Blockio wrote:Why do you assume it's for good? shin made kind of a big deal out of "'goodbye' is a phrase you say so you can meet again"

Honestly, it's because the Instrumentality and the Epilogue have a permanent goodbye vibe. That's why I assume Shinji won't meet Asuka, Kaworu and Rei (at least, in the near future).

It seems Asuka, Kaworu and Rei need to let Shinji go and find their own place in the World.

Melkor wrote:Not only that, there's also what Kaworu said to Shinji in 3.0 before he died. That they'll meet again.

To be fair, "we'll meet again" happened in the Instrumentality. Also, it's possible Kaworu means the loop (which has ended in this movie).

To be fair, the ending gives you the great impression that he has left on his friends forever.

But it seems that the final scene takes place in the AU. That will open a lot of possibilities, although it is not confirmed

On the question of why exactly Mari is on the platform at the end but not a character independent of the story.
You know, how it was in Bill Hicks' story about reading a book in a waffle house:

waiter: what are you reading for? Why read, when you can just flip on the tube?
Bill: 'cuz it's not the same...

It's not the same when you are with someone and when you are with someone who has one big common background with you. Someone who knows what the choker is (and wore it). Someone who will not let you dissolve in the white light of a new day, as befits a random protagonist, looking at a new dawn in the world he saved.

As far as I feel, the theme of "loneliness in a crowd", loneliness of people among people, has always been a part of Eva. Our ties and bonds with others determine this.

So it may or may not have a romantic context, ultimately it doesn't matter. You're just not alone, without any brackets.

Melkor wrote:Another significant parallel I noticed between Shinji and Mari is a connection to music, and the way they use it to cope.

This made me realize that Mari's humming, Shinji's SDAT, and Kaworu's piano are the few prominent examples of diegetic music, "music in a drama that is part of the fictional setting and so, presumably, is heard by the characters," i.e. music heard by both the characters and the audience that passes through the fourth wall. If these really are the only cases, I think it helps group Mari with Shinji and Kaworu as "metanarrative characters."

Konja7 wrote:Honestly, it's because the Instrumentality and the Epilogue have a permanent goodbye vibe.

Yeah, I agree. It has a similar vibe to Dragon Ball GT's ending (with Goku saying "goodbye" to Pan, Vegeta, Piccolo and Kuririn), only less emotional for me personally.

To answer the OP's question: I don't care. In fact, I couldn't care any less. At least the ending is not AsuMari. lol

Melkor wrote:The train station scene takes place an unspecified number of years later, so during the time inbetween that's plenty of time where Shinji could have had more interactions with the other pilots before their final parting at the train station.For all we know, he might even have had a conversation with them at the train station offscreen, and we only see it pick up after they had already finished talking and walked away to wait at their respective stops on opposite sides of the platform, and the reason Shinji seems to not pay them any mind is because it's just such a common everyday occurrence where they bump into each other on the way to work that he doesn't make a big deal about it.

The Train Station epilogue doesn't happen after a timeskip, it immediately follows the scene at the beach with Shinji and Mari on the 08, probably still inside the Anti-Universe; I thought the argument was finally settled (thread/20997/The-Last-Train-Station-Scene/ https://www.reddit.com/r/evangelion/com ... urce=share) Also, in order to exit Ube-Shinkawa Station after leaving their platform (as we see in the drone shot), Shinji and Mari were bound to run into Asuka, Kaworu and Rei because the elevated staircase ends in front of platform 1, where they are (were?) standing (there's still a possibility that they are just illusions imagined by Shinji that aren't actually there).

I find it hilarious how many people are angry about it.

"silvermoonlight” I'm not against the pairing I was really for it at first. As I felt maybe the message was about growing up and moving on and how people romantic tastes change as they age but as I thought about it harder and harder the cracks really started to show.

The very idea of it being a deliberate Anno arranged shipping is “full of cracks” and sinking fast. Her ships name: Makinami / illustrious is the only ship that actually didn’t sink?

“As the closest person to Mari is Asuka, so why did they not end up together as they have real history grounded in the narrative? Or even Rei since their both clones (Though Asuka's ending does hint to that since she gets on the train with Rei and Kaworu.) as I viewed the train as a symbol of going on a different journey with a different destination”

Absolutely trains in Evangelion were always symbols of journeys to change and it’s clear Shinji and Mari are not on this one.

