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Pseudolongino
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Postby Pseudolongino » Mon May 16, 2022 6:36 am

hi i'm new to the board, i just finished watching the blu-ray box with the series and the films (NOT the new ones) i still have some questions and i couldn't find a faq here so pls forgive if these have already been answered:

1) first of all, why do they need to fight the angels at all? it seems the goal of both seele and gendo is to start instrumentality, which requires the forbidden union of adam and lilith (? see question 2), so as soon as he has the embryo why doesn't gendo run to the basement and just do that? of course 'there wouldn't be a tv show' is not a legitimate answer ;)

2) how exactly does instrumentality/third impact occur? this is never properly explained in the series NOR the film: it seems they fear an angel coming to contact with adam would trigger that but isn't both adam and lilith required to trigger the impact? although it would seem the second impact was just adam? im confused...
i've read seele wanted to use the spear, lilith and the MP evas, and lacking the spear the eva-01 would suffice because it contains lilith soul (???) which brings me to question

3) lilith soul! why isn't it just within lilith which is well and alive, albeit crucifixed, in the basement??? it seems her soul resides both within Rei and possibly yui who is inside eva-01? (incidentally, yui died willingly which is why eva-01, unlike the others, goes berserk, regenerates an arm, moves to protect Shinji without a pilot ecc ecc? also never properly explained...)

4) Rei... if she was produced after yui's death in 2004 how comes she's 14 like all the other children? they can clone humans at the desired age? pretty strange
also, minor question, fuiutsuky at one point tells gendo that Rei is the fruit of his (fuiu's) desperation and his (gendo's) hope, but whatever has HE got to do with Rei or yui or anything else? (why does he even go along with gendo's plan at all?)

thanks for reading this if there's a faq please point me to that

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Postby kuribo-04 » Mon May 16, 2022 12:04 pm

Don't have too much time, but I hope these quick answers suffice.

1) Gendo has to wait for Kaworu to be killed and his (Adam's) soul to return to its original body.
As to why Seele waits, they are an actual sect, I always got the idea they follow the Dead Sea Scrolls almost as if they saw the whole thing as a rite. Plus I think they feared an Angel appearing suddenly and interfearing.

2)An Impact isn't any specific thing, and can be triggered in several ways. However, there are similarities. Adam "ascended" because he had human DNA fused into him (beginning of episode 21) in some sort of experiment, and humans come from Lilith, while in Third Impact Gendo put the Adam embryo inside Rei, who fused with Lilith.

3)Lilith's soul is inside Rei because during Yui's "contact experiment", which happened while Eva-01 and Lilith were still fused*, something went wrong, leading to this switch. It's kinda like the scifi trope of brains switching bodies, just more convoluted.
Lilith ended up in what was left of Yui, and Yui ended up in Eva-01.

*As stated in EoE, Eva-01 is a "copy" of Lilith (Evangelion uses the term copy lightly). Check out these images:
https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_Analysis:Dummy_Plug_Plant_Images

4) It seems they can just do that, yeah. Have the clones age rapidly.
Fuyutsuki was in love with Yui, or at least that seems to be implied. He hopes Yui can come back as well, or maybe he thinks he'll become one with her through Instrumentality.
As for the desperation, maybe he is just a little more self aware than Gendo and the fucked-upness of having Yui clones bothers him.

A side note, Eva's worldbuilding does get pretty absurd. I always try to see what the significance of these things in the story is, what they could be symbolizing. I think that's where the priority was in this weird reality.

If you watch the new movies and have questions here I am. Though there are good FAQs for the first 3. And the 4th we are still figuring out lol.
Shinji: "Sooner or later I'll be betrayed... And they'll leave me. Still... I want to meet them again, because I believe my feelings at that time were real."
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Postby Pseudolongino » Tue May 17, 2022 3:30 am

hey man thanks, quick answers are the best, especially when they're wrong :tongue:

1) well, that is never estabilished now is it? if gendo needed adam's soul as well as his body why didn't he try to get it? and why would seele send a sacrificial messenger down to terminal dogma when they know perfectly well lilith is the giant crucifixed and not adam and they even tell kaoru so his surprise is totally nonsensical? (maybe adam+angel=destruction but adam+lilith in whatever form = instrumentality?) they dit it to scare gendo? to fuck with Shinji? Absolute Mistery, but there's already a thread discussing it...

