Something that stuck out at me while looking at the End Of Evangelion drafts recently is that Gendo gets this line at the end of his confrontation with SEELE "Yui stayed inside the EVA willingly for this moment".

While there are plenty of substantial changes (like Shinji doing the fapping directly looking at Asuka, not just in his room) a lot of the cuts are extra exposition that can be deduced or is communicated visually in the final movie(such as Shinji's entry plug ejecting or Gendo remarking that Shinji is now in control of the impact event etc. ), having Misato just completely explain the conspiracy by herself in monologue rather than showing her talking to Hyuuga, Misato telling Shinji that he's got to destroy all the MP EVAs etc.

The manga makes it very clear that Gendo didn't know (and that Fuyutsuki didn't tell him on purpose) but Sadamoto always made it clear that the manga is just his own interpretation, and at the time that he finished his involvement with the main show/franchise was long since over - also, Manga Gendo is pretty different in general.

Now you're asking, "but isn't he doing all this to bring her back precisely cause he doesn't know?"

Not necessarily.
I've always pointed out that he believes in The Plan for its own sake too, ep 25 makes that pretty clear.
He expects to be reunited with her when The Plan is done & is most certainly looking forward to this/ being carried forward by this hope as a strong motivator.

How different were their plans really? They both involved grabbing the S2 engine while SEELE's didn't.
Conversely, what actually happens in EoE seems to be exactly what Yui had planned, third impact included.
Maybe she felt the prophecy could not be averted but a TI that is then immediately undone would "technically fulfill it"
Maybe it was actually impossible & predermination really exists in-universe; Maybe its a result of Yui being brought up in the SEELE cult mindset. Like a protestant would renounce the catholic church but still believe in Jesus & shit.
(As Fuyutsuki asks earlier, "Will [EVA 01] become an ark to save us from the destruction of Third impact?" )

Nor does Yui say much more than "what do you wish for" until AFTER Shinji made his decision. Maybe she didn't care what he picked, or - more likely - she believed that hed act like she expected it in the end.
So maybe the only difference between their plans was that Gendo firmly believed that the resulting conglomerate in the sea of lcl would absolutely decide to stay tanged forever but up to that point they're the same...

well, we know one point where it differs: Shinjis involvement. Yui seemed to have planned that he would be the pilot & insists that he stays the pilot when he considers leaving in ep 19.
Rebuild is a different ballgame but as far as the original series goes, Gendo wasn't planning to have Shinji pilot at all, he only got called cause Rei was out of commission & whenever Shinji thinks of leaving he declares that Rei will now pilot eva 01....
And certainly creating her was not in the original plan, as she is essentially a means for him to do the picking himself instead of how Shinji ends up doing it.


Then there's this bit from the Q&A where we also get the name origins for everyone etc:

5.2) What happened to Shinji when he was small? (ep.21)
He witnessed Yui's fatal accident, and "ran away" from NERV and his
father. Probably as a result of this and Yui's death, Rei is
recruited as a pilot. In the earlier episodes he has no recollection
of this. We were made to assume that Gendou abandoned him to work on
his project. Shinji finally remembers in ep.(20? 21?).

I don't think this justifies what Gendou does to his son, but that's a
different question.

(emphasis mine)

Like I mostly took the line in ep 20 to mean that Shinji "ran away" in the sense that the experiment was just frightening to witness & that he blamed Gendo for her death. But you could kinda deduce some implication here that they actually tried to make 4 year old Shinji the pilot. (Asuka wasn't much older after all) Several toddler tantrums later, Gendo sent him off and went to work on the vat with Yui's remains, "Screw it, we'll just Frankenstein us a Pilot."

One might also wonder if he knew this at the time or only found out later(which he probably didn't - he was missing for a week, was said to have changed greatly...)
Or maybe he thought he could handle it all by himself/ was fine with the temporary parting but then quickly found that he couldn't & had no means to manage a grieving, tantrum-throwing toddler.




Of course its possible that the idea that "only Fuyutsuki knew" emerged later in the writing process.

But even in the final version he has a line at the end of the meeting with SEELE (right in front of Gendo) that's somerthinglike "...such is the will of the soul that lives on inside EVA" or something like that. It's vaguer but there's a similar implication to it.


