Kyoko's Soul

[Monk Ed]

Kyoko's screaming her line in the second/last time, yes. Which is exactly what I mentioned only a page or two back.

Oh so that's the vaunted screamed line. It didn't sound like screaming to me, it sounded more like desperate, quiet-but-high-pitched, scared pleading.

Please pay attention to posts, folks!

How was I supposed to know that the thing I heard that sounded to me like a child's voice was actually a really, really high-pitched voice of a woman?

So that's Kyoko's voice... I find it hilarious that there does happen to be a child voice mixed in there as well anyway. (Or is there, even? Because if there is, I don't hear it anymore.)

Addendum: That high-pitched voice (now presumably Kyoko's) interrupts another line being spoken, by "good" Kyoko. That setup only makes sense if those are indeed two halves of Kyoko arguing with each other, because a flashback isn't going to interrupt a live line. The more (and more, and more, and more) I listen to this, the more it sounds like those have to be two independent halves of Kyoko arguing with each other. Bad Kyoko's first "Please die with me!" comes very prominently out of my right speaker before being answered promptly by Good Kyoko from the left speaker. Combined with Bad Kyoko shortly thereafter interrupting Good Kyoko with a more screeched and desperate (as if the last gasp of their fight?) "Please die with me!" suggests a battle between two active entities rather than an active entity battling with a mere echo from another's memories.

[Sailor Star Dust]

why is she so damn happy?

Asuka discovered Kyoko in Eva-02, her mother loved her all along, and the good outweighted/overcame the bad. We've been through this already in this thread.

Monk Ed: I hope you now see exactly why this thread is so for some of the old-timers!

[Legendary]

Asuka discovered Kyoko in Eva-02, her mother loved her all along

How does this imply that Kyoko's bad soul was in there?

[Sailor Star Dust]

Read Monk Ed's post. And more importantly, rewatch the sequence in Japanese (Renewal if you can find it), subbed. Seriously, it should help.

[Legendary]

I should be going to bed, but sadly I'm too stupid to. Still, that isn't much of an argument either. Asuka is at incredibly high synch with Kyoko throughout EoE. There is no reason not to conclude that the things she thinks cannot be heard by Kyoko, especially since Yui seems to be able to do the same thing with Shinji when he's stuck in Leliel and when he's stuck in her. And of course, the flashback argument is specifically arguing that Asuka is remembering her terrible mother and that the maternal bit is specifically trying to argue it down.

[Monk Ed]

I should be going to bed, but sadly I'm too stupid to. Still, that isn't much of an argument either. Asuka is at incredibly high synch with Kyoko throughout EoE. There is no reason not to conclude that the things she thinks cannot be heard by Kyoko, especially since Yui seems to be able to do the same thing with Shinji when he's stuck in Leliel and when he's stuck in her. And of course, the flashback argument is specifically arguing that Asuka is remembering her terrible mother and that the maternal bit is specifically trying to argue it down.

The oft-invoked Occam's razor favors simplicity in what we are shown over simplicity in what is not shown. The former is what informs the latter. If the most direct interpretation of what we are shown* indicates that there's two active pieces of a soul arguing with each other, then the backstory is what must be changed to accomodate that.

*"What we are shown", to be clear, includes the entirety of the series, not just an individual scene. I say this now to forestall people saying "Oh, so according to your logic, Lilith really IS Adam in all the scenes where she is presented as such but then magically becomes Lilith once she is called such huh huh yeah right."

Yes, having two pieces of a soul in there, one of which was put in later, does require that extra convolution that someone went and fetched the remainder from Kyoko's remains. But that's exactly what the scene suggests. The facts of what we see are perfectly free to inject whatever extra convolutions they damn well please into the backstory. That's what backstory is: the complicated implications stemming from the little bits and pieces we are shown. Reinterpreting what we are shown just for the sake of keeping a neater and simpler backstory is putting the cart before the horse. Besides, what we are shown is not even contradicting anything that happened in the backstory, it's just adding one extra event that had otherwise not been implied. This is where it is being implied.

