midoriyoh wrote:You say that the quote about "Shinji in Misato' mind and Misato in Shinji's mind" proves that the characters exist in "monadic isolation", but the fact that here Shinji sees scenes from others' lives that he couldn't possibly know about shows that some sort of fusion has already started. The statement about being separate and simultaneously in each other's minds seems to be a description of this fuzzy transitional state, not of "monadic isolation".)
Thinking about this now I think you are probably correct. I am not sure why I interpreted it like that at first. I did not mean to say they were in complete isolation, I was thinking of a monad in the philosophical sense, without interaction but nevertheless "synched up" somehow, but there really isn't much support for this in the actual show.
midoriyoh wrote:There is another observation that one can make here: Shinji accepts his existence and rejects Instrumentality not by his own reasoning, but by debating and being taught and shown the nature of reality by others, in a way that wouldn't be possible without intimate knowledge of each other's minds provided in these initial stages of soul fusion. Or in other words: Shinji only rejects Instrumentality after an experience
made possible by Instrumentality mind fusion quirks. I guess that's another possible explanation of what "Complemented Shinji" could mean.
This is very insightful, and I think probably right. It has the benefit of solving the seeming contradiction with the Newtype Filmbook.