Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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justwonderinboutstuf
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Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby justwonderinboutstuf » Fri Jun 10, 2016 12:21 am

I've been reading a bunch of threads, watched some videos so I could better understand what the hell went on in the last episodes/the movie, and while I have most of it pretty figured out I still don't think I've found any consensus on what happens to dead people after the third impact. Asuka dies in her Eva before everyone gets tanged (I assume), and yet she's still alive at the end of the movie. So basically, did Asuka die and come back, did she die and not come back (It's in Shinji's head) or did she somehow not die? And if she came back from being dead, was this a special case or can any soul decide to join with their body? I don't expect there to be a 100% clear answer but I haven't found much discussing this specific question.

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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby pwhodges » Fri Jun 10, 2016 1:28 am

As Asuka died before instrumentality, it is presumed that people who died at least a bit before then can come back (assuming, as I think most do, that the end of EoE shows real returns). But we have little other evidence to show just how far back that goes. If we include everyone who appears in instrumentality (though they may be in Shinji's head), then that would be covered by saying any death after 2I could be reversed (which I have seen suggested) - but really, it's pretty much up to us to decide for ourselves.
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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:24 am

I would just assume that all of the souls from all of ever were collected, even though there's no hard evidence for it. If older souls couldn't be gathered, I'd wonder where those souls wondered off to so GNR couldn't find them, especially since there's no theology present in Evangelion that suggests a literal heaven or hell for souls to go to. (Unless Second Impact did something that collected the souls of the dead prior to Third Impact. But there's no evidence for that either.)

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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby KingXanaduu » Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:48 am

Nobody ever said that Heaven/Hell or any of God's domain was a realm that GNR or even the FAR could grasp. True, souls in the Eva-verse can be manipulated, but I doubt that Nerv or anyone of Seele could grasp the TRUE definition of the soul.
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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby AuraTwilight » Fri Jun 10, 2016 1:35 pm

Well, like, they can recover souls from dead bodies and split them into parts, what else do you need to be able to do? They can even transfer memories.

What more manipulation is there to the soul besides cheating death and changing who someone is?
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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby Bagheera » Fri Jun 10, 2016 3:28 pm

Souls are likely recycled, same as flesh and bone. It starts looking screwy when we look at the evolutionary history of the Earth (the first souls were distributed to . . . prokaryotes? :uhh: ), but it works reasonably well. We also know that souls don't leave the body when it dies (we see Rei's psychopomps collecting the souls of dead soldiers and Nerv personnel, for instance, to say nothing of Misato and Ritsuko), and we know that a fair chunk of living things eat other living things to survive, so they'd presumably consume the soul at the same time. And so the cycle continues . . .
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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby thewayneiac » Fri Jun 10, 2016 6:52 pm

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:I would just assume that all of the souls from all of ever were collected, even though there's no hard evidence for it. If older souls couldn't be gathered, I'd wonder where those souls wondered off to so GNR couldn't find them, especially since there's no theology present in Evangelion that suggests a literal heaven or hell for souls to go to. (Unless Second Impact did something that collected the souls of the dead prior to Third Impact. But there's no evidence for that either.)


Whenever I see that argument I think that Earth is going to be really crowded if everyone who ever lived starts coming back. Picture a very confused Caesar, Napoleon, and Lincoln emerging from the LCL.

I would say that since Rei can transcend time it's her call which people who died before 3I can come back.
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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby Reichu » Fri Jun 10, 2016 9:56 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:Souls are likely recycled, same as flesh and bone.

They're considered a form of life in NGE, so, yeah, this is the most likely scenario. Everything in nature is reused insofar as the laws of thermodynamics permit it. Why would "psychomass" fall forever off limits just because the host body has died? The notion of an immortal soul doesn't make much sense in NGE, either. For one thing, there is no afterlife, hence nothing for a soul to remain immortal for in the first place. Immortality is also associated with, in NGE, the Fruit of Life, which nearly all life on Earth doesn't have. If Lilin are not immortal, why would their souls, an intrinsic part of them, inexplicably be?

It occurs to me that the idea of every soul being allowed to return is not only overly convoluted, it would be completely antithetical to the ecosphere recovering in an even moderately recognizable form -- and to Homo sapiens coming back at all. The souls of everything that ever lived on Earth ever, going by the assumption that every organism had a completely unique soul, would be... a LOT a LOT a LOT ^(really big number) of souls. It's utterly incomprehensible. Now, consider that the lives of these organisms were spread out across hundreds of millions of years +. That entire time, biomass was being constantly recycled. If you suddenly loosed all these souls back onto the Earth after Third Impact, you know what would happen? They would compete ferociously for the biomass that's available, because there's absolutely nowhere near enough to go around. And since the majority of species, unlike humans, don't put any thought into their drive to live, all of the available LCL would be used up REALLY FAST by everybody other than us, leaving the souls of humanity to just... do whatever souls with no chance of ever reembodying do. The resultant ecosphere would also be really wacky and dysfunctional, since it would be mixing and matching organisms from across all biological history, and any of them would be lucky to survive at all. (I can already imagine at least half of the things that try reembodying in the ocean getting promptly killed by the abnormal conditions, and a considerable amount of biomass subsequently getting tied up on the ocean floor.) The chances of any sexually reproducing organisms ever finding someone they can share gametes with would be exponentially small, and all of them would almost certainly die out, leaving evolution to start over again from whichever asexual species manage to gain a foodhold in the madness.

