Hey guys, today I was deep thinking about Shinji being with Mari in the new world without evas, with no interaction with his other fellow pilots. I think the general idea comes from Shinji wanting a world without evas, and that may imply cutting bonds with the former pilots which bonded with him. In this case, Mari is the only one who had a few interactions with Shini. They never made a friendship during NTE until the end of TUAT, where she served as a guide for him. So for me it seems logic that he ended up with a person who didn't make a bond with him through evas, and that's why the other pilots are seen far from Shinji. He's starting a new life from scratch and without evas the former pilots don't have a bond anymore, so they could go on and live a normal life as civilians. And in this case, Mari is the only one who didn't make a connection with Shinji through evas. What do you guys think?

There may be something there to the idea that Mari comes with the least prior engagement and can operate as a clean break. But I associate her very strongly with Eva Units in my head. She's the only one who consistently, gleefully pilots them. One of her two early interactions with Shinji is (albeit unknowingly) advising him from a thrashed Unit 02. She does bond with Shinji in Shin through an Eva because she ferries him, through an Eva, into the Minus Space in the first place. And if she's supposed to be a complete clean break from Evas, why does she initially show up to him within Minus Space in an Eva Unit after they're wished away?

While mari knows and Shinji and forms a bond with him through the eva. She is also the only person who has not suffered directly from Shinji through gis actions in piloting the Eva.

examples are:

* force Misato to relive the trauma of the second impact when the N3I started.

* do nothing to help Asuka which caused the dummy system to be used to destroy the eva 03 with the ninth angel (although when rewatching 2.0 it is mentioned that the angel corrupted the eva up to the entry plug and there was basically nothing to do other than crush it).

* Rei gets estén by the tenth angel after a suicide attempt to stop it with a N2 missile and subsequent death. Because unit 01 was not in the battle.

* kaworu who ended up dead because Shinji could not stop piloting unit 13 in the battle of central dogma when he told him to stop and touch the spears.

* the apparent hundreds / thousands / millions? of dead after N3I including the parents of Midori and Sakura.

and she too she is the only person who said she was going to do something and she did it the way she said it (promise to go find him at the end after he saves the princess).

when in comparison we have.

* Misato who promised him that he was not alone and in 3.0 Shinji is left alone with the necklace which is his punishment for his sins (which was later reconnected in 3.0 + 1.0 by Misato in that the necklace was a symbol of atonement and redemption. .. I don't know what to think about the characterization of the characters, basically those who work in WILLE seem bipolar.)

* Rei who promised to protect him from piloting the eva to such an extent that she decided to stay inside unit 01 and set his sync to 0.0000 or camouflage it so that WILLE wouldn't use him as a pilot? This pushes him into despair.

* Asuka I don't think they had any kind of promise between them, although their relationship was seriously damaged.

* kaworu who offered him hope of being able to repair the world but omitted critical details when he showed him the result of the third impact, for example the N3I and third impact being different events, his connection with Kaji, the unit 06 in the central dogma and his participation general in what happened 14 years ago (something that is never explored and it would have been interesting the reaction of Shinji to know that and if he had piloted unit 13 if he had known) and the fact that he approached him in his most vulnerable moment where Shinji would have accepted anything and had to die in front of his eyes.

The interesting thing between mari and Shinji is that when they officially meet, Shinji is basically a laser-guided missile aimed at gendo with the intention of stopping everything once and for all regardless of whether it costs him his life and that is apparently when he has "matured" .

when we see the climax of the final impact Shinji was going to commit suicide to save the world and was stopped by his parents and left on the beach where mari fulfills her promise to go find him something that Shinji if we take into account his past relationships, experiences and the fact that he was going to die he could hace thought it was not true or that she would never go looking for him. also at that point he remembers all the previous cycles so who knows what he saw. plus dozens / thousands / millions? variations of how his life and the people around him ended in catastrophe and being repeated over and over again (it is unknown if mari appeared or not in those cycles, although taking her role as Eva's destroyer maybe she never appeared in those cycles?).

