EVA Unit 10 wrote:He tried to force Shinji to kill a pilot because an Angel was in that patciuclar EVA and when Shinji refused Gendo still made the EVA do it and to make matters worse it was Shinjis friend Toji.

I found this scene so frustrating. He left all 3 Evas out in the open with no plan, waited for 2 of them to get taken out then ordered Shinji to kill another pilot, (which he knew Shinji wouldn't do) when he could have organised a combat plan where 2 engage in simultaneous combat while the other rips out the entry plug.

Then it occurred to me that the whole thing was a damn set up! He put the Evas in a vulnerable position so that Shinji would be left to fight alone and he knew Shinji would refuse to kill the pilot.
Son of bitch just wanted an excuse to test his dummy plug!

He is an abusive fuck no denying that I hated the way he treated Shinji

EVA Unit 10 wrote:Yui was in the wrong for leaving her family by merging her soul into the EVA and showing it to a 4 year old Shinji not to mention she was behind The Third Impact

Taking the dialogue between Yui and Fuyutsuki before the contact experiment into consideration, she didn't have any further choices for herself, mankind and most importantly her beloved son. As of the moment second impact occurred, they knew third impact was inevitable, only to be delayed or hastened with. Yui is like that one pawn of a totalitarian system where neither they will exactly abide by the way and command that is forced upon them, nor will cause conspicuous treason that will result in fruitless execution as in without accomplishing goals(in Yui's case, a relatively better post third impact world for her son and mankind). Rather they'll go by their own way that might end up sacrificing themselves(It did for Yui, in a way), but leaving something to be grabbed upon and a trail to follow by that will ensure their goals being accomplished for the greater good in a distant future, or not thereof, rather than the other two worse scenarios where either the pawn comply with the system and ending up in a sheer cold dystopia(in Eva's case, SEELE's version of instrumentality) or getting executed for treachery without accomplishing anything, still ending up in a scenario where totalitarianism comes out victorious.

SEELE's the primary perpetrator here, Yui being their disobedient yet altruistic, shackled pawn, mainly for Shinji, who hadn't left with any other choices. The system is to be blamed here, not its bound slaves.

I feel like the anime series is lacking context regarding why Yui made her plans. I get the impression that it was her who reached out to SEELE to make her plan happen.
It must have been really important to put Shinji through all that, sacrifice her human form and shatter her family.

It could be that she didn't know what she was getting into and found that she couldn't leave because she knew too much.

I just feel as though her reasoning in EoE was vague and didn't justify any of it.
Her reasons in the Manga/books were far more substantial.
(Book spoiler hidden):


In her very first scene I think her report that she was discussing with Fuyutsuki was her original plan, which he seemed to be in agreement with, which she may have adjusted to get around SEELE once she got involved with them. She would have had to integrate stopping SEELE into her own plan - whatever that was.
I still get confused over which part of 3rd Impact was part of whose plan.

It seems a bit of a stretch that a thesis paper on bioengineering would consist a masterplan on terraforming the planet and initiate forceful evolution of mankind based on some old apocrypha. I believe, it was something revolutionary enough on bioengineering that the Eva world back then wasn't so familiar with, something great enough to stand out in front of Fuyutsuki, something that was able to change and rewrite a great number of laws on the subject. Most probably something on cloning or genetic engineering which was of great help in project E later on. Even if the paper was on her plan, Fuyutsuki would've never come in agreement with it judging from the reaction of him when it had come to light to him about the truth behind second impact and Seele's plan.

The rest of the scenario is pretty clear IMO. Gendo was already Seele's pawn. Yui started dating him, even married and had a child with him before second impact. And since she's already a genius to begin with, Gendo referred her to Seele and probably insisted her to work with him in Gehirn just so that she can work with the Evas as that falls in her subject of expertise. Later, everything came to light to her as well and from then, which compelled her to come up with a plan of her own to create a relatively better post third impact world for Shinji and greater mankind, not such a distinct one that it would be conspicuous to Seele.

Berserker wrote: Gendo was already Seele's pawn. Yui started dating him, even married and had a child with him before second impact. And since she's already a genius to begin with, Gendo referred her to Seele and probably insisted her to work with him in Gehirn just so that she can work with the Evas as that falls in her subject of expertise.

Pretty sure it was the other way around, no? SHE was the one involved with Seele through her dad, Gendo married her because he wanted in on that deal.

Also, I’m gonna hazard a completely baseless guess and say that her paper was on soul transfer, which is something that may have previously been considered impossible. That’s an area of expertise that would make her uniquely qualified for Project E.

