Over in the Wunder construction date topic, these three dates are mentioned:


I started this new topic to ask if there are any other dates shown on screen, and to ask for translations of some markers and signs I screencapped to learn if they have date information.

A roadsign during Kenken and Shinji's drive:


Grave markers in Village 3:


Watermelon seeds in Wunder's vault:


The back of Kaji and Shinji's photo:


Kenken's camcorder viewfinder:


Can anyone translate these? Any date information in them?

nerv bae wrote:A roadsign during Kenken and Shinji's drive: 1*

Grave markers in Village 3: 2*

Watermelon seeds in Wunder's vault: 3*

The back of Kaji and Shinji's photo: 4*

Kenken's camcorder viewfinder: 5*

No dates.

1* Pear picking at the Fujiyama Farm (5km) early August to late September.

2* Not exactly readable but I'm pretty sure they're just names and there's certainly no numbers or dates.

3* No dates. The reference number isn't interpretable as one.

4* No dates. The reference number isn't interpretable as one.

5* Time remaining 1 hour 22 minutes.

Crap, no date information! Thank you for translating. Some offhand thoughts:

Szmitten wrote:1* Pear picking at the Fujiyama Farm (5km) early August to late September.

I wonder if that pear picking season has been adjusted for 2nd impact climate effects.

nerv bae wrote:

Yui's grave marker  SPOILER: Show

Anyone else think Yui's numbers are just "(02004)"? Could still be a misdirect, although the twitter theory linked there doesn't address the parenthesis.

If anyone else sees relevant writings please post them in here; I will add more if I find some.

From 1.11, Misato's Yebisu beer and Kuroshio refrigerator are dated 1887 and 1975, respectively:


The Yebisu beer appears to be a direct copy of a real-world can. So, this teaches us that as of 1.11 people are using our "normal" calendar and not a holocene calendar, as has been speculated for the grave marker, turntable, and dedication plate.

Speaking of the turntable, can someone re-translate the symbols around its "12001" (see picture in first post spoiler)? I don't remember if those have actually been translated as "built on", or if they instead indicate that "12001" is something besides a date.

More from 1.11, here are Toji and Kenken's personal records shown during the 5th angel sequence. I don't think they have date information but the barcode stuff will drive me crazy someday.

I've been thinking that perhaps the omission of any mention to years in any everyday setting (see last paragraph for the exeption) is deliberate and for a pretty mundane reason that makes sense out of universe, not in.

Basically, the original show aired in 1995. The setting of 2015 was 20 years into the future, and even Second Impact was several years away, at the turn of the century nonetheless.

For the production of the Rebuilds, it just was not possible to reproduce that "near future feel" using the same years, given that the first movie came in 2006. Also, some details appear very much updated to be contemporaneous with the movie releases: the LED traffic lights when Shinji waits to be picked up by Misato in 1.0; Asuka's feature phone when she is being taken to the Eva-03 test is very much state-fo-the-art, later day Japanese feature phone (the iPhone came to Japan in 2007 but smartphones as we know them today weren't universally widespread yet). If I remember correctly, there was some limited-edition collaboration with some manufacturer and you could get the exact same phone back then (and of course, in Shin, there's an iPhone seen during instrumentality).

So I think the choice they made was to simply avoid any reference to years, since sticking to the original 2000~2015 of NGE would make it anachronistic, and using something more present-day just wouldn't have the same punch in terms of "nice numbers" (or End of The Century Apocalypsis ring). The fact Second Impact being 15 years early was of course kept, but the "absolute" years aren't still mentioned.

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The 12,000 or-so year calendar-based construction date we see is a clear exception, that avoids the above problem altogether because it's obviously some arcane, non-standard calendar related to perhaps SEELE etc. and doesn't need to have a direct connection to the everyday calendar.

nerv bae wrote:Speaking of the turntable, can someone re-translate the symbols around its "12001" (see picture in first post spoiler)? I don't remember if those have actually been translated as "built on", or if they instead indicate that "12001" is something besides a date.

