An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Lavinius » Wed Oct 21, 2020 2:15 pm

Eva has many strengths, but strict consistency isn't one of them. The Human Instrumentality Project glimpsed as late as episode 17- a race against time, completed before the Angels win, with little relation to the Evas- seems quite different from the Instrumentality finally seen in either version of the ending. This isn't a result of carelessness, but because the show was considerably improvised- earlier notions inspired later ones according to an artistic or dreamlike logic, rather than according to a Watsonian consistency.

The other great inconsistency is in the matter of Adam. In episode 15 the being later identified as Lilith is named Adam, and indeed it seems for much of the show that Gendou & Fuyutsuki mean precisely this entity when they talk about Adam- even though they should know more than anyone else that it's Lilith.

For a long time I thus supposed that until some point well into Eva's production, the story concerned only a single Seed of Life, Adam, single alien vessel, the White Moon, and that Humanity (we cannot call them Lilin) were collectively the Second Angel. The more complicated backstory involving Lilith was likely devised after episode 15 finished production. However, this account leaves an enormous gap- namely, who Rei was supposed to be, if not the avatar of Lilith. Merely a clone is an unsatisfactory answer; straight from the start Rei is a divine being of some kind. The only solution I could think of was that she was supposed to be the avatar of Adam, which seems quite unnatural.

---

I now propose a somewhat more complex conjecture, based on the following considerations:

*The entity in Terminal Dogma being called Adam until very late.
*Shogouki being compared to Adam, until the sudden explanation that she- the essential Eva who should be made from Adam- is in fact made from Lilith.
*Ritsuko's story in episode 23, which has humanity finding "Kami" at the South Pole, and then making/finding Adam out of, apparently, what was left of "Kami" after Second Impact.
*Humanity (Lilin) not being descended from Adam, which is somewhat odd.
*The GeoFront lacking any indication of being an alien structure until quite late.
*There being only one ancient Impact, despite Adam's & Lilith's arrivals presumably being separate events.
*How in the Second Episode 24 draft, the familiar Terminal Dogma scene plays out without Kaworu ever realizing that "Adam" is Lilith. Nevertheless, immediately after this we have a scene where Kiel references Lilith's role in Instrumentality. This suggests that Satsukawa while writing the draft knew something about Lilith, but thought that she was something other than the Terminal Dogma entity!
*Rei, and thus Lilith, being present from the beginning.

I thus suspect that until quite late in Eva's production (apparently as late as the final draft of episode 23), the backstory was something like this:
There was a single Seed of Life in Antarctica, Kami or Adam Qadmon, consisting of masculine & feminine elements bearing the Fruit of Life & the Fruit of Knowledge. The Angels were made with the Fruit of Life, and Mankind with the Fruit of Knowledge. At Second Impact Mankind attempted to acquire the Fruit of Life from Kami. Instead, Kami was catastrophically split into their two component beings, Adam and Lilith. Adam lost the Fruit of Life and was reduced to an embryo (imperfectly cloned into the Eva Series). Lilith seemingly retained the Fruit of Knowledge, and she was brought to Japan. There she was bound, armored, and had her soul exchanged (accidentally?) with Yui's- thus Yui became Lilith, and Lilith survived in a regenerated version of Yui- Rei Ayanami. Yui-as-Lilith was then redesignated as Eva-01, being the other half of Adam.

Conjecturing as to the original ending, clearly it would have involved Gendou's plan to recreate Kami by merging Adam & Lilith. I suspect that Gendou planned to merge himself into Adam (that is, the Adam embryo now regrown in Terminal Dogma) and join with Yui-as-Lilith as the new Kami. What role Rei would have had in this version is unclear to me- it's unlikely that Gendou would have cast her aside. The best solution I can think of is that Rei and Shinji, the two Ikari children, would have been made into a new Adam-Lilith / Kami pair to procreate on a new world. Alternately, Gendou-Yui-as-Kami would have traveled to a new world, leaving Shinji & Rei together on Earth. Needless to say, this is highly speculative.

