What was the point of 2.0 again?

[Chaos Pudding]

Eva-02 was never fully repaired, in any traditional sense, from the battle damage she took in the 10th Angel fight. The missing parts of her head and the missing arm, for example, are robotic implants.

It would then make sense that Eva-02 was never fully repaired if post-N3E Earth is as devastated as it's seeming it is. Not having the resources to both make new Evas and create sufficient replacement parts for the Evas already created would force NERV/WILL-E to improvise.

[BlueBasilisk]

Could the Key of Nebuchadnezzar possibly be the basis for Eva 13? Mark 06 showed us an Eva can be tossed together pretty quickly with the right base, which is what happened with Mark 09. So where the hell did NERV pull this whole new Eva from?

Looking back on the first two movies now, it kind of seems like the purpose was to get the returning viewer comfortable with familiar story beats so that 3.0 can really kick the chair away.

[Grub]

If we're asking what the point of 2.0 is, we must step back and ask ourselves what the point of anything from Evangelion is. It can change at any time, and have little to no relevance to what came before.

I think, therefore, for reason of sanity, we should consider Evangelion only exists for watching big mechas blowing !#%* up and Shinji crying. And Asuka screaming. And Kaworu being white-haired and pretty. And Gendou being a dick.

[Hyper Shinchan]

*I'm wondering, does Tines still speculate about 2.0 just like most of us are speculating about 3.0, from second hand sources?*
Anyway I'm almost prone to reverse the question, what is the the point of 3.0? The characters are enigmatically changed, Rei got thrown away in the bin and there are ridicolous plot devices like the "Curse of Eva" just because they assumed people wouldn't fap to late 20s Asuka and Mari... Yeah, I'm really wondering what is the point of 3.0. Personally I'm just fine with this film because of the amazing relation between Shinji and Kaworu, from the audio-rip it sounds even better than episode 24 but besides that I'm quite perplex about several points of this movie.

EDIT:
I'd want to add that narratively Ha made perfectly sense, it wasn't identical to NGE, which seems to upset some people, but it was a plausible continuation of the story started with Jo. Q instead seems to make little sense to me, first and foremost because we don't know what happened during some f#cking 14 years.

[Xard]

The characters are enigmatically changed

I seriously hope you have better case to make here than the endless bickering on "Misato is harsh at Shinji now wahh" that has been going on this whole time.

Rei got thrown away in the bin

What did you expect after she said in end of 2.0 she can't live elsewhere (except, uhh, the angel/eva core?) anymore - the Third Impact was not going to change that as it was going to end the world y'know.

Either way Rei still remaining within Eva-01 core was to be expected.

and there are ridicolous plot devices like the "Curse of Eva" just because they assumed people wouldn't fap to late 20s Asuka and Mari

this might actually be true though with Final still out there I'm not making that call yet

I'd want to add that narratively Ha made perfectly sense, it wasn't identical to NGE, which seems to upset some people, but it was a plausible continuation of the story started with Jo. Q instead seems to make little sense to me, first and foremost because we don't know what happened during some f#cking 14 years.

Not much of true importance it seems though. Only thing that really needs explanation is Wille's background but I can't help but suspect that whatever organization Mari has been working on since 2.0 is related

[Hyper Shinchan]

I seriously hope you have better case to make here than the endless bickering on "Misato is harsh at Shinji now wahh" that has been going on this whole time.

Yes I refer mainly to that from what I heard so far and I don't understand why you dismiss that point so easily.

What did you expect after she said in end of 2.0 she can't live elsewhere (except, uhh, the angel/eva core?) anymore - the Third Impact was not going to change that as it was going to end the world y'know.

Once they were both inside the Eva I see little difference between the case of Shinji and the one of Rei, different soul/body mechanics could be the only explanation.

Not much of true importance it seems though. Only thing that really needs explanation is Wille's background but I can't help but suspect that whatever organization Mari has been working on since 2.0 is related

I don't think so, some serious shit could have happened which could explain missing Evas, at least if we go by progressive enumeration, fucking blue pattern things which aren't called Angels, Gendo apparently taking over Seele and probably a lot of other stuff which would have been interesting to at least mention en passant.
EDIT:
I forgot Kaji's disappearance which could or could not be related to Misato's bitching attitude.

[Gendo'sPapa]

I'd argue if what happened in the 14 year interim doesn't matter to Shinji - like his Dad taking over SEELE - then it doesn't matter to the story Anno is telling.

There's A LOT of things Anno has always skimped over in the NGE universe ever since it's creation. A lot of plot elements that might be cool little stories on their own but add little to nothing to Shinji's personal arch. No one can look back at NGE and say "Well, every universe building question I had was answered."

