Neon Genesis Evangelion/Headscratchers

Note to posters: The Evageeks Wiki and the related Eva Commentary Project have many excellent articles and analysis on the themes and motifs of Evangelion, as well as in-depth discussions of several episodes. Please give them a look before asking any new questions.

• Why is Manga!Asuka's full name still Asuka Langley Soryu? It is pretty clear that the Langley in Anime!Asuka's name comes from her American father, but in the manga she is a test-tube baby and Manga!Kyoko was never established to be in a marriage with a Langley, so why isn't her name Asuka Zeppelin Soryu?
  • Maybe it came from her adopted parents.
• Jet Alone. Would that damn thing hold his own against an Angel? I mean, the mech WAS pretty tough and strong, wasn't it? That's a question that has bugged me for years, and the worst part is that I won't ever know the answer.
  • It wouldn't stand a chance, simply becuase it could never get past an angels AT Field.
    • This should be apparent from the first episode, as Sachiel's AT Field is able to protect him from an N2 mine, which is basically a really powerful nuclear bomb. Consider how much less powerful a robot's punch would be; you need and AT field.
  • Your questions are sort of the point of the filler that was the Jet Alone episode. Not only can it be seen as a jab at mecha anime and manga, it was to make it clear that only the Evas could ever be effective. This also makes Misato's comment of mankind being foolish to harness the source of its own near-destruction for its salvation true. Seriously, contrast Jet Alone's uncontrollableness to the Evas. Yes, that isn't a word, but Jet Alone was tampered with by humans; Evas could only be tampered with by an Angel.
    • But what if Jet Alone was given a positron rifle? The rifle is capable of penetrating the AT field at long range, and JA has a nuclear reactor which might reduce the severe power drain that firing one of these rifles requires.
      • Considering that the prototype required energy from all Japan, which has nuclear reactors of its own, one more probably wouldn't make much difference. Being armed with a positron rifle is still a valid AT-less option, though.
• If the biggest limitant about the Evas is supplying enough electric power to keep it's systems going, well, why not go nuclear power? no, what happened with Jet Alone is not an excuse, since it was all a setup done by Nerv themselves.
  • The Jet Alone was meant to showcase not just the nuclear powered aspect of the giant robot but the AI-controlled aspect. NERV didn't want anyone else, especially the SEELE-controlled UN and JSDF forces handling the Angels, so they purposely set up and botched the test. Remember too that the Jet Alone's main body was the nuclear reactor, and the EVAs had organs and people taking up space in their chests.
    • Plus Seele wanted the Evas controllable and limited. And Gendo wanted Unit One to overcome that obstacle by devouring an S2 organ from an angel. And the rest of the planet didn't want Asuka to have access to a nuclear reactor.
      • On top of that, remember that Jet Alone was just a robot, while the Evas are actually cyborgs. Even the tiniest leak in the containment could mutate the Evas biological components in ways that quite frankly, we can't comprehend.
• If Rei disapproved of Instrumentality ("Everybody has a right to life") why didn't she, I dunno...SIMPLY NOT GO AHEAD WITH IT?
  • Because SEELE was trying to do it anyway with the MP models. This way she gets some control over the process. Don't forget she cannot struggle doe to Shinji calling her.
  • SEELE get what they want anyway. Rei gives a way out of it or something?
    • Well, everyone gets to do what they want in the end. Come out of the goo, stay in the goo, their choice... though I'm pretty sure Yui's the one who goes "everyone has a right to life".
  • Rei just disapproved of Gendo's Instrumentality. She wanted Shinji to ultimately control the process. So did SEELE, but they figured he'd just scoop up everyone in the egg, and not relent and leave them to their devices.
• It always annoyed me that in the opening, there was the awesome picture of Unit 0-1, with like 6 wings of light, flying, and it never appeared in the show. Anybody know where those images came from?
  • From Gainax? The opening was made in-house, it wasn't out-sourced. It sorta happened in the movie though.
  • You mean Rebuild? Because what happened in EoE wasn't quite what I meant.
    • EoE. In any case, I assume you're asking what the point of the whole thing was. It's probably just preproduction ideas they animated, with the version in EoE what they eventually went with. Happens all the time in anime.
    • Yeah, that's what I figured. It's just disappointing, because I was sooo looking forward to that specific part.
    • You're missing the point of anime openings. They aren't like Western animations, which typically use openings as trailers. Anime openings have a series of scenes that summarize what you're getting (sometimes) to a music theme which is (typically) used at least partially to promote a particular artist's new single. Eva's opening animation actually does a really good job giving you hints about the story, especially that bit with Unit-01's wings, but you should never, ever assume you'll see scenes from an opening animation actually in a series proper.
• The frigate in the lake of LCL in Terminal Dogma irks me: just why is it there? What purpose could it possibly serve?
  • It's a warship. What do you think it's for? They need something to patrol the place.
    • I'm quite sure that it won't do anything against something that manages to get down there. If the situation got that desperate the battleship would be beyond useless by that point.
      • It's there for the same reason Tokyo-3 has guns to shoot the Angels. They don't know it won't be useless. Also, what about humans? Angels might not be the only things trying to sneak into Terminal Dogma.
      • Not necessarily. If an angel got through on raw endurance and strength, then yes, but if it used deception and trickery and subterfuge... remember, they didn't know what the angels were going to be like ahead of time. What if instead of a giant eldritch abomination with alien geometries, the next angel is some guy posing as a technician to infiltrate the dogma? Or a small invisible creature crawling through maintenance tubes or something? They have to be ready for anything.
  • I got the impression it was there to move the guys in NERV around when they need to check up on the being that's there, perform maintenance, etc...
  • The Japanese military doesn't ever, EVER stop trying to take down the Angels through conventional means, even past the point where it is completely obvious that doing so is pointless and a ridicuous waste of resources. My guess is that all the military hardware is there for showing, a reminder from the army and navy and air force higer-hups to Nerv that, ultimately, they are in charge. It had to hurt their pride to be so useless, and that they had to let a paramilitary organization to take care of the problem.
  • It had to have hurt even more when NERV basically used all of those weapons as decoys to test Ramiel's range in Episode 6....
• It always bugged me how cheap and convenient was that Shinji doesn't remember his mom's face, so he (conveniently) won't be freaked out by Rei being an almost exact lookalike.
  • Justified partially because the last time Shinji heard her mother, she was hidden inside EVA-01, ready to "die", and he was 3-year-old. But yes, Gendou conveniently got rid of all pictures of her so that there would be no reminder.
  • Are they really lookalikes? I am aware that, besides the blue hair, in the artwork both Rei and Yui do look similar (of course, that could be chalked up to the limitations of stylized and simplified anime designs, but I digress). Makes sense, because Rei is a clone and all of that. But I think that, since Yui was part project that made the Evas, somebody would have noticed that all of sudden Gendo has a pet pilot that mysteriously looks exactly like his dead wife... or perhaps they do notice and just don't care.
    • They're not just lookalikes. All the Reis are straight-up clones of Yui, created by Gendo and Fuyutsuki.
• This may be something that's left to be revealed in the manga, whenever the next volume comes out, but what's up with Shinji's breathing issues in volume 10? Is Kowaru covered in allergens? Did he catch the same bug Asuka had in volume 9 that caused her to faint? Did he suddenly acquire asthma for no reason? I mean, it seems to disappear in vol. 11 when they made such a big deal of it, like it was going to foreshadow something important!
  • Having read up to the events of EoE, Shinji's breathing problems seem to be a one shot component to show the incredible stress he was going through.

• Why did Gendo wait until EOE before initiating Instrumentality? Why not as soon as he got Adam, when he had both Lilith and a devoted Rei? Those three seem to be the only necessary components for his version of Instrumentality.
  • I think either version of Instrumentality requires all the angels are defeated so that humanity can have their own third impact. That still doesn't explain why he doesn't start it as soon as Kaworu gets killed, though.
  • Well, Kaworu stopped Third Impact in the Rebuild, so it's likely any Angel...and especially Kaworu, who is ALWAYS the Last Angel anyway, would of been able to stop Instrumentality if they started it. Or at least interfere so it doesn't go as planned.
    • As I understand it, the version of Instrumentality he tried to execute was just an emergency decision: Better than letting SEELE have their way.
      • Gendo wasn't sure he could do it right at the moment, especially with an "new" Rei. He only tried it when he realized that SEELE snuck up on him and it was a now or never situation.

• This isn't an It Just Bugs Me, but it needs to be said. Word of God says that episode 25 and 26 happen during the time that Shinji is contemplating Instrumentality during End of Evangelion. He ultimately rejects it and him strangling Asuka is the ending. Accept that. Rebuild of Evangelion takes place in a world where everyone finally rejected Instrumentality but for some reason has also rewound the clock by a bit. Now stop asking questions about when things happen.
  • Citation needed.
    • Last I checked this wasn't Wikipedia.
      • You must have checked a long time ago, then. However, leaving that debate aside, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask for a citation on a supposed Word of God pronunciation on that matter.
    • The first part is screechingly obvious to me. I don't see why people keep assuming the two endings are mutually exclusive when they fit together with absolutely zero issues. That thing about Rebuild, though, I don't know where the hell that came from.
      • Maybe because it's a remake, like the term 'rebuild' implies? Maybe the evidence to the contrary is purely circumstantial.
      • Or because Kaworu says "this time, I'll make you happy" and other sentences saying that it's not the first time Shinji went throught that story.
  • How on Earth does the character development that Shinji goes through during the stream of consciousness in 25 and 26 fit in with him trying to kill Asuka?
    • Did you think that maybe the "self-affirmation" ending of 26 was a little too easy, maybe corny even? Probably so did Shinji. It was like his first AA meeting, and it's common enough for someone to go on a bender right after one of those.
    • When everyone is tanged, there is no other. There is only the self. When Shinji is strangling Asuka, besides the obvious parallel to the show's theme of people hurting each other by trying to get closer, it also shows an acknowledgement of something besides himself. It's that act that shows Shinji as independant of instumentality.

• Why did Seele go from having the holograms of themselves at meetings to the monoliths? The wizard of oz bit really doesn't work very well if you know what they look like before hand.
  • There are twelve monoliths and only five men are seen talking to Gendo. The anonymity is for the other sevens benefit. Plus, they use the monoliths to talk to non-members like Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki.
  • This troper was under the impression that the first 5 were the Instrumentaility committee while the monoliths were SEELE. The two groups are different but with a bit of membership overlap.
    • Neither, it had to do with the budget of the series. They're kept as monoliths in the Rebuild series because it's iconic.
  • Nobody knows what the internal politics of Seele are like, if the old men we first see Gendo talking to are the same ones he'd talked to a week before (or if they were accurate representations ever). There are any number of reasons why they might have a discussion about this that ends with "Fuck it, we're doing monoliths now".

• Okay, I know that love can make one stupid and crazy, but how did Gendo foresee Yui doing anything but violently rejecting him after he sleeps with both Dr.s Akagi, abandons their (meaning HER) son, and then does all sorts of things that make him miserable? If Yui resurrected I'm sure she will reject Gendo in the most brutal lecture ever. And then Gendo kills himself.
  • For all we know, they have an open marriage and sleeping with Ritsuko wasn't a problem. I have NO IDEA what he was thinking with Shinji, though, other than the fact that he was so terrified of him he wasn't thinking rationally.
    • I hate to sound dumb, but Shinji doesn't seem all that scary. Most of the time, anyway. And the rejection began as soon as Yui died, it seems, a decade before Shinji began doing the only thing that he ever did that could under any circumstances seem intimidating: piloting Unit-01.
      • Err... no, not scared as in "he will do something to injure me." More of a psychological fear. In End of Eva, Gendo says "I can finally see you again, Yui... With me, I will just keep hurting Shinji. So, it's better to do nothing." and Yui replies "You're actually afraid of Shinji, aren't you..."
      • Regarding the open marriage, for all intents and purposes, YUI IS DEAD (And I Must Scream be damned)! He thought that (assuming the Yui is the Chessmaster and got absorbed intentionally) that Yui got trapped inside of EVA-01 and he was rescuing her. Regarding his relationship with Shinji, they're both the same: They are hurt because they are lonely, but don't get close too each other in fear of being hurt even more. Dance of the Hedgehogs if you will.
      • I always had the impression that Gendo mistreated Shinji ON PURPOSE, planning to use him as a key in his plans to achieve instrumentality. The fact that he parted with son and behaved like an asshole around him immediately after Yui's death only reinforces that impression, that he worked to harden Shinji's psychological barriers in order to make him an Eva pilot.
  • Basically he wasn't terrified of Shenji personally, but simply terrified of being a parent, or more specifically, terrified of screwing up, so he just didn't even try and ignored Shenji till he needed him.
  • Yui, who clearly places her hopes in mankind and thusly acts to ensure mankind's survival, may be an "ends justify the means" sort of person since she joined SEELE and if Fuyutski figured out they had some shady goals, maybe Yui caught on or was at least told somehow. She may see the sheer exploitation of the Akagis to be a justified means (it's for the survival of mankind, after all, to have people as gifted as the Akagis on their side, right?). If not, then she may even heavily believe that those affairs are part of the prophecy foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls—assuming she knows of them. But since it seems the End confirms that Gendo will always truly love Yui, that may be enough for her. Gendo mistreating Yui is a psychological defense mechanism, and Yui may be understanding of that; after all, for some people, it's difficult to love others if they can't love themselves.
  • When he dies he has a hallucination of Eva-01 eating him, which is about as violent a reaction as one can get.

• I am personally disheartened by the fact that we never learn who shot Ryoji Kaji. It's probably just my personal nitpicky thing, but if you think about it, it could literally be anyone (except Misato, and we only know that by Word of God) because both NERV and SEELE had reasons to get rid of him.
  • Word of God says it was a nameless mook.
  • This was deliberate. Anno wanted people to focus more on Kaji's death and the effect it had on the characters. Not on who ended up doing him in. They also didn't want to specify which faction (NERV, SEELE, The UN, etc.) killed him, since they all wanted to at that point.

