Thrice Upon Time questions regarding Asuka and Ending.

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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Aniele
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Thrice Upon Time questions regarding Asuka and Ending.

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Postby Aniele » Mon Oct 18, 2021 8:36 am

I watched 3.0 in like 2013/2014 and since then any hype for the 4th movie died out for me until they released One Last Kiss trailer. Now after few days after watching Thrice Upon Time I cannot stop thinking about it. I think what really cursed me is the exact second when trailer music started playing at the end.
Of course Thrice Upon Time made me ask some questions where I am unable to find/think of logical answers.

Asuka:
Was Asuka clone of the original herself (why would Germans clone her anyway unless they cloned her after Near Third Impact) or someone elses, like Rei?

At the end we can see young Asuka (but older than Shinji) looking at Ikari’s ‘loving’ family and how Shinji was just born into family EVA piloting business where she had to work very hard for it. In her face expression I see lust for his ‘happiness’, empathy knowing how really f*cked up family he has and what will happen to him and sadness at the same time that she will never be as good as him piloting EVA. Then Kensuke comes and just says that she did her best (if that was Asuka from original anime series she would probably get upset like she did after Hikari said to her something similar). My question is was this just her imagination where she put herself as helpless child during events of Antiuniverse or was this real memory (because there is some age gap between Shinji and her)?

Ending:
I can’t understand the deal with resetting/recreating the world. In the anime and 1st movie we can see Rei (or godlike being that just looks like Rei) in the street which gives us clue that End of Evangelion already happened and she can see all that is in new world. Does this mean that AFTER last scene in EoE where everyone who wanted to come back, came back and then reset happened, after which Rebuild starts? Or is this multiverse thing where knew universe is created and everything is happening again but slightly different way? Or maybe so much time passes that the universe just repeats itself? I really hate that idea about multiverse in any sort of way but I like the idea of one infinite timeline which can be resetted/looped/recreated/whatever but it has to be only 1 timeline for me.

In Thrice Upon Time it looks like Shinji created new ‘real/our’ world in AntiUniverse where he put all his friends who wanted to have life without EVA ever existing (with no memory of it also I guess). But all the sh*t left behind that happened is still in different world. I don’t feel like in this new world he lifted curse of EVA. I think in this new world simply passed a lot of time and that’s why everyone seems older (if it was lifted than Marie should be much older looking than Shinji, right?). I know that taking off DSS choker is symbolic BUT WHY DID SHE PUT IT INTO HER POCKET? This looks to me like they checked out if new world is really without any EVA and everyone is happy and then somehow decided to go back from where they came from.

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I really didn’t like Marie since we basically don’t know anything about her. She seems to be only a plot device. I was hoping that we would see more of Fuyutsuki, Misato, Ritsuko and especially Asuka but I guess we will have to wait another 20 years for some OVA. I really liked entire village chapter where we could see all main characters. It was very peaceful and calming to me seeing Rei learning how to be human. I wish that they would develop much more other characters.

Now I’m going to rewatch anime and movies. Thanks Anno.

nerv bae
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Re: Thrice Upon Time questions regarding Asuka and Ending.

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Postby nerv bae » Mon Oct 18, 2021 11:00 am

View Original PostAniele wrote:My question is was this just her imagination where she put herself as helpless child during events of Antiuniverse or was this real memory (because there is some age gap between Shinji and her)?

I lean towards this scene being a real memory. We recently poked at which Asuka's real memory over in this thread:

View Original Postnerv bae wrote:In this instrumentality scene we see young Asuka and young Shinji at the same-ish age

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Re: Thrice Upon Time questions regarding Asuka and Ending.

