spontaneously from one state A to a new state B, and the direction of change is that of increasing entropy. A glass breaks but doesn't rebuild by itself, the billiard balls disperse but don't recompact. Entropy increases, disorder is more likely than order, because there are more disordered states than ordered states.

Gendo speaks of harmony and order, Fuyutsuki speaks of "time that cannot be reversed" and "world that can be rebuilt". Rather than to see time as a memory warehouse in which events are stored, a dimension in which we can move back and forth, we see time as a simple interval that separates order and disorder state.
In this case, if we could control matter, energy and physical processes with super accuracy and with great prediction (power of God), we could control states of disorder and restore their state of order. A broken glass spontaneously returns intact. In this case, the inversion of time does not mean moving in the past of a memory dimension, but means reversing the entropy from disorder to order: the past is not a place stored in a memory dimension, but it's a state of things that can be restored. Maybe that's the Gendo's goal.

Probably Tenet by Cris Nolan is like this.

Shun: My approach at the moment is a bit “wait and see”. I don’t feel an overwhelming need to seek loopholes in what Fuyutsuki has said. As you demonstrate in your post, it can be done, but should it be done? Is that actually the direction the proverbial wind is blowing in? With Eva being designed as a giant interconnected puzzle, I figure that the intended direction will reveal itself simply as a result of working on other mysteries. Not to say that I'm disagreeing with your proposal; it's more that my specific approach leaves me without any real opinion other than "OOOO SHINY!!! *runs off to chase some chain of bizarre mental associations*"

On that note, I actually did recently stumble across what MIGHT be hints pertaining to the “time shenanigans” issue. I’ll include those at the end of this section.

(...did I say I was going to be more brief? I lied, apparently. Though in fairness, this section probably warrants the detail.)

II.B.3. Towers of Babel

The bizarre structure standing above the epicenter of Third Impact — an inverted pyramid containing the Geofront and Nerv HQ facilities, perched atop an externalized version of the Main Shaft leading to Central Dogma —



is a pretty blunt callback to the Babel Towers from Nadia. Yes, “Towers” plural — four of these things are seen over the course of the show. Let’s take a look…

First seen is a replica built by antagonist Gargoyle’s organization Neo-Atlantis (…and slave labor).



It is created for the sole purpose of being a weapon of mass destruction. To hear Gargoyle gleefully explain how it works:

GARGOYLE:
Look at this beautiful tower.
It is the Tower of Babel!
The huge power from the plant
is fed into this tower,
and becomes particle energy!

GARGOYLE:
This is the heart of the Tower.
Beautiful!
Within this spiral tower,
the particle energy is accelerated, compressed into a central chamber,
and the light ray is sent into the distant sky.
Then the god's punishment is wreaked.
When the ray returns to Earth,
it will burn and destroy everything!
In the tremendous heat, nothing will be left alive.
By directing this ray, we can attack any point on the Earth,
and destroy it completely!
We can create anything we desire, and destroy everything!
That is the power of the gods!

Pleasant chap, ain’t he? Orihalcon, mentioned in section 1, is integral to the tower’s functioning. I’m assuming it’s used to concentrate the particle energy into the beam of light (but I could be mistaken). For his replica tower, Gargoyle is forced to use artificial orihalcon, which I suppose just means “not made through genuine Atlantean methodology”.



Gargoyle’s verbal explanation glosses over exactly how the Light of Babel is directed, and this is through a network of ancient (over 12,000 years old) satellites, called “slave stars”, which are named after Biblical angels (Michael, Lucifer, and so on)*. I’ll bring these up again later.


*(Yes, I personally know “Lucifer” is not meant to refer to an angel, but it’s a very widespread misinterpretation that has taken on a life of its own, so nobody split any hairs over this please.)

The entire sequence in episode 07 where the tower is fired for the first time is arguably given a “whole scene reference” when the positron cannon is fired in Eva:Jo; they feel extremely similar. I’m not sure if the similarity has any particular relevance to the thread — I can’t think of any, at least, but maybe that’s just due to (weirdly uncharacteristic) lack of imagination on my part — and I won’t be doing any kind of analytical breakdown here. But if you have any thoughts, please let me know.

