NTE as a clear message plus embellishment

[adelfino]

After thinking on several plot details over and over again, trying to make a sense of it *all*, it's getting clear to me that NTE (as NGE, EOE before it) is a clear message ("go out, connect, expect pain, get over it"), and all else (images, wording, mythos) is just cool stuff that just doesn't have a reason, but it's there like a frame for a picture (the message).

I mean, Imaginary Evangelion, Black Lilith, First angel becoming the thirteenth, Failures of infinity, Doors of Guf, Anti-Universe, Evangelion-sized skulls, creating a spear out of Wunder, etc., etc., etc. It's difficult to believe there's actually a story where all this elements make "sense", and that Anno wrote it from beginning to end.

Does anyone feel the same?

I still like it, of course, and it makes me feel better believing this and not that there's actually stuff there that I'm not seeing.

[AdamMalkovitch]

I definitely think there was a big shift between 1.0 and 2.0, NTE sounds like it was originally supposed to be a remake of the original series as movies, but with CG elements and using the original plans Anno scrapped when he decided he wanted to focus more on the psychological aspect/the team started running out of time and possibly money. But I think once he started 2.0, he had a basic idea in his head of what he wanted to do. 2, 3, and 3+1 all feel very similar, and there's very little between them that contradicts another one [although there supposedly being a "Golgotha Base" which built the Dummy System, as well as the Golgotha Object in the Anti Universe fuck you I'm not calling it Minus Space, is a bit sussy]. I know how it goes when you're writing a gigantic story and want to change something partway through, you've gotta make sure the change lines up with previously established rules and tones and everything. But, Anno is an ultra perfectionist with autism and a hyperfixation on his works, so it would surprise me if during my current rewatch I find a bunch of stuff that clashes.

[adelfino]

But, Anno is an ultra perfectionist with autism and a hyperfixation on his works, so it would surprise me if during my current rewatch I find a bunch of stuff that clashes.

Just to be clear: I'm not talking about inconsistencies, but stuff that has been added because it's cool, and there's no underlying explanation that actually connects all of it. Like the Nebuchadnezzar's Key, the walking failures of infinity, the third angel being kept alive, the in-orbit EVA-01.

I think it's there just for us to say: woa! look at that! so cool!

[Archer]

Some of those things DO have significance. Maybe not on a particularly deep metaphorical sense, but at the very least on a plot/story level.

The Key of Nebuchadnezzar is basically just an AU Adam's Embryo and serves as a means for Gendo to transcend his humanity in his quest for Instrumentality. The Failures themselves are also part of the ongoing Instrumentality process, which is explained way better in 3.0+1.0 than it ever was in EoE: they're the "purified" bodies of humans who will transcend to godhood with Another Impact or 4th Impact or Final Impact or whatever the fuck Gendo wants to call it. Eva-01 is in orbit presumably because Gendo wanted him safe, far away from WILLE's grasp, until he was needed for whatever the Instrumentality plan was (though unfortunately for him, Misato got her hands on Shinji first and he instead had to kidnap him from the Wunder).

The third angel though, I got nuthin' lol. And yeah, I think a lot of the lore just gets confusing and bogs down the story (seriously, fuck the spears, I have no idea why there's so much emphasis placed on them when I have no idea what they could possibly represent, they're just big pointy sticks bro)

[The Dragon Mask]

The third angel though, I got nuthin' lol. And yeah, I think a lot of the lore just gets confusing and bogs down the story (seriously, fuck the spears, I have no idea why there's so much emphasis placed on them when I have no idea what they could possibly represent, they're just big pointy sticks bro)

Just about spears, I feel like this movie made it clear they represent a wish/will/fate. They must be wielded by a soul, and represent the ability to change the fates written down in the book of life (or other Apocrypha). It seems Kaworu had a hand in writing them this time as Kaji says he wrote Shinji into the book of life. Anyways the Spear of Gaius represents the will of the current world to continue living on, and so it stands to reason the other Spears somehow represent prior wills/wishes/fates. Perhaps Cassius was the will of Lilith, and the 4 Adams Spears were different wills of Adam/the angels to live on as well.

