Author Topic: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: End Of Evangelion  (Read 26639 times)

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #30 on: November 25, 2015, 10:47:06 PM »
The subs make it seem rather dramatic, yeah. What Gendo says right after as a response sets off some ticks and tocks in my head though. He says "But here we stand, mankind, still living as lifeforms", or something like that. The latter half is kind of suspicious. Still alive as living beings? Or as lifeforms? That almost makes it seem like the anti AT Field the Giant of Light/Adam set off is still in effect. Especially since Fuyutsuki says in response to this that it's 'because they're under of protection of the power of science'. Which if it were the case, would mean that there exists a way to neutralize the anti AT Field waves, possibly how Misato survived in the capsule if it were equipped with that.

You know, I've never really thought about the mechanics of Adam's anti-AT field. I guess that probably is what Fuyutsuki is talking about, isn't it? My assumption was that he was talking about the water, since I have the vague impression that the blood ocean is poisonous, or at least harmful to humans. But now that I think about it that's just based on information from Rebuild as far as I remember. There very well may be a literal zone of death around Antarctica that they've somehow figured out how to stave off.

In fact, Gendo's definitely in charge, Fuyutsuki seems to just be reluctantly tagging along.

I think that's a reasonable description of their entire dynamic, yeah. My impression has always been that Fuyutsuki is more following Gendo to try to keep him from getting too out of hand more than because he believes in Gendo's ideals or methods. And Gendo is probably well aware of that.

Also I just realized that Fuyutsuki calls Gendo 'Ikari', which probably makes him the closest person to him in the show atm.

Oh yeah. I didn't directly notice that.

The pacing of this episode is pretty hilarious. Black out. Is it Ritsuko's fault? "It's not my fault...". Well backup should be up soon. "What? Backup is also cut?" Would be terrible if an Angel showed up. "Unidentified object detected on radar." lol

It's a funny episode. Much more so than I remembered. Lots of great subtle comedy.

JASDF detects the Angel but they aren't at all concerned because, "it's definitely headed towards Tokyo-03 anyway". I wonder it they're a little suspicious of why though? Also I realized that they called it the 8th Angel, and yeah, Matarael is actually the 9th. So this would mean that Nerv/Seele is keeping one of them secret. Which I assume would be Lilith, since we don't know about that one at all yet, and really don't at all until like at the very end. Well actually, Kaworu didn't know about Lilith. So either Seele did know and didn't tell him because they needed to get rid of him, the last Angel, or Gendo wants to keep it a secret from Seele because he needs to get his hands on Adam in secret. Well actually it would be ludicrous for Seele not to know, because they discovered the Black Moon in Japan along with Lilith. So what's with the cover-up? I guess so the Angels don't find out? But it doesn't seem like they react specifically to Adam, since they all think Lilith is Adam, meaning they just instinctually set out for one of the Seeds of Life, whether it's their own progenitor or not. Then again, Gaghiel attacked where Kaji was at presumably because it was sensing Adam. So if they can all sense both (or maybe it can only sense the closer one?) why would they all go for Lilith? Because it's bigger? Looks like I derailed on peripheral questions.

Yeah, that is all weird. I don't know. The mis-attribution of which Angel Matarael is has been a well-known aberration, but I haven't ever heard an answer to it that I thought fully made sense.

My next thought was that since she says "I can tell", maybe it could also mean that she can tell that secretly Gendo regards Shinji with more favor.

Fair enough, I didn't think about it that way. Does he? I suppose he does.

Shinji makes some silly comment about maybe how being afraid of the dark and carving away at it with fire to live on is why humans are special and why Angels might be attacking them etc etc. Which sounds like total BS and Shinji just trying to get in some clever word. Or maybe just random musings.

He's basically right even if he doesn't know why, they're being attacked because they're Fruit Of Knowledge and they're getting in the way of the Tree Of Life crowd. And science and progress is the most direct representation of what makes Angels and humans different. But the way he says it is pretty goddam dramatic and dorky.

Ironic that he would start wondering about why Angels attack them and the such in one of the first monster of the week episodes.

I'm actually amazed that there hasn't been more discussion of this. The Angels are so bizarre that if I was being attacked by them I would be thinking about nothing other than why. Especially given their attack pattern of always homing in on locations immediately around NERV, clearly they're doing it for some kind of reason, but that reason is completely unknown to most people. Maybe the fact that they are so alien and seemingly uncommunicative makes writing them off as mindless kaiju monsters easier than trying to figure out their psychology, but I was preoccupied with that the first time I watched.

The Giant of Light/Adam has the shoulder binder thingies that the Evas store their prog knives in, odd.

That makes me assume that part of the purpose of that base that sprung up around him was to try to restrain him and maybe even control him. Again we see bits of this in Rebuild with the entry plug grafted onto that skeletal Angel Mari kills, but I think it's seeded in the original series. They probably experimented on Adam extensively, including I guess grafting prototypes of those shoulder pylon things onto him.

One of the operators mentions that Shinji was 'born to pilot an Eva'. Some foreshadowing? I don't exactly remember the details of his birth and circumstances of Yui.

I don't know what that means, but I think it's just a red herring, or accidental roundabout logic at best. As far as I remember there's nothing special about his birth whatsoever, unlike Rei who actually was born to be a pilot.

Oh there we go, the South Pole has red oceans. And the big air carrier is carrying a long wrapped pole thing, which I assume is the Lance of Longinus.

Yes, it is. There's an image somewhere (the Japanese laser disc maybe, or Death And Rebirth?) of Adam impaled by the Lance in Antarctica. So that's definitely where it came from.

Sahaquiel, I don't remember having either a negative or positive impression from my first view. The Rebuild adaptation really blew my mind though by how epic and awesome it was. A little ambivalent on the humanoid Angel within the Angel though. The animation for the Angel battle was pretty great, I'm surprised by the amount of action there was. Perhaps not as much as the one against Israfel, but with the budget restraints slowly revealing itself, I was pretty impressed. I totally forgot that the AT Field assisted mach dash was in the tv series.

During my Eva viewing immediately prior to this one I was disappointed with how bare-bones this fight was compared to the Rebuild version, but I didn't feel that way nearly as much this time. The actual fight is basically nothing, but the whole race leading up to it is still exciting. I re-watched the Rebuild version after I finished this episode and was surprised to see how much they matched up, at least at certain points.

Shinji gets praised. Finally, a bone to the poor puppy! He seems so happy, and the episode ends on happy note. Shinji is happy, Misato and the three children are eating together, with Asuka managing to pick an event where Rei wouldn't feel uncomfortable joining. Almost a bit anxious, seeing him so happy like that.

With how much of an ass Asuka usually is she's surprisingly thoughtful about this. She goes out of her way to try to include Rei (maybe indicating that their rivalry hasn't developed to the toxic levels that it will later) and even to spare Misato's wallet. She's probably in a good mood because she didn't get trumped by anyone this time out. In fact, in both of these episodes she seems perfectly happy to fight alongside Shinji and Rei as equals and share more or less equally in the credit. It's when she starts to fall behind them that it really starts to wear on her, I guess.

Sahaquiel's design does look a bit wacky and silly compared to the Rebuild version. Or even by itself comparing it to the previous Angels, just a blob of orange makes it look like a really bad kindergarten crayon drawing or a clump of play-doh. Liked both episodes though, even though some of the character models looked a bit off sometimes.

Like I said before, I think the design could have worked better than it did if the reveal was more gradual. That would have given it more of an inhumanly bizarre, surreal vibe than just making it look silly. And I forgot until I rewatched it that that's exactly what happens in Rebuild. The Sahaquiel is shrouded in an opaque AT field until it nearly reaches the ground, which gives less time to think about how goofy it is.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #31 on: November 26, 2015, 03:08:50 AM »
Like I said before, I think the design could have worked better than it did if the reveal was more gradual. That would have given it more of an inhumanly bizarre, surreal vibe than just making it look silly. And I forgot until I rewatched it that that's exactly what happens in Rebuild. The Sahaquiel is shrouded in an opaque AT field until it nearly reaches the ground, which gives less time to think about how goofy it is.
Except Rebuild Sahaquiel doesn't look goofy. I think in addition to what you said, they should have emphasized how absolutely ginormous it is. Probably would have helped stave off the bizarro design aspect, because now that I look at it again, it looks silly but it's not terrible, there's a very surrealness to it.
Also there's this neat video I found a few years ago after watching Rebuild 2.22 that added some rain and night effects to Rebuild Sahaquiel's appearance, and it really adds to the atmosphere.

Quote
I'm actually amazed that there hasn't been more discussion of this. The Angels are so bizarre that if I was being attacked by them I would be thinking about nothing other than why. Especially given their attack pattern of always homing in on locations immediately around NERV, clearly they're doing it for some kind of reason, but that reason is completely unknown to most people. Maybe the fact that they are so alien and seemingly uncommunicative makes writing them off as mindless kaiju monsters easier than trying to figure out their psychology, but I was preoccupied with that the first time I watched.
It really would be interesting to see what the other Nerv staff think of the Angels, especially the bridge trio. How'd they get recruited? Asuka comes out and hangs a lampshade on the whole matter, saying exactly what first time viewers may have been thinking subconsciously: that the Angels are unknown things attacking us, and that of course we have to fight back. Which is to say, no thought at all --They're just monsters coming to attack, so we go defeat 'em first. Which in the context, immediately after Shinji's wondering out loud, seems more like poking fun at the whole usual monster-of-the-week business.
And maybe they already did have that discussion, how long has Nerv been around? How long have the bridge trio been around? Since they're part of the Second Impact generation, they might just be thinking that it's the repercussions of Second Impact, and they might have simply accepted that the Angels will come to attack because wondering why doesn't really affect anything. A kind of fatalism, perhaps.
The Angels aren't really out to attack either, they just want to get to Adam right? Funnily enough, I remember Kaworu even wondering if 'all things born from Adam must return to Adam', maybe even the Angels themselves don't know.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #32 on: November 26, 2015, 03:36:55 AM »
And maybe they already did have that discussion, how long has Nerv been around?

Since the day after Gehirn was shut down, right? So like ten years? I'm pretty sure we're told exactly eventually.

The Angels aren't really out to attack either, they just want to get to Adam right? Funnily enough, I remember Kaworu even wondering if 'all things born from Adam must return to Adam', maybe even the Angels themselves don't know.

One of the persistent questions I've had about Eva is "What would the world look like if an Angel won?". The idea is that only one race can have dominion over the Earth, but what does an Earth where Sahaquiel is the dominant species look like? Would there just be a bunch of Sahaquiels flapping around, or is the ability to reproduce a Lilim thing? Or at least does it require two of the same Angel? Would additional copies of the victorious Angel hatch from somewhere to join the winner? Would all of the other latent Angels keep emerging to continue battling for Adam? Are non-human species factored into this at all? Would there still be wildlife in Sahaquiel World? Clearly some Angels are capable of conscious thought, and I assume all of them are on some kind of abstract alien level. Do they have culture, or would they if they had enough time to evolve? Can they even evolve further, or is that again a feature of Fruit Of Knowledge only?

That's only tangentially related to what you said, it's just something that I think about a lot and hadn't had an opportunity to bring up yet. Maybe this is answered in a roundabout way, but if it was I missed it.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #33 on: November 26, 2015, 05:17:45 AM »
One of the persistent questions I've had about Eva is "What would the world look like if an Angel won?". The idea is that only one race can have dominion over the Earth, but what does an Earth where Sahaquiel is the dominant species look like? Would there just be a bunch of Sahaquiels flapping around, or is the ability to reproduce a Lilim thing? Or at least does it require two of the same Angel? Would additional copies of the victorious Angel hatch from somewhere to join the winner? Would all of the other latent Angels keep emerging to continue battling for Adam? Are non-human species factored into this at all? Would there still be wildlife in Sahaquiel World? Clearly some Angels are capable of conscious thought, and I assume all of them are on some kind of abstract alien level. Do they have culture, or would they if they had enough time to evolve? Can they even evolve further, or is that again a feature of Fruit Of Knowledge only?

That's only tangentially related to what you said, it's just something that I think about a lot and hadn't had an opportunity to bring up yet. Maybe this is answered in a roundabout way, but if it was I missed it.
I don't think it's that the 'species' of Angel that contacts Adam rules dominant, but rather that if any Angel manages to contact Adam, then Lilith-based lifeforms are completely wiped out and the right to the dominion of Earth goes to the Adam-based lifeforms, ie: the Angels, all of them.
I've never thought of reproduction before. If Lilith-based lifeforms have the Fruit of Knowledge, then Adam-based lifeforms have the Fruit of Life. That is, presumably they would have eternal lives. If we generalize the reproductive processes as simply a way for a species to continue to live on and exist, then any lifeform with eternal life wouldn't need to have that ability. You wouldn't need any posterity because you yourself would continue to live on as your own species forever. Seeing as one of the main themes of Eva is loneliness, and how AT Fields are physical manifestations of separations of egos and how it separates lifeforms, Angels with their powerful AT Fields would probably be very lonely and alone. Which I think is validated by the Armisael episode later on.
Another question popped up in my head just now though, which is: why are there only 15 Angels (17 -2)? Is that the totality of the Adam-based offspring? It appears that Adam, at least, can spawn off descendants somehow, maybe it only created 15? If the Angels won, would the Angels that subsequently appear be the only ones that wander the Earth?

Randomly musing further: I know Anno said that he only drew themes from Christian mythos without really explicitly trying to depict any of it literally, but technically the Fruit of Knowledge was the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the bible. If we go off that, then the Angels who don't have this would not have any sense of morality, simply existing to suit the whims of their egos, in a way. Sentient, yeah. Such thought processes would indeed be very alien to us. It also means that Angels aren't stupid, ie: not they they don't have Knowledge. Perhaps untainted by sin? Since such things wouldn't apply to them. One of the temptations that the Serpent used in Genesis to get Eve to eat the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil was that if she ate it, then she would 'be like God, knowing good and evil.' I wonder how 'intelligent' these Seeds of Life, Adam and Eve are. All we see of them is through their souls within Lilin containers. Random musings.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #34 on: November 30, 2015, 05:02:11 AM »
Oh shit I forgot today was Sunday. Had a four day weekend so I lost all concept of time. I'll watch tomorrow afternoon I guess.

Edit: Okay, starting now. I only have time for one episode today, I'll do the second one tomorrow. Laterer and laterer.

Episode 13: Angel Invasion

Is this the first time we've seen those weird test Eva torso things? They're really creepy. I assume they're parts salvaged from failed Evangelions, but I suppose they could just be fully mechanical too. It's slightly interesting that the pilots are able to synchronize with them since (I assume) they don't have souls. Have these been used before to gather data about sync rates? Maybe that explains why the Magi are always wrong in their calculations about the success rate of Eva operations. If they're using information collected from useless, incomplete models with no souls then maybe they don't have the necessary information to know how a real Eva will operate. I believe we do see tests being performed on the production models sometimes too though, so maybe not.

I wonder if the fact that Asuka says that she can only feel her right arm has something to do with the fact that she's synchronized with an Eva that only has one arm? The test Evas only have a torso and a right arm, with no left arm, legs, or head. All three of them are like that too, so it's probably not just because that's all they could salvage. It's probably for some weird reason.

When people keep saying "protein wall" I assumed at first that they were talking about the Evas, since they have organic parts. But it looks like they're actually talking about part of the Geofront's structure. That's weird. Does the Geofront have biological elements to its architecture? Or is "protein wall" a term that I'm just misunderstanding.

It's cute that Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko both use exactly the same phrasing about Gendo "jumping all over their asses". I wonder who learned that from who?

It seems that "Pribnow Box" and "polysome" are real-life concepts in DNA, but I couldn't figure out what they were from the Wikipedia descriptions. Something very technical, anyway.

Does the fact that Rei's simulation Eva is the only one that moved foreshadow Kaworu's power to override a soulless Eva later on? It also appears to have bones when Misato breaks breaks off it's arm, which seems to support the idea that they're organic.

Gendo rising up out of the floor around 8:40 is not only a bizarre/funny visual, but his desk blends into the background in such a way that I had to rewind and look closely to see that he wasn't just a floating, disembodied torso.

I think this is our first indication that Gendo places higher value on Unit 01, isn't it?

Kaji's line is suspicious. Is it supposed to imply that he knew this was coming, and by extension that he had something to do with it? I guess it would make sense that he created an opening to help an Angel get into the Geofront under SEELE's orders, but he didn't know what form it would take. Presumably this was a gambit by them to do something with the Magi, or to the Magi while everyone was distracted.

Iruel is certainly among the most unique Angels, if not the most unique. That's kind of a hard title to lay legitimate claim to with weirdos like, well, every single remaining non-Zeruel Angel floating around, but Iruel is certainly weird. It seems to be the only Angel that can reproduce, if that is in fact what it's doing (and assuming we don't count Israfel, which I don't). Can Iruel really multiply? I assume it still shares one soul between all of its individual microscopic components, if for no other reason than that it's singularly referred to as "the 11th Angel" and not "Angels 11 through ???".