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Postby The18°angel » Wed Oct 20, 2021 1:04 pm

If that really is an Asuka memory then that raises more questions than answers. Did the original Asuka die or was she not fit to pilot Unit 02, starting the Shikinami series?
in that case we know that there are only two clones that survived the training and tests and I say "survived" because the rest were discarded by NERV Europe but we have dozens of clones active at the same time, maybe they all share the same memory of the original? but in that case the original Asuka who is a little girl was born naturally or was raised in an artificial womb as an experiment or did she died, then the other clone the "original" what is supose to be. if a clone can be a "original" the the line that mari says in the dogma central about the original Rei being kinder than Rei Q would not refer to yui, and we know that the original 3.0 preview in rebuild 2.0 is canon so then there were several clones of Rei active at that time, does that mean that she referring to the clone that seemed to be the leader of the group that we see in the preview?

or maybe just for horror the little Asuka is the control unit of eva 02 and that maybe explains why ynit 02 stopped Asuka attack on unit 13.

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Re: Thrice Upon Time questions regarding Asuka and Ending.

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Postby nerv bae » Wed Oct 20, 2021 6:23 pm

After thinking about it some more, I will qualify my prior position. I think all of the Asuka memories shown in her instrumentality sequence are real, although some of them have instrumentality embellishments: for example we see Asuka in the aquarium during the field trip, which is her real memory from 2.0. But she is wearing her plugsuit, which is an embellishment added just for her instrumentality. I think the Asuka memories where she sees toddler Shinji are similar: her actual real memory (even though we have nothing like the 2.0 aquarium scene to confirm this) with embellishments (Kenken doll sitting on the log next to her, and maybe even her backpack monkey and S. S. Asuka nametag).

You're right to question how "our" Asuka gets to have the real memory of toddler Shinji. The instrumentality picture wall shows us that only Shikinami Type 0278 and 0313* survive, and I think one of these must be the original because otherwise we would have three Asukas to keep track of rather than two. Call 0278 the original (whether born naturally or in a test tube) because she is kept center-frame during the picture wall zoom out. Then, either the memory with toddler Shinji is 0278's, pre-cloning, later transferred to 0313 (and presumably also to the hundreds of other clones), or the memory with toddler Shinji is 0313's, post-cloning, and original Asuka 0278 never experienced it. Either way "our" Asuka 0313 has the memory and gets to look back on it during instrumentality.

*Staring at the picture wall a bit, I think there are 555 total Shikinami Types, in 15 rows of 37, so that 0278 is dead-center.

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Re: Thrice Upon Time questions regarding Asuka and Ending.

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Nov 04, 2021 10:13 am

Re: Thrice’s Ending, I am of the position that the train station is not in the real world. I am also of the position that Shinji didn’t rewrite the world, despite his talk about it.

First, regarding world rewriting, the two objects needed to rewrite the world was an Evangelion Unit (presumably any would have worked, but Unit 01 had Yui in it, and it became an actualized god after absorbing “Zeruel”/Rei II. So it probably works best, and is the focus of all of Gendo’s goals), and a giant spear. Shinji had access to both Unit 01 and Wille’s spear up until Yui pushed him out and rewrote everything herself. Shinji’s wishes were probably granted in that action, but it’s important to note that Shinji isn’t the one actually rewriting the world. In fact, he’s still stuck in the Anti-Verse.

Which brings us to the train station scene. Shinji is never shown leaving the Anti-Verse. No evidence of Shinji leaving the Anti-Verse is ever shown either between Yui rewriting Evas out of existence and the train station scene. Meanwhile, the film is showing evidence of the Wille Crew leaving the escape pods (footprints leaving abandoned escape pods found by the Pen Pen Squad), indicating that this is the real world that still exists. Then the film cuts to Shinji at the beach (where the visual aesthetic gets all weird and stuff), then at the train station (where, again, we are met with a different visual athletic, this one heavily live-action).

Mari’s presence is in this scene, which is important. Remember the part where Mari promised Misato that she would bring Shinji back?

SPOILER: Show
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Image
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Mari is entering the Anti-Verse to pull Shinji out from there and back into the real world. (Now with no Evas.)

SPOILER: Show
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She even removes the DSS Choker from Shinji’s neck, which only makes sense of you remember that he’s still wearing it in the Anti-Verse. (And also that he wouldn’t need it if he’s then going to go back to a world without Evas.) If one were to interpret this scene as taking place in reality, then it’s a weird and distracting detail that only further confuses matters right before the credits roll.

But that’s my take on the ending. The train station is in the Anti-Verse, and Mari is fulfilling her promise to Misato by bringing him back out from it.

