Just want to know you guys' thoughts. Some people have actually theorized that the pics drawn by the staff in the pamphlet that was handed out during the last run are in fact the epilogue of what happens after the end. To quote:

"In the last picture where appears Maya and Ritsuko in the farm appears the word in cursive "Fin" ("End") So completely sure that this illustrations are actually the epilogue. Also in the same picture in the background appears Kaji Jr and Kaworu. During the movie Kaji recommends to Kaworu to go to the village and be a farmer as his son. Kaworu accepts."

They at the very least don't consider them to be random either:

"A booklet authorized by Hideaki and released in the projections of the definiteve goodbye of Evangelion is going to have just "Random illustrations" casually the most of this "Random" illustrations perfectly works as a epilogue and in the last page we see a classic "Fin" in cursive letter. Resource use it mostly for indicate the definite ending of a play/piece/story."

In particular, the one implying KawoRei is seen to be confirming that they got together at the end:

"Of the thousands and thousands of images that the staff has to their disposal they causally choose those that give a strong message. Specially I'm talking about the one that confirms definitely KawoRei. If are not canon why choose this particularly for the limited space of the booklet? Specially when certain part of the fandom is going to be triggered for this. Sorry but this images were chosen deliberately over others with a specific purpose."

Thoughts? Are people just looking too deeply into the pieces of artwork?

I think it's just fanart drawn by the people who made the film, fulfilling their wishes of what they want to see these characters doing together. I don't think any of it is canon in any capacity, I think it's just people who made the film doing what they want with the characters and sharing their love and appreciation of these characters with us!

I don't think "Fin" is compelling as an argument because Occam's Razor would suggest it's, you know, just the end of the pamphlet.

"Canonical" is overthinking it, but many of the illustrations have a speculative or interpretive nature, and is more valuable (in terms of authority) than the speculation or interpretation of, say, random Evageeks users. If staff think Rei and Kaworu are a pairing and that Kaworu really does meet up at the farm, that lends at least distant evidence to certain arguments about what does or doesn't happen, because who knows what insider knowledge staff are privvy to or gleaned from Anno or Tsurumaki.

It's just for viewing pleasures. Don't think so hard. It might has some references from the film but it doesn't mean it is part of the film.
Unlike the manga, 3.0(-120).

These are great pieces of artwork and I'm glad we got the opportunity to take a look at them. That said, they're artworks. This is the true extent of their nature. I think we shouldn't take them too seriously, but rather enjoy them for what they are.
To claim that these images are "canonical" is tantamount to saying that Sonic is canonically Santa Claus. I mean, Naoto Oshima himself (co-creator of the character) drew this image for Sega Harmony magazine in the 90s. So it must be canon, right? Nah, it's just artwork.


I'm also trying to understand why some people are claiming that the booklet validates a romantic bond between Kaworu and Ayanami. Is it because of that picture with Shinji? It's really cute and I'm a fan of LRK. That said, isn't claiming that they are together a bit of a stretch? They're literally just standing next to each other hahaha!

Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:I think it's just fanart drawn by the people who made the film, fulfilling their wishes of what they want to see these characters doing together. I don't think any of it is canon in any capacity, I think it's just people who made the film doing what they want with the characters and sharing their love and appreciation of these characters with us!

This!
They were probably selected based on who had the prettiest pics etc.
The staff have their own HCs and opinion like everyone else... especially in a movie like this with a deliberately ambiguous ending.
If they wanted to communicate some important stealth agenda this seems like an inefficient convoluted way to do it.

BernardoCairo wrote: Is it because of that picture with Shinji?

It#s mostly ppl claiming that's supposed to be their kid, when the fringe is obvsly Shinji's. Clearly someone thought that one visual of Kaworu with baby Shinji in the film was cute & wanted to draw that scenario, and then put in Rei because why not? After all their standing together in the last scene.
Same reason why she's still got the long hair though she doesn't actually have it in the epilogue - the artist probably thought she looked cute with it

I don't think the kid in the image with Kaworu and Rei is Shinji, since he doesn't really look like kid Shinji (different skin tone, color eyes and color hair). And the kid is smaller than the kid Shinji that appears in the Instrumentality.

That said, I agree that the images aren't canon. It's likely the members of the staff were just having fun or their own personal interpretations.