As hokey as the visual representation of "hacking" with the Magi icons changing from blue to red is (shouldn't that be the other way around, since Angels are "code blue?") it's certainly effective. This episode is reasonably tense despite the fact that there's no fight scene.

The design of the Magi is great. The brain-like pipes and the notes all over the interior are super evocative and cool. They kind of remind me of Junji Ito backgrounds the way they're drawn.

I wonder who told Misato that the Evas use the same technology as the Magi for their "AI"? I'm assuming she's just wrong about that, but is that the common explanation among NERV personnel to avoid telling them the truth?

I remember never understanding why Iruel tried to self-destruct the Magi, since it's using them as a host, but this time around it made more sense to me. If it's goal is to get to Adam/Lilith then it makes sense to clear away obstructions in the form of people working against it and possibly literal physical barriers, and an explosion seems like an efficient way to do that. And since it has an AT field presumably it wouldn't be harmed in the process.

Iruel's death is weirdly anticlimactic. Seems like having it explode or melt or something would have been nice, just to get some closure on it. I wonder if NERV was able to salvage it and use it for anything? We don't have any reason to assume that the microorganisms that make it up disappear at any point, so presumably they could recover and study them.

Despite the hokey premise and lack of action, I really like this episode. Maybe it's because Ritsuko is possibly my favorite character, but I think this episode is super interesting. The relationship dynamic between Ritsuko and Misato mostly borders on hostile, but we see them really getting along in this episode despite butting heads and it's sweet. And for all of the times Misato has trumped Ritsuko with her crazy, risky plans it's nice to see Ritsuko get to be the one with the good idea this time. I don't miss the main cast much at all for just one episode. The plot relevance of this one is debatable, since a lot of the revelations we get here are reiterated in later episodes and the potential plot point of SEELE maybe using this as a pretense to do some espionage isn't particularly required, and I can't even remember if it's even explicitly referred to at any point. So it might not be necessary, but I'm glad it's here. I don't think too many episodes like this would have been a good thing, but one is great.

« Last Edit: December 01, 2015, 06:25:26 AM by commandercool »
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #35 on: December 02, 2015, 05:20:15 AM »
Okay, time to finish up what I should have done two days ago.

Episode 14: SEELE, Throne of Souls

Fuck I forgot the clip show was this early. :V  Does this episode even have any content? I'm pretty sure I've never seen it. I hate clip shows.

Well, might as well watch it on fast forward and see if there's anything to see.

First mention of the Angels' actual names, notably.

Boring boring boring, fast forward fast forward fast forward. I don't have any idea if I'm missing anything.

Okay, at the halfway point there's sort of some new stuff. Looks like reused animation, but the story is new.

I'm assuming SEELE is just playing dumb about Iruel, right? If they didn't send it how else did it get in?

Is this the first time the Dead Sea Scrolls was mentioned? Or has Gendo referred to it before to Fuyutsuki or Kaji or somebody? I can't remember it coming up before, but this seems like a weird place to drop some relatively major plot shit.

Rei's weird rambling always bothers me. It seems out of character for her. I guess this is a glimpse into her thought process or whatever, but I can't reconcile her actions with her lines here. And it rings of filler to me. Arguably some of this is sort of character development for her, but I think it only exists as an excuse to recycle existing footage.

Her vision of a lineup of dozens of herself is sneaky foreshadowing, but not really in an interesting way. And I suppose her monologue inside of Unit 01 could be interpreted as a reference to Yui and the true nature of the Evas. Maybe it was even intended that way, but again, I can't bring myself to really take Rei seriously enough here to worry about it. I guess I just have a low opinion of her, because this all sounds ridiculous coming from her.

We get confirmation that Unit 00 and Unit 01 have very similar personalities, which makes a lot of sense although I don't remember having ever read that before. Possibly because I've never seen this scene before, or if I have I forgot about it.

The fact that Misato knows that Rei and Unit 02 couldn't be interchangeable with the other Evas and pilots is kind of interesting. I wonder how she understands that to work? She apparently thinks that the Evas are controlled by AI along the lines of the Magi, so I guess it follows that she knows that each of them is patterned after a dead person, just not the mechanics of how. But does she know the details of which people are associated with which Eva? Does she actually know the Yui or especially Rei I are involved?

The look Maya gives Ritsuko in the scene where they talk about the dummy plug system is great.

Is the Unit 00 berserk scene just straight-up reused animation but with the new color scheme? I understand that it's supposed to parallel the first time, but that is some bold use of animation recycling. In kind of a bad way.

Seems like Ritsuko let something slip when she wonders aloud if Unit 00 is trying to absorb Shinji. I don't think that phenomenon is common knowledge, even among the NERV staff.

Okay, I must have seen this episode before. I remember the Math Puppy stuff. Ha.

It took me a second to realize that Fuyutsuki is setting up a scenario from a Shogi magazine during his meeting with Gendo. At first I was like "Wow, he is committed to not paying attention. He's reading a book and playing a game with himself at the same time". But it turns out those two things are linked. Still, that is some impressive cold shouldering.

And to cap off the surprising number of introductions of plot-relevant concepts in this episode, we get the first direct show of the Lance Of Longinus.

I gotta say, I found that painful to sit through. And even then I skipped like half of it. I suppose it's kind of admirable how much the plot moved forward in an episode with such little original animation, but I don't think that's a good thing. Recap episodes shouldn't try to be things they're not, because then I'm obligated to watch them and I really don't want to do that. Whenever I talk about my least favorite episodes, assuming I'm not even counting recap episodes.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #36 on: December 03, 2015, 12:34:35 PM »
Argh, late again, this has been a rather crappy week.

Ep. 13 Angel invasion

Magi episode. The animation quality for this episode is a great improvement from the past few episodes, the characters look great and also on model. Though maybe a little young looking.

We get introduced the actual nature of Magi and learn that it's more or less Ritsuko's mother, but beyond that I didn't notice anything else that was a gamechanger. Except, what's Kaji doing way down in Central Dogma? He mentioned work, but I forget for what. Yeah, Gendo shows his priorities concerning Unit-01.
Asuka mentions that this is for some 'Auto-pilot test', which combined with the next episode mentioning the Dummy Plug system for the first time, is nice foreshadowing for its actual use later on.
And I believe it's the first time 'Adam' was actually mentioned?
Misato seems to think that the Evas are machines with personalities implanted into them, which obviously isn't true. So more of her not being informed. Although it is rather odd, since she knows it's an android/biological. Maybe she thinks the biological parts of the Evas exist simply to make the personality OS easier to use?
I was wondering, maybe Iruel is a colony of a species, a species of one of the Adam-based creations. Kind of like how we have cats, dogs, and other animals, Iruel represents a species. Even Ritsuko calls it 'they'.
Maya fangirling over the Magi notes was pretty cute, but it seems at least partly inspired by her whole 'Notice me sempai' thing she has going on strongly.

Not much to say.



Ep. 14 Seele, Throne of the Soul

Oh a recap episode, I forgot we had one.
Oh Ramiel has that Ramiel "aaah" cry in the TV series too.
Seems odd that Seele didn't notice the Iruel invasion. If they know the schedule of the Angels' arrivals, then they should assume that it was an Angel, and yeah, they do find out at the end of the episode that it was an Angel invasion. Though Gendo tried to hide it from them, I assume just to mess with them or throw them off a little. Seele doesn't have any reason to feign ignorance with Gendo, and even if they were, that wouldn't be the place to feign ignorance at. If they really did send in Iruel, then that's what they should be feigning ignorance about if Gendo decides to ask them about it. I somehow doubt that Seele really has this omniscient knowledge of Angels and even the ability to simply 'send' an Angel whenever they feel like it. It really seems like they're just the committee to complain to Gendo when somethings goes slightly awry. As Gendo said, he holds all the cards.

The train of consciousness bit did seem like an obvious ploy to save some of their remaining budget, though it didn't particularly bother me. I took it as Unit-01 showing images to Rei, similar to how Unit-00 started showing images to Shinji, and her just responding to them with the first thought that came to her mind, as a sort of Rorschach test. It's an interesting way to show a glimpse into her bizarre psychology, since this episode and the previous episode start to ask questions about Rei that invites suspicions about what her deal is. Asuka wonders at the end of the episode what she is, Ritsuko mentions the Unit-00 must have been trying to kill her, of which the berserk itself was caused immediately after Shinji sees an apparition of a Rei with a really creepy face. The one bit that interests me is where she says 'a women who doesn't bleed'. I assume 'bleed' here refers to menstrual cycles. Does Rei not have those? That would be really interesting. And then there was that bit where she starts saying something about how she's melting away and feeling the presence of others, which I wonder is a subtle introduction to her Lilith powers in EoE.

Not so much 'not paying attention', his playing Shogi probably simultaneously portrays two facets. One of which is the whole Chessmaster position they hold in the show. The other, I interpreted differently. I wouldn't say that he isn't paying attention, but more a showing of his casual accompanying along Gendo's project like some kind of club adviser. Gendo frequently says 'our plan', but when talking about Unit-00 going berserk, Fuyutsuki says that it wasn't in 'his plan'. Which could very well simply saying that he certainly didn't see it coming, but may also be a subconscious slip of the tongue.

Rei carrying the Lance of Longinus. I almost wish they showed her unraveling it first, so we can connect it to the scene it was shown in before.

Another Maya and Ritsuko scene. I probably wouldn't have noticed how fixated Maya is towards Ritsuko if I hadn't watched EoE already, but it's pretty cute. And then another scene of Ritsuko and Misato butting heads, which is coming up far more frequently now, though little by little. Is it just me or does it seem like Misato is usually the one setting off the sparks? She's starting to pull in rank more often now, which doesn't work out well for their friendship. It would probably be fine if she wasn't so unable to separate her professional work from her personal mission, and hence, her personal life. Every time Ritsuko has to stay silent on some confidential, important matter that doesn't concern her, Misato takes it as an affront to their relationship. Because honestly, the operational chief or whatever her title/rank was has no need or business knowing about whatever it is information she's trying to pry out of Ritsuko.

Episode 13 was pretty great, really great use of tension without fight scenes. Episode 14 I didn't hate. As far as recap episodes go, it wasn't terrible. But obviously a filler episode.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #37 on: December 07, 2015, 03:35:25 PM »
Aaaah shit I forgot again. Sundays have been weird lately. Will try to get to it tonight.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #38 on: December 08, 2015, 03:57:10 PM »
Ep. 15 Lies and Silence

First mention of Marduk Institute? Something about how they select the Eva pilots, and it's controlled by the Instrumentality Committee. I wonder how that process works. Kaji snooping around to try find out what happened 'here' 16 years ago. About Second Impact?

Fuyutsuki says one of the Seele guys came to complain about how the Instrumentality Plan was behind schedule. But then, what is there to do? They also don't seem to know about the Adam plan or the Lance of Longinus, or if they do, they don't seem to think it's connected with the plan since Gendo says that they are indeed all connected.

Shinji remarks to Rei that she reminded him of a mother, and then blushes when he says that she might make a good wife. I remember my roommate asking why she blushed. Which I'd never thought of.

Shinji and Gendo visiting Yui's grave together. He plays cello back in the apartment, which is the first time we see it. Rather odd to suddenly throw it in there, but whatever.

Rare scene of Kaji, Misato, and Ritsuko together. I can't seem to like Misato that much, maybe because of how violently she reacts the more she learns about Nerv's secrets. Or maybe in general, I don't really care much about her outburst towards Kaji either.

I'm surprised that Shinji rises to the challenge when Asuka goads him into kissing her by asking if he's scared. Shows how much he's grown. Then in the next episode he gets a bit overconfident, but for someone like Shinji I think it's good medicine, if only the show showed him some mercy. He starts to get confident and suddenly we start getting Angels like Leliel after all.

And why is Asuka surprised to smell Misato's lavendar perfume on Kaji? She knows she was dead drunk and likely needed to get support from him. Unless she was surprised that she used the perfume at all, like it's some kind of date perfume or something.

We see Rei in a massive tank and the show starts to be more open about her mysteries.

Kaji reveals 'Adam' to Misato, which surprises her. If she didn't know that 'Adam' was down in Terminal Dogma, then what did Nerv tell her was down there that they needed to keep the Angels away from at all costs?


Ep 16: Deadly illness, and then

Oh haven't heard this happy theme playing in a while. Misato and Kaji seem to be on good playful terms since the last episode, since he's inviting her out to drink.

Surprisingly enough, Shinji is looking forward to his results on the Harmonics test. He got the best score, which makes Asuka rather bitter and spiteful. When she's asked by Rei if she pilots the Eva to get praise from others, she replies that it's to praise herself. In other words, to boost her own self-worth and self-confidence. Since she's literally broken without it and all.

Leliel has an awesome design, and it's the first Angel that really starts to reach across into the bizarro realm. I was looking up inversions of geometries in the higher dimensions, >2, but couldn't find anything that would help me understand the sucking in inverse AT Field business. Though if I remember right, Rei inverses the AT Field of her Unit-00 in the Armisael episode to suck in the Angel too. So I guess if normal AT Fields keep stuff out, then it makes sense that inverting it would suck stuff in. Wonder why they didn't explore that more. I wonder if doing so is dangerous in a psychologically polluting sort of way, considering what AT Fields are.

Misato and Ritsuko have a big argument and probably would be the point where their friendship stops being one.

LCL purification wears out and Shinji starts to smell blood, which may start to answer questions about what the LCL is, if anyone had any doubts since the first episode as to what exactly it was.
Aaand Shinji starts to talk to the Angel. Halfway through, he screams as he questions why it's so bad to do something that he's found he likes doing. Presumably about piloting an Eva, since he's realized that he's good at it and it's giving him pretty much what he's always wanted. Stuff like his father's recognition and attention, recognition from others, etc.

I'm glad that we get to see some flashbacks about his parents. Gendo was suspected of killing Yui, interesting enough and we start to see that maybe Yui didn't die some natural death. And then he sees an apparition of his mother. With long blond hair for some reason. Maybe it's how he envisions his mother since there are no pictures left? Since he seems to have forgotten about his past, younger memories.

And then there's this interesting scene where Yui, scribbled out with black lines, leans over a young, smiling Shinji who is holding out a small, red and pulsating orb towards her. When she asks if 'this is enough', he says something though the audio is muted, and she replies 'really, well good for you'. I wonder if this is Leliel handing over its core to Yui, and thus to Unit-01 to destroy. Which if this is the case, it brings up a lot of interesting questions. First, once it ate Shinji at the beginning of the episode, it expanded itself to 600 meters and stopped growing and not moving from its place. Why didn't it try to go to Terminal Dogma like all the other ones? What made it satisfied to hand over its life after it finished talking with Shinji?

Unit-01 has no energy so it goes into berserk to burst out of Leliel's 3D 'shadow'. Ritsuko and Asuka are in shock, both over different reasons. This seems to have mellowed out Asuka a bit, since she wonders what exactly it is they're piloting. Ritsuko is disturbed about the originals that they copied the Evas off of, which she remarks to Gendo that it's the first time she's felt fear about them.

Rei is watching over Shinji when he wakes up in the hospital, and she says to him the same thing Yui did when he says he's fine, which makes him gasp. So our first clues to what her deal might be, and her connection to his mother. Asuka was hiding behind the door when it suddenly opens as Rei walks out. She seems embarrassed but also concerned. For all that's happened, we get a weird sort of happy ending to the episode, despite the mysteries deepening.

So these 2 episodes are the beginning of the deconstruction phase of the show in full force. Leliel being a very good indicator of that, as the Angels only get either stronger or more bizarre. We went from mook-y kaijuu to bizarro alien lifeforms. Animation was pretty good both episodes, especially the latter.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #39 on: December 08, 2015, 04:55:14 PM »
You beat me to these ones. I have a weird cold and it's making me tired, so I fell asleep before I had the chance to get to them. These are great episodes so I want to watch them.

Edit: Okay, only one episode today. I got sidetracked by cleaning the kitchen and now I'm tired. But I really want to get at least one in, so I'm going to.

Episode 15: Lie And Silence

If SEELE dismissed Gendo who would they replace him with? Fuyutsuki? One of their people? Kaji even? I suppose they're probably not even remotely serious about firing him, so I guess they probably didn't think that through.

When Kaji reaches into his jacket in the warehouse is he reaching for a gun? Or does he just want any would-be assassins to think he might have one? I have a hard time picturing him owning a gun for some reason.

I can't remember if the Marduk Institute has been mentioned before now. I think it was, in an early episode regarding either Asuka or the members of Shinji and Rei's class, but maybe not. If it was mentioned before and someone was able to connect those dots I suppose they wouldn't be able to gain much information from it.

