Shin Eva-Official Social Media: 3.33 You Can (Not) Be Localized

[Zusuchan]

This thread is a continuation of this one. The hype train continues!

In immediate response to royabr121's last post-thanks for the clarification. My view is that Snyder might act like an edgy child (edit: though he comes across more as someone with a very juvenile and childish idea of what "mature" constitutes), but I have considerably more faith in Anno. Some logical leaps might just be logical leaps and some nonsensible happenings might just be nonsensible happenings, but I personally will wait until I see Shin before commenting further since I don't think my current knowledge is adequate enough for actual in-depth analysis and as one of those people who love Q, I have more reason for faith than those who hated it.

[BernardoCairo]

I was thinking about the name: "Shin Eva-Official Social Media: 3.33 You Can (Not) Be Localized"
It would have been a natural evolution of the pun! lol

[ElMariachi]

Thanks for the translations, Nuke-kun, it's true that the meaning of what the interviewed people meant between each translation can be very different, for example:

ogtさんのラストシーンについてのコメント、すんごいオブラートに包んでくださってるけど「手前で終わってる」というのは少なからず受け入れられてない気持ちがある
Ogata talks about the last scene in a round-about-way, saying "I feel like it just ended in front of my eyes" implying she can't really accept the way it ended.

ogtさんのラストシーンについてのコメント、すんごいオブラートに包んでくださってるけど「手前で終わってる」というのは少なからず受け入れられてない気持ちがある


OGT [Ogata] comments on the final scene, "They really tried to cushion the blow, but I feel like I'm having a very hard time accepting that just like that, it's over."

In the first version it looks like Ogata is unhappy with the ending of the movie, while your version's meaning it's simply that she's sad that it ended.

リョウジ少年とケンスケの将来あるかもしれない会話よい〜〜
Kensuke's VA says he'll tell Kaji jr. about his parents when he grows up a bit more.

Wait, that goes against the implication in Shin that Misato and maybe Kaji Sr were among those resurrected.

｢ミサトさんと加持さんの仲を取り持ってたのはケンスケだったのかなーって｣
Kensuke's VA thinks he was put in charge of raising Kaji Jr. by Misato and Kaji.

That was the impression I had too toward Kensuke: he has a military jacket with the WILLE logo (meaning that he is or was part of the organization), was pivotal in the establishment and survival of Village-3, was put in charge of the chronicling of the life in said Village by Misato, he knows about Kaji Jr's origins and what happened to his father and also that Misato secretly regrets to had put all the blame on Shinji (meaning that he was part of Misato's inner circle and she trusted him enough to trust him her son's safety and confide her regrets to him) and according to Tsurumaki was at Asuka's side for a good part of the last 14 years. In a hypothetical spin-off about the time skip, he would be an important support character like Kaji was in NGE.
Although the weird thing is that despite all of this, he reacted to the Wunder in Shin as if it was the first time he saw it. ("That's the Wunder? Whoa, it's huge!")

え、左様って冬月だったの?(にわか)
Fuyutsuki's VA says he was piloting Neo-Nerv's dark wunder, it wasn't automated.

Now I'm imagining Fuyutsuki in the Dark Wunder after 14 years of seating in neo-NERV's HQ, piloting it like a madman, crashing it against the Wunder and having the fucking time of his life doing it!

序破Q見てなくてもジ・エンド・オブ・エヴァンゲリオン見てれば面白いですよ
They say to understand Shin Eva you don't have to watch Jo-Ha-Q (aka 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), just watch End of Evangelion.

It's my personal opinion of course, but I don't think that this is a good thing, because it implies that Shin is first and foremost a meta-commentary/spiritual successor to EoE, and for me Shin should be the first and foremost the continuation and ending of the NTE storyline. Although that would explain why some of themes carried by the first three movies were seemingly abandoned in Shin.

やっぱりQは製作中にストーリーが二転三転してた
While working on Q they changed the story and started over from scratch over and over again.

I wonder how far those rewriting had gone: was the timeskip and destroyed world always part of the story, or was it initially closer to the next time preview in Ha and was later changed?

An inside look at Unit 01's limbs.
Seriously, the first tweet features some really cool and unsettling images. Flowers coming out of an Evangelion? This is not something you see everyday.

