Adams, Children, and the Nature of the Cycle

[ShinjiStranglesAsuka]

I've been reading this over again since it's hard to take in everything at once, and I did have a question about this part:

FUYUTSUKI:
Your son ultimately behaved exactly as planned.

GENDO:
Yes. Next, I'll have him get closer to Rei.
The plan will remain unchanged.

Isn't this a little too hard to plan? I can maybe see them predicting Shinji's behavior to certain situations but how could they manipulate Shinji & Rei into a wincest relationship that culminates in the two of them awakening Unit-01? I'm not discrediting it but it does seem a little far-fetched at the moment. Unless your point is that Shinji is DESTINED to go for the forbidden wincest fruit.

[Blockio]

Isn't this a little too hard to plan? I can maybe see them predicting Shinji's behavior to certain situations but how could they manipulate Shinji & Rei into a wincest relationship that culminates in the two of them awakening Unit-01? I'm not discrediting it but it does seem a little far-fetched at the moment. Unless your point is that Shinji is DESTINED to go for the forbidden wincest fruit.

I'd argue that it's a lot easier to manipulate two children into growing close to each other than it is to predict exact behaviour in certain situations, especially when you have essentially full control over the circumstances both of them grow up in.
As for 01 awakening - definitely, there is a degree of uncertainty there, no question; there was a specific sequence of events required (extremely powerful angel, Rei gets killed, Shinji sorties in a very enraged state), but since Gendo seems to have twelve backup plan for everything, I reckon there are some unknown variables here that facilitate different ways of achieving 3I.

This is a bit out there and probably not true, but for all that we know, "Rei and Shinji are both in the entry plug for 01" with one or two on their own relatively inconspicuous events happening beforehand might just be enough to trigger it; there's a lot of uncertainty in how the supernatural works, which I will shamefully have to admit is not my strong suit when it comes to Eva lore

[Reichu]

The exact methods for controlling Shinji's behavior have not been divulged that heavily, but mention has been made of "brainwashing" and also of memory erasure. (The brainwashing was at one point going to be more prominently featured; lines in 2.0 where Fuyutsuki objects to the use of the technique and says it's "making Yui sad" were ultimately cut.) I assume much of it simply is Gendo and Seele banking on Shinji's soul behaving in a predictable manner, in which case Shinji would tend to follow the program simply as a matter of his innate nature, with a modest amount of "prodding" required to keep him moving in the desired direction.

All this information about Shinji's spiritual profile would presumably come mostly from Seele, whom we know are ancients and may have had extensive dealings with Shinji's original incarnation (the being I refer to as "Luvah" simply for convenience's sake); and to a lesser extent from Kaworu, who retains memories of his and Shinji's former selves, though it's unclear how much if any of this information he shares with Seele. (There is much more to say regarding this "past life" stuff... Once the "Deep-Lore" thread has been developed to a certain point, I hope to return to this one and divulge some major revisions to the overall Adams/Children theory, such as how I'm currently leaning toward the original, pre-merged identities of the four Adams being hugely important to NTE's ancient backstory.)

[ShinjiStranglesAsuka]

Even though this is a party of four, Kaworu only cares about one other person there. He shows complete disinterest in Asuka and Mari; they may as well not exist. He is singlemindedly fixated on Shinji, at the expense of all else

You remember the scene that was utlimate cut from Ha where Asuka's face pops off and starts speaking in Kaworu's voice? It wouldn't make sense for Kaworu to know or care about Asuka unless she was definitely special in someway. I'm really starting to dig the idea that Children = Adams now.

Then again, maybe we shouldn't read too much into cut scenes. They're cut from the movie for a reason.

[UrsusArctos]

They're cut from the movie for a reason.

But what reason? These cut scenes are actually quite revealing, and it'd be interesting to know what Anno and company had in mind when they cut them. Is it that these scenes disrupted their narrative flow, or perhaps they didn't want some of the key information in their plot revealed too early? Frankly, I think completely disregarding them might not be a good idea until after 3.0 + 1.0 comes out (and we can see for sure whether they recycled these ideas or dropped them altogether).

