Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Melkor » Tue Jul 28, 2020 12:54 am

So as we know, Unit-03 got possessed by the 9th Angel in 2.0 while Asuka was inside it, and she ended up being severely injured. She recovered, but the possibility that some leftover contamination from the 9th Angel might still exist in her has been brought up. My question is, do you guys think this contamination will end up playing any role in 3.0 + 1.0? 3.0 didn't really address it, so it almost feels like a dropped plot point. We are left to assume that her covered up eye is the result of what happened in 2.0, but other than that not much attention is drawn to it.

Twice during 3.0 we see Asuka's eye glowing blue under the eye patch with some Angel Sealing Hex Glyphs, so it seems that the 9th Angel did leave some sort of mark on Asuka that permanently altered her body. I can't help but feel it's going to end up being some kind of Chekov's Gun in 3.0 + 1.0. But what effect will it have? At best it could end up being some sort of power up for Asuka, and at worst it's slowly eating Asuka away from the inside and will eventually kill her. If in 3.0 + 1.0 we see Asuka coughing up blue blood and having to take medicine to control it, then I would be worried.

For all Willie knows, the 9th Angel could take possession over Asuka's body at any moment while she's piloting and start an Impact type event, so you'd think they would definitely want to have one of those DSS Chokers on her, even more so than Shinji, but during the movie there is no sign that she is wearing one. If she truly was wearing one but it was covered up by her plug suit, we would have at least seen it glowing underneath during the battle when her eye started glowing blue. If the glowing blue eye signifies the Angel contamination in her body acting up, then that's something that the DSS collar should have reacted to. That doesn't necessarily mean it would have immediately exploded, but at the very least entered a pre-activation stage like it did for Kaworu where it was glowing in the early stages of 4th Impact. I think there is a reason why we don't see Asuka wearing a choker, and it has to do with her eye patch.

We're kind of making a big assumption when it comes to the DSS Chokers. Nobody ever said that all DSS type devices have to take the form of a Choker. Whenever Asuka's eye starts glowing blue, you can see Angel Sealing Hex Glyphs show up on it, the same kind as on the DSS Choker. That eye could possibly be fake and is actually something that was implanted into her by Willie after she lost her real eye in 2.0. Much like with the DSS Choker, whatever device that Willie implanted in Asuka's eye could be used to kill her if the need arose. Asuka doesn't need to wear a Choker because she already has a DSS type device inside her eye that could explode in her head. If that is what that blue eye thing is, could it end up activating if the contamination from the 9th Angel starts to resurface in her during Final Impact? Shinji would absolutely lose it if someone else he cares about ends up going out the same way as Kaworu.

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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:05 am

The Angel is dead -- its ATF collapsed, it reverted to LCL, and a rainbow marked the completed sacrifice. Ritsuko says that there is no remaining contamination on a physical level -- makes sense, Angel is super dead -- but warns us of mental effects. The current framework I have for understanding this is detailed here:

post/889688/Adams-Children-and-the-Nature-of-the-Cycle/#889688

There are some glaring omissions I need to address (which I suppose will happen in the upcoming post about Asuka's pseudo-Impact which I've promised) but I think the main ideas are pretty sound nonetheless. The Angel didn't contaminate Asuka -- she contaminated IT, and was then forcefully reminded of things she had forgotten about herself. So forcefully, in fact, that she was transformed. That blue stuff isn't so much the Angel as it is a manifestation of Asuka's true self.

EDIT: Didn't actually address the thread topic, whoops. My current whimsy -- which Anno-sensei could utterly demolish without issue -- is that, yes, Asuka's True Blue self will be directly addressed as part of a presumed confrontation with the impacting Eva-13. She learns or realizes that 13 is actually her, and uses that fact in a desperate bid to stop Final Impact. Of course, Gendo had accounted for this, and Asuka's moment of self-realization only helps everything along.
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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Melkor » Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:08 am

If it's supposed to be a manifestation of her true self, then why is only one eye glowing instead of both of them, and why does she need to keep it covered? There seems to be something up with that eye. If it's not angel contamination, then it must be some kind of fake prosthetic eye. I can't see any other reason why she would be wearing an eye patch over it if her original eye wasn't injured or missing.

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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:35 am

Edited previous post, btw.