• Why was Jet Alone a robot? The reason the EVAs are humanoid is because they are really giant cyborgs wearing armor, which is also why they're so agile, but Jet Alone was cumbersome and clunky as hell demonstrating why real Humongous Mecha are impractical. Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be a tank or something? Or was the fact that its creators were incompetent intentional?
  • Basically some guy in JSSDF thought "Oh look, Nerv made an humanoid mecha! Let's make a nuclear mecha to prove that we are better than them!" It kinda backfired, though.
  • Well, there was a lot of equipment shaped for use with humanoid-shaped Evangelions (knives, rifles, catapults, shields, carrying planes, etc...); maybe Jet Alone was supposed to be compatible with those so the reduced transition costs would make him a better sell: "Not only is our giant war machine better, you can use it with all the infrastructure already deployed!"
  • Also, how can you deconstruct the giant robot genre without a Take That to the whole giant robot idea?
  • The JSSDF didn't know that the Eva and AT-Field were biological in nature. Even as JA was, it would have been highly effective wielding the Lance of Longinus.
  • It's also important to remember that, even though it was inferior to the Evas in terms of power potential, it was a functioning prototype that had to be sabotaged by our heroes to keep from usurping their place. Even though they're clunky and not very agile, if it could be improved upon and mass produced, it would have been a viable option. After all, there's something to be said for not leaving the fate of humanity in the hands of three very emotionally disturbed children and the spirits of their insane mothers.
  • The guy who was in charge of Jet Alone made two good points for the robot. First, the idiocy of depending on things that can only fight for five minutes once unplugged. And second, the even greater idiocy of putting such powerful war machines in the hands of potentially psychotic kids. And about Jet Alone's clunkiness, remeber that it was it's first real test. How much time did it take to Nerv to perfect their Eva's? How many tests fraught with danger before they could solve all the quirks and bugs?

• This page and quite a few others refer to humanity turning into something called Tang. None of the pages actually say what Tang is, and I don't believe the term used in the show at all, so is this some sort of All There in the Manual thing?
  • It's a kick in a glass Apparently, it's not sold in your area.
  • Technically called LCL. They don't explicitly name it as such in the movie.
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20100227073518/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_glossary#LCL
    • For an actual explanation combining all three of these, in the series it's actually called LCL. It's supposed to be like the essence of all human life. However, it strongly resembles the drink Tang, which starts out as a Kool-Aid like powder but when mixed with water is an orange liquid.
    • A more concise explanation: Memetic Mutation. Everyone turns into orange liquid = everyone turns into Tang!
  • Actually, they do identify it as LCL in the show. Hence the reason I was confused when everybody called it Tang.
  • It's an orange drink. We make fun of the scene where people dissolve into LCL by saying that they "get hugged and turn into tang".
  • Tang.

