What Now in terms of Children 2 & 3...Post-3I thoughts!

[NemZ]

That's not extraordinary in the least. Yui specifically says that all beings have the power to return to human form. There's nothing ambiguous about this statement: all beings have the power, period. All the have to do is be able to "imagine themselves in their own heart," whatever the hell that means.

Yes, but can =/= will. Perhaps they aren't in a state to know this is a possibility. Or worse, perhaps they do know and simply choose not to. Either way Shinji pretty clearly is and has been alone in the ruins of the world for some time.

No. She said that when AT Fields returned people would feel pain. There was no qualifier there -- if she ended Instrumentality, people would feel pain again.

Any people who existed as people, sure. Or they could drift into nonbeing and escape this situation, disolving into Nirvana.

Because Yui said so.

Yes, but Yui is batshit crazy, seeing humanity from the perspective of a timeless outsider more concerned with humans as a species than as individuals. She's saying this right as she's in the process of bugging out for good so excuse me if I don't just take her word for it.

The natural reading

There is no such thing. You're just privileging your own view as somehow intrinsically correct rather than just one of many options a viewer could potentially come to.

[Bagheera]

Yes, but can =/= will. Perhaps they aren't in a state to know this is a possibility. Or worse, perhaps they do know and simply choose not to. Either way Shinji pretty clearly is and has been alone in the ruins of the world for some time.

Asuka shows us that neither of those is particularly likely.

There is no such thing. You're just privileging your own view as somehow intrinsically correct rather than just one of many options a viewer could potentially come to.

It is intrinsically correct, at least in this respect, because it's taking what's said on screen at face value. You're the ones who are ignoring what's said and making shit up about how Asuka's some special case. But there's nothing in the movie to suggest this is so. You can't just throw out the whole narrative and replace it with "a wizard did it" and expect it to hold any water.

[Mr. Tines]

The natural reading (taking what's on screen at face value) for this is of course "Extinction Event scale impact -- the ecosystem is now fucked."

[center][/center]

[Bagheera]

. . . in Hakone. For the rest of the world it was Tuesday.

[Mr. Tines]

. . . in Hakone. For the rest of the world it was Tuesday.

Ripping the Black Moon out was enough for that. No, when you consider how high those waves have to be to tower over the mountains, there's no way this is not at least Pacific-wide dinosaur killer material.

[Bagheera]

Ripping the Black Moon out was enough for that. No, when you consider how high those waves have to be to tower over the mountains, there's no way this is not at least Pacific-wide dinosaur killer material.

2I blew up Antarctica. That is an extinction level event. This is a blip on the radar.

[Bryan]

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think Asuka alone has this ability

Of course there is. She's freaking Asuka! You're treating her a little too much like a normal teenager and not quite enough like the anime protagonist she is. Yes, her thoughts and feelings are written to be exactly what anyone in her position's would be, but that doesn't mean she doesn't get to enjoy an ability to do things that stretch the limits of what normal humans can do. It's not a coincidence that the Evas managed to defeat sahaquiel despite having a 1 percent of success. Add to that her close relationship with the people causing all of these changes to happen, the basic parts of her character that if they were true for anyone we knew would make our jaws drop and the unique emotional changes she was going through when we last saw her and there we have a ridiculous amount of reasons to think she could be a unique example.

No. She said that when AT Fields returned people would feel pain. There was no qualifier there -- if she ended Instrumentality, people would feel pain again. You can't feel pain if you're a soup of LCL, so that means people would have to re-embody before they could hurt one another again. And lo, Asuka comes back and she and Shinji hurt one another, just as Rei said they would. There is nothing remotely paradoxical about this.

Here you simply misunderstood what I was saying although I should have been more clear. I only put that quote there to show that Rei saw reversing instrumentality as a bad thing to some extent that Shinji may not want to do, but that's not the paradoxical part. The most strikingly paradoxical part is how can you imagine yourself in your own heart if there is no self to do this imagining?

Because Yui said so.

Yui has no way of knowing such things. The only way I am able to interpret what Yui says is that after Rei lays down the ambiguous and uncertain future, Yui contorts what she just said into something hopeful out of her emotional need to make her son who she loves more than anyone else in the world feel good about it. In fact, that's pretty much definitely what happened with the only question being whether what she said had the added bonus of being true, but I see no reason to believe she had any way of knowing.

[Bagheera]

Of course there is. She's freaking Asuka!

That's not much of a reason, man. Particularly since the whole point of Eva is to treat the characters realistically rather than according to the usual anime tropes.

Here you simply misunderstood what I was saying although I should have been more clear. I only put that quote there to show that Rei saw reversing instrumentality as a bad thing to some extent that Shinji may not want to do, but that's not the paradoxical part. The most strikingly paradoxical part is how can you imagine yourself in your own heart if there is no self to do this imagining?

There is. As soon as AT Fields come back people are individuals again, so it's just a matter of recognizing that fact and imagining yourself as a person rather than an undifferentiated soul. It's a matter of refining something that's already there, not becoming the opposite of what you currently are.

Yui has no way of knowing such things.

Actually she does, particularly at that moment. Rei has just invested her with all of her power and Yui has taken up the mantle of Seed of Life, which means she knows exactly how these things work. She and Lilith can be taken at their word when they explain the process to Shinji.

