I was fairly shocked, I started out watching the rebuild movies and I was NOT ready for the OG series. My reaction was me sitting on my chair staring at my ceiling thinking <3

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In modly mode - I'm surprised there's not an obvious thread already. I've pruned one of the duplicates of the OP.

As forum member - the archetypal reaction is "WTF did I just watch", and mine was not too different. It went from sitting there numbly, to rewatching, to realising that that emotional gut punch was how it ended, trying to make positive sense of it, and in the following days, vomiting up a couple of fix-fics to purge it from my system. That was nearly 22 years ago, but the scars remain.

I like many others was perplexed, I knew that it was unlike anything that I had ever seen before and had a difficult time making sense of it. Over subsequent viewings however I was able to reconcile the films themes and insights on the human psyche and found it to be one of the most impactful and fascinating films I've ever seen. I definitely think it's worth watching more than once because it's so much to take in that I don't think that a single viewing could truly do it justice.

I remember I thought I was following it well enough and then was like "huh!?" when it abruptly ended at the beach scene. Thought it still had a bit to go and it ending so suddenly caught me off guard.

I was less confused the second time I watched the series.

The thing is that Shinji's soul had been suspended in LCL before, following which his body was reconstituted by Ritsuko at Misato's insistence. Thus the plan had always been to do this to humanity in general. It is still unclear to me if Yui (his mother) was preserved in LCL to be put into unit 01.

There is some disentangling necessary to understand how Kaworu and Rei are linked to Angels, but apparently they are both somehow linked to angelic souls while also having human souls. Or do they only have angelic souls, while having different information?

I loved it. But I was also very sad when it ended. I remember crying a bit that night.

I already liked Evangelion a lot at that point. But I think it was EOE which made me into a fan and eventually led me to here. It's a film that still evokes a lot of emotions in me to this day.

Darth Plato wrote:I was less confused the second time I watched the series.

The thing is that Shinji's soul had been suspended in LCL before, following which his body was reconstituted by Ritsuko at Misato's insistence. Thus the plan had always been to do this to humanity in general. It is still unclear to me if Yui (his mother) was preserved in LCL to be put into unit 01.

There is some disentangling necessary to understand how Kaworu and Rei are linked to Angels, but apparently they are both somehow linked to angelic souls while also having human souls. Or do they only have angelic souls, while having different information?

Actually, Ritsuko failed to reconstitute Shinji, (empty plugsuit ejected from the entry plug), then Shinji reconstituted himself apparently with Yui's help. You'll notice Shinji's body was ejected from the core, not the entry plug.

Yui was absorbed by Unit-01 during her contact experiment. The attempt to recover her resulted in Rei, a clone of Yui made of Angelic Unit-01 matter instead of human matter with Lilith's soul. Kaworu is Rei's counterpart, a human clone made of Adamic matter with Adam's soul. Some here believe that Kaworu was cloned from Misato's father, but that's impossible to prove definitively.

thewayneiac wrote:

Darth Plato#945768 wrote:I was less confused the second time I watched the series.

The thing is that Shinji's soul had been suspended in LCL before, following which his body was reconstituted by Ritsuko at Misato's insistence. Thus the plan had always been to do this to humanity in general. It is still unclear to me if Yui (his mother) was preserved in LCL to be put into unit 01.

There is some disentangling necessary to understand how Kaworu and Rei are linked to Angels, but apparently they are both somehow linked to angelic souls while also having human souls. Or do they only have angelic souls, while having different information?

Actually, Ritsuko failed to reconstitute Shinji, (empty plugsuit ejected from the entry plug), then Shinji reconstituted himself apparently with Yui's help. You'll notice Shinji's body was ejected from the core, not the entry plug.

Yui was absorbed by Unit-01 during her contact experiment. The attempt to recover her resulted in Rei, a clone of Yui made of Angelic Unit-01 matter instead of human matter with Lilith's soul. Kaworu is Rei's counterpart, a human clone made of Adamic matter with Adam's soul. Some here believe that Kaworu was cloned from Misato's father, but that's impossible to prove definitively.

Thank you for those details. I'll look for that on the rewatch. Unlike the series which I have seen twice, I somehow had the misfortune to see EoE first, many years ago and it was just crazy nonsense my friends could not explain. But I think the fact that the show ESTABLISHES that a person can be suspended in LCL with their soul intact is an amportant prelude to what eventually happens.

my initial viewing was disturbed because of stuff I saw Shinji doing and stuff happening to Asuka and the part where Gendo tries to get Rei to merge with him. I didn't know who these characters were and it was all just weird and disturbing for no reason. However I now think nearly all of it was either indispensable or at least important. I have to say viewing it from a fully adult point of view--I am closer to Gendo's age than Kaji's now--that aspect actually helps me enjoy the whole series more, and of course it gains nostalgia aspects with rewatches.

I accept the ending as it is, although the new ending served as an interesting commentary or complement to it.

PS are those details of Rei's origin agreen fully by expert fans? I think I interpreted it as something different. If there is a good thread I wouldn't mind being directed there.

Darth Plato wrote:
I think the fact that the show ESTABLISHES that a person can be suspended in LCL with their soul intact is an amportant prelude to what eventually happens.

Yes, for instance it's been established that Shinji never left the entry plug during instrumentality. If he had been floating around on the surface with all the other billions of souls he couldn't possibley have retrieved Misato's cross. Plus, if I remember right they show his plug bobbing to the surface when instrumentality ends. Yet he was still in communication with everyone else.

I was talking about the fact that the scene in the earlier episodes established narratively that a person can live as a soul in LCL, Also that they can resume physical form somehow, So the instrumentality sequence where people get "tanged" as people say is not their death, except in the sense that their soul leaves the natural body. Of course they also begin to lose a sense of their boundary versus others, so one could see that as a kind of death. But it is more like death as understood in religious traditions--their soul does not disintegrate but lives on.