Unit 01's Dangly Parts

[NAveryW]

Does no one else consider it rum that, at least at some point during the production process, Evangelion Unit 01 possessed male genitalia?



Now, the movie is indeed more ambiguous:



(No, those dots aren't testes. The small red dots are moving all around Unit 01 and I happened to take the screenshot when they were perfectly aligned with Unit 01's bulge.)

Combine the presence of a lower horn and completely non-feminine proportions with a womb metaphor and an umbilical cable and we have... a hermaphrodite? A hermaphrodite like Satan? A hermaphrodite like Adam was in the Kabbalah? A hermaphrodite with absolutely no religious significance whatsoever? Just a male who may or may not have the soul of a female? Or just an artist who was completely out of the loop?

[oOoOoOo]

I'm not sure exactly how the secret cabal went about producing these creatures, but I imagine reproductive organs were not as necessary as ass-kicking potential. It is possible the Evas are sexless, or simply engineered to have whatever traits are useful, more like a hodge-podge of features rather than "male" or "female" or even "intersex".

[Carling]

I thought it was just EVA-01 and Rei combining, like their cores or something

[NAveryW]

I thought it was just EVA-01 and Rei combining, like their cores or something

The two big dots are the cores, yes. I was talking about the dots in the testicular area, which someone would inevitably suggest prove Unit 01 has testes if I didn't point out that the dots were only in that position for a couple of frames.

[Action_Bastard]

I don't think that is supposed to be Shogouki. I'm thinking more along the lines of Shinji, maybe a concept of him within the "Great Beyond Depth" getting Rei. Maybe it was originally intended that he not get Rei and become a "god" himself along with Unit 1.



Also, the two "testicle" dots are probably coincidence. Notice all the other random dots on Godgouki, notably the legs.

[NAveryW]

Oh, it's Unit 01. It has the glowy core and everything. And the proportions aren't anything like Shinji's. In fact, they're much more human than those of any of Eva's actual humans.

[Action_Bastard]

Eh, well, who knows then? That's all I've got...

[BulletSaint]

I think male genitalia would make sense. I've always viewed the Units as, at the very least, physically male, even with female souls.

[Azathoth]

I think male genitalia would make sense. I've always viewed the Units as, at the very least, physically male, even with female souls.

I've never viewed any of them as having biological sex at all, since they're alien life forms with no immediately visible genitalia. The only reason Lilith and Adam are personified as female is because they act as mothers to their respective derivatives.

[Sachi]

inb4 someone makes a comment about Unit-01's penis being moved and made into it's horn.

[AuraTwilight]

I thought it was pretty obvious that the Seeds (and thus the Evas by virtue of clonedom) were most likely hermaphrodites. It certainly works better than a bunch of giant females with tubes of finite, premade baby-batter.

[sephirotic]

Sexless +1 Since, sexual division is a symbolic imperfection condition of the incomplete human race something that angels don´t share with us. After all they dont need to chemically reproduce.

(Even tough futas would've been more interesting =X)

[Hyper Shinchan]

Just my 2 cent worth opinion, but in the 3rd Impact events Shinji could have merged to some degree with Eva-01 even at a physical level, giving the sexless Eva male's traits.

It is possible the Evas are sexless, or simply engineered to have whatever traits are useful, more like a hodge-podge of features rather than "male" or "female" or even "intersex".

Unfortunately testicles wouldn't be useful, actually in combat they'd be one of the more problematic weak spots and they'd cause some serious feedback to the pilot if they're hit in that place.

[Reichu]

The human penis got that way so that it could deposit semen into vaginal tracts located on other (in our case female) persons. It wouldn't be a terribly useful feature on something ostensibly designed to be (as suggested by others) a functional self-impregnating hermaphrodite. In such a beast, the sperm ducts would be more intuitively routed directly to the site of fertilization (or some such).

Which is why I think this is a more likely scenario for the unused concept:

Just my 2 cent worth opinion, but in the 3rd Impact events Shinji could have merged to some degree with Eva-01 even at a physical level, giving the sexless Eva male's traits.

Certainly, some kind of transformative merging would have been required for Eva-01 to develop a human-like face. (In 1.0, she's seen to have the same head type as in episode #20.)

Unfortunately testicles wouldn't be useful, actually in combat they'd be one of the more problematic weak spots and they'd cause some serious feedback to the pilot if they're hit in that place.

Well... testicles lying outside of the abdominal cavity in a skin pouch, anyway. (A quirk of much of the Mammalia, and to my knowledge nobody else.)