Then in the end Shinji who achieved his goal is left abandoned on the beach and is about to disappear when Mari fulfills her promise and rescues him.

there is also a direct parallel to something that gendo mentions in the instrumentality.

gendo says that people act in one way but says other things, that he does not trust what people say because they could lie to him or just say what they felt at the time.

It's interesting to see shortly after that mari keeps her promise to the letter, when Shinji lied to Rei and Kaworu shortly before about whether he was going to be okay and about Mari going to find him when his plan was to sacrifice himself to save the world.

The18°angel, I agree with almost everything you just said, but I need to mention some things.

The18°angel wrote:* Rei who promised to protect him from piloting the eva to such an extent that she decided to stay inside unit 01 and set his sync to 0.0000 or camouflage it so that WILLE wouldn't use him as a pilot? This pushes him into despair.

It isn't totally clear that 0.0000 was caused by Rei. It seems this could have happened because the system couldn't read the infinite sync from Shinji.

That said, it's true that Rei decided to stay inside unit 01 to prevent Shinji from piloting again. In 3.0+1.0, it seems that Shinji needs Rei's permission to pilot Eva-01.

The18°angel wrote:* kaworu who offered him hope of being able to repair the world but omitted critical details when he showed him the result of the third impact, for example the N3I and third impact being different events,

I don't think Kaworu hid from Shinji the fact that N3I and Third Impact are different events. Kaworu mentioned that the Third Impact was the cause for the red Earth and he implied it was a ritual caused by lilins. After that, he mentioned the N3I (Shinji opening the Gates of Guf) was the trigger to bring about the Third Impact, which is the reason why humanity blame Shinji.

It's confusing for the audience, because we don't exactly understand what Kaworu means by "trigger". However, it's pretty likely that Shinji really understood N3I and Third Impact were different events (Shinji wasn't surprised when Kaworu said that Lilith was the Epicenter of the Third Impact in Terminal Dogma).

That said, it's true that Kaworu hid information from Shinji. Besides the other things you mentioned, I suspect Kaworu plans to sacrifice himself to repair Earth (as Shinji almost does in 3.0+1.0)

Axx°N N. wrote:And if she's supposed to be a complete clean break from Evas, why does she initially show up to him within Minus Space in an Eva Unit after they're wished away?

That's an interesting question. One answer is: Gendo and Yui used the Gaius spear to wish away Evas 13 and 00 through 07 in the Eva-spearing scene, but wished that Eva 08 (plus its four overlapped Adams' Vessels) would stick around long enough after that for Mari to find Shinji and save him.

nerv bae wrote:One answer is: Gendo and Yui used the Gaius spear to wish away Evas 13 and 00 through 07 in the Eva-spearing scene, but wished that Eva 08 (plus its four overlapped Adams' Vessels) would stick around long enough after that for Mari to find Shinji and save him.

Yeah, and for all we know, the fact it's an overlapped unit and technically also those Adam's Vessels might have something to do with it, plus it does vanish right afterward. With how abstract Minus Space is, it's even an open question how literal the Unit itself is, if it's not pure representation.

Konja7 wrote:I don't think Kaworu hid from Shinji the fact that N3I and Third Impact are different events. Kaworu mentioned that the Third Impact was the cause for the red Earth and he implied it was a ritual caused by lilins. After that, he mentioned the N3I (Shinji opening the Gates of Guf) was the trigger to bring about the Third Impact, which is the reason why humanity blame Shinji.

It's confusing for the audience, because we don't exactly understand what Kaworu means by "trigger". However, it's pretty likely that Shinji really understood N3I and Third Impact were different events (Shinji wasn't surprised when Kaworu said that Lilith was the Epicenter of the Third Impact in Terminal Dogma).

That said, it's true that Kaworu hid information from Shinji. Besides the other things you mentioned, I suspect Kaworu plans to sacrifice himself to repair Earth (as Shinji almost does in 3.0+1.0)

The truth is that I interpreted that Shinji was completely focused on the mission of recovering the spears and it is obvious that he did not know about Lillith or the mark 06 that was a different impact. in fact he asks about unit 06 and kaworu says that it was "ruined" by the lillims and that it doesn't matter anymore, only the spears matter, the same thing says about lillith. and he didn't know anything about the twelfth angel either.

