Going with a counterargument here: If the String Quartet really were metaphysical Doppelgangers presaging an event/omen, would they be gathered together playing presumably physical musical instruments in such an oddly specific time and place? Sorry, I really don't buy that idea, even if the logical opposite that has officially been stated out aloud - that these are simply physical lookalikes gathered together and playing - is more than a little weird in itself, it's not wholly improbable.

In fact, I'd go to argue that these physical, flesh-and-blood kids who looked like Shinji, Rei, Asuka and Kaworu and gathered together and played in Tokyo-2 serve as thematic "heralds" for the event that's going to happen in Tokyo-3, despite being perfectly normal kids with lives of their own, and who presumably had their own stories and fates in instrumentality. There are a lot of people in NGE, including the majority of Seele members themselves, whom we know very little of and who turn up, become important to the story as we see them, and then do their own story-related things in the background. I imagine that if NGE had its own "Gaiden" series we'd see the tales of the String Quartet foursome.

Zusuchan wrote:Lavinius: I guess you've won me over re: Quantum Rei. I now no longer believe in her existence! I still think it's possible (a connection of Lilith and Adam has the potential to open up interesting capabilities, I think), but it does make more sense that Lilith just appears sometime and looks at people weirdly.

Re: Instrumentality, it's possible. Anno is a huge sci-fi nerd.

The key element of "Quantum Rei" isn't that Rei's capable of time-travel per se; it's that cause and effect are nonlinear, so that our "real world" sense of an effect happening after a cause don't need to hold true. The ghostly images of Rei aren't omens or prophecies; they're for real, but because cause and effect are not in sequence, Rei can appear even before instrumentality. And like a subatomic particle, Rei can literally appear to be in two places at once stemming at the moment of instrumentality, but can turn up before or after that.

Quantum Rei is for real, in short, and she's not so much capable of traveling forwards in time as being disjointed in time. And while Anno's understanding of quantum physics may not be world-class, he does nail the breakage in temporal causality pretty well.

I wasn't ever going to list the string quartet musicians as the ghostly type of doppelgängers Lavinius insists they are. I was just going to point out that some people have thought so and this could be a possible explanation. But I do think that my original statement is still the one most likely to be correct. So no worries necessary considering that.

Re: Rei-I mistook the idea of Rei becoming disjointed in time for Rei being able to travel in time. Physics has never been my strong suit...I guess I believe in her again? I think both ideas make a certain amount of sense and could be true...but then again, simply in terms of story, it being Rei who is disjointed in time has a far larger impact than it just being Lilith. Guess I've regained my faith in Quantum Rei.

Thanks for telling me.

UrsusArctos wrote:Going with a counterargument here: If the String Quartet really were metaphysical Doppelgangers presaging an event/omen, would they be gathered together playing presumably physical musical instruments in such an oddly specific time and place?

Yes? Of course that's what they'd do? (And the Instruments could be as ghostly as their clothes; though since we know that apparitions can interact physically it's neither here nor there.)

I don't think that we're all going to come to an agreement on this- you both seem to find my idea as random & nonsensical as I find yours. So let's drop this line of discussion.

(But, to give an actual example of this sort of apparition that comes to mind, it's said that before the civil war between Cæsar & Pompey, the ghosts of Marius & Sylla (previous leaders in a civil war) were seen fighting.)

The key element of "Quantum Rei" isn't that Rei's capable of time-travel per se; it's that cause and effect are nonlinear, so that our "real world" sense of an effect happening after a cause don't need to hold true. The ghostly images of Rei aren't omens or prophecies; they're for real, but because cause and effect are not in sequence, Rei can appear even before instrumentality. And like a subatomic particle, Rei can literally appear to be in two places at once stemming at the moment of instrumentality, but can turn up before or after that.

Quantum Rei is for real, in short, and she's not so much capable of traveling forwards in time as being disjointed in time. And while Anno's understanding of quantum physics may not be world-class, he does nail the breakage in temporal causality pretty well.

Tbh most of what you're doing here seems to be giving a technobabble explanation for... omens & prophecies. I'm not denying that there's nonlinear cause & effect- that's exactly what I've been asserting all along, and that part is plainly canon by the DSS (or at least appearance of cause & effect; I don't personally believe cause & effect are anything fundamental- but please, let's not get into metaphysics.)