• Okay, why is it that the only weapons that are effective against the Angels things the Evas wield? I can understand that the AT field would work with a prog knife, but are we supposed to believe that AT fields work along with bullets from giant guns and proton beams?
  • Yes, since the idea is to negate the Angel's AT field so that it can be attacked.
    • The proton beam doesn't actually negate the AT field. It's just fires a blast powerful enough to cut right through it. Seeing it takes the power output of a nation to fuel one shot, using Evas is usually more convenient.
  • Well, on the simplest level, an AT Field is probably a bit like a bulletproof vest - it can deflect quick impacts but can be "wrestled" apart by a struggling Eva, cut apart with a prog knife, or "drilled" through by the the Lance of Logninus. A strong enough impact can break through (like the proton beam) but it takes a lot more energy to do so. The Eva-wielded guns can do damage once the AT Field is negated, but I don't recall them ever being used to attack the Field itself.
  • Since an AT Field is apparently based on the ego boundary, perhaps only a living creature with a soul of some sort or another could generate one of its own and fight against it?
  • Using enough, they could just Nuke'Em as well, this shows to be one possible option in a few cases, if not viable.
• What the heck happens in the last two episodes? Okay, everyone and their father has asked this question, but it still needs writing down.
  • Put simply, budget budget budget. Put more complex.... leeeeessssseeeee... Anno had intended to use EOE as a part of the series from the beginning (so, no, the rumor that Anno hates his fans and that EOE was a last-minute Ass Pull to get rid of them is not true), but the man cut his budget and he only had enough left to make two more episodes. From what I understand, somewhere between 24 and 25, Third Impact happened offscreen, only nobody resisted it in this version. What we see in the last two episodes is Shinji trapped in his own imagination for eternity. Looking at it that way, this ending is even bleaker than EOE's; at least in EOE we get the Spirit Advisor saying that everyone else could come back. Although, maybe it's not bleaker for the dead-things-disposal people; they're going to have one nasty surprise when they get back after EOE...
    • Unfortunately for the easy explanation, no. Gainax's budgetary troubles came after the show had long been completed, when it was busted for tax evasion.
    • Wait a minute. Anno was one of the founders of Gainax. He WAS "The Man." It's one thing to say that the budget ran short, but Anno was the guy at the top. It makes me wonder.
      • Well, there's a graph known as "Fuzzy Explains It All," which, if I recall, posits that Gainax's budget was inversely proportionate to Anno's utilization of illegal substances. The graph of his drug use breaches the 9000 barrier just as the show reaches episode 25 and the budget fizzles out.
      • Basically, when the show started to get violent, the sponsors dropped it in a hurry. That's bound to cause some financial difficulties.
        • While the show was a main cause of the wave of censorship that later swept Japan's tv networks, the show itself was not subjected to it except for a minor snafu with TV Tokyo over episode 18.
      • Hideaki Anno was in charge at Gainax, yes, but budget is often decided by network chieftains (TV Tokyo executives).
        • Anno was not "in charge". He was a co-founder and their premier director, yes, but he was not the only one running the company. Gainax's budget is dependent on income, and that income is dictated by their customers, like anyone else's. Those customers being the aforementioned network executives.
    • My theory is that the Big Damn Movie takes place in between episode 24 and 25, and the last two episodes show in greater detail what happens to Shinji after everyone turns into kool-aid and the world as we know it ends. I imagine everyone in the world go through similar "enlightening" experiences and go on to live in their own personal paradise/dream world.
      • I believe that the plurality of fan consensus, and Anno's inscrutable intentions, are that Eo TV can be viewed as an extension of middle of EoE, just after the point where Shinji declares that "everyone should just die." The TV ending ends just before the scene with Rei and Yui arguing against Complementation, and the scene on the beach (heh, On the Beach) is chronologically the last scene we are shown.
    • I've heard contradictory rumors about budget cuts or whatever, so I'm not sure what actually happened in the real world. As for the fictional world, call me crazy, but I actually LOVED that ending. I don't think I've met anyone who shares that opinion, but I stand by it just the same. In leaving the (coherent) story behind and delving into Shinji's internal world, Anno managed an incredible subversion of expectation that (in my opinion) expressed the true heart of the story. After so much toil, Shinji finally came to understand himself. In these last two episodes, he dismantled his own self-loathing and declared "My life is worth living!". The ending is strange, but also beautiful.
      • I thought the same thing about the original ending.
      • I always thought of the last two episodes and EoE as "What if" scenarios. If the Third Impact is completed succesfully, last two episodes of Eva TV. If people resist and fight back against it, EoE.
        • I enjoyed the TV ending and thought it was a happy ending. The way it seemed to me was that Third Impact was not successful, since the episode ends with Shinji deciding that his life has value and he wants to continue living in this world - to me, that means that his individuality was restored, visually represented by the theater background cracking around him.
        • ^^ I completely agree with the last two tropers. The way I view the TV ending, Instrumentality is a temporary process that melds people together and forces them to resolve their unhappiness before they are reborn into the physical world. We see this happen to Shinji, and it's very strongly implied that the same process will happen for everyone else, and that the human race will ultimately be reborn into their physical selves as happier, well-adjusted people. Plus, since we saw Kaji, and Rei II, not to mention Touji with all his limbs intact, it also seems to be implied that recently deceased people can come back too. As far as I'm concerned as of now, End of Evangelion never happened, because it undoes all the character development Shinji had in the last episode, and the possibility of a happy ending for every character.
        • I have to agree, too- I was traumatised by Eo E (as I'm sure many people were, for various reasons...) because I thought the TV ending was a beautiful, cheerful thing. I'm highly likely to be wrong about it, but I'm happy in my wrongness.
  • The answer is simple enough. The original episodes 25 and 26 were in fact the planned ending to the series. It's a common theme in Anno's work (compare with Gunbuster, for example,or the direction he was taking Kare Kano in before he was removed from the project). D&R and EoE were both created largely in reaction to fan response, in particular the large number of death threats Anno received over episodes 25 and 26 (some of which are shown on screen during EoE). Thus, while episodes 25' and 26' are not truly a "screw the fans" section, that is a part of it. In fact, all 4 episodes show the exact same ending, simply from different points of view. Episodes 25 and 26 show an internal (mental) view of Complementation itself, 25 from within Asuka, Misato, and Shinji's minds, 26 from within Shinji's only. Episodes 25' and 26' then show an external (physical) view of the events leading up to and beyond Complementation, with some additional mental clarification.
    • As I heard it, it was the other way around. EoE was going to be episodes 25 and 26, but due to a combination of budget cuts, time restrictions, and censorship crises, they had to cobble together Eo TV. And the real "original" planned ending, before the series started, was going to have the twelfth Angel (or possibly twelve Angels, I've heard conflicting interpretations) descend from the Moon and vaporize America.
    • I'm torn on the subject. There's plenty of "evidence" for both, but personally I'm leaning towards EoE being the original ending, based on the fact that the Preview section of episode 24 shows sketches and storyboard material that's quite obviously from the EoE (only in the Director's Cut version of the episode, though). The first time I watched through the show I remember thinking "Why isn't Asuka kicking everyone's ass?" come episodes 25 and 26.
    • There are some scenes in episode 25 that could have been taken from EoE (Asuka being underwater, Akagi having a gunshot wound at her back, lying in water, Misato being shot, etc.) that indicate, that the end of EVA and the original endings occur somewhat parallel. Well, that's one explanation.
    • This is the way I generally see it, as well. Episodes 25 and 26 happen inside the mind, and EoE shows the external effects of Third Impact and what happens after Shinji rejects Instrumentality. However, I think that the ending of episode 26 (applause) can be interpreted in either way—either Shinji rejects Instrumentality and comes out of the LCL (which is what happens in EoE) OR he accepts it and learns to live without AT Fields and individuality (which could be an interpretation of the entire cast standing around him, applauding). This could also be an argument for Anno's Take This to the fans—one could argue that the ending of the TV series was deliberately ambiguous because that's just Anno's style (and is in keeping with the tone and themes of the series), but when fans complained, he gave them a more concrete ending—just not necessarily a happy one like they'd hoped.
    • As far as I can tell, there are 3 schools of thought about how to two endings relate to each other. Theory A is that End of Evangelion is the "true" ending, retconning episodes 25 and 26 into discontinuity. Theory B is that they are both "complementary" and meant to be taken together (the most common explanation for how they fit together is that End of Eva is what is "really" happening in the physical world while the episodes are what is happening in the character's heads, either during instrumentality or during the whole movie). Theory C is that they are both equally valid but mutually exclusive alternative endings; different "branches" for how the story could have ended.
    • Budget was clearly an issue as the amount of reused stock footage cannot have been wholly intentional. Also it's no coincidence that still frames, angles that don't show mouths moving during conversations and repeated frames from earlier episodes become the order of the day. There's only so far that artsy type excuses can take you when it comes to a rather clear situation like that. That said Theory C actually seems to be the one that holds the most weight. There is concept art that shows things that were clearly intended to get more developed in the real world before moving on to the psychodrama. It actually seems like things were intended to proceed as Eo E shows until everybody goes to LCL and then it would have moved to the characters heads. There it would leave the ending highly ambiguous for the sake of letting the viewer decide whether they saw a happy ending or a bittersweet one.
• In general, what the flying rat heck?!?!
  • Oh yeah. Agreed. Just look at the size of this entry!
• Whose "soul" is in Unit 00?
  • And for that matter... If Yui's soul is in Unit 01, and cloning doesn't produce a new soul (as evidenced by all these soulless clones of Rei), whose soul does Rei herself have? Or the "no new souls" rule only holds for clones of clones, not for clones of natural-born people? (In which case, why didn't they just make several clones of Yui instead of only one?)
    • Rei has Lilith's soul (see the DC version of episode 24).
      • They did make several clones of Yui, but as there were no souls left in the Chamber of Gauf, there was no way to make more than one active at a time. Hence the soulless Reis in the tank waiting their chance to use Lilith's.
  • What do they mean when they're talking about "souls," anyway? Did they ever try to install Rei's stored memories into more than one clone at once? Are there really human souls, whatever that term even means, in the Evangelions? Or just shadows? Is Yui Ikari's "soul" more than just data copied from her brain as she died, running as an artificial intelligence program in Unit-01's computers? Say, is this science fiction or is this fantasy, anyway?
    • Soul means just what it sounds like: a metaphysical entity that inhabits the physical body and gives it mind. Evangelion is filled to the brim with metaphysics and mystic concepts. Don't tell me you didn't realize?
    • As above, they mean exactly what everyone else does when they say "soul". Yui's soul in Unit 01 is her complete soul, as evidenced by the independent actions she is occasionally able to take (see Episode 1). In fact, you can tell who's soul is in charge of the Eva by what colour it's eyes are: White for Shinji, Yellow for Yui, and Red for the dummy system.
      • So is this science fiction or fantasy? I personally view it as the latter, with trappings and props borrowed from the former.
        • It is neither. It is a commentary on human nature and Japanese culture, particularly otaku and hikikomori, couched in a metaphysical allegory within a Science Fiction background.
          • ...true, because neither science fiction nor fantasy has ever offered a commentary on human nature and culture, particularly this or that aspect, couched in a metaphysical allegory within a genre background. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to go watch a Planet of the Apes / District 9 double feature, and then maybe read some Kurt Vonnegut right after my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. Unless they're showing 2001ASpaceOdyssey, that is...
        • It's soft science fiction. It doesn't really follow any fantasy themes, and it uses science as a plot device and stylistic decor rather than exploring science like hard science fiction usually does.
    • The souls are represented as little red points for humans, but for angels and Evas, they form gigantic "Cores." The S2 organ and the Core are somehow related, but in the end, the Core is merely a gigantic inflation of the soul, hence it being referenced as the "Throne of the Soul" on one occasion.
  • But back to the question...there are a few theories about Unit 00's soul. Personally, I like the idea that it's Naoko Akagi.
    • Naoko Akagi cannot be an Eva's soul. In every case where a soul was extracted for an Eva, the "donor" had to be inside the robot. Dr. Akagi never went near one, nor did she even work with them; her great project was the Magi-supercomputer and that is the only place where her will survives.
      • Citation Needed. Soul installation always took place offscreen. I prefer the idea that they have a soul vacuum cleaner hidden away somewhere.
      • NERV has demonstrated that they have the capability to harvest the souls of dead creatures and can implant them within inert, soulless clones. Lilith's soul is extracted from Rei's dead body several times over the course of the series and implanted into fresh Rei clones with relative ease; it stands to reason that they would be able to perform the same technique on the bodies and souls of Lilim as well. Also keep in mind that entombing Akagi's soul inside of EVA-00 would be poetic justice indeed (she was responsible for trapping Yui inside of EVA-01, after all) and that all of the EVA units would seem to share a similar thematic profile - the EVA units themselves are female in gender, they all have the souls of mothers locked inside of them, the Entry Plugs are essentially "wombs" within which the pilots dwell, and the only people that are capable of piloting the units are children. The only reason that Rei is probably able to sync with EVA-00 is because she has Lilith's soul and is sub-consciously capable of taking control of the unit whenever Akagi's soul is "dormant" - just like Kaworu did with EVA-02 towards the end of the series.
  • Incorrect. Asuka's mother (who committed suicide) is the soul for EVA 02. Toji's dead little sister is the soul for EVA 03. Both of them had even less reason to be near an EVA than Dr. Akagi had, yet End Of Evangelion all but confirms that Asuka's mother is the soul of EVA 02.
    • Noooo...Toji's sister is still alive. And Word of God is that only part of Kyoko's soul is in EVA-02—the part that recognizes Asuka as her daughter.
      • My guess is that unit 03 didn't have a soul at all, which is why it got taken over by that Angel. Kaworu said that he could control Unit 02 because its soul was "dormant"; if Unit 03 had a soul that could fight back, it wouldn't have been taken over.
    • If I understand the theory correctly, after chibi-Rei goaded Dr. Akagi into strangling her and then taking a head dive off a ledge, Gendo had the doctor's dying body shoved into the Eva so that her soul could be sucked in. This is why the Eva seems to hate Rei and Gendo.
    • Perhaps it doesn't have one at all, and that was why Rei had to be "built to order" in order to be a pilot?
      • Well, Unit 00 does have a consciousness of its own, since it initially rejected Rei and then Shinji in exactly the same manner. But they never tried to synchronize Shinji with Unit 00 again, so we can't know whether it would accept Shinji later, as it did Rei. And in any case, Rei's primary purpose was not to be an Eva pilot, but to trigger Third Impact; it's just that she was initially the only available pilot they had.
        • As Shinji saw Rei's distorted image inside the Unit 00, my theory would be that Lilith's soul was somehow divided between the robot and Rei and with the destruction of the Unit they became one, once again. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence to support this. For example, when Unit 00 went berserk with Shinji inside, Rei didn't even try to escape the apparent danger, because she knew that the Eva wouldn't, couldn't harm her and indeed, it stopped attacking and instead started to bang its head on the wall. Also, in the Director's Cut the Unit turns into a giant Rei with a halo just before it explodes.
          • You can interpret it as "banging its head," or you can interpret it as "trying to head-butt its way through the wall and kill Rei/Gendou" (in the two parallel sequences where it happens. Tends to support the Akagi Sr. theory, as she was none too happy with either.
          • I always thought that each Rei had a different soul which is be merged with Lilith's every time she's brought back, and that the soul inside Unit 00 was Rei-01.
            • Unit-00 has no soul, it borrows that of it's pilot, unlike the other units. Rei only ever has Lilith's soul. Akagi cannot be in Unit-00 because, as someone once put it, "she left hers all over one of the Magi". Basically, there isn't really an effective way to "shove her dying body" into Unit-00, as she was killed instantly in her suicide.
            • It is very likely that the soul inside Unit 00 is Rei, as her name also hints towards this (Rei can also mean Zero in Japan). It is very likely that since Rei is a hybrid of Yui and Lilith, and that we see her appearing and disappearing in front of Shinji, that Kaworu wasn't the first human angel.The reason she has trouble controlling the prototype 00 is most likely either an ID issue (ID as in Freud - not I.D.)) or, very likely since it IS a prototype - an error with the system/linkage/whatever.
              • We may never know...
                • Well, when Rei II is being taken over by Armisael, when Rei sensed its presence she wondered if it was the "me inside the Eva", and when Eva 00 went berserk at one point it saw Ritsuko Akagi as Naoko Akagi and tried to attack her. Those alone indicate that Eva 00's soul is that of the first Rei. See: http://wiki.evageeks.org/Eva-00%27s_soul
    • One thing for sure, the soul inside Unit 03 when Unit 01 killed it was Bardiel's. My theory is that it didn't have a soul in it before that, and that that was why Bardiel was able to hijack it so easily.
  • The best theory I've heard is the one from Evageeks: The soul in Eva 00 is from Rei 1 (the original Rei). Rei later refers to a "Rei in the Eva", Shinji gets a sensation of Rei from Eva 00. It would also fit the theme of the Evas containing the souls of their pilot's mothers since Rei 1 is the origin of the later Reis.
    • The extension of that theory that I heard was that the Rei we know for most of the story has an incomplete soul, which is why she acts so emotionless. Half of her soul controls the EVA, and half controls the Rei body. After the destruction of Unit 00, Rei begins showing more emotions, as both halves of her soul have been reunited.
• Why does Shinji see an image of Rei for a split second in the first episode? At this point, he doesn't even know her.
  • This Rei and the Rei at the end of EoE are known as the "Bookend Reis." Their true purpose is sinister... and completely unexplained. It's mostly there for the mindscrew factor... either that or Anno had everything planned out with ridiculous detail from the beginning and this is really deeply symbolic.
    • Maybe, because GNR was the divine being in EoE that fulfilled Shinji's wish and not Gendo's, it's symbolic for God: I am the alpha and the omega. That's why she appears at the beginning and the end of the series.
  • V explains it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNx-wsaEkZ4
  • As fans of the popular "disappearing wristwatch" Epileptic Tree could tell you, Rei's presence in this scene could be used to argue that the whole series, aside from the first few minutes of episode and the last few minutes of EoE, never happened in reality; Rei's there because she's come to turn Shinji into Tang, and what we see for the next 25 episodes is just the stuff going through Shinji's head as he experiences Instrumentality. See the WMG page for Eva for a more detailed explanation.
  • This one is easy. Rei simply tried to travel back in time to prevent instrumentality and Eo E. She clearly fails.
    • Does that make Rei a Time Lord? That explains so much!
  • Once Rei merges with both Adam and Lillith, she becomes some sort of transcendent being, with apparitions of her appearing everywhere. Ritsuko and Misato even saw her before the merging, but both of them got tanged later... So perhaps the first time Shinji sees Rei might actually be the last time she sees him...
• If Gendo and SEELE both wanted the "constructive" Third Impact to occur, triggering Instrumentality, why didn't Gendo just give away Unit 01 to SEELE instead of resisting the assault on NERV HQ (which turned out to be pointless anyway)?
  • Pride? Gendo doesn't seem the type to let someone else pull the switch, or take Unit 01 or Rei away from him without a fight.
  • Not to mention that Gendo didn't really have much to lose. He spent the entire attack locked in the basement with Rei, I doubt he cared about the people dying upstairs.
  • Gendo, as evidenced by his consumption of Adam, attempt to merge with Rei, and surprise at her betrayal, wanted to be the initiator of 3rd Impact, and furthermore had a scenario which conflicted with that of SEELE, namely uniting with Yui at any cost. Thus it was important for him to initiate the impact on his terms, beginning with his theft of Adam by way of Kaji, his removal of the Lance (and thus the removal of anything to dampen Lilith's power) and his allowing Unit 01 (and by extension Yui) to achieve immortality by means of S2 engine, thus making it Lilith's complete double.
  • It is, however, unclear whether or not he meant to end TI and return with Yui, or simply to merge with her in TI for all eternity.
  • In EOE this troper heard Gendo saying "Death creates nothing". We all know Seele are Death Cultists believing that mankind will only be happy when they are unconscious, and since Gendo was double-crossing the death cult while believing that Death of all mankind except for him is pointless, we can deduce that Gendo never wanted the destructive Third Impact Seele was trying to initiate, and only wanted to resurrect Yui, which is currently in Rei (physically) and Unit 01 (mentally). Maybe the reason Gendo used Rei to merge via Adam is not because he wanted to turn everybody into Tang, but because either he wanted to take Yui's soul away from 01 and merge it again with Rei, recreating Yui, or he wanted Rei to take his own soul away from his existence and force himself into 01, killing him but not the entire human race. Of course Rei joined the Seele Instrumentality since Shinji was put in the helm of the Lance of Longinus, which was possessed by the MP Evas, making both Shinji and Seele the effective controllers of mankind's destiny (Lance of Longinus is another name for Spear of Destiny) instead of Gendo, and of course Rei, being a submissive angel instead of a free-willed Lilin, can do nothing to stop the masters of destiny.
• Why do the Angels attack one at a time instead of all at once? Yes, I know, so that our screwed-up protagonists can defeat them in heroic single combat like something out of Homer. But it isn't even handwaved. This is a problem, by the way, with the Monster of the Week idea pretty much wherever it appears.
  • One explanation I like is that the angels exist to test humanity. They always appear - seemingly out of nowhere - precisely when they need to in order for the humans to be just about able to defeat them. This is most obvious in the case of the big spider angel: It's the most ineffectual and incompetent of the angels (though except for that one they pretty much appear in order from least to most dangerous), and it turns up just when NERV is crippled by power blackout. It, like each of the angels, forces the humans to fight their hardest and gradually better themselves to the point where they come to earn Instrumentality. Of course the humans aren't told this because it would spoil the purpose of the test.
  • Because its not really an invasion.
    • Wasn't the Angels' goal to trigger a Third Impact favorable for themselves by merging with Adam? In which case, they would achieve it with much higher probability if several of them attacked at once.
      • Well, yes, but only one of them could win. That's why the last angel commits suicide, so humans would be the ones to win.
        • Do you mean that only one Angel could win if multiple Angels attacked simultaneously? Please clarify, and also please give a source for that assertion.
          • From Kaworu's episode, and the Red Cross Book, it's made clear that the entire reason that the Angels, SEELE, and NERV are fighting over the stuff is because whoever is in control of the Third Impact will be able to destroy the remainder.
            • It still seems to make more sense for all the Angels to attack simultaneously ("kekekekekekekeke ZERG RUSH! ^_____^") if their intent is to defeat NERV, seize control of Terminal Dogma, and do whatever it is they intend to do with Adam and Lilith.
              • Perhaps the Angels themselves can not tolerate each other and choose to work alone. Their only possible agreement is to defeat the humans first, before fighting amongst themselves. Yes, yes, the Angels have mutual Fantastic Racism. That, or maybe they mature at very different rates. The 8th angel WAS found in a developing stage when the earlier angels had come and die.
                • When you consider the fact that humanity is the 18th Angel, it sort of makes sense that the other 15 (not counting Adam and Lilith, of course) consider each other as much as enemies as they do humanity. I always thought that the first Angel to initiate Third Impact would Win (not sure what, but it's bound to be good) Humanity is just another of the Angels that want to initiate Third Impact (of course we're a little bit different from the other Angels) On another note: the 13th and 14th Angels attacked within a day from each other, so it's not like there were always huge amount of times that passed
                  • Uh... that seems too much like an ad hoc hypothesis to me, sorry.
                    • Because otherwise the series would be over too quickly and Anno wouldn't be able to get out all of his angst. Seriously, you people are putting way to much thought into this...
                      • Well, there's thousands of potential reasons, but think about it like this: each of the angels was essentially an entire race of gods (?) in a single form. Humans from different countries don't necessarily share a language-how are we to expect that the angels are capable of coordinating their attacks? The last angel was the only one who seemed able to effectively communicate.
                        • I always just figured the angels were more like a force of nature as opposed to an organized military. They don't have roundtable discussions about whether or not to attack in groups; they just show up whenever. I'm not even sure if they're really aware of each other.
                          • Think of it this way: It's not "Humans vs Angels". It's "Every species for itself and God against all"; the Angels are not cooperating with each other for the same reason they're not cooperating with the humans, they're all enemies. But as humans seem to possess Adam/Lilith, and those are the targets/goals/whatever, humans end up being the ones attacked instead of them beating up on each other.
                        • From the manga: "...the Kabbalistic view is that all other creatures without exception — even the Angels and Archangels — are based on this model of Adam (Kadmon) but were left incomplete; only Adam (of Genesis) was a complete image of the divine. This accounts for the myth of jealousy and discord among the angelic hosts..."
  • Skipping all of the mess above, the Angels do not cooperate because they are not allies. Their own inscrutable goals include merging with Adam and causing Complementation (not TI) with their own form, and attacking in conjunction with another angel would mean there was a chance a different form would win. It is stated in the series that only one form can continue post-Complementation, so they would not be interested in helping a different form "win". Additionally, as it is not known exactly where the Angels come from (not including Sandalphon), save from Adam's White Moon, it is quite plausible that they are simple arriving in the order they become active.
    • The reason as I understand it for the Angels not attacking at all once is that they are attempting to become like humanity. Humans are collectively the Lilim, the child of Lilith- essentially they were an Angel as well, and became many with AT fields split between them to keep them individualized. EoE has this undone, so that they merge together. The Angels are 'lonely' because there is only one of them (a particularly important source is the Angel that attempts to merge with Rei) and are attempting to usurp humanity's position by contacting Adam.
    • Have to agree with this, and also point out that the Angels are all VERY different creatures. There's a very shaky correlation in strength through the progression of the series (though I'd argue that Zeruel from ep 19 was the strongest of the Angels) and a much stronger correlation in rise of intelligence. The first ten or so Angels seem to act mostly on instinct: their instinct to merge with Adam. The last few are actually truly intelligent (I'd argue starting from the shadowy thing whose name I forget). I doubt these things COULD form a strategy with each other even if they wanted to. How do you have a conference between a computer virus, a giant eye-meteor, a fetal pterodactyl, a giant whale, and a gay 14-year-old albino? You can't.
      • Gregg Landsman disagrees.
    • Another interesting idea is that the Angels did not actually want to cause Third Impact and that they simply wanted to rescue Adam or Lilith from mankind because they were aware that mankind would cause TI. I would also like to point out that the civilian death tolls caused by the Angels are surprisingly low, not once has an Angel gone on a killing spree unless threatened or attacked first. So it stands to reason (and Gainax mindscrews) that the heroes were the Angels, while Seele and Gendo were the villains.
  • I always thought that as soon as Angels were born/arrived/whatever, they immediately made a beeline straight for Adam, without pausing even for a second. Since only one Angel emerged at a time and was subsequently destroyed, they never had time to cooperate.
• Why doesn't anyone use nuclear weapons (not "N2 mines," whatever those are, I mean real canned sunshine in the significant fraction of a megaton range) against the Angels? I don't mean NERV or the UN or the Japanese military, I mean presumably in 2015 there are still nuclear superpowers, presumably they're not unaware of the Gigeresque giant tentacled hellbeasts laying siege to Tokyo-3, and if they are not fully aware of the stakes then still they'd have to regard the Angel attacks as significant and a danger to be dealt with. It could have been used for dramatic effect, i.e., "Shinji! You have ten minutes to defeat the Angel or else the Chinese will turn the city into a self-illuminated glass parking lot!" I know, Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe plus Nuclear Weapons Taboo. But WHY? It's not even handwaved. Did no one think of it?
  • I doubt they would be any more effective than N2 mines or any other heavy ordinance.
    • Whether they would be more effective than N2 mines is up to the writers, but that's not really the question. The question is, would the leaders of the nuclear superpowers be likely to be sufficiently alarmed at the sudden siege of Tokyo-3 by skyscraper-sized Gigeresque tentacled hellbeasts to panic and start throwing nukes at Japan? It Just Bugs Me that the scriptwriters didn't think of this.
      • The other nuclear powers were supposed to have been completely devastated by the Second Impact, to the point where the United States was letting NERV do above-ground tests with antimatter engines in their back yard.
        • Hmm, maybe, or not, considering that the UN naval vessels in episode 8 look mainly like American ships with American crews, and include that distinctive signature feature of American naval power, a nuclear-powered supercarrier. But leaving that aside, what about China? They're only a few hundred miles away, they have a significant nuclear arsenal, and they don't like the Japanese one little bit on their best day.
          • More than appearing as US vessels, they 'are' US vessels. 'Over the Rainbow' is the original name for the USS Teddy Roosevelt, CVN-71.
            • Uh, no. There has been a carrier named Shangri-La, but nobody in the Navy is that big a Wizard of Oz fan. The ship name is a very obscure Urusei Yatsura Shout-Out, to a pair of episodes that introduce a Name'sTheSame character.
      • Or, if not outright devastated, in support of Japan's plan. Remember, NERV is a branch (sort of) of the United Nations, and the Evas were built by more than one countries. And the other Magi were in various other countries. Anyone with the technical level to do something was following NERV's lead.
        • For varying values of "do something." The first nuclear weapons were constructed in 1945 in a nation where * transistors* didn't exist yet. That's my point.
          • Finally an easy question on this page, though why none of you just said this is rather beyond me. It's clearly stated in NGE that the N2 bomb is at least as strong as a Nuclear Bomb.
            • What does that even mean in this context? And are we comparing it to a one-kiloton backpack nuke that a Special Forces team might use to wreck an enemy airfield, or are we comparing it to Tsar Bomba, weighing in at a claimed 100 megatons yield? That's six orders of magnitude here.
            • N2 Mines are around 20 Kilotons, with 30KT being an absolute upper limit. A direct hit from a 1MT bomb would be significantly more powerful than the particle beam used to destroy Ramiel. See here for more information.
            • Several things: "N2" stands for "non-nuclear", which means it's an exotic but "clean" explosive. I can't think of anything that's simultaneously clean, high yielding but with a lousy mass/yield ratio, (The N2 mines we see are about the size of a car, but apparently have a 20kt yield) don't scale, and can be produced by a planetary civilization/in a gravity well. Antimatter is fairly clean, except for the high-energy photons produced during annihilation, but 20kt yield AM bombs would be tiny. You could handwave it by saying that the containment machinery is most of the mine, but there's no plausible reason for it not to scale; and antimatter is hilariously expensive to produce. Evaporating neutronium would be pretty energetic, but harder to produce than antimatter, and prohibitively massive, on the order of thousands of ton of real, hard to transport, mass.
            • Also: There's more than a few nuclear superpowers out there. Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea all have nukes, and the first two even have ICBMs. One of France's major industries is producing nuclear reactors for export. There isn't a single reason for any of these nations to fail to respond to an existential threat.
            • Pardon me but superpowers? Most of those countries that you have listed have only a small amount of nuclear bombs at most which would have to be carried by aircraft all the way to Japan at the drop of a hat whenever an EVA attacked. And none of these countries would willingly give up any of their nuclear arsenal to another country. Lastly, North Korea only just got the bomb in 2006 while NGE was written over 15 years ago. On a side note, India and Pakistan have been enemies for years and they only have nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the other. Is it too much to assume that they finally pressed the button on each other?
            • Note that almost all the nuclear powers you listed are coastal countries. Therefore, they would have been flooded under 100+ meters of global tsunamis. Similarly, it is mentioned somewhere (I can't recall precisely where) that there were nuclear wars after Second Impact, and that would certainly have depleted the arsenals and made people a bit edgy. Meanwhile, you have to remember that SEELE essentially controls the vast majority of the world, and they want the Evas to be perceived as the only credible means of engaging the Angels because they intend to use them to ascend to godhood.
              • It wasn't so much that SEELE was trying to enforce the idea that the Evangelion was the only weapon capable of standing against the angels and more there wasn't anything else that had a chance of holding it's own against the angels. The one time they considered trying to kill a angel with N2-mines, the plan required over 992 N2-mines and STILL need the help of the Evangelions.
                • • I assumed that the Evas were there to prevent the N2s from glassing Tokyo-3. 992 20KT bombs is going to have quite an effect.
                  • And although that may sound impressive that's still only 20-30 megatons and that monster was in a pocket dimension. The Tsar bomb was a 112 megaton original design with the U238 casing replaced with lead which tampted it down to 58 megatons. You could make a gigaton, teraton, or even 100 teraton thermonuclear bomb; although they would be the size of a truck, house, and battleship respectively. Remember that staged thermonuclear detonation actually become more efficient as the size and number of the stages increases. So if you launched a battleship sized nuke into oribit using a nuclear pulse propulsion engine then deorbited tha warhead on an angel it would solve any proble by the simple fact that it would have more kinetic energy than the rock that killed the dinosaurs. It would also "solve" whatever continent you dropped it on but you can't make an omleat without flash frying a few hundred million innocent eggs.
              • An N2 mine might be a kind of nuclear device; one suggestion I heard was a pure-fusion device. There's a phenomenon called "induced gamma emission," which is like fluorescence but with atomic nuclei and gamma rays. You * might* be able to use that to replace the first stage of a thermonuclear weapon, an implosion-type fission bomb...the intense gamma ray flux would be used to initiate a fusion stage, and you could chain several together until you got the desired yield. Of course, perhaps the neutrons from the fusion reaction might induce fast fission of the material necessary for the IGE primary and there might be fission yield...anyway, it's probably SEELE's doing, but all things considered, for the most part there was no need for the Evangelions. They could have taken care of the Angels with nuclear-tipped ALC Ms (air-launched cruise missiles, like the AGM-28, AGM-69, AGM-86, AGM-109, AGM-129, etc.) launched from bombers, assuming they used enough and they had a sufficiently high yield. Of course, that wouldn't have been nearly as interesting...also, I guess that for some of the Angels, putting that ALCM on target might be tricky. Hell...there are certain types of tactical ballistic missiles that could have done the job.
  • Unfortunately for the above, canon sources state that N2 stands for Non-Nuclear, and is therefore not any form of fusion or fission. The best possible explanation for the lack of nuclear weaponry is the usual fears about nuclear warfare coupled with the results of the nuclear conflicts that had already followed after SI. In the 12th Angel scenario, where Dr. Akagi's back-up plan involves all of the existing N2 mines being used, the Evas are there not to protect T3, but to neutralize the Angel's AT field in hopes that without it the mines 'might' do enough damage to kill the angel. As an important addendum, the original Tokyo was destroyed by a nuclear weapon, hence the renaming of Nagano to Tokyo-2 (accompanied by the movement of the government) until Tokyo-3 can be completed and the capital moved there.
    • Japan never really got over Hiroshima, let's put it that way.
  • Has anyone considered fuel-air explosives? According to the Wikipedia article (so form your own opinions about that), there have been fuel-air bombs with destructive powers comparable to weaker nuclear bombs. Since we don't seem to know what type of nuclear weapon we're supposed to be comparing the N2's to, a fuel-air bomb isn't beyond the realm of possibility...
  • A simpler explanation is that using nukes on the Angels would also result in you blowing up or heavily disrupting the HQ for research and design for anti-angel weapons. If it turns out that there is so much as 1 angel that is immune to nukes, glassing Tokyo-3 would remove any effective alternative.
  • Whose genius idea was it to actually specify the make-up and yield of an N2 mine? I mean, Evangelion is like, -1 on the Sci-Fi Hardness Scale.
  • If you want a "pick and choose canon" answer, ignore all this stuff about what an N2 mine actually is (I've never read it, therefore it's pure lies). "N2" has a two in it, so it's twice as strong as a nuclear bomb. I mean, "S2 engine" has a two in it, and it's strong...or something. Right? See, it all makes sense when you don't think about it.
  • Simple, really: because using a nuclear bomb, which besides the Positron Rifle can be the only weapon capable of demolishing an angel many times over (992 N2 mines are calculated to be hardly equivalent of a 20mt nuke, 25mt weapons were commonly deployed by the US Air Force during the Cold War and Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear device ever created, had a whopping 50mt yield — at half-power), would cause so much collateral damage and be impractical to use near a city. According to the Wild Mass Guessing page, Tokyo-3 was built where it was precisely to ensure that Eva units are the only defense against the angels, which is exactly what Seele wants. The really bugging thing is how in Rebuild they don't send ICBM's on Sahaquiel despite how there will be no collateral damage.
• Why is one of the most repeated ideas, once we learn about the background and the conspiracies, this bizarre idea that the human race is at an evolutionary dead end? Evolution is change in allele frequency in a breeding population over time. It's unstoppable. Do you want empirical evidence? Go google for the "Flynn Effect," a measurable significant increase in average human intelligence in the industrialized nations just since 1900. I'll wait here. Go see for yourself. Back? Now, contemplate the idea—wrong-headed and laughable, but one Anno seemed to be working very hard at pushing—that our species has reached a stage of genetic stasis and stagnation. And think about the science and engineering that, in the series, went into creating the Evangelions themselves—gigantic living genetically engineered cyborgs. Look at Rei, a living Transhuman Goddess grown from a mixture of human and alien genetic material. If the science of the year 2015 can create the Evas and it can create Rei, then by God it can create a better future for humanity than turning us all into Tang and starting over as primordial ooze. With the tools and knowledge that would have to exist in order to create such things, the future of humanity is limited only by their imaginations, and people as brilliant as Naoko Akagi would have to have far better imaginations than I do. Was Tang really the best thing they could come up with? Really and truly? They could have ended hunger and poverty, cured all disease, and made the whole human race into posthuman genius übermensch, just for starters. Maybe SEELE are all insane deathcultists, maybe Gendou is willing to turn the world to Tang for one last million-to-one shot at seeing (read:fucking) Yui again, or maybe just spending the rest of eternity hallucinating that he's with Yui. But NERV is full of brilliant people who are, presumably, not insane deathcultists, who are bright enough to deduce what's going on, and in a position to do something about it. So what the HELL, man? What the HELL? Has none of these people read Bruce Sterling? More to the point, has Hideaki Anno, a very intelligent and literate man, by all accounts, and a big fan of American science fiction (the word "Instrumentality" is a Cordwainer Smith reference), never read Rudy Rucker or Bruce Sterling? Shapers FTW!
  • You try dealing with Gainax's fanbase. If you still believe, after six years of trying to pander to Japanese otaku, that humanity is not at an evolutionary dead end and that destroying the human race in order to save it is an over-reaction - well, let's just say you're a far more charitable man than Anno.
    • Point. Remind me not to attend any anime cons in the foreseeable future.
    • I'd like to point out that researchers argue as to how valid the Flynn effect is. Several claim that it's simply a matter of comprehension and people are learning how to easily get high scores on outdated IQ tests that often challenges comprehension more than intellect. One particularly noteworthy support for this claim is that people like Da Vinci (who are supposed to have genius intellects) would fail our modern IQ test because he never learned the method to take it properly. Others claim it is valid but the 20 point progression seems implausible and that it must be increasing at a slower rate.
      • There can still be mutation and selection without any significant progress, or a population with too little genetic variation to end up imploding.
        • Are you talking about otaku or are you talking about the human race generally? Do otaku normally have a chance to reproduce at all? I always thought that this was a self-limiting mutation that prevented itself from being passed on.
          • Hah, hah, real funny, **** er... Look, if b-movie fandom can be passed on (and if you don't believe me, visit the B-Movie Message Board and count the parents), otakudom can as well.
            • Hmm. Maybe Anno is more of a fan of Greg Bear (read "Blood Music" some time) than Bruce Sterling, at least when it comes to transhumanism. Greg Bear's 1983 short story "Blood Music" is about genetic engineers creating a superintelligent life form in the lab, which then decided to incorporate all life into itself in a very Instrumentality-ish fashion.
  • Note that the only people in the show who actually believe this are the religious nutcase Omniscient Council of SEELE, who are using the "artificial evolution" as a cover story for their attempt to personally become gods by means of Third Impact, using 2nd Impact, the attack on NERV, etc. to remove those they deem "unworthy" of joining them. None of the rational characters (read: Yui) buy into this bullshit, and Anno himself leaves off EoE with what is essentially a kick in the groin to such beliefs by leaving SEELE swimming in a sea of Lilith's menstrual blood.
  • On the other hand, why would rational people get involved with5D
  • It is never stated that they mean 'genetic' ep://www.newsweek.com/id/96399 As soon as I saw this...]]
  • It is never stated that they mean 'genetic' evolution. There are many other kinds, and the series is far more based on Jung's writings than any existing Sci Fi works anyway. Note: Instrumentality is a mistranslation, Complementation is the correct term. There are whole books (read: PhD thesi) written about this series in Japan. As for the "evolutionary end" concept, presumably they got it from the same Dead Sea Scrolls that told them the Angels would be attacking, what order they would be in, what to do about it, and what some of their suboordinates my try to subvert. While it's canon that Yui was a member of Seele, it's never clear on how much involvement she actually had, or how much knowledge of the actualy events she was given. Manipulating people is the Committee's speciality, after all. Convince everyone that what they are doing is a war for survival (not too far off the mark anyway) and most of them will go right along with it, especially when the Angels begin their attacks.
    • Building on this idea, I took it that SEELE et al thought that humanity was at an evolutionary dead end not so much intellectually or physically but rather emotionally or spiritually. Instrumentality was an attempt to solve the problems of individual isolation, alienation, depression and suchlike (philosophical/psychological problems), which mankind has been wrestling with (arguably) unsuccessfully since forever. Also, most of these types of problems seem to get worse rather than better as the culture advances in intelligence and wealth (otaku-ism and hikikomori-ness, two of the issues Anno was reportedly specifically concerned with in the creation of this series, are definite symptoms of this). Anyway, just some troper's two cents.
  • They were planning to become a posthuman God with Reality-decimating powers. Tang was just the leftover from the human corpses without souls: the real project is the Giant Goddess Rei on which all of mankind will be assimilated.
• Did the characters stay dead?
  • most of them weren't dead at all. They were just reduced to LCL by the deactivation of their AT-fields that held them together. And those who were dead... They also were turned into LCL, so one could speculate, that they're also able to come back.
  • It is generally assumed that dead people stay dead, but that those living at the time could return if they feel like it. Note: it is an 'option' to return, and not an easy one to take at that.
  • It is also possible that anyone who died just before Third Impact also had their soul taken, allowing for Misato and ritsuko to be part of the instumentality shown in 25 and 26
• Here's something else that always just bugged me. How is it that, when Shinji appears in the school, Kensuke spots him instantly and knows who he is and what he does? Leaving aside the fact that Kensuke does not even seem especially bright, well—if YOU saw a giant war robot fighting a kaiju, would YOU immediately conclude that the robot was being piloted by a barely-pubescent kid? And while we don't really live in a Shonen adventure world, the cast of NGE doesn't either. If I saw a battle in your city between a huge monster and a gigantic futuristic war machine, I would think that the pilot of the machine, if it even had one and it wasn't an autonomous artificial intelligence, would have to be some kind of highly trained soldier, maybe something analagous to a fighter pilot or a Special Forces commando type, maybe even someone 40 years old who'd been training for the last 20 years. Granted, Kensuke isn't 100% certain of this and has to enlist the aid of girls in the class to flirt with Shinji to get confirmation. But why is he convinced of this from the very beginning?
  • As was told, Tokyo3 is a company city, whose the almost totality of its inhabitants are employees of NERV in a way or another. Aida family could be not an exception. In the show, it are instances where Kensuke repeats to his friends accurate inside information about NERV that he assures has gleaned from his father and uncles. Being Kensuke the militarist otaku that he is (and the only person shown who thinks that driving a Giant Mecha is cool besides Asuka), he could be interested in learning who was the one driving the mysterious robot. Probable he could have listened some of the facts from his relatives, and later got a glimpse on the "public" info about Shinji from his father's documents. He has had plenty of time, since Shinji began school about a week after his first fight.
    • My interpretation is that Shinji just sorta showed up the day after the first Angel attack, so people were suspicious and rumours were flying. Kensuke caught wind of it, and thought 'hey, I really wanna deck the guy who piloted that thing, and this shinji guy looks a lot easier to beat up than some 40 year old marine'. So he asked the girls to flirt with Shinji and make sure, and then when Shinji typed 'yes' into the red laptop thing (which was stupid of him), Kensuke had all he needed to justify kicking the crap out of Shinji. so, in other words, it's because he guessed right through sheer luck.
      • Er, are you sure you're not confusing Kensuke with Touji? Kensuke never raises a hand against Shinji, being as, you know, he's an Otaku. Touji, however, does punch Shinji to the ground. Twice.
  • While Kensuke's intelligence is never directly shown, he is generally considered to be a military otaku who follows the defense industries closely. As Kaji says in a later episode, Shinji is rather well known in defense circles, so his identity is not exactly a secret. Plus it is quite clear from the episode in question that Kensuke put it together based on rumours and what he had put together from his father's computer, and it wasn't confirmed until after the girls in the class got Shinji to admit it. There is no evidence that Kensuke asked their help on that either, it is more likely that they, having heard the same rumours, probably just wanted to know on their own. Consider that there is a comment by a backgrounder about how many people are leaving the city, and Kensuke's question about it being odd that Shinji is arriving when so many others are leaving. Also, it's Toji that wants to hit him in response to his sister's injuries, not Kensuke.
    • Also, depending on how much inside information Kensuke has, he might have known that the Evangelions were not being piloted by adults; all it would take is coming across a single reference to the Children. Also, if cam across any information about how the Third Child arrived in Tokyo-3, and then the next day there a new guy at school, being suspicious makes sense.
• Related question: why the HELL is Shinji put into a junior high school, apparently with almost no security, and no warning against revealing his identity? It's bad enough that he's vulnerable to reprisals from relatives of civilians who get maimed during Angel battles. What if terrorists or doomsday cultists decided to attack the school and take the pilots hostage or murder them? Don't say that this is unknown and unthinkable in Japan, either. Ever heard of Aum Shin Rikyo? If I were running NERV, the pilots would be under house arrest, or protective custody, or whatever clever euphemism you could come up with, for the duration of the war. They'd get personal tutors for their education and they would NOT be allowed out in public, where any bunch of lunatics with a grudge might try to take them hostage or worse. NERV is wagering the lives of the whole world on the Children winning the Angel War, which requires them not to get run over by a truck, or kidnapped by doomsday cultists, or whatever, before it's over. I know, Anno wanted to show social interaction, and to write scenes intentionally reminiscent of coming-of-age teen comedy, which required the Children to go out and interact with people their own age and have lives beyond training and sleep. But it's illogical and an insanely stupid risk for NERV to take.
  • An interesting question I've never thought about. To me it seems impossible that doomsday cultists etc would exist in the antiseptic world of Eva. It might be just that: It's a hugely depopulated world where people have more room than they need and nations (as evidenced by the UN becoming a world leader) have learned to bond together and not kill each other so much. And, to also answer why Gendo hasn't interfered with Shinji's life, trained him to be a pilot or at least taken him out of regular school, take a look at how he works as a commander: He sits silent and immobile with shades and gloved hands covering his face, basically only speaking to affirm or deny the decisions of his officers when he has to, and actively taking charge only when there's absolutely nothing else left. It would make sense for him to allow Shinji a normal life not only to avoid being a parent or to prevent the boy going insane but because "If it's not broke don't fix it" seems to be his basic attitude.
    • "To me it seems impossible that doomsday cultists etc would exist in the antiseptic world of Eva."...What show were you watching? The entire plot is two organizations fighting over which type of apocalypse to use, while a race of monsters tries to end the world their way. And considering that it's a company town, almost EVERYONE there is either a doomsday cultist or working for one.
  • Short Answer, you can't deconstruct the Giant-Robo genre without school scenes. Long answer, Tokyo III is a "company town" in the truist sense of the word. The parents well at least the fathers and uncles of all the kids work for NERV. They've been vetted and have loads of clearance. Apparently they do blab, Kensuke has heard a new pilot is arriving and puts 2+ 2 together. They ARE being watched, Misato gets a report about Shinji getting slugged, presumably they would've interefered if Touji had a baseball bat. Lastly The whole class are pilot candidates, Touji's just the only one to be picked. See comment above about "no mothers".
    • One certainly hopes so! One comes away with the impression that, for all that Gendo is a mad supergenius only a long-haired white cat away from being a James Bond supervillain, a whole lot of stuff about his plans, and a whole lot of stuff about NERV, is pretty half-assed, unless it's all one gigantic interlinked and interlocking chain of Gambit Roulette that twists around and loops back on itself in one big Mobius strip of Magnificent Bastard awesomeness. Too much is too dependent on dumb luck for that to be a plausible alternative, though, especially given how badly it ended for him in EoE. Why wasn't Shinji raised to be a pilot from the time he could walk, like Asuka, instead of just having to show up one morning and climb into the cockpit of the giant robot he never saw before, with the lives of all humanity on the line? Why does Rei live in a decaying building that just screams "slasher movie set?" Why aren't the security goons from Section 2 even halfway competent? Why is Misato, of all people, put in the position of being our neurotic hero's surrogate mom? For all that they do get along pretty well together, for all her genius and cunning as a battlefield commander, given her known habits and proclivities I would not have trusted her with a potted plant, much less the safety and emotional well-being of the fragile, clinically depressed, borderline hikikomori hero.
  • First off, as to why Shinji wasn't raised a pilot; Gendo admits in the movie that he was terrified of his own son, indeed he seems to have gone to great lengths to ignore his very existence. It's only when Gendo finds that he specifically needs Shinji that he even brings himself to acknowledge the boy and even then Gendo makes a point of spending as little time as possible with him. Misato well remember that Gendo's smart but not omnisentient, he might not even know about Misato's issues. I doubt he socialises with her off hours, as far as he knows she's an efficient and cunning commander of men. Even if he doesn't know about her problems; hey, the more angsty Shinji gets the better fighter he becomes, score! As for his overall plan; well, his main coup was gaining control of NERV, after that he does indeed make some really dumb decisions, by my opinion through simple arrogance. He sees no reason to worry about Shinji being one step away from going apeshit nuts because he's damn good at fighting and Gendo couldn't care less about anything else. He sees no reason to protect the kids because there's a whole lot more of them, or if worst comes to worst he could just use Rei. He sees no reason to look after Rei properly because she's obviously head over heals in love with him and worships the ground he walks on. ha! He's just as surprised as anyone when she turns on him, although he REALLY should have seen it coming.
    • Hmm. Then, too, there is the recurring scene in the opening episode of most every classic giant mecha series, where our hero has to get behind the controls of the Humongous Mecha that he's never seen before and save the day. I wonder if Anno was gently pointing out a common logical inconsistency of the genre rather than offering this up with no sense of irony. As for Misato, I still have a problem with it, because she's a high-ranking officer in the organization he runs. He works with her, he has to hear the rumors, and he's boinking her best friend. In any military organization worth a damn, the top brass have psychological profiles on everyone of import. For all that Misato and Shinji ended up getting along pretty well, in a way that made me think of Annie Hall and Alvy Singer (or, if you prefer to think in terms of the classics, the Lady Fujitsubo and Prince Genji), it's not what I would have expected. If Gendo has some convoluted "scenario" which requires him to control everyone's lives down to minor details and manipulate them in order to induce certain psychological states at certain times (and that may be more fanon than canon, I admit), and his plan requires Shinji to be an angst-ridden human dishrag who nonetheless maintains the magical ability to transform into Heero Yuy when danger threatens and kick ass impressively, I would have expected him to put him in the company of someone less likely to try to improve his mood (and if you want to make a double entendre out of that, brother, you go right ahead). In his position I'd have been more inclined either to issue Shinji a small apartment of his own or, if I were convinced he needed adult supervision, I'd have put him with Ritsuko Akagi, who is not nearly as fun-loving or cheerful as the eccentric Misato. Which leads to another question, though: why is Shinji so much better at fighting the Angels than anyone else? Yeah, he has a roaring abundance of rage in his heart, which is normally turned inward and so normally manifests itself as crippling depression and self-hatred. But Asuka and Rei have been training all their lives. Granted, to Asuka it's all one big video game, a way to prove that she's the best, and when she suits up and gets in the entry plug, she's normally concerned with showing off, not winning the fight. And Rei shows very little initiative and will not do much at all without a direct order. Still, going foaming-at-the-mouth berserk and charging screaming at the enemy as if he'd just seen it slap his mama lulz is not, historically, a tactic that has a high success rate, though maybe it works better if you're at the controls of a ten-story giant war robot. He should not, by rights, do nearly so well as he does. I know, he's the hero. But it's not logical.
      • Also, from a viewpoint of Dramatic Necessity, Misato is more desirable (and you can interpret that any way you want, you pervs) because, 1, she's funny and ditzy when she's off duty, which allows her to play the Zany Comic Relief to Shinji's Straight Guy in the sillier off-duty scenes, and 2, there is also the deliberately ambiguous feelings they seem to have for one another, and you can't have a Humongous Mecha series with a teen protagonist if it doesn't include a Cool Big Sis to flirt with the protagonist in a deliberately non-maternal manner.
      • Actually Asuka is clearly the better pilot through 90% of the series. Note that even after Shinji beats her scores, Misato still wants Asuka walking point (unfortunately Shinji picks a really bad time to assert himself). The difference is, Asuka doesn't have access to the Beserker beatdown (which is really how Shinji wins his fights, bar Kaworu). Rei spells out the reason why to Asuka "you need to let your Eva into your heart". Asuka gets angry with herself when things go bad (in the final episodes, her issue is letting others in), which isn't what sets off an Eva. Shinji gets mopier when things go bad, basically asking "won't someone help me?" And mama does.
      • As the previous pointer pointed out: it's mostly not him that does the beating down. In fact, he beats a whopping total of 3 angels on his own, counting Leliel. His mom, being the overprotective but inattentive psycho bitch that she is, racks up the rest of the kills. Screw it, Anno has an epic lampshadehang in Episode 2, when Shinji catastrophically fails to pilot Unit 01, gets beaten up, and then blacks out while his mom opens a can of whupass on poor, defenseless Sachiel.
        • To be fair, Shinji almost defeats Zeruel on his own before his power runs out, which happened to beat down Asuka and survive a suicide attack by Rei. While Asuka has a much better tactical mind, Shinji is essentially the muscle even outside of Berserk happyfuntime.
        • Even granting this, it always seemed to me that the boy, for all his neuroses, demonstrated quite astonishing courage just in trying to do it at all, regardless of his motivation or what actually happened. "Hey kid, we need to strap you to the front of our tank so we can go fight the bad guys. Don't worry, we know what we're doing. Just try not to scream too much."
  • ANSWER TO THE OP: They explain that Shinji's middle-school class is composed entirely of EVA pilot candidates for NERV's convenience. One would expect that that particular middle-school class is not a normal unguarded one.
    • This is correct, and as some of the above pointed out, and for all that Section 2 sucks at finding people, the school is under surveilance. (Misato knows of Toji's smacking Shinji, for example.) And originally, Shinji 'is' assigned a single apartment of his own. Misato takes him in because she doesn't feel he should be alone.
  • Recognising that not everyone here likes Shinji and Warhammer 40 K - in fact, might even hate it - nevertheless Charles Bhepin takes note of this point when he has Shinji kidnapped at one point.
  • First of all, NERV has reserves. Not only have they been developing the dummy plug system throughout the series (to the point where it is used to devastating effect against Bardiel) but Shinji's entire class consists of pilot candidates, so they probably don't consider losing one of their pilots such a big deal (notice that every time they needed a replacement, such as when Shinji refused destroy the 13th angel and when unit 4 became available, they had no trouble finding a substitute; the only exception was Zeruel's attack, but that was a very special case because Shinji had quit on that exact day and the dummy plug kept on being rejected, so it's really not NERV's fault). Furthermore, we know that piloting an EVA is somewhat dependent on one's mental state and emotions (see, for example, how Asuka's depression caused her to be unable to handle her EVA); maybe the lead psychologist at NERV decided that the best thing for the pilots' mental health was to live as normal a life as possible, including living in normal houses, going to a normal school, and having a chance to make friends their own age that weren't other pilots. Also, they might have difficulty finding willing pilots if house arrest is part of the deal; sure, Shinji and Rei might not mind, but what about other potential, more sociable pilots? They had to convince Toji with the bonus of special medical care for his sister, so pilots can refuse. Finally, since the entire city seems to be a company town and Shinji's class is composed as described above, it isn't a stretch to suppose the class and school are guarded, and people don't get to live or come into the city without having business with NERV.
• When Eva-01 was fighting Eva-03, why exactly couldn't they just disable the dummy plug halfway through the beatdown? I mean, the damned thing was a huge red stain by then, couldn't they stop Eva-01 before it crushed Eva-03's entry plug?
  • I think they could have, but chose not to.
    • They probably wanted to make sure Bardiel was completely dead, considering the implication that Bardiel IS the EVA, or something close to that. Super Robot Wars has it where Bardiel is the SOUL of the unit itself, and you can recruit Touji in it by basically Friendship Through Superior Firepower. And SRW tends to use a lot of All There in the Manual.
      • That, and they were going through to the logical conclusion of the rather illogical false moral dilemma they set up for Shinji in the first place. Why the hell would Shinji choose that moment to dig in his heels and say "nuh-uh, I'm not going to kill another human," when it was neither necessary nor even desirable to harm the other pilot? He's an Evangelion pilot, he was (in the anime continuity) the first one to go into combat, he has more kills than the others put together by the end, and if anyone ought to know the secrets of Main/Synchronization, it's him. He could have ripped the other Evangelion's arms and legs off without physically harming its pilot. It would have been extremely unpleasant but he could have done it, it would have worked, and no one would have gotten hurt. And he would have to have known this better than anyone else. It's almost as if the adults running NERV conspired to force him to react this way, which would be stupid and counterproductive, not to mention out of character for most of them. I know, if you asked Anno, he'd probably say something about "dramatic necessity," and showing there were limits on what orders Shinji would follow if he found them morally repugnant. But it sticks out at me. It Just Bugs Me.
        • It's not a false moral dilemma. The pilot is Synchronized to the EVA. That means that even if Shinji had ripped off the other EVA's arms, it would at the very least caused Toji to experience the pain of having his arms ripped off, potentially killing him from shock. I believe I remember at least one instance where Shinji goes into convulsions while piloting the EVA and has to have his synchronization cut to save his life. Then there's the episode where Shinji dissolves into the LCL. Heck, if Toji was synchronized enough, it would have caused his arms to actually rip off as demonstrated by what happened to Asuka in the End of Evangelion. Seriously, ripping the arms and legs off the EVA is not a guaranteed Non-Lethal KO.
        • Also, especially in the manga (where you get to see Toji in Unit 03's plug after Bardiel takes over), it seems likely that Bardiel was assimilating him and the plug in the same way it had taken over the EVA. Therefore, in order to completely eliminate the angel, it would have been necessary to destroy the plug anyway.
      • Actually this is something that Kaji talks about in the manga adaption of the anime (which is quite a bit different and, in this troper's personal opinion, mostly a vast improvement). He tells Shinji that he could have stepped in to save him if he really tried, saying that it was entirely Shinji's fault for allowing Gendo to use the dummy plug. This seems rather harsh, especially as in this version of the story, Toji is killed in the battle, but most people would agree that Shinji should have done something about it.
        • Gendo never wanted, nor expected Shinji to react any other way than he did. He was looking for a chance to test the Dummy Plug.
  • The short answer, of course, is that the Angel's signal didn't go dead until after the Entry Plug was crushed, as stated in Episode 18.
    • Or maybe a pissed off Rei, which is what the Dummy Plug essentially is, would give Frank Castle a run for his money in terms of putting someone down for good.
      • According to the Classified Information, the Dummy Systems are "artificial souls that were developed at the end of the research [into copying souls]. In terms of functionality, however, the dummy systems leave much to be desired: although they could make Evas activate, that was the limit of their capacity." Meaning that it was all Yui doing the ravaging.