The series has hardly shown any evidence or hint to come to the conclusion that Yui was one of the Seele dude's daughter or somehow related to Seele. From what I've seen, it's most probably a cheap conspiracy theory that tried to justify her as what the thread's title suggests, an evil bitch. Taking that aside, from what the series actually demonstrates, she was a brilliant student on bioengineering, who managed to stand out in front of Fuyutsuki through her "now questionable" thesis on something, which granted her a chance to work with Fuyu, who before that, was somehow given the obligation to bail out Gendo by someone for something, which later led somehow to the event where Gendo and Yui finally crossed path and caught each others' eyes and so on. The thing is, these two met because of Fuyutsuki, whether or not a third party was involved. Before that, Yui wanted a simple life but just so happens to fall in void of intricacy that is Seele's agenda via Gendo.
On the other hand, Gendo was a hot headed bull who had pent up anger and hatred for everyone and everything due to unknown reasons. Presumably, the existence of this secret organization had come to his knowledge which just so happens to get their hands on some old scrolls which will grant them a chance to "purify" the world and let them reshape it the way they want or they simply crossed path and it showed a glimpse of what Gendo had in his mind for an ideal world.

Everyone can come up with a speculation of their own on what Yui's thesis paper was about, since there's no valid info on it to work with. That's just the way fandom works, immense fanwanking(no offense). But from what little bits and pieces that we have, the fellow professor of Fuyutsuki referred Yui to Fuyu because the context of the paper seemed to fall in Fuyu's subject matter expertise to him, from logical standpoint. Obviously, if it was on something way off of her subject, something on pseudo theological stuff, that would've caused them to freak out or simply find it ridiculous rather than be cognizant about, let alone be highly impressed about and interested to working on it jointly.

Archer wrote:Pretty sure it was the other way around, no? SHE was the one involved with Seele through her dad, Gendo married her because he wanted in on that deal.

Yes - that was at least the rumor at the time (that Gendo only married her because he wanted to get in touch with SEELE). Whether or not the rumor is true is another question - it could be that he did actually fall in love with her (and I'd argue that he did). Regardless, Yui's connection to SEELE remains - the rumor questions Gendo's motive, not Yui's connection to SEELE. Gendo was pretty much a nobody before that point, but after he became close with Yui, he quickly rose through the ranks, being the one to recruit Fuyutsuki just a few years later.

Still though I dont think she should have brought her son to see the experiment and it went wrong and now look at what happend it traumatised Shinji unfortunately even if it was good Intentions for both parents it ended up only making their child traumatised so unfortunately I don't think they are in the right but as I said evangelion is a show where in my opinion gives people different perspectives on the situation and that's how I took it but I repect other peoples opinions on This topic

I think it’s unarguable that she’s not directly responsible for everything that happens to Shinji. She abandons her family to chase some unclear personal agenda that I STILL don’t really understand, and if we assume that she knew she’d be absorbed during the test (I think she did, but there’s no hard evidence either way) then with that decision she’s actively choosing to doom Shinji into eventually piloting. At best she’s just incredibly misguided and delusional and genuinely thinks that she’s doing good by sticking her soul into a giant robot. At worst, she doesn’t give two shits about her family and cares about Shinji only as a pawn to use in her grand plan. I lean more toward the former, which is more “well-intentioned but fucks things up” than “evil scheming bitch”, but I just can’t see an interpretation where she’s a good mother or a good person.

We also gotta ask, like, why the hell was NERV sacrificing their top scientists’ souls into giant robots anyways? Maybe Yui rigged her own experiment to suck her into the Eva, but surely Asuka’s mom is more useful as a scientist than as a giant robot when they could’ve really gotten ANYONE to do the activation tests.

Sorry, my bad. I should've double checked before staying firm to my delusions. Yui was indeed the first one to be working for Seele in the couple and Gendo approached her to get a free pass, according to the rumor, which is debatable, but that's another tangent. Even so, that doesn't clarify if there was some family ties between them. Granted, it's a possibility, but the chances are homogeneous with other scenarios such as they simply hiring her after getting to know about her capability in bioengineering through their intelligence division or she decided to join them by getting to know about them somehow and so on.