The firing of the Babel Tower utilizes visual effects that probably bring to mind the Angels’ energy projection abilities. My instinct would be that the effect style predates Nadia significantly, but it’s a cute detail nonetheless.


^ This GIF was made very lazily and is not up to normal Reichu standards, but it serves the purpose.

Moving along, there are three other Babel Towers, as mentioned, one in each of the Atlantean Arks, which are: the very confusingly-named Atlantis, the Red Noah, and the Blue Noah.

In episode 16, we see the first. It should look pretty familiar, except the top is not quite an inverted pyramid — it’s more of an octahedron.

JEAN (MONO):
Atlantis, the legendary continent that was destroyed 12,000 years ago.
There's nothing left alive.
It's a world of death and silence.
Atlantis... I wonder what caused its destruction?

(...)

ELECTRA:
It was that crystal tower we came down, the Tower of Babel.
(...)
Gargoyle tried to construct a similar tower, but failed.
This is the original tower.
Never again will it show its dreadful power.
Actually, it wasn't meant to be used as a destructive weapon.

JEAN:
Then what was its real purpose?!

Not that this Babel Tower isn’t directly relevant to our interests. Look around inside Atlantis… Does it remind you of anything?







A ruined reddish landscape where ALMOST nothing can live. (I guess based on what Arcadia’sLegacy said, Atlantis here is a direct reference to Space Battleship Yamato?) For the purposes of Eva Q, this callback might be implying that the transformed Nerv HQ is a weapon of some kind, and it is in some way responsible for the current state of the world. Of course, it might be more metaphorical than that. But, nonetheless, it’s there.

Onto the next. In episode 22, we meet the Babel Tower of the Kingdom of Tartessos via flashback.



The flashback weirdly implies that both the tower and the surrounding city are completely destroyed, yet both are still there when the characters reach Tartessos in episode 35.



I have no idea what the deal with that is. Anyway, episode 35 reveals that the tower is actually sticking out of the center-top of the Blue Noah — the city is built right over the ark. The reason why the tower is sticking out like this is handily explained:

JEAN:
Electra once asked
what is the real function of the Tower of Babel?

NADIA:
It's a communication apparatus.

JEAN:
Communication? With whom?

NADIA:
Communication with our real homeland.
We use light.

JEAN:
Homeland?
But Tartessos is your homeland, isn't it?

NADIA:
Our real homeland.
It's 277.5 light years from here.

This version of the Babel Tower is a closer visual match to New Nerv HQ. This is reinforced further through a much sneakier visual callback: during Fourth Impact, the ground surrounding the Black Moon looks a bit… Tartessos-like, I must say. (I'm not completely sure what to make of the ground "going full Atlantis" and this might come up again later.)



The fourth and final Babel Tower, that of Red Noah, is only really seen in brief and at distance when Gargoyle commandeers the ship and gets to fire off a couple of shots.



Not much of interest there for our purposes, though perhaps it provides a slight hint of foreshadowing.

In Q, after the main shaft is destroyed by Eva 13, New Nerv HQ remains exactly where it is, and therefore must be levitating. (It can be further argued that the shaft wouldn’t be able to support the pyramid’s weight in the first place and in fact it was secretly levitating the entire time.) Since Gendo and Fuyutsuki are last seen on a Wunder-style bridge, and the pyramid possesses a giant “egg” device nearly identical to the one on Wunder containing Eva-01, there is an argument to be made that the pyramid is a flying ship of some kind. Thus, in intertextual terms, it becomes a mobile airborne Babel Tower, just like the one on Red Noah that’s used against the N-Nautilus. I don’t know if this means we should expect the pyramid to have some kind of secret weapon, though if such a thing does exist, it technically could be a “secret” in that “hiding in plain sight” kind of way.

So let’s go back to Tartessos and what was learned there. The Babel Towers’ true purpose is to relay communications through light. This means that the true purpose of the slave stars is to assist with this function, and the satellites can hypothetically direct the Light of Babel all the way to the M78 Nebula. Well, I guess they don’t call it the Land of Light for nothing.