[Reichu]

You remember the scene that was utlimate cut from Ha where Asuka's face pops off and starts speaking in Kaworu's voice? It wouldn't make sense for Kaworu to know or care about Asuka unless she was definitely special in someway. I'm really starting to dig the idea that Children = Adams now.

Yeah, that scene definitely came to mind while BlueBasilisk and I were putting our speculah together. Relying on the cut scene as a main data point wouldn't have made sense, but the fact that it fits in with the rest of what we put together sure doesn't hurt. Before, the cut scene was completely and utterly baffling -- like, why in seven hells would Asuka have this vision(?) of her disembodied face speaking to her, familiarly, in Kaworu's voice? Why was Kaworu "inside the Eva" at all? But everything clears up with the idea that Kaworu, Shinji, Asuka, and Mari were at one point a fused being. As in the final version of the scene, Asuka is being brought face-to-face ( ) with aspects of her nature that had previously been kept buried and hidden. Kaworu is saying "This isn't like you" because he knows who Asuka used to be, and unlike the other pilots he actually remembers. The fact that his voice is 'inside her head' may also imply that some kind of psychic connection persists even after the four-way split.

In the finished films, Kaworu does show signs of having a long-distance link with Shinji (he knows "that boy has awakened" even before Seele 01 has told him; he goes to the ruins of the melon patch to ruminate after putting Shinji through a harsh expodump, implying he somehow knows about Kaji's talk with Shinji there; he knows to get up on HQ's roof to watch a falling star -- Evas 01 and 02 -- and welcome Shinji home; everything about that second Shin trailer), so could he have one with Asuka and Mari as well that we simply haven't been made privy to yet? As Ursus goes over, there are many reasons why the sequence could have been removed. An interesting point of comparison here is the once-planned shot, during the Second Impact flashback, clearly showing a geyser of blood (or LCL I suppose, technically) jetting out from the epicenter and hitting the Moon. Even if the storyboards had never told us about this cut, it would have been necessary to fill in the blanks in an essentially identical manner based on the various clues in the movies; omitting the "blood geyser" part of the sequence didn't make it not true, and is probably more a case of "we can probably let the audience figure this out on their own, right?" Another perhaps relevant example (especially in that it shows this thought process actively at work) is in one of the drafts for EoE. Anno tentatively writes in a scene explicitly showing Shinji eject the entry plug from Eva-01 at the end, noting "Is this actually needed?" In the finished movie, there is no such scene, but you can still figure out that it must have happened.

Anyway, I'm not even sure what I'm going on about anymore, so disregard the rambling if you like. I'm glad you're getting a kick out of the thread.

[Sworzen]

Great job Reichu, absolutely loving your theory
After reading your posts, I went back to the preview at the end of 1.11 to have a look at the adams again and I noticed something. Some shots after the adams, text saying 'LILIN+?' appears. Just after that we can see in this order:
-Kaji
-Gendo
-Misato slapping Ritsuko
-Asuka
-Rei
-Shinji
-Kaworu
-Mari
I understand 'LILIN+?' as that we are about to see lilin and also something that is not lilin.
If Kaworu and Rei with their red eyes and possibly having SoL souls were the only non-lilins, shouldn't they be the last ones shown instead of them being mixed with the rest of the childen? That way, the order in LILIN+? would be followed, first LILIN (adults and Rei, Asuka and Shinji) and then ? (Kaworu and Rei).
However, if the children have the four souls of the Adams and Rei has the soul of Lilith, it follows the order perfectly, as they would all fall into the '?' category. It would also fit Asuka addressing the people from WILLE as lilin in the end of Q, implying that they are not lilin.
Of course I could be looking too much into it and it could simply mean that Kaworu is in there into the mix or something.

SPOILER: Show