2) i thought the spear caused the second impact, not human dna, at least that's what this site says

3) ok i can buy lilith soul being inside eva-01/yui but what does Rei have to do with all this? besides, ritsuko says only one soul was left in the room of guf when Rei was 'made' so it couldn't be lilith's
they really are pretty messy when it comes to souls manipulating, it's never explained how they do it and what the rules are (the manga even says a soul can't be digitized which would contradict all this maneuvering, but the stuff with the magi and naoko's personalities seems to indicate the anime went a different direction!)

i saw the first movie way back when, didn't care much for it, can't even remember whether i bothered to watch the second

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Postby kuribo-04 » Tue May 17, 2022 3:54 pm

View Original PostPseudolongino wrote:hey man thanks, quick answers are the best, especially when they're wrong :tongue

lol?

1) Gendo getting Adam's soul would mean opposing Seele, we see in EoE what that causes.

2) I disagree with whoever wrote that then.

3) Rei is the equivalent of Eva-01, the result of mixing up soul and dna of two beings.

Third and fourth Rebuild are completely different from the shiw btw.
Shinji: "Sooner or later I'll be betrayed... And they'll leave me. Still... I want to meet them again, because I believe my feelings at that time were real."
Ryuko: "I'm gonna knock ya on your asses!"
-Asuka: THINK IN GERMAN!!! -Shinji: Öh... Baumkuchen...
Hayashida: "As game developers, our work is special. All of us here can put smiles on very many people's faces with our work."
~('.'~) (~'.')~ Dancin Kirby

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Postby gelflinghand » Fri May 20, 2022 6:08 pm

View Original Postkuribo-04 wrote:3)Lilith's soul is inside Rei because during Yui's "contact experiment", which happened while Eva-01 and Lilith were still fused*, something went wrong, leading to this switch. It's kinda like the scifi trope of brains switching bodies, just more convoluted.
Lilith ended up in what was left of Yui, and Yui ended up in Eva-01.


That doesn't sound right to me. I assume extracting Lilith's soul was the first thing they did, to keep her passive like the empty Rei clones. Otherwise it seems implausible that she'd just let humans do all the stuff they do to her. And I don't think there was anything physical left of Yui after the contact experiment. It does seem likely that some of Yui's DNA ended up in Lilith, if all the little legs are incomplete Rei clones, but that could have been done intentionally after the contact experiment. Eva-01 was made from Lilith's lower half, but I don't think there's any evidence that they were still joined at the time of the contact experiment.

If the Rei clones aren't extracted from Lilith, it's possible they really are 14 years old and were created to store Lilith's soul. That would explain why the existing clones can't just be replaced after Ritsuko destroys them.


In any case, Nerv certainly has the technology to extract and implant souls. Not being able to digitize them just means they can't be copied. As to how it works, I can't imagine what kind of meaningful explanation the show could have given. And digitizing personalities is a different matter entirely - the Magi aren't self-aware, they just incorporate Naoko's opinions into their data processing.

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Postby Pseudolongino » Sat May 21, 2022 2:18 am

thanks to both of you
after reading more of this forum and completing the manga i have a clearer view of the whole picture and i agree that some details don't quite fit entirely but thay may not be so important especially when all the other material is considered, both psycological, philosophical and mythological (trying to put a dozen eggs in the basket, aren't we mister anno?...)
one interesting bit about kaoru and the third impact almost happening in ep24 is revealed in the manga: gendo says that even if the kid had made contact with giant lilith it wouldn't have initiated instrumentality, as he was missing the most important thing: lilith's broken heart...
now what does lilith have to be brokenhearted about? did he mean yui? the yui inside Rei? the Rei that also has lilith's soul for some reason?
but why would yui be brokenhearted as well? it's pretty clear in the manga and EOE that she chose to stay inside eva-01 (who has lilith's body) to protect Shinji and to let him handle instrumentality (she probably knew the scrolls too): very freudian and typical of disfunctional families... the father is envious of the child and the mother inevitably betrays the love that brought the son for him, the child in turn has to grow free of both of them and walk with his/her legs
the manga ends with a flashback to young yui falling in love with gendo and some mari makinami deciding not to compete with her and going away... i know she's a character of the last movie but was is her significance to the story? is some alternate reality involved (btw, manga Shinji ends up in some sort of happy alternate reality like the mock one in ep26 of the original serie, although his closing words mirror exactly the ones that open the manga just with a positive spin instead of suicidal, not a great arc to be sure!)

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Postby Zoop » Sat May 21, 2022 3:23 am

One important detail, the manga isnt just a manga version of the tv series. They are entirely different stories, they are as different as Rebuild is from the TV series.
The contents of these media should not be concidered canon in the other types of media. The manga the most, since its not written by Anno (whereas the series and rebuild are).

Meaning, if you found an answer to something in the manga, it doesn't mean that same thing will be true for the tvseries. In fact, you can be sure of it that this is something new specifically written for the manga.
Sometimes you can reference each type of media for a mindset, to get some ideas to help you in the right direction. But with a lot of it you have to keep in mind that is has no relation to your particular research.

Especially stuff like "lilliths broken heart". You can be assured that this is pretty much bullshit in anything other than the manga.
Mari was added just for shits and giggles (no, really), signigying more that the manga has no relation to the other stories (rebuild en nge). Just references and homages, is all it is.
In terms of canon, you should concider the manga to be not much more than a fanfic. Just like the anima novels, raising ikari project, girlfriend of steel etc.

If you do want to fit it in the global canon, rebuild seems to have made a link there, then this is an alternate universe, maybe something you could travel to during instrumentility (like Shinji experiencing "happy at school"-reality or the life action sequence during instrumentility). But fact remainsthat these universes are self containing, their rules, physics and plot points can be entirely different. Going by this logic, then even the "real" current world is part of those universes (which is likely where mari and Shinji end up at the end of rebuild). But maybe thats a tad too literal.

Afaik, the only "extra content" that should be concidered canon is the NGE2 game, afaik, Anno has confirmed that extra information from this game can be concidered canon and provides "what ifs" for different endings, how NGE could have ended.
Personally, i dont like it, since it explains adam and lillith to be pretty much aliens.
So canon can also be a personal preference, i kinda reject nge2 as canon, even tho its officially seen as such.

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Postby gelflinghand » Sat May 21, 2022 4:26 am

View Original PostPseudolongino wrote:one interesting bit about kaoru and the third impact almost happening in ep24 is revealed in the manga: gendo says that even if the kid had made contact with giant lilith it wouldn't have initiated instrumentality, as he was missing the most important thing: lilith's broken heart...
now what does lilith have to be brokenhearted about? did he mean yui? the yui inside Rei? the Rei that also has lilith's soul for some reason?


I assume "Lilith's broken heart" is just a poetic way of saying her soul, which is inside Rei. There's no Yui inside Rei, she's just her clone; they're effectively twin sisters with an age gap.

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Postby Pseudolongino » Sat May 21, 2022 8:28 am

Well, sadamoto isnt just someone passing by, hes an author of the anime and the manga was published concurrently with the serie/movies so i think if he said some bullshit someone would intervene
Of course he takes some liberty but nge is so vague about so many details that i think interpretations are de rigeur and his should be considered particularly authoritative
Btw, no answer to my question: who is this marikami, in short?

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Postby Zoop » Sat May 21, 2022 11:08 am

Nevertheless, the manga isnt the tv series, just like rebuild isnt the tv series, or rebuild isnt the manga.
Both rebuild and tvseries are by the actual same author, and still we see them as seperate canons because certain things work fundementaly different, for example, its never confirmed that the souls of the pilots mothers are in the evas in rebuild, even tho its so in the tv series, we shouldnt assume the same is true in rebuild.

So yes, the manga is as much canon to the tvseries as a fanfic would be, and sadamoto was allowed to "bullshit" as much as he liked. It's not like it's the only NGE-based manga or spinoff out there. Evangelion Anima is made by Yamashita, also a very prominent figure in the creation of NGE, but his story completely goes of the rails. Also not canon.
In any case, especially since NGE is so vague and lacking in details, you should be wary to fill any gaps with extracanonical stuff, like the manga.
It can be used to draw certain parallels, in some cases the different media types try to portray the same thing, and since these people have worked together, it's interesting to see what their (alternate) take on things are (even when comparing NGE-Anno with Rebuild-Anno), but they dont share the same lore.