My claim is that this is not somehow a power that Lilith-Adam acquires at Third Impact- she doesn't transcend time or become "disjointed" in it. If you believe this, can you please cite some actual evidence for it? Explain how the S2 Engine could give such a power? Offer an explanation of why Lilith-Adam has it but Yui doesn't? Explain how this adds anything to the narrative that "Lilith looks at Shinji (synchronously)" doesn't?

Zusuchan wrote:it being Rei who is disjointed in time has a far larger impact than it just being Lilith.

What difference do you see between Rei and Lilith?

Lavinius wrote:(But, to give an actual example of this sort of apparition that comes to mind, it's said that before the civil war between Cæsar & Pompey, the ghosts of Marius & Sylla (previous leaders in a civil war) were seen fighting.)

Indeed, and I've also heard of the apparition of a giant with a trumpet appearing before Cæsar before he decided to roll the dice and cross the Rubicon, and strange lightning seen over the dome of the Hagia Sophia and the Virgin Mary leaving Constantinople shortly before that very last vestige of the Roman Empire fell. I'm aware of the stories of such things happening before historical events not just in Roman and Byzantine history but worldwide. All the same, it is up to Anno and his writers to decide whether such things apply in his universe.

While I can't conclusively disprove your theory that the string quartet serve as apparition omens, I don't see this as proven either. (And no, I'm not dismissing your idea out of hand as "nonsensical")

Tbh most of what you're doing here seems to be giving a technobabble explanation for... omens & prophecies. I'm not denying that there's nonlinear cause & effect- that's exactly what I've been asserting all along, and that part is plainly canon by the DSS <snip>

It's not technobabble as much as quantum physics actually being weird. Although I'll hand this much to you - people tend to throw the term "quantum" as technobabble all too often, and I admit I can't make an explanation about why this could be a quantum physics phenomenon any simpler or clearer for you without resorting to going completely off-topic.

As to the idea of cause and effect not following linearly, I'd point at the same phenomenon as you, the appearances of Messenger-Rei before Instrumentality begins. So we both clearly see the same phenomenon differently. As to your questions, how does the S2 engine have that effect, and why does the Adam-Lilith combo manifest this? That's not something I have an answer for, and perhaps only Anno knows the answer.

And I would also ask why Yui doesn't manifest to people in either her human or Eva forms prior to Instrumentality as an omen, given that the entire event ends with Yui drifting off into space with a number of souls on board? Don't take this as me being needlessly argumentative or dismissive of your argument; I find your idea fascinating but I'm not "sold" on it just yet.

UrsusArctos wrote:All the same, it is up to Anno and his writers to decide whether such things apply in his universe.

Of course; my intention there is merely to give some indication to anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about that this sort of thing is an established trope (probably a near-universal for human cultures) that doesn't need to be explained to be invoked. (Much like Eva uses the Progenitor Aliens trope without explicitly calling it out.)

It's not technobabble as much as quantum physics actually being weird. Although I'll hand this much to you - people tend to throw the term "quantum" as technobabble all too often, and I admit I can't make an explanation about why this could be a quantum physics phenomenon any simpler or clearer for you without resorting to going completely off-topic.

And I would also ask why Yui doesn't manifest to people in either her human or Eva forms prior to Instrumentality as an omen, given that the entire event ends with Yui drifting off into space with a number of souls on board? Don't take this as me being needlessly argumentative or dismissive of your argument; I find your idea fascinating but I'm not "sold" on it just yet.

By technobabble I merely mean that what primarily matters to Eva is Eva's own worldbuilding; relating those effects to actual physics (or actual qabbalah) is secondary.

I'm not sure what you're trying to ask about Yui- can you please rephrase the question?

It just feels to me that this is an explanation of things that doesn't seem to have any in-show evidence, and has become ingrained basically because no one else is as particular about Lilith as I am.

By the way, I think one of you might want to branch out this whole tangent about the Death quartet and """Quantum""" Rei into a new topic.

Lavinius wrote:
What difference do you see between Rei and Lilith?

Rei is a cut-off part of Lilith who acquired her own emotions and thoughts and feelings and ideas through her life experiences. Rei and Lilith are the same, yes, but thinking about it, probably more in the sense that they were one being some time ago-but from the moment Rei actually arrived in the world, she became, well, Rei. Not Lilith.

