Has any member of khara ever commented on the creative reasons behind the Timeskip? I mean - do we have a quote from anybody about why they chose to skip 14 years?

I would hope they go into detail in the upcoming interviews, but frankly I am not too hopeful for that. Not because they will avoid talking about that, I don't think they can just pretend it didn't happen, but because 3.0 (still a masterpiece IMO) released 13 years ago, the film after that came 9 years after it, which was 4 years ago. Basically it's such a long time frame that it's almost certain that staff will recount things differently from what happened, misremember things, and not be totally forthcoming even if they wanted to. People don't often remember this, but Anno changed how he talked about EoTV a lot over the years, even in the relatively short period after it was immediately released, up until EoE being anounced, it being released, and everything since then.

Ergo, they never talked about it. Thank you! I have looked everywhere for a couple weeks, every Japanese yahoo answer or blog, and i just couldn't find an official reason for the why.

We all know why: it's more interesting that way. But I was looking for a quote, and it appeared there's none. This is just crazy!

The ‘closest’ I think they’ve come to discussing it was Anno at the Stage Greeting (IIRC) after Shin released talking about original ideas for 3.0 was ‘an Eva movie without Shinji’ (or something along those lines) as you see in the original preview at the end of 2.0.

Which doesn’t really tell us anything about the creative reasoning for the time skip but does put it into the context of Rebuild’s ‘format’. Of the four finished films there’s c.210 mins pre-time skip, c.260 minutes post time skip. Earlier it’d been planned for Rebuild to be three releases of 90mins, 90mins then a last ‘double film’ of two 45 mins parts. (obviously those would be rough numbers and any releases, like 1.0, would naturally be a bit longer).

Even if just after or before 2.0 released they’d decided to expand the last two films to each being full length, that the planned 3x90 releases were insufficient for the story they wanted to tell, which naturally to quote Tolkien ‘grow in the telling’, if the first one was the pre-time skip 3.0 preview, it’d leave only one film post time skip, rather than the eventual 4+ hours of post time skip story.

Which is a very convoluted way of saying that when they decided or first discussed the idea of a time skip during Rebuild’s evolving conceptual history has a lot of bearing on the time skip in story itself. I would hazard a guess that earlier the time skip was supposed to be more of a ‘distant finale’ kind of ending for the final battle. (Maybe the wanted to do something like the last chapters of the Devilman manga where it skips ahead.)

Interesting! Is there anything left from that stage greeting?

Marynou_penguin wrote:Interesting! Is there anything left from that stage greeting?

I think I saw the video on Eva-Extra app, but since I don't know Japanese I couldn't understand it.

That said, they don't seems to reveal a lot of información about their plans for a movie without Shinji.

Yeah sure, I was just looking for the exact quote about a movie without Shinji. Is it still on Eva extra? I’ll have a look around.

Marynou_penguin wrote:Interesting! Is there anything left from that stage greeting?

It's this one:

https://wiki.evageeks.org/Evangelion_3. ... e_greeting

We didn't transcript and translate the whole thing though, there are only bullet points. Still that doesn't guarantee they went into further detail.

(oh, crap, they made the videos private LOL)

I mean, they're on record about various elements like Mari being intended to "break" the Eva story away from its familiar beats. So, I always took the timeskip to be of a similar strategy.

The VAs being allowed to sound more like their actual ages, maybe?

Also just drama: Not only did you majorly done goofed, it's long ago settled history that you did, irreversible irrevocable facts and now they've all hated you for much longer than they ever were your friends (or that's at least what it looks like to Shinji)

Eventually it seems to get spun into expressing this pretty common feeling of feeling like you got left behind in life by your peers.

Once in the case of Shinji who is literally still a kid while all his friends now have jobs and kids and whatnot.

And then you have Asuka, grizzled war veteran who feels stuck because of how her life is dominated by traumatic events & how she never quite got closure on the past. (which is underlined by having her visually 'stuck' but also wearing an eyepatch)

Generally phantastical things in fiction exist to make irrational emotions rational within the setting of the story so they can be confronted.


It's also worth noting that Anno himself felt 'stuck' at the time he made the OG show (there's one quote where he says that he doesn't feel much more mature than Shinji on the inside - & of course we have Misato, a literal immature adult. ) - but by the time he finished the Rebuilds that was no longer the case & he said he empathized more with Gendo than Shinji at this point. So maybe he's telling the story of how he got unstuck.


Structure wise 2.0 sees Shinji becoming a little stronger, doing things more of his own accord for his own goals, but if he does that then he also needs to be challenged more, because he can't "win" in the third act. there needs to be a belly of the beast/dark night of the soul moment (especially if kaworu is supposed to get a big role this time, his whole thing is appearing as the last glimmer of hope in the despair pit and then dying in a way that leads to more despair)
He was afraid of responsibility because what if he fucks up. So in a sense the logical next step was to... have him fuck up, so he can face that fear that he previously avoided by not taking responsibility. Q is designed to be the 'absolute worst case scenario' for Shinji, cause he always feared that everyone would hate him. So bam, everybody hates him now! And have hated him for 14 years to create a sense of an 'insurmountable gulf'
Though they didn't end up hating him quite as much as he thought at first. Even in Q when they're very selective about what they do or don't show us, Misato can't bring herself to shoot him, but it doesn't seem like Shinji knew that.

FelipeFritschF wrote:

Marynou_penguin wrote:Interesting! Is there anything left from that stage greeting?

It's this one:

https://wiki.evageeks.org/Evangelion_3. ... e_greeting

We didn't transcript and translate the whole thing though, there are only bullet points. Still that doesn't guarantee they went into further detail.

(oh, crap, they made the videos private LOL)

Using waybackmachine, I managed to watch them:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211227063 ... Dp8_KjKPq0
https://web.archive.org/web/20210712213 ... esbeUC0hrE

These were exactly what i was looking for. Thank you!!

I honestly a good part of the reason was to both allow for more high-budget mecha action that is not just a variation of the original 90s theme, and to destroy any sense of familiarity in the viewer.
Then the precise length of the skip, 14 years, was probably picked for meta-narrative reasons.

Marynou_penguin wrote:

FelipeFritschF wrote:
It's this one:

https://wiki.evageeks.org/Evangelion_3. ... e_greeting

We didn't transcript and translate the whole thing though, there are only bullet points. Still that doesn't guarantee they went into further detail.

(oh, crap, they made the videos private LOL)

Using waybackmachine, I managed to watch them:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211227063 ... Dp8_KjKPq0
https://web.archive.org/web/20210712213 ... esbeUC0hrE

These were exactly what i was looking for. Thank you!!

I should mention I don't find the data about the stage of the Eva Wiki so reliable. A lot of the information comes from Japanese twitter users who saw the stage, but I feel a lot of the information in these tweets were interpretations or conclusions (not something directly mentioned by Anno).


For example: I really doubt Anno gave all the information for this timeline:

Near-Third Impact in Ha → Gendo ousted → Kaworu and Kaji assume command in Gendo's absence, aid in the preservation of NERV and in protecting Misato and co. → Gendo somehow reassumes command at NERV → Gendo uses SEELE, another battle occurs, starts Third Impact → Kaji dies to stop Third Impact → WILLE is born → Q begins

It's more likely the twitter user created this timeline using some of the information mentioned and their own conclusions.


PS: Thank you very much for letting me know me how to see the video.

Another function of the skip is that it maintains the speculative future setting. 3 years after Q, we would have been firmly past the in-universe date of 2015.