”I just don't feel it works in the Evangelion narrative the reason I say this is Mari hardly knows Shinji”

I think you are very wrong there, Mari seemed to “know” an awful lot about everyone. Being Yui’s close friend and also Fuyutsuki ex student? You are left with the impression after he calls her a traitor. She says “I haven’t been called that in a long time” that she has always been in the background since NGE’s beginning, first as an operative for SEELE then part of the UK branch of NERVE. (She was born in England) and acting finally a freedom fighter for all “humanity” for WILLE. So in fact she may know Shinji better than any other living person.

“if you watch the rebuilds almost all their meetings via one are fan service related it's not like in the series where you see Asuka Shinji almost kiss and do stupid stuff. There's no intense emotional conflicts no build up nothing as though the EOE ending is painful you are left wondering well will Asuka and Shinji sort it out finally?”

Unfortunately your not supposed to drag your emotions from NGE into the rebuild universe? But I know growing up with NGE you can’t help yourself. The directors spotlight can’t shine equally on all characters, despite them all having full and interesting lives concurrently. I guess it was just her turn in the spotlight with Shinji. Anno freely admitted he directed things from the mood he was currently in at the time. And good on him for it’s made for a genuinely emotional journey of self acceptance.
He got it right in NGE, then redid it for the fans in EoE, and finally we see it again in Rebuilds ending, for those that “got the ending message the first time 26 years ago, this Rebuild ending always had to end this way. Thankyou Anno for staying true to the core message of your story.

“Shinji and Mari could have had this same thing but healthier throughout the rebuilds but its just not there from the start which is such a shame. Also, as we get no flashes of their life growing up and their romance this puts Mari in to very problematic territory as the ending is almost like Hollywood one going here is your reward woman who you didn't have to work for, she's just given to you”

Anno admittedly found it hard to connect with people because they are changeable and are not very reliable or consistent, this ending plays very well into those feelings.

“I feel the better ending would be for all of them to meet as adults but go on different journeys on the platform catching different trains and for Shinji to leave on his own with no romantic hints and leave it open for the audience to make up their own mind and ship who ever they want.”

It’s still a completely open ending for Shinji to reconnect with ANY of them. But to have Shinji left alone on a train at the end would make for a very depressing ending. I would absolutely hate an ending like that! It would Make the EoE ending feel jubilant by comparison.

Unrelated: Kaji Ryōji has enough “mystery” as a double agent to warrant his own spin off anime. With a time travel component added he could effectively die twice on the same terms as in NGE and Rebuild tying the whole franchise together and evolving the back stories of all our favourite characters. How about it Anno? One last epic to confuse the hell out of us some more in the style of James bonds 007.

My two cents was that Anno deliberately did the 14 year time skip to make the collapse of an asushin pairing very plausible. In that beach scene in 4.0 it's obvious that they have some fondness towards each other but 14 years apart (in Asuka's pov), it's reasonable to not pair them in the end without some plot stuff happening.

As far as Mari and Shinji, I'm not sure what the motivation from Anno was. After creating a plot where asushin wasn't going to happen (not that they needed to be paired), was he always planning to pair Mari and Shinji or somewhere along writing the four movies did he decide it? I mean, these movies spanned fourteen years. It's totally plausible that he started 1.0 with an outline to the ending of 4.0 and Mari x Shinji might have been a later edition.

I'm curious how much of the total script was written by 1.0, how much changed over those fourteen years, and so forth.

I have to point out, isn't Mari mentally 68 (or is it 82 after the time skip?) and Shinji is mentally 14 during 3.0 and 4.0? That's honestly one of my biggest issues and not just the implications that Mari really has a strong sexual interest in someone so young that she has a very obvious advantageous position over because of her age, experience, knowledge, etc. I feel like it's a sort of reverse "she looks 10 but is actually 800" with instead of this being a handwave to make it less uncomfortable that an older male character is with a woman who looks 10, it's to make you forget that Mari is a kind of a sexual predator. If a visibly old male character like Fuyutsuki started coming onto 14yo Asuka (let's pretend that would somehow happen), rubbing her shoulders, making sexual advances, I think there would be a level of discomfort in the audience. But because Mari looks visibly like a teenager, it's easy to just not think about her age because it's never really brought up other than the scenes where it shows her way back in the day. Note: I'm def not a prude. Big fan of Rommel, BoreasAnemos, and others who do well-written explicit works or others who tackle controversial plots.

