Zusuchan wrote:I'm not really sure of the necessity of acting like Anno 100% knew what he was doing 100% of the time and thus everything in NTE is incredibly thought out and detailed to the point of every last interaction being a crucial part of the work without which the whole narrative falls apart [...]
I don't think this argument holds any water, to be honest. The film was years in the making, and the big sendoff, which includes Rei and Kaworu, and indeed, all of Evangelion, is not a throwaway scene. The importance of the scene to Anno is evident in the movie itself: she's the only person Shinji rescues who is commented upon by other people - Kaworu brings her up obliquely with Shinji, and Shinji in turn mentions her to Rei. Speaking from experience, stuff like that happens (a character invading scenes important to other characters even though not present themselves) when an author is preoccupied with something.
And the narrative falling apart because a scene contradicts your preferred, "clean" interpretation is just hyperbole. It's not the narrative which falls apart, but one interpretation of the narrative. Or part of it. Nobody is arguing that Rei or Kaworu didn't get the happy ending they were portrayed to be getting; nobody is arguing that Shinji didn't get his good ending either, or that Anno did in fact not get to say goodbye to Eva. We should also consider that maybe it wasn't the scene which was poorly done, but that maybe Shinji is bad at communicating, and handled Asuka poorly. Which would look exactly the same, and doesn't rely on the author (with the aid of a quite extensive team) simply making a mistake. For example, Wille proclaims that they're doing what they do without Divine Help; while sitting in a ship of the gods, ordering two other gods to go two battle in two clones of the gods. Yeah, right, no divine help. Is that Anno simply taking a big sip of the idiot koolaid, or is he making a comment on human hubris, in the context of his ongoing thematic exploration of technology and its effect on humanity?
I guess I should also clarify something with regards to "the work speaking back to the author". You are of course right: a work can not actually talk (it does exist, though), but it does reflect back the thoughts of the author. Again, speaking from experience, writing a story is just as much exploring yourself as it is exploring the characters. Cognitive dissonance arises when you want the story to go one direction, but the story itself, which is of course also part of you, wants to go somewhere else. It's the battle between what you
want and what you know is most likely/true. So the struggle is of course not between author and work, but an internal struggle of the author. Which brings us back to the need to "shut up" Asuka and rob her of agency: you suppress one part of yourself which disagrees to get to the outcome you wish for. This happens quite a lot in writing: every scene which gets cut because it doesn't fit into the direction the author wants to go in, while still being entirely consistent with characterization, is an example of this.
What does it mean? What does it add to the film's themes or the series' themes as a whole?
It brings in some much needed ambivalence. Not every goodbye is happy - saying goodbye isn't always easy. Anno spent half his adult life doing Eva. Mixed feelings arising and expressing themselves in the work are really not unexpected. There are no perfect solutions, and a shade of darkness or bitterness to mellow out the rampant sweetness of the ending is, I think, much preferrable to an ending that uncritically gives
Gendo a happy ending. A Gendo who is much more monstrous than his NGE incarnation ever was. If
that doesn't make you at least a little wary that maybe not everything is as happy as it seems, I really can't think of a stronger tell. Maybe the seeming love-song to modern day Japanese society, which got a rather ambivalent treatment in for example Shin Godzilla.
Regarding "darker interpretations make no sense": Who determined that? We're not dealing with "what it's supposed to be" (again: who determined that?) but with "what it is". And who says the ending isn't happy, just because it (maybe?) wasn't a happy ending for Asuka? Wouldn't that at best make it bittersweet? And if it was supposed to be a happy ending, but it didn't turn out to be one, it's still not a happy ending, no matter what the author intended.
TL;DR-there's no point in consistently assuming that NTE is a fully organized work in which everything conveys exactly what it's meant to convey and which has no inner contradictions, especially when such assumptions lead to perspectives that are out of order in regards to the logical deductions.
If your logical deductions stand in opposition to the work, it's your logic which is faulty, not the work. The logical continuation of your argument is that we assume that the work is not consistent to begin with, and ignore everything which does not fit our preferred deduction. (Which in my case would mean that I completely ignore all the signs that Asuka still has positive feelings for Shinji, for example; but I can't, because the work portrays it otherwise, as painful as that is to accept.) It's just a non-starter for analysis, same as the tried and true "but it might also just not mean anything" type of argument. It's also self-defeating from your side of the argument, because if a scene
doesn't convey what it's meant to convey, this also means that a scene which conveys happiness was originally meant to convey ambiguity, or dread, or whatever else you want to read into it, which brings us right back to the starting point.
@Axx°N N.: I really don't know what to say to the meta-stuff, because it's all incredibly nebulous to me, but I don't think it's even needed. You can look at the work as is and come to the same conclusions regarding the ending. The "I don't want to rely on rumor, but let me rely on rumor" bit made me chuckle a little, though.
Anyway, this thread was supposed to explore Asuka's and Shinji's relationship in NTE, so I guess I could try to bring it back to topic by restating my stance: their relationship was never as close as it was in NGE, and Asuka's core conflict doesn't revolve around Shinji in the form of the hedgehogs dilemma. Neither is Asuka important to Shinji's journey: she's, for him, at best a mistake he has to fix to move on himself, and he's got no problem saying goodbye to her, either. Why would he like her? We never got the scene where he admires her determination and ferocity; he was solely fixed on Rei, until she got boring because she wasn't his any longer, and was then just waiting for Mari, because he likes being a good puppy to his Mommy. He doesn't even thank Asuka for feeding him and making him snap out of his stupor, giving Rei all the credit instead. (Asuka, funnily enough, doesn't object. I guess she has learned to not expect anything of the idiot at that point).
Asuka meanwhile was initially interested because Shinji called out her name in battle, then chose piloting over the Dinner Party, and thus the "love triangle contest" Rei had planned (she calls Misato in the dead of night, after she learns when the test will take place), and reinforces her decision by sending Rei to him. No "Oh, you're looking for the brat? Back off, he's mine, Original Batch!", no grumpyness after Rei is gone either, no bitter "Why do I keep losing to that doll?!" That she's still not over him completely is somewhat baffling, but for one, love and hate aren't opposites, and other than that, he's probably the only boy she ever interacted with, since she was doing her Battle Royale for her early life and was then in containment for her later life, with Kensuke being a very platonic relationship. Leaving maybe two years or so where she had a normal life, at (presumably) (physical) age 13-14, which would be the time where she starts being intersested in boys. But not as interested as she is in piloting.