As for the reason of bringing Shinji to witness her own contact experiment, I think it's as what she said, to let him see the "brighter" inevitable future. Besides, since the moment she had made the decision that she was gonna be the resident soul willingly, she knew he had to endure and see a lot of hardship before his eyes in the future, not to be mistaken for clairvoyance ability but mere predicting skill. Compared to those, that was just a meagre and preemptive one to let him be acquainted to what his future holds for him. Motherly instincts come at play here as well, I believe, to see loved ones for one last time before "death". One might say other instincts should've been more dominating such as putting children out of harm's way over anything or not letting them witness such bizarre things, which contradict the former one. But in her case, an exception was made since everything was already out of the world in a negative way that it didn't matter anymore.

Edit: She didn't abandon her family. As a matter of fact, she didn't have a family when she joined Seele. After Shinji was born, the only thing she could've done to ensure a "relatively" better post inevitable third impact world for him was to sacrifice herself in the Eva, rather than a world where Shinji would've been either a dead meat like the average population or a world which Seele had pictured in their mind, which was obviously not a "good one", to both of them. Maybe she couldn't keep to her words to the point as she may had the ability to create a better world than what we actually see in 26'. But it was something, more than absolutely nothing, which I'm taking positively.

Some other poor sucker could've been piloting Unit-01 if she didn't absorb herself into the core. At the very least, she could've prevented her own family's direct involvement in the events.

Maybe she thought that having Shinji pilot was key to her plan, but evidentally, she was wrong, because he fucked it up, and who can really blame him? Maybe she didn't account for the fact that her "death" would pretty much drive Gendo mad, but again it's just short-sighted, delusional thinking on her part if she just expected everyone else to be on board with this frankly insane plan that doesn't actually make any sense when you look at it.

That's why I'm saying like, at best she's well-intentioned but completely delusional, and didn't put any thought into the immediate consequences that her actions would have, which would go on to ultimately cause her dreams of a "better world" to never come to fruition.

I also don't think Third Impact was inevitable. It's not a natural event that was bound to happen eventually, it was something that had to be actively triggered with complicated plans from multiple competing parties. It's pretty easy to envision an AU scenario where Yui's still alive, and Gendo's motivation, instead of bringing Yui back to life, is to defeat the angels and stop Seele's initiation of Third Impact in order to ensure that his family will have a safe future. In fact, that's probably what Evangelion would be if it were a normal mecha anime.

Archer wrote:Some other poor sucker could've been piloting Unit-01 if she didn't absorb herself into the core. At the very least, she could've prevented her own family's direct involvement in the events.

Logically, yes. And I believe, that was Seele's intention, to get a random dude and their mother to suffer for their accomplishment, rather than getting their own members/crews involved. But then again, that would've resulted in Shinji being a dead meat and Seele accomplishing their goal and thus the worst world possible for Shinji in Yui's eyes, for which to avoid, she did everything she could've done.

Third impact was not inevitable, until second impact. At least I remember this correctly, Fuytsuki explicitly stated that in his dialogue with Yui during their last talk on screen before her contact experiment.

It's been a while since I've actually watched the show, but I was under the impression that 3i was something that had to be actively triggered. In the show, you have the Angels/Adam, Seele and Gendo each competing to trigger their own version of 3i, but in this hypothetical AU where Gendo wants to prevent Instrumentality, all he needs to do is kill all the angels and sabotage Seele's plan. With all interested parties out of the picture, 3i seems like it would've been averted for the time being.

Maybe Yui thought that inserting herself directly into the situation was the only way to sabotage Seele's plans, but that's just her being short-sighted again. Even in the show, Gendo does plenty to fuck with Seele's agenda, and it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where Gendo's able to outplay them and cause their plan to fail.

It's all according to dead sea scrolls, 2I somehow being connected to 3I. It's like a circuit where once you press a button, there's no going back. No matter how much you elongate the cables/medium, the energy flow will reach the end of it sooner or later. But you can't stop it in midway. Obviously, the scrolls must have been much more detailed and logically elaborate than just a simple instance like this that made them be so certain about it.

Archer wrote:in this hypothetical AU

What? Where? Am I missing on something?

that's just her being short-sighted again.

Or was it? Was she left with any other choices for the sake of Shinji? Would Gendo have gone against Seele's plan and come up with his own if Yui didn't implement hers? What would've been a much more provident deed to you in such circumstance?

Assuming Yui were still alive, I absolutely think Gendo would've gone against Seele's plan if going along with it would've put his family in danger. So yeah, I think the more logical option would've been to work with him to subvert Seele's plans while making it look like they were cooperating. If she thought that her plan was genuinely the best option, despite the TONS of obvious and immediate negative consequences, then I'd still say she's delusional and short-sighted.

