I'm not saying that they are:
1. Literally the first 2 physical human beings
2. That there are no other human beings on the planet who rejected instrumentality
3. That all humans will descend from them.

All I'm saying is that visually, they are presented as the only 2 physical humans who rejected the all-togetherness of human instrumentality, thus they are the "man and woman" of a new age of mankind.

That's not true, we have an article for that

Yeah, like I said in 3., I'm not saying everyone will literally descend from them. Just that they're a man and a woman shown in a new age of humans....

I guess you can interpret it that way if you want, but I doubt that was the intention given the extremely loose connection. It's a stretch.

DTGee wrote:I guess you can interpret it that way if you want, but I doubt that was the intention given the extremely loose connection. It's a stretch.

I mean, it's a series that liberally references the biblical Adam & Eve in a loose context. I don't blame anyone for taking the imagery of a last man & woman (not literally, but narratively) and running with it.

It's a sensible thought to have for the aforementioned reasons, but it on a pretty fundamental level does not work with the rest of the show if you think about it. NE spends no small amount of time on the notion that human interaction is, in fact, very difficult, and that noone is entitled to romantic involvement; ending all of that on the note that now they're the only ones left (or at least the only ones that matter), so therefore it is a foregone conclusion that they are destined to have sex and repopulate Earth is not a great take

Blockio wrote:It's a sensible thought to have for the aforementioned reasons, but it on a pretty fundamental level does not work with the rest of the show if you think about it. NE spends no small amount of time on the notion that human interaction is, in fact, very difficult, and that noone is entitled to romantic involvement; ending all of that on the note that now they're the only ones left (or at least the only ones that matter), so therefore it is a foregone conclusion that they are destined to have sex and repopulate Earth is not a great take

Actually, it's that very difficulty Asuka and Shinji have that makes them more, not less, like Adam & Eve, given that they (Adam & Eve) fell from Paradise and no longer worked in harmony as originally intended.

Father Roderick explains here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13m8ttd-BOY

My point is that trying to make Asuka and Shinji into Adam and Eve figures is missing the point.

It does not work with the themes of the show, and comes from the painfully heteronormative notion that if a male and a female are isolated together through whatever circumstance (disregarding the question if anyone else comes back - the argument hinges entirely on the two of them being the only ones that matter), they are bound to end up in a relationship, which - no.
It's shipper goggles with extra steps.

They're horny teens who like each other despite their prior misunderstandings with almost nothing left except each other...it's practically a matter of when rather than if based on what we've seen. As far as "heteronormative" goes, Asuka is extremely straight and Shinji at least leans towards women. His interactions with Kaworu did seem extremely homoerotic, but Anno denied that in an interview. (FWIW, it still seemed VERY homoerotic to me).

There's nothing in the show's themes that negates romance. Just that romance is often messy, hurtful, and strained, which it also was for Adam and Eve after they were banished from Eden.

I always find it odd that often on EGF people will dismiss certain takes by deferring to Word of God statements and certain conflicting aspects of the material, but the ending (and series overall) in question was purposefully, by that same Word of God, meant to be open-ended and interpretive. That inherently means the grand total of takes to pull from it are more numerous than the "true or false" attitude that often crops up.

Blockio wrote:It does not work with the themes of the show....

The show is replete with sexual yearning, animosity, reproductive imagery, the relation between parent and child, life on earth, destiny, biblical allegory and the broad theme of alienation vs. human connection, and the value in it despite pain. I don't ascribe to anything close to a "shipper reading" on the ending, but to cast a blanket judgment that anyone approaching some kind of fated end between Shinji and Asuka in their reading must be an open or furtive shipper isn't giving due credence to the legitimacy of someone's subjective takeaway. Maybe you end up being right, but I feel like it's merely not good faith to levy that right out of the gate. I can easily imagine an effortpost that does in fact make such a read work with the themes of the show.

Asunji_Yuko wrote:but Anno denied that in an interview.