Though this is primarily based on my philosophical views. Then again isn't most everything?

Zusuchan wrote:Rei is a cut-off part of Lilith who acquired her own emotions and thoughts and feelings and ideas through her life experiences. Rei and Lilith are the same, yes, but thinking about it, probably more in the sense that they were one being some time ago-but from the moment Rei actually arrived in the world, she became, well, Rei. Not Lilith.

Though this is primarily based on my philosophical views. Then again isn't most everything?

And yet Rei returns to Lilith, and once again they are one being with continuity, and we see that Adam considers Rei Lilith, and he's likely to know what's going on best.

That's why I think the word avatar is perhaps the best word to use for their relationship- when Vishnu became Krishna, obviously Vishnu didn't stop existing as a heavenly, transcendental being, and Krishna is certainly a person in his own right. But at the same time, it'd be incorrect to deny that Krishna is Vishnu.

Hmm, mayhaps. I don't know much about avatars, but aren't they traditionally more like the incarnations of deities than well, whatever Rei's and Lilith's relationship is?

Zusuchan wrote:Hmm, mayhaps. I don't know much about avatars, but aren't they traditionally more like the incarnations of deities than well, whatever Rei's and Lilith's relationship is?

Well, if we're gonna get technical:

Wikipedia wrote:Avatar literally means "descent, alight, to make one's appearance",[3] and refers to the embodiment of the essence of a superhuman being or a deity in another form.[22] The word also implies "to overcome, to remove, to bring down, to cross something".[3] In Hindu traditions, the "crossing or coming down" is symbolism, states Daniel Bassuk, of the divine descent from "eternity into the temporal realm, from unconditioned to the conditioned, from infinitude to finitude".[5] An avatar, states Justin Edwards Abbott, is a saguna (with form, attributes) embodiment of the nirguna Brahman or Atman (soul).

So that does seem a good fit to me.

Lavinius wrote:That's why I think the word avatar is perhaps the best word to use for their relationship- when Vishnu became Krishna, obviously Vishnu didn't stop existing as a heavenly, transcendental being, and Krishna is certainly a person in his own right. But at the same time, it'd be incorrect to deny that Krishna is Vishnu.

That's pretty much spot-on. Krishna even meets Vishnu in one tale and bows before him, but he's capable of turning into Vishnu's full, eldritch "universal form" and at the end of his mortal existence, merges back into Vishnu (that is, when Vishnu doesn't turn up before faithful devotees in Krishna's form).

All the same, there are two things that make me leery of considering Rei an avatar of Lilith in the Hindu sense -

1. Rei was apparently created by Fuyutsuki through unspecified methods after Yui's disappearance ("Rei, the product of my despair...") but there's no confirmation that Lilith willingly became Rei, and one of the key conditions of avatar creation is that the god in question willingly descends from a divine existence to a mortal one. The most important avatars, the ten avatars of Vishnu, were caused by Vishnu's willing incarnation into animal/quasi-human/human form. An avatar is a controlled spiritual descent, and retain full memory of their divine nature unless their original god withholds it, while it seems that Rei is confused/disturbed by her origin from Lilith and is heavily implied to have an incomplete soul in her second body, with some of her having gone into Eva-00. (There are amnesiac gods and goddesses in human form, but those instances don't qualify as avatars. Rei seems to fit the amnesiac god somewhat more closely.)

2. Avatars merge back into their original god without changing their god's form or identity. Vishnu didn't become more Krishna-like when Krishna's existence merged into his own, and even gods condemned to briefly spend a mortal existence return to their original form when they become aware of their divine nature again. But Lilith is reshaped by Rei, and when Rei returns to Lilith in EoE, Lilith changes to GNR and stays that way all the way to the end (except when Kaworu briefly gets into the "driver's seat" to talk to Shinji). Lilith has landed up permanently gaining a new form and by extension, a new identity, which an avatar doesn't do.

UrsusArctos wrote:That's pretty much spot-on. Krishna even meets Vishnu in one tale and bows before him, but he's capable of turning into Vishnu's full, eldritch "universal form" and at the end of his mortal existence, merges back into Vishnu (that is, when Vishnu doesn't turn up before faithful devotees in Krishna's form).

