I think if I have learned anything from the discussions surrounding the Evangelion movies, it's that the idea of quality writing in film is a mostly subjective and pretty divisive element of media consumption. Everybody seems to have more or less drawn their lines in the sand on how they feel about NTE, and I only expect the public perception of the franchise to become more polarized over time.

I'm really more interested in seeing how Anno himself will reflect on his work ten years down the line. Will he be satisfied with it? Will he cringe at some of his choices? Or will he forget about it? Maybe criticisms over "the writing" will motivate him to come out of Eva retirement and do it all over, yet again. Maybe we'll get the 1-24 + EoE "pure" remake with modern animation so many fans apparently desperately covet. I'd watch it. Honestly as an anime fan, I feel less interested in dissecting every scripting decision under a microscope so much as I would enjoy witnessing something that is beautifully drawn and presented, as every Evangelion movie has been.

Given the type of creator that Anno is, I don't think he will ever be 100% satisfied with his older work, lol. I'm not expecting him to come back to Eva, but if he did I wouldn't exactly complain, either.

Ok, so let me start by saying I was really dissapointed in how TUAT's second half ended being (and the Paris battle too ), but let's go back in the day to when they released 2.0. Fututsuki babbled a lot about how much SEELE wanted to build not a fake God but a TRUE God (that Eva being Eva Mark.06). Then when the post-credit scene came and Mark.06 finally reached Nerv, I was super hyped about the infinite possibilities a God Eva could bring into the table. Then 3.0 came out and Mark.06 was reduced to nothing More than garbage containing an Angel. Why did Anno do something like that to a powerful Eva (I get it's Shinji's story this time, but ffks sake ). So then they introduced Eva 13 as the new super powerful Evangelion (later calles God's Eva by Asuka). The deal Is: what was the point of creating a super powerful Eva only to get it discarded off-screen? I think they hyped Mark.06 and Cassius Spear a lot only to be reduced to useless tools in the movies.

I generally advise against obsessing too much over what or who is "the most powerful" of any given thing; it very quickly leads down the route of forgetting that what matters are the people inside them, not the weapons they use.
As far as Mk.06 goes - it's a tool in the schemings of Seele, as they try to outmaneuver Gendo. It's not something Shinji (or any of the other pilots bar Kaworu) knows nor cares much about, so it makes sense that it would not be given much screentime, nice as the design may be.

In-universe, it was the trump card SEELE had so Gendo wouldn't have all the cards (which also serves to show us that the Rebuild version of SEELE are more dangerous than their NGE counterpart), out-of-universe, I think it was to hype everyone on the fact that Kaworu has now his "own" Eva, and that it's as special as Unit 01.
And also, to sell merchandise (IIRC Mark.06 is still one of the most popular Evas in the polls) and also a stealth homage to Evangelion ANIMA, as Mark.06's helmet is similar to Armaros', the big bad of Anima.

Mk 6 is also a victim of the whole “rewriting 3.0” thing. It presumably would’ve gotten more screen time in the original concept, where it’s central to starting and/or stopping Third Impact. Presumably, the scenes that hype it up as the next big thing were written back when it was supposed to be the next big thing.

Now, of course, one could argue that instead of having the original 3.0 apparently happen off-screen without any changes, they could’ve changed their original plans such that the final product (which, of course, doesn’t include this missing entry) is much more narratively cohesive. But that’s not the decision they made, and there’s nothing to change that now. Mk 6 feels like it’s completely wasted because the movie it was foreshadowed for got wiped from existence IRL, but still happened in-universe.

Disagree of the opinion that Mk.06 was just a weapon. The characters have a specific term for it like "true god" just like the Wunder is referred as having the power to "kamigoroshi" by Misato and Gendo's use of the term referring to him using 13 and/or the key in his plans. It seems to me it was simply a retcon.

The point was to be cool. It runs on the rule of cool. It can fly, doesn't need to be hooked up to a power source and has a dope halo. Not to mention the badass spear and the unique name.
As Archer brought up, it was being hyped for a movie that never came out. I would go as far as to say that they were doing a terrific job with it, actually.
It's still awesome, though.