From what I understood from a DeepL machine translation: the first tweet is the first draft Yamashita made of the limbless EVA-01, back then there was a suggestion that there were "flowers" sprouting from 01's limb stumps (personal note: that remembers me the little legs sprouting from Lilith, not you?), he then notes that the idea wasn't that far-fetched, because this design was inspired by when the Wunder was originally meant to be much more organic, with the main engine literally being a beating heart and the ship having veins and guts, a greenhouse in this core (with Misato's office being there) and human-sized MP-Evas (the ones from EoE) acting as its white cells and doing reparation and maintenance of the ship, and EVA-01 was "fused" to the "heart's" pericardium through tissue coming out of the severed limbs that looked like flower petals. The last image of the first tweet is the early draft of said Wunder heart, dating from 2011, it also reveals that having Unit 01's limbs severed was planned all along.

The Wunder was originally designed to be much more Eldricht than the "flying warship with a bit of bones" that we got, I'm a little sad, because the way it was originally envisioned was much more impressive and striking IMHO. I was also fan of the half-vegetable regrown limbs in the first image.

The other tweets are about how the original design of "flower limbs" finally wasn't kept and how they kept cycling through ideas, the one who ended up in the movie is the one in the last tweet, Yamashita notes that this last design gave the impression that the limbs were separate parts that were "unplugged" from the main body, like in a doll or a toy model, instead of being a flesh limb attached to the torso, and that this was the feeling they wanted to give (even if they are supposed to be natural limbs attached to the torso)

Yeah I know, believe me I was just stressing how idiotic and illogical it is for Asuka to feel that way. I mean, would it have been better had he killed you, would that have better you, dumb bitch? Because that was what his dad telling him to do at the time.

From what we got in Shin, yes, she would had definitively preferred to had been killed rather than live the life she got to live during the timeskip. Something very important to keep in mind is that Asuka isn't mad at Shinji for merely not doing anything, but because by refusing to do nothing she ended with the grievous injuries (and probably the missing eye) and the high level of Angel contamination that ended with a piece of said Angel living inside her and her Curse of Eva that removed from her the ability to age, eat, sleep and if the cut line is still relevant, to even have sex.
So yes, she would had preferred for him to either go for the kill so she wouldn't have to live as a "monster", or actively try to save her, which might had prevented her from being so heavily altered. (doubtful, but we'll never know)

Unfortunately, it's never explained how the Near Third Impact and the Third Impact are connected, which is pretty frustrating. However, it is clear in 3.0+1.0 that the destruction of Tokyo 3 isn't the "only" consequence from the Near Third Impact.

Sorry but for me this isn't merely frustrating, but bad storytelling: you can't have the event that changed the entire story and fueled the MC's character arc be revealed to had a follow-up event months later that was actually what changed the entire setting and have the story saying that both are somehow connected because "reasons" and thus that everything is still the MC's fault, not when it's the fucking core of his character arc in the second half of the saga!
You have to show the connection between both events, else the entire narrative of Shinji's sin reeks of gaslighting!

[Konja7]

リョウジ少年とケンスケの将来あるかもしれない会話よい〜〜
Kensuke's VA says he'll tell Kaji jr. about his parents when he grows up a bit more.

Wait, that goes against the implication in Shin that Misato and maybe Kaji Sr were among those resurrected.

I think we need a more reliable translation, before we could conclude something about this. The translation machine doesn't mention anything about parents.

Of course, it's also possible Kensuke doesn't notice the hint that Misato could come back to life. After all, he wasn't part of that scene.

[BernardoCairo]

Thanks for the insight!
DeepL is a great tool. I use it when I want to understand the meaning of a French word, but I'm too lazy to open Le Petit Robert. lol
Anyway, I agree with you. The original idea was at least more interesting. A flying garden. Do you want something cooler than this? That said, this version of the AAA Wunder wouldn't blend well with Q's overall design (with its use of a mostly red and gray color palette). That's the impression I got from your description, at least. Still, it sounds amazing.
As for Kensuke, he's such an interesting case. It's impossible to deny his similarities to Kaji (both physically and in character). He gives me such a good vibe. He seems to have considerable influence in the village, taking care of everyone. Even Misato trusts him! His "transformation" was one of Shin's coolest surprises.

[Axx°N N.]

In response to the "trust in Anno" tangents, I have to say I'm really not heartened from all the interview translations I've read, even less so with each subsequent one. It just seems that not only was the work uninspired or in Tsurumaki's case downright grueling, but that Anno made it because it had to be made, he'd already set it up to exist, and he did whatever he could to finish it with the biggest priority being to finish it. And it's not that I think he didn't put his heart into it, the film absolutely seems to reflect his feelings, but those feelings seem to include resentment for the obligation, entrapment, wanting to be done with it so badly that he stopped caring about it in several other ways, such as being true to characters or making a cohesive self-enclosed narrative. What joy he seems to have derived was from experimenting on procedural directorial things and finessing angles and the technological design aspects (not in terms of mecha, but in terms of ways to go about the filmmaking itself). I don't think it was a total hack-job, but I do feel that the by now cliche refrain of "the meta elements swallowed up everything else and in themselves don't mean enough" is pretty on-point.

