Derantor wrote:
3: No clue, I don't understand Mari & Maria.

This has become a meme. Unless NERV/SEELE/IPEA? have gone full blade runner and Mari was implanted with the memories and personality of Maria to control her better or something like that.


what strikes me as weird if Shinji is an adam is that NERV / SEELE did their best to isolate others from human society for most of their lives. in Asuka's case we know that she trained at euro NERV military bases until she was allowed to go to the outside world to do a shopping marathon.

kaworu was on the moon.

and mari lived in the base of bethany in the middle of nowhere the first time we see her.

while gendo abandoned a demi-god without any kind of vigilance except for a teacher.

by the way i forgot to mention that the "original" Asuka is also just another clone, it's weird how they difference a clone from the original(Who is a clone to).

It could also be that Original Asuka was born to human parents, hence why she's the original, and the other clones are clones of that first Asuka. Or rather, Shikinami. We don't know her first name.

Good point about Shinji being the odd one out, wrt. being isolated. We do know that he was brainwashed, and that his memories were suppressed. Asuka was also sent out into the wider world at one point, and treated (apparently) like an normal teen (who also happens to be an Airforce Captain). Stands to reason that she was similarly brainwashed/memory wiped.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see your reply, Nerv Bae.

nerv bae wrote:Is the NTE-internal framework written up anywhere public? I can't recall seeing it written up neatly here on EGF or over on ARQA APOCRYPHA (either way, she needs to update that darn blog lol).

Sadly, no - the forum threads are at this point horribly out of date, too, and a lot of stuff on Arqa isn't up to date, either. We (well, Reichu, mostly) are (is) working on it, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

You know watching the movie in Japanese dub. I noticed that mari calls gendo, gendo-kun but calls yui, yui-san.

which is weird because gendo is canonically older than yui and maria / mari? is assumed to be 16 years old during her time in college. or is it just that maria / mari is trolling us.

The18°angel wrote:You know watching the movie in Japanese dub. I noticed that mari calls gendo, gendo-kun but calls yui, yui-san.

which is weird because gendo is canonically older than yui and maria / mari? is assumed to be 16 years old during her time in college. or is it just that maria / mari is trolling us.

Yeah. "Gendo-kun" was the first hint that Mari is older (she called Gendo like that in 3.0). However, Gendo is still older, so it should be weird that Mari calls him as Gendo-kun.

That said, we see that Mari is pretty playful with Gendo in the flashbacks, so "Gendo-kun" is likely how Mari tease him. Mari is a very laid back character.

Konja7 wrote:
That said, we see that Mari is pretty playful with Gendo in the flashbacks, so "Gendo-kun" is likely how Mari tease him. Mari is a very laid back character.

Weird that she would keep calling the name she used to tease him 28 years later with múltiple apocalypses, being on the enemy side and on top of that Asuka getting killed in front of her by gendo's actions and plans. Inmortality most have really made mari very laid back.

The18°angel wrote:Weird that she would keep calling the name she used to tease him 28 years later with múltiple apocalypses, being on the enemy side and on top of that Asuka getting killed in front of her by gendo's actions and plans. Inmortality most have really made mari very laid back.

Well, although "Gendo-kun" likely started as tease, it should have become a habit for Mari to call him that way. In the same way that Mari still calls Fuyutsuki as sensei even although he must have stopped being her teacher a long time ago.

Also, it's pretty clear in Mari's talk with Fuyutsuki that she doesn't hate Gendo (she even understand his feelings). It's just that she won't support Gendo's actions and the way he involves humanity.

Never watch dubs, and get used to Japanese so you can generally notice this sort of thing since characterisation and implied backstory is present.

-kun is also a suffix for work colleagues and/or underlings.

See also Kaji insisting on calling him Commander Nagisa while Kaworu is extremely familiar with Ryo-chan.

The suffix san expresses a relationship of little trust or closeness, but of great respect and education towards the recipient.

The honorific kun (く ん or 君) is used to treat male persons who are of less age or rank, as well as children or adolescents, men, you can also occupy it with your friends, since this honorific denotes a close relationship or you've known the person for a long time.

Also, kun can be used in the workplace, so you can call your colleague or lower-ranking employee.

It is important that you know that this honorific is only used to address men,

The honorific chan (ち ゃ ん) is used to refer to girls or women of any age. Although, it can also be used to call children, friends, animals or boyfriends, as it refers to a more affectionate relationship. it is associated with a relationship of love and trust.


So can we suppose that in the reality of rebuild mari is actually gendo's best friend and only considers yui someone of respect then? because otherwise watching the dub in Japanese creates more questions than answers. And kaworu had a weird thing going on with Kaji.