Blockio wrote:I generally advise against obsessing too much over what or who is "the most powerful" of any given thing; it very quickly leads down the route of forgetting that what matters are the people inside them, not the weapons they use.

Can Mark VI beat Goku, though?

BernardoCairo wrote:Can Mark VI beat Goku, though?

Depends on if Mark VI can enter awakening state to be honest IMO XD

If you sat someone down to watch NTE and then asked them what they thought of Mark.06, they'd very likely go "what's Mark.06?"

Axx°N N. wrote:If you sat someone down to watch NTE and then asked them what they thought of Mark.06, they'd very likely go "what's Mark.06?"

You can answer "the Eva on the Moon that was hyped for two movies", they'll probably see what you're talking about.

Mark.06 followed all the tropes of the important element being hyped and that will be important to the plot, and you can caught on it if whether you're familiar with the TV series or not:

• it's first appearance at the last scene of 1.0, with this mysterious boy waking on the fucking Moon and who seems to know Shinji, with a giant looking like this Lilith thing behind him, that follows all the tropes of the teasing for "this will be important in the next movie".
• if you're familiar with NGE, this scene is even more insane: firstly, Kaworu appears way earlier in the story compared to the TV series (whom until now the Rebuild movies were supposed to be a retelling) and he already knows Shinji! Also the giant behind him has the same mask as Lilith in the TV series, while Lilith now has a "regular" Angel mask, so you get the feeling that this thing here will completely change the story
• through 2.0 we see it being transformed into an Eva, with SEELE announcing that it'll the true keystone of their plan, and not EVA-01, the time until its completion being a countdown to the moment the story will go completely off the rails compared to the TV series. And again the people familiar with the TV Series realize how much of a game changer this is compared to the original story, because it means that Gendo doesn't have the one vital piece for Instrumentality that gives him leverage over SEELE (until the last moment), so he'll be forced to pull the trigger on his open rebellion way earlier than in NGE. And there's also the fact that this new Eva carries a giant spear that has nothing to do with the spear of Longinius...
• And once it's completed and deployed for the first time, Kaworu is wearing the same kind of advanced plugsuit than Mari (the other element that doesn't follow the original story's script) and is getting ready to fight what will be the strongest Angel ever seen, and in the end it ends up stopping in one blow the thing that tore said Angel a new one, saving the day in the most dramatic fashion possible!

So yeah, everything pointed to it being very important to the story, and it was... but not in Shinji's story.

ElMariachi wrote:You can answer "the Eva on the Moon that was hyped for two movies", they'll probably see what you're talking about.

The inspiration for that post was being in a gunpla shop with a friend and them being mistaken about a Mark.06 kit despite having seen NTE. They thought it was from a spinoff game or novel or something, so I tried to recap what it did and was, and they still didn't buy that they'd actually seen it in action. I'm pretty confident it didn't register for anyone else I know who's seen NTE, but from my experience large swaths of NTE are easily memory-holed by casual viewers. Like, to break down your examples, those scenes each showcase the Unit for seconds at a time. One of them is a post-credits sequence some might have missed completely, and then when it's featured heavily in 3.0 it's not only headless*, its body has been redesigned, and it gets buried under lots of new jargon. I've seen some viewers not piece together that it was the same Unit Kaworu piloted, or that what Kaworu piloted was what was being constructed on the moon. When the material is taking it for granted that you'll draw these connections despite being given 5 seconds at a time to care to invest in piecing it together, I don't blame viewers for failing to do so. The screentime of an intact Mark.06 has to be, like, under 30 seconds.

The argument that something can be intentionally obscured and relegated to the background instead of merely being an abandoned concept is a good one if it serves some kind of thematic function or contributes to the narrative because of its elliptical nature, but I'm not sure what can be gleaned meaningfully from Mark.06's status as camera-averse other than that it was lost in the transition between original 3.0 and Q. Plus it's not like NTE is actually so strict as a narrative, or like everything is utilized meaningfully to drive home Shinji's narrow perspective as if it were its founding premise or dedicated thematic concern 100%, because we see plenty of scenes from outside Shinji's perspective, notably Gendo shutting down Seele, furthering his plans with Fuyutsuki, murmering to himself and etc. More of Mark.06 could've been shown without being inconsistent whatsoever from the tack the narrative takes in other places.