We could end with some Rebuild-related speculation like how The Plan (according to 1.0) seems to have been drafted while Yui yet lived and how in the one flashback we see of her she's telling Gendo to "take care of Shinji" (like she knew she was going away) but at this point the agendas of both of themare complete enigmas & it makes no sense to have this convo when the fourth movie is (hopefully) about to drop in a few months.

I'm gonna stay by the side of him not knowing it. We do know that during her last days, she only disclosed the matter of her to become the resident soul to Fuyutsuki only, and told to keep it a secret. Now Yui explicitly states her goal of preventing the "final tragedy", making a better world for Shinji, which goes against Seele's apocrypha. At that point, Gendo and the rest of the Seele were blindly following the dead sea scrolls, going by what fate had written for them. Only after Yui's contact experiment, Gendo recommends Fuyutsuki the new project and tells him of already proposing it to Seele, human instrumentality project, of which Gendo's only motive was to reunite with Yui, while Seele had different plan. Third impact was inevitable according to the apocrypha, I agree. But instrumentality was Seele's method of using it for their own reason. To avoid the public going against them and to make it reasonable to Gendo and Fuyutsuki, Seele made Gehirn and Nerv to show that, "look, angels will be attacking. We'll defend using Evas to prevent the third impact." The contact experiment of Yui was the key to finally start the preparation of instrumentality, as after that they knew Gendo will propose that. Basically, Seele manipulated Yui in thinking that she was going to manipulate their plan just to manipulate her into being the resident soul to manipulate Gendo to get involved into their plan by simply making it look like it's actually Gendo's idea, but it's actually theirs from the beginning. In conclusion, Seele knows their way around mind games. But little did they know, Gendo and Yui had other plan over their plan, both having different one on different time, as Gendo was following Seele's plan faithfully until Yui's experiment, after which he made his own which helped Seele for the time being until they went full rampage on Nerv in EoE to implement their version. We know the rest. Also, after the battle of Zeruel, when they were trying to salvage Shinji, Ritsuko mentions the salvage procedure data was made ten years ago. Obviously, that was Naoko's doing in response of Yui's merging, which I'm assuming, was ordered by Gendo. If Gendo knew that was gonna happen, he wouldn't have even tried, let alone give an order to make a procedural thesis on salvation of a body and soul and make use of it, which went in vain(ether it was Naoko's intention to fail or Yui being adamant. Both ways, Gendo had nothing to do with the failure).

In short, all of this went according to Seele's plan. Seele obviously didn't reveal this to Gendo as he wouldn't have been a part of this if he knew that would happen. That was their way to involve Gendo in their plan of instrumentality.

Shameless promotion of Reichu and quite possibly my favorite forum thread in-coming: thread/20093/Kaworu-and-SEELE-Gendos-Plans-Angel-Rebirth/

Has some interesting ideas about Gendo's plans.

Berserker wrote:
In short, all of this went according to Seele's plan. Seele obviously didn't reveal this to Gendo as he wouldn't have been a part of this if he knew that would happen. That was their way to involve Gendo in their plan of instrumentality.

Agree with this point. I guess is completely another tactical movement from SEELE to get involved Gendo in the instrumentality plan. Probably because they know there aren't no one who can do it better. Even in EoE looked like Gendo felt he was treated as another puppet like the rest when the instrumentality starts.
Seele used the only thing which makes Gendo more fragile: Yui persona and its process we see.

Are you talking about that's he didn't know about Yui being in the EVA? Her soul? That's is not possible. He knew it very very well. But to him, it don't matter. Cause Yui is not with him, but with her son. Except for when fighting the angels, to him, is as if Yui was not existing anymore at all in the first place. He want to feel her physical embrace as a woman. Just like Shinji do want his mom.

No, the question is whether Gendo had known about the contact experiment of Yui with Eva 1 would result in Yui merging with the Eva in every way, becoming the resident soul of it. Or at least that's what she intended to happen, in which she succeded.

Is Kendrix trying to find out wheter or not Gendo knew about or not that's Yui would end up being absorbed/"becoming" in the Eva? A part of me think little did he knew it... On a subconscious way, yes. After all, all this Eva stuff was related to bio-engineer, and although, I did never go to middle school and high school, to me, in the context of Eva and with Yui and her labcoat that's have a classic cliche "angelic" feel, it ring automatically "Metaphysic" to me. And if I don't say bullshit, metaphysic is all about related with science physic stuff that's can't be seen with the eyes and so, the soul.