[Zusuchan]

I was thinking about the name: "Shin Eva-Official Social Media: 3.33 You Can (Not) Be Localized"

I hadn't even thought about that. But what's done is done.

[Kendrix]

That was the impression I had too toward Kensuke: he has a military jacket with the WILLE logo (meaning that he is or was part of the organization), was pivotal in the establishment and survival of Village-3, was put in charge of the chronicling of the life in said Village by Misato, he knows about Kaji Jr's origins and what happened to his father and also that Misato secretly regrets to had put all the blame on Shinji (meaning that he was part of Misato's inner circle and she trusted him enough to trust him her son's safety and confide her regrets to him) and according to Tsurumaki was at Asuka's side for a good part of the last 14 years.

This - clearly he & Misato would have talked a lot.

A lot of these alt ideas seem really cool but I guess the main reason they all got shut down is that Anno was very committed to the gritty "barely surviving on cobbled together tech" aesthetic - it seems he was always making sure that it didn't look like WILLE had too many resources to preserve the sense of oppressive hopelessness that is a big part of what made Q that it is.

But yeah it seems like Yamashita had enough material there for Anima 2: Rebuild edition

[Zusuchan]

After some discussion, it's been decided that Bernardo's opinion is better than mine and has thus been implemented. The pains of release have been abandoned-the pains of localization are yet to begin.

[ElMariachi]

A lot of these alt ideas seem really cool but I guess the main reason they all got shut down is that Anno was very committed to the gritty "barely surviving on cobbled together tech" aesthetic - it seems he was always making sure that it didn't look like WILLE had too many resources to preserve the sense of oppressive hopelessness that is a big part of what made Q that it is.

But yeah it seems like Yamashita had enough material there for Anima 2: Rebuild edition

Q could still go both way in terms of technology: on one hand we had Asuka's patched up suit (even though the recent manga retconned it into it being an old one she put for sentimental value) and her half-cyborg Eva, but on the other we had the new EVA-08, new armors for the WILLE Evas with corresponding plugsuits, new weapons and entry plug technology, the Wunder itself and its gigantic fleet.
So the setting could had been a "pseudo-apocalytic" one where a lot of resources and people were lost due to the Red Earth, but there were still enough surviving civilization to have a solid footing in this destroyed world, but Anno instead got for it being Fallout with Japanese people.

As for Yamashita, he does has really original and crazy ideas, although from the look of how ANIMA evolved, he seems to need to have someone to prevent him from going full Gurren Lagan. (and have a writer instead of him doing it himself, because apparently ANIMA is a very dry read)

[Registration]

Yamashita's writing is pretty cool, It is more of an hard sci-fi take on Evangelion, making the characters acting more mature in the sense that they are older and they know their responsibilities.

I would love if he did another eva novel using his mecha designs not used in the movie, it could even not even show the same characters, it could be great.

[Stan]

Do we have any insights as to what the changes will be for Shin for it's theatrical re-run? It's getting animation upgrades before even the blu ray which I find wild.

[Konja7]

Q could still go both way in terms of technology: on one hand we had Asuka's patched up suit (even though the recent manga retconned it into it being an old one she put for sentimental value) and her half-cyborg Eva, but on the other we had the new EVA-08, new armors for the WILLE Evas with corresponding plugsuits, new weapons and entry plug technology, the Wunder itself and its gigantic fleet.
So the setting could had been a "pseudo-apocalytic" one where a lot of resources and people were lost due to the Red Earth, but there were still enough surviving civilization to have a solid footing in this destroyed world, but Anno instead got for it being Fallout with Japanese people.

To be fair, in Q, it's implied that the situation of humanity is pretty bad in this destroyed world (the restoration of the world is mentioned to be the hope for humans).

So, I suspect the pillars protecting from corification and the risk these would stop working was always part of the plan.


To be clear, I don't think Anno developed much of the way humans live during Q. I just think the plan was always that the humanity's situation was going to be extremely precarious.

[BernardoCairo]

After some discussion, it's been decided that Bernardo's opinion is better than mine and has thus been implemented. The pains of release have been abandoned-the pains of localization are yet to begin.

Here we go! lol
Thanks for taking my suggestion into consideration!

Do we have any insights as to what the changes will be for Shin for it's theatrical re-run? It's getting animation upgrades before even the blu ray which I find wild.