I'm not really sure what to take away from the scene with Shinji and Rei in the elevator. I'm guessing Shinji is basing his idea of what a mother would act like on TV and movies, since he doesn't have one and neither do any of his current friends. I wonder if he had friends before he moved to Tokyo-3 who had mothers? He's so awkward at first that it's easy for me to imagine him not having any friends before Misato forces him to open up, but maybe he's just that way because he's having a hard time because he has to see Gendo all the time. Maybe he had a bunch of friends before. As for Rei, the only thing I can guess from her reaction is that she knows about the nature of her relationship to Shinji and that's why she's uncomfortable with what he said? Rei seems hard to embarrass, so I'm surprised something like that got to her. Or maybe she's just starting to open up too.

Misato's advice to Shinji before he has to hang out with Gendo seems like good advice, but I can't help but wonder what her best-case scenario is. She talks about how nothing will change unless he takes initiative, but what kind of change is she expecting to see? Is she hoping Gendo will just get over his Gendo shit and start treating Shinji like a person? I was going to say that she should know him better than that, but now that I think about it that might actually be a reasonable thing for her to hope for. She hasn't actually seen them interact that much, she's mostly just seen Shinji avoid him. Granted most of the interactions she has seen between them have been very negative, but she's also seen Gendo doing some pretty good stuff. Maybe it's not weird that she really does hope that they can get along.

During the scene at the graveyard Shinji says something about "the teacher" being right. I'm pretty sure he's talking about the teacher that he lived with before he moved in with Misato. I've always wondered what that person was like. I wonder if Shinji had much of a relationship with them.

Gendo does seem the most open he's ever been with Shinji in that scene. It seems like he actually is trying to open up, but I think it's clear at this point that what he's actually trying to do is to stay closed off. He's gone out of his way to carefully keep Shinji at arm's length, and he almost slips up here. But then he has to fly off in his fancy hovercraft and not even offer Shinji a ride, giving the impression that Shinji has to walk all the way home. There's nobody else to pick him up right now, after all.

First appearance of Shinji's cello that I can remember. Going back to what Shinji was like before the first episode, I think this lends a little credence to the idea that he used to be a normal person with a relatively normal life. I can't easily picture the Shinji we met in the first episode having a hobby like this, so he very well may have just been a completely different person before. He says he never quit playing because nobody ever told him to stop, but I think/hope it was really just because he enjoyed it.

I've seen this episode a bunch of times, but when it cuts to that quick shot of Misato and Kaji in silhouette in an alley my first thought was not "she's throwing up". :V

When Misato talks about how similar Kaji and her father are I had to think about it for a minute to understand what she might be talking about, but from what little we know about her father I suppose she's right. His only defining feature was that she believed up until he died that he cared more about work than he did about her or her mother. We never find out what work Kaji was involved in when they were originally dating, but based on how we see him act in the present I can understand why she believes that of him too. After all, it is his work that ultimately kills him, and even after he's been explicitly warned. So for what little we know about Misato's father they do have a lot in common.

Asuka briefly teasing Shinji about his mother seems pretty low. But given that she's coming from a similar situation, arguably even a slightly worse one since she remembers her mother and was much more traumatized by her death than Shinji was, I suppose she knows how serious saying something like that is.

What exactly is Gendo doing with Rei in that weird tube? Is this just general clone maintenance, or is it something more specific to do with Gendo's plan?

First appearance of Lilith. I'm still unclear as to why she's misidentified as Adam for as long as she is. Is that because Kaji's information is incomplete? He knew about Adam because he helped procure him for Gendo, so did he just assume that any alien he found in Central Dogma must then be Adam in a full-grown state? Or is he lying on purpose? This is one of the biggest things I've never been able to keep straight about this series, so I'm going to try to actually figure it out this time.

This episode is great. There's no action, no robots at all, but it's fantastic. At this point in the series everybody looks like maybe they'e going to be okay after all. Everybody except maybe Rei (and that's just because of a lack of screentime, not a lack of development) turns a corner this episode and things are looking up for all of them. Even Gendo maybe. Which only makes what happens next that much more devastating. Because I always watch this part of the series in such quick succession I've never been that clear on when shit starts to go wrong, but it's clearly not here.

I really want to watch the next episode right now, but I know I'll regret it if I do. This episode probably took me the longest to watch and take notes on of any episode since the first. It's very dense, and they tend to get denser from here forward. I'll be kicking myself at work tomorrow if I stay up much longer.

Rare scene of Kaji, Misato, and Ritsuko together. I can't seem to like Misato that much, maybe because of how violently she reacts the more she learns about Nerv's secrets. Or maybe in general, I don't really care much about her outburst towards Kaji either.

She's not one of my absolute favorites, but I do like Misato a lot. In a way she's actually kind of the POV character for much of the show. I feel like we see Shinji through her perspective as much as through his own perspective, especially at this point in the series. She's all kinds of flawed, maybe irredeemably so, but I can't really bring myself to blame her for most of her actions. As the show points out a few times, she and Shinji are a lot alike. I can imagine an adult Shinji being very much like her.

I'm surprised that Shinji rises to the challenge when Asuka goads him into kissing her by asking if he's scared. Shows how much he's grown.

I don't think she was going to give him much of a choice. She clearly wanted to do it quite a lot and probably wasn't going to take no for an answer. In fact, at this point I think Shinji saying no would have been an even bigger indicator of growth if not for the fact that he probably wanted to do it too.

Kaji reveals 'Adam' to Misato, which surprises her. If she didn't know that 'Adam' was down in Terminal Dogma, then what did Nerv tell her was down there that they needed to keep the Angels away from at all costs?

My best guess is that she thinks it's something integral to the Evas. She clearly puts a lot of faith in them, so if she thinks it's the Eva equivalent of the Magi or the secret Eva factory or something it makes sense to me that she would place extremely high value on protecting it and that she would easily believe that the Angels would have a reason to target it. Although I can't remember, has she ever advocated blowing up the headquarters when an Angel got too close? I think she has, so if she thinks it's something mankind needs to be able to fight back she wouldn't be so quick to consider destroying it.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2015, 05:49:34 AM by commandercool »
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #40 on: December 12, 2015, 04:49:37 AM »
Aaaaah I'm so late.

Okay, gotta finish this shit. Almost time to do the next two. :V

Episode 16: Deadly Illness, Then...

I relate to Shinji so hard in the first scene.

Hey, Rei is starting to develop social skills. Before she would have just walked away from Asuka's rant without saying anything, but now at least she interrupts her to say goodbye. At this rate I legitimately feel like given a few more years she could be holding conversations with people and everything. Too bad the time skip in Rebuild 3.0 worked in such a way that we didn't get to see Rei II after many years of social interaction. That could have been really interesting.

Now we see Leilel, who might be the absolute strangest Angel, and one of the more important ones too. My younger brother is into physics and he watched with me during my second viewing, and he tells me that this design is basically scientifically sound. At least as far as what a four-dimensional object/being might look like.

It's a minor thing, but when Shinji clenches his fist while he's impatient waiting for the fight I noticed that the glove of his plug suit made a sound exactly like a latex glove. I've always just kind of assumed that the plugsuits were some kind of cloth/spandex-like material. Are they actually made of rubber or latex? I don't know what that changes, just that they might be a little more uncomfortable.

Why can't the plug be ejected this time? Usually it's because the Unit 01 is berserk at the time, but I don't think anything should be interfering at this point. Does that feature even work with Unit 01? We've seen it work with Unit 00, but maybe Gendo (possibly at SEELE's insistence?) had it disabled on Unit 01 because the robot is more valuable than the pilot.

Once again, I find myself really relating to Shinji here. He acts like a little bit of an asshole, granted, but not that much. As someone who has a little bit of an inferiority complex I can totally understand his risky behavior immediately following a modest success. If you're the kind of person who just isn't good at anything and people see you succeed you feel like you have to prove that it wasn't just a fluke. But that often means taking risks you shouldn't to try to prove yourself and just fucking everything up. Yup, I relate very strongly to that. Poor kid.

But yeah, I don't really feel like this was Shinji's fault all that much. He kind of charges into the fight, but at some point somebody was going to have to engage and they were probably going to get trashed no matter how carefully they went about it. It would have been interesting if this had turned into another Ramiel scenario, with a near miss, a retreat, and some kind of complicated long-shot Misato plan, but ultimately somebody was going to have to be the bait to see what Leilel even is, and it ultimately does work out for Shinji this time.

It's pretty cold-blooded of Ritsuko to ask Misato to trust her while lying to her face. Which brings up something I never really considered before-Why is she so invested in Gendo's plan? She's sleeping with him at this point, we know that for sure (I've always kind of wanted to see what that's like, by the way. Now THAT is a big extant mystery of Eva. What on earth is sleeping with Gendo like?), and she's in love with him I guess, so is that it? She's just doing this to try to make him happy? Or does she know about and believe in Gendo's ultimate crazy scheme? She does try to stop him in the end, so I'm not sure if she really knew what he was trying to do or not. Maybe she really did believe in it on paper but didn't like what she saw when it ultimately started to come together.

Shinji's flashbacks to other people talking about Gendo behind his back are kind of interesting, in the sense that I never really thought of Gendo as a public figure before. I always just assumed that he managed to lurk so deep in the shadows that nobody knew who he was. And maybe that's actually the case and the people in those flashbacks were just former colleagues or even current colleagues, but that does at least raise the possibility that I never considered before that average people might know who Gendo Ikari is and have an opinion about him. Those flashbacks also kind of imply that maybe Shinji remembers something about his mother's death, which I didn't think he did. So maybe he has that in common with Asuka after all.

Yup, we're definitely firmly in "phase 2" of Eva at this point.

Misato and Ritsuko have a big argument and probably would be the point where their friendship stops being one.

Yeah, Misato knows that she's being manipulated at this point. It would be hard to come back from that.

And then there's this interesting scene where Yui, scribbled out with black lines, leans over a young, smiling Shinji who is holding out a small, red and pulsating orb towards her. When she asks if 'this is enough', he says something though the audio is muted, and she replies 'really, well good for you'. I wonder if this is Leliel handing over its core to Yui, and thus to Unit-01 to destroy. Which if this is the case, it brings up a lot of interesting questions. First, once it ate Shinji at the beginning of the episode, it expanded itself to 600 meters and stopped growing and not moving from its place. Why didn't it try to go to Terminal Dogma like all the other ones? What made it satisfied to hand over its life after it finished talking with Shinji?

Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

So why did Leilel die? The only potential clue I can think of is this line, spoken by Leilel: "No one can justify life by linking happy moments into a rosary. In particular, I cannot." I can't believe that Leilel is talking about its own experiences and happy memories. Maybe it's naive or narrow-minded of my, but I just can't picture a four-dimensional shadow monster having happy memories. So that leads me to believe that it's talking about Shinji's memories, having read his mind. I think Shinji's shitty life made Leilel so despondent that it just decided to die. :o The one interaction it's had (that we know about anyway) with a sentient being and all it saw was a life that it can't accept, so it just gave up. Or maybe that's not true at all, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #41 on: December 15, 2015, 04:29:35 AM »
Okay, so I tried to post this yesterday but the forum was broken or something and it wouldn't let me log in on any of my devices so I copied it to a text document and just forgot about it until now. But here it is.

Episode 17: The Fourth Child

What makes SEELE think Leilel was communicating with Shinji? Did he say something to that effect? I would've though that the more natural assumption was that it was just trying to eat him.

So NERV's second branch was in Nevada in the United States. I wonder what they were like? Were they also in a Geo-Front? I'm assuming they probably were, since we couldn't see any of their facilities from that satellite picture. They get completely destroyed in the activation test for Unit 04 as it blows up on the launchpad. I assume sabotage, probably by Gendo and probably for the same reasons he sabotaged Jet Alone. Unit 04 also had an S2 engine (salvaged from the remains of one of the intact Angels, I assume?), so maybe Gendo or SEELE shut it down because of that. Or maybe it was just an accident, but I have a hard time believing that.

It would have been interesting to see how the dynamic of a more powerful, foreign Eva being thrown into the mix. I assume it would have had an American pilot, and it probably would have been moved to Japan since that's where all of the Angels are. Or maybe the US would have kept it there just in case. It would have been a fair assumption that Angels might start attacking the second branch, since the presence of Evas has been the most common-sense explanation for all of the previous Angel attacks for anyone who doesn't know about Adam and Lilith.

Although we never see it on camera there is a canon design for Unit 04. It looks basically like Unit 00, but it's chrome with red and black trim. I have a Unit 04 Revoltech action figure on a shelf next to my desk, and it came with some weird make-em-up weapons like Eva-sized tonfas and a plexiglass riot shield thing. The recent re-release had it packaged with a red Lance of Longinus, because why not? I know spinoffs sometimes make Kensuke the pilot of Unit 04, which doesn't make that much sense to me given that it was made in America by Americans, but I kind of like the idea of Kensuke getting the way more powerful robot and just showing everybody up all the time and becoming the new main character.

I think it's interesting that Unit 04 really did just disappear, and we really do never see it again. When I watched Eva the first time that seemed pretty suspicious and I just assumed that it would show back up and some point. When Kaworu was introduced I was like "Oh finally, that must be Unit 04's pilot". But nope, actually gone as far as we know.

I like Ritsuko's coffee mug. Somebody has to have made one of those, right? For cosplay purposes if nothing else.

I notice that Rei's pillowcase is no longer covered in blood. Is that because she was injured last time we saw her apartment, or is that because Gendo has been maintaining her better with that brain tube thing? At any rate, I'm surprised she hasn't cleaned up her space a little thanks to the new social skills she's been slowly developing. Which I suppose it a lot of the point of this scene.

Rei is acting weird in this scene even for her. She's completely unfazed that other people would just be congregating in her bedroom and making themselves at home, but she's surprised that Shinji cleaned up. I suppose it speaks volumes about her mindset that the only thing that surprises her is people being civil toward her.

I'm still unclear on who, if anyone, I think sabotaged the second branch after the scene with Gendo and Fuyutsuki. Gendo does legitimately seem to think it was an accident, but he might be feigning ignorance. He does seem awfully smug about it. And it sounds like SEELE is not happy with the results, but again that could be a smokescreen. I suppose it could be a third party, but at that point we're well into the realm of "it doesn't matter, who cares".

Once again, Shinji's teacher is rambling on about Second Impact. It really is the only thing he ever talks about.

I'm just now noticing for the first time how Unit 03's color scheme matches Toji's track suit. Weird.

This was probably technically the slowest episode since like episode four, but I didn't really notice. A lot of stuff happened, even though there was no action and it was all just setup for the next episode. I don't love that it doesn't stand by itself very well, but it doesn't matter too much because the episode is fine.

Episode 18: A Life Choice

Hey, English in an anime that's actually good! They must've gotten real North Americans to do the voices, which for some reason doesn't happen very often.

Apparently the implication of the lightning in the clouds that the plane carrying Unit 03 flies through is that Bardiel was hiding in that cloud and that's the point at which is infected Unit 03. Or at least I've been told that that's the case based on some interview that I can't source.

Ha ha what, Rei is doing the Gendo pose in the scene in the classroom. Has she done that before and I just missed it? Crazy.

Everybody looks very slightly off-model so far in this episode. Which is surprising this late in the series.

Why are Kaji and Shinji sleeping on the floor in the living room (at least I think that's where that is)? Shinji has a bed, right? I guess I understand that Kaji wouldn't want to sleep in Misato's room, but why are they both out there? Is that some kind of Japanese hospitality thing I'm not familiar with?

First appearance of Bardiel. It's kind of similar to Iruel in a lot of ways, so despite the fact that it's a pretty out-there concept for a creature it's not anything especially new to the series at this point.

I notice that the attempt to force-eject the entry plug almost works. The plug cover pops off and a bunch of steam or smoke shoots out, it's only the physical presence of Bardiel that prevents it from ejecting. Which I think lends a little credence to my theory that Unit 01 just doesn't have that feature.

At first I thought it was kind of weird that Unit 03 managed to get the drop on Asuka given how slowly it was moving out in the open, but just as I was about to type that it did the same thing to Unit 00, but on camera this time. I guess it's just a combination of how fast it suddenly started to move with the fact that all of the pilots are still trying to figure out what's going on that let it close in that fast.

This is the first time we see that the Evas can basically be remotely self-destructed, or at least remotely dismembered. Or is that a feature that only Unit 00 has because it's been so hard to control in the past? Seems like they could just use that to disable Unit 03, clearly they're still able to at least receive signals from it because they can still monitor Toji's vitals. It probably wouldn't work, I assume it would just grow weird extendo-fungus limbs, but it seems like it would be worth trying.

In some ways Bardiel acts like a berserk Eva, but the telling sign that it's more intelligent than that is the way it just immediately abandons Unit 00 as soon as it's clearly crippled. Unlike an Eva it knows exactly what it wants and isn't driven by bloodthirst at all.

