Replying in a more suitable thread to
this digression Reichu wrote:if one is to identify the two endings, "I Need You" clearly comes after "Congratulations".
Yes; since the closing scene appears to be in objective reality, that ordering follows from the hypothesis of identity. It's just that I don't see anything as positive as his decision:-
Shinji: I am I. I wish to be I.
I want to stay here!
I can stay here!
(even setting aside the issue what "here" might mean in the context of when it is uttered in ep26); nor anything in the way of obvious affirmation as:-
People: Congratulations!
GNR starts spilling LCL/blood before we see Shinji & Rei together in the LCL sea; and his reaction throughout lacks any conviction or enthusiasm - how he is shown is more like he's going with the flow (like a dead fish), giving the answers his guardian angels seem to want, rather than making a mould-shattering decision of his own.
The nearest thing to the "I am I" is his immensely more guarded farewell to Yui
Shinji:
I still don't know where to find happiness...
But I'll continue to think about whether it's good to be here... whether it was good to have been born.
But in the end, it's just realizing the obvious over and over again.
Because I am myself.
well after Complementation (and GNR) has collapsed. There is no-one left, then, to affirm his decision, to congratulate him.
Reichu wrote:The Shinji who has discovered himself in the surreal studio seems much the same as the Shinji who decides, with Rei and Kaworu's council, that Instrumentality sucks.
More that the separation into individuals is a lesser of evils
Shinji:
But that's just pretending - a self-intoxicating belief... like a prayer.
It can't possibly last forever.
Sooner or later I'll be betrayed... And they'll leave me.
Reichu wrote:If EoE abruptly ended with Shinji's personal revelation and didn't show the aftermath of 3I, would that make it any more "upbeat"?
There was no point of revelation, no "Aha!" moment, shown, so no clear moment to draw the curtain to match EoTV. Nor, in the finale, any indication that the Shinji who returned was any the better for his experiences and the revelatory insights they offered him.
Actually, the only place to have cut EoE short and left it on the upbeat would be about the time that Maya was subsumed, but that's a different topic.
Originally posted on: 14-Jun-2005, 21:14 GMT