They're good questions. I don't have complete answers at the moment -- and this doesn't bother me, since I have no reason right now to think they won't eventually emerge -- but the visuals of Asuka's "awakening" provide hints. The face of a child appears in the opposite end of 03's entry plug, and a cross and concentric circles made of feathers radiate from the child's right eye. If we think of the visual as representing a "mirror", then right becomes left -- which we later see is Asuka's glowing eye that requires proximity to sealing glyphs.

The blue corrosion begins in the child's eye (taking over the core), along with the feathers and the iconography of the cross and circles. The former is covered in my linked post; I won't repeat anything here. The feathers reference wings -- as in, wings of the Adams. The shape formed by the feathers is impact imagery, suggesting the cross-shaped incision in the land plus the beginnings of the Gates. (It is a very close visual match, in fact, to Eva-04's attempt to open the Gates, which helps link the Eva-03 and -04 events.)

What does all this mean? A child represents a former version of oneself, and Anno enjoys using creepy, leering children as harbingers of unpleasant truth. Arael took the form of young Asuka in 22'; Rei 1 brought the truth of Lilith to Rei 3 in EoTV; and here the motif reappears. Shikinami gets a similar envoy, and the message is "You're really one of the beings from Second Impact."

I don't think there is any basis upon which to suggest Asuka's left eye is not real. The visual storytelling isn't saying "FAKE", if anything it's suggesting the exact opposite -- that the eye is the MOST real part of her. As she looked in the "mirror", her true self expanded out from that eye. Accordingly, this is where the process of self-reconfiguration has begun. The glyphs suppress this and prevent further change from occurring. What would happen if Asuka took the patch off? I'm guessing we'll find out.

I'm also guessing that the blue gunk that covered Asuka when the "feathers" hit her inside 03's plug initiated the process of transformation by causing a chrysalis of core (or whatever exactly the blue core-looking stuff really is) to form around her. She enclosed herself and began to change. The cellular alteration began in the eye but apparently did not proceed much beyond that.

Why the left eye? Call-back to EoE, for starters, but Anno is so incredibly pedantic that odds are it's referencing some system of mysticism or another.

EDIT: The DSS chokers seem to be programmable to some extent -- they would be pretty lousy technology if they couldn't accommodate different needs. If Asuka does have one, I'd think it would be simple to program it to ignore the cellular change that has already taken place. A similar principle is how the Magi were not constantly sending out an alert about a Pattern Blue entity being inside Nerv HQ. Yes, they know about Eva-01, and that's not what they want Magi to look for, so just program the system to ignore 01.

There's still so much we don't know about the new metahuman lore in NTE. It's a pretty crazy new frontier. But I hope these posts were at least a little helpful.
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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Melkor » Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:07 pm

Is there something dangerous about it then? If the glyphs are to prevent further change, then does that mean such a change could be dangerous to Asuka or those around her if it were allowed to continue?

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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:41 pm

That does seem to be the takeaway. Your guess is probably as good as mine in terms of what the glyphs are holding in check, though. We've seen the eye glow once when Asuka wasn't in an Eva; glowing eyes is associated with Evas and some Angels. Since the Angel basically barfed Adamsian imagery onto Asuka, and she has a glowing blue eye afterward, maybe we're supposed to think that she started to literally turn into a miniature Eva? That would be kind of metal. (And a little meta too, I suppose. Remember the EoE call-back? The Spear through the left side of Eva-02's head, trauma from which transferred onto Asuka's eye, was a case of the Eva-pilot link becoming physically real.)

The danger that Asuka represents to others might be something we've already seen. She was "awakened" in an Impact-like event, and we saw core -- or a very core-like substance -- radiate directly from her body. I would guess the LCL in her plug was being converted, similar to how Eva-01 converted the inside of its coffin to core, and Eva-13 started to turn Eva-08 into core. The eyepatch could -- in addition to preventing further physical change -- help suppress Asuka's own coreification phenomenon. Maybe her plugsuit could act as additional insurance, in that case, sort of acting in the reverse way the hazmats suits do, and keeping any possible contamination exactly where it is.

Weird stuff.
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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Melkor » Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:13 pm

Which sort of loops it back to the original question of the thread on what role the weirdness with Asuka's eye could play in the plot of 3.0 + 1.0. At best, it could result in a power-up for Asuka, and at worst it could result in her death, or probably some combination of both.

