royabr121 wrote:So Kaji being their founder somehow should affect appraisal of them 14 years after the fact? What does it matter? Also, remember that Kaji was the one to bring Nebuchadnezzar's Key to Gendo? Remember he did this in order to satisfy his own urge to know what was going on behind the scenes? He was not the cleverest guy around to begin with.
Kaji brought the Key to Gendo because that was part of his test of loyalty to be accepted in his circle, alongside destroying the base with the Third Angel (so SEELE won't be able to keep experimenting on Angel/Eva hybrid technology) and assassinating Mari (and with what we learned in Shin, we now know why Gendo and Fuyu wanted to get rid of her, because she knows a lot of their plans since she probably was a former member of their cabal), so he didn't had the choice but to bring the Key to Gendo, or else he couldn't had infiltrated NERV.
That was a risk he had to take.
Saint Eva wrote:Kaworu working behind the scenes to save WILLE and Lilin is a plausible theory though it still doesn't make WILLE look good. Kaworu's relations with other characters, specifically WILLE are also just weird and vague.
That's the two things that irks me: WILLE were presented as the true protectors of humanity, that unlike their time at NERV were they were just pawns to further the evil masterminds' plans, easily disposable if they turn out to be too inconvenient, this time they were openly fighting the evil cult on an equal footing, a great departure from EoE when they were all slaughtered once SEELE lost its patience (and because Gendo betrayed them), then comes Shin and the revelation of the true extend of neo-NERV's military strength... and it turns out that WILLE were just pawns to further the evil masterminds' plans, easily disposable if they turn out to be too inconvenient, nothing changed in 14 years and an apocalypse. The only logical reason WILLE could had survived that long would be because a select few either allowed them for their own gain (Gendo) or protected them (Kaworu), their fate were never in their own hands.
And the second thing is that Kaworu is completely disconnected from the story and setting, that's why during the waiting for Shin I was really looking forward for the moment Shinji would go out of his funk and have a conversation about what happened during his time at neo-NERV (if it wasn't with Asuka or Misato about why did he got against their pleas to not pilot and not listening when they told him to stop, then at least to get some intel on what's in that fortress, because there mustn't be many people who came back from there!), because then he will inevitably mention Kaworu, and we'll get some information of what WILLE (and by proxy the rest of humanity) know and think about him, maybe learn things that Kaworu didn't told Shinji about him, I mean he's guy that stopped N3I and descended on Earth in a unknown flying Eva before taking over the leadership of NERV Japan, they
must have things to say about him! At least they must wonder what was that deal with a 13th Angel being detected out of nowhere during the fight in Lilith's chamber!
And then... nothing, not even a mention of him and what he did, it's as if he never existed outside of being that bishonen Angel with gay subtext toward Shinji at neo-NERV, despite being the main reason why Shinji decided to pilot one last time, even if he had to fight his former friends.
Instead of that, WILLE assumes that Shinji piloted again simply because Gendo told him to do it (lolno). The missing DSS Choker? He probably took it off himself somehow (lolno). EVA-13? No need to interrogate him about it, it's just a Single Entry-Plug Eva so all we have to do is stick this Entry Plug Shutdown and all is good (lolno... woopsie).
So what, you're gonna tell me that the entire personnel of NERV was arrested and brought somewhere else before Kaworu could even exited Mark.06 and that Kaji never even mentioned him to Misato and Ritsuko and that Kaworu did nothing in those 14 years except play piano in that floating fortress?