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Postby Blockio » Sat May 21, 2022 8:13 pm

Saying that the manga is as different from NGE as NTE is is an overstatement. However, the point remains, the manga isn't the show, and any amount of inferring from the manga onto the show is to be treaded cautiously.

As for the souls business - it's outright deconfirmed that the mothers' souls are in the Evas in NTE apart from Yui in 01, since it is both very evidently no longer the deciding factor for pilot compatibility by virtue of each of the kids piloting at least two different units, mostly in situations where it would have been impossible to install a new soul with the switchover to the second, and also by virtue of Kaworu, Asuka and Rei not having a mom to speak of that could be put in any of their units.
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
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What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Postby Pseudolongino » Sun May 22, 2022 5:38 am

the manga tell the same story, with just 2 or 3 major differences that have no influence on the overall outcome or outline (Shinji knowing it's toji inside eva-03, kaoru appearing well before and battling with Rei and Shinji and no love lost between them, gendo saving Shinji from jssdf with his at field, pretty badass!)
i don't know about these other mangas or miniseries but i'm assuming they are alternate stories or prequels of some sort set in the same universe but NOT dealing with the story of the serie/EOE
the rebuild movies i have seen only the first or maybe the second, i remember basically nothing, but the stuff with the mothers' souls alone tells me everything i need to know: it's a different beast, one i do not care to get acquainted with, and the fact it's authored by Anno should NOT take precedence over the substantial changes in plot, characters and the like (i mean, it's pretty obvious he's not going to retell the exact same story, the manga on the other hand is a different medium, it was published even before the serie started to air, so it IS the same story with some changes made by sadamoto to be his own man and not just a pedestrian adaptation)

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Postby Zoop » Sun May 22, 2022 6:31 am

Just saying man, the manga is a different beast as well.
It only relativily recently got finished (2013), so the last few books have been influenced by Rebuild (the inclusion of Mari, for example). So it's definitely not telling the same story as NGE is.
Its kinda funny how you bash on Rebuild, but defend the Manga which has literally taken elements from it.
There are far more fundamental differences than the ones you listed (https://wiki.evageeks.org/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_(manga)#Changes_made_from_the_anime_series).
I mean, it ends vastly different, how much more clue do you need that it's "merely" a spinoff?

That last sentence of yours could exactly be used to describe the manga as well.

In any case, on these boards its more or less accepted to treat the different media as different canon, hence why there are seperate boards to discuss each. You are free to draw your own headcannon by matching the manga with nge, but don't be surprised not many will share that view with you. You'll be frequently reminded that theories based on extracanonical materials should be taken with a big bucket of salt.

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Postby Blockio » Sun May 22, 2022 5:47 pm

View Original PostPseudolongino wrote:and the fact it's authored by Anno should NOT take precedence over the substantial changes in plot, characters and the like

I am not positive what that sentence is even supposed to mean.
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Postby hui43210 » Sun May 22, 2022 6:12 pm

Maybe the words of Sadamoto himself can clear things up

SPOILER: Show
"Thank you. But that being said, you can’t use the manga to complement the Anime. This manga is just what I draw when I thought “it is should be like this, right?” Nothing more, nothing less."
"No, unlike Anno, I don’t have a life worth telling.(laugh) Perhaps I won’t express myself overall……But I can’t just copy Anno’s work. In this condition, I have to come up the theme myself, try to use different methods to describe. Every version of EVA has a different ending, I think the manga will have a different ending, too. As a work, entertainment is more important, so I can’t make the work same as the anime. But if I make the manga something completely different, then it can’t be called EVA. So not too close, not too far away. Rebuild is in the same position." - All About Kaworu Nagisa interview with Sadamoto
I mean, predictability is the central attraction and the narrative hook that we've all come to expect from the Evangelion franchise. How come Anno can't realize this? Twice? - FreakyFilmFan4ever


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