When I said "not just the implications" in the prev paragraph, I'm referring to imagining a 14yo and 68/82yo developing a romantic relationship. How does that work? I don't feel like the movies made it seem plausible. Sure, Mari makes it very obvious she's interested in him. But it seems so one-sided and they don't really have much in screentime together to make them suddenly go "poof" at the very end and are a happy, loving couple. I feel like Anno would have done better to just not pair Shinji with anyone. I know we all love our ships (huge LAS fan) but I feel like this ship detracts from the Rebuilds. It doesn't feel earned, just out of place. Like checking a box that Anno needed a ship. The time skip made LAS something that would need another movie (or a radically different 3.0/4.0), so that's a no go. Rei? Plot makes it not really work. Honestly, the plot in 3.0/4.0 makes pairing anybody with Shinji just feel out of place. So who is sexually attractive and still interacts with Shinji? Sakura? I mean, the plot could've been tweaked a little to where it's an open-ended "they have feelings, where will it lead" at the end. But nope, he went with Mari and it just feels shoehorned into the movie. And it doesn't affect the story any because it happens at the very end (the pairing itself, not her constant flirting). There was also no mechanical story reason for them to end up together either because it happens at the very end.

TL;DR I don't think the plot works to bring together 68/82yo Mari and 14yo Shinji, with the story not really making it feel right even if Mari was actually like 20. It would have been better to just not have a pairing or do something ambiguous like EoE.
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Extra/Theory: for the older Eva fans, we all remember the theory/joke/notion that Anno hates his fans and that's where the last episode of the series came from, as a sort of dick slap to end a series centered around angsty mental health ends with all the characters cheering Shinji on for overcoming his problems (which is a positive, albeit extremely unsatisfying conclusion). What if 1.0 and 2.0 were meant to honeydick us and then 3.0 and 4.0 are his "lol, fooled you. You thought you were going to get (insert plot point that didn't go to completion in NGE i.e. LAS) with the Asuka cooking scene and other things, with the Bardiel scene providing a potential (if explored and done well) for a way to push them together with Shinji caring for her out of grief or something and something develops but this is Eva so at best it'll be a background burn with maybe a pairing at the end and that could very plausibly work in the Rebuild universe with S and A not having near the trauma of NGE. I use LAS as an example but there's so many ways (pick your fav plot element) I feel like a different direction with 3.0/4.0 would have worked well for exploring something touched on but not developed in NGE. Nope, time skip so large that it more or less erases the first two movies and we're basically left with all new characters except for Shinji. It's jarring for the audience and 3.0 especially just seems like a badly done fanfiction.

Final though: I think Anno did much better work when he was severely depressed. I don't like the notion that suffering makes better art but it might be the case with Anno. NGE was a very impactful, heavy series and the Rebuilds just sort of seemed more run of the mill 2010's battle mech anime with some heavier than normal themes. It feels very superficial compared to the original, meant to appeal to as wide an audience as possible (except for a lot of the serious NGE fans). And maybe that's what he was going for. He's much better mentally since NGE and it's just not his thing anymore to write deep, angsty stories. Maybe the Rebuilds are the type of art that Anno is about now.

Honestly, there's so little meaningful buildup to Mari x Shinji that I'd say it's plausible they're just good friends or some sort of mentor relationship. Shinji can handle sexually charged teasing and give back now because he's grown past some of his trauma. Remember Mari is old. Imagine your teenage self dating one of your grandma's friends who was hot for some reason. But you could see something where you because good friends with them and/or they had some sort of mentor relationship with you.

I think it’s one of those things you’re really just not supposed to think too hard about. Like, the way their age is treated is so cursory and non-commital that there can be a serious argument to be made that whatever is stunting their physical growth has drastically reduced their ability to mature emotionally as well. Like Asuka is still hung up on a kid she knew for a couple of months 14 years ago. IRL, a 28 year old woman still having some unresolved issues for a boy she last saw in middle school would certainly be a sign for severely arrested development.

