The Idiot Ball in Q - Lazy Writing or Thematically Poignant?

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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Postby Conspicuous » Mon Jul 29, 2013 7:08 pm

Asking the giant robot which probably contains the dude for help once you're in a position where you're about to die and out of option is pretty reasonable as a last resort, I would say. What else was she supposed to do? Do nothing and wait for death?

Also, the only thing in her actions in the interrogation room that could be construed as a "tantrum" would be the punching the glass part, which is a perfectly viable and direct way to express just how angry she is with him for all the things he did (and between the aftermath of the Bardiel incident, and his causing the apocalypse while leaving everyone to clear up his mess, she has plenty of reasons to be angry at him). If anything, she's more fair with him than most of WILLE is by expressing her anger clearly instead of just giving him the cold shoulder, and she puts him in a better position to try to make up for it (and she wants him too, as her disappointment in the last scene over his inaction is to be considered) She's not pleasant, but she's not exactly cruel either.

And by the time she actually fights him, Shinji has already flaked out of taking responsibility by leaving with Mark.09, and then he goes and pilots the giant apocalypse machine even after everyone told him not to, while he's immediately declaring his intention to "change the world", like he's under the impression that he's a hero about to save the world.
He's clearly utterly delusional, and calmly discussing things is a pretty futile effort with someone who's been presumably utterly brainwashed by Gendo into believing he's doing the right thing, just like he believed he was doing the right thing fourteen years ago.
On top of that, Asuka has zero reason to even consider of the notion that the Eva can actually fix things. While we as the audience know they can be used as giant terraforming devices, but as far as most character are aware, they just bring forth Instrumentality, and any other possibilities are just plain inconceivable.

Maybe if Shinji made an effort to at least try to understand why Asuka would want to stop him (and he has more than enough information to come to the correct conclusion), they could actually discuss matter, but given the extreme risk involved in leaving him be, crushing his Eva and pulling him out of it forcefully really is the safest and most reasonable decision to take at that moment. They can discuss things after he's no longer a threat and only if he's willing to behave. Really, she would've done that with any other person, and the fact that it's Shinji only gives him a track record of being a threat to humanity and a chance for her to blow off some steam, but otherwise doesn't affect her decisions.

Really, I can't think of any action that's truly not a rational decision on her part, and like I said, while rational, she's not exactly pleasant. She's still Asuka, after all.

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Postby ElMariachi » Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:14 am

I agree to disagree.

About operation US, it was the moment that she called for an help she wasn't sure she would receive(they don't know if Shinji is still somewhere inside) that gave me the "un-Asuka-ish" impression : it looked more like praying for help than requesting support from an ally she was sure would give it to her.

What happened in the interrogation room was a tantrum, because she expressed her anger by destroying part of the equipment(I doubt that glass panel is cheap) and didn't even bothered to explain why she was angry, basically their exchange was : "- Asuka, I'm glad you're okay!" *throw punch* "- What was that for?" "- Pent-up anger and grief." "- For what?" "- Because, fuck-off!"
And the icing on the cake, when eh asks about Rei, she calmly tells him that he's making so much useless fuss about one woman, and that they don't have the luxury to care for that. Basically she's spiting on the face of the girl Shinji risked everything to save, without even bothering to explain to him why he should worry about more important things.
Seriously, Asuka brought nothing to the debriefing, remove her from the scene, and there was nothing that she said that Misato and Ritsuko weren't gonna to tell him, the debriefing would have proceed without any problems(until Mark.09 attacked of course)

About the final fight, Shinji stopped plenty of times to try to explain to Asuka why he was piloting, and Asuka's only answers was to insult him and charging with a giant double glaive.
Why would Shinji be the only one to try to understand why the other is acting the way it did, Asuka didn't tried one single second to understand why he was piloting. And when she finally understood(meaning when Shinji finally managed to gain enough seconds of respite to explain what he's trying to do with these spears), instead of at least trying to reason him by telling that it was a trap, or that nothing good could come of the spears, which would have taken no more than five seconds, she insults him and resume her attack, she didn't gave him one single reason to stop.