• Why is everyone's first name written in katakana? Even perfectly Japanese ones, like Shinji.
  • To make the meanings behind the names more ambiguous.
  • Anno did it intentionally to keep them from being over analyzed, as stated in an interview.
  • Also, I think it may be some element of The Trains Run On Time. Gendo has one of the best jobs in the world; directorship of a UN NGO with huge discretionary funds and no oversight committee. He is the obstructive bureaucrat who makes the system not work right.
    • What do Gendo's actions (or inactions) have to do with how names are written? I mean, I know it's probably a mispost, but what the hell?
  • I think it's pretty common in Anime for Japanese names to be written in kana.
• The angels are shielded by giant “soul barriers” that can only be penetrated by technologically amplified adolescant emotion, forcing the governments of the world to turn to angsty teens piloting giant robots in order to defeat them? Neat excuse for the show's premise, but not neat enough. What about Rei? Couldn't you just stuff a Rei inside an NN ICBM and obliterate each angel? If Reis wouldn't work for whatever reason (I can't see why not), you could use unwitting volunteers. The public wouldn't know they were connected, or even that humans were involved. I probably would have required EVAs to use some special ability to land the finishing blow, in order to avoid this issue.
  • You need to recover the soul to put Rei in a new body, which will be difficult to do when her corpse is vapor. Also, only Rei expresses the AT field thingy without the giant robot amplifier, and that only happened once in the entire series, against an opponent who was not a giant monster. It's not something everyone can do. So you have one shot, and that's assuming the Angel isn't one of the rare ones which can take N2 mines to the face unscathed.
  • As you correctly mentioned, defeating angels is just an "excuse" for the premise. NERV's real concern was not them, but rather triggering Third Impact according to SEELE's scenario. For this, they needed the Evas—and this is why they had to keep them around, and even sabotage competing projects that could render the Evas obsolete (such as Jet Alone).
  • The adolescent emotion is only necessary because the Soul Barrier is not theirs or the Evas', but that of their mothers (except for Rei, who is technically everyone's mother including her own). They need these children specifically because their mothers volunteered or were 'volunteered' to be the test pilots, and thus when exposed to their children would exhibit particularly effective ability to understand them (read: synchronize) and would also thus exhibit a strong protective AT field to block out all interlopers. SEELE (and for that matter Yui) needed the Evas to become gods, thus the use of gigantic, monstrously expensive, inefficient, preposterous, and otherwise silly use of giant robots, when in fact a positron cyclotron in gun form would work just fine.
    • That bugged me too. If they have the big Angel-slaying death ray, why do they need the giant robots? Couldn't they just mount it on, oh, I dunno, a gigantic tracked vehicle like a great big tank, and use that instead?
      • People here seem to forget the enormous energy that it takes away just for a few shots and cooling. At least the giant robots didn't cause blackouts.
      • Yeah, they just had to pay the GNP of a small European country for routine maintenance every time one of the whacked-out kids cracked a mech's restraints/armor.
        • They only have the one of those things, they take forever to charge up, and keeping them charged using capacitors for long periods of time is dangerous.
          • The gun wouldn't have been able to one shot all the Angels. All Angels are not equal. They were lucky that Ramiel decided to stay in one spot so they could actually hit it.
            • Yeah, that gun is only good for large, stationary angels. That's why the only two angels they bust it out on are Ramiel and Arael (and the latter was much farther away than Ramiel, so the shot failed).
• Where were the Angels hanging out before they attacked? Did they form one by one from the sea of LCL around Antarctica, or were they all around beforehand and just chose to attack individually? What was the impetus for the Angels to form so many years after Second Impact?
  • No one ever knows where they have been, except for Sandalphon, found in the volcano. As for impetus, well, it was the prophesied time, see....
• Well, for one thing, I see consider the TV ending as so completely open-ended it could be interpreted as Shinji accepting Instrumentality or as him rejecting Instrumentality. Also, what part of Shinji being turned into a stick figure and/or entering his own High School AU doesn't qualify as a Mind Screw?
• Did Kaoru really have to die? When Rei initiated the Third Impact in EoE, she seemed pretty in control of the whole thing. Couldn't Kaoru have just fused with Lilith and taken Adam from Gendo (granted he didn't know that Gendo had Adam) and then lived forever just him and Shinji? I really don't think Shinji would've minded considering Kaoru was the only person he was ever really happy with.
  • Maybe Angels can't merge with Lilith, only with Adam? And yes, he did have to die. He was an Angel, and a rather sadistic one. The concept of even having sympathy for a human was probably completely alien to him—he was just abusing Shinji's feelings.
    • • No he wasn't. The only people who were shown to care for Shinji were Rei II and Kaworu, both of whom were part of either Adam or Lillith. He truly cared for Shinji which is why he sacrificed himself rather than destroy his friend.
    • Then why let Shinji kill him? I thought he said it was because he didn't want to wipe out humanity (or something like that). Also, wasn't required that Adam and Lilith be brought together for the Third Impact to occur, or is that just how humans had to do it?
      • The other Angels were going for Adam (alone), so I'd guess it had to be Adam and another angel - Rei, containing Lilith's soul, and also being based, at least partially, off of humanity (the 18th angel) works, apparently. At least, I think.
      • In addition to the above statement, in Eo E, all of humanity turned into a big ball in the sky and merged with both Adam and Lilith. Since the idea was to merge with Lilith and particular, implanting Adam into Rei was probably what made it possible to do just that. This troper is still trying to figure out how that makes any sense.
      • Kaworu is an angel. Like all angels (except Adam, Lilith, and the Lilims) he must join with Adam and survive while wiping out humanity (and maybe all other angels, if they weren't dead already) or die trying. Since he didn't want humanity to be exterminated and he didn't care about his own death, he decides to let Shinji kill him.
  • Kaworu couldn't fuse with Lilith because Kaworu derives from Adam as an originator Angel. Lilith is a separate progenitor from which humanity was born. Adam (1) --> 3 through 17, Lilith (2) --> Humanity (18). The numerical system refers to the order of the Angels' appearance and identification as angels, not to their birth chronology. Adam and Lilith originated separately, and also from space.
  • Kaworu didn't have to die but Shinji's mind was already in a million piece by then. He was probably thinking somewhere along the lines of it's his duty to kill Angels and Kaworu's an Angel. If Shinji hadn't killed Kaworu it might result in something bad happening for Shinji and so Kaworu tried to make it easier by asking for death. Shinji just couldn't ignore the request of the only person who showed him sympathy.
    • fhqwhgads:Lol? Shinji never cares for his "duty" except that he hopes it can win his father's acceptance. When asked why he fights, he explicitly says that he does it for his father. Similarly, when asked by Asuka how he got so good at playing the cello, he responds that someone encouraged him to start when he was 5 and "no one told me to stop". Shinji's initiative doesn't come from a sense of justice or understanding. Although the things he does after taking initiative are sometimes (but not always) borne of noble intentions, his chief motivation for accepting the tasks he undertakes is a compulsive desire for affection. He is so desperate for attention and affection that he'll do almost anything other people tell him regardless of whether he finds it interesting. Furthermore, Shinji is not understanding of Kaworu, he's heartbroken. He says "You betrayed me! You betrayed my feelings! You betrayed me, just like Father did!" However, in spite of the fact that it contradicts all of his personal goals and idealizations, he kills Kaworu. If the vague chance at getting recognition from his father was enough to make him pilot an EVA, then Kaworu's actual affection for him was enough torque to get him to do almost anything. The fact that he has so spectacularly demonstrated actions which are the complete opposite of what he wishes himself to be convinces him that he is completely and totally worthless as a human being, and leads to his standing around doing nothing in his EVA while the world ends and Asuka is killed.
  • fhqwhgads:The reason Kaworu betrayed Shinji was because he thinks macroscopically. He sympathizes with people, but not on a personal level. For example, he says that singing is the finest achievement of Lilin Civilization. This focus on "Lilin civilization" is all he really cares about. He acts kind to Shinji, not because he cares about Shinji personally, but because he finds Shinji to be an epitome of the qualities he sympathizes with in humans. It is this inspiration that causes him to spare humans by allowing Shinji to kill him. (If he were to cause instrumentality, humankind would be destroyed since they aren't his progeny). The catch is, he spares humankind, not for Shinji's sake, but for humankind in general. That's why he's not especially concerned with the fact that he's subjecting Shinji to this trauma.
    • If you'd like a meta answer, it was so Shinji could be as fucked up as possible at the show's conclusion. Some random bishounen turns up and says he loves you? I'm afraid you'll have to kill him, Shinji, we can't have you being happy or anything, now can we. There you go. Just pop off his head. Excellent. * thumbs up* Roll finale, his mind is broken!
• Okay, I'm just going to ask what we're all thinking. What the fuck is this show about? Near as I can get is Deconstruction. Deconstruction of anime, mostly the mecha genre. Deconstruction of a great deal of scifi tropes, fantasy tropes and character tropes. All spiced up with tons of random symbolism with little intrinsic meaning. Am I close?
  • Mix Hideaki Anno making the ahow as a way of working through his issues with Springtime for Hitler.
  • It's about the plotting of a secret organization who are following the will of so-and-so prophecies by building huge biological mecha that will eventually merge with Precursor technology to ascend humanity to a higher plane of existence.
    • A part of the deconstruction is that we have a "pawn's eye view" of the whole symbolism conspiracy etc. There is practically nothing our heros can do to take control of the plot, they just have to react to it and try to stay alive (and hopefully sane).
  • From my comment above: It is a commentary on human nature and Japanese culture, particularly otaku and hikikomori, couched in a metaphysical allegory within a Science Fiction background.
  • It's about human beings and their relationships with each other, exemplified through the case studies of the main characters. The giant robots and kaijus are just there to add a bit of decorative flavor.
    • It's about giant robots killing monsters of the week, exemplified through a blending of Super Robot bullshit and Real Robot weaponry. The Freudian psychodrama and relationships are just there to add a bit of decorative flavor.
      • Well played.
  • I'd consider it to be about three or so different things.
    • Deconstruction of the mecha genre. It gets bored of this about halfway through.
    • Character study and psychological analysis. Lots of this. Lots and lots of this.
    • Religious...Angel...Kabbal...Apocalypse...humanity...um...screw it.
• Why did Misato um-and-ah so much over telling shinji that Toji was Eva-03's pilot? Would shinji really have reacted that badly? He would have been a bit incredulous to start with, but I don't think he would have gotten upset.
  • She felt he would, especially since she knew how badly he hated doing it himself, and that was enough for her to hesitate. Remember that she herself is not very confident in interpersonal communication, so regardless of how he would actually reacted, she feared a very bad response. Particularly against herself, as he likely would have accused her of something sinister by bringing his friends into the mess, and quite likely would have run away again in protest.
• How the hell did Nerv get Unit One under control after it defeated Zeruel? It was self-aware, breaking out of its armour, and had just consumed the S2 organ, so it was no longer constrained by the 5-minutes-of-power rule. Characters later said that with the S2 organ, Unit One was now god-like in it's power, but by the next episode it's safely switched off and back in the cage.
  • That was only shown in the Manga, for some reason. They used the various non-explodey Angel interception systems to tie up the Eva. Weird that they couldn't at the very least throw in a couple of seconds of exposition on the matter. Of course, that raises another little niggle - I don't recall them showing * any* anti-Angel mechanisms on the geo-front, which is where Unit-01 was doing all that rampaging, the Manga showed the Eva being tied up by one of Tokyo-3's SURFACE all-purpose utility skyscrapers.
    • It didn't take place in the Geofront, first thing Shinji did after engaging Zerul was to force him onto an EVA launch pad and shoot him back up to the surface, where the main fight took place.
  • Most likely (from the anime perspective), Yui-Shinji simply powered down on her own, no longer sensing a threat, as happened the first time it went berserk.
• It's been a while since I saw the series, and I have only watched through it once so this was probably explained, but... What the heck happened with First Impact? I know Second Impact destroyed Antartica, and Third Impact did... whatever the hell happened at the end, but wouldn't there have to have been a first one to start all this shit? Or am I just being an idiot?
  • First Impact was the one during the solar system's early days, where the broken-off material formed the moon. I think in NGE, this is when Adam and Lilith were dropped off or something.
  • According to The Other Wiki, the First Impact was when the Black Moon carrying Lilith fell to Earth four billion years ago. The part carrying Lilith broke off and the rest of it bounced back into space to form the moon.
  • First Impact is actually a "Giant Impact" caused by an asteriod hitting Earth some 4 billion years ago. Second Impact is so named because it was the biggest since the First one. Canon, from the Red Cross Book.
  • According to the First Ancestor Race theory (seen here, and also filtered through Adeptus Evangelion), an ancient superpowerful race created Adam and Lilith (and perhaps others) to seed the galaxy with life. Adam came to Earth to prep it for the creation of Angelic life, while Lilith got knocked off course somehow and also ended up on Earth. Her "ship" collided with the planet, and the "command module" containing Lilith herself was lodged in the earth (eventually moved by tectonic shift to southern Japan). The remainder of her ship was stuck in orbit around Earth and became the moon. Then Lilith and Adam fought (since two different Seeds of Life aren't supposed to xenoform the same planet), Lilith's blood was spilled in the oceans (which became the Primordial Soup that gave rise to all life), and Adam was subdued by the Lance of Longinus (which was actually a sentient device created to subdue a Seed of Life if it got out of control).
    • Close, except there was no fighting beteen Lillith and Adam. During the Impact Lillith's Lance was either destroyed or left in the now orbital chunk, and the Seeds were programmed not to allow two types of Seeds active on any planet, so since Adam's Lance was the only one left it autmaticly responded to "turn off" Adam allowing Lillith free reign in creating life.

