Neo-NERV or WILLE--whose side are you on?

[El Squibbonator]

As I'm sure we're all aware, the third movie shuffled the decks with regards to the characters and their allegiances. We now have a new group--WILLE--consisting of Misato, Ritsuko, Mari, Asuka, and most of the other old NERV employees. NERV, meanwhile, is still under the command of Gendo Ikari. Shinji, of course, seems to have no particular affiliation toward either group and in fact seems to despise both of them. The question is, then, when the inevitable final battle in 4.0 comes, which one will you be cheering? NERV or WILLE?

[Kendrix]

It seems little of a possibility to be on Gendo's and Fuyu's side (Kaworu wants to doublecross them as does Shinji once he finds out what they've been doing, and Rei Q doesn't have any real affilation, she just does what she's told, as evidenced by the ease with which she helped/followed Asuka once she found the slightest bit of motivation of her own, she was pretty much a meat automaton/ philosophical zombie when Shinji first met her)


WILLE have sure compromized their ethics and you could see them in various lights, but at worst it's a black vs gray situation. The world will still be distinctly better off if they win than if NERV did.

Despite the dehumanizing treatment Shinji gets, look at what the average WILLE members seems to experience in the organization - they're all very loyal to Misato and have a huge theme of hope/actually doing something/will to live goin on. You could discuss them all day, but it's pretty clear that SEELE or Gendo's victory is not much to root for.


That said, I think the contrast between the two places is one of the things that are very well done in this movie, you have WILLE with its lively young bunch of newness and individuality/ragtag bunch of misfits (Really, look at Sakura, Hideki or Midori. They're innocents. They're the plucky new generation that will inherit the world. ) they all proudly wear their blue emblems and are very alive. Heck, even Asuka and Misato who have gotten old and bitter are still portrayed as very brave, strong and cool.

Then you have neo nerv full of emptiness and decay and people who have long lost their humanity if they ever had them, it is all almost completely mechanized/automatic, the only real human there is Fuyutsuki, and he's old and bitter. Kaworu is probably a source of warmth and light, but he's "abstract"/"ethereal" enough not to create an idea of "being amongs people".

It strongly evokes a ghost town, and the deeply sad thing is that Shinji belongs to the ghosts. He's not the young person that needs to survive anymore, he's a remnant of a dead world, of a generation that left Sakura, Midoru & co a way crappier world than the one they received, and Shinji is part of tha, albeit accidentally. He never wanted it, but it's still a horrible truth he can't escape.
Midori was probably a toddler pre-timeskip, Sakura was an elementary school girl.

[TMBounty_Hunter]

TEAM SHIN-CHAN 4EVA

Fuck the rest.

Except Mari. She's cool.

[Rei IV]

TEAM SHIN-CHAN 4EVA

Yep. Pretty much this.

[Firetrout]

Hmmmm...On one hand, we have two misguided elderly men that nearly succeeded in committing omnicide, twice. On the other hand we have everyone else who is trying to prevent them from succeeding, not to mention containing most of the NTE cast. That's pretty one-sided.


NERV all the way.

[heavytread]

What ever side Mari and Asuka are on.

Fuck alliances to anyone else!

[hui43210]

Team WILLE all way fools!

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Neither- I'm team Evangelion pilots all the way. Until Wille or Nerv start being nicer, I'm not rooting for either one of them... but in a bind, I'd go for Wille.

[KingXanaduu]

It strongly evokes a ghost town, and the deeply sad thing is that Shinji belongs to the ghosts. He's not the young person that needs to survive anymore, he's a remnant of a dead world, of a generation that left Sakura, Midoru & co a way crappier world than the one they received, and Shinji is part of tha, albeit accidentally. He never wanted it, but it's still a horrible truth he can't escape.
Midori was probably a toddler pre-timeskip, Sakura was an elementary school girl.

Let's not get into another discussion about where Shinji belongs and what his fate should be anymore, okay? We've done that to death, and Shinji has HOPE for the future. If he belonged with the ghosts, Asuka would've just killed them. We've done this to death people.

If I had to choose, I go with Nuke, that the Pilots are the team I go for, if Wille cleans up their ethics a bit.

[Kendrix]

I didn't mean to start a discussion, just discuss the use of aesthetics with the factions. -.-

[KingXanaduu]

I didn't mean to start a discussion, just discuss the use of aesthetics with the factions. -.-

Sorry if it sounded harsher than I intended. Just trying to prevent the inevitable here.

[Kendrix]

Okay, okay, I apologize!