Also yeah, the “relationship” is so poorly set up and the resolution is so fleeting and ambiguous that it could really mean anything. Certainly by the conventions of storytelling there is enough to reasonably assume that a romantic relationship is the intended implication, but it’s far from conclusive.

NTE goes all over the place with the matter of people's age: Shinji is supposed to be seen as immature and unable to grow up compared to everyone else, but he's literally 14 years old in mind and body due to having been dead for 14 years, Asuka is supposed to be 28 years old and use the excuse that she "grew up first" to say to Shinji that it can't work between them, yet doesn't act adult a single time through Q and Thrice, and Mari (assuming the one seen in Gendo's flashback is indeed the same as the present one) is thrice Shinji's age, yet still acts like an adrenaline junky teenager.

And then they're all 28 years old. Asuka because that's her supposed biological age (without having got through the slow process of maturing and growing up through puberty, not sure that it'll be without difficulties for her to adjust).
For Shinji, my interpretation is that it's as a reward for his new "maturity" (even though I have strong opinions about this movie's idea of maturity) and as a consequence of having gained the memories of countless timelines.
The weirdest one is Mari, because the prequel manga showed that she had an absolute blast with her unaging body, as it let her extra time to try out lots of new things and enjoy her youth, I guess that since the new world was expunged of everything Eva and Angel related, she couldn't keep the curse and while she was at it, decided to get herself a young adult body. (better than one around Yui's age I guess!)

sephiroth2004 wrote:Honestly, there's so little meaningful buildup to Mari x Shinji that I'd say it's plausible they're just good friends or some sort of mentor relationship. Shinji can handle sexually charged teasing and give back now because he's grown past some of his trauma. Remember Mari is old. Imagine your teenage self dating one of your grandma's friends who was hot for some reason. But you could see something where you because good friends with them and/or they had some sort of mentor relationship with you.

According to some members who follows the Japanese fandom, even there it's a 50/50 split on if their relationship is supposed to be romantic or a friendship.
The thing is that while Mari does always act flirty and very touchy, we don't have any frame of reference about adult Shinji to know if he's genuinely flirting back or if it's just who he is now, and playing along like Kaji would for everyone not being Misato.
And it's Shinji we're talking about, Shinji "I can't hold the girl I like even while she's kissing me" Ikari, who's now complimenting Mari about her boobs, removing her glasses while calling her "as cute as ever" to fluster her and then running hand-in-hand with her, in Japan, a country where people tend to keep physical contact to a minimum. (I also recall seeing people arguing that their scene is typically how lovers behave in Japan)
On the other hand, they don't know each other at all, in-universe they formally presented each other less than half a day ago, so how could they be a couple?

As for the Asushin pairing, I think that it's being disserviced (if the intend was indeed to shoot it down) by how the last two movies continuously tease it, with the main wingwoman being... Mari. I've noted somewhere that of all the outside of battle conversations between Mari and Asuka, only one is not about Asuka's feelings for Shinji (the hairdressing scene), then after Asuka says that it can't work between them because she grew up first, she ends in an actual adult body and is shown profusely blushing at Shinji's confession (strongly implying that she's actually not over him), and then some time later we get the prequel manga showing us that she was even more head over heels toward him than we though, up to reciting ancient love poems to his memory and Mari going even more all-out on her teasing and wingwomaning of Asuka's feelings toward Shinji.

So yeah, in the end I don't get where they wanted to go with that: is their love really over and now Shinji is with Mari as a symbol of moving on, with his declaration to Asuka being a simple nod to EoE? Is it supposed to mean that they could meet up and be together in the future? Or that both could had been together but due to one final act of lack of communication, it will never come to be? Or is it just a non-committing "it's up to your interpretation" thing?

The real question is: is the breast dialogue less squick-y in the context of a "typical conversation with a friend your grandmother's age," or with a love interest your grandmother's age? If this kind of breast-orbiting flirtation is the ideal frame of mind one should arrive at after a convergence of several timeline's-worth of memories, I find it particularly immersion-breaking; a human being exiting the godhead shouldn't, couldn't and/or wouldn't walk out your typical cheesy YA and/or rom-com water-off-the-back protag, a kind of trope thought up by mere mortals for tradition and popular appeal's sake, firmly rooted in the mundane. And I take the breast part of the equation as typically male-creator originating ("Mari stems from Tsurumaki's libido" indeed), which, again, should be all but annihilated proceeding from a kaleidoscopic, perspective-shattering spirit journey. It feels so bizarre for a series that has ended on such profound notes beforehand for the final destination of the franchise odyssey to be quintessential "men writing women" material.