[aboose]

Just to be clear: I'm not talking about inconsistencies, but stuff that has been added because it's cool, and there's no underlying explanation that actually connects all of it. Like the Nebuchadnezzar's Key, the walking failures of infinity, the third angel being kept alive, the in-orbit EVA-01.

I think it's there just for us to say: woa! look at that! so cool!

I don't necessarily agree with this. The NTE series heavily sets up the concept that you can use the spears as escapism to recreate the world however you want it. Imaginary Evangelion is the representation of that narcissistic escapism.

I think you're not being very fair, first of all because it's been days since the movie came out and there hasn't been enough time for people to wrap their head around these ideas.

[Warren Peace]

In the recent documentary, Anno credits his father for his own fascination with "incompletion." His dad lost his leg in a freak accident which greatly impacted his life. So Anno finds value in broken/mysterious/incomplete concepts.

Shinji's lack of understanding drives all of his problems, so it's natural that the series deals with obscured meaning.

[Archer]

Just about spears, I feel like this movie made it clear they represent a wish/will/fate. They must be wielded by a soul, and represent the ability to change the fates written down in the book of life (or other Apocrypha). It seems Kaworu had a hand in writing them this time as Kaji says he wrote Shinji into the book of life. Anyways the Spear of Gaius represents the will of the current world to continue living on, and so it stands to reason the other Spears somehow represent prior wills/wishes/fates. Perhaps Cassius was the will of Lilith, and the 4 Adams Spears were different wills of Adam/the angels to live on as well.

I like the idea of that, but the execution falls completely flat for me. It starts in 3.0 with all the nonsense about the two different spears that aren’t actually different spears that won’t work because of that, and then in 3.0+1.0 Gendo just makes two more fucking spears for the ritual, but then apparently he wants there to be NO spears (…so no one else can do anything to stop him I assume?) and it’s all just a big mess. This is one aspect where I think the excessive amounts of lore actively fucks with the emotional/metaphorical reading, because by the time Gaius shows up I’ve already completely turned my brain off to the concept of spears and assumed they’re just some dumb lore shit I don’t care about. Your explanation makes sense, and I like it, but I feel that if that’s the interpretation Anno intended, it gets completely muddled by the confusion surrounding the other four spears.

Also, what the fuck IS the book of life? I only recall Kaworu using it once (“Shinji, our names are next to each other on the book of life”) and assumed he was speaking completely metaphorically i.e. their fates are intertwined. You’re telling me it’s a real metaphysical construct that actually exists?

[evaunit13]

I've been watching a lot of David Lynch, both his works (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet) and interviews on his process (this channel has a lot of them), and at some level the nonsensical parts make total surreal sense with no explanation. Considering a lot of parallels between Lynch and Anno (returning to finish their most famous work, a TV series, in a theatrical format [Twin Peaks S3 was shot as one really long movie], concluding them with a very meta self-referential acknowledgement of themselves as fictional), I think adopting the sentiment of conveying a mood rather than a message is appropriate.

Take the EoE beach scene: you could dissect whether it's Shikinami or Soryu or whether it's in the past or the future or whether it's real or not, but I don't think anyone who's seen EoE didn't think immediately of EoE, which seems likely what the creators were intending.

[InstrumentalityOne]

Does anyone feel the same?

I still like it, of course, and it makes me feel better believing this and not that there's actually stuff there that I'm not seeing.

I definitely saw the movie like that too.

I will even go as far as taking a step further that the fact that a lot of the technobabble has only gotten worse was most likely sort of intentional on Anno's part to move away from the embellishment by making it totally incomprehensible.

I suspect that he got a little bit frustrated that people found Eva to be complex or read far too much into the significance of the set-dressing, rather than the human story of understanding themselves and others, living and deceased at the center of it all.

[adelfino]

Does anyone feel the same?
I suspect that he got a little bit frustrated that people found Eva to be complex or read far too much into the significance of the set-dressing, rather than the human story of understanding themselves and others, living and deceased at the center of it all.