Given that the sun is a visual motif of Asuka, often with her being silhouetted against the sun, I wonder if there's any significance behind Unit 03 lumbering toward Shinji silhouetted against the setting sun? Weirdly that reads as kind of a call-forward to this scene in Rebuild 2.0.

Now that I think about it, is the extendable arms a feature of Bardiel or of Unit 03? I've always assumed that it was Bardiel's corruption that let it do that, but now I'm not sure why I thought that. We do clearly see that Bardiel is mutating it somehow when it oozes acid onto Unit 00 I guess, and Rebuild makes that more clear with it sprouting extra, unarmored arms that probably weren't part of the original robot, but I don't think it's ever really made clear in the original series. The more logical assumption is probably to assume that this isn't normal, but I think it's weird that the armor on the arms seems to stretch along with them, and I kind of like the idea of the American Eva having weird features like Mr. Fantastic arms.

This is the first indication we get, or at least that I picked up on, that the dummy plug was intended for Unit 01. Makes sense, but I kind of forgot about that even though I know how this episode ends. I wonder if Unit 02 has a dummy plug system. Since it's based on Rei's personality it probably wouldn't work for anything but Unit 01 or Unit 00, right?

The fight between Unit 01 and Unit 03 is, by my understanding, probably the second most iconic/infamous scene in the entire series. The Rebuild version is considerably more gruesome, but I forgot just how brutal the TV version is. Unit 03's head exploding is brief but incredibly graphic with brains and eyeballs splattering everywhere. I had been told at one point that this scene was responsible for a much of the budget trouble that the series had toward the end, with the extreme graphic nature and violence against a child causing a lot of sponsors to withdraw and forcing the show to move to a later, less profitable timeslot for later episodes. I've never been able to confirm that though, or really find any information about the original airing schedule for the show. I spent quite a while looking tonight in preparation for this episode and I couldn't find anything. Do you have any idea if that story is true? It sounds kind of made up to me, but I haven't ever seen confirmation one way or the other.

Part of that story is that the original version of the script had Toji dying in this scene, and that I do kind of believe. I mean, his entry plug gets completely crushed. It's amazing that he didn't die (although I believe the pilot is at one of the ends of the plug and most of the damage was to the middle, so maybe it looks worse than it is). I believe it is semi-canon that he loses a leg, but we never see that. I think there was an unfilmed or deleted scene where he plays basketball with Shinji in a wheelchair and it's clear that he's missing a leg.

It's probably not that important, but I think it's a little notable that everyone takes it as fact that Bardiel is dead. It didn't have a core to destroy and I don't see any reason to assume that mutilating Unit 03 would particularly hurt it, so it's a little strange that it seemingly just dies anyway. Rebuild goes out of the way to make it clear that this is the case, but the TV version surprisingly doesn't. In fact I'm almost surprised it never pops back up. With all of the talk of the pilots becoming contaminated by contact with the Angels and the to-do about exactly that with Bardiel and Asuka in Rebuild it would have made a lot of sense for Toji to be infected and do some Angel shit later on.

I don't usually watch the end credits or the next episode preview, but I just happened to leave it playing and I notice that there was no promise of fanservice from Misato this time. When did that stop?

I don't think there's any question about it, this episode is great. It's slow to start, but it's all obviously building toward one of the more pivotal moments in the series. These two episodes weren't quite as much of a two-parter as five and six, but they definitely have to be watched together and tell a single story.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2015, 04:39:50 AM by commandercool »
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #42 on: December 15, 2015, 07:44:23 PM »
It's finals week, but I already watched the episodes and took notes on Saturday so I'll write stuff up sometime I get time

e: Ugh this week was unprecedentedly busy, so here I'm going to do 4 episodes worth

Ep 17: Fourth Children

It's been a week since I watched these 2 episodes so I forget most of the stuff I was meaning to comment on. Well at least I have my notes.

Lots of details of the Dummy Plug system. Either Gendo or Ritsuko mentioned that the dummy plug sends the copied thought processes to the Eva to trick it into synchronizing. Which seems to me to implicate that the Eva doesn't actually need a living soul to sync with, but that it needs to 'think' that it's syncing with some living, thinking being. Which is somewhat odd, why does it need that? Is it that the soul in the Eva needs to be assured that it wont go berserk if it activates and that it needs someone to control/pilot it?
And then they mention that there is "one child whose core can be prepared immediately" which sounds incredibly suspicious and ominous. What does that mean and how does that work? That either of Toji's parents are immediately available to embed in the Eva? Or maybe... his sister? I wonder if the 'donor' of the soul needs to be aware of the intricacies of the working of the soul, what the Eva is and all that before being sucked in.

Gendo asks Rei how school is going and even seems to imply that they eat lunch regularly. I wonder if this was always a thing or that Gendo is getting more attached to her as time goes by. Ritsuko begins to show jealousy towards her.

Amusingly, this episode has both Asuka and Rei blushing in it. Asuka after arguing with Shinji over the lunch not being made and Rei when thanking Shinji for cleaning her room.

Oh ok so the Marduk Institute doesn't exist. Somehow forgot that. Nerv has complete control over the process of choosing the pilots. Then Kaji invites Shinji to drink. Shinji is strangely open around him even though they hadn't had much interactions together. Kaji says he's open towards people he trusts. And maybe it has something to do with the fact that Kaji is the only adult male around. Helps that he's close to his dad and receives affectations from both Misato, his authority figure, and Asuka, a close friend. And he seems to have changed his answer a bit since the Leliel incident, since when Kaji asks him if he's found something he likes, he can't answer.

Toji's the 4th pilot, the number of death, seems convenient.


Ep 18: The judgement of life

Yeah English was surprisingly good. And he says 'roger and out' as opposed to 'over and out'. I know the latter is definitely wrong, though not sure about the former. Seems right though, which is funny since Hollywood can never get it correct.

Toji points out that Rei is worried about Shinji. By this point, she's developed enough emotions to be concerned about him firstly, and secondly to realize that what he's saying is true. Which is to say that the feeling he pointed out was something she recognized within herself, a huge improvement over what she started out with.

I always wondered if Toji still kept the nerve connections with his Eva while Bardiel was in control. It seemed to cause pain through the nerves judging by Rei's reaction when it started to get infected by the liquid thing. Except that Toji is completely soaked with that thing, that must be painful, even if he didn't feel everything else.

Ep 19: A man's battle

I lol'd at Shinji in triple handcuffs. Like one isn't enough.

Zeruel slips past Unit-02 after lopping off its head and arms even though Asuka was still alive inside. Seems a bit odd to me considering how much it goes out of its way to cause destruction. Like trying to kill the bridge staff. Though maybe it was just trying to reach the actual Adam.

So Kaji casually mentions something very important and dangerous for him, that they found out his other job and was taken off the combat thing. I forget who 'they' were. Since he's an espionage spy agent, seems pretty bad for him.

Huh Evas have cores. I forget if the Angels' cores were their S2 engines. Does that mean that the Eva's core is the fruit of knowledge? I wonder if it's technically possible then for an Angel to eat and obtain one of the fruits of life, which now make totally sense to be able to eat the S2 engine: you eat a fruit to obtain its 'nutrients'.

At first I thought that Shinji and Kaji not being very affected by the blast of the N2 bomb making much sense, since Shinji and Misato were waaay further in episode 1 and felt huge shockwaves. But then I figured that Rei was only carrying 1 bomb (which by the way, Sachiel took almost no damage from N2 mines, how would this work on Zeruel?), and also Shinji and Kaji would technically be behind Unit-00 more or less. Rei did expand her AT Field to maximum before setting off the bomb, which may have prevented the blast from going out as much behind her.

At sync rate over 400%, Ritsuko wonders if 'she has awoken'. Which would imply that Yui is either normally asleep, or was asleep and is finally awake. Also it occurred to me that one of the reasons why Gendo places so much more priority over Unit-01 may simply be due to the fact that it contains his beloved wife's soul.


Ep: 20 Shape of the Heart

First time seeing Seele's emblem? Interestingly, the committee hadn't even considered the possibility of the Eva consuming an S2 engine. They word it interestingly too, they say 'the Eva which cannot grow an S2 engine on its own', which perhaps hint at their plans to supplement an Eva with an S2 engine in their own way, leading to the MP Evas in EoE.

Nerv moves to their secondary HQ and leaves Magi for awhile. I wonder if this is outside Geofront, since that's in a wreck, but that would mean that they would have to rush to meet the Angel at Geofront when they appear. I feel like that isn't the case though since they seem to be right there when they launch in the subsequent episodes.

Shinji realizes that he knows the Eva and that he ran away afterwards from his father and his mother. So he ran away after seeing the Eva while his mother was still alive? That's weird, I figured it was after she died and all the troubles were flying around. Unless it was metaphorically he meant that. And he's talking to an apparition of Rei, which is also weird. Why would it be Rei? Is it actually her? And the Leliel Shinji also briefly makes an appearance. I've been wondering about Leliel's words actually. Angels don't seem to be the type to randomly muse and philosophise about stuff, so when Leliel mentions that Shinji inside Shinji and the Shinji inside others, maybe it was talking about something that was actually 'true' or something it perceived to be an actuality or truth. Maybe that was the Leliel inside Shinji talking. I wonder if the Rei talking is the Rei inside Shinji, and sufficiently powerful beings can to some extent reach within the ;themselves within others', or 'sync' with the 'themselves within others'.

I feel like looking up oral stage in freudian psychology but I'm really tired so I might do it later.

Quote
This is the first indication we get, or at least that I picked up on, that the dummy plug was intended for Unit 01. Makes sense, but I kind of forgot about that even though I know how this episode ends. I wonder if Unit 02 has a dummy plug system. Since it's based on Rei's personality it probably wouldn't work for anything but Unit 01 or Unit 00, right?
That actually makes sense, I hadn't thought of that. Since all the Dummy Plug does is send an imitation or copy of Rei's thought processes, it wouldn't at all be able to trick Unit-02 into activating.

Quote
I had been told at one point that this scene was responsible for a much of the budget trouble that the series had toward the end, with the extreme graphic nature and violence against a child causing a lot of sponsors to withdraw and forcing the show to move to a later, less profitable timeslot for later episodes. I've never been able to confirm that though, or really find any information about the original airing schedule for the show. I spent quite a while looking tonight in preparation for this episode and I couldn't find anything. Do you have any idea if that story is true? It sounds kind of made up to me, but I haven't ever seen confirmation one way or the other.
This is the first time I've heard of this, I have no idea. Would not surprise me that the sponsors were taken aback by the sudden change in tone and direction of the series, even if the hints were there.
Ok well I just checked the Japanese wiki and there's no mention of the episodes being moved to a different time slot, they all aired every week on Wednesdays (I checked the dates) from 6:30pm to 7:00pm. The only two exceptions to this are episodes 13 and 14 which had to air either slightly earlier or later because their slots were taken up by special New Years shows or something, so completely random reasons. So probably false, can't find anything about episode 18 in particular either, though the article did mention that that episode and some other episode with Misato and Kaji were both criticized as not being kid-friendly. I've heard stories about how the mythical budget problems weren't actually a thing or something or something either.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2015, 12:35:34 PM by Меа »
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #43 on: December 20, 2015, 05:24:23 PM »
Lots of details of the Dummy Plug system. Either Gendo or Ritsuko mentioned that the dummy plug sends the copied thought processes to the Eva to trick it into synchronizing. Which seems to me to implicate that the Eva doesn't actually need a living soul to sync with, but that it needs to 'think' that it's syncing with some living, thinking being. Which is somewhat odd, why does it need that? Is it that the soul in the Eva needs to be assured that it wont go berserk if it activates and that it needs someone to control/pilot it?

My understanding of that is based on conjecture and possibly misunderstanding, but here it goes: Evas need pilots and are able to generate AT fields because the entry plug system is built to exploit their feelings toward the person in the cockpit. That's why the pilot and the Eva need to be related, the Eva's soul has to have existing protective feelings toward the pilot so that they will violently defend them. The AT field is a natural extension of their protective instincts in this case. That's why parent and child relationships seem stable and the one outlier we know of, Unit 00, has a lot of problems. So the Dummy Plug works by tricking the Eva into thinking "Your child is in danger, fight back and protect them".

And then they mention that there is "one child whose core can be prepared immediately" which sounds incredibly suspicious and ominous. What does that mean and how does that work? That either of Toji's parents are immediately available to embed in the Eva? Or maybe... his sister? I wonder if the 'donor' of the soul needs to be aware of the intricacies of the working of the soul, what the Eva is and all that before being sucked in.

I was watching these episodes very closely with the "Unit 03's soul is Sakura Suzuhara" theory in mind and I don't think it holds water. There's a reference made by Ritsuko to the fact that Toji would only agree to be a pilot of his sister was placed under NERV's protection way too late in the process for them to have already had her killed and stuffed in an Eva. I suppose Ritsuko could have been lying to Toji and Misato about that and Sakura really is dead at that point, but that seems incredibly risky since Toji would find out about it eventually and probably either throw a destructive robot tantrum or just withdraw. I'm confident in guessing that the soul of Unit 03 is Toji's mother, and that when they say it can be "prepared immediately" that line is there more for plot convenience of picking a pilot than as a hint that Sakura is dead or is going to die.

And as for whether the soul needs to be aware of what they're getting into, I doubt it because of Rei I's age. She probably did know some stuff about the Evas because she was around them and Gendo a lot, but even if she was very precocious I doubt she had a nuanced understanding of how they worked. Maybe again that has something to do with why Unit 00 is so crappy and unpredictable and if she did know more it would work better, but my headcanon(?) is that the Evas only have the most basic emotions and instincts of their souls, not all of the memories, so I don't think they would remember anything that they knew about themselves in life.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #44 on: December 22, 2015, 05:54:22 AM »
I'm a day late, but I wasn't home yesterday and I didn't think to watch anything in advance. Oops.

Episode 19: A Man's Battle

What exactly is Toji seeing in that scene where he's watching Shinji and Rei argue? The common sense answer seems to be that he's just hallucinating as he listens to them talking in the same room that he's sleeping in, but the fact that they're on the same train from the Leilel scenes is weird. Is this possibly the result of some kind of contamination from his exposure to Bardiel? Are the people he's seeing actually Shinji and Rei? They seem to be, or at least Shinji does. Rei is harder to pin down because she doesn't have a well-defined personality anyway, but the way she's talking here reminds me or Leilel. Rei is also shown silhouetted against the sun in this scene, what's the significance of that? Is it because she's becoming more aggressive, confronting Shinji about the way he talks about Gendo? Or is it meant to call back to a similar shot during Shinji's confrontation with Unit 03/Bardiel in the last episode?

It's clear from the shot of Toji in bed in the next scene that he has indeed lost a leg. I couldn't remember if that was ever made clear in the series itself or not. Not like it matters, but it is there.

Misato says that "Suzuhara was a mistake that can't be mended with words alone" and I'm not entirely sure what she means by that. I suppose she probably means what happened to him was a mistake, but nothing he did contributed to that. It's not like picking a different candidate would have changed anything. Does she maybe mean picking someone who Shinji had such a close relationship to? Is she accepting that Bardiel and the new candidate getting maimed was inevitable, but the mistake was picking someone who would cause Shinji to quite after he was forced to almost kill them? Is she assuming that Shinji wouldn't have had as much of a problem nearly killing a different member of his class? Or is she just being hard on herself and blaming herself for somehow causing all of this by approving him as a pilot, as though if she picked someone else everything would have been okay somehow? Or was approving a fourth pilot at all the mistake because it put another child in danger?

The second part of the episode is titled "Introjection". In psychology introjection is when a person adopts behaviors of other people, often as a defense mechanism. I'm not sure what that refers to in this case, but my best guess is that it's talking about Shinji mimicking Rei and Asuka's willingness to go into battle as a means of coping with him newfound helplessness in the face of an attack.

First appearance of Zeruel. Zeruel is one of the most important Angels, and certainly one of the most memorable. The design is kind of a regression back to the weird alien kaiju designs of the earlier Angels, and the original TV design in particular looks pretty silly. This guy wouldn't have been out of place in the first handful of episodes. And yet it manages to be important and memorable because of how strong it is and the events surrounding it. Zeruel seems like it's widely regarded as the most powerful Angel, although Armisael is the only Angel to actually kill an Eva (sort of, by forcing it to kill itself) in the TV canon.

Early on we had talked about what the Angel battle with the highest death toll is, and after watching this again, it pretty much has to be this one, right? Zeruel causes a series of massive explosions throughout the city before it's been fully evacuated, so there's no way it didn't kill a lot of people. Unless the citizens of Tokyo-3 have become so adept at evacuating that they were all able to get well out of the way in the brief time between when Zeruel appeared and when it started blowing things up, it certainly caused a lot of deaths. Probably more than Gaghiel, who I think is the only real contender for second place.