What does this have to do with anything? What, indeed? After Mark.09’s destruction, the obelisks on the pyramid start doing something rather interesting: they begin to beam streams of red light up into the space beyond the Gates of Guf. (We’ll call it “Guf Space” for the sake of simplicity.)



Even better, there’s actually something inside the Guf Space when this is happening.



Nobody knows what the hell it is or why it’s there, but it’s been informally referred to as the Guf Object or GUFO. It seems to be approximately spherical in shape (or at least the bottom of it is) and has six Dali crosses sticking out of it. The GUFO is actually revolving in place, so, assuming the beams of light keep extending into Guf Space beyond the point they recede into darkness from our POV, the four crosses sticking out the GUFO's sides would be passing in and out of the red streams as it moves along.


^(EDIT: Lots of weird stuff going on here that you can't normally see in this shot because the GUFO is much too dark in the actual film. The rippling water effect on the entire GUFO, suggesting that perhaps Guf Space is fluidic -- a Sea of LCL, if you will... The bizarre way the shades of gray shift across the object's round bottom, like inks mixing in water. The aura, which is almost suspiciously reminiscent of the pool of pinkish light whereby Eva-01 and Rei fused together. It's a bit too much, really.)

These parallels to Nadia are driving it in pretty damn hard that New Nerv HQ is a Babel Tower. Which would make that red light coming out of the obelisks what? The Light of Babel. Which would make that weird object it’s being directed toward what? A slave star.

Yes, I really am suggesting that Nerv is sending a message into Guf Space, and that the GUFO is a form of technology that will relay that message somewhere. Maybe even somewhen.

It feels pretty reasonable to guess that Guf Space operates outside of normal space-time. I dunno why, just a feeling.* Anyway, just supposing that this is true, and that it is capable of functioning as a “hyperspace” of sorts, then that would make it an ideal sci-fi communication medium, wouldn’t it? That prompts the question, of course, “who in seven hells could Nerv possibly be sending a magical telegram to? About what??” Well, there are couple of hints that we can milk here, so I guess we might as well.

* (Justifying this idea can be done later, after I’ve considered my reasoning more thoroughly. Though… I do believe Shun has done some detailed analysis to this effect?)

Consider first the element of the novel Thrice Upon a Time that people went nuts over: that whole “sending messages into the past and/or receiving messages from the future” thing. If we treat that as a clue, then perhaps that’s what going on here. The light is heading away from the obelisks, so in this case a message is being sent, not received. Can we know for sure it’s into the past, though? Are there any other hints we can use?

In fact, there is, though it’s hidden a little out of the way. The Light of Babel isn’t just the concentrated beam of photons that a Babel Tower puts out, it’s also the name of a BGM from Nadia that gets a rearranged version in Q. Its new title? “Gods [sic] Message”. Oh my! Here are the lyrics:

Teachings of ancient prophets
Teachings of ancient prophets
Scriptures of God's own message
Delivering God's message

Biblical instructions which will govern our existence
Moral codes by which we have chosen to heed

If these lyrics are intended to be actually relevant to the content of the films, and not just cool-sounding nonsense, presumably this is in reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So… let’s put this all together. Once Seele are dead, and their watchdog Mark.09 is destroyed, Nerv uses their “Babel Tower” to send the “Light of Babel” into Guf Space to be received by an ancient “slave star” and transmitted. This light is equated to a “message from God”, with the implication being that said message is sent into the past, and is somehow received by ancient prophets who codify it into scripture that becomes known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I have no problem admitting that this is pretty damned wacky, and I have no idea how this works logistically and what the implications for the story might be. It’s so weird that the temptation to brush it off is quite strong, but… at the moment, I don’t think I can actually dismiss it out of hand. In trying to think up reasons why it might be wrong, I just dig myself deeper.