Also: I have heard the argument that the alleged "past" Kyoko is hinted as being such because she is repeating verbatim lines from Asuka's memory. I don't remember Asuka remembering Kyoko screaming those words.

Also: When you think about it, why would Seele/Nerv not fetch the rest of Kyoko's soul to put it in there? They had the technology, so if the Eva in fact works better with a whole soul instead of a partial soul (as indicated by problems that Rei apparently has in operating her own Eva), they'd need a decent reason not to retrieve the rest of Kyoko's soul. They might even have found out from tests using Asuka herself (prior to or shortly after Kyoko's death) that the partial soul that was already in there was not good enough.

[Legendary]

(as indicated by problems that Rei apparently has in operating her own Eva)

Eva-00's soul being Rei isn't confirmed either, so you need a second theory to explain why they would do this in the first place. Further, we come across a problem here: At the time Asuka was being tested, she was the only Eva pilot. Rei doesn't pilot until 2009 at the earliest. Shinji doesn't pilot until 2015. Asuka probably did have low results at first, but it was either six weeks or six months before Rei started synching with Eva-00 and it's likely based on their expectations from Shinji that Asuka's training worked out the same way. Further, in this environment, where Asuka actually is the test pilot, it is highly unlikely that there'd be any chain of events where a group of Nerv workers say "Hmm, the part of Kyoko that loves the shit out of Asuka isn't synching with her well enough. Let's add the bit that had no recognition of her daughter!" That's just asking for trouble.

As for Asuka's remembering things louder than they were, it's still reasonable enough in a flashback for dramatic purposes. Also, crazy!Kyoko gets two lines in at the end of the sequence. She makes no appearance beforehand, and Eva-02 fights like crazy to protect Asuka afterward. If it's flashback!Kyoko, Asuka is the one who ultimately chooses to move forward and ignore that memory. If it's crazy!Kyoko, it means that it's Kyoko who deals with the conflict, which, as Bagheera has noted, negates Asuka's growth.

[Sachi]

I would once again like to address another important issue here: what evidence is there to suggest that Unit-02 ever struggled with it's two halves? Thematically, it would be quite important that this struggle was resolved in the lake scene, but no struggle was showcased in the series so it carries no weight. However, it would bear much more impact that the resolved struggle was between Asuka and her mother, as Asuka is the central character in the scene. Asuka has a past with her mother; it's showcased within the series as an essential part of Asuka's inner-conflict; it's resolved and Asuka comes out with that powerful revival of confidence and emotional last stand.

The only evidence supporting the idea of a patched-up Kyoko soul is the fact there existed two parts that may need to be patched-up.

[Monk Ed]

I would once again like to address another important issue here: what evidence is there to suggest that Unit-02 ever struggled with it's two halves? Thematically, it would be quite important that this struggle was resolved in the lake scene, but no struggle was showcased in the series so it carries no weight. However, it would bear much more impact that the resolved struggle was between Asuka and her mother, as Asuka is the central character in the scene. Asuka has a past with her mother; it's showcased within the series as an essential part of Asuka's inner-conflict; it's resolved and Asuka comes out with that powerful revival of confidence and emotional last stand.

The only evidence supporting the idea of a patched-up Kyoko soul is the fact there existed two parts that may need to be patched-up.

Thematically, the problem we might have here is that Asuka would be "reconciling" with only the part of her mother she likes, rather than the totality of her.

On the other hand, I can foresee the counterargument of "Yeah but what she must reconcile with is her memory of her mother, which already includes the bad stuff. Then the way we could interpret the scene is that Asuka learns that there was a part of her mother at all that truly loved her and that's what gives her the strength to overcome those bad memories on her own -- even if the 'whole' mother is forever gone. Furthermore, if, as you suggest, what Asuka is supposed to be reconciling with is indeed her mother and not herself, then Asuka's not really solving anything at all. If what she encounters in the entry plug is her complete mother, then the interpretation of the scene which indicates that also indicates that Asuka did not and could not solve her problems on her own but rather had to be 'rescued' by another person, her mother."

To which I respond "...Straw man has a point."



Edit: Figured it out while brushing my teeth.