Christ, Unit 02 gets it worse in this episode than it does in Rebuild. I forgot about that. So apparently TV NERV is better at putting Evas back together than Rebuild NERV, since Unit 02 basically looks the same after this despite being completely decapitated. In Rebuilt it loses one arms and gets it's head bashed in and it ends up looks substantially different for all of the extra mechanical parts they need to get it working again.

Kaji is such a badass. Seriously, did he plant those watermelons just so he could do that if shit got real?  What a cool guy.

I have to assume the timeframe of Shinji getting into Unit 01 makes no sense. Apparently Zeruel just stands here over Central Dogma for quite a while as Shinji runs to the bay where Unit 01 is, gets in, and powers on. Whatever, it's a minor inconsistency that doesn't really hurt the show, but it is technically a plot hole.

Zeruel breaking into Central Dogma and targeting the bridge staff makes it among the most bloodthirsty Angels that I can remember. Again Gaghiel is the only other one that comes to mind as far as Angels that go out of their way to kill people, and I believe Gaghiel may have only been doing that because the ships it attacked were firing on it. Zeruel actually slows down long enough for Unit 01 to catch it for seemingly no reason than that it wanted to kill some more people. Again, much more traditional monster behavior than we've seen from an Angel in a while.

Actually that comes up again in the next scene, where Unit 01 becomes incapacitated. As my understanding of the Evas goes, Unit 01 would not have gone berserk if it didn't think Shinji was in danger, so the fact that Zeruel wasted a bunch of time trying to kill Unit 01 rather than just abandoning it and heading straight to Terminal Dogma is the sole reason it doesn't succeed. After Bardiel explicitly doesn't do this in the last episode it's quite a contrast. Zeruel behaves more like Unit 01 than like any of the Angels we've seen lately.

The way Unit 01 moves after going berserk is decidedly more simian than we've seen before. It really reminds me of a gorilla. I suppose maybe that's meant to highlight absolutely for certain that it's a living thing, not a robot. It's really horrible. That noise it makes made me physically uncomfortable as I was watching this just now.

I've always considered this episode to be one of the most important in the series, but looking at it again I guess it's technically not. The main thing that happens here is that Unit 01 awakens, whatever that means exactly, and absorbs both the S2 Engine and Shinji. That could technically have happened during any Angel fight, or at least any Angel with a visible S2 Engine (so probably not Bardiel, Leilel, or Iruel). Even the stuff with Shinji resolving to be a pilot again isn't probably strictly necessary since it's again kind of a response to a problem that only existed this episode. So while this might not actually be one of the most plot-significant episodes, it is one of the best. I basically mark "the last part of the series" as anything that happens after this.

Episode 20: Form Of The Mind, Form Of The Man

So how did NERV re-capture Unit 01? Did it just go dormant again after a while? How did they move it? I feel bad for anybody on that work crew, I would be scared it would start moving again at any moment.

What do SEELE mean when they say "This is all because we didn't put a bell around Ikari's neck"? I can't figure how this really could have been Gendo's fault. He got sucker punched by a bullshit-powerful Angel out of nowhere. Are they talking about his failure to keep a shorter leash on Shinji? Or when they say "Ikari" are they actually talking about Shinji? They're probably just aimlessly scapegoating, but I do wonder if they blame this one any particular decision of Gendo's.

Lol, Kaji is sitting on Gendo's desk in the next scene. Again, badass. :D

Why is Shinji's empty plugsuit in the cockpit? He wasn't wearing it in the last episode. I mean, the obvious answer is "the animators forgot", but that's a minor error.

I don't think I ever noticed this before, but the exposition scene about what happened to Shinji is actually one of Eva's infamous minute-long static shots. Aside from a flashing light in the background it's just a still shot of Unit 01's head with Ritsuko and Maya silhouetted against it. Unlike the most iconic examples of that phenomenon this one has dialogue over it so it's less noticeable, but it definitely qualifies.

Shinji's psychedelic freakout sequence has a brief shot of Rei I, which is the first we see of her in the series and presumably the first indication that Shinji actually knew her as a kid, even if he doesn't remember. That could be read as his extrapolation of what Rei probably looked like when she was younger, but I believe her outfit is exactly right, so clearly he actually is remembering.

Is the Rei that Shinji is talking to this whole time supposed to be Yui? At first I just assumed this was his internal dialogue with himself, but if that's the case I think he would just be talking to himself. The fact that he's talking to Rei could mean that she represents his mental construct of her (and by extension probably other people, and she's just coming to mind because of where he is when he's doing all of this), or she represents Yui and Rei is just the closest thing to Yui that Shinji can picture.

The dramatic music in the scene where the bridge crew is trying to salvage Shinji strikes me as ridiculous. The technobabble actually hasn't struck me as that gratuitous so far for how often people complain about it, but this scene has it real bad, and the fact that that she seems to expect me to be excited by it is silly. It's not very dramatic and it's not interesting. Maybe all of this terminology actually does mean something that makes this less of a waste of time and it's just going over my head, but I don't like it.

In describing Unit 01 (weirdly by calling it an android, which surely she can't still believe at this point) Misato says "It's man-made, but who knows what lurks inside that  black box?". Maybe this is common knowledge, but I just learned a few years ago what a "black box" is. It's a rhetorical device based on a concept in electronics in which the input and output of a process are known, but nothing else is. In electronics a black box is an educational tool in which a circuit is covered up and students have to determine what's underneath the cover by monitoring the input and the output. So in a broader sense a black box is any process in which the first and last stages are known, but something in the middle is unknown. In this case Misato means that NERV built the Evas, and they've seen what they can do, but they don't know how they work.

I was on board with this episode at first, but by the end I kind of hated it. I understand the need for a buffer between the last episode and the rest of the series, but this just comes off as a momentum-killer. It has massive amounts of animation recycling, large parts of it either don't make sense or are just too complicated or deliberately obscure for me to follow right now, and it doesn't bring much to the table aside from retreading things from past episodes and foreshadowing some upcoming stuff in a way that's too obtuse to be useful. I think a lot of the common criticisms leveled at Eva are present here. There is plenty of important stuff involving Yui and Misato that does matter to the plot quite a lot, but it's kind of buried in what's basically just wordy filler. I wouldn't count this below the worst episodes in the series because the important stuff in it is important and interesting, but a lot of it isn't great.

So Kaji casually mentions something very important and dangerous for him, that they found out his other job and was taken off the combat thing. I forget who 'they' were. Since he's an espionage spy agent, seems pretty bad for him.

I think he's talking about Misato, after she caught him in Terminal Dogma and he showed her Lilith.

At sync rate over 400%, Ritsuko wonders if 'she has awoken'. Which would imply that Yui is either normally asleep, or was asleep and is finally awake.

My understanding of that is less than she was asleep and more that she was just unaware. Maybe she's beginning to remember things on some level.

Also it occurred to me that one of the reasons why Gendo places so much more priority over Unit-01 may simply be due to the fact that it contains his beloved wife's soul.

I'm sure that's true to some degree. He sees Unit 01 as his only chance to get her back, but it also is literally her as well. So he's got a lot invested in Unit 01, to the extent that I'm surprised he or SEELE actually uses it in combat. Maybe they consider this a do or die kind of thing and don't believe they have any other choice.

Nerv moves to their secondary HQ and leaves Magi for awhile. I wonder if this is outside Geofront, since that's in a wreck, but that would mean that they would have to rush to meet the Angel at Geofront when they appear. I feel like that isn't the case though since they seem to be right there when they launch in the subsequent episodes.

I'm guessing secondary HQ is still within the Geofront, just a different part. It's hard to say though, since we never get a great idea of how big the Geofront actually is, how much of it is in use, and what's actually down there. We probably don't have that information partly because the geography just doesn't make sense, but it seems pretty risky to fully move operations out of the immediate proximity of Terminal Dogma in the inevitable event that more Angel shit does down.

Shinji realizes that he knows the Eva and that he ran away afterwards from his father and his mother. So he ran away after seeing the Eva while his mother was still alive? That's weird, I figured it was after she died and all the troubles were flying around. Unless it was metaphorically he meant that.

I think when he talks about his mother in this case he's (subconsciously?) talking about Unit 01, in the sense that he tried to quit being a pilot and therefore ran away from his mother. Alternatively he may mean that in the sense of running away from his mother's memory, since we've already seen that Gendo is the only link Shinji still has to that memory. Running away from him could also mean running away from her.

And he's talking to an apparition of Rei, which is also weird. Why would it be Rei? Is it actually her? And the Leliel Shinji also briefly makes an appearance. I've been wondering about Leliel's words actually. Angels don't seem to be the type to randomly muse and philosophise about stuff, so when Leliel mentions that Shinji inside Shinji and the Shinji inside others, maybe it was talking about something that was actually 'true' or something it perceived to be an actuality or truth. Maybe that was the Leliel inside Shinji talking. I wonder if the Rei talking is the Rei inside Shinji, and sufficiently powerful beings can to some extent reach within the ;themselves within others', or 'sync' with the 'themselves within others'.

That never occurred to me, that does make some sense. The Rei in this episode could be Quantum Rei from End Of Evangelion, reaching back to Shinji at different points in time. My money's still on Rei representing Yui here, but that makes sense too.

This is the first time I've heard of this, I have no idea. Would not surprise me that the sponsors were taken aback by the sudden change in tone and direction of the series, even if the hints were there.
Ok well I just checked the Japanese wiki and there's no mention of the episodes being moved to a different time slot, they all aired every week on Wednesdays (I checked the dates) from 6:30pm to 7:00pm. The only two exceptions to this are episodes 13 and 14 which had to air either slightly earlier or later because their slots were taken up by special New Years shows or something, so completely random reasons. So probably false, can't find anything about episode 18 in particular either, though the article did mention that that episode and some other episode with Misato and Kaji were both criticized as not being kid-friendly. I've heard stories about how the mythical budget problems weren't actually a thing or something or something either.

I've been asking around about this for the last week, and every single person I talked to had heard the same story I had. I'm pretty sure one of them was the person who told me that though, and they all know each other, so maybe they all got it from him. Seems like it might be a persistent myth, but yeah, I haven't been able to find any evidence at all and you found some to the contrary, so there you go.

As for the budget problems not being a thing at all, I have a little bit of a hard time believing that. The animation problems and the nature of the last two episodes scream "budget problems" all over to me. Maybe not relative to other shows at the time, and maybe it's more a case of budget mismanagement than actual budget problems, but there was so much corner cutting that clearly something was going on at some point.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #45 on: December 25, 2015, 08:31:00 AM »
Something i don't understand 'bout this show: Why do they use kids and not, idk, solders?
My old avatars: Old ass turtle, Unzan - Second and Current Avatar by the talented Aoshi-shi

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #46 on: December 25, 2015, 07:41:32 PM »
Something i don't understand 'bout this show: Why do they use kids and not, idk, solders?

All we know for sure is that there is a reason, we don't know what the reason is. Ritsuko explicitly says "We have to use fourteen year olds to pilot the Evas" in the fourth episode, but that's all she says. There are a lot of theories beyond that of various levels of credibility:

-One of the more common theories is that there's something fundamentally different about the bodies and/or minds of people born after First Impact. Some people have claimed that there's evidence that anyone born after Second Impact has no soul, and somehow that's why they're able to interface with the Evas. I don't believe that for a second, but it's a popular theory.

-Because NERV and SEELE's different plans both revolve around Unit 01, and because of the circumstances surrounding Yui and Unit 01 Shinji and Rei are the only ones who can pilot it, the other pilots are deliberately kept around the same age to avoid questions.

-Younger pilots are easier to trick and manipulate. Gendo's plan involves conditioning Shinji into making certain decisions at certain times, and it might be harder to dupe an adult pilot that thoroughly.

-My personal theory is that it has to do with the relationship between the pilot and the Eva. The two more functional Evas, Unit 01 and Unit 02, have a parent/child relationship with their pilots, and I believe that's why they're able to take autonomous action to protect them. I think the whole concept of the Eva was built to exploit the natural protectiveness mothers have for their children, and that feeling is stronger when the pilot is younger. Maybe this wasn't originally intended, but after the accident with Yui I think it became part of the plan.

-It might have something to do with the mental state of people at that age. In order to mentally interface with the Evas via the entry plug they may need to have less fully-formed personalities. There might be too much mental feedback from an adult with a more developed mind that might make that link less stable.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #47 on: December 28, 2015, 04:18:30 AM »
No episodes for me today, I just bought a new computer, so all of my machines are occupied transferring files. Didn't occur to me to just watch the DVDs on my TV until right now, I assume my old laptop could handle transferring files and me typing text into it at the same time, but oh well. I'll get to them tomorrow.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #48 on: December 31, 2015, 06:29:09 AM »
Alright, this will be my third time attempting to do this. This next episode is a big one, possibly the single most important and densest episode in the entire series, so I've decided not to watch it a couple of times because I didn't think I would have the time to give it the attention it deserves. But I don't have anywhere to be tomorrow morning and I've hopefully fended off everyone who might distract me, so here goes.

I should point out that the next handful of episodes (21-24) have two versions, the TV edit and the Platinum director's cut. I will be watching the director's cut for each of them because it is better. That makes these episodes considerably longer, which is a double-edged sword because they're already pretty dense, but whatever.

Episode 21: The Birth of NERV

So very first frame of the episode and we've already got something significant. I believe this is the first time S2 is stated to mean "super solenoid". A solenoid is effectively a spiral or coil, which I suppose probably makes the S2 engine some kind of DNA structure. Ha. Reminds me of Gurren Lagann.

If I'm not mistaken, this scene at the research base is originally from Death And Rebirth, and the placement of it here makes that movie a complete waste of time, rather than just tedious. Not every single bit of original footage from Death And Rebirth made it back into the series, but all of it that matters did as far as I know.

Christ, there's so much going on in this research base scene, I could spend like an hour just unpacking this one clip. Somewhere in the wall of sub text there's something about the Lance of Longinus, which is "still where it was brought ashore after arriving from the Dead Sea last week". Was the lance found in the Dead Sea? I don't think I ever knew anything about where the lance is from then. I thought it was found near Adam. Why was it in the Dead Sea? Also there's a line buried in there about how "The physical contact experiment is scheduled for the 13th of next month". If it wasn't physical contact that set Adam off, what was it? I would say proximity to the spear, but apparently it was near him for at least a little while without anything happening. Maybe it was being moved closer to him and the speaker in this scene didn't know about it. I could continue picking this scene apart forever because there's so much dialogue and much of it is semi-important, but in the interest of this not taking eight hours I'll move on.

"The DNA that dived into Adam is physically uniting". I guess that probably has something to do with what went wrong, but what does it mean? What DNA? Lilith DNA maybe? Or Lilith DNA by proxy of a human?

Someone offscreen says "Pull back the lance" after the reaction that leads to Second Impact begins, so I guess they did get it closer to Adam after all. Maybe even touched him with it.

"Even if only for half a second, we have to put an anti-AT field around him! Get enough energy to generate an anti-AT field!" Wow, these researchers can do that? I don't think even NERV can do that. I mean, I guess probably not since they all die, but they at least have the potential to do that. Or they think they do.

You know, now that I think about it, I'm not sure what the significance of the SEELE monoliths is. The monoliths are obviously a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and if I recall in 2001 weren't they the mechanical vessels of aliens who had transcended physical bodies or something like that? Is the implication that the SEELE members are no longer human? I could easily believe that except we see Keel in the cyborg flesh in End Of Evangelion. Fuyutsuki says "Not the committe, but SEELE itself has finally appeared". Is he implying that the committee are just puppets, either literal or metaphorical, and that the monoliths are separate from them? He calls the 01 monolith Keel, so clearly they share an identity. If I had to guess I'd say Fuyutsuki is talking about their actions in kidnapping him being representative of "the real SEELE" and not necessarily their forms, but it's sort of ambiguous.

I don't think I ever explicitly noticed that the flashback to Yui in college was in 1999. I just assumed that it was a number of years before Second Impact, but no, it was shortly before. Not that that really changes anything, but it does make her and the other characters in that timeline younger than I had always assumed.

I believe this is the first time we ever actually see Yui, or at least the first clear shot of her? It's not much of a dramatic reveal. I can see her resemblance to Shinji, but she really looks a lot like Rei. More than I remember. That makes sense of course, but it really is a close parallel.

And holy shit, I really never noticed how much young Gendo looks like an adult Shinji. Again, makes sense, but wow, I can't believe I never noticed that.

Yui calls Gendo "such a cute man, it's just that no one knows it". What could she possibly be talking about? I would love to see just a scene or two of that. Of Gendo being a cute man.

Fuyutsuki accuses Gendo of having been interested in Yui, at least originally, to get to SEELE. I wonder if this is true. What motive could he have to want to get to them at that point? If that was originally his plan then he must have accidentally fallen in love.