NGE & in turn Rebuild have always been more interested in the human story than the world building elements. Sounds to me like in 3.0 Anno has done exactly what he did in NGE all those years ago - as the story itself gets grander & events begin to reach apocalyptic levels the narrative focus becomes smaller & more intimate.

I can fill in the missing gaps in my mind. There are a million stories to be told about what occurred between 2.0 & 3.0 but that's clearly not where Anno wants to focus the story nor should he. He wants his story to be about an isolated foolish child lost in a world he doesn't have any connection to. By keeping the New Eva World a mystery with so many unanswered questions and missing bits of superficial universe building information places the audience directly in Shinji's mindset.

I've loved every thing I've heard about 3.0 so far. It sounds like the kind of wild brave filmmaking from Anno I've always been a fan of. It would have been so easy for Anno to cash an easy win and make Rebuild be 'Evangelion without anything challenging' but instead he's following a path very similar to what he did with NGE. He's lost a lot of fans who loved the 'Happy-Go-Lucky & Let's save the girl' story present in 2.0 and is going for something a bit starker and real.

I've listened to the audio rip twice and the aside from the busy sounding first half hour, 3.0 sounds like a return to mature filmmaking for Anno! Can't wait to actually SEE the damn thing!

[Hyper Shinchan]

There's A LOT of things Anno has always skimped over in the NGE universe ever since it's creation.

This is a good point and probably it doesn't help that a film must be necessarily more streamline, you can't spend twenty minutes blabbing about Gehirn and stuff, still NME is taking it to the next level by almost starting anew this story, skipping years of characters development and pretending that we just accept that *something* happened, directly or indirectly related to 3I. You can expect that the viewer will just make assumption about what happened before the beginning of the story, it looks to me like Anno is playing with us if he also pretends that we make assumptions about what happened in the middle of the story too. It could be related to an attempt to let us identify with the main character, we don't have to know anything about what happened because he doesn't know anything about it, still I don't know if it really worked out well, I guess that I'll have to see the real deal to confirm if I can accept this explanation.

[Grub]

Maybe Anno should just go ahead and write an Evangelion book after this? Or a really big RPG. That way he can write everything he wants to write and not worry (too much) about a two hour time limit.

[Mr. Tines]

*I'm wondering, does Tines still speculate about 2.0 just like most of us are speculating about 3.0, from second hand sources?*

Add about 3 years of discussion and illustration, both here and on /a/; which is a major quantitative change compared with where we are with Q.

Anyway I'm almost prone to reverse the question, what is the the point of 3.0?

It seems that we're each looking for something entirely different from the other from what happens when Anno returns to this millstone around his career on the far side of his mid-life crisis.

To me, everything said about Ha puts it down in the Pit of Voles Uncanny Valley of adaptations -- managing to be neither Evangelion nor Anno's new super-robot sci-fi magnum opus, but instead some malformed version of the former with the latter mutating it from the inside; whereas Q appears to have thankfully climbed out the far side (or emerged from the chrysalis, or whatever).

I think it's telling that Q has opened with Xard wall-of-text analyses, the sort of thing which Ha never got from anyone, especially not within days of opening. That says there is some useful point to it within the narrative.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Or a really big RPG.

Instead of PSP's NGE2 RPG, a PS Vita Evangelions 2: New Movie Edition RPG? Instead of Classified Information, there could be files that fill the gaps on the 14 year timeskip.

[Azathoth]

I think it's telling that Q has opened with Xard wall-of-text analyses, the sort of thing which Ha never got from anyone, especially not within days of opening. That says there is some useful point to it within the narrative.

I seem to recall there were a lot of walls of text thrown around between those who thought Ha Shinji was Hitler and those who didn't.

[Grub]

Instead of PSP's NGE2 RPG, a PS Vita Evangelions 2: New Movie Edition RPG? Instead of Classified Information, there could be files that fill the gaps on the 14 year timeskip.

haha well there you go

[Sailor Star Dust]

Azathoth: More like several threads with variations on the topic:

thread/9161/Shinji-20-an-improvement/

thread/9781/Shinjis-portrayal-in-Eva-20-222/

thread/12166/Za-Beasto-Sequel-Theory-Shinji-manning-up-and-honorifics/

thread/11496/Control-of-Near-3I-Shinji-vs-Eva-Yui/

thread/11222/Shinjis-Revelation-AKA-Bloodied-Hands-Asuka-vs-Rei/

thread/11168/Gendos-Control-Shinji-Blind-to-Bardiel-Killing/

thread/11236/Shinji-as-a-puppy-NGE-NME-discussion/

[Azathoth]

thread/11236/Shinji-as-a-puppy-NGE-NME-discussion/

lol oh man. that post was not one of my finer moments

[Mr. Tines]

The earliest of those threads (#9161) was posted on Sun May 30, 2010 07:41 GMT -- almost a year after Ha was first shown in cinema; we're currently less than a week from Q's début.

