EoE "Last A"/ Rebuild

[Chrad]

I've been thinking about the original 'rejecting instrumentality' sequence and ending.

Rei: "Only Angels can break the walls of an Angel heart."
Kaoru" And only humans can break the walls of a human heart."
Rei: "This is a possibility."
Kaoru: "The possibility that people can understand each other, sometimes."
Rei: "That they can understand each other without relying on words."
Shinji: "But that's just a make-believe."
Shinji: "Just a wish."
Shinji: "Just a prayer."
Rei: "But that instant is sincere."

An instant of sincerity when people understand each other without the need for words?
Sounds like a bit of contextualization/explanation of the final scene to me.
It certainly casts it in a hopeful light.

[gwern]

I couldn't find your quotes in in Literal Translation scripts or ADV Platinum scripts; where are you getting this?

Anyway, I also found a relevant EoE quote (Bochan_bird translation) from just before Instrumentality ends:

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.
Still... I want to meet them again, because I believe my feelings at that time were real.

[jota]

Ok, thats gonna be a huge silly question but I'm a huge silly person, so... Where is available this Last A and Last B stuff?

[Chrad]

I couldn't find your quotes in in Literal Translation scripts or ADV Platinum scripts; where are you getting this?

It's unused material from the sequence where Shinji rejects Instrumentality, as originally written. Taken from here, where you can also see Last A/B.

[Sailor Star Dust]

An instant of sincerity when people understand each other without the need for words? Sounds like a bit of contextualization/explanation of the final scene to me. It certainly casts it in a hopeful light.

I somehow found this line in EoE itself to be similar, maybe it's just me:

Rei (OFF): So, if you are lost, you have to recover yourself...even if you don't know what to say, even if you are deceived by what others say.

[Lucretius]

I've been thinking about the original 'rejecting instrumentality' sequence and ending.

An instant of sincerity when people understand each other without the need for words?
Sounds like a bit of contextualization/explanation of the final scene to me.

Yeah, I thought the same thing.

[Chrad]

Asuka's original final line does seem to gel with the Carddass Masters explanation for Shinji's strangling.
It's almost as if Asuka is replying to Shinji.
"Is this real? Will she stay still and let me kill her?"/""Idiot. No way I'll let you kill me."

In light of Shinji's pleading in the opening scene, it's interesting that it was originally planned that Asuka would wake up and call him an idiot like always.

[Azathoth]

In light of Shinji's pleading in the opening scene, it's interesting that it was originally planned that Asuka would wake up and call him an idiot like always.

She doesn't actually call him an idiot. If memory serves, the line is "Anta nankani korosareru nowa mappira yo" - which is certainly contemptuous but stops short of insulting his intelligence specifically.

Or maybe Asuka's not being entirely serious? Anno's complaint with the line was that Miyamura couldn't deliver it the way he wanted, which does raise questions about the tone Asuka is supposed to have during the scene - surely Miyamura wouldn't have had a problem expressing disgust with Shinji, given the line she eventually came up with. I've always wished we knew a little more about why exactly Anno was dissatisfied with the original last line.

[Chrad]

She doesn't actually call him an idiot. If memory serves, the line is "Anta nankani korosareru nowa mappira yo" - which is certainly contemptuous but stops short of insulting his intelligence specifically.

Mdwig's page says that in the original script she said, "idiot", which was removed by the time they reached the storyboard stage.
It seems to me that Anno was working on making the line more and more brutal. "Idiot" would perhaps have been too light for the scene's thematic thrust.

As to Anno's problem with Miyamura's delivery of the final line, my guess is that it was meant to carry a degree of ambiguity, and it was very difficult for Miyamura to carry this nuance in her performance.
"Kimochi Warui" is simple, brutal and ambiguous enough to sidestep the issue, while at the same time working nicely on a meta level. I'm glad it's what we ended up with, though it would be nice to know more about the reasoning behind the original line's rejection.

[thomson777]

Forgive my ignorance but what is "Last A"? Is this fanfiction or something?

NEVER! you must be punished for you're insolence!

/sarcasm