chrunkle wrote: I really dont think hes gay or bi or whatever, either, so Kaworu wouldnt work)

At least they had something resembling a relationship beforehand, Shinji and Mari makes about as much sense as Asuka and Kensuke, as in they're both forced and stupid.

I always thought the Rebuild were leaning more towards Rei Ayanami being the final goal. The first two movies definitely were. And I'm a bigger Asuka fan, but Rei makes more sense than a "character" like Mari who's just there to sell new merchandise.

But I guess I can convince myself that the relationship between Shinji and Mari at the end isn't necessarily romantic, and that she just represents change.

OneShotPunch wrote:At least they had something resembling a relationship beforehand, Shinji and Mari makes about as much sense as Asuka and Kensuke, as in they're both forced and stupid.

Perhaps he wasn't meant to have something serious with any of the other characters, but rather try something different with a new person (Mari). In a way, it was the best option the writers had to incorporate the "change" element to the ending.

BernardoCairo wrote:Perhaps he wasn't meant to have something serious with any of the other characters, but rather try something different with a new person (Mari). In a way, it was the best option the writers had to incorporate the "change" element to the ending.

I would have respected an ending that had completely random new people if that was the intention. As it is, it's just confusing and creepy for Shinji to (if not literally than at least symbolically) end up with their parents' college friend which by default makes her "a past element" rather than a proper change.

OneShotPunch wrote:I would have respected an ending that had completely random new people if that was the intention. As it is, it's just confusing and creepy for Shinji to (if not literally than at least symbolically) end up with their parents' college friend which by default makes her "a past element" rather than a proper change.

I see what you mean, but she's still the embodiment of change in this context. Mari was introduced specifically as a tool to change the ending (since Tsurumaki couldn't think of a way to end Evangelion differently without a new character to spice things up). She wasn't created by Anno, so she's also different from the other characters by design. And she's determined, unlike everyone else.

AsukaisLiterallyMe wrote:No there isn't.

There's a massive difference between ending with "Kimochi warui" (said by the most disgusted and worn sounding Asuka imaginable) and running away while holding your waifu's hand.

I'm late to this thread but the final scene with Mari and Shinji is also devoid of all the characterization that Asuka and Shinji got in the EOE+NGE. One reason many of liked the romantic relationship between Shinji and Asuka is because the idea of two fundamentally broken people are able to eventually outgrow their angst and connect on a deep romantic level is appealing. I get what Mari is supposed to symbolize, a new begining, she's free from all the trauma of the other characters, she makes Shinji's life better, but she didn't have the episodes long development that Shinji and Asuka had, made their eventual copaling come out of no where.

BernardoCairo wrote:I see what you mean, but she's still the embodiment of change in this context. Mari was introduced specifically as a tool to change the ending (since Tsurumaki couldn't think of a way to end Evangelion differently without a new character to spice things up). She wasn't created by Anno, so she's also different from the other characters by design. And she's determined, unlike everyone else.

Thematically it makes sense that Mari represents change and moving on, but we also have the entirety of the original series +EoE where Shinji and Asuka's relationship gets explored deeply, something we didn't get with Mari, so it feels weird she ended up with him even though the logic of the rebuild series makes that relationship necessary.

lmm34789 wrote:
I'm late to this thread but the final scene with Mari and Shinji is also devoid of all the characterization that Asuka and Shinji got in the EOE+NGE. One reason many of liked the romantic relationship between Shinji and Asuka is because the idea of two fundamentally broken people are able to eventually outgrow their angst and connect on a deep romantic level is appealing.

Um, what series did you watch? There is no romance between Shinji and Asuka in the original series, and EoE certainly did not end with them overcoming their flaws as people. In fact, it makes way more sense for Rebuild to end with them splitting off forever, as the movies make it clear being in Evangelion has kept them trapped in an endless repeating cycle and breaking out of it means moving on from those past relationships. AsuShin was never real.

OneShotPunch wrote:There is no romance between Shinji and Asuka in the original series, and EoE certainly did not end with them overcoming their flaws as people. In fact, it makes way more sense for Rebuild to end with them splitting off forever, as the movies make it clear being in Evangelion has kept them trapped in an endless repeating cycle and breaking out of it means moving on from those past relationships. AsuShin was never real.

