Evangelion questions

[Psychobob3tb]

Two years ago I watched the first four Evangelion episodes, and was instantly taken with it, and I lust after its box set. But at this stage there was no box set in the UK. Little more than a year later I found the box set, but highly priced I rejected it. Now finally, at a slightly more reasonable price, I decided to buy the box set, and fell in love with the show all over again. I watched the entire series yesterday, and although two years later I finally had some answers, at the same time more questions were raised.

Q1: If there was a second impact then what was the first?

Q2: If the cause of the second impact was a lie, then what really caused it?

Q3) How did that spear impale Adam, and where did it come from?

Q4) Where do the Angels come from, and why do the wish to destroy mankind?

Q4) What criteria or abilities do certain children have for piloting Evas?

Q5) What is the unification of minds (in detail/elaboration)

Q6) Did Gendo have a different endgame in mind, instead to the final outcome?

PS: I just learned about ‘The End of Evangelion’. So I’ll be buying that because the original TV ending left me feeling empty inside.

[Mr. Tines]

A1: About 4.5 billion years ago, when a big smash caused the formation of the Moon. In the NGE setting, this was Lilith's arrival.

A2: The Katsuragi expedition's awakening of Adam.

A3: It self-propelled rather like it did when piercing Arael in ep22'; and it came from (was brought to earth by) Lilith.

A4: The Angels are the offspring of Adam, and in a very real sense "this planet ain't big enough for the both of us"

A4(bis): Their mothers are dead, and the souls emplaced in the core of an Evangelion.

A5: All mental barriers down. Your thoughts leaking into everyone else's and vice-versa. Sartre's hell, manifest on Earth, in other words.

A6: Gendo wanted to get Yui back out of EVA-01; everything else was incidental.

PS: I just learned about ‘The End of Evangelion’. So I’ll be buying that because the original TV ending left me feeling empty inside.

Go see it now. Come back when you have. Tell us how you felt. And some of the answers above can then be elaborated upon.

This thread should be kept spoiler-free (Hint, hint).

[Psychobob3tb]

So Adam is an alien, correct, nothing divine about it him?

And the angles are his children, if that’s the case, then why wait 15 years to avenge? Adam

Who is Lilith?

[Mr. Tines]

In order

That's correct.

They don't hatch until later (we even see Sandalphon hatching in the vent of Mt Asama - in ep10 Magma Diver)

The big white figure crucified in the basement.

[SEELE 08]

So Adam is an alien, correct, nothing divine about it him

That all depends on who you ask.

Lilith is the 2nd angel and the proginator of mankind. Also there are those that beleive that Adam was female, some believe he is male. If you can even ascribe a gender to him he's probably hermaphroditic in my opinion.

[Psychobob3tb]

So what your saying is those two aliens crashed landed on earth millions of years ago, and reproduced spawning the angels, and reproduced spawning mankind? Adam arrived first, followed by Lilith during the second impact, they spawned, and then Lilith attacked Adam?

I guess this is the reason for the biblical comparisons; Adam was father to mankind, god in a sense.

Can I asked where you all got your information from, because the show doesn’t elaborate the way you people have, is it explained more in the films?

[SEELE 08]

That's the beauty, some of this crap is made up, in some cases extrapolated from evidence within the show, or it sometimes comes from a lousy eva video game. If you're really brave you'll wonder over to the Animenation forums to see the root of this evil. Frankly I'd like to stick with what's in the show and movie myself. Some of what's been proposed is probably true, some of it is utter crap. Probably true: the whole Lilith/Adam as source of life and distrubtors of sould.
Probably utter crap: Lilith/Adam are aliens (I know a video game says so, but frankly that's not cannon).

[Mr. Tines]

A lot of the information can be inferred by heavy reading between the lines. There is more information (as people discuss their secret agendas in cryptic terms) in EoE, but the rest has to be deciphered from what we are shown.

There are some explicit give-aways in the Japanese Playstation game NGE2 (a sort of Sims meet strategy meets text adventure game). It's not been officially translated, but there are some transcriptions out there like this one.