The18°angel wrote:It is important that you know that this honorific is only used to address men,

While this is largely right, it is still not the whole truth - for a well-known opposite example in manga/anime, consider Tohru in Fruits Basket who is called Tohru-kun more than anything else..

The18°angel wrote:So can we suppose that in the reality of rebuild mari is actually gendo's best friend and only considers yui someone of respect then? because otherwise watching the dub in Japanese creates more questions than answers. And kaworu had a weird thing going on with Kaji.

Not necessarily a best friend. As I said, "Gendo-kun" could start as a tease from Mari (for a "grumpy" man), but ir becomes a habit. Honorifics could be an habit issue too.

Regarding "Ryou-chan", "-chan" is an endearing honorific, so that's likely the reason why Kaworu uses it for Kaji. It's true that it's weird to use it on a man (especially by another man), but we are speaking about Kaworu.

Fuyutsuki always(/often?) called her Yui-kun. You hear it in workplaces and offices for both genders. It's not exclusively male in the same way that -chan isn't exclusively female. -chan in most cases straddles a line between creepy/infantilising and jokey/endearing.

Point is that Fuyutsuki-sensei was always that to everyone, Gendo-kun, Yui-kun, and feasibly Maria-kun existed as a singular unit at the time, which is what is implied and what we see.

edit: In this situation -kun is familiar but professional.

For this reason, seeing the dub in Japanese is the same as watching it in dub in another language, the suffixes kun, san, sensei and chan do not reveal anything because the characters who use them fall into the category "but we are speaking about...(name the character)".

The18°angel wrote:For this reason, seeing the dub in Japanese is the same as watching it in dub in another language, the suffixes kun, san, sensei and chan do not reveal anything because the characters who use them fall into the category "but we are speaking about...(name the character)".

It's characterisation. And entirely informs Mari's relationship with Gendo and Kaworu's relationship with Kaji. And how any character feels about any other, especially in terms of closeness. I know we all roll our eyes at anime making us sit through "Call me be my first name kyaaa noooo" nonsense but it's a cultural necessity and provides a lot of nuance that gets literally deleted by most translation processes.

kaworu is an angel who grew up on the moon (besides being a looper) and mari is half Japanese half English (immortal apparently) and those suffixes don't really help because at the end of the day both characters are mysterious / ambiguous / laid back, that's why now the problem is not that they use the suffixes ... it's not being able to interpret them in a suitable context that basically will vary from viewer to viewer.

for example mari calls gendo, gendo-kun because they were close or because it is the form of teasing him. Mari calls yui, yui-san because she considers her older or because she doesn't know her very well.

Calling fuyutsuki sensei does not add anything new because moments before everything implies that mari was his student (somehow he managed to rejuvenate several years or is a clone who knows that does not matter).

and also we have to take into account that in this movie Kaji calls Misato only by katsuragi ... the woman who is going to be the mother of his son and only calls her katsuragi ... I don't think the dialogue is a very good reference to be able to measure how close the characters are and the characterization

The rules of thumb for things like honorifics and first-person "pronouns" like you see in some English language manga translations are all high level approximations to the actual usage, which like the rest of the language is highly contextual. Guidelines that stop a gaijin making a total buffoon of himself are just that. Bearing in mind that anime dialog is itself highly stylized (often exaggerated, and, if in a period setting, sometimes "forsoothly") compared with the actual vernacular, you can hear them being broken all over the place, once you know what to listen for. When you do that, it can add a layer of nuance about relationships above and beyond whatever the subtitles might convey.

One major example not mentioned so far is the way that Gendou himself rarely if ever uses honorifics when addressing others.

I'm no longer so sure that Eva-01 and Mark.06 are two of the Adams. This is the hypothesis I'm working on now:

The Confusing Meaning of "Angel"

The word "Angel" is used with two different meanings in NTE.

Given how angels are numbered in order of discovery, it must be the case that humanity first found Kaworu (or some other physical entity hosting his soul, before he emerged on screen from the coffin in the shonen body we all know).

Next, they discovered Lilith and the Geofront and realized she too was a lifeform that could not be explained by current science, so the generic term "Angel" was coined to refer to such beings. At some point the connection was made with the Dead Sea Scrolls and her role as origin of all known life on Earth was established.

The next "mystery" lifeform found was Tunniel, which was accordignly named the Third Angel. It later became clear that the Angels discovered from the Third on are essentially different from the first two, and it is these ten entities to which "Angel" refers when Gendo explains the options handed to humanity by God.

So in a broad sense, "Angel" means "any superhuman, until know unexplained life form" (except the Adams, for some reason); and in a norrow sense, it means "The ten FoL-based beings that occupy a privileged place as God's children".