• Why the hell are there 17 Angels? For a show that is absolutely chock-full of What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic, why pick a number that isn't symbolic in any culture? Why not 10 (the number of angels in Hebrew mysticism) or 12 (a number with heavy symbolism in Christianity)? How about a multiple of a significant number, such as 15 or 18?
  • There were 18, Humanity is the last Angel, and if you wanna get technical 18 is 3 times 6, or three sixes making 666. Although, it seems more likely that the real reason is that 17/18 was just a number that fit in the number of episodes they wanted to do...
  • It's worth pointing out that it is 12 in the manga and depending on the math may be 12 in Rebuild too.
  • In the Proposal, there were 28. The number 28 in Hebrew also means "power" or "energy," which makes sense as far as the Angels go. The final twelve angels got scrapped (replaced by a reference to twelve MP Evas in the series, which were replaced by the nine that actually appeared), a couple more added in (such as Zeruel. In the proposal, Eva-01 was just upgraded!), and the series became what it is today.
  • Anno himself has stated in several interviews that all of the "symbolism" of the show, meaning the Western religious references, are not really symbols at all, but merely chosen because they would be exotic and foreign to the intended audience (the Japanese). He has also stated that he has never understood the show's appeal in the West, because it centers on mainly Japanese/Asian cultural traits and does not offer much beyond the !symbols for Western audience to relate to.
  • As for 17 having no significance, it is a prime number, and also the number of years in the life cycle of a cicada, which are a big audio motif in the series.
  • 17 is also 12 + 5, and as you know, ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5. The Law of Fives is never wrong.
  • More significantly, 18 is practically Hebrew for life. Many letters in that alphabet also represent a number, and chet-yud, which spells "Chai," or life, is 18. Just a little theory, based on the show's symbolism.
• If the Angels came from Adam and humankind came from Lilith, how can humanity be the 18th Angel? For that matter, how could Lilith be an Angel and still have spawned humanity?
  • Lilith isn't an Angel. Lilith is the polar opposite of Adam. They're both terraforming agents left behind to seed new worlds by a Precursor species, but Lilith brings forth life in the form of life as we know it, while Adam brings life in the form of the gigantic Angels. That's why humanity is the 18th Angel, because it's derived from Lilith, in the same way that the rest of the Angels are derived from Adam.
    • See, what bugs me, though, is that according to The Other Wiki, Adam was the First Angel and Lilith was the second, with the third being the first one battled in the series. If Lilith is expressly not an Angel, then how can humanity be number eighteen?
    • To be precise, Adam was the first Angel, and the most powerful, which landed in the White Moon. Lilith was the second, and landed in the Black Moon sometime (not long) after the White Moon did. While Lilith overswept the White Moon, while doing so, the White Moon was still capable of creating the next sixteen angels, but the angels go dormant. These sixteen angels were 'offspring' of Adam. In the process, Lilith took over the Earth, and either metaphysically or physically caused the development of all (non-Adam) animal life forms, including humans. These would eventually become Angels. The White Moon Angels (Adam and the sixteen fought Angels) operate differently than Black Moon Angels. The former has access to the Tree of Life, while the latter have access to the Tree of Knowledge, and are thus dramatically different (and the ancestor race that seeded them never intended two Moons to land on one planet). These are all Angels, but the underlying abilities, capabilities, and understandings are dramatically different. They are still Angels, however, with the ability to generate and maintain AT fields.
  • As to the numbering, the Angels are numbered in the order they are discovered, Adam was found first, then Lillith, as to humanity being 18 it was becuase no one thought about it till number 17 brought it up and said the human race as a whole constituted an Angel.
• What are the point of the plug suits? Shinji has been shown piloting EVA-01 perfectly fine without one several times, at the very least during the first episode and in EoE.
  • The Pilots synchronize with their EVAs through the hairclips they wear. That's all that's needed to pilot an EVA, however, the plugsuits enhance the process somehow.
  • They could be safety gear of some kind. Also, it saves them from ruining their clothes.
  • They seem to be partly to protect against the stresses of sudden acceleration and deceleration, like a flight suit, and partly as a convenient bundle for bio-monitoring and emergency life support equipment. In one episode where Shinji's heart is fibrillating after a rough encounter with an Angel, the control team is able to shock him back to a stable pulse via his suit before they've even gotten the entry plug open.
  • The canon answer is that they help the pilots maintain their ego borders, preventing "accidents" such as happened to Yui.
  • Canon also says that they incorporate heat-regulation systems in addition to those provided by the LCL heatsink.
• This is the most nitpicky question ever, but why do Kaworu and Rei have navels? I can maybe understand why Kaworu I and Rei I would have navels, but why would their clones possess navels? I highly doubt SEELE and NERV went through the time to create ALL of their clones in wombs, even artificial ones.
  • You still need to pump nutrients into the clones while you're growing them, and the navel is built for exactly that purpose. No sense in making a different location to attach tubing to when human bodies start with one.
  • You doubt SEELE and NERV went through the trouble of using wombs, but what makes you think there is another method? Evangelion isn't THAT further ahead from us, technologically speaking; it may well be impossible to grow clones without real or artificial wombs (if they even have the latter). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Kaworu and Rei were both carried to term by surrogate mothers.
  • So they can contemplate them.
• In the volume 7 of the manga at least (I haven't seen the anime) when Shinji and Ryoji are in the bomb shelter hiding from the Angel, Ryoji chews out Shinji about turning his back on NERV and all their bullshit and Toji being killed because Shinji could have saved him if he really wanted to so he has blood on his hands as well. But it looked like Shinji really wanted to save Toji and he really couldn't.
  • Kaji's point is that Shinji chose to do nothing, for defendable reasons (he was even willing to die by the angel's hand), but still he ducked the chance to try something that may have gotten Toji out alive. Whether or not humanity took down the angel was outside his control, the only control he had was whether he'd be at the controls. Kaji's pointing out that being passive-aggressive (Shinji's default reaction) is a choice, even if it means you do nothing.
    • What could he have done? I thought he was locked out of the controls.
      • Yes, after the Dummy Plug was activated. At that point, it was too late for him to do anything.
• Why are the Angels called Angels anyway? Who was the idiot in charge of naming them?
  • The ancient prophets of Qumran who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, most likely. Remember that everything that happened (right down to Second Impact), everything done by SEELE, GEHIRN, and NERV, was based on prophetic data found in a hidden Scroll. Presumably it referred to the invaders as Angels, possibly due to restrictions of the ancient Hebrew vocabulary, and the dudes in SEELE just decided to stick with the 2000-year-old code name.
  • If this is about how they look, do a little research, and you'll find out that they are far closer in appearance to the angels appearing in the Bible, than the stereotypical pufy winged, blond girly men you can see on Xmas cards. Of course actual angels wouldn't have looiked good on renessaince paintings, so the artists took the liberty of antropomomorphising them. So blame Leonardo da Vinci, not Anno.
    • Renaissance angels don't really resemble biblical angels, but neither do the angels of the show (beyond being freaky-looking abominations). The real reason is the same reason everything else in Evangelion has Judeo-Christian imagery; rule of cool. "There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us... we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool."