To which I respond "Whether or not Asuka is being 'saved' is a matter of interpretation whether that's her whole mother in there or not. I say that in either case, she is still ultimately solving her problem herself, because she is still the one choosing to respond to that love with acceptance.

"But if what she is accepting is the warmth of the love of her complete mother, bad-side and all, I find that more thematically powerful and pure than if the impetus for Asuka's self-resolution was a kind of unrealistically unvarnished love that her complete mother would never have shown."

Take that, me!

[Bagheera]

Read Monk Ed's post. And more importantly, rewatch the sequence in Japanese (Renewal if you can find it), subbed. Seriously, it should help.

It doesn't. The sub and the script you provided don't address the yell/high-pitched voice we hear after "Don't kill her!" at all. If that's not a laugh it's a bunch of shrill, stacatto words that sound damn similar to me.

And I'm not getting anything mixed up. Reichu noted infantile crying and laughing on the storyboard, and I asked her to elaborate. That's it.

@Monk Ed: I think things would be the same regardless of whether there were two entities in there or if one of the voices was in her head. And don't forget the sequence of images we see at the end; it's clear something's going on in her head at the time.

Also, on the dual Kyoko issue: again, don't forget that having two aspects of Kyoko in the plug does not necessarily mean the second aspect is the recovered soul from crazy!Kyoko; it could also be the result of breakdown from the rape. This makes more sense since we see how badly it affects her and her reaction is noted by Kyoko in 24. By your own argument Occam prefers this approach to the soul harvesting business.

And stop arguing with yourself, it's confusing.

@Sachi: I think you have the right of it here.

@Symbv: Found a YouTube link here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owO8mKh6PuA&feature=related

The bit I'm talking about is at 1:17 - 1:19. That part isn't translated in that sub or the ZX sub, and it isn't in the script SSD provided a few pages back.

@Debate in general: It occurs to me that we might be overthinking this. Don't you folks ever argue with yourselves? You'll think about doing something, and then say something like "no, don't do that you idiot, that's stupid!" I think we all do this, and we're (mostly) rational people. At the least we don't have composite souls that have been patched together after disastrous experiments involving giant robots. What if Kyoko's feeling suicidal after the rape, knows Asuka feels the same, and, in a moment of weakness, says "die with me" before chastising herself and moving on? That is to say, what if there aren't two Kyokos in there after all, but rather one Kyoko with an internal monologue we're privy to on account of Asuka finally being able to sync with her?

This probably won't satisfy most of us, but you can't beat it for simplicity!

[Seele00TextOnly]

...

[Sailor Star Dust]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owO8mKh6PuA The bit I'm talking about is at 1:17 - 1:19. That part isn't translated in that sub or the ZX sub, and it isn't in the script SSD provided a few pages back.

Guess what? The 1:17-1:19 mark IS the second time we hear Kyoko's "Isshou ni...Shinde choudai (Please die with me)" when she's sounding panicked/screaming! Why it wasn't subtitled in this version you linked to, it beats me. That video must be Mangle's subtitles (the ZX version which uses Mangle's subtitles for god knows whatever reason even though they have the Renewal visuals/audio in their release) then. I know for a fact that the A2000A Renewal subtitles include Kyoko's lines, that's where my transcript from earlier came from.

KYOKO'S VOICE: Please, die with me. You shouldn't die. Stay alive. Please, die with me! Don't kill her! Stay alive.

And as far as I know, the only 'subs for Renewal Death/EoE are ZX's version and A2000A (who fansubbed ALL of Renewal), unless there was a new subtitle translation in recent years that I'm not aware of.

So yes, it WAS accounted for in the transcript/subtitles. And thanks for completely ignoring my point of "please rewatch the scene". All you're doing is proving my point exactly as well as making me feel like I'm wasting my time by you stubbornly neglecting the points I'm bringing up.