Oh, it's Unit 01. It has the glowy core and everything.

Just for the sake of pointing it out: At least in the final, there is a glowy thing that is not a core, but lies directly between the two of them. (The IPEA logo imitates/prognosticates this effect when the doors on Eva-02's containment pit open.)

[Mr. Tines]

the Seeds were most likely hermaphrodites.

Lilith seems to be producing something with legs by budding; and the creation of EVA-01 seems to bear more resemblance to budding than gestation.

[Reichu]

Lilith seems to be producing something with legs by budding; and the creation of EVA-01 seems to bear more resemblance to budding than gestation.

However Eva-01 was generated, Lilith's legs weren't the only victim. One of her arms was starting to atrophy as well. This detail gets neglected a lot, though I'm not sure how pertinent it ultimately is. It does make me think that biomass was siphoned from Lilith's limbs into the Eva, and that the Eva was actually emerging from Lilith's pelvis all along. Whether this is still 'budding' or closer to a grotesque mockery of gestation/birth is up to you.

[NAveryW]

The human penis got that way so that it could deposit semen into vaginal tracts located on other (in our case female) persons. It wouldn't be a terribly useful feature on something ostensibly designed to be (as suggested by others) a functional self-impregnating hermaphrodite.

Tell that to the long dead artists of hermaphroditic angels.

Here's some speculation that I wouldn't put too much thought into except that I did: whoever put "prostate" on the computer list of Evangelion parts was almost certainly aware of what a prostate gland is. Maybe it wasn't a goof after all. Or maybe it was. Or ma-

As for taking on Shinji's characteristics, why did the Evangelion take on the proportions of an adult human male? (Rather, aren't the adult human male proportions what the Evangelion had all along? Sort of hard to tell...) And let's not forget that we clearly see during Operation Yashima that Shinji does not have genitals.

[Reichu]

I need to stop checking this thread. I'll be gone soon, beLIEve me.

Tell that to the long dead artists of hermaphroditic angels.

Their spirits would get bored and leave before I could finish entering the whole message into the Ouija Board.

Not sure how much trust I'd put into the whole "prostate" thing. Remember that Cowper's Gland is there too, but, whoops, there's only one of 'em! Raises a bit of suspicion as to the intentionality of it all. I mean, unless they went so far as to decide that not only are Evas male, they possess one less Cowper's Gland than regular human males do.

Couldn't tell you why they decided to give the Evas more masculine proportions from the start. Suffice to say I never read much into that specific detail. From a sci-fi perspective, one look at an Eva's face will tell you that the same biological standards need not universally apply. What we think of as a "masculine" body type could in fact be considered, in hominid terms, closer to the primitive condition; there isn't anything intrinsically male about it. That is, things like fatty breasts and a pear-shaped body were not initially there to differentiate the women in a particular ape bloodline; they evolved over time.

TL;DR, the Evas aren't giant Homo sapiens; what's normal for us isn't necessarily normal for them.

And I think, in that drawing, Shinji-esque characteristics were being superimposed on an Eva-esque body type, hence the proportions. They might have been considering the inclusion of genitals because a glowing humanoid god thingy (that doesn't have a jail bait body) can get away with exposing them on the big screen.

[NAveryW]

Well, hey, if you can accidentally put "prostate" and "Cowper's gland" on a readout, you can accidentally draw genitals on a dissolving monster.

I don't think Shinji's genitalia were omitted from Jo because of censorship concerns (Sasshi's were shown in Abenobashi without incident). It was most likely because genitalia are shown so rarely in anime that it would be seen as distracting to the average filmgoer. Watchmen serves as a good case in point, though Dr. Manhattan's groin was apparently blurred in the Japanese release.

As for me, I find conspicuous removal or concealment to be more distracting. I say they should have avoided the full-body Shinji shot altogether, but Japanese audiences are probably more used to it.

[Hyper Shinchan]

Well, hey, if you can accidentally put "prostate" and "Cowper's gland" on a readout, you can accidentally draw genitals on a dissolving monster.

They could barely know what a prostate and especially a Cowper's gland is, it's not hard to believe that they could have opened a book of human anatomy and took some term randomly, genitals are a "little" more known in their structure and functions and I doubt that they've drawn them accidentally.

As for me, I find conspicuous removal or concealment to be more distracting. I say they should have avoided the full-body Shinji shot altogether, but Japanese audiences are probably more used to it.

As you said it's not rare that they're concealed but anyway Reichu was surely joking about it.