Sure Shinji has his share of responsibility in what happened(he did continued even thought Kaworu was begging him to stop), but so has Kaworu for not better explaining before what the two spears were supposed to do and thus why later the fact that there is only one type threw the plan through the window, and Asuka for not even trying to reason him, although he was eager to talk. Maybe he really was so delusional that he wouldn't considers what she knows, but since she didn't even bothered to try, we don't know,and that wouldn't have made her look like an enraged berserker.
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Postby Conspicuous » Tue Jul 30, 2013 9:54 am

I'd still say that Asuka's actions during Operation US were perfectly rational. It was already established that her life was considered less valuable than the recovery of the Eva was, and her "praying for help" still beats waiting for death. And given how it worked out, I'd even say it was the "correct" decision to make.

And I'll admit that damaging the equipment was irrational, so that gives her one truly irrational action. But given that no-one really seemed to care about it, I doubt that it was actually considered all that valuable. So while irrational, it's not really anything resembling an Idiot Ball level offence.
And in her exchange about her not giving a real explanation for her punch, I would say it's important to note that Shinji changed the subject to her eyepatch before she even had a chance to answer. And I think it's fair to say that the eyepatch represents a lot of bad memories for her.

When she tells him that she doesn't know anything about Ayanami, she's right. No-one really knows her present state, or what happened in the climax of 2.0. No-one except Shinji knew that he recovered her from Zeruel's core, so his talking about how he "saved" her would make no real sense to them.
And when she talks about how no-one in the world has time to fuss over one person any more, I doubt she's doing it out of spite. She tries to make clear that the world changed, and that he as an individual simply doesn't matter any more. She regards herself in the same way now, and she simply expect him to keep up with her.

Does any of this actually help him? Nah, not really. But she doesn't treat him any worse than she treats herself, and her fault lies with believing that everyone else can take it in the same way she can.

And in their fight in Terminal Dogma, while she certainly didn't try to reason with him very hard, it's still important to note that she wasn't really in a position to calmly discuss things with him. Shinji had the superior Eva, and all she had was the element of surprise and the dominant position in their fight. If she gave up her relentless assault for a moment, she would lose that position permanently, and Shinji could easily gain the upper hand, meaning that if she failed to convince him, she wouldn't be able to stop him by force any more.
And she did ask him if he was trying to cause Third Impact again, insinuating that was what pulling the spears would do. Yeah, she wasn't exactly convincing, but she did make an attempt to reason with him. Ultimately, after his response about how he believes that he's a hero who's saving the world, she just gives up on those (weak) attempts and goes for the more reliable approach of using force to stop him.

Note however, that I only call her decisions "rational", not "correct" or "ideal". She's not basing them on emotion, and would treat random others in the same manner.

In fact, to take things away from our back-and-forth about Asuka, I would say that the entire film is a critique of this behaviour.
Misato's, Ritsuko's and Asuka's actions are all based around cold hard logic. Shinji is treated like an extreme threat, and extreme countermeasures are taken in order to prevent said threat from coming to pass.
He's not really treated like a person, and any sort of compassion is nowhere to be found. Contrast with 1.0, when Shinji didn't want to get back inside the Eva to face Ramiel.
Instead of just telling Shinji to "man up" and do it, Misato realizes that she needs to be more compassionate towards him, and tells him what he's fighting for in the first place, by leading him to Lilith. (also note that they end up holding hands in this scene, in contrast to Asuka dragging him by the wrist in 3.0. They're both reaching out to each and communicating fairly, and it works out to help everyone involved)

Really, 3.0's message is all about how people should be working together. Even Kaworu, who's otherwise the only person who shows anyone compassion, only works for Shinji's happiness, and given how he says that Mark.09 is there to keep an eye out for WILLE activity, regards them as an obstacle to overcome.
Everyone is just working to their own ends, and no-one tries to reach out to anyone any more, leading to the loss of one of WILLE's Evas, Shinji's further traumatization and Gendo getting exactly what he wants.

Honestly, while no-one is really holding the Idiot Ball, the failure to communicate is still apparent, and it's pretty obvious that one of the messages of 3.0 is that you need to find the right balance between cold logic and compassion if you want to make things work.