As I mentioned before, the first rule of Eva analysis is to already have a grasp of the scene(s) you're analyzing. This includes the dialogue/transcript (Gainax Script and/or Storyboards if handy), images of the corresponding dialogue as well as rewatching the scene(s) in question one or two times (or hell, five!) to have a good idea of just what you're debating. Debate or analyze Eva in any other fashion, and you're bound to miss a point or two for yourself and others. Analyzing the recommended way WILL save you from any potential embarrassment in front of other fans. Trust me, I've been there with going about things the wrong way. I know.

I'm not trying to sound high and mighty, I'm stating the god's honest truth. While I in no way consider myself an expert analyzer when it comes to Eva, I know a thing or two. I know somewhat of how/why the fandom works the way it does with why the "old-timers" (or maybe "senpai" is better ) reached the conclusions they did that have stood the test of time for so many years waaaay back in the fandom's early ANF days.

[CJD]

Addendum: That high-pitched voice (now presumably Kyoko's) interrupts another line being spoken, by "good" Kyoko. That setup only makes sense if those are indeed two halves of Kyoko arguing with each other, because a flashback isn't going to interrupt a live line.

In any other series I might agree, but I contest that during Evangelion. I still feel that what we hear/see is Kyoko in 02 overpowering the depression of Asuka, which has it's root in her mother's insanity and subsequent depression.

Thematically, the problem we might have here is that Asuka would be "reconciling" with only the part of her mother she likes, rather than the totality of her.


<trimmed>

The way I see it, is Asuka isn't so much reconciling with "only the part she likes", as she is realizing there's good and bad parts of her mother. A theme that's continued in EoE, during Shinji's experiences in instrumentality, is that people have parts you like, and parts you don't. He must come to accept that with Misato when he sees her sexual relationship with Kaiji.

Another example of this, from the audience's perspective, is with Gendo. Throughout the series the audience sees Gendo as a rough person at best, and at worst a despicable human who will do anything to accomplish his goals whatever the cost. While you're opinion on him is perspective, he isn't shed in the best light regardless. Then come instrumentality, it's revealed he's not so different from Shinji. He, too, runs away from his problems, not believing that anyone (Shinji) could love him. In this case, instead of coming to terms with the "bad", we must come to terms with the "good".

I know somewhat of how/why the fandom works the way it does with why the "old-timers" (or maybe "senpai" is better ) reached the conclusions they did that have stood the test of time for so many years waaaay back in the fandom's early ANF days.

I understand what you're trying to say, but to be fair, standing the test of time isn't evidence of proof.

[Bagheera]

Guess what? The 1:17-1:19 mark IS the second time we hear Kyoko's "Isshou ni...Shinde choudai (Please die with me)" when she's sounding panicked/screaming! Why it wasn't subtitled in this version you linked to, it beats me. That video must be Mangle's subtitles (the ZX version which uses Mangle's subtitles for god knows whatever reason even though they have the Renewal visuals/audio in their release) then. I know for a fact that the A2000A Renewal subtitles include Kyoko's lines, that's where my transcript from earlier came from.

Your transcript is in error! Look, your transcript says this:

KYOKO'S VOICE: Please, die with me. You shouldn't die. Stay alive. Please, die with me! Don't kill her! Stay alive.

The line I'm talking about comes five seconds after "Don't kill her!" I'm sorry if this is frustrating for you, but the script you provided DOES NOT MATCH UP with the sequence in question, and that's what's causing all the confusion. It's exactly the same when watching the ZX version.

I don't know who provided that script. I don't know who did the translation. But the dialogue as written there does not appear to match up with what's actually spoken in the scene if the bit I mentioned is in fact the second "die with me". You might wanna address that before you start lecturing people about how to do things.

So yes, it WAS accounted for in the transcript/subtitles. And thanks for completely ignoring my point of "please rewatch the scene".

I did rewatch the scene. Several times. That's why I found the damn error in your script!

Wherein you completely cave to the other side? The heck?

Eh? Not at all. I still think the soul harvesting business is nonsense. But it's certainly possible that Kyoko is shouting herself down as much as Asuka's memories. I like the memories approach -- I think it makes for potent storytelling, and I think it works thematically -- but I'm not about to say it's the only good explanation for the scene because it's not. There are other approaches to explaining what's going on that don't involve the tortured backflips of the patched soul theory.