Apparently Gendo was at the research base the day before Second Impact. I assume the fact that he left just in time means that he was already operating under the guidance of the Dead Sea Scrolls at this point. How long was that the case? Was he already aware of them before meeting Yui? Probably, hence his alleged interest in SEELE.

There's a lot happening in the middle here concerning Gehirn, the production of Unit 00, Misato and friends in college, Naoko Akagi, etc. that I have surprisingly little to say about. I guess it all goes by pretty fast and is pretty straightforward. Important stuff, but not a lot to talk about that I can think of.

I suppose it's worth briefly noting that Gehirn is German for brain. That makes SEELE (soul) the ultimate driving force behind instrumentality, Gehirn (brain) the planners, and NERV (nerve) the physical executors.

Yui dies offscreen, and Gendo immediately shifts gears and becomes Modern Gendo. He also suddenly starts wearing glasses.

The last time Ritsuko and Naoko see each other they say "Good work" instead of "Goodbye". Not sure if that's nice or terrible.

How did Naoko figure out what Rei is? Did she learn it from Gendo between their first meeting and now, or did she just figure it out by connecting the dots? I'm not really clear about how much she ever knew. The same way I don't really know how much Ritsuko ever knows, I guess. Probably everything I suppose.

As Kaji is freeing Fuyutsuki he says "All I want is to get closer to the truth... within me". I wonder what he means by that. It seems to me that he's in the espionage business because it's the only way to piece together anything resembling the truth, but that truth is decidedly outside of him. What internal truth is he looking for?

Kaji's death has been one of the biggest sources of controversy in the series. A few shots in the director's cut were very deliberately altered because people got the false impression from the cinematography of the TV version that it was implied that Misato killed him. In the manga it's explicitly clear that Gendo is the killer for some goddamn reason (one of the many reasons I don't care for the manga). I think it's third-tier canon that Kaji was killed by an unnamed security officer who we've never met before and whose identity doesn't matter at all to the series, and it's better that way. It's the circumstances he's gotten himself into that ultimately kill him, not the choices of any other particular person. I suppose it's technically ambiguous whether he's even dead or not, but I don't think anything would be gained by assuming that he survived somehow. He's served his purpose as "mechanism by which secrets can be revealed" and now he can't do that anymore, so it's kind of uncharted territory from here on out, even more than it was before.

I think Shinji and I have the same earbuds. I swear his are identical to the ones I'm wearing right now as I watch this episode.

Misato knows right away what Kaji's message means. Seems that everyone knew this was inevitable. Fair enough, I can't really see how it could have ended any other way. If Kaji cared about living and not uncovering as much information as possible he would have booked it a while ago.

Well, that took a long time. This may be the single most information-dense episode in the series, and I suppose in a way it's kind of to the episode's detriment that it's basically just an exposition dump, but I like it a lot. It's one of the most straightfoward presentations of facts and events we get in the series, which makes it invaluable for piecing together a lot of the more arcane stuff. And we get to see a lot of things that we don't see anywhere else in the series. It also revolves around Fuyutsuki, who I've been finding to be one of the most interesting characters this time through.

I considered just calling it a night after this episode because it took me so long to watch, but fuck it, I don't have anywhere to be early tomorrow because I have work off for the holiday. I'll push on and do the next one too.

Episode 22: At Least Be Humane

This episode opens with another scene from Death And Rebirth. This seems like a perfect place for it, it's a thematic bridge between the last episode and this one. Almost seems like it was intended to be here. Was it? Were all of the re-introduced director's cut scenes written for these episodes but cut for time and budgetary reasons only to be reintroduced much later, or is it just a nice coincidence that they fit in so well?

We see Asuka's backstory, which is horrifying. I know a lot of people don't like Asuka because she's such a bastard, but I can't help but to like her knowing the kind of awful shit she's been through. I can't really hold how fucked up she ended up against her at all.

Kyoko's accident is the opposite of Yui's in many ways, and I suppose that sort of directly informs the ways in which Asuka is the opposite of Shinji. Yui died because she took a risk in an experiment for Shinji's sake. Kyoko died for her own sake, because she was too busy being wrapped up in her work to think about what would happen to Asuka if something happened to her.

The man and woman who are talking about Asuka in this scene are her father and his mistress (and her eventual foster mother..?), right? I'm not sure why I have that impression, but for some reason I'm pretty sure that's the case. Where is her father, anyway? Is he still alive?

The weird parallel of Asuka's understandable aversion to dolls in this continuity and that doll she talks to in Rebuild 2.0 is really interesting. I have theories about that, and I'll get to them eventually.

There's a brief shot of NERV technicians reconstructing Unit 02 after it got mutilated by Zeruel. I guess I forgot about that.

The scene with Asuka and Rei in the elevator is another one of those infamous extremely long static shots. It certainly serves a purpose, but it does feel a little gratuitous in length. They could have trimmed it in the director's cut, but I suppose those are such a part of the show now that it would almost be a shame to.

We see Arael for the first time. Along with Armisael it's one of the most obviously biblical Angels, and arguably a contender for strongest Angel with Armisael and Zeruel since it takes such extraordinary measures to defeat.

The first part of Asuka's hallucination/mind journey made me really, really uncomfortable. To the point that I wonder if maybe it went a bit too far.

Is the later scene of her talking to a younger version of herself supposed to imply that Arael is trying to communicate with her the same way Leilel did with Shinji? The show doesn't really seem to use imagery consistently enough in this sort of scene for that to be entirely clear, but the dialogue would sort of fit.

The crew of that boat that's floating in the ocean of LCL around Lilith have the strangest job in the world.

The scene where Unit 00 throws the lance is one of the coolest pieces of animation in the series. It's short, but it looks fantastic. Kind of an odd contrast to all of the re-used animation and other shortcuts in this episode, but hey, it worked.

I think we're safely into the point where every episode (pending how you feel about the last two) is absolutely plot-necessary. This is another important episode. The series wouldn't really be able to work without it. Ultimately I guess not that much happens for all of the filler in it, but it sets a mood for Asuka that's important.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #49 on: January 02, 2016, 06:34:33 AM »
Ugh, sorry again for lateness. This has been a most emotionally exhausting week. I'm drained. I'll try get to them as soon as I can.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #50 on: January 02, 2016, 08:22:39 PM »
No worries. Take your time.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

helvetica

  • Arcade Maid
  • *
  • United Federation
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #51 on: January 03, 2016, 01:42:08 PM »
Funny enough I just watched Evangelion again from start to finish while cramming for my exams a few weeks ago. And this time was the first time I watched the director's cut versions of 21-24 and I never realized how much more they added and how much more of a mindfuck they were.


Twitter: @hipsterfont | Discord: helvetica#0573 | LINE: hipsterfont

He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #52 on: January 03, 2016, 05:08:23 PM »
Funny enough I just watched Evangelion again from start to finish while cramming for my exams a few weeks ago. And this time was the first time I watched the director's cut versions of 21-24 and I never realized how much more they added and how much more of a mindfuck they were.

Yeah, the director's cut it really remarkable. We're lucky to have gotten such a substantial addition to the main canon that long after the show was over. I'd like so see the same treatment on every single episode some day, but I think that's pretty unlikely since a lot of the current director's cut was re-introduced material that was already finished for other projects and that kind of thing just doesn't exist for most episodes.

If you have any specific thoughts, observations, or questions feel free to weigh in, especially if it concerns episodes we're currently talking about. In theory I'll be covering 23-24 this afternoon (but more likely I'll get distracted or not carve out the time for them and end up doing them later in the week).
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #53 on: January 04, 2016, 09:01:50 AM »
Oh there was a director's cut edition. Ah, well I've watched the TV version just now. Might make for an interesting comparison for how much more lacking it is compared to the former though.

Ep 21, Birth of Nerv / He Was Aware That He was Still a Child

I found a lot of the information very interesting. Like you say, exposition episode, but it was so welcome after all the mystery starting arise in the last couple of episodes, in addition to adding some much needed backstory to very interesting characters. And despite that, I don't have any too much to comment on, at least in the TV version (or maybe my eyes and mind weren't sharp enough to catch anything).

So we find out that the Instrumentality committee =/= Seele, judging by Fuyutsuki's comment. Which I'm having a hard time understanding. Every scene with Keel, we see him in the dark room with colored lights, with the other members of what we presume is the committee. I specifically remember that one guy with that high-pitched, weird gait of talking with the long nose and droopy eyes. I forget if any of the outsider characters specifically mention Seele, or continually refer to the 'upper brass' as "the committee". I know in this episode Misato was discussing with Hyuga and she only mentioned the committee. The monoliths before Fuyutsuki speak through a voice mask, to conceal their identity. All the monoliths but Keel's. It doesn't appear that Keel, whenever he was speaking with the other old men, that he was with anyone higher. Nor did it seem like there was anyone above the committee by the way they were conversing with each other. The way they speak in a really round about way and constantly use metaphors to me would suggest that the committee actually is Seele. I wonder what point there is to use faces in the committee and monoliths as Seele. Why differentiate them? Why use that buffer, the committee, between Nerv and Seele? Regardless, Keel we know is part of both. It appears that he is the main spokesperson of both the committee and Seele. Maybe the committee is a portion of Seele that specifically deals with the Instrumentality project, while other members deal with other projects, like the MP Evas, or hell, Kaworu, or whatever. Or maybe that was the point of Fuyutsuki's comment, that not only did the Instrumentality committee 'division' of Seele show up, but the actual upper brass of the whole of Seele itself. Which, considering that the Instrumentality plan is probably the most important objective of Seele, it wouldn't surprise me if the upper ring of Seele consisted of all of the committee members, plus perhaps a few of the head directors of the other 'committees' of other project.

And then they say that they have no intention to create a god. Unit-01 is by this point every bit a god, though not using its powers. Has both the fruit of life and fruit of knowledge. Perhaps an interesting peek into Seele's version of 3rd impact that they were desiring. When Gendo first mentions to Fuyutsuki that he submitted the proposal of the Instrumentality project to Keel, he says that the project is something that 'has never been done, the path to god (or become a god)'. Maybe its the former, the 'path to god' that he submitted, he submitted a proposal to a path to 'god' and not to create a 'god', even though he may have intended the latter from the beginning.

Which would also mean that before this proposal, Seele was funding Gehirn for research into Project E, which I believe was... "reviving Adam". Whether Gendo meant this literally --actually reviving Adam-- or metaphorically --cloning Adam to create Unit-00 -- I don't know. I assume the latter though, since though I forget why 2nd Impact was deliberated, I get the feeling it was to do something about Adam. If Gendo was in charge at the time around 2nd Impact, and since Seele we assume doesn't know about embryo Adam, then we can assume that Gendo manipulated some of the experiment to allow the creation of embryo Adam. Since Gendo would know that Adam is 'revived', we can assume he meant the phrase metaphorically. Now the question remains, why? Since they had the dead sea scrolls, they knew about the Angels. They knew that this was their only way to fight against them 15 or whenever years from now. Which I would assume that Project E's purpose was to create clones of Adam, Evas, to fight against the Angels. And that's it, and that it was only until Gendo's proposal that Seele decided to use the Third Impact to their own advantage. This would also explain Seele's mention of their having no intention to create a god. They would simply manipulate Third Impact (or cause one) to achieve the results they were seeking.

If Gendo manipulated the events of Second Impact to create embryo Adam, then he had to have some intention of some kind of Instrumentality plan then. Perhaps he also explained that to Fuyutsuki at some point, which is why Fuyutsuki knew about it when Gendo mentioned that he submitted a proposal of a new plan to Keel. That would explain Gendo's motives for working for Project E. Then why would Fuyutsuki want to work with him? Gendo's offer of 'work[ing] with him to create a new history of humanity' (or something like that) doesn't seem like the sort of ambition that he could bait Fuyutsuki with. Maybe Fuyutsuki felt threatened into it after being shown such clearly top-secret confidential things? Maybe that and the fact that Yui was involved in it? Or perhaps it was because of his initial determination to seek the truth behind Second Impact after he saw past the fabricated information of the meteorite explanation by the UN. Maybe all three. Like you say, Fuyutsuki is being a really interesting character through watching this. He's very much involved.... and yet not involved.

Kaji's death is probably necessary, and his going out is rather convenient. Who is it? we ask. The TV version definitely makes it initially seem like it was Misato, even though it becomes very apparent, to me at least, that it wasn't her. She becomes overcome with grief; she doesn't break from her actions.


Ep22 Don't be (At the least, like a human)

Now that I'm commenting about it, it amazes me how smoothly I watched through Asuka's flashback. I don't know how much more the Director's cut edition adds to it, but occurs to me that the level of trauma she must have experienced is utterly alien to me. I don't even understand but just to feel 'omg that's fucked up'.

Your comparison between Yui and Asuka's mother is interesting, though I wonder about the 'died for herself' part. We don't really know her intentions behind being the subject of the contact experiment. We don't even know if it was her intention to, though presumably they did have her consent. The man did call it ironic that she became the victim to her own proposal. Victim would imply that there was something about it that wasn't entirely her intention to happen. And I wonder what was different about her contact proposal that was different from the one with Yui's. Perhaps the one with Gendo them was confidential and it was developed independently by Asuka's mother? Could perhaps be another reason why the dummy plug may be incompatible with Unit-02.

I'm liking the subtle facial expressions. Maya throws Ritsuko a conflicted look after she mentions that they will prioritize repairs on Unit-00 after Asuka does poorly on her synch tests. Ritsuko makes a hurt, nasty one because Misato makes a retort taken too far about her home and cats.

I was fine with the long scene in the elevator with Rei and Asuka. After all the dismal events, it almost comes as a moment of peace and quiet in all the depressing, gloomy stuff. At the same time, it's a dreadful moment. You know Asuka's in a terrible mood and Rei can't possibly defuse her. And Rei ends up making the first comment, interestingly enough. She wants to help since what she offers is advice. Says a lot about her development, perhaps.

Asuka launches to the surface from her Eva, which would imply that all the pilots have the privilege/authority/clearance to launch without permission from Misato.

In addition to the sync-boosting qualities of LCL, it also apparently has a mind contamination barrier effect.

Very interesting dialogue between Fuyutsuki and Gendo about the latter's decision to use the Lance. Like you, I really liked that throwing animation. Those few short hops, I can feel that visceral, kinetic energy in that throwing motion. It must also be the one moment where an Angel was so 'easily' and quickly disposed of. Barring Matariel anyway, I feel that's slightly different because they still had to work for it. The Lance of Longinus shows up for just a few short scenes and disappears just as quickly, but manages to establish itself as this really alien, incomprehensible weapon that simply, kills an Angel. Just like that. So tasteful. Also I vaguely remember watching this scene before where the Lance collides with the AT Field, and then howls and morphs before piercing through. I assume that was the scene in the Director's cut? Or maybe I'm remembering wrong.

Altogether some really neat episodes, though I couldn't find too much to talk about some of the new information.


All that stuff of the scene from Second Impact I've totally missed, I'll have to find the Director's edition and watch it at some point.

Quote
Yui calls Gendo "such a cute man, it's just that no one knows it". What could she possibly be talking about? I would love to see just a scene or two of that. Of Gendo being a cute man.
Perhaps Gendo is secretly quite like Shinji? He did say he wasn't used to being liked, maybe he had very awkward and shy moments with Yui whenever it became more (positively) emotional.  I'm thinking like the Shinji around Gaghiel/Israfel episodes, except slightly more brash.

Quote
Apparently Gendo was at the research base the day before Second Impact. I assume the fact that he left just in time means that he was already operating under the guidance of the Dead Sea Scrolls at this point. How long was that the case? Was he already aware of them before meeting Yui? Probably, hence his alleged interest in SEELE.
This is one of the mysteries that confounds me too. How and why was Yui tied to Seele? And how did Gendo know about it? And though it depends on how much he knew, why did he try to be a part of them?

Quote
The last time Ritsuko and Naoko see each other they say "Good work" instead of "Goodbye". Not sure if that's nice or terrible.
From my understanding, "good work" comes off as a very thankful sort of "aaahhhhh", releasing a big sigh after a long day of work sort of phrase. Like a "you/we worked very hard today, let's make a toast to a hard day of work", sort of loosening of tensions sort of thing. Though it might be a little distant(?), I don't know, I think it shows that they're fairly close, I mean they were exchanging letters, even if their mother-daughter relationship wasn't necessarily that close. That they were very close as colleagues, but were rather awkward about their familial relationship.

Quote
As Kaji is freeing Fuyutsuki he says "All I want is to get closer to the truth... within me". I wonder what he means by that. It seems to me that he's in the espionage business because it's the only way to piece together anything resembling the truth, but that truth is decidedly outside of him. What internal truth is he looking for?
My subs say "All I want is to get closer to the truth. / To have it in my grasp." which agrees with what I'm hearing.