Nuke-senpai listed the differences between 3.0 + 1.0 and 3.0 + 1.01 in the open forum.

[ElMariachi]

To be fair, in Q, it's implied that the situation of humanity is pretty bad in this destroyed world (the restoration of the world is mentioned to be the hope for humans).

So, I suspect the pillars protecting from corification and the risk these would stop working was always part of the plan.


To be clear, I don't think Anno developed much of the way humans live during Q. I just think the plan was always that the humanity's situation was going to be extremely precarious.

That the situation would suck more than pre-3I was a given (the entire planet is a core after all!), it's more that I didn't expected Anno to depict humanity's situation so desperate that its reduced to a handful of people scattered on glorified refugee camps whose only barrier against death is a bunch of pillars that could fail at any moment and for which they don't have any way to repair in time if/when it happens (WILLE/Kredit probably had people who could do that, but by the time they arrive it'll be too late), which makes me scratch my head on how this situation can be considered "hopeful" by the people of Village-3. And that's without even taking into account SEELE/neo-NERV's robot army.

[royabr121]

That the situation would suck more than pre-3I was a given (the entire planet is a core after all!), it's more that I didn't expected Anno to depict humanity's situation so desperate that its reduced to a handful of people scattered on glorified refugee camps whose only barrier against death is a bunch of pillars that could fail at any moment and for which they don't have any way to repair in time if/when it happens (WILLE/Kredit probably had people who could do that, but by the time they arrive it'll be too late), which makes me scratch my head on how this situation can be considered "hopeful" by the people of Village-3. And that's without even taking into account SEELE/neo-NERV's robot army.

Logic and cause and effect clearly were not considerations as far as Anno was concerned regarding the post time skip world. Which is a real shame as at the time I actually liked the idea of the time skip and the post impact world. Now however I am disappointed to learn that it was quite shallow, like a lot of things in the rebuilds.

[UrsusArctos]

Logic and cause and effect clearly were not considerations as far as Anno was concerned regarding the post time skip world. Which is a real shame as at the time I actually liked the idea of the time skip and the post impact world. Now however I am disappointed to learn that it was quite shallow, like a lot of things in the rebuilds.

How would you back up your assertions regarding the lack of logic and cause-and-effect? Do you have sources that show what Anno did not care for these considerations, or known details from the movie that back these up? What makes you characterize the post-Third Impact world as shallow? The other discussants in this thread have been quite thorough in discussing Shin Eva's known details, and it would be much appreciated if you more explained your own point of view in greater detail to further the ongoing discussion.

[FelipeFritschF]

There's some stuff coming out from the new cast greeting.

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/amp/articles/6 ... c359a93788

http://yaraon-blog.com/archives/199576

The real reason for Sakamoto's reticence: Anno told her tons of [stuff] about Mari no one else knows, she's not sure how far those things can be discussed in the pamphlet or interviews, and as she doesn't have Anno's explicit permission to share this stuff Sakamoto swears she'll take these secrets with her to the grave. The other seiyuu say they're sure Anno won't mind...

[ElMariachi]

There's some stuff coming out from the new cast greeting.

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/amp/articles/6 ... c359a93788

http://yaraon-blog.com/archives/199576

The real reason for Sakamoto's reticence: Anno told her tons of [stuff] about Mari no one else knows, she's not sure how far those things can be discussed in the pamphlet or interviews, and as she doesn't have Anno's explicit permission to share this stuff Sakamoto swears she'll take these secrets with her to the grave. The other seiyuu say they're sure Anno won't mind...

Calling it now: Yui ended seajed in Unit 01 because Mari sabotaged the contact experiment, and she's working against Gendo partly out of guilt for making him go through the deep end, you heard it here first folks!

[Kendrix]

She's comitted.


Lol but so far we thought Anno was having a super different approach with Mari to what he previously did (telling the actors of the characters who know stuff all the stuff and less so for the less knowing ones)
I thought the idea was that since Mari was supposed to be more spontaneous & in-the moment he told her nothing so that she'd make an impression regardless of background stuff just through her basic personality/attitude.

But this seems like she was handled like the other "knowing" characters, just like Kaworu's & Rei's VAs were told all the stuff.

IDK if this changed between Q and final or if Saakamoto was just keeping it really tight.
Still some degree of intentional mystery here ("He would only hint")

It's reassuring to know that there IS a plan (wether it's the 60 year old theory or the clone one), & so the remarks from 2.0 that could be seen as contradictions are probably indeed hints for us to puzzle out, not forgotten throwaway lines.

I'd be upset if something that looked like7was framed very explicit "Look here!" character exposition was just flat out forgotten.