Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Jul 02, 2013 7:52 am
I'd ask the complete opposite question: How did it ever leave Shinji's possession in the first place? Does anyone here even know?
Sure, we assume he put it down, but there's no shot establishing that he did. We didn't see a shot of him leaving it on the Wunder. We didn't see a shot of him putting it down somewhere on the Wunder and never picking it back up. We didn't see a shot of him dropping it somewhere on the Wunder and forgetting about it. There's no close-up of the SDAT Player sitting on the floor in the foreground as Shinji left with Rei in the background. There isn't a shot of Shinji leaving with Rei in the foreground with the SDAT Player laying on the floor somewhere in the background. There's nothing that establishes that he left it anywhere. If there was, then we'd know exactly where he left it on the Wunder; on a table, desk, bench, floor, metal chair, something, somewhere... But we don't get anything establishing where he left it or how it left him, so we can't say for sure that it did that either.
The last we saw the SDAT Player before Shinji leaves the Wunder, it was with Shinji. So it leaves very little room to infer that it somehow left his possession, especially without a shot establishing that, and especially when we see that it's still in his possession in the scenes following his exodus from the Wunder.
So, what this basically comes down to is one of two things: It's either a continuity error (most likely), or Shinji stored it somewhere on his person. (He could have pinned it between the overlapping areas of his hospital gown, but again, there isn't a shot establishing that either.) After all, video game characters can pull objects that seemingly come from nowhere that "they've stored on their person." This usually happens without the player doing any real critical thinking about how or where the objects are being stored. I'm not saying that this is a form of logic that works in a video game, but rather it's a similar error that's constantly (and often times intentionally) made in a video game for simplicity's sake, and it isn't criticized half as much in video games as it is in film, despite it being more prominent in video games, to the point where it almost becomes a fundamental rule in video games.
And, as far as continuity errors go, this one with the SDAT Player is rather small, insignificant, and relatively unnoticeable. It really doesn't distract from the emotion, pacing, or importance of the scene. The extreme close-up shot establishing that the STAD Player is in Shinji's possession is prominent enough so that, unless you've watching it often enough to have a wandering eye, any mid-shot or long, full-body shot of Shinji not having the SDAT Player is practically unnoticeable.
At this point, it's like asking how Shinji got dressed into his plug suit in Episode 20 of NGE, after he already entered the Eva in his school clothes in Episode 19. It's a continuity error. And the SDAT Player error is smaller than the wardrobe one in NGE, so I guess I wouldn't focus too much on it.
robersora wrote:^