Huh I don't remember anything about Asuka and dolls in Rebuild 2.0, I'll be looking forward to it.


Well that's all for those 2 episodes. That was a mouthful. Finally some answers, more questions, in the series.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #54 on: January 04, 2016, 11:23:19 PM »
Oh there was a director's cut edition. Ah, well I've watched the TV version just now. Might make for an interesting comparison for how much more lacking it is compared to the former though.

Have you seen the director's cut before and you don't have it now, or have you never seen it at all? It's worth hunting down, but it's found on the Evangelion Platinum box set which is hard to find for a decent price right now. Should become a lot more accessible after the Blu-Ray release. As far as I remember there are only really two extremely plot-relevant bits, the opening to episode 21 and a brief shot during episode 23. The rest is either helpful but non-crucial background or just redrawn animation.

So we find out that the Instrumentality committee =/= Seele, judging by Fuyutsuki's comment. Which I'm having a hard time understanding. Every scene with Keel, we see him in the dark room with colored lights, with the other members of what we presume is the committee. I specifically remember that one guy with that high-pitched, weird gait of talking with the long nose and droopy eyes. I forget if any of the outsider characters specifically mention Seele, or continually refer to the 'upper brass' as "the committee". I know in this episode Misato was discussing with Hyuga and she only mentioned the committee. The monoliths before Fuyutsuki speak through a voice mask, to conceal their identity. All the monoliths but Keel's. It doesn't appear that Keel, whenever he was speaking with the other old men, that he was with anyone higher. Nor did it seem like there was anyone above the committee by the way they were conversing with each other. The way they speak in a really round about way and constantly use metaphors to me would suggest that the committee actually is Seele. I wonder what point there is to use faces in the committee and monoliths as Seele. Why differentiate them? Why use that buffer, the committee, between Nerv and Seele? Regardless, Keel we know is part of both. It appears that he is the main spokesperson of both the committee and Seele. Maybe the committee is a portion of Seele that specifically deals with the Instrumentality project, while other members deal with other projects, like the MP Evas, or hell, Kaworu, or whatever. Or maybe that was the point of Fuyutsuki's comment, that not only did the Instrumentality committee 'division' of Seele show up, but the actual upper brass of the whole of Seele itself. Which, considering that the Instrumentality plan is probably the most important objective of Seele, it wouldn't surprise me if the upper ring of Seele consisted of all of the committee members, plus perhaps a few of the head directors of the other 'committees' of other project.

Yeah, I really don't understand this dynamic. Hopefully End Of Evangelion explains it better and I just forgot. There's also a bizarre wrench in the works (that weird extra monolith) in episode 24 that completely throws off the whole thing, but that may be an animation mistake and not actually canon.

Which would also mean that before this proposal, Seele was funding Gehirn for research into Project E, which I believe was... "reviving Adam". Whether Gendo meant this literally --actually reviving Adam-- or metaphorically --cloning Adam to create Unit-00 -- I don't know. I assume the latter though, since though I forget why 2nd Impact was deliberated, I get the feeling it was to do something about Adam. If Gendo was in charge at the time around 2nd Impact, and since Seele we assume doesn't know about embryo Adam, then we can assume that Gendo manipulated some of the experiment to allow the creation of embryo Adam. Since Gendo would know that Adam is 'revived', we can assume he meant the phrase metaphorically. Now the question remains, why? Since they had the dead sea scrolls, they knew about the Angels. They knew that this was their only way to fight against them 15 or whenever years from now. Which I would assume that Project E's purpose was to create clones of Adam, Evas, to fight against the Angels. And that's it, and that it was only until Gendo's proposal that Seele decided to use the Third Impact to their own advantage. This would also explain Seele's mention of their having no intention to create a god. They would simply manipulate Third Impact (or cause one) to achieve the results they were seeking.

Gendo's motivation remains completely unclear to me, but at this point I guess I'm just okay with the fact that we're not supposed to understand it. We would have to know more about what Gendo was like as a young man to understand him, the show does not give us that, and he'll just have to remain mysterious in a lot of ways. Fair enough.

Your comparison between Yui and Asuka's mother is interesting, though I wonder about the 'died for herself' part. We don't really know her intentions behind being the subject of the contact experiment. We don't even know if it was her intention to, though presumably they did have her consent. The man did call it ironic that she became the victim to her own proposal. Victim would imply that there was something about it that wasn't entirely her intention to happen. And I wonder what was different about her contact proposal that was different from the one with Yui's. Perhaps the one with Gendo them was confidential and it was developed independently by Asuka's mother? Could perhaps be another reason why the dummy plug may be incompatible with Unit-02.

I don't think Kyoko intended for her accident to happen, just like Yui presumably didn't. I think it was either an accident or design by someone other than her. But she seemingly put herself at risk for her own purposes, while Yui seemingly put herself at risk for Shinji's sake (not that I'm particularly judging Kyoko on that, mind. We don't know enough about her for it to be fair to call her truly selfish, but Asuka seems to remember it that way).

Also I vaguely remember watching this scene before where the Lance collides with the AT Field, and then howls and morphs before piercing through. I assume that was the scene in the Director's cut? Or maybe I'm remembering wrong.

Yes, that's in the director's cut. It can't pierce the barrier at first so it morphs into a drill shape (again reminding me of Gurren Lagann) and shreds through it.

All that stuff of the scene from Second Impact I've totally missed, I'll have to find the Director's edition and watch it at some point.

Do you have Death And Rebirth? If you do I'm pretty sure that scene it in there somewhere. It might be the first scene, I don't remember.

My subs say "All I want is to get closer to the truth. / To have it in my grasp." which agrees with what I'm hearing.

Oh, okay, I'll just chalk that up to a bad translation on my end then. That makes complete sense to me, unlike the line in my version.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #55 on: January 11, 2016, 03:05:03 AM »
I'm just watching it with subs online. My friend has a copy so I might have to borrow it from him if it comes with the Director's Cut scenes. Or just watch the Death and Rebirth movie.

Ep23: Tears

So the Armisael episode. It tries to contact Rei and does. I wonder if the apparition here means anything. In Shinji's case he sees a younger self, in Asuka's case the Angel shows her memories (or maybe the Angel is exploring her memories?), and here Rei sees an apparition that's identical to herself, only half submerged in LCL. Also this would be the first time we see the Angel talking for itself, talking about its feelings. And it's wanting to share its heart and feelings with Rei. Before that it asks Rei if she wants to become one with it. And anyway it brings up the feeling before Rei and she calls it loneliness. Though the Angel simply calls it a pain in its heart, when she elaborates the Angel says that that feeling is Rei's own.

All the Angels so far that took interest in humans never tried to approach Terminal Dogma. Leliel stayed in place, Arael stayed in space, and Armisael just hovered in place.

Oh and Rei says something interesting too. When asking Armisael if it's lonely because "we are many but you are alone/one", it would seem like 'Angel' is a pretty general classification of Adam-based beings. That or she was referring to the general reality that only a single is ever around at a time. Or that the Angels haven't really met each other. Or whatever.

Armisael was oscillating between pattern blue and orange. There's bound to be a list of all instances of not-pattern-blue moments somewhere where we could identify some kind of pattern but I didn't make one.

Rei reverses her AT Field which confines the Angel and then self destructs. The other time was with Leliel when it inverted its AT Field to suck in Unit-01. I guess technically reversing and inverting is different though, though I don't know if those specific terms are errors in my memory or random translation kinks. She self destructs and sees a quick flash of Gendo smiling. Which means that Rei II most cared about Gendo, or wanted affection from him though she just realized that she also cared about Shinji, or at least wanted to be with him to relieve her loneliness. Or that not being able to be with him was causing some amount of loneliness.

The retrieval team finds something in her Entry Plug, but Ritsuko orders to keep the findings a secret and to destroy every related thing. Is there something in the Director's Cut that elaborates on what they found here? I imagine something Rei clone related. Oh right I just remembered, the 'Angel Tree' is also only in the Director's Cut edition isn't it? I forget what context that appears in.

Misato tries to 'soothe' Shinji by offering herself to him. Shinji is disgusted and/or afraid and refuses her. On her part, probably a mix of guilt and loneliness. Still rather creepy though.

We get Rei III. And apparently the committee doesn't know about the Rei clones because Fuyutsuki says her 'being alive' might cause trouble with them. Either that, or it's the same as before when Shinji was contacted by Leliel and they wanted to interrogate him about that too. Because if they have Kaworu clones, then it wouldn't make sense for them not to know that Rei clones may also exist. Unless they don't know that she has the soul of Lilith. Which, how'd they get that again? They got the soul of Adam from Second Impact, how'd Gendo get Liliths?

So Ritsuko's little story about mankind finding god was pretty interesting. It would almost seem like they found a god before Adam, and then tried to resurrect it which became Adam. Gendo did say they called the Giant of Light Adam, which means that there was some other being before it? Shinji asks if the Evas are humans which surprisingly enough is answered with a 'yes' from Ritsuko. Which is odd, but ok.

And then the part about how only Rei, 'Rei', was able to generate a soul for herself, and how the Room of Guf was empty. Now what's that about. I feel like there was some other reference to Guf some other time but I don't remember. Lots of psychobabble (holy crap that's an actual word? No red squiggly lines) that I don't really understand. And you know what? This whole thing about creating clones or creating copies from things about something brings up something interesting about this universe and cloning. The cloning process. You can make physical copies, but those physical copies don't come with souls. In the whole moral, ethical debate about clones that we have in real life about whatever business about their treatment or their souls, or about how people shouldn't 'play god' or whatever else religious, ethical, moral, humane arguments and whatever ever ever. Anyway, all that, the clones that are created in this universe don't come with souls, those souls have to be generated or provided for somehow. Since Rei's soul is Lilith's, that's explained, and why only 'Rei' is the only Rei, the only container, that had a soul. Even the Evas, copies, ie: clones, of Adam don't come with souls, ie: clones without souls, have to have salvaged human souls to be able to have a soul. Which is all pretty interesting and stuff I just now thought about. I forget the name of that branch of science in this series, was it metaphysical biology? For all that can be done with souls, manipulation, transferring, salvaging, etc., it's interesting that souls don't just come from nowhere in this universe. Some lucky accident that happens when some physical thing is made or copied. Has to be pulled from somewhere. Some... Room of Guf? Is that what it is? I remember Kaworu saying something about closing the doors of Guf in the 3rd Rebuild movie.


Ep: 24: The Final Angel. The Beginning and the End, or "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

So Kaworu may be my favorite character, or at least the favorite of the children.

I believe there was some controversy about what Seele wanted to do with sending in Kaworu. From the TV version, it seems like they wanted to get the Angel defeating business over with already and sent him in to Nerv to get defeated. I vaguely remember there being more ambiguity with Seele's intentions with their conversation with Kaworu in the Director's Cut edition.

Seele, the monoliths, call Gendo a "good friend, comrade, and conspirator", meaning they did actually trust him. Which would explain why they weren't too sure if he was doing his job properly or not or whether to trust him or whatever. Or perhaps they were exaggerating to pay respects for his work for them before they off him.

Kaworu reveals that everyone has an AT Field, which must have been a bit reveal for real time viewers. Then later says that he wanted Shinji to stop Unit-01 because otherwise it might have "lived on with her"? ? ? ? ? Who living on with whom?? Unit-02 and Asuka? Unit-02 and her mother? Her mother and Asuka?

And finally we have the famous minute long silent scene of Shinji struggling with the decision to kill Kaworu. His throwing a quick (gentle?) glance at Rei is also intriguing. I wonder what he wanted to tell her, if any. Maybe a look of handing over his life to her, in a weird sort of way.

I wonder what's special about the Angels when they contact Adam that differs from Evas (Unit-00) coming in contact with Adam that doesn't cause Third Impact? Although... 'Adam' is actually Lilith, which could be why Unit-00 contacting Lilith doesn't do anything. So if Unit-01, based on Lilith I believe? comes in contact with Lilith, would that cause something? Would be funny if it could cause a Third Impact for the Angels that wipes them all out, as opposed to a Third Impact for humans which wipes out all Lilith-based life.


For being the last Angel, it wasn't a big fight or anything, but perhaps the most impactful. The epitomy of Angels showing self-awareness, I suppose. Of Angels showing interest in humans.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #56 on: January 11, 2016, 04:55:02 AM »
I was all ready to get this in on time tonight, but my roommate was like "Hey I just bought a new fight pad, let's play Blazblue so I can try it out" and we played for over four hours. :V So I guess I don't have time tonight after all. Oops. Will watch tomorrow.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #57 on: January 12, 2016, 04:12:23 AM »
Episode 23: Rei III-Tears

In the first scene with Misato listening to Kaji's voicemail over and over we can see that she owns a skateboard. I can't remember if we've seen that before and I commented on it then, but I find Misato skateboarding hard to picture. Between that, the poster of a sportscar over her desk, and the general messiness of her room I guess the takeaway is supposed to be that she's ultimately an immature person and isn't equipped to deal with this situation.

I guess everybody's having a terrible time. Asuka is depressed, Hikari has to deal with the awkwardness of having Asuka impose on her, nobody's around to talk to Shinji, and Ritsuko's cat died. This is all on-theme with the episode, I suppose. :V

Seele's like "Gendo, the things you have done recently are too bold" and he just ignores them to answer his phone and ends the conference. Bold indeed. Either he thinks he's too important for them to actually touch, or he already knows he's going to get End Of Evangelioned and he knows he's fucked regardless.

I've basically already said everything I have to say about Armisael. It's part of the trend of the Angels becoming increasingly literally biblical. It's also arguably the strongest Angel being the only one to successfully kill an Evangelion and a pilot. It continues the spiral/DNA theme that's been popping up a lot lately, giving a hint to the true nature of the relationship between Angels and each-other, and Angels and humans.

This episode also has one of the most significant additions from the director's cut in my opinion, or at least one of the most often discussed. Toward the end of the fight (if you can even call it that) between Unit 00 and Armisael, Unit 00 begins to mutate and this weird growth sprouts out of its back that contains elements of all of the dead Angels up to this point. Fandom has dubbed it the "Angel tower". It's a much more direct hint to the aforementioned relationship between the Angels, and also possibly indicates that the reason Armisael wanted to make contact with Unit 00 was that it was trying to deal with its own loneliness by trying to recreate another Angel somehow to be with.

It occurs to me that Rei II's death sort of parallels Asuka's death, with both of them and their Evas reaching up toward the sky in the last moment before they die. But Rei is reaching toward a vision of Gendo in a loving way, whereas Asuka is reaching out toward the Mass Production Evas trying to kill them.

Is the brief scene where Unit 00 briefly mutates into a giant naked white Rei with a halo for a moment right before it explodes new to the director's cut? I don't remember that at all. It's weird and I'm not completely sure what the point of it is. Does it indicate a connection to Quantum Rei somehow, or is it a result of Armisael's power?

I just noticed the full implications of the episode's title. It's the third numbered episode named after Rei following episodes 5 and 6, but it's also the introduction of the character Rei III. Interesting.

The scene of Ritsuko finding Rei's body is chilling. Ritsuko doesn't talk about her like she was a person at all, but whether that's professional detachment, a psychological defense mechanism, her own personal dislike of Rei, or a genuine belief that what she is isn't human is unclear.

Is the song Shinji's listening to on his tape deck the Gunbuster theme song? It's hard to make out, but it sounds very similar if it isn't.

That device with the glass tube and the metal brain that we see Rei hooked up to periodically is for backing up her mind, isn't it? I think I wondered earlier what it was for, but that seems pretty clear to me now. It stores Rei's memories in case a new one has to be put into use, so Rei III's memory goes up to the last time Rei was put into that thing. I can't remember when the last time we saw her in it was, although I'm not sure if we should assume that that was the last time it was used or if it's possible it was used since then and we just didn't see it.

There are STILL construction sounds outside of Rei's apartment. I suppose that's because the construction never stops in a city that's constantly being destroyed by monster attacks. This seems like a weird time to bring this up, but how long has it been since we first saw this place, anyway? Obviously it's impossible to tell exactly how long of a period of time Eva takes place over because the season never changes and we rarely get specific dates for current events, but I think general consensus is usually that the whole series takes place over around a year. I guess that means the first time we saw Rei's apartment was about a year ago, since we see it early on and there's not much in-universe time left before the end of the series. Even though Rei has changed some, her room has not changed almost at all. The only thing that's different is the lack of blood on her pillow.

And yet another thing that I'm realizing for the first time is the implication of Rei III's line "Are these tears? I'm seeing these for the first time, but it doesn't seem to me to be the first time". I think she's indicating that she has some of the memories Rei II had right before she died that shouldn't have been able to be saved. Whether this is because they share a soul (do they even share a soul? Or parts of one fragmented soul maybe? If the widely held "Unit 00's soul is Rei I" theory is true they should each have distinct souls, but maybe they're linked because of their shared origin) or because of something to do with Quantum Rei and that weird giant halo Rei I don't know, but it seems likely that that's what she's talking about here.