* EDIT: I was mistaken in saying Mark.06 was headless, but I'm leaving the mistake because it's ironic having happened in an exploration of how easily Mark.06 is memory-holed.

^
It's true that Mark.06 lost most of its impact (eh) on the viewer if you miss the after credit scene in 2.0, since it's the big payoff of its (short) scenes through 1.0 and 2.0.
And it's also right that it has much more of an impact if you remember the plot of NGE, for the points I wrote in my previous post (the fact it's as special as Unit 01, that it's Kaworu's "own" Eva...)

Mark-06 is also central to the untold events of "Rebuild 2.5", by which I mean the large time skip between 2.0 and 3.0.

It was the the singular tool that stopped Near-Third Impact at the end of 2.0, and it was central to the events of (Actual) Third Impact that happened off-screen, since its corpse is still there at Central Dogma, when Shinji and Kaworu go to retrieve the spear in Unit-13.

The events that happened there were world-shaking, and very significant to all the characters except Shinji. And because Shinji is not there to experience it, it is not part of his story, so it is not depicted in the movies.

In fact, it is a theme in all of Evangelion - not just Rebuild - that no Impacts are directly shown to or experienced by the viewers, except for the very last one at the end,j with Shinji taking center stage. All accounts of events during those Impacts are scattered and second-hand, and the storyboard explicitly avoids focusing on it. In fact, most of the action in NGE and Rebuild consists of various successful attempts to prevent, delay or stave off a full Impact event.)

So (Actual) Third Impact happening off-screen - while frustrating - is not really out of character for the Evangelion storytelling experience.

But its exclusion necessarily results in Mark-06's presumably heroic sacrifice going unnoticed.

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APPENDIX:|
What follows here is a brief analysis of how each Impact event is depicted in NGE, EoE and Rebuild.

In NGE:
- First Impact is never mentioned, and its existence is only implied through the references to Second and Third Impacts.
- Second Impact is frequently mentioned, yet its events are never described. The closest we got of witnessing it was a short flashback scene of a young Misato being rescued by her father.
- Third Impact is the final one, yet we do not see how it is triggered. All we see is the end of episode 24, followed by episodes 25 and 26 diving into the scattered human subconsciousnesses of Instrumentality

In EoE:
- This contains a full experience of Third Impact, including its triggering, its external progression, the events in Shinji's (and humanity's) subconscious, its resolution and (brief) aftermath.\

In Rebuild:
- First Impact is never mentioned, just as in NGE.
- Second Impact is again referenced frequently. However, the only scene supposedly depicting actual events from Second Impact (which happens during a conversation Kaji and Shinji have in 2.0, at the marine nature preserve) is a limited set of very stylistic shots depicting Misato, four Adams and four Spears.
- When Near-Third Impact happens, we see it being triggered and starting to unfold, before it gets shut down. However, we never get a good view of its efffects on the world, or its direct aftermath. 3.0+1.0 gives a few flashback scenes, but the focus there is on the characters' emotions and not on the world events.
- (Actual) Third Impact is the opposite. We do not witness the trigger, and instead we only ever get to see its aftermath, which is a MAJOR theme in 3.0. In fact, this builds up throughout the entire movie - starting with a view at the planet from orbit and culminating in the horrid scene in Central Dogma. Any conclusions we can draw about Third Impact are through forensic analysis of these (many) scenes and landscapes.
- Fourth Impact is triggered at the height of 3.0, yet it is ultimately averted.by the deactivation of Unit-13. While Shinji is present and central to this event, he is not in a state of mind to proactively do anything. This makes Fourth Impact come off as a "failed rehearsal" for Final Impact in many ways.
- Final Impact is the big one, in 3.0+1.0, and this is the one that we, the viewers, get to witness from beginning to end, again with Shinji's perspective being the main contribution.

What was the point of Mark.06?

"This shit is going to sell so much merchandise." - Some aspiring Khara marketer working with one of the mech artists.