All the same, there are two things that make me leery of considering Rei an avatar of Lilith in the Hindu sense -

1. Rei was apparently created by Fuyutsuki through unspecified methods after Yui's disappearance ("Rei, the product of my despair...") but there's no confirmation that Lilith willingly became Rei, and one of the key conditions of avatar creation is that the god in question willingly descends from a divine existence to a mortal one. The most important avatars, the ten avatars of Vishnu, were caused by Vishnu's willing incarnation into animal/quasi-human/human form. An avatar is a controlled spiritual descent, and retain full memory of their divine nature unless their original god withholds it, while it seems that Rei is confused/disturbed by her origin from Lilith and is heavily implied to have an incomplete soul in her second body, with some of her having gone into Eva-00. (There are amnesiac gods and goddesses in human form, but those instances don't qualify as avatars. Rei seems to fit the amnesiac god somewhat more closely.)

2. Avatars merge back into their original god without changing their god's form or identity. Vishnu didn't become more Krishna-like when Krishna's existence merged into his own, and even gods condemned to briefly spend a mortal existence return to their original form when they become aware of their divine nature again. But Lilith is reshaped by Rei, and when Rei returns to Lilith in EoE, Lilith changes to GNR and stays that way all the way to the end (except when Kaworu briefly gets into the "driver's seat" to talk to Shinji). Lilith has landed up permanently gaining a new form and by extension, a new identity, which an avatar doesn't do.

Not so much arguing with you- Avatar can be a word worth using without us having to say that the Lilith-Rei relationship is working exactly like it does in Hindu theology (Lilith is a physical, biological, flesh-&-blood being, for one)- but both points I think at least bring up some subtler topics.

1. I think that it's reasonably established that from Fuyutsuki's end, what happened is he accidentally pulled out Lilith's soul (in a regenerated Yui body), while trying to retrieve Yui from the still-joined Lilith-Shogouki. However, what happened from Lilith's end is less clear. I don't see it as likely that Gehirn would have been able to bind her up and make Shogouki out of her against her will- Lilith wasn't sealed by a Lance like Adam was- though I suppose it's possible that they did trick her somehow.
Personally, I suspect that Lilith left her body deliberately, fulfilling the prophecied death of the Second Angel, so that she would no longer be bound by the prophecy (just like Tabris had to die to achieve his freedom).

2. Reichu's pointed out that Lilith's crucified form isn't FAR-looking at all but resembles a diseased Lilin form (note the ears!) more than anything else. So I think it's surprisingly possible that Lilith was in a Lilin form already when contact was first made by Gehirn, and that the blobby, corpse-like shape we recognize is the result of her being fucked up by having Shogouki grown out of her without having a soul to tell her how to put herself back together right. Note how the body is growing up dozens of Lilin-looking legs, like it's trying to regenerate itself but can't quite remember how. Of course this pre-Gehirn Lilin form wouldn't have been a specifically Rei form, but I don't think that the blobby thing on the cross ever was her natural form.
As for Lilith permanently assuming the form of Rei in particular... I think her aspect as Rei is precious to her, but I don't think she's limited to it. It is worth considering that everyone we see her appear as Rei to is someone who'd already know her as Rei (we, the audience, already know her as Rei), and that she can easily appear as multiple stages of Rei or as someone else entirely. So that Rei is how she'd typically appear to a Lilin, but perhaps not to some other form of life.

I've taken the liberty of adding a little note in the Quantum Rei article specifying she isn't time travelling so much as her existence is non-linear. I don't suppose this should go into the common misconceptions page? The article makes it unclear (used to, at least? ), but I think most everyone familiar with the theory is aware of the general idea.

Use "avatar" if you want, but the whole Rei-Lilith relationship never felt very avatar-like to me. There are enough variations on avatars in Hinduism, but the Rei-Lilith relationship isn't in them.

Lavinius wrote: I don't see it as likely that Gehirn would have been able to bind her up and make Shogouki out of her against her will- Lilith wasn't sealed by a Lance like Adam was- though I suppose it's possible that they did trick her somehow.
Personally, I suspect that Lilith left her body deliberately, fulfilling the prophecied death of the Second Angel, so that she would no longer be bound by the prophecy (just like Tabris had to die to achieve his freedom).