The first two angels, designated Adam and Lilith, are separate sources of life - the antagonism between humanity and the Angels is due to this separate parentage (we are Lilim, as Kaworu notes in ep#24).

EDIT - probably worth noting that the public story of first and second impacts is given in the school-book page shown in (I think it's) ep#7, if you stop-frame it and read.

It is always worth stopping and reading the text.

[Psychobob3tb]

Thta's great, but I don't speak Japanese.

OK, well I have this theory that Adam is god, and Lilith is Christ. There are strong biblical influences thorough the show, most of which are blatant, all of which are Christian.

What is religion or Christianity? Well I don’t really believe in god as our maker, but I believe religion is a metaphor for true and exaggerated events which helped shape our world. In sci-fi and conspiracy theorist there’s are strong belief that god is merely a life-form more advance than human, and that divine intervention is an action of that life-form beyond human comprehension, be it natural of technological.

Now technically if Adam was the first life-form on earth, creator of all life to follow, does that not make him God? And if Lilith was spawned by Adam would that not make it the son of god? God created the angels, and the angels were spawned from Adam. What if the forunner to all humans was a hybrid angel, like Kaworu. Then of course there’s the fact that Lilith was crucified.

But the name Adam keeps bugging me, Adam can’t be god. What if Adam is the first human and Lilth is the son of god, while the angels are still angels. That leaves god unaccounted for, which doesn’t fit with the quote that went something like ‘We created the Eva from the angels to be closer to god’. That sentence would then imply that Lilth is an angel.

It’s confusion, but I fell the storyline is made from fragmented Christian beliefs.

[DatDude]

You need to realize their are not a lot of christians in Japan, most of that stuff is just their to give the show an exotic look.

Im not clear have you watched all of eva yet? If no then by all means do. EoE is a head trip, enjoy.

[Mr. Tines]

Thta's great, but I don't speak Japanese.

Machine translations (Babelfish, Google Languages) are not completely useless, though you do have to recognise when the kanji of a character's name have been translated.

OK, well I have this theory that Adam is god, and Lilith is Christ. There are strong biblical influences thorough the show, most of which are blatant, all of which are Christian.

In broad, you are in the right neck of the conceptual woods with the sci-fi god as technologically transcendent being.

The Christian - actually, mainly Kabbalist - stuff is put in there to look cool, because it's a funky foreign religion - much the same way as Buddhism (especially in its more esoteric forms) gets (ab-)used on this side of the planet.

See here for citations.

[AcesHigh]

PS: I just learned about ‘The End of Evangelion’. So I’ll be buying that because the original TV ending left me feeling empty inside.

Personally I felt the last two episodes tied up things fairly well. The final angel is gone, all that is left are the pyschological loose ends from the characters. Instrumentality was never meant to be a flashy event --- it was meant to be a personal self assessment and discovery. Shinji finds self worth and confidence, and so aims to be a better person than he has ever been.

I am sure the whole thing was not meant to be as confusing as it may seem, but the final message was clear. All the other little things like where Adam or Lilith came from are trivialities that the director didn't intend people would dwell on.

[Psychobob3tb]

Ok so I just watched EOE, and them I watched it with the American director’s commentary (also joined by anima enthusiast). So anyways turns out the Christian or Kabbalist stuff has more substance than simple to look nice, and make the show look intellectual.

I don’t know the Japanese directors name (I just got into the show) but he must have done some series religious reading. In the American directors commentary the anima enthusiast related specific imagery to biblical passages. The whole Lilith as Adams wife before Eve is also true to the Kabbalist religion, even the lance is mentioned in Christianity as being stained with the blood of Christ, therefore able to kill any deity. The lance was found in a crucified Lilith, and Christ was also crucified. The whole concept of the lance being able to kill any deity would suggest why it can penetrate an AT field.

I’m sure most people here are already aware of this and much much more, none the less the directors commentary makes it all the more exciting.

[DatDude]

The Japanese director is called Anno.

Don't put to much stock in the director commentary from ADV its not very good.

[Ryo]

The commentary is generally referred to as "the Commentary of Evil" here and on Animenation's Evangelion board. Don't take what it says too seriously.