Everything about the Scrolls is gonna be mostly up to personal interpretation. IMO the Dead Sea Scrolls aren't really all that precise, and the only thing they really "prophesize" is the coming of the Angels, and even that's more of just a "...well eventually they're bound to wake up" thing. I like to think SEELE really is just a crazy apocalypse cult that was taking 2000 year old religious texts way too literally, except they actually had the money and the influence to end the world over it.

Assuming Gendo had known about the inevitability of 3I after initiating 2I which along with his family puts everyone in harm's way, which was before Yui's "death" and all, he didn't show any sign of disloyalty to Seele's agenda until again, Yui's experiment, which made him change overnight and come up with the proposal of instrumentality project to Seele just to get united with Yui once again in any way shape or form, which I believe (instrumentality) was Seele's intention and motive behind everything all along but made it look like Gendo was the mastermind. But anyway, that's another tangent once again. The thing is, he was totally Seele's dog, wagging tail like they're commanding, until only after the contact experiment. He clearly had no motive of his own with the instrumentality and everything before that.

And I highly doubt a professor of bioengineering who had devoted his life in science and logics would've accepted the fact that third impact was inevitable according to some old scrolls either if it wasn't so assuring and detailed(at least to the extent that makes it credible) from the get go. And I wouldn't say the dead sea scrolls of the Eva world are just some old religious text. In fact I wouldn't even take them for some apocrypha if not only for their names. But anyway, that's another thing.

Not saying I don’t believe you (it’s just been too long for me to remember) but where’s it shown that Gendo is loyal to Seele? I don’t remember this being touched on much at all.

Yui already had plans about Instrumentality well before disappearing, and we see a Yui-Fuyu alliance against Seele being formed well before the Contact Experiment, and given what intimate terms Gendou is on with both of them, I can't imagine he was somehow not aware of his own wife's ideas. Moreover, Gendou's objections to Seele aren't just "my Yui"; he gives specific arguments against them in EoE. The three were plotting against Seele from the beginning.
It's true that he proposes the HIP to Seele (presumably the HIP to fulfill their goals, really intending his own)- and of course he does. He thus places himself in a position of being their most loyal & indispensible supporter in their eyes, while also giving himself control of the situation to shape it to his own ends.

Archer wrote:where’s it shown that Gendo is loyal to Seele? I don’t remember this being touched on much at all.

Not is, but I'm saying was. Though to be fair, it isn't explicitly shown or stated anywhere, but rather my personal interpretation from the fact that regardless of knowing everything and the outcomes from it, he still proceeded with 2I and went along with everthing Seele had thrown at his direction up until the contact experiment. During the presentation, so to speak, of the Eva series to Fuyutsuki, he along with Naoko even asks Fuyu if he was gonna join them in their pursuit for the new era for mankind, which implies post instrumentality scenario all along, just as if he was speaking for Seele whereas officially it was proposed by him later on after the contact experiment. So much for subdueing Seele's plan and going with his own when all he did was what Seele asked for manipulated him to do and just for absolutely no personal or altruistic achievement, only after the contact experiment, he had a motive to come up with his own alleyway in things. And only after the contact experiment, Naoko mentiones Gendo being drastically changed.
Nothing is exactly shown or stated in favor of his loyalty or disloyalty to Seele before the contact experiment. So it's only to be judged logically from the discrepancy in his behaviour and way of performing prior and posterior contact experiment.

I agree with most of the things Lavinius said as I've already mentioned them above in the other post, but I do oppose with Gendo knowing Yui plan beforehand the experiment and the three of them plotting against Seele from the beginning. Clearly, if Gendo had known, he wouldn't have just knowingly ordered Naoko to come up with a whole thesis on salvation from every aspect from the Eva in a jiffy and apply that, only to go in vain and just go off the radar for a few days in grief and only to come out as a whole different person, let alone even let the experiment proceed in the first place. And in Fuyu's last words with Yui on screen, he clearly said he was with Yui's plan, not Seele's(which was Gendo's too for the time being). He also said he had just informed Gendo about the contact experiment of Yui being the test subject, obviously suppressing the fact that she was gonna stay in there willingly. And I don't think two of these can be short sighted either at the same time. Clearly Yui's plan was the valid and provident way to go in such circumstance, for the sake of Shinji. The three couldn't have been plotting from the beginning jointly as Fuyutsuki was clearly in opposition with almost everything Gendo was going with, which was Seele's plan, up until Yui had come up with her own and he came in alliance with her, Gendo still having no idea what those two were up to before the experiment. Anyway, in the end, these are all our own interpretations, and I respect them for that.