While it is possible, even likely, that Lilith was deceived in some fashion to yank her soul out of her body, Lilith was never really dead. A dead body doesn't bleed LCL or regenerate lost legs. Adam, likewise, blew up but even with her soul in Kaworu, her physical body was still regenerating as an embryo. Saying that Lilith "died" here is a stretch.

Additionally, we don't even know what the Dead Sea Scroll "prophecies" say in the first place or how they're interpreted. The DSS are a complete black box since none of the show's creators have ever directly revealed what they contain (as opposed to what Seele interprets or outright makes up). Assuming that they prophesize the exact fate of every single Angel is going a lot further than predicting aspects of their appearance, role and abilities based on predetermined conditions. Had the Dead Sea Scrolls prophesized the deaths of all the Angels, it would make Nerv's task a heck of a lot simpler.

2. Reichu's pointed out that Lilith's crucified form isn't FAR-looking at all but resembles a diseased Lilin form (note the ears!) more than anything else. So I think it's surprisingly possible that Lilith was in a Lilin form already when contact was first made by Gehirn, and that the blobby, corpse-like shape we recognize is the result of her being fucked up by having Shogouki grown out of her without having a soul to tell her how to put herself back together right. Note how the body is growing up dozens of Lilin-looking legs, like it's trying to regenerate itself but can't quite remember how. Of course this pre-Gehirn Lilin form wouldn't have been a specifically Rei form, but I don't think that the blobby thing on the cross ever was her natural form.

You mean that Lilith's crucified form doesn't look like Adam at all, and that's making the assumption that the default FAR form resembles Adam. But Adam and Lilith both confer different Fruits - the Fruit of Life and Fruit of Knowledge - and it's likely that Lilith's possession of the Fruit of Knowledge gives her a more Lilin-like head, while Adam's head looks partly cetacean. To be true, the tank images confirm that Lilith does wither away when Eva-01 is born, but she regenerates her withered right arm just fine and even has it nailed back to the cross, so either the arm regenerated before Rei was created or Lilith hasn't lost all memory of regeneration.

For all we know, Lilith's original form could've been more, not less, Lilin-like, hence the ears. We don't get to see anything of Lilith's original face thanks to the mask, so there's no telling what it could've been like.

It is worth considering that everyone we see her appear as Rei to is someone who'd already know her as Rei (we, the audience, already know her as Rei), and that she can easily appear as multiple stages of Rei or as someone else entirely. So that Rei is how she'd typically appear to a Lilin, but perhaps not to some other form of life.

This is an interesting idea, but why should the Rei-Lilith being preferentially take Rei's form during instrumentality? Lilith appears as Rei before Shinji in Episode 01 before Shinji or the audience know her as Rei. After collecting the souls of dead Nerv employees (who presumably don't all know her personally) her various manifestations take on the form of Rei. Lilith's very identity has been reshaped here.

UrsusArctos wrote:Use "avatar" if you want, but the whole Rei-Lilith relationship never felt very avatar-like to me. There are enough variations on avatars in Hinduism, but the Rei-Lilith relationship isn't in them.

Someone gets it.
Rei I gets 50% of lilith's soul while 50% stays in lilith's body. Thus proving-

Lilith was never really dead. A dead body doesn't bleed LCL or regenerate lost legs. Adam, likewise, blew up but even with her soul in Kaworu, her physical body was still regenerating as an embryo. Saying that Lilith "died" here is a stretch.

After Rei I dies, II gets another half of it, unit 00 gets the other half. II and Unit 00 gets killed, III gets those parts. Now, Rei I, II, III individually were never lilith's avatar. You can call Kaworu adam's avatar all you want, cause he got the whole soul. That's why he remembers his identity, goals, everything. Unlike Kaworu, Rei can't. Do you even see Rei, for once giving angelic speech and lessons like Kaworu ever in the series? She's a being of her own, neither Yui or lilith. Yeah, their biology matches and everything. But spiritually she's a different being, in the body of a lilin a lilin with lilith's genes. Call her lilith's avatar when she becomes "Quantum Rei" as you call it, because then she gets lilith's whole soul, thus lilith. And that happens only in EoE, not before.
And i'm surprised that you guys taking Hinduism references while you can work with Kabbalistic references which also explains it and which was used as reference for NGE.

Berserker wrote:And i'm surprised that you guys taking Hinduism references while you can work with Kabbalistic references which also explains it and which was used as reference for NGE.