More importantly, as far as we know Gendo let's Shinji watch the contact experiment, without even moving the little finger. Their are "complices" to me. Except Yui knew far more than Gendo in clear conscious, and Gendo knew... Subconsciously.

....But...Maybe...Hum, I'm doubtful. But to me, there no way, that's in some ways, little did...He knew. But he didn't want to admit to himself.

Let's say that's factually and little did, he knew. But it still devastated him. And there also a part of him, obviously that's didn't want things to turn this way. At all.

No no the question was wether he knew (or eventually figured out) that she stayed intentionally

Oh, that makes everything even less complicated. Obviously he figured out, he had to. I won't saw he exactly "knew" as he didn't know she was even going to get all absorbed into. After the experiment, it was pretty obvious as she rejected to get salvaged. And basically what Kendrix presented in her first post. Maybe even Fuyutsuki might've disclosed everything after the experiment, just a reasonable possibility. But I'm gonna adhere by the fact that he didn't know that she was gonna get sucked until only after the experiment.

Oh wow Guys, I'm sorry. I'm such a shame of intellectual in the evageek, aren't I?

Line wrote:Oh wow Guys, I'm sorry. I'm such a shame of intellectual in the evageek, aren't I?

Literally I felt like you oftentimes lol. But we are here to understand EVA and learn from the guru's of this group.

Not necessarily ! Wasn't the message of Evangelion that's everyone can see his/her own visions of things? Even though reality is despite us, limitless, we don't see it completely, and we cannot have the full scape of it.

Isn't that's way shall we shape reality atleast in our eyes' the way we see it?

No?...

....

Who I am? Who are you? Sorry for the meta side of it lol ha ha! It's a think that's I love to do a bit too much particulary in my head, lastly.

But anyway nope, you don't have to follow the words of somes users that's point of views seem better/ acclaimed than you.

In EoE when Fuyutsuki said about Yui choosing to remain in the Eva, I don't think he said that bit out loud.
I think he said the first line out loud (where he was quoting Yui) then the line about her staying in the Eva had a very subtle echo to it like he was following up with inner monologue.

I highly doubt he knew about it. If he did, there’s no way he would’ve let the experiment happen, since literally everything he does afterwards, and arguably the only reason he’s even the bad guy in the first place, is because he wants to bring her back.

In-universe? Gendo’s an administrator, not a scientist, while Yui was more likely than not one of the leads on the Eva project, stated to be a prodigy in the obscure field of soul science. Maybe the reason she told Fuyutsuki was to get ahead of the situation because as a fellow expert in the field he would’ve been able to piece together the implications on his own. But with her position and power, it would’ve been easy enough to obscure some facts from Gendo and get the contact experiment approved.

AWinters wrote:In EoE when Fuyutsuki said about Yui choosing to remain in the Eva, I don't think he said that bit out loud.
I think he said the first line out loud (where he was quoting Yui) then the line about her staying in the Eva had a very subtle echo to it like he was following up with inner monologue.

that should be possible to confirm or deny with the script

Given the drastic shift in his personality from before versus after Yui's contact experiment and disappearance, it strongly appears that he wasn't aware of the plan prior to it happening. However, there is a bit of room for him to possibly put the pieces together after the fact. Perhaps after Yui's failed extraction experiment that resulted in Rei being born, Gendo gathered more clarity regarding the matter, but regardless, his desperate and obsessive motivations remain the same; whether or not he knows now or knew then, he's hellbent on being reunited with her which informs his behavior throughout the series. EoE still shows that Yui and Gendo were not on the same page when it came to Shinji, which is why Gendo requires retribution. EoTV glosses over this, and so perhaps only in the context of the aired series, Gendo and Yui's motivations can be conflated as being the same, especially with them being ceremoniously paired next to each other in the congratulations scene.

Kendrix wrote:that should be possible to confirm or deny with the script

I didn't realise that internal monologue was explicitly labelled in the script. If so, that would be a good way to determine whether he said out loud or not.

Do you know where to find the script? Because I don't. XD