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Postby ElMariachi » Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:27 pm

When Asuka broke the glass panel, Sakura completely freaked out, I still don't understand why Ritsuko and Misato didn't moved a muscle, I suppose that it's part of their interaction and we will learn more about that in Final.

Anyway I think we each have our own interpretation of Asuka in Q, no need to endlessly debate on it.


Your second point is far much interesting : I already thought that one of Q's core themes was the ravages of miscommunication, but you put that concept even further, and it perfectly fit with the events of the movie.

I was always wondering how Gendo managed to predict so well WILLE's actions, how Misato would react, how they would threat Shinji so he just had to send a Rei clone and he will immediately jump in the opportunity to leave them, like he said in the end of the movie Misato followed the plan... and your analysis answered it : like you said "Misato's, Ritsuko's and Asuka's actions are all based around cold hard logic.", there is no compassion to find, or concern about human life, only the objective count(Misato's new motto)... like Gendo. By trying to adapt to this new world, they turned into another Gendo!
And this new attitude that from their point of view make stronger and more adapted to this wasteland is completely deserving them, because that's precisely why Gendo can so easily predict WILLE's next move : he just has to think what he would do in such a situation, and he has a complete mental map of Misato's actions!

That's why he knew that getting Shinji from WILLE would be easy and only sent Mark.09 with Rei Q to do the job : he knew that WILLE will consider him only as an extreme threat, and that they will take extreme countermeasures against his supposed treat that will immediately antagonize him, even thought he would never betray Misato(had she just asked him to don't pilot because he did something very wrong, and he would have never do it because he don't want to hurt her), he knew that Misato would patrol with the Wunder around the HQ and send the Evas to intercept whatever movement they detect event thought it could be a trap, because that's how Gendo himself would react in that kind of situation, he don't see an human life, but what it could bring to his plans and the level of threat he represent, he already proven that in 2.0 when he immediately dismissed Asuka's life when EVA-03 was possessed, because she was "just" a pilot and that there was an Angel inside her Eva(and the time skip made him even worse)

And this "strong" and grim attitude came back to bite them in the ass when Shinji ditched them happily and gave Gendo all the time he needed to manipulate him into insanity and piloting again for the hope that Kaworu will give him to atone, hope that Gendo already preventively crushed by somehow morphing the LoC onto a LoL(or not telling to SEELE and Kaworu that it morphed), which in combination with Misato sending her top dogs to stop Shinji will put his almost shattered mind even more close to the edge so that when Kaworu will notice that he has been tricked and ask to Shinji to stop, he won't listen and pull out the spear, Awakening EVA-13 and forcing Kaworu to sacrifice himself to stop 4I... exactly as he planned!

WILLE simply can't win against Gendo with cold hard logic, because Gendo is the absolute master of cold hard logic, and WILLE are just making themselves all the more predictable with the way they are acting.

Anno probably wants to criticize the current trend of "grimdarkness" where everyone his hardened and everything is gritty, because people think that it's cool, and Anno show us that no, it's not cool at all, by showing us human and warm characters, then transforming them into grim people running only by cold and hard logic, and frankly it sucks!

If Misato and WILLE want to win, they will have to learn to find the right balance between cold logic and compassion like you said, if not Gendo will still making dance like puppets under a puppeteer's control.
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Postby Giji Shinka » Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:57 pm

[quote="View Original PostElMariachi":2en7dr03][/quote:2en7dr03]
Damn, if Anno (And other writers maybe) planned all this.......... :gasp:
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Postby Bagheera » Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:21 pm

View Original PostElMariachi wrote:WILLE simply can't win against Gendo with cold hard logic, because Gendo is the absolute master of cold hard logic, and WILLE are just making themselves all the more predictable with the way they are acting.


Um. "Cold, hard logic" would tell Gendo to "get over your dead wife already you stupid fuck, we have more important things to worry about." Whatever's governing Gendo's actions, logic ain't it.
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Postby Mr. Tines » Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:27 pm

Cold hard logic means you lie like a motherfucker to keep this dangerous loose cannon from going off the rails -- not tell the truths most damaging to that end first time you open your mouth. For the record, the original "ten minutes in the shower /a/non" post.

