ElMariachi wrote:Besides Shinji's plugsuit mentions that its battery is very low and and that he's danger because of it just before Kensuke come picking them up, which for me clearly means that yes, all this protection is necessary (the pilots being able to get away with less protection thanks to being "pseudo-Lilin")

Shinji is an interesting case, since he isn't totally affected by the Eva's "curse". Unlike other pilots, it seems he still needs protection from the Red Earth at some level. When the battery of his plugsuit is pretty low, Shinji also stops walking and seems to be tired.

DantesInferno wrote:Maybe it was Maya, or someone else on the com... but there is definitely a mention about the air quality... perhaps it was O2 levels, not CO2 (need to go back and check).

From the original subs file, just after the DSRV lands and the crew are preparing to work

15
00:05:17,700 --> 00:05:19,510
Analyzing the atmospheric composition.

16
00:05:19,510 --> 00:05:21,220
Oxygen density reads at -3.

17
00:05:21,910 --> 00:05:24,040
CO₂ is tolerable.

Konja7 wrote:Shinji is an interesting case, since he isn't totally affected by the Eva's "curse". Unlike other pilots, it seems he still needs protection from the Red Earth at some level. When the battery of his plugsuit is pretty low, Shinji also stops walking and seems to be tired.

Makes me wonder if ReiQ also had more enhanced L Barrier resistance like Asuka, or simply that her plugsuit had a bigger battery. (maybe for the systems measuring her body's synchronization level warning her of imminent tanging?)

Mr. Tines wrote:

DantesInferno#935921 wrote:Maybe it was Maya, or someone else on the com... but there is definitely a mention about the air quality... perhaps it was O2 levels, not CO2 (need to go back and check).

From the original subs file, just after the DSRV lands and the crew are preparing to work

15
00:05:17,700 --> 00:05:19,510
Analyzing the atmospheric composition.

16
00:05:19,510 --> 00:05:21,220
Oxygen density reads at -3.

17
00:05:21,910 --> 00:05:24,040
CO₂ is tolerable.

From their comment, the air seems breathable, they just can't open yet their helmet because of the L Barrier (besides, there's no indication that Asuka, ReiQ and Shinji didn't needed to breathe anymore around Tokyo-3, which had a barrier density so high that even the Wunder couldn't go pick them up).
But when you think about it, it's logical to check the air's composition, since 14 years with a near completely sterilized world could had seriously fucked up how much the air is breathable. I'm even surprised that the pre-timeskip world's air wasn't as fucked up, since contrary to the popular belief, most of the world's photosynthesis is done by the oceans' phytoplankton. (which already disappeared for 14 years due to Second Impact)
It might be that the size of the purified forest land around Village-3's mere thousand inhabitants is not just to have pretty sight, but to make the air breathable for them.

I think it is very likely Mari is some sort of clone, as the alternative would be too disturbing: (https://www.reddit.com/r/evangelion/com ... _nutshell/)

It's still kind of strange that they managed to create an exact copy of Mari's original self (mari in the movies looks and behaves exactly like mari in the flashbacks) but failed to do it for yui when creating Rei. Not saying that replacing yui with a younger clone would have been a great idea as gendo only wanted the original Yui.

“Philosophically” speaking, how is her being a clone any less disturbing? Unlike Rei, who is a true clone with no memories, it’s all but outright stated that “our” Mari, clone or not, has the memories and experiences of “Mary Iscariot”. Whether she has a cloned body or a body that was magically regressed by the Curse of Eva or a new body regenerated from LCL like Shinji’s in 3.0 (which, I guess, is functionally identical to a clone body), none of that changes the fact that she’s an adult woman in a teenager’s body from the moment she first appears.

Speaking of clones and memory, there is a peculiar thing about Asuka.

Asuka is one of a series of clones of a single original. In her flashback, there is a heavy suggestion that she first awakened in an LCL vat in her current (roughly 14-year-old) body, and was put through rigorous training, competing with her fellow clones. The original was ultimately deemed unsuitable to piloting (and there are hints she was kept inside a dummy plug that was inserted into Unit-13 to replace Shinji after the events of 3.0.)

However, she also has memories of being a young child watching Shinji and his family emerging from a car in a snowy landscape, and being jealous of him having loving parents. This has to be a memory from the original Asuka, not the clone who became the Evangelion pilot.