I might expand upon this a little in the Gargutsuki thread, as my remaining material on the subject would be a better fit there. This is probably the most “timey wimey” I’ll get in this thread for a while. After all, what use is a crack theory about the Dead Sea Scrolls being sent into the past if we have such little basis upon which to speculate about that past? Exactly. So I need to finish getting through my whole lineup of material here.

Tossing in my two cents here -

Since see see what looks like another GUFO plumb in the middle in the Gates of Guf hovering over the epicenter of 2I in Antarctica during 2.0, I wonder if the GUFO can also act as some kind of "plug" or "seal" to hold the Gates of Guf open after an impact. In that case, the red beams might serve dual purposes as Star Trek style tractor beams to drag the GUFO into the Gates and keep them open.

Alternatively, assuming a GUFO turns up during each impact and carries information pertinent to the future from the prior impact - the Dead Sea Scrolls came about from whatever First Impact happened carrying information about the Angels from the Second Impact, while the Antarctica GUFO seen in 2.0 over the South Pole carried information from Third Impact over to Second Impact and stayed in place for whatever reason, with the Fourth Impact GUFO sending information over to the time of Third Impact. I'm gonna guess that like Thrice Upon A Time, Gendo is using the information sent into the past by each Impact event via GUFO to alter the scenario to his own benefit and with Seele dead and Kaworu neutralized, he thinks he has a straight shot at finishing his plans at Final Impact using information he gained from 4I. Fuyutsuki, I guess, is going to get the same information as Gendo and throw a spanner in the works.

And it's not like there haven't been spanners in the works before, either. The 10th Angel was explicitly "stronger than anticipated" from the scrolls, so if Gendo altered 2I to suit his own benefit, the upshot was that one vengeful woman turned out to be more powerful than expected and very nearly threw things in disarray. We have no idea how Gendo responded to Kaworu shutting down Eva-01 with the Spear of Cassius. The fact that 4I very nearly turned out to be what Seele wanted suggests that the outcome was a nearer-run thing than Gendo would've liked.

Reichu wrote:Shun: My approach at the moment is a bit “wait and see”. I don’t feel an overwhelming need to seek loopholes in what Fuyutsuki has said. As you demonstrate in your post, it can be done, but should it be done? Is that actually the direction the proverbial wind is blowing in? With Eva being designed as a giant interconnected puzzle, I figure that the intended direction will reveal itself simply as a result of working on other mysteries. Not to say that I'm disagreeing with your proposal; it's more that my specific approach leaves me without any real opinion other than "OOOO SHINY!!! *runs off to chase some chain of bizarre mental associations*"

On that note, I actually did recently stumble across what MIGHT be hints pertaining to the “time shenanigans” issue. I’ll include those at the end of this section.

(...did I say I was going to be more brief? I lied, apparently. Though in fairness, this section probably warrants the detail.)

Of course, I understand, it is an "exploratory" approach. Anyway I talked about the inversion of entropy to put an extra sci-fi reference on the table, but if it will be useful to the theory I don't know.

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The parallels with the Nadia and NTE's towers of Babel are interesting! Only two observations:
1- The light rays of the tower of Babel are used to communicate with the planet of the Atlanteans, but it's not only this. The original tower is powered by Blue Water, and the omakes 4* it is said that the souls of the Atlanteans cross the Blue Water. The stone is probably an accumulator of souls, and maybe the tower of Babel sends them back to the original planet. At first I thought that the rays of the NERV pyramid did something similar: send the Seele souls to the Guf (chamber of souls in Talmud) in order to return to the place where they belong. But... why? I don't know.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SembbYIhigU

2- The red rays of the NERV pyramid also resemble the suspension beams of the Wunder, the ones it uses to control ships and the Eva-08. Maybe the NERV rays serve to control the GUFO? If the GUFO is the same sphere that expands in the flashback on the Second Impact, maybe it is first necessary to pull it out of the GUF. In this case the rays could be used to extract the crosses using gravitational interaction. The pyramid remains in the air when the conduit is destroyed, so it is likely that it is able to exploit the gravitational interaction. It would be a parallelism with the Wunder.