• Maybe it's due to not having done any extensive research on the real-world ones, but the Dead Sea Scrolls confuse me a bit, as in real-life they're just psalms and passages from the Hebrew Bible (along with Gnostic gospels that were hidden when they were considered Heresy), yet in this universe they're foretellings of the Angel attacks and are basically what NGE have for the Necronomicon. Basically, did Adam or Lilith just psychically reach out to some people in the year BC and say Hey, in several thousand years we're gonna have a fight, so get ready., or something?
  • According to EvaGeeks.Org, the parts available to the public correspond to the real-life scrolls; in the NGE-verse, SEELE got to them when they were first discovered and yoinked the most important parts. (Of course, this is also the site that insists Adam be referred to with female pronouns and refuses to use the term "lance.") I personally like to think that they were written by NGE's equivalent of Agnes Nutter (though she evidently did an unusual amount of pretty loose interpretation).
    • The site changed its policy and refers to all Angels and Evas as "it" now (though some pages may be experiencing lag). "Spear" is simply to be consistent with the only known official English rendition of the object in NGE, and isn't technically incorrect, although it goes against the habit of most English-speaking fans.
      • Not to mention Longinus, as a Roman infantryman, would have carried two spears and no lances.
• Okay, I get that only a few teenagers can pilot the giant mechas that are vital to the safety of the nation of Japan. So why does Japan severely and horrifically neglect the care and well-being of said teenagers? A drunken sexual deviant who can't even take care of themself is no fit guardian for the most important person for an entire nation. It would like if the Senate had Obama's desk moved to the basement janitor's closet...and they knew he was allergic to Windex.
  • Because neither SEELE or NERV really gave that much of damn about the life or sanity of its' pilots as they could always get more. It was the Evangelion that where important their plans.
  • I have a theory that piloting EVA requires a little bit of trauma in order to get the engine to "turn over", as it were (the AT Field = the barrier between individual human beings), and that's why the pilots have such fucked-up histories—it's what makes the machinery start up. Of course, too much trauma can have the opposite effect; Asuka is a good example for this.
    • I just realized something- The AT Field is basically someone's ego/sense of self being so powerful it can warp the laws of physics to keep other entities out. The three main pilot's psychological problems all boiled down to them not connecting with other people- Rei couldn't, Shinji was afraid to, and Asuka didn't want to; normal, well adjust people wouldn't have produced as strong a barrier, because they're more open to 'letting others in.' Maybe.