I can see really only two explanations for this:

1. clone!Asuka and original!Asuka merged into a single entity at the end of Asuka's final fight when original!Asuka pulled clone!Asuka into Instrumentality, and the Asuka was ejected back towards Village 3 is the re-unified soul of all the Asuka clones and the original.

2. clone!Asuka actually inherited memories of the original at some point. Since this sets the scene of Asuka viewing Shinji as a rival ever since their next meeting in 2.0, it is not a stretch to assume that she has had this memory all her life.

I am currently undecided which of these two narratives is more plausible. But if it is the latter, then this could suggest that the Ayanamis, Makinamis and Shikinamis each have a different relationship with the memories of their "predecessors".

So the original Shikinami was just fabricated using genetics, with no parents to begin with?

Just who is the original based on? The original one has got to have birth parents, or an original donor/genetic template.

I’m not sure if I really like the idea of Asuka being a clone. It’s almost as if she’s not really a person. And Rebuild makes it as though the Asuka we knew from the series didn’t even exist at all. I’m not sure how much this upsets some Asuka fans. I don’t know, I think I just prefer her as a more normal human being with her face and identity instead of being just some specimen created and biologically engineered in a lab for only one purpose. And having no parents to even begin with? It’s like she never existed in the first place. I think I can imagine how sad and lonely that could be.

While I despise the idea from an in-universe perspective for much the same reason, I think it’s kind of fitting meta-textually, because Asuka Shikinami is literally defined by being a clone of Asuka Soryu. She exists in this story not because she plays a key role in the story’s plot and themes, but rather because Asuka Soryu is a popular and iconic character in the franchise, and it would be utterly unthinkable to not include her.

While I would’ve preferred for her to actually.. ya know.. have a properly-developed arc, it’s at least mildly amusing that her in-universe backstory much like her real-life one is that she’s just a copy; and that even she realizes she can’t measure up to the “original Asuka”.

But this is kinda just rehashing the Asuka thread which already has plenty of discussion on this topic.

It does play on the idea that Asuka is a mish mash of the audience's expectations for being the best girl, and how she rejects this concept in Rebuild by being more aloof and withdrawn, as well as not ending up with Shinji.

Biologically speaking, all clones need to have parents. But cloning itself can be quite confusing when you talk about a soul. If a person is 100% the same genetically, do they share a soul? What is their sense of self and originality when there is another who is the same? I think that these are the themes that are highlighted in rebuild since Asuka's clone backstory leads to her being the way she is and needing to find an identity.

Jornophelanthas wrote:I can see really only two explanations for this:

1. clone!Asuka and original!Asuka merged into a single entity at the end of Asuka's final fight when original!Asuka pulled clone!Asuka into Instrumentality, and the Asuka was ejected back towards Village 3 is the re-unified soul of all the Asuka clones and the original.

2. clone!Asuka actually inherited memories of the original at some point. Since this sets the scene of Asuka viewing Shinji as a rival ever since their next meeting in 2.0, it is not a stretch to assume that she has had this memory all her life.

I am currently undecided which of these two narratives is more plausible. But if it is the latter, then this could suggest that the Ayanamis, Makinamis and Shikinamis each have a different relationship with the memories of their "predecessors".

I too would say the second narrative is the most plausible, because otherwise it would mean that almost half of her Instrumentality scene, where's we're supposed to be the big moment where Asuka's psyche is laid bare (said half also revealing that her initial resentment for Shinji was far older and deeper than we though), is about someone who never interacted with Shinji and literally came out of nowhere at the last minute during 30 seconds, what would be the point of such a thing?

Archer wrote:While I despise the idea from an in-universe perspective for much the same reason, I think it’s kind of fitting meta-textually, because Asuka Shikinami is literally defined by being a clone of Asuka Soryu. She exists in this story not because she plays a key role in the story’s plot and themes, but rather because Asuka Soryu is a popular and iconic character in the franchise, and it would be utterly unthinkable to not include her.

While I would’ve preferred for her to actually.. ya know.. have a properly-developed arc, it’s at least mildly amusing that her in-universe backstory much like her real-life one is that she’s just a copy; and that even she realizes she can’t measure up to the “original Asuka”.

But this is kinda just rehashing the Asuka thread which already has plenty of discussion on this topic.

That makes me remember how the writers had a very hard time figuring out what to do with her in 2.0, as the limited screentime made it impossible to have her with the same backstory as in NGE (and because, as we learned later, they already planned for the timeskip to happen), so much that the decision to have her pilot EVA-03 was more out of convenience to have her do something and have her out for Mari to shine against Zeruel, it got to the point that they even considered to had her just die during the Bardiel incident to be completely replaced by Mari!