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Since the GUF contains an object not visible from the outside world, it is most likely an extra dimension, or a hyperspace. In brane theory there is the Bulk, the higher dimensional spacetime background, and the membranes (universes) are located inside it.

The only interaction that can exit from the space-time of one universe is the gravitational one, and this accords with the hypothesis that the rays used by NERV to communicate with the GUF are gravitational rays. Furthermore, the 7 rainbow colors of the vortex could be a reference to the 7 heavens of religious mythology, and this accords with the idea that the GUF is another dimension.
As for the GUFO, I think it's a fantasy version of a black hole. After the quotes to Karekano and Nadia, I think Anno will also refer to GunBuster and DieBuster. In both endings there are black holes and temporal effects, and considering the black sphere that expands in the flashback of the Second Impact, I think that the idea is precisely the black hole. In addition, in DieBuster there are also the legion buster machines, the red ones that then come together to form the giant DieBuster. Maybe in NTE the swarm of Failure of Infinity and Infinity are something like that. But this is my hypothesis, which you already know, so I don't want to insist.

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BTW, little OT, but not too much. In your opinion, could this illustration have any connection, at least conceptual, with Shin Eva? Like Asuka and Mari on the Wunder by Yamashita. Since the first time it has fascinated me. Maybe it's a place connected to the GUFO? Or maybe it's just a sci-fi illustration and that's it.

I can see the temptation to associate the "black hole" from Second Impact with the GUFO. They're both round things that appear at an Impact that are utterly baffling and still have no explanation whatever. It's simpler if we only have to explain one Unidentified Impact Object than if we have to explain two. But at the same time, there are enough discrepancies between them that I feel a little hesitant... When it comes down to it, the two objects have basically nothing in common other than: (A) they appear at an Impact, and (B) they are round-ish. If they are different, we shouldn't mash them together, and if they are the same, we should be able to account for all these changes:

1) (A) "Black Hole" (BH) is, well, a pitch-black sphere.
(B) GUFO is maybe spherical (this is not known for sure; more below), and it is not pitch-black; it has a glowing white aura, and it has multiple shades of gray that shift across its surface.

2) (A) BH lays outside of the Gates within normal space.
(B) GUFO lays inside of the Gates.
- So how would the BH get inside them? The Gates at 2I lay far below the BH, and the opening in the middle is "plugged up" with another giant black object. Said giant black object is still there 14 years later, so at no point would the BH be able to reach the opening of the Gates and pass through.



3) (A) BH is just a sphere, nothing more.
(B) GUFO has six Dali crosses sticking into it.
(B1) Every time we see crosses spontaneously forming, they are regular crucifixes. The only other Dali cross we have seen so far is Eva-01's coffin, which is a constructed object. So the problem here is pretty huge, in that we have no basis upon which to suppose that crosses of that shape formed out of nothing. If the GUFO is supposed to be the immense object at the South Pole, then where did those crosses come from? Who put them there? When??
(B2) We can also surmise that it's a sphere, but we don't actually know for sure -- we only see the bottom. If you saw the Black Moon from the top down, you would think it is a sphere, but we know that it isn't. There might be some form of trickery in store for us -- give us only enough information to make us think "oh, a sphere, must be that thing from 2I!", and then turn the object sideways later and show we were all fooled...

4) (A) BH is hundreds of kilometers in diameter.
(B) GUFO is ??????. (Not a difference per se, more a "giant and annoying gap in knowledge".)

By the time these sticking points are accounted for, we would have a much better basis upon which to say "yes, they are the same" or "no, they are not". So for me, this is the more logical place to start. Treat them as "separate but related" at first, and see if they eventually converge. Again, speaking purely for myself here -- no judgment implied on how you choose to explore these mysteries.

I've made the mental connection between the Wunder's suspension beams and the "Light of Babel" as well. In fact, I've noticed that the GUFO is shown receding "deeper" into Guf Space after the red beams are no longer present.

So at some unknown point the beams turned off (they're still active when Eva-13 starts falling) and the GUFO started to move deeper into GUF space, indicating it was earlier being "pulled down" by the beams. Then when the Gates close, it's pushed back even further.