Watch as Shinji starts to panic when Kaworu says they have to stop because they are not the spears they are looking for. Shinji starts to lose control and then Asuka arrives and we already know how that ended. furthermore it is entirely within the character of Shinji to do things with extremely little information without much questioning until he reaches a point where he stops and doesn't want to do anything else. pilot unit 01 because Rei was injured and when that stopped being a problem pilot eva because Misato showed him lillith, when nerv was defeated by zeurel it took mari showing him what was happening for him to return to pilot eva and he left WILLE with Rei because he did not know what was happening and focused only on that "Rei" came to rescue him.

Unless he received that information off-screen or we did not see he only has the information that kaworu gave him which basically was.

"You are the cause of all this, you became a trigger of the third impact and no matter what you think, humanity blames you for all this death and destruction."

which is confusing because in 3.0 + 1.0 we see that it was unit 06 / twelfth angel who caused the impact ... unit 01 was not present and it can be assumed that at that point it had already been launched into space because we must remember that the third impact ruined the whole world except for places protected by the containment pillars (and even with that protection we see that the city of paris fell in the end).

and we must remember that kaworu wants to make Shinji happy and that could only happen if he piloted unit 13. as I said it is very difficult to know if Shinji knowing all the details would have agreed to go up the eva with kaworu and taking into account that kaworu is a looper And that this is not his first time, it is possible that he only told him the minimum so that he would act the way that Kaworu believed would help him be happy.

there is a reason why Shinji says that kaworu is like his father, both in the end manipulated him only that kaworu suffers from "good intentions created the way to hell".

The18°angel wrote:Unless he received that information off-screen or we did not see he only has the information that kaworu gave him which basically was.

"You are the cause of all this, you became a trigger of the third impact and no matter what you think, humanity blames you for all this death and destruction."

I don't think Shinji knows all details, but my point is that even from Kaworu's explanation in 3.0, Shinji could understand N3I and Third Impact are different events.

Shinji: What is this...?
Kaworu: The result of the Third Impact, which happened while you were fused with Eva-01.
Shinji: Then... the city and everyone in it are...
Kaworu: Mass extinctions aren't a rare ocurrence in this world. On the contrary, they spur on evolution. After all, life-forms transform themselves to adapt to their world. But the Lilin, they transform the world instead of themselves. And so, they create a rite in order to artificially evolve. Sacrificing the life-forms of the past in order to create a new life-form imbued with the fruit of life. This extinction is all part of a program hard-coded into all life in antiquity. Nerv call it the Human Instrumentality Project.
Shinji: Nerv did this...? What was my father trying to do?
Kaworu: Ikari Shinji-kun, once Awakened, Eva-01 opened the Gates of Guf and acted as the trigger to bring about the Third Impact. Lilin call it Near Third Impact. You were the key to it all.

Kaworu explains that the Third Impact was a rite caused by Lilin, while Shinji is blamed because his Near Third Impact is the trigger.


Now, the main reason why I think Shinji understood that N3I and Third Impact were different events from Kaworu's explanation is because it's never mentioned or implied that Shinji doesn't know they are different events in 3.0+1.0.

Kaworu's words about Eva-01 opening the Gates of Guf being the trigger for the Third Impact appear in the prologue of 3.0+1.0, while this movie never denied it. So, it really seems to be a connection between N3I and Third Impact. It's confusing and annoying, because we don't know what is this connection.

Also, we don't know if Mark-06 started the Third Impact. We only know automated Mark-06 was involved at some point.


PS: That said, this is off-topic (my fault). This discussion should be for this thread: thread/20826/Shinji-understand-the-Near-Third-Impact-and-the-Third-Impact-were-different-events-in-Q/

The18°angel wrote:there is a reason why Shinji says that kaworu is like his father, both in the end manipulated him only that kaworu suffers from "good intentions created the way to hell".

I think the reason why Shinji says that Kaworu is similar to his father is because both focus their lives on one person (Yui for Gendo and Shinji for Kaworu).

Although I should mention that the issue in the Instrumentality is that Shinji, Gendo and Kaworu are similar.