[The following relevant reply originally belonged to a post that was split out as part of a tangent. - Monk]

View Original PostBagheera wrote:For those confused, be sure to scroll down to the right post (it dumped me at the top of the thread even though you have the right link).

And yeah, that's pretty good. Honesty is not always the best policy, you'd think Misato would have figured that out.
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Postby Zoop » Wed Jul 31, 2013 8:19 am

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:Cold hard logic means you lie like a motherfucker to keep this dangerous loose cannon from going off the rails -- not tell the truths most damaging to that end first time you open your mouth. For the record, the original "ten minutes in the shower /a/non" post.


^ Exactly this! This post sums everything up, how they could have treated Sinji, while staying profesional.
Like I mentioned before, I find Sinji's treatment much too forced. Like they wanted him to react like he did. Just a little bit of tact, could save worlds in this case ...

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Postby Giji Shinka » Wed Jul 31, 2013 9:18 am

View Original PostZoop wrote:^ Exactly this! This post sums everything up, how they could have treated Sinji, while staying profesional.
Like I mentioned before, I find Sinji's treatment much too forced. Like they wanted him to react like he did. Just a little bit of tact, could save worlds in this case ...

So....Anno and others were bad/lazy writers when it comes to this part?
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Postby A.T. Fish » Wed Jul 31, 2013 12:49 pm

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:Cold hard logic means you lie like a motherfucker to keep this dangerous loose cannon from going off the rails -- not tell the truths most damaging to that end first time you open your mouth. For the record, the original "ten minutes in the shower /a/non" post.


I disagree with this, I believe it's far easier to convince someone to do something out of fear than it is to do so by being respectful, fear may not be the preferable choice but it's a well known fact that it can be really effective in controlling one's behavior. So, being honest about how he would die if he piloted an Eva due to the bomb collar was a very pragmatic way of keeping him from piloting (and it did, up until Kaworu removed it from him). This guy's post is a clear example of viewer's perspective messing with one's judgement.

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Postby Mr. Tines » Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:05 pm

View Original PostA.T. Fish wrote:I believe it's far easier to convince someone to do something out of fear than it is to do so by being respectful,
There's an old saying about flies, honey and vinegar that has some relevance here. And although the last thing WILLE wanted was Shinji wanting to jump ship at the soonest point, that was what they actually achieved.
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Postby A.T. Fish » Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:47 pm

Yeah, it's all very obvious after you've seen the movie but the characters haven't. They couldn't possibly know when Nerv would come or how they'd use a Rei clone to appeal to his emotions, so they could either be nice to Shinji in the hopes that Nerv didn't kidnap him and somehow forced him (or convinced him) to pilot or they could be blunt about it, pilot and you die. Honestly, I don't see how this makes Wille's actions idiotic, they had total control of the situation in their hands, all it took was the push of a button, in the end the failure was not due to their logic but due to their (Misato's) emotions.

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Postby Azathoth » Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:30 pm

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:Cold hard logic means you lie like a motherfucker to keep this dangerous loose cannon from going off the rails -- not tell the truths most damaging to that end first time you open your mouth. For the record, the original "ten minutes in the shower /a/non" post.


Yeah, nah, that post is pretty fucking stupid since it still gives Shinji the choice of whether to leave or not. Contrasted with what he thinks is Ayanami, no amount of rationalization or explanation has any effect on him and one would have to be pretty retarded to miss this since the plot of the movie is WHOLLY driven by the fact that no amount of rationalization or explanation has any effect on him. You can call it an idiot ball if you like, but I don't see why a term usually used to explain why teenagers in slasher films always go out into the dark scary woods to have sex (itself a perfectly explicable and in no wise "stupid" element of a story unless, as it usually is in horror films to be fair, it's pushed to its most comical extreme) should be applied to a movie which is, again, entirely and totally about a character who can't bring himself to accept reality. Like, NO SHIT Shinji chooses a convenient fiction over the truth. Would it have been a solution for Misato et al. to lie to him, then, provide him with their own fiction? No, of course not; any fiction they concoct would be incapable of pleasing him because, in reality, they don't have Rei, they can't let him pilot Unit 01, and there's no way they can conceal the consequences of his actions at N3I from him because it seems like the human race has basically collectively mythologized him as the goddamn devil while he was away (again, this is a perfectly understandable thing for them to have done!). The instant Rei shows up, he's gone regardless of what they tell him. The real solution - and I'll accept that if they did this there wouldn't be a movie - is not to wake him up, since there's literally no reason for him to be doing anything and a convincing reason for him to be doing nothing. Misato even says this -- so why the fuck are WILLE letting him walk around, instead of pumping him so full of morphine he can't piss in a straight line?? (maybe the drugs were part of the cargo they never got a chance to load...)