My guess is that the plan was altered rather late, as the last three episodes were being written, seeing as 23 clearly uses the older paradigm. I'm not sure what motivated this- Kaworu isn't clearly Adam until the DC/EoE.

Point-by-point comparison  SPOILER: Show
While in the final, canonical version of Eva lore, manifested in episode 24 & EoE, we see the following:
*Two primordial vessels- the White & Black Moons, with two primordial beings, Adam & Lilith, in conflict.
*Lilith's arrival in the Black Moon created the Moon (the celestial body).
*The Angels are descended from Adam, the Lilin from Lilith.
*The Evas are made from Adam, with the exception of Shogouki, who is made from Lilith.
*Lilith is in a clone of Yui (Rei), while Yui is in a clone of Lilith (Shogouki).
*Kaworu is the avatar of Adam, and Rei is the avatar of Lilith.
*Gendou unifies with the Adam embryo but apparently plans to
hand everything over to Rei.
*Later Adam & Lilith- with their original souls- are unified as a Kami, and Shogouki, the daughter of Lilith, likewise joins with Zeruel, the son of Adam, as another Kami.
*Both Lilith and Shogouki are used in Instrumentality, though either would be sufficient.


In the earlier version, we would have had:
*One primordial vessel in Antarctica, with a single hermaphroditic Kami within.
*Kami's arrival created the Moon (the celestial body).
*This Kami then procreated Mankind and our siblings, the Angels.
*At Second Impact, Kami was divided into two beings, Adam & Lilith. Adam was reduced to an embryo and used as the basis for the Eva Series (later he was regrown in Terminal Dogma)- he had lost of the Fruit of Life. Lilith, meanwhile, was armored as Eva-01.
*Lilith & Yui thus swapped bodies- Lilith's soul was placed into a regenerated Yui, while Yui now inhabited Lilith's body.
*Kaworu(?) is the avatar of Adam, and Rei is the avatar of Lilith (it's unclear even in OA 24 that Kaworu is Adam himself). Alternatively, Rei is the single avatar of Kami as a whole.
*Gendou unifies with Adam to join with Yui, who is Lilith.
*Third Impact would involve (in Gendou's scenario, at least) the reunification of him-as-Adam and Yui-as-Lilith as Kami.
*Both Lilith and Shogouki are used in Instrumentality, since they are the same being.


One will also note the similarities this has with the lore that seems to be at play in NTE.
Last edited by Lavinius on Thu Oct 29, 2020 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Zusuchan » Wed Oct 21, 2020 3:48 pm

This is quite interesting, I must say! How much this is true or not is, of course, a matter of intense speculation, but it does seem to me that the main points are most likely all true. And the way that Gendo's plans in the original proposal might send off some idea about his plans in NTE is interesting-he does seem to have big plans for Shinji and Rei...

Anyway, this is all I could really say, but thank you for this!

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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Blockio » Thu Oct 22, 2020 7:37 am

I second was Zusuchan said, this was quite a fascinating read! It's no secret that deeplore and production history aren't my strong suit when it comes to Eva, but as far as I can tell, everything you're saying seems like a reasonable explanation of what might have been planned.
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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Berserker » Fri Oct 23, 2020 9:41 am