12001 is the year, the 2 is the month ie February. I can't read the first two kanji but the latter two contain the year and month kanji, so it's a build date.

The actual reason is likely to maintain the near-future feel without retreading 2000-2015 or setting up another explicit date to pass. I suspect the Yebisu dates are more to do with licensing the likenesses of the products.

Thank you Szmitten for checking the turntable translation! Also, agreed regarding the Yebisu licensing explanation.

You could both be right that they omit dates to maintain a future feel. Here are some 2.22 screenshots where dates are omitted from places I'd expect to see them:

DantesInferno wrote:The 12,000 or-so year calendar-based construction date we see is a clear exception, that avoids the above problem altogether because it's obviously some arcane, non-standard calendar related to perhaps SEELE etc. and doesn't need to have a direct connection to the everyday calendar.

I don't think it's a clear exception, based on Szmitten's check on the turntable translation. Both dates use five digits for the year, and so they are probably both based on the same system (such as the holocene system). I don't think SEELE built the turntable, and I don't think SEELE would develop an arcane five-digit year dating system that's different than the five-digit system used by the probably-normal-human turntable builders.

To go further with the turntable, I did some brief research on railway turntables.

They're pretty old, and stopped being made by the 80s - in fact the one that Village-3's was based on became a protected cultural object in the 80s - and was probably made early-mid 20th century. The other details below on the labelling actually refer to anti-rust paints.

With that in mind, then if we take this stuff at face value, then the Buβe was built in 1750.

So anyway I think the dates are nonsense.

I'm actually surprised that they were building railway turntables into the 1980s, because turntables are a relic of the steam era (unlike Diesels or Electrics, steam locomotives can't go backwards) and the last steam locomotive in use in Japan, IIRC, was shut down in 1975. I wouldn't use it to date the technology seen here, though. If Wunder was built in 11805 and the turntable a little under 200 years later in 12001, it does make one wonder what the devil is going on with technological development in this universe.

I honestly think the dates are just supposed to be characters that resemble a date in instances where dates are unavoidable but are otherwise borderline random.

Szmitten wrote:So anyway I think the dates are nonsense.

Szmitten wrote:I honestly think the dates are just supposed to be characters that resemble a date in instances where dates are unavoidable but are otherwise borderline random.

Maybe, but that's not going to stop me from trying to find them all!

Found this conversation from 2013:

ElMariachi wrote:

Reichu#629003 wrote:One interesting detail: In the original show, the AEL existed in Hakone before Tokyo-3 was built. Here, the AEL exists in Tokyo-3. I wonder if this is a result of the altered timeline? (I seem to recall people discovering that NTE does NOT occur "15 years after 2000".)

Yes, people found a bulletin note in Shinji's school in 1.0 and 2.0 as well as a calendar in Misato's apartment in 2.0 that hints that 1.0 and 2.0 occurs in the years 2017-2018.

Evageeks' wiki has an article about it :
http://wiki.evageeks.org/Neon_Genesis_E ... Evangelion

The linked Wiki gives us these two screenshots with date information, which I missed on my recent rewatch (ugh, can't believe I didn't see a literal calendar. My excuse is that there were other distracting elements in the scene!):

Just double-checked 1990-2030: November 13th is a Monday in: 1995, 2000, 2006, 2017, 2023, 2028.

Just double-checked 1990-2030: February 5th is a Monday in: 1990, 1996, 2001, 2007, 2018, 2024, 2029. And just to drive everyone crazy, Misato bought that calendar on a 2-for-1 special because a second copy of it is hanging behind her on the wall opposite the first copy.

The linked Wiki picks the date pair of 2017-2018 for the two screenshots as most plausible, which seems reasonable.

The weird thing to consider about calenders in anime, is that oftentimes they'll just reference whatever is in front of them at the time of production. This is why a bunch of NGE dates correlate with 1994-95 calendars, why 1.0 dates align with 2006-07, 2.0 dates with 2007-08, etc.

Totally missed the whole turntable thing. Should have read the whole thread first!

Plowed through 3.33 and 3+1 and couldn't find any more date information. I think 3.33 is the only film to yield zero dates!