Yeah, I agree. Perhaps all this technobubble/lore is a way of Anno trying to guide us back to the human story by completely screwing any meaning that one can think he has hidden in regards of the lore.

Makes sense. Actually, I believe, makes the trip more enjoyable.

[Archer]

I…. Disagree with that approach if that’s what he was going for, because I believe it resulted in a worse end product than if none of that shit was there in the first place. But I can’t say it didn’t work on me, lol. It certainly made me completely write off anything lore and technobabble related as irrelevant useless bullshit and to instead focus on the human/emotional aspects of the story, and I honestly think I got a lot out of that experience. I was honestly kinda meh on the movie immediately after finishing it, and didn’t start to really like it until thinking about it for a day or two.

[Axx°N N.]

I've been watching a lot of David Lynch, both his works (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet) and interviews on his process (this channel has a lot of them), and at some level the nonsensical parts make total surreal sense with no explanation. Considering a lot of parallels between Lynch and Anno (returning to finish their most famous work, a TV series, in a theatrical format [Twin Peaks S3 was shot as one really long movie], concluding them with a very meta self-referential acknowledgement of themselves as fictional), I think adopting the sentiment of conveying a mood rather than a message is appropriate.

Take the EoE beach scene: you could dissect whether it's Shikinami or Soryu or whether it's in the past or the future or whether it's real or not, but I don't think anyone who's seen EoE didn't think immediately of EoE, which seems likely what the creators were intending.

As a huge Lynch fan, I disagree with the comparison almost entirely.

You mention mood, and that's something that typifies Lynch to me. But NTE? The camera is never still enough for mood to register. Compare the technobabble that wastes screentime in Shin to Part 8 of S3 of TP, which has almost no dialogue for the entirety of 50 minutes of pure visual language.

If the intention was to get you to tune out, that's not mood building. If the intention, as posited in the rest of the thread, was to do away with anything extraneous (like world-building?) in order to focus on character and theme, I don't think it did that, because of how often the dialogue is explanatory to the point of being characterless, and how little of the action has a sense of stakes.

[Settie]

One thing that would've helped the spears technobabble was if they didn't have an intrinsic "value" but were rather reflections of the wielder. It would explain all the morphing spears if they simply reacted to the mental state of whomever used it. So it wasn't so much that cassius magically changed to longinus without explanation, but that either Gendos or more likely Shinjis despair morphed the cassius (hope) spear into a longinus (despair), and also how Shinji in Tuat was able to morph cassius back to cassius.

Black moon splitting in half creating two spears, gaius spear suddenly being made, longinus and cassius morphing . They would be more akin to user accounts in the same PC, they use the same base but are different based on who uses them. Something like that would've made the whole spear business much easier to understand and be less confusing.

[evaunit13]

You mention mood, and that's something that typifies Lynch to me. But NTE? The camera is never still enough for mood to register. Compare the technobabble that wastes screentime in Shin to Part 8 of S3 of TP, which has almost no dialogue for the entirety of 50 minutes of pure visual language.

If the intention was to get you to tune out, that's not mood building. If the intention, as posited in the rest of the thread, was to do away with anything extraneous (like world-building?) in order to focus on character and theme, I don't think it did that, because of how often the dialogue is explanatory to the point of being characterless, and how little of the action has a sense of stakes.

Why does stillness == mood?
In Eva, technobabble and flashing montages are and always have been its mood. Exposition is par for the course for anime as a medium compared to live-action.
The still frames of the elevator and Eva 01 vs Kaworu were not the norm.

[Axx°N N.]

Why does stillness == mood?
In Eva, technobabble and flashing montages are and always have been its mood. Exposition is par for the course for anime as a medium compared to live-action.
The still frames of the elevator and Eva 01 vs Kaworu were not the norm.