Personally I think that those illustrations are a mix of canon, speculative canon and non-canon: the image of a 3 years old Tsubame can reasonably be inferred to be what she will look like in-universe at this age, Asuka and Rei Q posing like in the cover of a magazine is obviously non-canon (hell, Rei Q was already when Asuka got her white plugsuit!), Kensuke teaching mechanics to Kaji Jr while Asuka is in the car could be canon, at least it's something that could be imagined to had happened somewhere in Shin or before.
Then there are the more harder to pinpoint: Maya and Ritsuko tending a field with Kaji Jr and Kaworu in the background could happen, but OTOH Ritsuko and Maya don't seem like the kind of persons to settle as farmers after the world was restored. There's also an illustration of eyepatch Asuka in a farming outfit with the illustrator writing in the commentary that he wondered if Asuka participated in the village's activities from time to time and that this illustration what inspired on if she did, but we know from the movie that she actually never mingles with the people of Village-3 so it's safe to say it's non-canon.

It's like that calendar from 2014-2015 which had a mix of simple illustrations (the characters in a cartoonish style playing in the beach, EVA-00 swimming in the sea...) and canon ones that weren't shown in Q, such as Unit 02 being prepped for Operation US, the tesseract crashed on Earth with Unit 02 still grabbing it and a pensive Asuka on top of it... and there was that famous illustration of someone looking like Shinji walking in a field next to what looked like a gigantic walled city with airships flying overhead, which made many people believe that this would be the "place where the Lilin are", and come Shin that illustration turned out to be nothing.

As for the image of Rei, Kaworu and that kid... well if it was the two of them only, it would be a simple illustration of someone who like Reipunzel and wanted to draw her and Kaworu as adults in street clothes, but then there the addition of this red-eyed kid out of nowhere that put everything out of whack, why put a never seen before character in an official illustration booklet? But on the other hand, back in that old calendar, one of the illustration has Sakura eating at a café with a teenager that looked like Misato, which made people theorize that she might be Misato's daughter, and again it turned out to lead nowhere. (although we did got an offspring of Misato)

All this to say that I don't know what to think about this.

Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:I think it's just fanart drawn by the people who made the film, fulfilling their wishes of what they want to see these characters doing together. I don't think any of it is canon in any capacity, I think it's just people who made the film doing what they want with the characters and sharing their love and appreciation of these characters with us!

This so much. And on top of that, at least in other franchises, Japan tends to not nearly be as anal about canon vs noncanon as the west, caring more about if it's an official source than if they are part of the exact same continuity, so I find the debate to be rather pointless

From what I'm hearing on other sites Ogata explicitly stated in a radio interview that they are not canon.

What?
But I need "Mari with cute braids" to be canon!

eldomtom2 wrote:From what I'm hearing on other sites Ogata explicitly stated in a radio interview that they are not canon.

I really doubt Ogata will use the word "canon", since that concept/word doesn't exactly seem to exist in Japanese.

That said, it would be interesting to know what Ogata is really saying about these images.

I can't believe it's 2021 and people are still discussing if random artwork is canon or just promotional. In here, of all places. You should know this after the last 25 years of absurd merch and official artwork.

It's just for fun, just like after EoE Asuka and Rei weren't, erm, getting intimate, nor should we take this Die Sterne official art to assume Asuka and Shinji necessarily got along. Funny, just like the Kaworei art, I don't know if that's supposed to be Shinji himself or their son:



Nor, for that matter, do we need to assume that Rei has been eating Kaworu's lemons since 1997 just because it also had Kaworei artwork.

FelipeFritschF wrote:Funny, just like the Kaworei art, I don't know if that's supposed to be Shinji himself or their son:

SPOILER: Show

I guess that would be Shinji who looks smaller for the angle of the image. Asuka is in a higher position.

FelipeFritschF wrote: Funny, just like the Kaworei art, I don't know if that's supposed to be Shinji himself or their son:

I always assumed that is actually regular Shinji and the pic just has wonky perspective

It's funny that "Canon" things becomes even bigger problem in any stories or saga these days.
And as for these arts, they're as free as our interpretation of the open end.
If those to be canonized then there are many things to debate from the previous NGE art books.

Where can I find those artworks?

Sadamoto's artbooks, Die Sterne and Der Mond.

pwhodges wrote:Sadamoto's artbooks, Die Sterne and Der Mond.

Thanks, but I talking about those with "Maya and Ritsuko farming". Are there scans of these here in the forum?

^ It's here: