About this 'regenerating harpies' thing...

[Reichu]

I've heard the claim that the MP Evas "regenerate" since time immemorial. This idea seems a little odd, since they maintain their gruesome injuries throughout the entire movie. I'm guessing that EoE's prolific continuity errors are to blame for the misconception, but still. Their injuries only go missing -- rather suddenly and mysteriously -- for three cuts involving Eva-02's dismemberment, plus the "shock inserts" of Eva-02 being eaten, before they appear again fully intact.

Just telling people about this never seems to be enough, so I finally grit my teeth and threw together some screenshots demonstrating that, no, the harpies never heal. They're just, aherm, "indecisive"... as you'll see shortly. (This is a real quick and dirty job, and preparing an official Evapedia page would take more time, hence why I haven't done that. Yet.)

Layout illustration of individual MP Evas diagramming their respective damage.

Eva-05
- Being thrown against 13, with neck damage visible
- Abdomen punctured by Eva-02's arm
- Getting ready to take off
- Committing suicide (No sign of neck damage)
- Dead and petrified (right; you have to look really close to see the hole in the abdomen)

Eva-06
- Getting hit by sword (Note discrepancy with damage chart; the sword is supposed to cleave in from the left shoulder. Incidentally, the storyboards got it right.)
- Waking up (Damage now on correct side of body, albeit a little dodgy-looking.)
- Preparing to liberate S2 Engine
- Committing suicide (far right)
- Comitting suicide (close-up)

Eva-07
- Getting arm cut off
- Head with broken neck draped over shoulder (lol wut)
- Getting ready to take off (left; no floppy broken neck here)
- Right before Eva-01 receives stigmata (lower right; broken neck is now depicted as a red area)
- Biting onto Eva-01's wing (broken neck not depicted)
- Committing suicide (middle left; no sign of broken neck, again)

Eva-08
- Leg flying off (Not quite consistent with damage chart, which shows the leg getting severed above the knee, not at it -- but good enough.)
- Munching on dead Eva-02

Eva-09
- Cranium getting pulverized by Eva-02
- Hey... Where'd the rest of the head go? (The production illustration specifies that "the face gets crushed and the lower jaw stays"...)
- Torso getting snapped in half (or something like that)
- Waking up (Depiction of "crushed face" now 'softened' so that there actually still IS a cranium, albeit one with brains hanging out. This bizarre inconsistency exists in the storyboards; perhaps an artifact of having three different people work on them.)
- Getting ready to stigmata-ize Eva-01 (Entire head has gone missing again...)
- After "merging with Rei" (Back to the "exposed brains" version. Plus hair has managed to take root in brain tissue -- lawl.)
- Committing suicide (middle right; wonder where the hair went?)
- Dead (Apparently this is 09, since she's the only one with torso damage like that -- but now the head looks perfect.)
- Before petrification (...and breaking out in faces somewhat belatedly.)

Eva-10
- Double dose of spikes to the head
- Waking up
- About to "merge with Rei"
- Committing suicide
- Dead (second from right)

Eva-11
- Knife being planted in head
- Waking up
- Getting ready to take off (right)
- Committing suicide (far left)
- Dead

Eva-12
- Severed upper torso flying
- Lower body left standing
- Dropping part of Eva-02's corpse (upper torso only)
- Okay, now this is just fucked up... Have the two halves inexplicably found one another in death? (The pelvic plate has visibly been sliced through here)

Eva-13
- Out-of-place-looking core being crushed by Eva-02
- 13(?) waking up
- Eyes appearing on wings (damage just appears as a dark circular region here)
- Dead (An attempt to crush a misplaced core has inexplicably turned into a hole through the shoulder.)


I guess that about covers it.

What I want to know is, did all of the animators working on the Evas actually get copies of that illustration? And, if they did, why didn't all of them pay attention to it? And why didn't anyone notice (or notice AND do something about) these errors before the movie came out? (Like the person in charge of continuity?) Tough working in the animation biz, I guess...

[AyrYntake]

Well made point is well made.

Reactivate it is then.

[Dartz]

It's supposed to be an animation error. Everything I've read up to this point everywhere says as much. It happens. The continbuity of a fiuctional universe cannot be absolute. why they didnt notice? I dunno... maybe they were stupid?

Or rushing to get things finished.

[Reichu]

It's supposed to be an animation error.

You're making it sound like they did it on purpose.

Everything I've read up to this point everywhere says as much.

I'm curious about what exactly this "everything you've read everywhere" is, so links plox.

[Gamer_2k4]

Wow...

I mean, I was aware that they didn't regenerate, but actually seeing the damage persist throughout the entire movie in the screencaps was really incredible. Nice work collecting those.

[slothen]

I suppose it was easy for people to slip into using the word, 'regenerate' since we see unit01 regenerate a few times during the series, and the harpies have s2 cores, so it would make sense that they regenerate.

Except the two times I recall unit 01 regenerating, in neither of those cases did it have an s2. lulz.


Anyway I agree. They don't regenerate, merely reactivate.

[Reichu]

Except the two times I recall unit 01 regenerating, in neither of those cases did it have an s2. lulz.

Yup. The instantaneous regeneration may be due to the born-from-Lilith thing more than anything else. Even most of the folks with S2 Engines we saw needed some actual time to patch themselves up.

Makes it kind of curious just what the heck the harpies were doing during P3II -- they could have actually been using that as an opportunity to regenerate. But then, if they did, how would anyone be able to tell them apart?

[Sailor Star Dust]

Excellent work, it's nice to see a thread about this. If you end up doing a fanime panel, you should have it on something like this, I think.

[Oedipusfoot]

Yeah, maybe 'regeneration' is an incorrectly used term for 'reactivation' or 'reanimation.' I never thought about their changing wounds but I wondered about them moving again after Asuka destroyed them once.

[Reichu]

I wondered about them moving again after Asuka destroyed them once.

They were never "destroyed" in the first place. The only way to make an Eva go down and stay down is to crack the core open.

EDIT: Checking around, I'm sorry to say that bochan_bird's translation probably hasn't helped matters here... He renders Maya's line as, "The destroyed... Eva series!?", when the verb-acting-as-adjective (forget technical term) in question is 倒した, which just means "downed" or "defeated".

If you end up doing a fanime panel, you should have it on something like this, I think.

What, and bore the poor audience with my nerdy attentiveness to continuity errors that usually don't matter?

[FallenTabris]

The only way to make an Eva go down and stay down is to crack the core open.

Except for that last one that received a fist of love through the chest from Asuka, I guess? :o

[Reichu]

Except for that last one that received a fist of love through the chest from Asuka, I guess? :o

The core came through fine. Trying to crush a core with one hand is apparently a very slow and inefficient way to do an Eva in. (The proper methodology is to knock your opponent to the ground and roar like a lunatic while repeatedly bashing the core with a very hard object.) On the other hand, it does seem to cause prolific amounts of blood to spout out of nowhere.

http://www.evageeks.org/images/screens/mp/m25_C520.jpg

It's still a bit unclear how the core migrated to a position where it would be straddling/piercing the left pectoral... (Only a small handful of animators working on EoE seemed to understand the idea, "Big red ball goes in solar plexus.")

[FallenTabris]

Oh, she's holding the core with her hand. Didn't notice that detail before.

[AyrYntake]

You'd think that the core, being a spherical object, would just slip out of her hand when she clutched it...especially as she hasn't even got her hand round the back of the thing (for obvious reasons).

[The Eva Monkey]

In order for something to have regenerated, it has to show that it has regenerated. The logic is fairly obvious. They are still busted. Therefore, they have not regenerated. That line is just goofy in English. We need a moonspeak to English function, as well as a dub to moonspeak to English function.

Hoo-hah.

[Reichu]

That line is just goofy in English.

What line?

I popped in ye olde mangle dubbe just to make sure I hadn't missed something, and Maya says the "destroyed" (lawl) Eva Series has "reactivated", so I don't know what you're referring to.

[Bagheera]

Necro necro necro!

The core came through fine. Trying to crush a core with one hand is apparently a very slow and inefficient way to do an Eva in. (The proper methodology is to knock your opponent to the ground and roar like a lunatic while repeatedly bashing the core with a very hard object.) On the other hand, it does seem to cause prolific amounts of blood to spout out of nowhere.

http://www.evageeks.org/images/screens/mp/m25_C520.jpg

It's still a bit unclear how the core migrated to a position where it would be straddling/piercing the left pectoral... (Only a small handful of animators working on EoE seemed to understand the idea, "Big red ball goes in solar plexus.")

Looking at that image, is that actually the core? Cores are round and spherical, and that . . . isn't. Is this another animation error, or is that something else? A lung, maybe? That would explain the odd positioning of the thing. That does raise the question of where the heck the core is, but it seems odd to me that Asuka would be going for it there when she didn't in any of the other cases.

[Ornette]

If you look at that sequence frame by frame, the red thing is round and spherical. The blood squirting out and Eva-02's hand moving around makes it hard to grab a single frame that shows all of it.

[Bagheera]

If you look at that sequence frame by frame, the red thing is round and spherical. The blood squirting out and Eva-02's hand moving around makes it hard to grab a single frame that shows all of it.

Ah, I see. Looking at the whole sequence it looks like it's a shading issue, because that is clearly the core. How strange. She had to have known she couldn't just crush it with one hand, so why bother? Even though she wasn't thinking very rationally at the time it's still kind of odd.

[chaosakita]

This is really interesting. But I'm curious, besides the harpies regenerating, where else do we see continuity errors in EoE?