Well, this is quite interesting. This hypothesis surely answers most of the things like the earlier one. You sorta excluded the fact that your one fills the gap about the one lance,two seeds as kami being only seed with one lance, when the earlier conjecture was lilith's lance being destroyed or lost due to the crash landing which is kinda...not fulfilling as i might say.
Then again, if kami beared both fruit of life and knowledge, then he can be completely called as a member of FAR. Then why would he even need to be sent with a lance? He's just one of them.
Earlier, LCL's the primordial soup for knowledge based life,which is lilith's blood. If lilith and Adam got divided in 2000,then what did kami use to progenate fruit of knowledge based life in your version? I mean,you gotta use 2 different things cause 2 different type of life. Evolution can't cause knowledge based life to suddenly get fruit of life while ditching fruit of knowledge.
Seele had the dead sea scrolls all along. Then why would they even ignore a fact like this? Their goal's basically to become god, by bearing both fruits any way possible. If they knew, then they it's just a paradox since they also clearly referenced about 2 seeds coming down. If they didn't know/ignored, then they're stupids.
And last point, we surely got the evidence of 2 moons merged/buried in earth. White moon under Antarctica, black moon under Japan. The earlier conjecture suggests the satellite moon is the debris of earth,caused by the 1st impact when black moon collided. So, this is kind of a plottheory hole cause Adam kadmon won't need two transport vessels.
Lavinius wrote:*There being only one ancient Impact, despite Adam's & Lilith's arrivals presumably being separate events.

Adam was the chosen one decided to populate earth, while lilith intervened. So, Adam's moon smoothly landed over ancient Antarctica, got buried over the time of millennia. On the other side, Lilith crashed landed,thus the "impact". Satellite moon's birth. Black moon gets covered.
Alternatively, Rei is the single avatar of Kami as a whole.

I don't think anyone can be a single/whole avatar of adam kadmon. Your theory suggests that kami's got divided into adam and lilith both physically and spiritually. So,the newly created souls are now individual souls. Adam's soul completely goes to kaworu. So, it's safe to say kaworu's a avatar of adam. But lilith's soul gets divided 3(2 times if you think unit 00 has naoko's soul) times.Rei is a being of its own. But Rei I,II,III,unit 00,remaining part of lilith's soul in lilith's body combined=lilith. Then they can be referred to as lilith's avatar. What i'm trying to say is, if you divide a soul, it creates completely new being. Then, Kami's avatar is Adam+lilith. This completely comes of the kabbalistic belief,as every soul of every living is part of the primordial Adam kadmon's soul. But since every living thing is a being of its own, then we can also tell that Rei's a being of its own. This is not about belief,more of a reference. Think of it as mitosis of soul.

I would say, this is still nowhere near being a bad hypothesis about the whole thing. Maybe over time, this will gain more popularity and the earlier theory will get ditched. Who knows? For now, I'll try to find more points and proof as well as gaps and loopholes,as this will be in my head for who knows how long from now on.
Last edited by Berserker on Sat Oct 24, 2020 12:15 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby orcot » Fri Oct 23, 2020 11:00 am

any other old drafts or yust episode 24?

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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Lavinius » Mon Oct 26, 2020 12:14 pm

View Original Postorcot wrote:any other old drafts or yust episode 24?

There's a partly-translated draft of EoE.

View Original PostBerserker wrote:

Berserker, you seem to have said a lot but to have fundamentally misunderstood what I'm saying here. I'm talking about what I think Gainax was going to have the original backstory be when they wrote episodes 1-23, a plan which they altered significantly when writing the last episodes and EoE.
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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Berserker » Mon Oct 26, 2020 10:29 pm

My bad. I thought it was something you came up with. But anyways, it was interesting to figure out the flaws. Pardon me for my misunderstanding.
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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Szmitten » Thu Oct 29, 2020 12:55 pm

I've been quietly researching a timeline of Evangelion's production and have an outdated summary in this thread https://forum.evageeks.org/thread/20114/TV-Production-Timeline/ and while I don't have much to contribute since we don't have hard dates for scripts but I can sorta nudge a few ideas.

While the proposal existed between Sep 93-Apr 94, the actual script variants were being written in the bulks of 1994-1995 along with all the various pre/mid-production arts. This two year period was primarily focused on the first 8 episodes which were completed before the Oct 95 airdate, at which time the middle third of the anime was finishing-mid-starting animation production and the final third was in pre-production. Despite this, the "mysterious young boy is actually an angel" character was deemed important enough to be put into the OP which was storyboarded in Aug 95 - whether intended to be Adam or not isn't clear but he's important enough to be foreshadowed alongside Rei and the Angel iconography.