[Psychobob3tb]

The commentary was by 'Manga Entertainment', the company that appears to have acquired the licence to both films in the UK, ADV had no involvement. And although the person who voices Rei Ayanami was also voicing the commentary, the anime enthusiast was reflecting the beliefs and theories that came from fan communities such of this. So wouldn’t saying that commentary is a load of bull undermine your own authority on the matter?

Also you can’t really argue that there is no cannon to the religious connection when artefacts and myths have been taken directly from Kabbalism and Christianity, and then placed in the show.

There’s a lot of symbolism in that show that gets revealed in the commentary, and my impression of the Evangelion community based on this forum is that its fans are punishing themselves because they don’t believe such things should be solved so easily.

[Mr. Tines]

The commentary was by 'Manga Entertainment', the company that appears to have acquired the licence to both films

In the English speaking world - and are content to rebundle the soft-focus copy from tape, rather than upgrade to the better quality Renewal print.

So wouldn’t saying that commentary is a load of bull undermine your own authority on the matter?

Not at all. When the commentary from the same folk on D&R contains... well, read for yourself...

I just listened to the D&R audio commentary for the first time, and one comment just leapt out at me for it's atrocious stupidity: Death includes the Kaji gets shot scene, followed by the scene where Asuka learns from Shinji that Kaji is dead. The transition between the two scenes is a loud smack or slap. AWL says something like 'on the Japanese soundtrack, when Kaji gets shot, it just sounds more like a slap than a shot, so we put in our own gunshot effect'. Aaaagggghhhh!!!!! Idiots! Idiots!! IDIOTS!!! These irredeemable morons failed to even grasp the plain meaning of the scene! The slap is Asuka slapping Shinji; these dopes actually violated the artistic integrity of the movie out of pure cluelessness... This egregious stupidity comes up about 44 minutes into Death, if you want check it out.

then its the commentators whose credibility is at risk. Then it becomes a case of "if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself"

Also you can’t really argue that there is no cannon to the religious connection when artefacts and myths have been taken directly from Kabbalism and Christianity, and then placed in the show.

On this topic, Kazuya Tsurumaki assistant director of NGE and director of the Air part of EoE us on record as saying

There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show; we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.

[Psychobob3tb]

On this topic, Kazuya Tsurumaki assistant director of NGE and director of the Air part of EoE us on record as saying

There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show; we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.

I’m sorry but I don’t believe that for a second.

I believe that sentence may be open to interpretation, in that the director expresses that there is no Christian philosophy or teachings stemming from the religious visual elements, but the characters and artefacts themselves follow the story of the religions they base themselves on.

There is no chance in the coincidence of the following:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/lilith.html

http://www.bibleprobe.com/holy_lance.htm

Check out the second link, it says that the Lance Longinus was stained with the blood of Christ, the lance was formed when a Roman solider stabbed a crucified Christ with his lance, thus forming the Lance of Longinus. Now can it honestly be believed that the Lance of Longinus in Evangelion was stuck in a crucified Lilith by pure coincidence Longinus, which it just happened to bear a striking similarity to the biblical story?

[SEELE 08]

Check out the second link, it says that the Lance Longinus was stained with the blood of Christ, the lance was formed when a Roman solider stabbed a crucified Christ with his lance, thus forming the Lance of Longinus. Now can it honestly be believed that the Lance of Longinus in Evangelion was stuck in a crucified Lilith by pure coincidence Longinus, which it just happened to bear a striking similarity to the biblical story?

As long as you don't start with the nonsense that Keel is Longinus himself...I won't hurt you. But I think it was just called that for the hell of it, like most of the names in NGE.

[Mr. Tines]

Now can it honestly be believed that the Lance of Longinus in Evangelion was stuck in a crucified Lilith by pure coincidence Longinus, which it just happened to bear a striking similarity to the biblical story?

It's not as if they had a great armoury of different weapons in the sources to draw on. And a legionary's spear is rather different from a self-propelling reconfiguring AI-based smart weapon that you need a small aircraft carrier to transport.