NGE doesn't just use Kabbalah, it also appears to use elements of Buddhism and Shinto as well. I can understand the notion of "Kami" or "divinity" being used to describe Adam, Lilith and to some extent the Evas and Angels, and to some extent the

Nowhere do I see any unambiguous references to Hinduism (as opposed to shared references with Buddhism). Kaworu might be called an avatar, but Kaworu appears to be a genuine being of the seashore - being both Lilin and Angel, and having a female soul (Adam) in a male body, being neither one nor the other.

While some of this does fit with the Hindu avatars as we know them - for example, Rama from the Ramayana is quite explicitly Vishnu as Vishnu's avatar and at the same time, human, thus making him the only human being with all the power needed to kill the egotistical demon king Ravana - the circumstances of Kaworu's creation are so radically different that it just doesn't seem to fit the bill. A deity that's blown up, and then has its soul taken into the body of a half-human, half-Angel child really doesn't fit with any Hindu paradigm of avatar creation. Trying to fit previously defined Hindu concepts with NGE doesn't work.

UrsusArctos wrote:Use "avatar" if you want, but the whole Rei-Lilith relationship never felt very avatar-like to me. There are enough variations on avatars in Hinduism, but the Rei-Lilith relationship isn't in them.

Very well, I'm not going to insist on its usage, I just mean that it provides a ready example of a deity having multiple mortal personas who are still definitely the very deity.

While it is possible, even likely, that Lilith was deceived in some fashion to yank her soul out of her body, Lilith was never really dead. A dead body doesn't bleed LCL or regenerate lost legs. Adam, likewise, blew up but even with her soul in Kaworu, her physical body was still regenerating as an embryo. Saying that Lilith "died" here is a stretch.

Additionally, we don't even know what the Dead Sea Scroll "prophecies" say in the first place or how they're interpreted. The DSS are a complete black box since none of the show's creators have ever directly revealed what they contain (as opposed to what Seele interprets or outright makes up). Assuming that they prophesize the exact fate of every single Angel is going a lot further than predicting aspects of their appearance, role and abilities based on predetermined conditions. Had the Dead Sea Scrolls prophesized the deaths of all the Angels, it would make Nerv's task a heck of a lot simpler.

The listing of the Angels is clearly not in the order of their appearance or creation- otherwise Lilin would be the Third Angel. Even if you suppose that Sachiel through Armisael were created by Adam after Lilith's creation but before his sealing by the Lance, that can't apply to Tabris.

Instead, the numbering is very clearly in the order of the Angels' deaths. You can replace "death" by "removal-of-the-soul-from-the-body" if you wish to be technical about the actual operative factor. And this order is predetermined- Seele refers to the Thirteenth Angel (Bardiel) ahead of time, knowing that it will be different from those before. In fact, this is the only thing that ever indicates that they have any knowledge of the individual Angels' natures ahead of time.

How this works in regards to a potential Angelic victory scenario, I'm not sure. It's possible that the Angels' deaths are actually predetermined and they were never capable of victory, and Gendou's & Seele's measures are merely to prevent them from damaging Lilith/Shogouki, whom they'll need for their Instrumentality scenarios. Alternatively, the DSS permit multiple paths, and the order we see is merely that of the branch that Gendou & Seele are trying to keep things on.

To clarify, I'm saying that it's unclear if the "scenario" is more of an explicit branch of the DSS prophecy Seele is trying to stay on (i.e. the DSS says something like "if Lilin is to be the last Angel, the other Angels must be killed in this order:"), or if it's their own plan built around a single prophecy (i.e. the DSS says effectively "Here's a list of the Angels that will be killed in this order:" with everything else implicitly open.)

(The explanation given in the CI, of the DSS as a manual regarding FAR technology rather than actual prophetic knowledge, is grossly inconsistent with what's in the actual show, and must discarded.)

This is an interesting idea, but why should the Rei-Lilith being preferentially take Rei's form during instrumentality? Lilith appears as Rei before Shinji in Episode 01 before Shinji or the audience know her as Rei. After collecting the souls of dead Nerv employees (who presumably don't all know her personally) her various manifestations take on the form of Rei. Lilith's very identity has been reshaped here.