• How could Misato and Shinji survive an N2 explosion in the first episode unscathed? They were unbelted an the car rolled over like eight times or something (based on skid marks in dirt, it kept rolling over).
  • The car belonged to NERV, didn't it? Not a stretch to assume some unorthodox safety mechanism.
    • Didn't Misato make some comment about the car's payments after it got wrecked? If so, I don't think it is a NERV car.
• If the sea of LCL is made of conscious people who are 'connected', what about those who dissolved on the floor in random places in Geofront (and presumably the rest of the world)? They get to live forever as a pathetic little puddle, with no means of reaching the nearest body of water, er, LCL, to mix with and join the others?
  • It's only their bodies which were reduced to LCL, their souls (those little red dots) were all called up by Lilith. LCL is just raw material without an AT Field to hold it together.
    • I agree, but that makes me wonder... when a person dies in the series, why doesn't their body dissolve to LCL? The soul isn't there anymore, after all, is there?
      • Actually, I got the impression the soul does remains in a dead body, hence how they can recover Lillith's soul from Rei every time she dies and stick it in the next clone.
        • Which is really Fridge Horror if you think about it... although it does concur with the idea in Jewish mythology that souls remain in their bodies until Judgment Day.
          • Speaking of Fridge Horror, I just realized that, since the AT field is what holds bodies together, maybe the human decomposition after death is the result of the soul inside the corpse slowly dying and fading away, thus failing to maintain the body in one piece...
• Angels are showed as N2ed on several occasions, but do they occur IN Tokyo 3 or some random cities in Japan. If the latter, where exactly was Shinji when the first N2 of the show was dropped on Sachiel?
  • In the scene at the beginning of the first episode, there's a sign that gives the distance to Tokyo-3, several miles off IIRC.
• Okay, I can sort of what happened in the last two episodes. As much as that's possible without a mind reading device and extensive knowledge of the Kabbalah. What I don't get is what the hell triggered Instrumentality?
  • Gendo did. Watch End of Evangelion.
  • Preferably with your Therapist/
• It's been pretty well established that this series was a message to otaku that they needed to overcome their psychological problems, so how come Kensuke the stereotypical military otaku is seemingly one of the most psychologically well-adjusted characters on the show? I don't really mind, it just seems a little odd.
  • I took it as not just otakus, but everyone having psychological problems. Kensuke probably has his, along with everyone else, but he doesn't show them in public and he isn't a main character so it's never addressed.
    • The guy knows how terrible piloting an EVA probably is (see episode three) and STILL wants to do it. It probably doesn't NEED addressing.
  • It's because he's actually a spy for Seele.
• Did the MP-EVAs really need to eat Unit-02? What the hell was the point of that?
  • Shock value. Also it helped further Shinji's breakdown at the End.
  • They were hungry after the long trip and big fight.

