Cola-09 wrote:I think there's really just two possibilities. Either Anno has all the in-universe answers but deliberately keeps them away for the sake of future content that he's gonna feed us little by little for more $$$. Or he never really fleshed out the lore and was hoping that the brand, fan service and neat 3d animations would come up for it.

Edit: Anno being a screenwriter, director and producer and him working several years on one title, I tend to lean to the former. I'm having a hard time to believe that Anno who meticulously works on a few frames until perfection, would then suddenly lower his ambitions when it comes to the story.

Oh I don't think that Anno never cared about the lore, for example according to side-materials, he had a clear idea for some of the mysteries in 2.0 and removed some passages that explained clearly things otherwise implied, although we don't know if that was just to make things more mysterious or because he changed his mind (like: the blood mark on the Moon was indeed a consequence of Second Impact, SEELE knew all along that Bardiel infected Unit 03 and let it happen on purpose to weaken Gendo and get data on human/Angel hybridization, and Shinji's weird "hell train" dreams through 1.0 a,d 2.0 that didn't had any in-universe explanation was to be revealed to be Gendo submitting him to brainwashing)

Similarly, Maya Saakamoto (Mari's VA) revealed in an interview that Anno had a backstory thought for Mari, and only revealed it to her.

What I think happened is simply that by the time of Thrice, Anno was mostly interested in putting Evangelion behind him and trying new things on the technical side of filmmaking to use in his future Tokusatsu works, hence (as Konja7 wrote faster than me) why he talks mostly about the technical aspects of the movie's creative process rather than about the story or lore.

EZ.

Szmitten wrote:

SPOILER: Show

What was Mark.06?
An Eva developed secretly by Seele to have under their direct control to carry out Third Impact eventually. It being merged with Lilith and holding her decapitated head during Third Impact shows that this was succesful. Once it's no longer needed, it peaces out.
What was the Key of Nebuchadnezzar?
The means for a human to unlock Angelic abilities reminiscent of #24 Kaworu's ultimately to control and navigate Impacts.
What made Unit 01 so special?
Yui is in it.
What happened after 2.0 that led to the state in the world in Q?
Third Impact.
Why did Lilith had Rei's face?
Even with Shinji asleep, Eva-01 is an amalgam of Rei and Yui's souls, and Eva-01 has some kind of resonating influence on Third Impact in conjunction with the Mark.06/Lilith/12th Angel amalgam entity.
Why did the FoIs had Unit 01's appearance?
Eva-01 has some kind of resonating influence on Third Impact.
Why does the spears sometimes change forms and sometimes not?
Depends on the holder/user.
What were the Adam's Vessels?
The cores of the Adams in the shape of Evangelions.
What were the flying battleships?
The bodies of the Adams.
Why were they needed to guard the portal in Antarctica?
They weren't needed for guarding but for their wings.
What were the Mark.04, Eva 04, Nemesis Series and Mark.07 that NERV could built by the thousands?
Mass produced pseudo-Eva drones.
Where does Kaworu fits with the fact there are five Adams this time?
Kaworu is the 1st Angel. Adams are not Angels.
Why were WILLE's pilots treated like shit and even had their cell set up to be murdered harder despite them having saved the world at the end of Q?
They pilot living gods that can trigger Impacts and one of them has an Angel in her too.
Why did the Precursor race organized this overly elaborate Mortal Kombat to have humanity evolve into mindless eternal giants?
It wasn't organised.
What purpose had the Golgotha Object?
Artifact that holds Eva Imaginary.
What was Eva Imaginary?
An imaginary god-like entity that is an EoE Lilith equivalent.
What was Yui's plan in this continuity?
Not outright stated beyond watching over her son.
What's the deal with Mari?
Japanese British girl born in Yui/Gendo/Fuyutsuki's generation who kept her youth and is extremely interested in Eva and weasels into roles to achieve it.
What's the deal with Asuka's original?
She was a doner, and her soul was eventually stuffed into Eva-13.

EZ.

So, superficial information or complete guessing.

ElMariachi wrote:So, superficial information or complete guessing.

Most of those are directly stated, some can be inferred, many are designed to be mysteries and unanswerable.

ElMariachi wrote:What I think happened is simply that by the time of Thrice, Anno was mostly interested in putting Evangelion behind him and trying new things on the technical side of filmmaking to use in his future Tokusatsu works, hence (as Konja7 wrote faster than me) why he talks mostly about the technical aspects of the movie's creative process rather than about the story or lore.

I agree that Anno was mostly interested in putting Evangelion behind, but I don't think this really affected the information about the lore he always planned to reveal.

For example: I'm pretty sure Anno's never planned to reveal all the story about the Third Impact in the last two movies (that decision was likely made when he scrapped the idea of a movie without Shinji). That's why we only received Kaworu's explanation as an answer in 3.0.


I mean, we're still revealed a lot of information about the lore in 3.0+1.0. All the information necessary to understand the story and the characters motivations are revealed.