Because Rei is the form that bears the genetic link to Shinji, the very reason she's probably appearing to him to begin with.
And what other form, I'm going to ask, should Lilith be taking to deal with Lilin than that of the Lilin existence she herself was just in?
As for whether her fundamental identity has been reshaped, that's a question that I think is beyond inference from the text, and also depends on what you mean by it.

Berserker wrote:Rei I gets 50% of lilith's soul while 50% stays in lilith's body.

There's no reason to think that souls are homogenous when divisible, or that the Lilith-body has retained 50% of the soul- Rei can certainly do a lot more than the original body can, and I'd expect otherwise if they were evenly split like that. Moreover, if there were a substantial element of the soul left in the Lilith body, then I'd expect that to come out when further Rei bodies were drawn out- instead Ritsuko explains that only one Rei bore a soul.

Rather, the division of the soul is functional- Lilith retains only a barest fragment if the lowest, vegetative level if any. The element in Zerogouki is presumably some violent, animalistic element- the id or the like. But the element in Rei II is the crowning element, the rational soul, that capable of intelligent thought, speech, reasoning; that which contains Lilith's being-as-a-human (rather than as a plant or mere animal). This is obviously the most important part of Lilith's soul, and this is the one that Rei has. So she clearly is spiritually Lilith, Lilith-the-human-being (if not Lilith-the-giant-space-creature) on the fundamental level.

Why she lost her memory while Kaworu retains his is hard to say and rather beside the point. Plausibly memory is mostly physically stored in the original body's brain, and doesn't transfer with the soul very well (this also explains why Rei III seems a bit out of the loop). Indeed, it's not clear that Kaworu actually has retained his memory, rather than being just told by Seele who he is- which Gendou neglected to do with Rei.

(Division of the psyche by function seems to be the norm in Eva. The CI states that the Nigouki contained the maternal element of Kyouko's soul. Naoko divides her soul by three interpersonal roles she holds. Leliel talks about an acting function of the soul and a critiquing function.)

Lavinius wrote:There's no reason to think that souls are homogenous when divisible, or that the Lilith-body has retained 50% of the soul- Rei can certainly do a lot more than the original body can, and I'd expect otherwise if they were evenly split like that. Moreover, if there were a substantial element of the soul left in the Lilith body, then I'd expect that to come out when further Rei bodies were drawn out- instead Ritsuko explains that only one Rei bore a soul.

Well yeah, this is agreeable. But also there's no reason to speculate that lilith didn't do anything because she didn't have the ability to. It can be her will or the lance.

Rather, the division of the soul is functional- Lilith retains only a barest fragment if the lowest, vegetative level if any. The element in Zerogouki is presumably some violent, animalistic element- the id or the like. But the element in Rei II is the crowning element, the rational soul, that capable of intelligent thought, speech, reasoning; that which contains Lilith's being-as-a-human (rather than as a plant or mere animal). This is obviously the most important part of Lilith's soul, and this is the one that Rei has. So she clearly is spiritually Lilith, Lilith-the-human-being (if not Lilith-the-giant-space-creature) on the fundamental level.

"Divided soul would have different elements and traits of the original soul" seems arguable. And there's no evidence or references to work with in this matter. So, straight up calling Rei (before EoE) lilith seems too hasty and fallacious. Rather, it can be said that origin of Rei's soul is lilith, not guf or from kabbalistic standpoint Adam Kadmon's soul.

Rather, the division of the soul is functional- Lilith retains only a barest fragment if the lowest, vegetative level if any. The element in Zerogouki is presumably some violent, animalistic element- the id or the like. But the element in Rei II is the crowning element, the rational soul, that capable of intelligent thought, speech, reasoning; that which contains Lilith's being-as-a-human (rather than as a plant or mere animal). This is obviously the most important part of Lilith's soul, and this is the one that Rei has. So she clearly is spiritually Lilith, Lilith-the-human-being (if not Lilith-the-giant-space-creature) on the fundamental level.