Not a fan of the ever-present suggestion that actually NGE and EoE are exactly as hole-y as NTE regarding foreshadowing, set-up, rule consistency, etc. First of all because these things aren't binaries, and it's sort of thought-terminating to say "no, they're the same, the only difference is you're biased," and second of all because (correct me if I'm wrong) there's simply way more to work with in NGE & EoE, even ignoring the videogame loredumps, not just in terms of blink-and-you-miss it details that can string things together, but in terms of time dedicated to establishing certain elements and cementing certain workings and rhythms so they feel like they lead and proceed from each other. For instance:

Jornophelanthas wrote:- First Impact is never mentioned, and its existence is only implied through the references to Second and Third Impacts.
- Second Impact is frequently mentioned, yet its events are never described.

They're infodumped via freeze-frame: https://wiki.evageeks.org/images/4/4f/0 ... verlay.jpg
Background chatter in several school scenes attest to these details.
Although it's worth noting that this public discourse is later said to be a fabrication. But that means there was in fact a reveal:

Jornophelanthas wrote:- Second Impact is frequently mentioned, yet its events are never described. The closest we got of witnessing it was a short flashback scene of a young Misato being rescued by her father.

Thanks to the DC, we get an overlapping infodump of an experiment underway, and then see some of the result of the experiment gone awry, segueing into Misato's flashback. Additionally, Misato has this exposition in EoE: "15 years ago, Second Impact was caused by humans on purpose. But that was in order to minimize the damage by returning Adam to an embryonic state before the other Angels awoke."

To extrapolate: Lilith was incapacitated and experimented upon, Adam was even more radically incapacitated and experimented upon, to disastrous effects. Said effects are set-up elsewhere; Adam-being + Lilith-being = kablooey.

Jornophelanthas wrote:Third Impact is the final one, yet we do not see how it is triggered.

We do know it involves Rei, however. This seems another instance (pre-DC even, thanks to Kaji describing Adam as a "keystone") of Lilith + Adam = ??? We could have reasoned even before EoE that Gendo, through manipulation of Rei, got to drive proceedings. I might be mistaken, but can we say what facilitated anything in NTE's 3I without veering into headcanon?

An example of a dangling thread that I don't find any parallel with in NGE/EoE:

Jornophelanthas wrote:- (Actual) Third Impact is the opposite. We do not witness the trigger, and instead we only ever get to see its aftermath, which is a MAJOR theme in 3.0. In fact, this builds up throughout the entire movie - starting with a view at the planet from orbit and culminating in the horrid scene in Central Dogma. Any conclusions we can draw about Third Impact are through forensic analysis of these (many) scenes and landscapes.

Said forensic examination of the landscape reveals to us a giant mouth and a giant eye on Earth, but this never factors out into anything as an ingredient because it's abandoned once we breach minus space. Nothing accomplished in the new space demonstrates anything about what happened during 3I, because it's just that, a new space. Does any of it apply, and who's to say? It's literally out of this world. It's like if we saw statues of the MPE without context for what role they played in the esoteric ritual of EoE's 3I. Instead, thanks to EoE, the ingredients all build on prior components: Kaworu dummy plugs, AT fields, the tree of life, spears, etc.

NGE & EoE show us enough of the cards in the deck to do some math and factor out what it doesn't straight up show us, which turns out to be far more of the focal events than NTE. NTE, on the other hand, omits 20 years of material and, from what I can tell, it's nigh impossible to do math and figure out what occurred in 3I.

I'm not saying NGE/EoE are good because of the existence of these throughlines or NTE is bad because it lacks anything approaching seamless lore elements. But as I see it they operate completely different.

By the same token, saying the omission of these events are intentional as atmosphere and thematic tool doesn't mean said techniques were well-executed. Painting NTE as being in some way about this lack of information ignores the fact that it doesn't really do that consistently, deliberately or with much dedication. Like, it would work better for me if the entire MO or engine for the storytelling was an unreliable narrator or limited viewpoint, and I could imagine how this could work wonderfully with the themes about consciousness and its limitations and the hard separations between people. But NTE as a whole is all over the place in terms of perspective--despite stricter focus on Shinji, many parts of 1.0, 2.0, and Thrice feel like a light ensemble. Not to mention there are selective expository speeches about certain aspects and not others. Really, any of the cast who was present for 3I really could've had a Gendo-esque speech explaining things to Shinji, it's just no one seems to have seen the need, not least of all Shinji. But Shinji's "I don't need to know the details" schtick where Rei's death is all he needs as fuel isn't totally believable and reads more as a convenience so the film isn't even more weighed down in exposition.