An important aspect of Evangelion is that from the proposal summaries all the way through most of Evangelion's production is that there was not only no script for the final episode, but no concept. A version of episode 25 about Seele invading Nerv was done and ready to go, and the episodes immediately leading up to it were building towards that. Episodes 13/14 aired Dec 95/Jan 96, and it's around this time that Anno finally committed to the 26 we know, and 25 was re-written entirely to reflect it. VO and animation in immediately preceding episodes couldn't be altered much to reflect these changes and lead into the new finale, and so approximately 5-10 episodes were locked in building towards something else.

Obviously this is where the desire for 25/26 remakes and the NPCs came from: to smooth it over.

It's also often stated that Anno treated the series like a mangaka would write a manga, one chapter at a time (and yet still non-linearly sometimes, see episodes 5-6 and even 11 starting before 3-4), so any long term plans were very loose much to the chagrin of everyone else.

tldr; I'm not arguing for or against anything you're saying, just that the timescales and methods involved mean that Anno didn't have the solutions to his mysteries he was setting up months after writing them and were forcing him to commit to things he maybe didn't want to commit to.

edit: I haven't proofread so I probably haven't contributed anything anyone didn't know lol

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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Lavinius » Thu Oct 29, 2020 2:25 pm

@Szmitten, even if you didn't argue for or against, it's still very relevant information; thank you!

Commenting broadly also, 25 & 26 have no explanation of the causes of Instrumentality (though a lot on its effects) or to Seele's role, save that Rei=Lilith is involved. It's possible that a viewer could even think that Kaworu being sent was Seele's attempt at Instrumentality and that Gendou thus won, leading to 25 & 26. I wonder if the vagueness of Instrumentality is since, with the lore change in mind, Anno wasn't sure how he wanted to present it?

Anther thing pertaining to this is that Kaworu is wholly absent (apparently actually, permanently, dead dead) in 25 & 26. This seems to relate to the version of the lore that episode 24 exposited, where Adamids and Lilin were simply rival tribes of which only one could survive- Adam & children are exterminated, and Instrumentality is now just something Lilith does.

In EoE, however, it seems that several elements of the old lore were revived and altered to match the new lore. Shogouki and Lilith are both used for Instrumentality at the same time, since now that they were separate nevertheless both had to have major roles. And, even though Adam's & Lilith's origins as a single Kami are still discarded, Adam and Lilith do reconcile (for the first time) as a Kami- something made more poignant by their prior hatred for each other.
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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby Ghdust » Fri Dec 18, 2020 7:23 pm

To piggyback off of what Lavinius has said, I’m like 99% sure that Eva was originally intended to be a veryyyy distant sequel to Nadia: Secret Of The Blue Water in the Proposal. Take a look at this:

Setting: Before the birth of the human race, there twice existed prehistoric civilizations with advanced technology. The first civilization (the First Ancestral Race) created the EVA, but because of this they were destroyed. The next civilization (the Second Ancestral Race) created the Spear of Longinus, thus successfully containing the EVA; afterwards, as a countermeasure to anyone reviving the EVA, they planted Angels all over the world.



This information was found in this thread. This reveals several things about how the backstory of Evangelion was originally envisioned:

1. The Evangelion Units were created by the First Ancestral Race and not NERV.

2. There was a second “Ancestral Race” in addition to the first.

3. The First Ancestral Race was wiped out by the Evangelions.

4. The Second Ancestral Race was responsible for the creation of the Angels and The Lance Of Longinus, (singular!) in order to stop the Evas.