[Merkaba]

I'd argue if what happened in the 14 year interim doesn't matter to Shinji - like his Dad taking over SEELE - then it doesn't matter to the story Anno is telling.

There's A LOT of things Anno has always skimped over in the NGE universe ever since it's creation. A lot of plot elements that might be cool little stories on their own but add little to nothing to Shinji's personal arch. No one can look back at NGE and say "Well, every universe building question I had was answered."

NGE & in turn Rebuild have always been more interested in the human story than the world building elements. Sounds to me like in 3.0 Anno has done exactly what he did in NGE all those years ago - as the story itself gets grander & events begin to reach apocalyptic levels the narrative focus becomes more smaller & more intimate.

I can fill in the missing gaps in my mind. There are a million stories to be told about what occurred between 2.0 & 3.0 but that's clearly not where Anno wants to focus the story nor should he. He wants his story to be about an isolated foolish child lost in a world he doesn't have any connection to. By keeping the New Eva World a mystery with so many unanswered questions and missing bits of superficial universe building information places the audience directly in Shinji's mindset.

I've loved every thing I've heard about 3.0 so far. It sounds like the kind of wild brave filmmaking from Anno I've always been a fan of. It would have been so easy for Anno to cash an easy win and make Rebuild be 'Evangelion without anything challenging' but instead he's following a path very similar to what he did with NGE. He's lost a lot of fans who loved the 'Happy-Go-Lucky & Let's save the girl' story present in 2.0 and is going for something a bit starker and real.

I've listened to the audio rip twice and the aside from the busy sounding first half hour, 3.0 sounds like a return to mature filmmaking for Anno! Can't wait to actually SEE the damn thing!

This is my favorite post on 3.0. It's refreshing to see someone talk about Q without completely trashing it. I hate hate hate the amount of negativity people have toward it, and 95 percent of people on here, it seems, haven't even seen it. Anno is a master storyteller. If there's something that seems "off" in one of his works, there's probably a good reason for it.

[Coral]

The earliest of those threads (#9161) was posted on Sun May 30, 2010 07:41 GMT -- almost a year after Ha was first shown in cinema; we're currently less than a week from Q's début.

But this was also around the time the Blu-rays were released and international audiences were actually watching the films. I don't think measuring the time it takes for someone to windbag it up over a film they haven't seen is a meaningful gauge of quality.

[Hyper Shinchan]

Add about 3 years of discussion and illustration, both here and on /a/; which is a major quantitative change compared with where we are with Q.

Meh, quantitatively there could be a difference but watching the damn thing at this point probably wouldn't kill you.

To me, everything said about Ha puts it down in the Pit of Voles Uncanny Valley of adaptations -- managing to be neither Evangelion nor Anno's new super-robot sci-fi magnum opus, but instead some malformed version of the former with the latter mutating it from the inside; whereas Q appears to have thankfully climbed out the far side (or emerged from the chrysalis, or whatever).

Ha was a compromise between between a straight retelling of Evangelion, like Jo, and a completely new story, but I still think that they managed to do a pretty good job considering the (ambitious) prefixed objectives.
Q tells a completely new story with almost no direct relation with the old series, I'm pretty much sure that it's a quite good movie on its own but from what I heard until now it doesn't connect well enough with the rest of this new series; the problem isn't Ha being pointless/useless, actually Q still uses some premises of Ha, it's Q which is so "revolutionary" that it hardly seems to be the continuation of Ha. I'm really starting to wonder what they were initially planning to do, because this is almost surely the result of Anno scrapping early projects once again, but probably we'll have to wait until the 3.0 CRC to be sure about it.

I think it's telling that Q has opened with Xard wall-of-text analyses, the sort of thing which Ha never got from anyone, especially not within days of opening. That says there is some useful point to it within the narrative.

I'll keep for myself what I think about wall of text analyses of a film which we still haven't even watched.

[JoeD80]

I don't get why the thinking this is somehow scrapping ideas. Everything in Ha still happened; the stuff in the Q preview happened; we even see the results of some of it (Shinji stuck in the Eva, Mark 06 being in dogma, a new Rei, etc.). Also there is connection to the old series; Kaworu and Shinji on the duet and doing a combo with Unit 13 recalls Asuka and Shinji attempting to sync with the music in episode 9 (also note that Mahiro Maeda actually worked on that episode as an animator!); Kaworu sacrificing himself for Shinji.