Personally, I think that since they couldn't give Asuka her old backstory from NGE due to said time constraints, the writers took the opportunity to bring the character to new directions, hence the clone backstory, that completely change her motivations and dynamic with other characters, which could be resumed to "what if her pride to be a pilot and need to be the best didn't come from a lack of self-esteem (due to the trauma of her mother's insanity and suicide), but the result of an actual situation of life and death?", with all the ramifications that goes with it, like her more introvert and socially inept personality, or her easier acceptance of help from others in piloting (being a result of her deep-down craving for companionship after the Battle Royal that was her upbringing).
It could had helped that she's the character whose backstory changes the most through the franchise: orphan of mother with a deep-seated inferiority complex hiding behind a brash facade due to her mother's death in NGE, test-tube baby born to surpass her step-sister in the manga, last survivor of an inhuman pilot selection program made of clones in NTE, and IIRC half-Angel hybrid created in a laboratory by her "parents" (who used their generic material to create her) in Campus Apocalypse, so the road was already paved for such a thing so to speak.

But it's clear that there are fundamental differences between each line of clones: the Shikinami line who from the look of it have stable bodies and a soul (at least the movies never implies that there's something unusual with it) versus the Ayanami line which like in NGE, are unstable and need regular maintenance to survive and only one at a time seeming able to have a soul (the rest having it either absent or in the "wrong place" per Kaworu's words and depending on you translated version of 3.0), to Makinami's... whatever the hell is going on with her really, since we're not even sure if Mari is a clone in the first place, the only hint being the "-nami" naming convention.

I even wonder if the writers didn't yet meant for Asuka to be a clone back in 2.0, at least not while they entertained the idea to kill her off, since that would had put an abrupt stop to her character arc and defeated the point of such a revelation


As also written here, she could also be a meta-textual commentary on audience-expectation on tsunderes and best girls, or as an "anti-Soryu", and while I don't know if that's something intended by the writers (only making offs and interviews could tell us), I wouldn't like it if that was indeed the case, to have her as a meta-tool instead of being a proper character, first because I genuinely think that this new backstory could had opened interesting new avenues for a character arc, and because otherwise that feel like navel-gazing to me.

ElMariachi wrote:I even wonder if the writers didn't yet meant for Asuka to be a clone back in 2.0, at least not while they entertained the idea to kill her off, since that would had put an abrupt stop to her character arc and defeated the point of such a revelation.

I think the writers have already decided Asuka was a clone for the final version of 2.0. After all, this is likely the reason why they changed her last name to Shikinami.

Her new backstory also fits with her behavior in 2.0.

Konja7 wrote:I think the writers have already decided Asuka was a clone for the final version of 2.0. After all, this is likely the reason why they changed her last name to Shikinami.

Her new backstory also fits with her behavior in 2.0.

Yeah, her behavior in 2.0 does indeed fit well with her new backstory. By the way, if it was really planned from the final version of 2.0, it was a very good play from Khara, to make us think that her new behavior is a "dumbing down" of the character, only to reveal that there was an in-universe very good reason why she behaved the way she did. (now if only that revelation could had come earlier so the story could had done more with it...)

But as Archer already noted, this is a derail of the topic, which is supposed to be about Mari, so better continue in the thread about Asuka.

Zoop wrote:I think it has been theorized that with each clone, lilliths soul gets split in half to put in Rei, so the more clones, the "less" soul left for Rei (and thus the weirder she gets).

I'm pretty sure Lilith's soul was split in two, and one half went into Rei I and then Eva-00, while the other half went into Rei II. After the Kentucky Fried Rei incident, both halves reunited in Rei III, which is why she seems aware of her identity as Lilith.

dzzthink wrote:I think it is very likely Mari is some sort of clone, as the alternative would be too disturbing: (https://www.reddit.com/r/evangelion/com ... _nutshell/)

You misspelled erotic.

Lol. But seriously sometimes I really wonder if Mari is the same person as the flashback Mari. Even from the hazy black and white stills in Gendo's memories, it's clear that the person has the same manic pixie dream girl quality as Mari, and wears the same glasses and headband. The thing that is really disturbing is how she eerily appears in several significant moments such as during Shinji's birth and when Gendo gets introduced to Yui. In the flashback, Mari also meets Fuyutsuki and they later appear to recognize each other during the final movie.