I don't know how you could possibly arrive at this conclusion unless your definition of 'romance' is narrow as a toothpick. The very existence of trauma-bonded couples should speak to the variety at work in couples.

Trying to argue that there isn't infinite possibility re: interpretation of EoE's final scene is like arguing that a ripe banana isn't yellow. It's not only its very recognizable, immediately apparent reputation, it's the intent behind Eva, as stated multiple times, to be left to interpretation. The ending has polarities, it's disgust and a caress. It's strangling and calming down. It's condemnation and understanding. If the intent wasn't to make it ambiguous they'd either bone or kill each other.

I agree! There's certainly no cute romance story between the two. But their relationship is used to explore many themes from the original story. This is especially true in EOE. They had much more development in that film than Shinji and Mari did in all of NTE. But I guess the idea was just different.

Axx°N N. wrote:I don't know how you could possibly arrive at this conclusion unless your definition of 'romance' is narrow as a toothpick. The very existence of trauma-bonded couples should speak to the variety at work in couples.

My definition of romance involves "actually liking each other," which they never did. End of Evangelion is all about how Shinji demeans and sexualizes Asuka as a comfort object, and by that point Asuka flat out hates his ass and calls him disgusting. There is NOTHING. Their relationship is a miserable failure from beginning to end, foreshadowed explicitly by the dance routine episode ending with them crashing and burning.

Axx°N N. wrote: Trying to argue that there isn't infinite possibility re: interpretation of EoE's final scene is like arguing that a ripe banana isn't yellow. It's not only its very recognizable, immediately apparent reputation, it's the intent behind Eva, as stated multiple times, to be left to interpretation. The ending has polarities, it's disgust and a caress. It's strangling and calming down. It's condemnation and understanding. If the intent wasn't to make it ambiguous they'd either bone or kill each other.

Shinji was trying to kill Asuka. I think you forgot that part. Asuka was stopping him from killing her. The interpretation is pure disgust from beginning to end. Anything else is pure nonsense. They had no relationship, and as of Rebuild, never will. We should all be grateful.

OneShotPunch wrote:Shinji was trying to kill Asuka. I think you forgot that part. Asuka was stopping him from killing her. The interpretation is pure disgust from beginning to end. Anything else is pure nonsense. They had no relationship, and as of Rebuild, never will. We should all be grateful.

You are disregarding a massive chunk of the final scene, and its implications.

The final scene happens not right after Shinji came back to reality. If we look at the grave markers, phases of the moon and Rei's head, it becomes apparent, that a significant amount of time passed since he came back. From several days to several weeks.

Shinji spent a long time alone at the beach. He waited someone to come back, but no one did. He lost all hope, thought that he will forever be alone, and placed grave markers for all of his friends, including Asuka, because he thought that they will never come back. He probably though that he made a wrong choice by rejecting instrumentality.

After he placed grave markers he came back, fell asleep, and that when Asuka came back, found the grave marker with her name on it, (this is all confirmed in the draft of the script) and broke it, proclaiming that she's not dead, then found Shinji on the beach and lay down next to him (note that she did it herself, nobody forced her to do that)

When Shinji came back, he first sees a Rei apparition, and Asuka being near him. You can see the confusion on his face. He doesn't believe that this is real, he thinks that he's still dreaming or seeing things. He already buried all his friends and seeing Asuka near him, as he thought as just an illusion, was very painful, he simply didn't believe that she was there. Shinji in his delusion and already depressed state of mind, wanted this "illusion" to disappear, because it was painful. But when Asuka touches him, he realizes that she's real, and breaks down, because he realizes that he's not alone, and Asuka came back to him. Asuka, of course, not realizing what happened, was repulsed by what happened. But at the end of the day, Shinji didn't want to kill Asuka, and she did not hate him, because she came back to him herself.

You can read about all the details in this article https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_An ... Evangelion

People who ship Mari and Shinji (or Asuka and Kensuke for that matter) really missed the point of the Rebuilds. Or didn't pay any attention while watching the movie, and just hate Asushin.