But more importantly, this is what the narrative is telling us. Throwing that out on a whim isn't an argument or even an interpretation -- it's fanfiction, pure and simple. If we were given some reason to think Yui was an unreliable narrator that might be a different matter, but we weren't. As such we have to take what she is saying as true unless given compelling reason to think otherwise.

[AuraTwilight]

Also, you know, it's not like Yui literally planned all of End of Evangelion to happen, except oh wait she did like 15 years in advance.

I'd trust her as an authority on all Angel/Metaphysics bullshit she espouses on, since she had access to the same information as SEELE.

[Reichu]

Yes, but can =/= will. Perhaps they aren't in a state to know this is a possibility. Or worse, perhaps they do know and simply choose not to. Either way Shinji pretty clearly is and has been alone in the ruins of the world for some time.

Since when is one small section of Japan "the ruins of the world"? And how many times does this need to be pointed out, anyway?

Yes, but Yui is batshit crazy, seeing humanity from the perspective of a timeless outsider more concerned with humans as a species than as individuals.

...what's "batshit crazy" about that?

[Chuckman]

I could point out that if we were meant to even suspect that the rest of the world is not utterly devastated, or at least uninhabited, there would be some visual cue to indicate that since, at the end of the day, it's a work of fiction and not a documentary.

Instead I shall accept the idea that Shinji and Asuka reconstituted in the shittiest part of the planet and/or are actually in a Third Impact Memorial Preserve (Off Limits to All Visitors) because this is cruel and thus profoundly funny.

[NemZ]

Since when is one small section of Japan "the ruins of the world"? And how many times does this need to be pointed out, anyway?

Since it's all we see there's nothing at all to indicate anywhere else is better.

As often as it needs to be.

...what's "batshit crazy" about that?

If judged as a god she makes a kind of horribly pragmatic sense, yes.

Not so much if looked as a person who is so committed to the big picture that ultimately individual humans are just interchangeable gears in the great machine of blood and meat, for whom she is exiling herself to ceaseless oblivion just to provide evidence (to whom?) that this pointless thing "humanity" once existed.

[Bagheera]

Since it's all we see there's nothing at all to indicate anywhere else is better.

Bit of a fallacy there, since nowhere else got wrecked by the Black Moon and had to deal with GNR's splashdown. The real question is, "why would anywhere else be physically affected at all?" No reason, really.

[NemZ]

From comments in the show we know the rest of the world was on the brink of social collapse even before 3I, so it's not unreasonable to assume that with this extra chaos and power vacuum that things would be utterly doomed even without catastrophic damage (which they likely ALSO got).

2I started the doomsday countdown; 3I was just a botched escape plan from what was already viewed as inevitable.

[Bagheera]

From comments in the show we know the rest of the world was on the brink of social collapse even before 3I, so it's not unreasonable to assume that with this extra chaos and power vacuum that things would be utterly doomed even without catastrophic damage (which they likely ALSO got).

I don't see any reason to think catastrophic damage is likely, or even possible; there's no way to inflict it AFAICT. As for the rest that's pretty speculative, given that they managed to pony up the money to build the Evas. You need a pretty solid economy to produce that much coin.

[Stillborn]

SEELE was pulling the strings. They could redirect resources to the Eva project as long as it suited them at the cost of some other "necessary sacrifices" in different regions of the world.

With the global population displacement, communiaction between governing bodies impossible, everything will explode into anarchy and survival of the fittest. That's humans nature.

[Bagheera]

SEELE was pulling the strings. They could redirect resources to the Eva project as long as it suited them at the cost of some other "necessary sacrifices" in different regions of the world.

With the global population displacement, communiaction between governing bodies impossible, everything will explode into anarchy and survival of the fittest. That's humans nature.

And then we have Japan in the midst of the recent earthquake, which proves this is anything but so. "Human nature" is bullshit; always has been.

[Stillborn]

Japan still had functional government at that time and someone to coordinate restoration. Do you think there were no opportunists who broke into ruins and stole what they could?

Imagine if there was absolutely no coordination, mixmacth of peoples, nations langages and few brutal or charismatic opportunists to take advantage of that. Yeah... That's when basic instincts of our species come out...

[Bagheera]

Japan still had functional government at that time and someone to coordinate restoration. Do you think there were no opportunists who broke into ruins and stole what they could?

According to reports, not really.

[NemZ]

Er... miles high tsunami ring a bell? That's a global problem, along with the earthquakes that's certainly going to be accompanied by. On top of that you have hundreds of plane crashes, millions of car accidents, and all sorts of other accidents from technology left unattended for who knows how long, just left to burn unimpeded. On top of that you're looking at complete social collapse of all government and emergency services, as well as vital transportation, production and information systems. Into this wilderness you're talking about releasing people at unknown rates, many of them likely extremely confused and traumatized, and maybe not anywhere near where they were before or surrounded by people they don't know and can't immediately communicate with. In this mix will be all those who were formerly incarcerated criminals right alongside children of all ages, the deranged elderly, the terminally ill and the mentally unsound... all of them fending for themselves for whatever salvageable resources exist.

This will be a living hell for at least the next several generations.