I didn't mean complete stillness or still-frames, or even slowness, but that NTE's camera has a range that, at the low end, begins at a certain speed I find too fast to be effective. Compare the way the camera pans up GNR to give a sense of weight and importance in EoE to the way the camera seems to never want to dwell for long on CGI-GNR, or on anything really. The (super-fast) hyper-cuts in EoE's instrumentality had a mood because they were working mostly with the music and what dialogue there was was evocative. But in Shin when we get trippy acid visuals they're just quick-going background noise while Gendo is delivering the same exposition he's giving in other scenes. Even in the village half of the film the camera never settles enough on the environment, instead it's always a quick montage, or in the background as you're being advised what to know or feel by exposition. The opening of the film post-credits, they spend 1 minute in a montage of a huge stretch of landscape that could have been effective visuals and had a sense of environment if it was treated as a place.

What I meant is subjective, though. I personally felt like Shin never impressed a mood on me as a viewer.

[evaunit13]

SPOILER: Show

I didn't mean complete stillness or still-frames, or even slowness, but that NTE's camera has a range that, at the low end, begins at a certain speed I find too fast to be effective. Compare the way the camera pans up GNR to give a sense of weight and importance in EoE to the way the camera seems to never want to dwell for long on CGI-GNR, or on anything really. The (super-fast) hyper-cuts in EoE's instrumentality had a mood because they were working mostly with the music and what dialogue there was was evocative. But in Shin when we get trippy acid visuals they're just quick-going background noise while Gendo is delivering the same exposition he's giving in other scenes. Even in the village half of the film the camera never settles enough on the environment, instead it's always a quick montage, or in the background as you're being advised what to know or feel by exposition. The opening of the film post-credits, they spend 1 minute in a montage of a huge stretch of landscape that could have been effective visuals and had a sense of environment if it was treated as a place.

What I meant is subjective, though. I personally felt like Shin never impressed a mood on me as a viewer.

Reminder that Shin is not all of NTE. The Tokyo-3 wake-up scene in 2.0 was a useful montage, and 3.0 was arguably a lot about mood.

Also, The Return is over twice as long as all of NTE while telling essentially only a few days' worth of plot and was still probably twice as long as it ought to be. As much as I root for long takes, I will happily skip over the bar brooming scene on future rewatches.

The rest of my comparison is objective and not even debatable. It is an objective fact that these two creators appended to their TV series ~25 years later with a more filmic approach.

[Axx°N N.]

You're right, I was mostly talking about Shin. 3.0 is my favorite of them due to the mood, and I do like 2.0's montage.

It's so funny to me that in a series with so much violence, the most controversial scene is of a guy sweeping. As for me, the slower the better; I don't think NTE/Shin should've been that slow, but I do think a lot of its problems stem from the tetralogy format. I would've preferred an OVA, per the posters in that one topic.

And not to be pedantic, but I find EoE way more 'filmic' than NTE, as I understand that word. I'd describe NTE as a blockbuster first and foremost.

[baldur]

After thinking on several plot details over and over again, trying to make a sense of it *all*, it's getting clear to me that NTE (as NGE, EOE before it) is a clear message ("go out, connect, expect pain, get over it"), and all else (images, wording, mythos) is just cool stuff that just doesn't have a reason, but it's there like a frame for a picture (the message).

I mean, Imaginary Evangelion, Black Lilith, First angel becoming the thirteenth, Failures of infinity, Doors of Guf, Anti-Universe, Evangelion-sized skulls, creating a spear out of Wunder, etc., etc., etc. It's difficult to believe there's actually a story where all this elements make "sense", and that Anno wrote it from beginning to end.

Not gonna lie, the same thing can largely be said about NGE. Maybe not to quite the same extent, but still.

Also, you can definitely read into a lot of these elements and find meaning in them, but yes, it doesn't exactly fit together perfectly and was clearly not planned out from the start and is better appreciated as background scenery. I like how you phrase it, a frame for a picture.

[Archer]

Not the same thing because NGE lore was, if anything, excessively vague, meaning you could easily not even notice it if you weren’t paying attention or don’t care about that sort of stuff (e.g. me).

Rebuild lore is blatantly in your face and impossible to ignore, which makes it way more egregious when none of it actually makes any sense on a surface level or contributes much importance to the story and themes.