Cola-09 wrote:I tried to use the search but didn't get any results on the term "Reichu", would you be so kind to link a few of his most interesting topics? Thanks.

This is her main thread where most of the core speculation takes place in; keep in mind that this was written before Shin came out, so some of it is out of date, but the general framework of ideas and observations holds up decently well. Unfortunately, the things she's put out after her departure from EGF are a lot less neatly organized and a good chunk of them aren't public, but this is still a pretty good starting point all in all, and still one of the definite better approaches to trying to untangle NTE

So, I think the more simple connection between the N3I and the Third Impact is that both are the same event, which explain why the FOI are copies of Eva-01

The Third Impact that Shinji started was paused by the Spear of Cassius, but SEELE/Gendo reactivated this Third Impact in a way they could control it.

Shinji is blamed for the red land by humanity because he started the Third Impact in 2.0. SEELE/Gendo reactivated this Third Impact and they are blamed (enemies of humanity) too.


In itself, it isn't so difficult to see why Shinji would be considered responsible in this situation. We could say that SEELE planned its own Third Impact without Eva-01, but that Third Impact didn't happen (we couldn't even know if this Third Impact would have happenned).

Cola-09 wrote:

Blockio wrote:I suggest you read up on some of Reichu's old threads

I tried to use the search but didn't get any results on the term "Reichu", would you be so kind to link a few of his most interesting topics? Thanks.

If you search for "Reichu" in the "Search for keywords:" field, you get this unhelpful result:

The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: reichu.

This is because of a well-characterized search issue discussed here. The workaround is to search instead for "Reich*", or better yet to search for "Reichu" in the "Search for author:" field which, with a little more configuration, yields this list of all the topics she ever started in the Rebuild subforum. But, start with Blockio's topic linked in his post above!

BernardoCairo wrote: Although I partially agree with you, El, let's keep this thread as a place to discuss the in-universe lore of the tetralogy. What you're saying has some weight behind it, so I suggest you taking it elsewhere, to another (more appropriate thread).

Fair enough.
But if I may, I would like to explain to Blockio and Szmitten the point I wanted to make (because my previous posts were kinda curt and aggressive): I agree that some things could stay unanswered, like what were the Precursor race's motives, as it keeps things ambiguous and "larger than life", but I'm also of the thought that there's a minimum of explanation and justification of things that are presented to us that is needed to keep a coherence in the story and uphold the suspension of credulity (unless we're in a work of fiction where coherence was never a concern, like Kill la Kill where its setting doesn't make a lick of sense but it's alright because it was never meant to be coherent in the first place), or else that's how you end with Palpatine's fleet of Death Star Destroyers in Star Wars Episode 9.

And Thrice put us through such a rapid-fire of plot elements and technobabble that only serve to justify the scene where they appear, never to be mentioned again (and also not explaining things from the previous movies that looked like mysteries that will be revealed later - Mark.06, the Key of Nebuchadnezzar or the battleships for example) that for me it completely breaks the said coherence and suspension of incredulity.

I think that's the beauty of it, the fact that it doesn't lay out things right in front of you, that you have this puzzle to put together. Sure, I'd also prefer a couple of things to be less obtuse, but there are definitely points to approach this from that make sense of a picture larger than the sum of its parts

Or maybe it's just similar to JJ's infamous mystery box and most of these plot elements / details may not have an explanation at all until they they become the focus of some future material. Anno had an idea where it was heading, but most plot elements leading to the ending were heavily improvised as we saw previously in interviews, retconned previews, etc.

Not really, no; I don't think there is much in the previews that was outright retconned. Sure, the story changed over time, but I don't think that means we can or should assume that what is there doesn't hold meaning, that's not really how Anno and Tsurumaki do things

Jinroh wrote:Or maybe it's just similar to JJ's infamous mystery box and most of these plot elements / details may not have an explanation at all until they they become the focus of some future material. Anno had an idea where it was heading, but most plot elements leading to the ending were heavily improvised as we saw previously in interviews, retconned previews, etc.

I think Anno/Khara has an explanation for most of the mysteries, but they won't reveal it unless is necessary for the story.

For example: I'm pretty sure Anno knows why Mark-06 was so special, but he won't reveal it because Mark-06 has almost no relevance in 3.0 and 3.0+1.0.

Honestly, Mark-06 was affected a lot for scratching the idea of a movie without Shinji, where it likely has more relevance.


Another thing, the interviews and retconned previews only show that the creative process has had several changes, which is quite common in the creation of films.

That doesn't mean the story doesn't have consistency. Changes are usually made within certain limits.

Blockio wrote:Not really, no; I don't think there is much in the previews that was outright retconned. Sure, the story changed over time, but I don't think that means we can or should assume that what is there doesn't hold meaning, that's not really how Anno and Tsurumaki do things

Depends on the situation, but the problem doesn't really lie with what is there, but more with what isn't there. We know for example there was a third impact, a massive military operation is implied to have taken place before third impact, but these might have been the only thing that Anno wrote in a draft. Like a member previously posted earlier, everything in itself already has some kind of explanation on some vague level.