Now, in the backstory of Nadia, originally inhabiting a star in the Messier 78 nebula, an alien race known to humanity as the Atlanteans came to Earth 20 million years ago in search of a suitable habitat after they were cast astray for unknown reasons. On the quest for suitable servants for themselves, they first created whales. After this proved to be impractical, they then created humans.


The first of these humans was a creature named Adam.



This is a picture of the Adam from Nadia:

Image

As you can see, his face is hidden, just like the Adam/“Lilith” in Eva.


In addition to this, there are several similarities between the designs of the tech of the Atlantians in Nadia and the Angels, specifically in the eye motif:

Image

Image

Image

Image

Finally, in the Proposal, there is mention of a "the ancient ruins of Arqa" which apparently takes in important role in the finale. This bears a distinct similarity, IMO, to the myth of Atlantis.


Now, with all this in mind, here’s my theory on what Evangelion’s original backstory was:

For unknown reasons, an alien race in the Messier 78 nebula dubbed by humanity as the First Ancestral Race, created the Evangelions. Due to their wild and beastial nature, the FAR were almost wiped out by them, except for a few who escaped to Earth.


From here on, one of two things happened, depending on your interpretation of the lore in the Proposal.


Either the Second Ancestral Race arrived on Earth physically on regular spaceships; or, as in the current backstory, the FAR put their souls into Adam and then the progeny of Adam became the Second Ancestral Race on Earth.


Soon after, the Second Ancestral Race/Atlantians fought a war with the Evas with the Angels, and sealed them away with the Lance. Disturbingly, this implies that the Evangelions followed the Second Ancestral Race/Atlantians to Earth. After the war, the SAR created humanity to serve as their servants. As a precaution, they also wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.

As revealed in Nadia, the SAR eventually destroyed themselves through war, leaving humans as the dominant species on Earth. A few survived in the city of Tartessos.


Tens of thousands of years later, and the events of Nadia: the Secret Of Blue Water happen. Afterwards, the remnants of the Neo-Atlantians regroup and form a new organization: SEELE.

This is when Lavinius’s conjecture comes into play. The singular Seed Of Life, Adam, is awoken by the researchers in Antarctica. However, there is a key difference here: the Evangelion units were apparently awoken first either also in Antarctica or in another location entirely. (The Dead Sea?) This indicates that there originally was no Lilith at all; the Evangelions were separate beings of their own.

The Evangelions are brought to Japan, and the Contact Experiments happen as in the current show. However this leaves open the question of who Rei’s soul belongs to if Lilith doesn’t exist. I have two theories in mind:

1. Her soul is that of a surviving member of the First/Second Ancestral Races.

2. Or, more likely as Lavinius said, her soul is the “female aspect” of Adam, with Kaworu being the male aspect.


It’s unclear to me what the original ending would have been, as there are the factors of the twelve strongest Angels descending from the moon, the aforementioned city of Arqa, and the planned terrorist attack by cultists that was removed after the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack.

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Re: An Older Version of Eva's Lore

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Postby LMwanderer » Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:16 am

This is an interesting topic. There was actually a Nadia game that was made directly by Gainax much like some of the Raising Project games were if the information I've seen has been correct. It was for the PC98 and had an original story that certainly added to the universe while being its own stand alone adventure. There were a few interesting things that happened in it, and one stuck with me all of these years, and tends to return to me when I see topics such as this and a link between Nadia and Evangelion. Well, Neo Atlantis has something quite interesting here.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081116220143/http://www.thesecretofbluewater.com/NADIA-Videogame-Walkpc98-8-i.htm

The fact is the website calls it out as looking like an Angel, sure but with the series were once supposed to be interconnected and morphological similarities to an Eva as well it always struck me as a fun little trivia piece. I'm not sure if there was a deeper connection, but it would be interesting if there is more to it. This is certainly an odd place for a one off thing to suddenly crop up in the franchise. A giant one eyed white giant in what appeared to be a biological plant not all to dissimilar to the Adam facilities in Nadia that were already brought up. Well, just thought it worth a mention.


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