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Re: Thrice Upon Time questions regarding Asuka and Ending.

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Postby Aniele » Fri Nov 05, 2021 9:53 am

Thank you guys for replies above.

As I stated in the first post I did rewatch all Evangelion. Because I’m not at home but at work it took me longer that it should have. I have reviewed it in this order: NGE --> EoEx2 --> all the Rebuilds --> NGE --> EoE and I will probably see 3.0 + 1.0 in nearest future, again. I love that everytime I rewatch it I find something new I didn’t notice before.

I still like original series a lot more than the new one and when thinking of the movies I always try to remember that even characters look the same they are basically different people.

I have thought about my earlier questions a lot and figured some answers/hypotheses.

Regarding Asuka:
In my opinion she was a clone of original self. I don’t think she was cloned after Near Third Impact since she needed training to pilot Eva. And she was already infected with angel so she was most likely very hard to kill. Like a lot of people stated before we could see Asuka clones in tubes where she was already a teen. So that memory in the AU sequence where she saw Shinji with family was true but it didn’t belong to her but to original Asuka which we saw just before she tried to commit suicide via DSS chocker. That memory shaped her personality nonetheless. Maybe this is why she was prejudged towards Shinji like she suggested to Rei that maybe she was made to like him.
I feel like in this universe Asuka was punished for treating Rei poorly in original NGE, calling her puppet all the time. She became puppet herself and yet she could be who she is and not think what ‘real’ Asuka would do. In this memory sequence I believe that Kensuke is simply Shinji telling her that. He couldn’t be there since in AU could be only Asuka, Kaworu, Rei, Shinji, Yui, Gendo and later Mari. In the movies I didn’t observe any bigger feelings from Asuka to Kaji like in NGE so Kensuke was probably like a older brother figure to her and she needed to hear those words from him and not from baka Shinji.

I think her unability to sleep/eat came from angels blood and not from her being a clone. Neither in 1.0 or 2.0 I didn’t notice any symptoms above. Same goes for Rei. There is no indication of that. She said to Shinji that it’s curse of Eva but I think she only meant that they don’t age.

Regarding ending:
One of the things that connects Rebuilds and NGE is in my opinion Rei who already became god-like being transcending time and matter. It’s where we see white birds flying indicating that she is not really there in the first scene. Same situation happens on the train platform where we can see Asuka, Kaworu and Rei with a shot of flying white birds. They are simply not there or at least they aren’t the same characters from Rebuild universe. I believe that universes of Evangelion are all in parallel to each other where everything is happening at the same time but in a slightly different way. I saw a post on this forum where someone pointed out that Kaworu and Rei disappear right after that white birds shot with a train stopping by. We can’t see them anymore though windows of a train.

I really like what I read in this post (thread/21085/Comprehensive-and-in-depth-analysis-of-Asuka-and-Shinji-relationship-in-3010-and-implications-for-the-ending/) about Shinji’s sacrifice. We have to remember that he was saying to everyone farewells because he thought that he was going to die. He wanted to put a spear though his heart but was saved by his mom. Basically he had to alter his plans. AU is ‘shutting down’ and then Mari comes in to save him and bring him back. I think there is no time skip between train platform scene and meeting Shinji with Mari on the beach. We see his startled face moments after waking up on the train platform. AU was reimagined and EVA curse lifted. The final dialogue between Shinji and Mari is not long time since they talked together in her Evangelion Unit but this time Shinji is confident of himself. She takes his DSS choker off, puts it in her pocket (just in case?) and then they run back to real universe.

A little off topic from my post:
When I saw “Rebuild” title for the first time I thought it meant “rebuilding Evangelion franchise”. You know – having big budget this time and just retelling story of Evangelion. Now I read it as “rebuilding your connection with Evangelion”. I have read many, many times people saying that Anno just wanted to tell everyone to grow up and leave Evangelion in the past. But then… Why make Rebuilds at all if most of people left EVA in the past. I hope that 14 year gap will be filled at some point in the future. I feel like 3.0 would be would be perceived much better if that happened.


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