To postulate that the scene is showing Kyoko in fullblown Gollum mode is completely absurd thematically and conceptually when compared to the alternate flashback speculation. The scene is about Asuka, about why Asuka is so hurt (the mindrape brought all her hurtful past moreso to the serfuce culminating with the 'die with me' line from her mother) and about how she is helped by her mother out of it.

There is a weird element, though: only the first "die with me!" is shouted down; AFAICT the second one occurs five seconds later and goes unchallenged. Does that mean that aspect of Kyoko has lost, and is now simply ignored? I dunno. But the sequence is interesting regardless.

Again, remember the visuals that we do have. Asuka's mother greets her smiling with open arms; Asuka is elated. The crucial character undergoing crucial growth and transformation here is Asuka, not Kyoko. We get a static shot of the offscreen character that is barely a presence in the series, and we get a literal transformation shot from the young Asuka to the adult one. The scene is about her. It's really that simple.

Well, sure. I agree that the narrative works better if Asuka is choosing the Kyoko in reality over the Kyoko in her mind, but I think that works equally well whether the Kyoko in her mind is actually in her mind, or is actually in the Eva, or is just a fragment of a Kyoko broken by the mindrape. As long as Asuka is making that choice the nature of the second voice is kinda irrelevant.

[NemZ]

It occurs to me that the voices could be BOTH in Asuka's head AND coming from Kyoko. For example, Shinji's experience within Leliel, while absorbed in 01, and later in instrumentality seems to indicate that such communication between souls often takes the form of a memory fragment relavant to the implied message.

[Bagheera]

It occurs to me that the voices could be BOTH in Asuka's head AND coming from Kyoko. For example, Shinji's experience within Leliel, while absorbed in 01, and later in instrumentality seems to indicate that such communication between souls often takes the form of a memory fragment relavant to the implied message.

Yeah, that's a good point. Heck, the P3II sequences are nothing but memories altered to explore character interactions in real time.

[tehprognoob]

Character development-wise, if Asuka was actually choosing the "fragment of her mother" that she likes, then she'd be taking a very significant step on the road to overcoming her problems. Since EoE is supposed to be the culmination of the story where the characters at least come to terms with their problems (as opposed to the two-episode therapy at the end of EoTV), I think that it might be fine to think that maybe Asuka realizes that though her mother is bat-shit insane, there's still a part of Kyoko that still loves her daughter. Deep down, I really don't think that Asuka cares about the bat-shit part. Hence, she goes and chooses to support and attach herself to Mommy!Kyoko. As a result, she takes an active step to make herself happier. (I'm proud of her for that. )

As for Unit 02 not going berserk, as Asuka herself mentioned, it was designed for more or less conventional (Eva-wise) combat. Now, since the MPEs were built for Instrumentality, their collective conventional combat capability is lower. ([s:1fca4m6v]Lance[/s:1fca4m6v]hack-sourcing and respawn notwithstanding) So perhaps Unit 02 was built not to be capable of awakening, and was supposed to rely more on her highly skilled pilot instead?

[NemZ]

Why would you point out a problem in your own post instead of just fixing it?

[tehprognoob]

I have the Shinji problem :3

I don't see what's wrong with my post; in fact I think that it's okay, but a little part of me tells me to put something negative in there.

You can just ignore that edit.
EDIT: removed

[Bagheera]

I'm confused now. SSD just told you that the 1:17 - 1:19 part is in fact Kyoko screaming "Isshou ni... shindechoudai!". Listening to it more carefully myself, I can confirm it. I think what you're hearing as a "childish laugh" is the "isshou ni".

Yes, I understand that. I'm just noting that the script she provided does not match up with what's actually heard in the show (specifically, it gets things out of order, claiming both "die with me"s comes before "Don't kill her", when in fact the second "die with me" comes a bit later).

Or are you agreeing now that that's in fact what you heard, and just explaining how you came to be in error? I made the same mistake, except I heard it as a terrified little girl rather than a laughing one.

Pretty much. I was confused because we were told that was the second "die with me" when SSD's script indicated it should have come much earlier.