e: I guess Ritsuko kind of implies they did it to figure out why he responded as Unit 01 when Asuka called to him, except that doesn't square with the fact that they then don't do anything to actually figure this out.
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Postby Bagheera » Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:43 pm

View Original PostAzathoth wrote:Misato even says this -- so why the fuck are WILLE letting him walk around, instead of pumping him so full of morphine he can't piss in a straight line?? (maybe the drugs were part of the cargo they never got a chance to load...)


Because, despite the haters' words to the contrary, they honestly cared about the kid. The newbies don't know him from Adam, but Misato, Asuka, and the old bridge crew do and they're not okay with leaving him to rot. My guess is they've been waiting for the opportunity to get him back for 14 years, even though the fact that they want him back doesn't mean they're not mad as hell about what he's done. Humans are complicated beasts like that.

But you're right, in the end it didn't matter. As Tsurumaki said Shinji's fatal flaw is his obstinance; once Rei shows up there's no way that won't kick in, so no amount of rhetoric from Misato and crew will change anything.

And here I thought it was so darned clever! :sigh:
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Postby Azathoth » Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:54 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:Because, despite the haters' words to the contrary, they honestly cared about the kid. The newbies don't know him from Adam, but Misato, Asuka, and the old bridge crew do and they're not okay with leaving him to rot. My guess is they've been waiting for the opportunity to get him back for 14 years, even though the fact that they want him back doesn't mean they're mad as hell about what he's done. Humans are complicated beasts like that.


I guess they "care" about him in the sense that Misato wasn't willing to murder him for being dumb and uncooperative, but I just don't see that meaning anything more than that she's not hardxXxcore enough to kill babbies. The reason they went and got Unit 01 was because they needed Unit 01 to make their ship move, not because they wanted so much to get Shinji back. All they do, once they find out Shinji was in Unit 01, is 1) make sure he's Shinji, 2) make sure he can't immediately destroy the world again, and 3) lock him up so they can ogle him. So...what about this necessitated that he be spewing forth his moronic MUH Ayanami babbling, again? Seriously, just drug the little fucker, he's so skinny it won't even take much; Asuka can even come therapeutically beat up his limp corpse, speaking of people in this movie who could use a bit of time on opiates.

View Original PostBagheera wrote:But you're right, in the end it didn't matter. As Tsurumaki said Shinji's fatal flaw is his obstinance; once Rei shows up there's no way that won't kick in, so no amount of rhetoric from Misato and crew will change anything.


Tsurumaki quoting Anno, even.
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Postby Bagheera » Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:02 pm

View Original PostAzathoth wrote:The reason they went and got Unit 01 was because they needed Unit 01 to make their ship move, not because they wanted so much to get Shinji back.


An excuse. It lets them do what they wanted to do anyway.

All they do, once they find out Shinji was in Unit 01, is 1) make sure he's Shinji, 2) make sure he can't immediately destroy the world again, and 3) lock him up so they can ogle him.


Because they're not stupid and, as I noted, they're mad at him. Drugging him would be pointless, but I agree they should have locked him up sans collar. Piloting's not an issue if they don't stick him in a plug, and if he's locked up he can't get to one of his own volition.
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Postby Azathoth » Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:15 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:An excuse. It lets them do what they wanted to do anyway.