Your idea about the light being graviton-based is neat -- I had been rather annoyed by the fact that the light seemed to pull the GUFO despite the light's directionality being UP, not DOWN, like one might expect if it were acting specifically as a "tractor beam" or whatnot.

I love brane theory, though I only understand it in a very crude sci-fi kind of way; your working knowledge is much better. (I've invoked brane theory in Eva contexts before, though bizarrely this seems to be only in the context of finding a justification for NGE2's claim that the FAR came from another universe. Now that you've put brane theory and Guf space together I can't comprehend how my mind never went there. Bad brain, bad!)

That's just my two cents for now, as I don't intend to go on an extended tangent about the GUFO. I doubt the problems I mentioned are something that much progress can be made on without Shin anyway (but you never know, I suppose). I mostly just wanted to throw that bit of insanity about the Babel Tower out there while I was touching on the subject. I'll definitely think about the rest of what you both said. Fascinating stuff!

EDIT: I've added the animated GIF of the revolving GUFO to the previous post. Noticed some weird new things making it.

Brane theory is fascinating and disturbing at the same time, but even my knowledge is limited to popular science books, I'm not a physicist!

You're right, there are still many doubts...
The color difference may depend on the state, for example the GUFO is gray because it is sealed, or it's a containment bubble, and the sphere is black because the containment has been released. The crosses would be the seals, and maybe their creation could remain an ancient mystery, unless in Shin there is a flashback or at least a clue. However, I agree that it isn't an easy matter.
Btw, is the GUFO something that has always existed in the GUF, or is it something created by someone and hidden in the GUF?
Both possibilities are fascinating. The first is because the GUFO would be something primordial, like the Pangu's Egg. The second because of the Evas and the crosses that seal the GUFO. If in the distant past an ancient civilization created a very dangerous super-sci-fi technology, perhaps someone decided to seal it inside the hyper-space-time GUF in order to prevent its use. However, the Eva can open portals that connect the world to the GUF.

There is an interesting Japanese theory about GUFO and BH2.0 here: https://moon.ap.teacup.com/qwertyuiop/1338.html

EDIT
To avoid misunderstandings, I call the black sphere in 2.0 "black hole" (which I assume is the GUFO or is inside it), but I don't necessarily mean a physical black hole. Maybe Anno thought about black hole and wormhole as objects that modify space-time, and from here he invented a hidden place that allows to change reality and/or enter in other parallel or temporal realities. Or maybe he imaginated a hidden place to change reality and thought of drawing it as a black hole. The two creative processes (BH -> HP, and HP -> BH) are different but in the end the concept is the same.

EDIT 2

Reichu wrote:The rippling water effect on the entire GUFO, suggesting that perhaps Guf Space is fluidic

Interesting detail. Two things come to my mind:
* The water effect is a distortion of space-time caused by the GUFO, or by the suspension rays;
* Anno may have considered the superfluid space-time theory.
In Gurren Lagann the Anti Spirals flood the protagonists with the sea of ​​space-time, and if I remember correctly in the manga of the Space battleship Yamato there is something of similar.

Reichu wrote:In Q, after the main shaft is destroyed by Eva 13, New Nerv HQ remains exactly where it is, and therefore must be levitating. (It can be further argued that the shaft wouldn’t be able to support the pyramid’s weight in the first place and in fact it was secretly levitating the entire time.)
What does this have to do with anything? What, indeed? After Mark.09’s destruction, the obelisks on the pyramid start doing something rather interesting: they begin to beam streams of red light up into the space beyond the Gates of Guf. (We’ll call it “Guf Space” for the sake of simplicity.)

SPOILER: Show

Even better, there’s actually something inside the Guf Space when this is happening.

Without going into the rest of your very interesting parallels to Nadia (Which I archived to DVD almost 10 damn years ago and STILL haven't finished watching)

I believe the 'beams' have a much simpler purpose: The beams are just like the ones the Wunder uses to levitate it's fleet of battleships that it uses for storage and shielding purposes. Whatever is inside the Guf-space is holding up Neo-NERV HQ making it 'levitate' the same way now that it's support column has been destroyed.