I suppose this is subjective, and maybe the secrecy of Mark.06 truly contributes to the tone and world building for some, but for me it seems pretty evidently a victim to circumstance and only contributes to the feeling that many, many hard storytelling decisions had to be made. The experience of watching Thrice is one of ping-ponging, non-stop tactical gambles of storytelling risk, owing to how much missing timeline there is to explain (or otherwise). But in terms of Mark.06 being a storytelling element ... it's hard to evoke mystery if you're causing the audience to scrutinize whether something is missing due to well-established purpose or due to last-minute snap decision or feats of post-hoc salvage. NTE feels studded with details that don't function in and of themselves as mysteries or ideas once everything is said and done, but more like tidbits that end up not mattering once a certain step in the plot is reached. We all know NGE & EoE were written as they went along, but the least you can ask is for a narrative to preserve all its elements and make sure they don't become dead air on retrospect.

Axx°N N. wrote:* EDIT: I was mistaken in saying Mark.06 was headless, but I'm leaving the mistake because it's ironic having happened in an exploration of how easily Mark.06 is memory-holed.

Well ...

Axx°N N. wrote:We do know it involves Rei, however. This seems another instance (pre-DC even, thanks to Kaji describing Adam as a "keystone") of Lilith + Adam = ??? We could have reasoned even before EoE that Gendo, through manipulation of Rei, got to drive proceedings. I might be mistaken, but can we say what facilitated anything in NTE's 3I without veering into headcanon?

I disagree we really know that Rei is involved in the Third Impact in Episodes 25 and 26. The episodes are pretty confusing about how the Impact started.

We have an scene of Rei and Gendo, but the Impact seems to have started at that point and it is never explained what Gendo plans to do with Rei. That was my opinion the first times I saw those episodes.

Honestly, I need to read the explanations in the Wiki to understand what is happening. And it's still confusing that scene between Rei and Gendo seems to happen when the Impact has already started.

Guys, let's not turn this into another NGE vs NTE thread, okay? We all know how this will play out. People will try to distort NGE to make NTE look less messy than it really is, then someone else will try to respond and the discussion will go nowhere. Let's stay on topic.

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The basic thing we can all agree on is that canceling a movie and not erasing its events from your franchise's continuity is really stupid. And no, NGE's First Impact (for example) doesn't compare to it. First of all, it's something that happened thousands of years before the story even started, it doesn't affect the actual plot in any way, and even if it did, NGE is a character driven story. The focus is obviously on the characters and their interactions with one another. Anyone who has sat down to watch the show can confirm this for sure.
NTE's story relies far more on its mysteries and lore to capture viewer interest. So erasing an entire section of the narrative (which is taking place as the story progresses) is not the same as keeping an event like First Impact a mystery for hardcore fans to crack. Kaji died off-screen, Misato's development was slaughtered, and the duo Asuka + Mari ended up shallow without proper development.
Both sides should be able to argue without relying on NGE and turn this discussion into yet another "this" vs "that" debate.

Also, Konja, c'mon. It's pretty clear when Instrumentality starts in episode 25 and that's not even the point of this episode by design.

Just to answer a point on the Impacts: in NGE the term "Impact" is part of the official cover-up on what happened in Antartica, that it was an asteroid that crashed on Earth and slighted tilted the Earth's axis, hence the eternal summer in Japan.
The "First Impact" was the asteroid that exterminated the dinosaurs 65 millions years ago. Of course SEELE (and Gendo, Fuyu and Yui) know better, but keep using this term as its the one that everyone uses, and by extension they also use the term "Third Impact" for their planed final annihilation of all life on Earth (to "rebirth" it as one giant hive mind).

Of course, you might then wonder why NTE also use that term, since there's no way that an asteroid would turn the oceans red and lifeless and open a permanent portail to another dimension, but my guess is that the "Impact" term became such as staple of Evangelion that Khara reused it, and in-universe that it compares to the effect of the event, having as much a cataclysmic mass-extinction event as "First" Impact, rather than the cause. (it can't be an asteroid)