Anyways, it would obviously be nice if they all (or, being realistic, everyone appart from Gendo and Fuyu) just worked together and kicked some ass.

One has to remember that we don't get to see WILLE from the easiest perspective.

For the average joe, it's probably a cool thing to be part of - in any case, it seems to have been important to Anno to... hm. He bothered with all the new WILLE bridge bunnies many of which were all cute and/or sympathetic. The saddest thing is that most of them seem like they'd get along well with Shinji if they had met under less complicated circumstances.


(Then again, any organization could look extremely awesomer if it had Sakura to put band-aids on the recruits)
Sakura is definitely a huge asset. XD

[ChaddyManPrime]

I'm on whatever side of the fence Shinji is on, hopefully he is floating above them, and while they are are shouting up to him to save them from their miserable lives, he'll look down upon them and whisper "No" much like Asuka did to him but his will be much more meaningful and thoughtful.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Moved to proper section in Rebuild subforum.

My gut instinct is to reply "Team Wille" (since they're doing their best to save the world, moral shades of gray aside), but for the time being I'll say "Team Eva Pilots" since they're the ones I really want to see become better people despite all the horrible things they've endured.

[xyz346]

Have to say Team Shinji at the moment.

[Gob Hobblin]

Team Pen-Pen.


....I have to represent, yo.

[ChaddyManPrime]

Team Pen-Pen.


....I have to represent, yo.

Yeah he probably built his own ship with Kaji, Kensuke, Hikari, and Touji as his crew.

[Gob Hobblin]

A better ship! With blackjack, and hookers. In fact, forget the ship!

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Are you... shipping? 'Cuz canon sinks ships, you know.

[BC Baron]

So NERV or WILLE, huh? Are those seriously my only choices?

For me, the answer is quite obviously neither freakin one. Honestly, I hope they both fry in the most humiliating manner possible. Gendo has been and always will be a completely irredeemable prick and I've set aside a special bottle of champagne to celebrate the day when he receives the beating he so richly deserves.

Meanwhile, WILLE seems to exist for the sole purpose of vilifying Shinji's actions at the end of 2.22, where he supposedly caused all the devastation viewed in 3.0 by defeating Zeruel (conveniently ignoring that Units 00 and 02 were getting their asses kicked, the vaunted dummy system was utterly incapable of activating Unit-01 and some type of berserker mode was ultimately required to finish the job, since nobody thought it was necessary to actually attach Unit-01's umbilical connection). In fact WILLE is so righteously indignant toward Shinji, so completely certain that he caused all of the world's problems, so absolutely terrified that he'll initiate another Impact if he ever attemps to pilot again, that they make the only rational choice left and install Unit-01 (the one thing IIRC which was previously exiled into orbit due to its irritating propensity of destroying the world at precisely the wrong moment) as the Wunder's power source. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

As far as I'm concerned, Misato and the rest of WILLE are just begging to be made an example of.

...you have WILLE with its lively young bunch of newness and individuality/ragtag bunch of misfits (Really, look at Sakura, Hideki or Midori. They're innocents...

If that's how you choose to see them; well, that's good for you, I guess. I have nothing to base such assumptions on. I think they were shown briefly in one scene of the whole movie. I know nothing about them, how they got there, or what their true motives really are. They don't seem very interesting to me and quite frankly, I wasn't given much of a reason to care about any of these people. Rebuild already contained several characters that I considered potential protagonists to whom I had an established connection and wanted to see a lot more of, but Anno thought it would be better to toss them all aside. Fine job.

I've sided with Shinji (and certain incarnations of Rei) since 1999 and will continue to do so 'til the bitter end. The way I look at it, Shinji really has zero reason to trust a single word anyone ever says to him again. The next time either side tries to guilt trip into either doing or not doing something they consider to be of utmost significance, I hope he finally tells them off. Perhaps something along the lines of:

"Look, you keep telling me what a horrible, useless person I am. You now have more experienced pilots than functioning Eva's available to you at this point. Apparently, during in the last fifteen years while the entire planet has supposedly gone to shit, technology has somehow advanced to the level where you can make your mecha effortlessly defy gravity, shape-shift and pretty much do whatever the hell you want it to do. You've even managed to commandeer Unit-01 out from under me and make it your bitch. What the heck else do you want from me? Just go and fight your battles or whatever and see if you can do a better job of avoiding completely fucking over what's left of the world than I did, since you're all obviously way more qualified. To summarize, leave me the fuck out of it!"

(or words to that effect)