Oh, last second thought:

As has been noted, Gendo and Fuyutski appear to be inside a Wunder-like command bridge bubble. I wonder.....(pun intended)

Jurrasic wrote: Whatever is inside the Guf-space is holding up Neo-NERV HQ making it 'levitate' the same way now that it's support column has been destroyed.

As I mentioned (in the text you quote, even), the red beams only appear after Mk.09 is destroyed. (You can see them activate on-screen at the start of the "Kindred Spirits" scene.) New HQ is not using them to levitate.

Shun wrote:You're right, there are still many doubts... (snip)

For my own purposes, I think it's safer to assume by default that the BH and GUFO are two separate phenomena. Second Impact has more than enough going on, and plenty that hasn't been explained about it; "explain how BH becomes GUFO" makes the problem so much worse. If it's an inevitable problem, then it can be dealt with later, but if it's not, we shouldn't burden ourselves with it from the outset.

My personal instinct is that the BH has something to do with the genesis of the Angels. It appears seemingly out of nowhere, gets bigger, and there is no trace of it after Second Impact. If this is some kind of... I dunno... ATF-generated space-time egg that gets "used up" in the process of transforming souls -- the souls of the expedition members, say... -- from one state to another, then we have some kind of tentative grounds upon which to proceed further. "Dark round thing" + "spiritual transformation" is a preexisting Eva motif, as well.

Further in-film corroboration for this comes from the fact that the Third Angel is kept inside a gigantic black egg -- the very existence of which should raise a lot of eyebrows -- and construction is still taking place AROUND it, implying that a preexisting structure was used as a basis for Bethany Base. Is this giant egg the NTE equivalent of the dark egg that Sandalphon was found in? Did every Angel emerge from one of them, but they were difficult to discover (in spite of their incredible size) because of an in-universe mechanism like camouflage cocooning? Note that such giant eggs could easily be sourced to the massive phenomenon over the South Pole. On top of this, in an incredibly easy-to-miss detail, Eva-03 weird blue explosion starts out egg-shaped (like a bird egg) and expands from there. The expanded form honestly looks quite a lot like a gigantic ovum, so we're getting two kinds of egg imagery in one. Interesting how the chicken-like egg is "inside" the round ovum-like egg...



>There is an interesting Japanese theory about GUFO and BH2.0 here: https://moon.ap.teacup.com/qwertyuiop/1338.html

Some interesting ideas there, for sure. Lots to think about. Basing the entire analysis on an unverifiable memory was probably a bad idea, though... I have the 2.0 version of the movie as a cam-rip, and, while the quality is complete trash and all, there really is no indication that the shots of the South Pole are meaningfully different from what's in 2.22. It doesn't automatically spoil the whole write-up, but the speculation would have been much stronger without the "I swear I saw this in theaters!" part.

>To avoid misunderstandings, I call the black sphere in 2.0 "black hole" (which I assume is the GUFO or is inside it), but I don't necessarily mean a physical black hole.

I remember this point from your analysis, but the clarification is good for onlookers.

> Anno may have considered the superfluid space-time theory.

I can't comment too much on this and what it would mean for NTE, so I'll clarify why I mentioned the "Sea of LCL". Second Impact resulted in a huge amount of LCL coming from SOMEWHERE, and the amount is far too much to actually be the result of someone's body exploding. So to me, it would make far more sense if the "Sea of LCL" idea from NGE was getting recycled in some way. That is to say, there's another "universe" somewhere, it's where souls come from, and it's also full of this bizarre fluid. This would also explain why the Angels' cores seem to "explosively decompress" -- the cores are linked to this realm of space (another borrowing from NGE) and when the ATF collapses, the boundary between worlds temporarily destabilizes and results in additional LCL entering our universe. tl;dr: The GUFO looks like it's rippling because it's suspended inside a universe of LCL.

Well, this is all getting a bit carried away. For the thread's next installment, I think I may put the remaining Nadia stuff aside and return to my original "program".