Do you have a source? In the JUNE interview Anno stated that he chose the writer of that episode specifically because he could write homoeroticism well:


Interviewer: Who worked on episode 24?

Anno: A person named Satsukawa (Akio)-san did that. Satsukawa-san is better at—this is bad to say, but—he’s right on the mark when it comes to homoeroticism. *laugh*

Axx°N N. wrote:Do you have a source? In the JUNE interview Anno stated that he chose the writer of that episode specifically because he could write homoeroticism well:


Interviewer: Who worked on episode 24?

Anno: A person named Satsukawa (Akio)-san did that. Satsukawa-san is better at—this is bad to say, but—he’s right on the mark when it comes to homoeroticism. *laugh*

Oh, really? Wow. Okay, that explains the gay vibes I got from the episode. And I cannot find the source so maybe I misinterpreted something on some random website.

Axx°N N. wrote:The show is replete with sexual yearning, animosity, reproductive imagery, the relation between parent and child, life on earth, destiny, biblical allegory and the broad theme of alienation vs. human connection, and the value in it despite pain. I don't ascribe to anything close to a "shipper reading" on the ending, but to cast a blanket judgment that anyone approaching some kind of fated end between Shinji and Asuka in their reading must be an open or furtive shipper isn't giving due credence to the legitimacy of someone's subjective takeaway. Maybe you end up being right, but I feel like it's merely not good faith to levy that right out of the gate. I can easily imagine an effortpost that does in fact make such a read work with the themes of the show.

And I am not disputing that. However, becoming figurative Adam and Eve is a significant step above any of that.

It's a bit of a stretch but it depends on what aspect of Adam and Eve you are investigating and whether you consider Shinji and Asuka to be the central characters of the show. Neither Asuka or Shinji ate the forbidden fruit but they are flawed individuals from the very beginning, so they could be representative of the original sin of mankind, and therefore they must journey out into the new world after being cast out from paradise (instrumentality). However, it is worthy to note that they were not cast out but left instrumentality by their own choosing as they want to exercise their own judgements and return to the world to experience suffering but also hope. Having Shinji and Asuka at the end is symbolic of as they are the most flawed characters in the show who needed the most growth and help. The other characters like kaworu and Rei act like angelic entities that guided them, and Misato, nerv staff and gendo as parental figures who also impart their wisdom and experience onto Shinji and Asuka. At the end of civilization that they are forced to make a fresh start for themselves despite remaining flawed.

dzzthink wrote:Neither Asuka or Shinji ate the forbidden fruit...

I'd argue that they did, actually, from a certain framing. Adam & Eve accessed forbidden knowledge, and Instrumentality is nothing if not the most consciousness-expanding experience one can imagine, not without its shares of trauma and enlightenment. So both Adam & Eve and Shinji & Asuka are going from a state of all-and-nothing totality to one with free choice.

I’m not sure if Anno had really intended to have Shinji and Asuka paired with each other on that notion, and it’s also pretty apparent from the last Rebuild film.

Besides, it’s likely that they won’t be the only two people let if everyone else decides to come back, and they have a lot of issues to work out before they even decided to start a relationship.

Presented without endorsement : I haven't been able to track down any of the posts where I quoted an interesting interpretation I found long ago on a defunct Spanish language forum, that Shinji and Asuka were parallel to Adam and Lilith (as per the original myth, not the NGE versions of the names), and the spectral Rei we see hovering in the distance is the Eve analogue, waiting for Asuka to be banished. That makes an interesting and different reading of the events, at least.

Mr. Tines#940819 wrote:Presented without endorsement : I haven't been able to track down any of the posts where I quoted an interesting interpretation I found long ago on a defunct Spanish language forum, that Shinji and Asuka were parallel to Adam and Lilith (as per the original myth, not the NGE versions of the names), and the spectral Rei we see hovering in the distance is the Eve analogue, waiting for Asuka to be banished. That makes an interesting and different reading of the events, at least.

Then Kensuke and Toji weren't being ironic when they said "even the devil cries" in episode 9...