Wanted to include this in the earlier post. Yeah, brain contains memories. I agree. But only Kaworu recognizing lilith as lilith questions this. Seele obviously didn't teach him that. Other things like blaberring about angel and mankind's fate, the ability of manifesting A.T field; these are not something a normal human child can do neither something one can learn from other. These are about instincts based on your past. Which Rei was able to do once she got the whole soul merged, or should i say Rei became lilith. But before that, divided soul=new being. Another example: You can say Yui's body got dissolved in Unit 1, so she got her memories. But after contact experiment with unit 2, Kyoko's body was completely intact. Only her mental health snapped. Then how do you explain the soul in unit 2 still recognizing Asuka? Brain was still in Kyoko's body, which got buried. Soul is something we don't understand even by 1% in IRL. And in NGE, anything can happen. And the classification of soul (e.g progenitor soul, angel's soul, human soul) seems ridiculous to me. Just because one gets complex brain doesn't mean his soul is superior to another's soul. It's just because of one's biology. If a seed wants to live a lilin life, there's no problem in that.

The CI states that the Nigouki contained the maternal element of Kyouko's soul. Naoko divides her soul by three interpersonal roles she holds.

It's also specified that contact expermient with unit 2 went terribly wrong. Kyoko's soul division wasn't intentional at all. The reason of Kyoko going mentally unstable is the faulty contact experiment. Now, one cannot expect a mentally unstable person to be all maternal. Mental patient's emotions doesn't work like that anymore. Unit 2's brain didn't go haywire during contact experment, that's why the soul residing in it can express its maternity and emotions. Mental problem's not about soul, it's about brain.

Edit: Yeah, i meant Kyoko. My brain was fuzzy at that time i guess.

Berserker wrote:
Naoko's soul division wasn't intentional at all.

You meant Kyoko, right?

Whoa.

I regret missing out on all of this conversation. This is amazing that people are reading some weird fanwank I did back in 2014 on (something as arguably "skippable" as) Evangelion: Death.

lol, Evangelion: Death has to be one of my favorite aspects of the Evangelion franchise. I remember first getting into Evangelion and seeing Death & Rebirth in the list of Evangelion things to watch (I was probably only a third of the way through the TV Series at the time) and seeing IMDb reviews recommending to skip this film outright. They were either bored of the discontinuous editing of the events in the show or scared of the canonical can of worms it opens up, so I'm glad I didn't heed their warnings. This film has been one of the more unexpectedly interesting spices the franchise has ever offered us.

I don't have that much to add to this other than I still think the Quartet scenes have to be canon and has to have taken place at a physical location somewhere in Eva's Japan. No storyteller spends an entire film opening giving specific times and dates for events seen previously in the show, then give a specific time and date for events not previously seen in the show, then expect the audience to naturally conclude that one of them somehow isn't canonical to the other. That's just not how anything works in any media. If it doesn't make sense in the greater narrative, fine, but that isn't grounds to dismiss the shown events from happening all together. It just means that it doesn't make sense, and as a viewer you have to decide the discrepancy is distracting enough to pull you from enjoying the work for the tone and mood it sets. This isn't Cinema Sins. For God's Sake, we don't have to ding everything that isn't completely and perfectly logical in a film.

More recently I've been toying with the idea of the Quartet Children (the name I'm bestowing the Shinji, Asuka, Rei doppelgangers) were cosplayers of the actual Eva pilots. I mean, it's not that far fetched; Shinji did have a lot of fan girls in Episode 3, which tells us that Kaworu's bit about how "Everyone knows who [Shinji is]" in Episode 24 possibly referred to the general public and not just people at Nerv. But not even the idea of cosplayers makes sense for that film specifically since Asuka wouldn't have yet arrived at Japan during the Quartet scenes, so no one in Japan would really know who she is enough to dress up as her. Hell, I don't even know if Shinji was a part of Nerv 18 months before Episode 24. (Also, how in the world did that Asuka lookalike get her hands on an Eva headset? That's just so flippin' w e i r d, man.) It's a better hypothesis than the ones I've had before on the scene, as there's less to logically stretch in order to make it work, but there's an awful lot of stretching nonetheless.

I like UrsusArctos' idea of these actual kids being thematic "heralds" for the event that's going to happen in Tokyo-3. I don't think the scenes need to be appreciated on a level other than that.

I really don't think the cosplay idea makes sense, because 18 months before ep. 24 the Angels hadn't even started attacking. There would be no reason for Rei, Shinji and Asuka to be famous. Not to mention Kaworu's existence was supposed to be a mystery-Gendo didn't know about him until he arrived at Nerv's doorstep. So the theory doesn't really hold up.