The Rei Factory scene is important for a lot of reasons. There's the obvious plot significance of revealing approximately who and what Rei is, but also the fact that Ritsuko continues to conflate Adam and Lilith in this scene, when she has no reason to lie. This indicates that she doesn't seem to know about Adam at all, and possibly never will. I've wondered a few times what Ritsuko does and doesn't know, and to me this seems to indicate that she knows less than I though maybe she did. If Gendo kept Adam from her then she doesn't know the full implications of his plan. There's also the much rumored but seldom seen alternate cut of this scene on the Japanese laser disc, which is the one cut of Evangelion I don't own and have never seen. I've been looking for it for years, but it tends to go for $300+ and I don't own a laser disc player.

Before now I had never even seen this scene, but I looked around a little further this time and found it on Youtube. So here it is, the rare missing footage from the Japanese laser disc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLyrhgNiVA

In the real version those images are visible in the background of the scene with all of the creepy floating Rei clones. I'm not going to take the time to try to figure each one of them out at this point since that seems like it would take too long, but it looks like a rough summary of the events of episode 21.

Episode 24: The Final Messenger

Aaaaah I don't want to watch that scene with little Asuka again, don't show me that again! Christ! Although this time I noticed she says something about not being lonely anymore "Even though I don't have a papa", so I guess that answers my question about where her dad is and whether or not the male voice talking over this scene the first time is him. I don't remember if she said that the first time, I don't think she did, but maybe I missed it.

The scene of Asuka in the bathtub is controversial, in the sense that it's unclear if she was trying to kill herself or if she was just laying there thinking. Due to the visual juxtaposition with her mother's suicide I think we are supposed to understand that she's attempting suicide. That also explains the fact that she's literally comatose at the beginning of End Of Evangelion a little bit more than assuming that she was just so despondent that stopped responding.

First appearance of Kaworu. I don't really have particularly strong feelings one way or another about him. He certainly leaves a lasting impact on the series for how briefly he's in it, but we don't learn almost anything about him. Was his life similar to Rei's, growing up in a lab? He seems to be better at talking to people and he seems to know what's going on far more than arguably anyone else in the series, so I'm inclined to think it wasn't. Based on the way he talks to Seele and the amount of information he has my headcanon is that they raised him more like an actual child, or at least had him raised that way by someone and had a lot of contact with him. He seems to be a partner to them or even one of them, rather than being a human tool like Rei.

I will forever associate Ode To Joy with this episode.

I notice that the sub I'm watching spells Kaworu's name "Kaoru". I've seen it spelled both ways, but the former more than the latter, and I believe the former is the one the official subs use.

I always forget how explicit the homosexual understones between Kaworu and Shinji are. These things are so often a product of fanon that it's easy for me to forget and assume that here, but no, Kaworu is very clearly making advances on Shinji. I don't see that much room for an argument that the intention is anything else. So retroactively I suppose that means the parallel between Kaworu taking Shinji's hand and Misato doing the same thing earlier probably implies impure intentions on Misato's part. Which is consistent with End Of Evangelion, of course. Whether that means that Shinji is attracted to Kaworu or is just flattered/shocked is a little more up for debate, but hey, who am I to deny the dreams of a million fangirls (and plenty of fanboys too I'm sure)?

I mentioned much, much earlier that I've always disliked Pen Pen because I don't think he fits well into the tone or aesthetic of Eva, but that there's one scene that sort of justifies his existence to me. The scene with Misato saying goodbye to him before she gives me to Hikari's family is that scene. It's not much, but Pen Pen is something for Misato to be able to give up to indicate that something serious is about to go down, and that she intends to get serious and follow through on the opportunity Kaji gave her. Maybe the same effect could have been achieved with her just thinking out loud or something, but I like this scene.

This is a weird observation and probably completely meaningless, but the scene with Kaworu talking to the monoliths at the lake opens with some shots of rubble seen through a web of downed power lines, and the shapes and color palette gave me a very strong impression of, once again, Gunbuster. I think it's more Anno's visual style than any kind of direct reference, but I see a lot of similarities between the composition of that shot and organic-mechanical metal bones and organs that are occasionally visible under Gunbuster's outer skin.

The scene with the monoliths at the lake is yet another controversial thing about this episode. Maybe it's an animation error or maybe it's a confounding element of the plot that I just don't understand the significance of, but there are 15 monoliths (including one numbered "SEELE 15 Sound Only") when there are only 14 members of Seele. What does that mean? I have no fucking clue.

The shot of Misato spying on Kaworu seems to indicate that the monoliths weren't visible to her. Unless she just spotted him the moment they disappeared, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Weird.

Hyuga sort of reveals his feelings for Misato, believing that he's going to have to self destruct the geofront at any moment, and she says "Thank you". I wonder, did she know he loved her this whole time? I imagine she probably did and just didn't care much, but by her own admission she's so desperate to have contact with anyone at this point that she would probably be happy to give him a chance now if she had the opportunity. I wonder if they would actually get along?

The fact that Rei was able to get down to Terminal Dogma that quickly on foot suggests to me that she can use her AT Field like Kaworu does now and just flew down there. Maybe not, since the bridge detected Kaworu's AT Field but didn't notice hers until the last moment, and Eva isn't ever terribly concerned with geography or the amount of time it takes people to get from place to place, but she clearly has some super powers now.

This episode's minute-long static shot (actually 57 or 58 seconds) is probably the absolute single most iconic image from Eva in my opinion. I think the only other contender is upcoming, and both of them are certainly referenced and parodied often. This shot was the desktop wallpaper on my computer for several years.

There's another brief shot of a power line, this time in silhouette, that looks strikingly organic to me. It's like a nerve cluster or something. Classic Anno visuals, it's really interesting and effective.

The director's cut interestingly replaces the original next episode preview, which has images from episode 25, with a preview for the first half of End Of Evangelion. A bit telling, maybe?

Taken by themselves I don't like either of these episodes quite as much as 23 and 24. Obviously they're absolutely essential and the series doesn't work without them, and there's no question that they're great, but I think they're just a little bit too occupied with tying up loose ends and covering story ground to quite work as stories themselves. The flow of them is a little weird.


The retrieval team finds something in her Entry Plug, but Ritsuko orders to keep the findings a secret and to destroy every related thing. Is there something in the Director's Cut that elaborates on what they found here? I imagine something Rei clone related. Oh right I just remembered, the 'Angel Tree' is also only in the Director's Cut edition isn't it? I forget what context that appears in.

I'm pretty sure they just found Rei's body. Possibly it was mutated from contact with Armisael, but I don't think so. Pretty sure Ritsuko's reaction just had to do with the fact that she knew Gendo was going to get another body ready, so she had to cover up Rei II's body to keep people from realizing what was going on.

We get Rei III. And apparently the committee doesn't know about the Rei clones because Fuyutsuki says her 'being alive' might cause trouble with them. Either that, or it's the same as before when Shinji was contacted by Leliel and they wanted to interrogate him about that too. Because if they have Kaworu clones, then it wouldn't make sense for them not to know that Rei clones may also exist. Unless they don't know that she has the soul of Lilith. Which, how'd they get that again? They got the soul of Adam from Second Impact, how'd Gendo get Liliths?

The main thing about the Adam/Lilith confusion and subterfuge that I'm still not clear on it what Seele does and doesn't know. Do they know that Adam and Lilith are separate things? They know that Gendo has something in his basement, and they don't seem to know about the Adam embryo. The fact that Kaworu is surprised to find Lilith instead of Adam in Terminal Dogma makes me think Seele thought Lilith was Adam just like Misato and Ritsuko do, but where do they think Gendo got it from?

As for where Gendo got Lilith's soul, I'm guessing he used whatever was learned from Second Impact plus the principle Kaworu talks about by which he can synchronize with anything that doesn't have a soul to forcibly syphon bits of Lilith's soul off into waiting vessels. Or maybe her entire soul, that much is unclear.

So Ritsuko's little story about mankind finding god was pretty interesting. It would almost seem like they found a god before Adam, and then tried to resurrect it which became Adam. Gendo did say they called the Giant of Light Adam, which means that there was some other being before it? Shinji asks if the Evas are humans which surprisingly enough is answered with a 'yes' from Ritsuko. Which is odd, but ok.

I think the god she's talking about is Adam.

As to what she means by saying the Evas are human, I'm guessing she's referring to their human souls. Or she mistakenly believes that the Angels and the humans are all products of Adam, since she seemingly isn't aware of the difference between Adam and Lilith.

Has to be pulled from somewhere. Some... Room of Guf? Is that what it is? I remember Kaworu saying something about closing the doors of Guf in the 3rd Rebuild movie.

The doors of Guf/chamber of Guf was mentioned in that director's cut scene of the security footage of second impact, and will be mentioned again in End Of Evangelion (I believe the doors of Guf are literally Quantum Rei's hand vaginas, which suck up all of the human souls from the Earth). If I'm not mistaken "Guf" is a concept in Kabbalah that refers to the place where unborn souls reside before they enter human bodies and are born on Earth. Or something like that. I believe it's also featured a couple of times in Rebuild but I don't remember the specifics.

So Kaworu may be my favorite character, or at least the favorite of the children.

Interesting. Shinji is definitely by far my favorite this time around, but I've just never really given Kaworu that much thought because of how little screen time he gets.

I believe there was some controversy about what Seele wanted to do with sending in Kaworu. From the TV version, it seems like they wanted to get the Angel defeating business over with already and sent him in to Nerv to get defeated. I vaguely remember there being more ambiguity with Seele's intentions with their conversation with Kaworu in the Director's Cut edition.

In their conversation in the director's cut the Seele council members talk about how Gendo is planning to "open Pandora's box" just like Seele themselves are planning to, but unlike them he intends to close it before Hope can come out. So to take them at face value, they seem to know that Gendo has some kind of apocalyptic plan, but they don't believe he has the best interest of humanity at heart like they do so they have to stop him from enacting his vision.

Kaworu reveals that everyone has an AT Field, which must have been a bit reveal for real time viewers. Then later says that he wanted Shinji to stop Unit-01 because otherwise it might have "lived on with her"? ? ? ? ? Who living on with whom?? Unit-02 and Asuka? Unit-02 and her mother? Her mother and Asuka?

I interpreted that as "he will use her to go on and live" rather than "he will live on alongside her". I think he's saying that he's glad Shinji defeated Unit 02 because now he can't use it as a tool to defend himself.

I wonder what's special about the Angels when they contact Adam that differs from Evas (Unit-00) coming in contact with Adam that doesn't cause Third Impact? Although... 'Adam' is actually Lilith, which could be why Unit-00 contacting Lilith doesn't do anything. So if Unit-01, based on Lilith I believe? comes in contact with Lilith, would that cause something? Would be funny if it could cause a Third Impact for the Angels that wipes them all out, as opposed to a Third Impact for humans which wipes out all Lilith-based life.

My tenuous understanding of this is that all of the Evas are made from Lilith to varying degrees, but Unit 01 more than the others (I don't know if that means Unit 01 has more flesh and less machine, or more similar DNA or what). Remember that an Eva coming in contact with Lilith does indeed cause Third Impact in End Of Evangelion, although I think the Eva has to be awoken at the time or the restraints on it prevent the contact.

As for Angel Third Impact versus human Third Impact, my understanding of that is that Third Impact is for all beings except the initiator, so in theory it should effect all Angels and all humans except whoever comes in contact with whatever to trigger it in the first place.
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.

Mеа

  • catnapping
  • three dots connect to rectangles
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #58 on: January 17, 2016, 06:25:27 AM »
Ep 25: Do you love me? Beginning of the End/Instrumentality Begins
I haven't actually fully watched either of these last 2. I don't think I can handle 2 at once, so I'll do one today and another tomorrow.

I can't really say much. It's a lot of self-evident character explorations. The really new stuff is Misato's introspection since we never were able to get that in the series. Though it was shown previously that she split from Kaji after she realized he reminded her of her father. I think there was some subtle thing about Misato trying to find her father in him, but here they really play out her Oepidus complex. Also interesting shot of her shot to death, which gets explains in EoE.

Seems the man and woman speaking over the still of child-Asuka was her father and step-mother. And he didn't love her actual mother, so Asuka sided with her mother-mother. Would explain that thing about not needing her father or whatever earlier.

The characters around Shinji accuse him of wishing for destruction, death, and a return to nothing, a world where no one could be saved. He says it was because no one saved him. This gets to explain his deeper (more subconcious?) motivations for initiating Third Impact in EoE, which I appreciate.

And all this the theme of 'the people within others' hearts' is played with. It reminds me of Leliel's words again. I guess Leliel really was serious. But this, this theme that finally becomes literal ?or as literal as it could be in this Instrumentation psycho realm? I guess Leliel really was serious when speaking. It makes me wonder if the Angels themselves have the each other within their hearts. It would almost help to explain the Angel tree/tower that Armisael made. Except that would ruin Armisael's loneliness a bit I guess. It also makes me wonder when the others-within-the-heart is born. When they meet? If so, the Angels we assume never met, so that would almost debunk my little theory.

Oh yeah, even Rei is interrogated by 'Rei', this might be the quantum Rei thing you talk about? Makes more sense here, since Third Impact is finally initiated.


Quote
I've basically already said everything I have to say about Armisael. It's part of the trend of the Angels becoming increasingly literally biblical.
Might have missed asking, can you elaborate?


Quote
Is the brief scene where Unit 00 briefly mutates into a giant naked white Rei with a halo for a moment right before it explodes new to the director's cut? I don't remember that at all. It's weird and I'm not completely sure what the point of it is. Does it indicate a connection to Quantum Rei somehow, or is it a result of Armisael's power?
It's not in the TV version for sure. But that's interesting, that would find a parallel in the Rebuild movies when Zeruel ate Unit-00/Rei. In both cases it's Rei and and Angel 'combining'. And then doesn't Rei turn into the Giant Naked Rei in EoE when Rei combines with the embryo Adam? Seems to always be that whenever Rei combines with or is combined with an Angel, she/it turns big and naked. Oh yeah, Kaworu briefly showed up as big and naked in EoE as well. I guess the Adam (or angel) and Lilith merging always results in the more dominant of personalities showing bigger. Those worthy of causing the Impacts or whatever I suppose.

Quote
And yet another thing that I'm realizing for the first time is the implication of Rei III's line "Are these tears? I'm seeing these for the first time, but it doesn't seem to me to be the first time". I think she's indicating that she has some of the memories Rei II had right before she died that shouldn't have been able to be saved. Whether this is because they share a soul (do they even share a soul? Or parts of one fragmented soul maybe? If the widely held "Unit 00's soul is Rei I" theory is true they should each have distinct souls, but maybe they're linked because of their shared origin) or because of something to do with Quantum Rei and that weird giant halo Rei I don't know, but it seems likely that that's what she's talking about here.
Huh, yeah, that's interesting. Never thought about that. And cool find with that video.
Naked expression; purple raspberry flavour

commandercool

  • alter cool
Re: Let's Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion: Now In Progress
« Reply #59 on: January 17, 2016, 07:07:37 AM »
Might have missed asking, can you elaborate?

Oh yes, I did miss that. What I mean by that is that the last few Angels are the most consistent with descriptions of Angels and their particular classifications in the Bible.

Arael resembles a Seraphim, the highest order of angels in some hierarchies. Seraphim are creatures with three sets of wings that are associated with the sun, and Arael arguably has three sets of wings (it's hard to tell) and appears to be made of light.

Armisael is consistent with the Ophanim, which are described as "wheels of burning fire". Technically Ophanim are usually depicted as two nested wheels forming a sphere and are described as being covered in eyes, but I don't think the resemblance is an accident.

The other Angels draw their visual identities from a bunch of different places (for example, the eye motif seen on Matarael and Sahaquiel is commonly considered a reference to Nadia: The Secret Of Blue Water, one of Anno's earlier anime) while these last few seem to be the only ones directly inspired mostly by their namesake.

It's also worth noting that Zeruel, while not based on anything from the Bible visually as far as I know, is named after a specific angel from Abrahamic lore. Zeruel was the angel sent by God to help David slay Goliath. Some of the others may be named after specific angels from lore, but I'm not aware of it if they are. Their names are all legit Hebrew and do have meanings consistent with their powers and themes, but I don't know if they draw those names from pre-existing mythological angels like Zeruel does.

Edit: Take all of this with many grains of salt by the way. I'm not a biblical scholar and I've never even read the Bible, the Talmud, or any other applicable text. This is all sketchy unsourced stuff I've picked up or been told in the course of Eva fandom.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2016, 07:23:18 AM by commandercool »
I made a PADHerder. It's probably out of date though.