Final Scene of End of Evangelion questions

[MisatoCrush]

After Shinji rejects the human instrumentality project he awakens next to Asuka.

He sort of starts strangling her, but she touches his face.

Eventually Asuka's eye looks down and she says something.

Question 1: So Asuka is alive at the end? Shinji did not complete the strangulation?

Question 2: Is the English translation of Asuka's last line 'How disgusting' accurate?

Question 3: How do you interpret Asuka's last line? I see it as a happy(ish) ending where she continues her friendly teasing comments about Shinji. Throughout the tv show she's teasing him and putting him down. I see her comment disgusting as: she's alive and ok physically and mentally, and they're gonna live happily ever after (as well as they can after the worldwide bedlam that just occurred.)

Question 4: Are Shinji and Asuka the new Adam and Eve?

[Lavinius]

Welcome to the forum.

1. Yes.
2. Asuka says "kimochi warui", which literally translates to "feeling sick," I think.
3. I think it means exactly what it seems to mean: Asuka is disgusted, by everything. Shinji, the world, maybe even herself still... I don't know. But if it means anything I know that they're going to be okay (and so will Rei).
4. Only in a certain sense. They are the first humans to return, yes, but anyone with the will to live can return from the Sea of Instrumentality. They aren't going to need to repopulate the Earth by themselves.

[Lord ikari shinji]

My answers are...

1.yes

2.yes, but can also be translated as "i feel sick or i dont feel well"

3.Asuka just being Asuka i think she was some what upset at Shinji for not saving etc. In the end, Shinji is still abit broken and he needs someone to help him, low to behold he get Asuka lol. I think the two of them will learn to love each other after that shitstorm.

4.maybe, i mean people can return if they will it,so thier the last two humans for now.

[Kid]

1. She is alive.

2. It is accurate as far as I know. It's one of those quirks of translation where you take a line and give it the English equivalent rather than the direct translation.

3. To me the line is just about everything. As someone who believes that the original ending takes place at some point during EoE I imagine that, like Shinji, Asuka had her own epiphany and decided to stay in the real world rather than a happy one. When she wakes up it dawns on her how sick the world she chose really is.

4. Impossible to know, but I think not.

[Mr. Tines]

1) yes
2, 3) In an interview, Miyamura had this to say about that last line

I had been thinking directors should convey their ideal how the show shold be to us. But Anno pitches us questions such as “What do you think for yourself if things went on such and such ways to you?”
After recording all lines of the movie, I was called to the studio because the final line needed to be revised. Ogata came there too as it was Asuka and Shinji's scene.
Asuka's final line was “Anta nankani korosareru nowa mappira yo!” in the film scenario. Anno didn't live with my line no matter how many times I tried. Ogata and I were at a loss how we should play what Anno wanted to express; she even tried to ride on me and choke me to meet his demand. He must have been pursuing reality.
Concerning the final line we adopted, I'm not sure whether I should say about it in fact. At last Anno asked me “Miyamura, just imagine you are sleeping in your bed and a stranger sneaks into your room. He can rape you anytime as you are asleep but he doesn't. Instead, he masturbates looking at you, when you wake up and know what he did to you. What do you think you would say?”
I had been thinking he was a strange man, but at that moment I felt disgusting. So I told him that I thought “Disgusting”. And then he sighed and said “… thought as much.” He said. “I thought as much.”

4) No. The conventional interpretation is that they are just the first to return. My own take was that they are in their own special damnation in the anti-Eden at the end of the world.

Some related threads
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/2270/Passage-of-Time-EoE-Final-Scene/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/13181/End-of-Evangelion-ending/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/8283/EoE-last-scene/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/3858/Why-did-Asuka-reincarnate-on-that-beach/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/3323/Asuka-on-the-beach-tangent-split/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/8496/Finished-watching-TV-Series-and-The-End-of-EvaQUESTIONS/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/7776/Question-About-Asuka-at-the-End-of-EoE/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/1457/The-Ending-of-the-End-of-Evangelion/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/1558/AT-the-end-of-EoE/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/459/Shinji-Asuka-and-Life-after-End-of-Evangelion-and-quot/

[MisatoCrush]

3. To me the line is just about everything. As someone who believes that the original ending takes place at some point during EoE I imagine that, like Shinji, Asuka had her own epiphany and decided to stay in the real world rather than a happy one. When she wakes up it dawns on her how sick the world she chose really is.

Hi! Thanks for the reply. Can you expand on your comment here about 'the original ending took place during EoE at some point'? What do you mean?

Are you talking about how the original TV series had episodes 25/26 that were really abstract, and some of the same stuff happens in EoE, but to a lesser extent?