Mari seems to act like a teenager and not a 56-year-old woman but why is she a more mentally stable pilot, despite her young age? Even Asuka's past history of having to compete with her clones left her jaded and constantly wanting to be the best.

Given that cloning and brain reprogramming are established factors, it could well be that Mari had memories of her mother/genetic source implanted into her.
There's a couple of factors this explanation doesn't neatly cover, but taking everything we know into account, that seems to be the one that is the most likely

Based on purely textual evidence, I don’t think neither cloning nor de-aging (or non-aging, or some equivalent) can be considered “more likely”, because both require some pretty big assumptions and we really have nothing to go off of other than highly circumstantial evidence. Cloning isn’t even a particularly clean answer, because I’ve pointed out earlier in the thread that assuming Mari IS a clone, this necessarily means that either the Mari in Gendo’s flashback is a *different* clone, or she is the same Mari who has for some unexplained reason not aged to the present day. Maybe the CRC’s when they are released will give some Word of God on Mari’s background, as it is we just do not have enough to make anything other than blind guesses based off circumstantial evidence.

And that's precisely where the second part comes in; we know from Rei Q and the Advanced Ayanami series that it is possible for Nerv/Seele to remote-control a human in the same way that it is possible for the Vessels to take over the AAAA Ships, potentially even in real time. From there, it's not a huge stretch to assume that using the same technology, memories could be transplanted as well

Right, but it is similarly not a stretch to assume that “Mary” could’ve gotten absorbed into a core in a Yui-like incident, and was later reconstituted as “Mari”, similar to how Shinji was in 3.0, except a few decades younger.

Blockio wrote:And that's precisely where the second part comes in; we know from Rei Q and the Advanced Ayanami series that it is possible for Nerv/Seele to remote-control a human in the same way that it is possible for the Vessels to take over the AAAA Ships, potentially even in real time.

Wait what? When is it said that Rei Q and the Advanced Ayanami are remote controlled? To have implanted memories (or else they would be toddlers unable to do anything until several years of learning) and pre-programmed to have certain behavioral patterns (such as a propensity to like Shinji), okay, but if they were remote-controlled, Rei Q would had never ejected from Mark.09 and decided to join Asuka.

dzzthink wrote:Lol. But seriously sometimes I really wonder if Mari is the same person as the flashback Mari. Even from the hazy black and white stills in Gendo's memories, it's clear that the person has the same manic pixie dream girl quality as Mari, and wears the same glasses and headband. The thing that is really disturbing is how she eerily appears in several significant moments such as during Shinji's birth and when Gendo gets introduced to Yui. In the flashback, Mari also meets Fuyutsuki and they later appear to recognize each other during the final movie.

Mari seems to act like a teenager and not a 56-year-old woman but why is she a more mentally stable pilot, despite her young age? Even Asuka's past history of having to compete with her clones left her jaded and constantly wanting to be the best.

We'll never know unless Khara explain it to us in the CRC, but I have the theory that the out of universe reason for her behavior in 2.0 was because they haven't decided yet to have her backstory of being from Yui's generation and knowing all of the secrets of Eva and Gendo's plans (which fits with some of her remarks in 2.0 such has her plugsuit not fitting her or not liking to "implicate adults in children's affairs", and also the 2.0 CRC where Khara explained how much they changed Mari's backstory and role in the movie until almost the last minute), and from here they had to continue with her characterization for the next movies. (especially since she also serve as a foil to Asuka)

ElMariachi wrote:Wait what? When is it said that Rei Q and the Advanced Ayanami are remote controlled? To have implanted memories (or else they would be toddlers unable to do anything until several years of learning) and pre-programmed to have certain behavioral patterns (such as a propensity to like Shinji), okay, but if they were remote-controlled, Rei Q would had never ejected from Mark.09 and decided to join Asuka.

In the case of Rei Q it's somewhat hidden behind cheeky plays on viewer expectation; Reichu has an article on it up on her blog, while some of it ties back to out of date speculation, the core still holds.

As for the Advanced Ayanamis - well, given how the ones we see are all moving in unison, don't talk while piloting the Opfer-types and just in general have a lot of instrumentality vibes going on with them, in light of the things about Rei Q, I don'T think it's a stretch to assume that part of what makes them "advanced" is the fact that they are fully/at least mostly remote