Mari has memories of both Yui and Gendo, was a friend of Shinji's parents, witnessed his birth (we see it in Gendo's memories), and at least mentally, is around 50 years old when 3.0+1.0 ended. I don't care if she's a clone or not, she has the original Mari's memories. She says to Rei-Q, "Your original was a lot easier to deal with," meaning Yui, the original of the Ayanami clone series. She calls Gendo "Gendo-kun," which in Japanese is a friendly pronoun that one uses towards a peer of the same age or younger. She speaks with Fuyutsuki as if they are acquaintances and have a history. She has Mari's memories from the time when Yui, Gendo, and Fuyutsuki worked together. She is the same person.

Misato gets a lot of shit, being called a pedo, but if Mari, being a 50-year-old family friend, ends up with Shinji, how is this not grooming and weird?

Besides that, Mari is the one who is constantly pushing Asuka towards Shinji, teasing her to admit her feelings, which Asuka eventually does. Why would she go for Shinji all of a sudden, knowing and respecting Asuka and Shinji's history together? It just doesn't make sense.

Not to mention that Mari and Shinji met like 4 times in the span of 14 years, and spoke for maybe 5 minutes total. Shinji learns her NAME an hour before the final scene. In the ending of 3.0+1.0, Shinji just became an adult; he doesn't know yet how to navigate in this body, how to be an adult in practice. He probably didn't even understand what the hell happened, and you think he will just start to swing his dick like nothing right away? Shinji is still Shinji; he's not some kind of playboy. Mari is a 50-year-old friend of his parents; she is family, not a love interest. And that's the same reason Mari was so eager to save him, because she also considers him family. Just like Asuka. THIS IS AT THE CORE of NGE and EOE; Asuka, Misato, Ritsuko, Shinji all suffer from the same thing: broken family. Without a proper adult figure in their lives, thy fail to connect with others, and navigate through life because of their flawed, incomplete and broken families. As a child of a divorce, I can confirm that that is in fact the case in my life also. And Kensuke and Mari fill that void for Asuka and Shinji.

Finally, the broader context of 3.0+1.0 is not romantic. It's about not rejecting people in your life. Asuka and Kensuke have zero romantic chemistry, because Kensuke is a friend, a figure of an adult who can teach both Shinji and Asuka how to connect with others. We see how Asuka, although she spent some time with Kensuke, is still miserable and lonely. And the final scene with Asuka gives us the clue why. When she looks at Shinji with his parents she starts to cry, because she never had parents; she cannot connect with them. But Shinji turns into the Kensuke doll to remind her that there are people like that in her life who care for her. Kensuke plays the same role in 3.0+1.0 as her mother in EOE.

The metaphor of both Shinji and Asuka growing up in the Minus-space after they saw Kensuke and Mari is clear: to become an adult, you need an example of an adult, a good example, a family. That's why Shinji was disappearing until Mari came to him. That's the message of the movie: without adults in your life who can show you the way how to be one, you are doomed to forever stay a child. Both Kensuke and Mari, I think, are metaphors for people in Hideaki Anno's life, like Miyazaki, who is clearly a father figure to him and helped him with his depression after 3.0 by casting him in The Wind Rises, and Shinji Higuchi, who is a friend of Anno who convinced him to direct Shin Godzilla in the same time period. As Anno later said, "Shin Godzilla saved me." That's why 3.0+1.0 is like that. No one can save themselves.

People who were in relationships, I'm sure, will agree that a good friend is better than a lover. Love makes things messy and complicated, while a friend can really heal you. That's the role of Mari and Kensuke, to give love and affection without demanding the same in return. Not demanding anything; just with their behavior, they are showing Asuka and Shinji how to be a proper adult, how to connect with others. And Rei is doing the same thing.

And for those who say that Asuka and Shinji never had any kind of romance, they literally said that they liked each other in 3.0+1.0; how much more proof do people need? We can argue about the past tense of what's been said, but in the context of the movie, when they both were about to die, and knew it, I doubt that it was behind them. And for Shinji, who was asleep for 14 years, the whole "liked" thing happened like couple of months ago.

So, Asushin was right all along.

If it is, then Evangelion is a disgusting work of garbage that should have never been made. I was wrong to ever like this show or interact with its fanbase. You deserve the Rebuilds.

OneShotPunch wrote:If it is, then Evangelion is a disgusting work of garbage that should have never been made. I was wrong to ever like this show or interact with its fanbase. You deserve the Rebuilds.

That sounds like something Asuka would say That's a low blow, man. I wouldn't wish Rebuilds even on my worst enemies.