[Mr. Tines]

Can you expand on your comment here about 'the original ending took place during EoE at some point'? What do you mean?

The keyword here for discussion of the various efforts to reconcile the two dramatically different outcomes is "concurrency"

Related threads
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/8141/What-isConcurrency/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/10494/Concurrency-Rises-from-the-Grave/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/12277/Ep-25-Script-and-its-Implications-Concurrency/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/8122/An-EoE-Theory-thats-been-confusing-me-Concurrency/
http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/13243/EoTV-EoE-Narrative-Concurrency-Reasons-for-and-Against/

[Gorbatschow]

Question 3: As far as I know it kimochi warui can mean "disgusting" and "I feel sick" both would make perfect sense in multiple ways:

Disgusting

1. She lets down her cover and confesses her feelings towards Shinji to herself. To her, caused of her kind of twisted mindset, this is pathetic.
2. She probably knows Shinji better than she ever wanted, caused by instrumentality and therefore knows his whole character including his feelings for her. (And including a certain yogurt-based scene)
3. She probably considers his emotional discharge (strangling) pathetic (weak character)

I feel sick

1. We all know what happens during EoE. Everyone would feel sick.

Question 4: No, everyone can come back. Also the religious symbolism isn't relevant to the plot in a superficial way. It works more as narrative and visual aesthetics, than as an actual analogies.
There are many other thread about the symbolism and Adam and Eve. They will help you. ;)

[Mr. Tines]

3. She probably considers his emotional discharge (strangling) pathetic (weak character)

IIRC, the French translation for the final line took exactly that tack, and rendered it as "Tu es minable."

There are many other thread about the symbolism and Adam and Eve. They will help you. ;)

Not so many as you'd think. This is the most obvious

http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/3326/Shinji-Asuka-is-Adam-Eve-or-Shinjis-Psychedelic-Sunbathe/

[Lumiere]

Wow. Wait. So everyone can come back? Then why are only Shinji and Asuka there? No one else wants to come back?

[UrsusArctos]

There's a vast shoreline for others to return to if they decide to come back. For narrative purposes, Anno needed only to show Shinji and Asuka back.

[AuraTwilight]

Wow. Wait. So everyone can come back? Then why are only Shinji and Asuka there? No one else wants to come back?

It took Shinji nearly a month to come back when he was absorbed into Unit 01; it's the same process.

[Wanderlust]

Wow. Wait. So everyone can come back? Then why are only Shinji and Asuka there? No one else wants to come back?

They can all come back and others probably will in time, but part of the beauty of the scene (in spite of all its admittedly dark tone) is the fact that Shinji and Asuka, probably the two characters who suffered the most from hedgehog's dilemma throughout the series, were still the first ones to choose to come back to a world where people are separate again and can hurt each other once more.

If these two heavily tormented kids still think the world and human interaction are worthwhile, then maybe humanity isn't doing so bad and there's still hope for the future.

[AuraTwilight]

Mind you, Shinji had a very special condition that made him the first to return (he was never really fully integrated in the first place and had a special vantage point over everything), and we don't know if anyone returned anywhere else in the whole planet. Asuka might be the millionth person for all we know.

[NemZ]

No one else wants to come back?

If you saw what was left of the world would you want to go there?

[Gorbatschow]

If you saw what was left of the world would you want to go there?

Not forgetting, that every person who isn't emotionally and/or socially scared, should be more than satisfied with Instrumentality.

[Wanderlust]

Mind you, Shinji had a very special condition that made him the first to return (he was never really fully integrated in the first place and had a special vantage point over everything), and we don't know if anyone returned anywhere else in the whole planet. Asuka might be the millionth person for all we know.

Sure, but considering they appear to be right in the epicenter, so to speak, of where 3I took place, as well as the signs that Shinji's been alone for a while now, I think it's not too much of a stretch to assume Asuka was the first, or at least one of the first, to come back. Certainly among the cast of the series, at the very least. Don't see why the likes of Maya or whatever would've sprung up from the tang halfway across the world instead of near the place where they were complemented.

[AuraTwilight]

In fairness, Maya and company were carried into the sky before they tanged; they could wind up ANYWHERE.

Not forgetting, that every person who isn't emotionally and/or socially scared, should be more than satisfied with Instrumentality.

How on earth do you figure, considering that Instrumentality is suicide/non-existence?

[Gorbatschow]

How on earth do you figure, considering that Instrumentality is suicide/non-existence?

I just said, that most "normal" people will like it, because all of their flaws and problems get solved.

P.S. It's heavily implied that Instrumentality equals the loss of individuality.

[Mr. Tines]

Instrumentality is long ended by the time Shinji surfaces after saying his farewell to his mother. More so by the time we see Asuka on the beach too.