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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:11 pm

Hmm... That reminds me of a question I've personally had about some of my own outlandish predictions. (Which are just for fun and hype -- I'm ready and waiting for the movie to blow my mind with stuff I couldn't imagine -- so extensive disclaimers apply to the rest of this post. :wink: ) If you don't mind me thinking out loud a bit here about silly stuff... maybe some of it will stir the imagination, at least.

Let's say it's a given that Eva-13 (or whatever it becomes after Gendo and Nebby are added to the mix) is at the epicenter of Final Impact. Wille heads there in Wunder. Their two Evas will need to go to the root of the problem and try to stop it. With Eva-13 being that much more powerful -- having integrated Nebby's biomass and Gendo's soul into itself -- Wille's Evas will need to literally combine their efforts to stand any kind of chance. But this still won't be enough and a sacrifice will have to be made.

Asuka by now consciously knows who she used to be, and she will use that information to make a difference. Fans have been anticipating Gunbuster references in the fourth movie for years, and here is where we will get our big one. Eva-13 is an analogy for the threat of the space monsters -- if it's not stopped, then (as far as Wille is concerned) humanity is screwed. Asuka and Mari are Noriko and Kasumi piloting BM-01 and BM-02 in combined mecha form -- which is to say, they're co-piloting Eva-8+2. (Will Asuka call Mari "oneesama" before everything is over? And, in a slight twist, will it be meant literally? That would be lovely.) Stopping Final Impact will require more than brute force; it demands ingenuity. The only advantage left to Wille's pilots is that Eva-13's body should belong to Asuka. So maybe they can use that.

Before, Asuka sacrificed most of Eva-02's body to destroy Mark.09, a core-based being, and the vessel her soul once inhabited. Now, it will have to be the other way around. Asuka sacrifices herself -- the pilot. Somehow, she merges with Eva-02's core, and then Mari (in a moment of tone-deaf fan service many have been anxiously awaiting) rips the core out of 8+2 and throws everything into one final effort to plant that sucker into 13. This would perhaps provide a moment's false hope, as Eva-13 changes to reflect the presence of its original soul -- gets much BLUER, I would imagine.

So, assuming just for purposes of fun that such a thing were to happen, this is where the eye would come into play. When the time comes to hijack Eva-13 directly, Asuka would rip that eyepatch right the hell off. Screw that whole "turning this tiny Lilin body into an Eva" part. She'll just become the Eva outright. (I.e., become Eva-02 by fusing with the core, enabling Mari to implant her into 13.)
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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby Melkor » Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:08 pm

I suppose something like that would be a sacrifice. If Asuka becomes a full on Evangelion, it's unlikely that she'll ever be able to return to a human form again and resume a normal life. She'll be stuck like that forever if she survives the battle.

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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby nerv bae » Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:43 am

Whew, a lot of the speculation in this old thread was correct!

Bumping to ask a question about Asuka's bad day in Unit 03. Reichu says above that a face of a child appears in the plug:

View Original PostReichu wrote:... but the visuals of Asuka's "awakening" provide hints. The face of a child appears in the opposite end of 03's entry plug, and a cross and concentric circles made of feathers radiate from the child's right eye. If we think of the visual as representing a "mirror", then right becomes left -- which we later see is Asuka's glowing eye that requires proximity to sealing glyphs.

The blue corrosion begins in the child's eye (taking over the core), along with the feathers and the iconography of the cross and circles.

This assertion is also in the fandom wiki:

As childish-like giggling are heard, a child figure appears deep within the plug. Unit-03 then goes out of control and destroys the Matsuhiro facility where the test took place.

However, I don't see a child's face in the Prime 2.22 release:

SPOILER: Show
Image

Image


Maybe I'm just being particularly face-blind today. Does anybody have an image showing the face? I'm stumped.

I put the pics into a spoiler tags - JoelcrNeto

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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby JoelcrNeto » Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:29 am

For the child's face to be visible you need to wait more. Here is the right time:
SPOILER: Show
Image

From 2.0 CRC:
Image

I suspect that child is her original one.
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Re: Will Asuka's Angel Contamination Play A Role In 3.0 + 1.0?

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Postby nerv bae » Tue Oct 12, 2021 12:06 pm

Oh, wow. That is really haunting -- thank you!


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