The role of Lilith, The (proper) Angels, and Third Impact

Lilith herself is the beginning and end of all life on Earth (as per Misato, 1.0); as such, the Angels seek to merge with her and trigger a global L Containment field that will obliterate all FoK-based life. This is the "be exterminated by the Angels" option given to humanity by God. Misato refers to this hypothetical event as "Third Impact" near the end of 1.0, simply because it would happen after Second Impact, but it is in no way similar to the Third impact that comes next in Gendo's/Seele's plan for instrumentality.

In this sense, the behavior of the Angels is much more straightforward and easy to understand than it was in NGE. There is no "Adam" to return to, and they simply seek Lilith in order to exterminate humanity as a punishment for being FoK-based lifeforms, by God's command.

What Happened at Second Impact

The Katsuragi expedition found 5 Adams and 6 spears. They were either lying there in the South Pole, or they were able to bring them out of negative space somehow (the latter is consistent with Gendo's exposition).

For whatever reason, they awakened the four lesser Adams using four of the spears. The Adams developed halos and turned into giants of light.

The four spears used were consumed, the awakened Adams "burned all the way up" (nobody stopped Second Impact, it extinguished itself once the Adams had been consummed). The resulting explosion blew one of the remaining spears to the Moon, the 'surviving' Adams all the way to the shores of Japan (chalk outline seen in 1.0? Although it has only two arms), and the remaining spear somewehre else but still on Earth.

The Earth-bound spear was recovered and pinned to Lilith for some reason. The other one was discovered on the Moon, and that's one of the reasons Seele built the Mark.06 there. The surviving Adams was kept dormant by either Nerv or Seele, for future use.

All production Evas (00, 01, 02, 03, 04?, 05, Mark.06, Mark.07, etc.) are likely cloned from genetic material harvested from the four Adams prior to Second Impact. In particular, Eva Unit 01 was cloned from the three-eyed Adams. When it awakened, it achieved pseudo-deification, meaning that it was the closest thing possible to the original awakeded Adams it was based on, but not quite. In contrast, when Eva unit 13 awakens, Asuka mentions that it has gone "past pseudo-deification". That is, it has turned into an actual God, because unlike Unit 01, it is made from "the real thing".

On Awakening

In NTE lore, "awakening" seems to equal "developing a Halo and becoming a potential impact trigger". The Adams (and the Evas cloned thereof) seem to need to undergo a specific process to awaken, while the Angels (proper, i.e. 3rd on) are in an awakened state "from the start". Gendo masterminds Near Third Impact at the end of 2.0 and Near Fourth Impact (unofficial name) at the end of Q, with the specific purpose of awakening Eva Unit 01 and Eva Unit 13 respectively.

Eva-01 awakens by the sheer will of Shinji. It later incorporates the core of the 10th Angel (delivered by means of Rei Ayanami, later revealed to have been "built specifically for that purpose") and turns into a radiant giant, but the awakening happened earlier.

Eva Mark.06 Seems to be awakened from the get-go; perhaps this is by virtue of it having an (artificial) Fruit of Life and/or being the "true Evangelion"/"Actual God, not a fake one".
Not sure what to make of it, but there is an intravenous bag labeled "BTB" ("blood type blue"?) at the construction site.

Eva-13 awakens by consumming the 12th Angel. Although arguably it too awakens by Shinij's will, and only turns into "radiant giant" when the angel is consummed: When Kaworu tells Shinji that Eva-01 awakened and became the trigger of 3I, we are shown the cut where its eyeballs bulge red out of their sockets and the red L Containment Field rings first appear overhead. The red eye-bulging in Eva-13 happens when Shinji cuts Kaworu off the controls and starts climbing Lilith's carcass (albeit without rings / doors of Guf overhead).

Eva-02 awakens by injecting "angel blood" and/or its pilot (again, "built specifically for that purpose") unleashing the 9th angel within the entry plug.

It seems like obtaining the FoL could be tied to awakening, but not quite (see Eva-01); so it's not immediately clear how the four Adams were awakened during Second Impact. They did each get an Adams-type halo for sure.

Eva-13 has a double (tangent) halo. Perhaps because it has two pilots/souls manning it.

On the Halos

Back on topic of the halos, the Wunder has two "Adams type" halos. Likely, one is from Eva-01, and the other from the absorbed 10th Angel, which manifests as Adams type by virtue of being subdued? Or maybe (out-of-universe) one halo of each type didn't look good visually

In contrast, the 3 Nerv ships have a single halo each, purplish, of "Angel type" if I7m not ,mistaken. Can't remember what the Adams Vessels halos look like in 3.0 and 3.0+1.0 (I think Angel-type), but after Eva-08 "overlaps" them, the four halos appear to be of Adams type. Not sure what to make of this...

Addendum (2022/Feb/07)
The Mark.06 halo totally looks angel-like (sharp edge, rainbow-ish colored), not Adams-like (fuzzy edge, fully white). I wonder what that means...