Anything to back this up? because as far as I can tell the river runs the opposite direction to the one you say it does. WILLE needs the power to kill god; to that end they build Wunder. They need a source of (infinite-ish) power for Wunder; to that end they conceive Operation US and, though not without a hitch or two, retake Unit 01. One could interpret WILLE's slightly clumsy handling of the Shinji situation as a concession that they weren't expecting him to be inside it at all, at least not in any recognizably human form.

View Original PostBagheera wrote:Because they're not stupid and, as I noted, they're mad at him. Drugging him would be pointless, but I agree they should have locked him up sans collar. Piloting's not an issue if they don't stick him in a plug, and if he's locked up he can't get to one of his own volition.


He is locked up when Rei Q breaks him out, they did that just fine. But why would drugging him be pointless? They've established that they have what appears to be Shinji's body, inhabited by something which possesses Shinji's memories, but god knows what else could be inside his head...and it turns out, possessing Shinji's memories is no guarantee that Shinji isn't basically insane, irrational, and unpredictably self- and other-destructive. I'd still have considered it to be a more or less proportionate response if they encased him in concrete, really. If they let him stay awake just so that they could berate him, that actually is pretty foolish, so I assume that at least the ostensible purpose for which they let him remain awake, aware, and ambulatory was study. But if that actually happens, the movie forgot about it.
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Postby Bagheera » Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:20 pm

Az: Your second point addresses your first. The fact that they didn't study him suggests they brought him back just because. There's no other reason to bring him back.
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Postby Conspicuous » Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:36 pm

[The quotation below is from a post that has since been split out as part of a tangent. - Monk]
View Original PostBagheera wrote:Not in NME, she isn't. Hell, that wasn't even really true in NGE.

Everyone who? That doesn't seem to be a very common sentiment in threads around here.

I meant that to Gendo, Yui is still irreplaceable. While he may care more for his other goals in Rebuild, it's pretty obvious that he still desperately wishes to reunite with her.

And I was mostly talking about WILLE (also Gendo, but he was always like that).

Honestly, I would expect that in fourteen years of hell on earth and involving an outright war against NERV, human culture and interpersonal interactions would be significantly changed.
I mean, pretty much everyone at WILLE would be pretty hardened. Taking harsh truths to the face would be just business as usual for them.
They probably treat Shinji like that because they don't really care enough to spin a series of lies to keep him calm. That would just be too much effort to deal with. Keeping him in line with a jail cell, and a choker that will blow his head off should he unexpectedly escape is more than enough insurance to prevent him from causing trouble, right?

Of course, the best sort of insurance would've been to just blow his head off when they found him in the Entry Plug, but apparently, they're still not cold enough to do that just yet. That's just about all they'll give him, though. They won't rely on any sort of emotional appear to keep him in line, just hard, physical security measures.

They're more reliable than people.

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Postby ElMariachi » Wed Jul 31, 2013 7:08 pm

@ Azathoth : like I said, what happened at the beginning of the movie was pretty much inevitable, there was simply too much information WILLE had to give him in too little time before Mark.09 appeared. It's not that Shinji ran away from reality because he didn't liked it, but because it was so pants on heads crazy that it's impossible that he would believe it, especially since "Rei" appeared right in front of him to rescue him just after Misato told him that she's "no more", from here there was nothing that told him that Misato wasn't lying about everything else, time skip included : it's only when he saw the ruins of NERV HQ that he realized that 14 years had really passed since his last memory.
And when he goes to see Rei, he asks her why Misato is fighting his father and not the Angel... in his mind, the ANgel War was still ongoing and NERV are still the good guys!

And if he was always asking about Rei while in WILLE, it was because getting her out of Zeruel's core is the last thing he remember doing before ending in this insane world, so of course he will ask what happened to her.

Finally, drugging him wouldn't had changed anything : Mark.09 was basically taking a stroll on the Wunder's roof, and could very easily punch an hole on every room of the quarantine zone until she found Shinji. Worst, had WILLE drugged him, Gendo would have a blank slate to manipulate him to his whims.

The big problem is that we weren't in WILLE's heads : we don't know why they settled to put him a bomb collar specially designed for an humanoid Angel, what they intended to do with him and what they are punishing him for, Kaworu says it's because he blew up the world, but the elements shown in the movie don't fit with the N3I we saw at the end of 2.0.
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