The breast dialogue is a direct echo of how Mari introduced herself to Shinji earlier in the movie. I disagree that it's squicky in general, because it's not Shinji making a crude comment, as much as Shinji quoting Mari at herself

Blockio wrote:The breast dialogue is a direct echo of how Mari introduced herself to Shinji earlier in the movie. I disagree that it's squicky in general, because it's not Shinji making a crude comment, as much as Shinji quoting Mari at herself

Thus the "men writing women" comment. The script has it that she's a woman who introduces herself using her breasts, which imo is a fantasy scenario akin to mech battles, and could only come from the mind of a man.

Blockio wrote:The breast dialogue is a direct echo of how Mari introduced herself to Shinji earlier in the movie. I disagree that it's squicky in general, because it's not Shinji making a crude comment, as much as Shinji quoting Mari at herself

Also, it's a callback to the very beginning when Shinji first arrives in Tokyo 3 and has that picture of Misato with an arrow pointed to her breasts with the words "look here" right next to them. I think Shinji's reaction to that photo at the beginning & the final scene in Shin shows his growth in dealing with other people.

Axx°N N. wrote:Thus the "men writing women" comment. The script has it that she's a woman who introduces herself using her breasts, which imo is a fantasy scenario akin to mech battles, and could only come from the mind of a man.

Given that the scene is neither played to be particularily sexy nor does Anno have a track record of putting this kind of fanservice in his works - he prefers working with camera angles and general casual nudity, see Ha or the first five episodes of Gunbuster - I can't help but feel like that complaint is in rather bad faith. Sure, if one wants to see Mari as just a jack off fantasy with no thematic relevance, she can absolutely be interpreted that way, but it requires an awful lot of cherrypicking and broad stroking to get there, ignoring a large amount of small, but all the more relevant details along the way

Blockio wrote:Given that the scene is neither played to be particularily sexy nor does Anno have a track record of putting this kind of fanservice in his works - he prefers working with camera angles and general casual nudity, see Ha or the first five episodes of Gunbuster...

That's true, and it's why it strikes me as egregious. The only other instance I can really think of is in the latter portion of Nadia, where Elektra is given a new outfit for no discernible reason but that a scenario is contrived later where she's electrocuted/knocked around, as an excuse for her to writhe around in her skintight suit in a leering pan down of the frame. Given the stakes and significance of that part of the plot, it struck me as really out of place. I suppose I take Asuka on the beach in Thrice as another example--serious moment, odd balance of tone and titillation. Usually in Anno's works what fanservice there is is appropriate to the tone and the moment--not so much in Thrice for me.

Blockio wrote:I can't help but feel like that complaint is in rather bad faith. Sure, if one wants to see Mari as just a jack off fantasy with no thematic relevance, she can absolutely be interpreted that way, but it requires an awful lot of cherrypicking and broad stroking to get there, ignoring a large amount of small, but all the more relevant details along the way

I would prefer it to not be the case that it's poor taste sexist depiction, so that's not what I want at all, actually, because Anno is one of my favorite artists and I'd prefer there be some substance to it--alas, I don't see the small details that make her characterization much more than that. Could you elaborate on them?

It's already hard to take Mari as a particularly real person, and the attempt is challenged along the way by various things, not least of which is her boundless attitude given the grave setting. There's the way she operates as a convenient plot contrivance, the production's BTS description of her as a tool to "destroy Eva," the description of her as originating from Tsurumaki's libido, the hands-off approach Anno took so she wouldn't become a reflection of his psyche, etc., and the general lack of development in human terms beyond surface-level details like her archetypal passion for being a book worm. She rarely, if ever transcends being a trope, tool, archetype, function, figurant, etc. Which is why it strikes me as particularly clunky to revolve so much of what should be an instrumental scene, one that could go great lengths in giving context to who she is as an actualized person in relation to another actualized person, only for the script to focus on her physical features--unless the script really only considers her in terms of her enthusiasm and her body and her enthusiasm for her body. And maybe that's the point; that's what her character was decided to be, full stop. I won't argue against that and the thematic role it serves on the basis of contrast--but on the level of feeling like a woman character that transcends her rhetorical role as dictated by a male screenwriter, or that a woman themselves would ever write, I'm not so sure. What's the point of a portrayal of a woman that feels like it doesn't exist in reality, other than to operate as fantasy in order to please an audience? I won't say it's escapist, but it's decidedly unreal.