There's also the question of the visual elements like teeth on the ground or the moon or some visual inconsistencies between movies. Lots of these things might not even come from Anno and may be visual elements that don't have any backstory (and some might argue they don't need a backstory/explanation at all). But, they might expand on all these things if necessary, because you can always justify whatever you want and that's what Disney does in the current comics related to the sequel trilogy.

I'm not saying nothing has a backstory and everything is made up on the spot, what I'm saying is that we probably sometimes look for answers about things that don't necessarily have proper answers (yet). It's a bit frustrating because I'm the kind of person who's very interested in the lore and technical details, but sometimes you just have to realize that things are how they are and you can't do anything about it, only theorize. To summarize I think some elements of the story are supposed to stay vague because they were created this way and aren't supposed to be alaborated upon.

Jinroh wrote:Depends on the situation, but the problem doesn't really lie with what is there, but more with what isn't there. We know for example there was a third impact, a massive military operation is implied to have taken place before third impact, but these might have been the only thing that Anno wrote in a draft. Like a member previously posted earlier, everything in itself already has some kind of explanation on some vague level.

I agree on this.

I don't think Anno worked out the events surrounding the Third Impact in great detail. He has only told us the relevant aspects of the Third Impact for 3.0 and 3.0+1.0 story.

Anno originally planned to make a movie without Shinji, which would probably deal with the Third Impact, but I doubt he would have fleshed out the events too much on this discarded idea.

I don't doubt that there are questions about the timeskip that were not a priority for Anno; however, since there are a great many things that tie directly to events during the timeskip that we do not get to see, that means that they have meaning to the story, and Anno is a better writer than to also never have thought about those. the reason why we are discussing this is that NTE asks questions that it does not openly answer, all while placing hints to potential answers elsewhere, sometimes hidden in different questions; it is now our role to piece this puzzle together if we want to know the answers, and pretending that there are no puzzlepieces to look at or that they are meaningless visual fluff/throwaway lines is not helpful here

I suppose most of you already know this but there's one minor detail I just realized upon rewatching Thrice that I didn't caught last time. For instrumentality (whether physical or mental) not only the spears are needed as a sacrifice, but Lilith must be involved as well. I could remember Fuyutsuki mentioning the artificial recreation of Lilith with the use of the 4 ships, but I've never understood how. Now if you count the beams or "wings" of all the ships you end up with exactly 12 parts (4x3), the same number of wings Lilith grows in both EoE and the Thrice finale. Those artificial wings seem to be good enough to fake "Lilith" and kickstart instrumentality. Boom!

Cola-09 wrote:I suppose most of you already know this but there's one minor detail I just realized upon rewatching Thrice that I didn't caught last time. For instrumentality (whether physical or mental) not only the spears are needed as a sacrifice, but Lilith must be involved as well. I could remember Fuyutsuki mentioning the artificial recreation of Lilith with the use of the 4 ships, but I've never understood how. Now if you count the beams or "wings" of all the ships you end up with exactly 12 parts (4x3), the same number of wings Lilith grows in both EoE and the Thrice finale. Those artificial wings seem to be good enough to fake "Lilith" and kickstart instrumentality. Boom!

Lilith doesn't seem to be necessary in that way for the Instrumentality. Lilith's role seems to end in the Third Impact.

SEELE's Instrumentality Project (humans becoming beings with FOL but whitout FOK) doesn't really need Lilth for the last part. The Fourth Impact in 3.0 would fullfil SEELE's goal without Lilth being involved.

Gendo's Additional Impact needs the Eva-Imaginary, which isn't really Lilith even if it looks like a Black Lilith.


The "recreation of Lilith" using the four ships was necessary to create the Black Moon Spear. Gendo needs this Spear for the Fourth Impact in 3.0+1.0, since he will need to preserve Spear of Longinus and Cassius for the Additional Impact.

Konja7 wrote:Lilith doesn't seem to be necessary in that way for the Instrumentality. Lilith's role seems to end in the Third Impact.

SEELE's Instrumentality Project (humans becoming beings with FOL but whitout FOK) doesn't really need Lilth for the last part. The Fourth Impact in 3.0 would fullfil SEELE's goal without Lilth being involved.

Gendo's Additional Impact needs the Eva-Imaginary, which isn't really Lilith even if it looks like a Black Lilith.


The "recreation of Lilith" using the four ships was necessary to create the Black Moon Spear. Gendo needs this Spear for the Fourth Impact in 3.0+1.0, since he will need to preserve Spear of Longinus and Cassius for the Additional Impact.

Makes a lot of sense, and raises the question:
If Gendo & Fuyutsuki needed 4 ships (12 wings) to turn the Black Moon into the new spears, How was Wille able to make a new spear using just the one Wunder?