In short: it's considerably simpler to assume that only the living and recently dead are collected -- like, MAYBE fifteen years back would be the absolute limit -- because otherwise Shinji is getting unceremoniously killed by the Paleozoic version of influenza while Asuka will be dinner for Precambian monstrosities if she is lucky.
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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:49 am

^ If t's going to be specific to fifteen years, then there would have to be something about Second Impact that would put a "cap" on the age of souls collected. Otherwise, it would be more sensible to make an argument that a soul decays and fades into nothingness after a period of time, thus there being a limited pool of surviving souls to gather from the start.

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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby Reichu » Sat Jun 11, 2016 1:44 am

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:^ If t's going to be specific to fifteen years, then there would have to be something about Second Impact that would put a "cap" on the age of souls collected. Otherwise, it would be more sensible to make an argument that a soul decays and fades into nothingness after a period of time, thus there being a limited pool of surviving souls to gather from the start.

I do wonder if perhaps the souls at the South Pole might have an extended lifespan, so to speak. Think about it this way...

With Third Impact being "creation in reverse", it is highly plausible that Terran life got its start by Lilith releasing LCL into the ocean and emptying her Chamber of Guf. How we proceeded from a mixture of organic chemicals and souls to actual organisms is, naturally, unclear, but it's probably not important. All that really matters is that the two factors (bio- and psycho-) eventually combined to produce the first life. We can't necessarily assume that this happened straightaway, right? Things were happening on a geologic time scale. Hypothetically, the LCL acted as a sort of sustaining medium for the souls. There are weird hints in the show that LCL and souls come from the same place anyway, so this actually isn't as insane as it might at first sound. This also helpfully explains away the need to feel any worry for the souls of humanity rotting before they have a chance to return. As long as they're floating in the ocean's LCL layer, they'll be fine.

Now, about Second Impact. Something funny clearly happened down at the South Pole. The Classified Information alludes to it having been converted (at least partially) into an "Adam-type ecosystem", whatever that means. In order for this to happen, however, AATF shenaningans were required. All of the Lilith-based life down there (except Misato, because reasons) went sploosh. Adam's energy wings act quite a lot like the green crosses in EoE in that they fling the souls of (presumably) the research team skyward, and Misato watches them careen back down to Earth afterward, back into the ocean. Going by the updated DEATH version of the "spreading wings" cut, the ocean waters are RED at ground zero -- sounds familiar, yes? Visiting the area 15 years later, the waters look a bit more ... magenta-ish, but this is still an indication that something is odd about the composition. Could it be the FoL version of a primordial sea?...

The red vs. orange vs. magenta thing is actually getting me thinking. LCL is likely the fundamental building block for all life, mortal and god alike, but conceivably its properties change depending on its innate energy or something like that. Think the color-based wavelength scheme in the show, from red (Tree of Life) to blue (Angels). The colors are a metaphor for how high-energy the constituent matter of a given lifeform is, but perhaps with LCL is metaphor is more literal?

- Red LCL: Seen with "ecological reboots".
- Orange LCL: Emitted directly from Lilith and Evas, and also flushed from the space beyond Leliel's body.
- Magenta ?LCL?: Seen at South Pole = "Adam-based ecosystem".

Magenta isn't actually a wavelength, but the eyes' attempt to make sense of red and purple at the same time or something. I'm not sure what to make of this, except to say that purple is the highest-energy part of the visible spectrum, which I suppose goes along with pattern blue Seeds and Angels being the highest energy of the lifeforms we've observed. The red color could conceivably come from "leftover" red LCL, assuming some sort of conversion process was unfinished.

I really need to make a proper thread about all this someday.
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Re: Just finished watching NGE and EOE, can dead people return to life after 3rd impact?

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Postby Limienerd » Sat Jun 11, 2016 10:26 pm

I think what people are forgetting about is you need to be willling to continue living to be able to come back so it would be less people than most would think. Plus I don't think the majority of people working on Eva were thinking indepth about non main character coming back etc.

To the topic though
My mood right now is to say defintely people that are dead can return and I feel Auka returning and Rei talking about people returning is enough evidence for that.


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