I'd like to think this isn't a dichotomy, at least--Mari can have thematic purpose and fail to feel like a real enough person. Wouldn't that be the inherent gamble of what seems to be Mari's mode of characterization--a character characterized by their lack of characterization?

@ Axx°N N.

In some ways Mari feels more like a plot device than a person. I don't really feel much depth to her character beyond "I'm sexy, effusively cheerful, and like to tease people". Would that be flanderization? Maybe she does have a lot of depth but in a story if you don't show/tell or even imply, then the audience doesn't have much to go on.

She exists to motivate the other characters to do something. And maybe that was her intended purpose, which is important but she's not really written to be a character for us to be interested in the same way we are with some of the others. I feel like this isn't uncommon in anime, having a supporting or weak main character who exists to have interactions with the real main character(s) to get them to move the plot forward. I think if it weren't for the seeming possibility at the end of Mari being in a romantic relationship with Shinji despite them having very little in the way of interactions and suddenly he's all "babe you got big tits", we would look at Mari's character differently. But in the relationship lens, it reads like one of those fanfics where LAS goes from zero to a hundred without the work to even get it up to forty and it leaves the audience confused. It's made very obvious that Mari has some sort of interest in Shinji but it never seems romantic, more just sexually charged and teasing. And Shinji never seems like he wants to date her.

I just feel like their relationship came out of nowhere and I'm curious what the thought process was for the writers to do that when it seems like it would make more sense and be more Eva to just have Shinji not be with someone at the end. But since there's such a split on are they dating or just friendly, I guess Anno did get his ambiguity fix.

Since Anno had others handle Mari maybe that's where the disjointed feeling comes from, like Mari is from a different "universe" simply because a different set of people handled her. I really want to know whose idea it was to have the Mari and Shinji are maybe/probably together at the end because it's just so out of nowhere. Why do it? What was the idea, lesson, etc they wanted to show by shoehorning it in at the last second?

ElMariachi wrote:
As for the Asushin pairing, I think that it's being disserviced (if the intend was indeed to shoot it down) by how the last two movies continuously tease it, with the main wingwoman being... Mari. I've noted somewhere that of all the outside of battle conversations between Mari and Asuka, only one is not about Asuka's feelings for Shinji (the hairdressing scene), then after Asuka says that it can't work between them because she grew up first, she ends in an actual adult body and is shown profusely blushing at Shinji's confession (strongly implying that she's actually not over him), and then some time later we get the prequel manga showing us that she was even more head over heels toward him than we though, up to reciting ancient love poems to his memory and Mari going even more all-out on her teasing and wingwomaning of Asuka's feelings toward Shinji.

Yeah, they teased the %&$* out of us for three movies. They basically did almost everything (assuming conventional storytelling) to make it seem like we'd at least get some ambiguous LAS like EoE but nope, hard right off the bridge and into the concrete below. Like you said, Mari is the wingwoman trying to get them together. And subverting expectations is fine, as long as the story supports it. I may not personally like the result but I can appreciate something that's technically competent. There's no scene(s) that carries the transition from "I have big boobs let me touch you" to "we're in a romantic relationship now". That's not subverting expectations, that's just inserting something that doesn't make sense. Subverting expectations with all the LAS setup they're doing would be they realize they're close but who they are now they're just not ready to be together. Maybe they'll just be close but platonic companions.

And here's another thing, after 4.0 wouldn't Shinji be mentally much older now and thus the anti-LAS reasons in the movies (he's 14 and she's 28, grew up apart, etc) either no longer apply or are much weaker? And she would know how Shinji reacted after Bardiel, she would know that he didn't intend to cause 3I, etc. I mean, with all the buildup and teasing of LAS in the movies, that relationship makes a lot more sense than the two of them being together in EoE. In NTE Asuka is shown to have much stronger, less confused feelings for Shinji than in NGE and while they both have issues, at the end of 4.0 the worst of it is resolved while EoE they're still royally messed up.