• Why does Gendo remind me of Stanley Kubrick, lookswise, not for the Kubrick Stare? Okay, maybe it is the Kubrick Stare.
  • He reminds me more of Peter Cushing. It's those cheekbones, I think.
    • He reminds me of my dad, when he was 40. That's the closest one can ever get to Gendo regarding looks.
  • I'm more reminded of Abraham Lincoln, really...

• Okay, here is what bugs me. In the magma angel episode, they talk about thermal expansion, and Asuka gives the correct but very basic explanation that things expand as their temperature increases. Then when she is fighting the angel inside the volcano, her attacks with the knife have no effect. But then she remembers the thermal expansion thing from earlier, cuts off her coolant tubes, blasts the cooling liquid at the angel and attacks with the knife again... and this time it succeeds? What? Why does the attack succeed when tried in this new manner, and what does it have to do with thermal expansion?
  • We're dealing with an organism that has acclimated to the extreme conditions inside a volcano. That is, extreme heat. Exposed to sudden, extreme cold would likely do the same to it as what happens to deepsea fish when they're pulled out of the water. Although what happens to those fish is that they dissolve, because the pressure isn't holding their bodies together. Expansion. What happens to the angel is that its body is cooled down, and whereas hot stuff expands, cold shit shrinks. Now I can understand if you thought this should only make the angel's shell harder, but I imagine the flesh wasn't made for such sudden change.
• During End of Evangelion, what did Miasto expect Shinji to do? The movie made it seem like, even if he wasnt in a clinical depression, there really wouldn't have been much he could have done to stop Instrumentality.
  • Misato had barely learned the full idea behind instrumentality and the Second Impact a little while prior; she is on her laptop reading the details at the same time MAGI is hacked, which opens up the attack and invasion. She probably wasn't aware that SEELE was going to send in a squad of immortal regenerating EVAs, and thought that as long as Shinji could help Asuka hold off the invading forces they would at least buy time for the people at headquarters to figure out SOMETHING (for example, giving evidence to the Japanese government that they were being duped by SEELE).
    • Asuka defeated the Harpie Evas easily until she ran out of power. Unit One with the special core could presumable have held them off indefiently, possibly preventing instrumentality from Seele's end. It still wouldn't have stopped Gendo from triggering it with Rei however.
    • Actually, they weren't any more immortal than the Angels or other Evas, aside from their infinite power supply. Asuka just missed the Attack Its Weak Point Core and didn't inflict significant damage to deactivate them.
• So Doctor Akai strangles the first Rei clone and shoots herself. Fair enough. But earlier on we see that her brain, whole and intact, is inside the Magi Computer. Now, considering the massive blood-spray behind her, it looks like she shot herself in the head (also considering that most people who shoot themselves do it in the head). So how the hell did she shoot herself, cause a blood-spray that big, without harming her brain? And wouldn't her brain turn to mush in three minutes once it's been deprived of oxygen? I would say it might be a cloned brain, but since the Magi are made up of three different sides of herself, and souls/self-identity can't be copied, that wouldn't work.
  • The MAGI doesn't contain her brain; it contains her personality/thought patterns which were copied/programmed into it. We do see something that looks like a brain inside the MAGI, but either it is somebody else's brain or it is possible to create that component artificially.
    • Since lil' Rei I was already walking around during that time, they probably already had the sort of cloning technique they're using in the show to create "EVA spare parts" and thus used it to create three brains, possibly from Akagi's own genetic code.
  • Judgeing by the fact the three Magi computers were made operational before she died, and were already based off her personality, it's unlikely that her actual brain was placed inside them. Meaning the one we see is either artificail (either biological or mechanical) or some other person's.
• After all these plot/theme focused questions, I think it's time for a good ol' fashioned nitpick: Eva pilots pilot while entirely submerged in LCL, so why does it never look like that's the case. Nobody leaves the cockpit dripping wet, civilian wear remains appearing freshly starched, everyone's hair stubbornly stays in place despite being in a fluid with a consistency somewhere between water and blood, and - on the off occasion of having two or more people in the cockpit - nobody has trouble hearing anything. Are there some sore of bizarre properties of LCL that I missed, or did the writers just forget what was in the cockpit most of the time?
  • At one point Kensuke complains that his camera is getting ruined when they have to get inside Unit 01 with Shinji.
  • It also has bizarre properties. They can breathe the thing.
    • That's not a bizarre property.
• Okay, now here's a nitpicky one: what type of university degree is Asuka supposed got her hands on? And even more important how?, To be more specific, she is fourteen by the time of the series and is stated to have an University degree. According to German rules and laws, children are supposed to enter primary school (Grundschule) by the age of five or six, depeding on emotional maturity. In the nine years between this, she would barely be able to make a degree at the Hauptschule, the lowest form of education. Of course, assuming that her Child prodigy status is true, she may have skipped classes. But in Germany you are only allowed to skip two years regardless of your abilities, leaving her at 11 "completed" years, enough to have the next step, the Realschulabschluss, which still is too low for attending University. And that already completely ignores the time it takes to finish the University degree.
  • I'm sure they make - if not outright encourage - exceptions for one of the children that plays a major part in saving humanity's collective asses. Now that I think about it, indeed, as I was typing the words above, I realised that those same people could do a lot of other things in that regard. Like making sure their precious pilot's fragile ego didn't suffer any academic failure and lowered the difficulty a bit. 'They' may indeed have been trying to bolster it and inadvertently turned her into a perfect, total bitch. Also, as for which degree she got, I guess we can rule out psychology.
  • German law and educational structure could have easily suffered radical alterations in response to the Second Impact. In particular, applied science and engineering graduates would be needed to help fix the infrastructure and find ways to help the population, so they probably got some kind of fast track which forgoes years "wasted" studying other subjects. As well, child prodigies could have been allowed to skip as many grades as they were able to cope with. These changes, if they happened, wouldn't be reversed once the emergency was over (because it is hard to make sweeping changes into structure, and while the Second Impact would have provided a great catalyst for change in one direction, idle life wouldn't have produced much pressure to change back), so depending on Asuka's intelligence and major (note her knowledge of thermal expansion) it wouldn't be unreasonable for her to graduate university like that.
  • If I recall correctly, isn't it stated somewhere that Asuka went to university in America?
  • Either way, regardless of how she got her degree, or in what. If she has a college degree period, why the hell is still attending middle school?
    • Didn't Asuka say in one of the episodes that she can't read Japanese? She's probably going only to learn the writing system and get more used to the Japanese way of life.
      • Not to mention the possibility that the Pilots went to school in order to add a bit of normalcy to their lives/give them a chance for a bit of healthy socialization with other children their age.
• So, maybe I missed out on some stuff, but what makes non-manga Gendo so apparently villainous? From what I could tell, his goal was to turn everyone into LCL. If that was completely involuntary I'd understand the villainy, but they can apparently turn back if they want, so... why's it so terrible? It's practically heroic. I'm not saying Gendo's a great guy, I understand that he's cold, manipulative, abandons people, and is a general bastard, but that doesn't make him a Big Bad so much as a Jerkass.
  • I'm not sure if he even knew it was possible for people to come back in corporal forms. In my opinion, though, eternal life (even at the cost of individuality) is by logic infitively preferable to mundane, decaying-and-being-eaten-by-worms, eternal death. From a consequentialist point of view, Gendo is practically forty Jesuses. That's as many as four tens, and that's awesome. On the other hand, it could all seem a little reckless: I don't think they had ever tried doing this before, and just imagine some stupid technical complication screwing all of isntrumentality up so it mind-rapes all of humanity for eternity. But that was never the point... Consider also that Gendo was willing to make some very drastic changes in billions of people's lives, without asking them if it was okay with them, all so he could see his wife again. Rapture at the cost of free will, pure hedonism (the philosophy). Anyway, I think you have a point. Whether instrumentality was right or wrong is such a far-reaching question that people will never agree on any answer, and whether Gendo's intent or his actions or the consequences of his actions make him a good or bad person is similarly dependant on profound philosophics that it cannot be determined. In conclusion: I say that Gendo should be vindicated of his status as villain.
  • From End of Evangelion, where he comes across as Shinji taken to his logical extreme.
    • Gendo: I will finally be with you again, Yui. When Shinji is near me, all I ever do is cause him pain. It was better when I did nothing at all.
    • Yui: Were you afraid of Shinji?
    • Gendo: I didn't believe that anyone could love me. I don't deserve to be loved.
    • Yui: So you were running away. You rejected the others so that you would never be hurt. You were terrified by the invisible bonds that people form. You were afraid, and so you closed your heart. This is my retribution.
    • Gendo: Forgive me, Shinji.
• So Kaworu is an Angel who was artificially created by Seele from Adam's soul? Why would they create another obstacle to achieving Instrumentality? If an Angel merges with Adam, wouldn't humanity be wiped out by Third Impact?
  • Kaworu was tricked into going after Lilith (who is crucified in the Terminal Dogma) rather than Adam, who Gendo carries in his hand. From his dialogue in the manga, at least, it seems that him touching Lilith would have resulted in the "humanity merges with each other" version of the third impact, which is what Seele wanted (rather than the "humanity becomes extinct" version that would have happened if an angel touched Adam). In either case, Seele apparently can't begin instrumentality from their end without all angels being defeated, so they had no choice. Which makes this a Xanatos Gambit; either Kaworu would succeed in touching Lilith and cause the kind of third impact Seele wanted, or he would be killed and Seele could start the third impact themselves with all the angels gone.
    • Wow, an actual Xanatos Gambit? Not just something that tricks tropers into thinking it is one, but is really just a very complicated Evil Plan? Astonishing!
• Okay, so during the battle with Kaworu, Misato tells one of her guys to prepare to self-destruct headquarters if they lose contact with EVA-1, since it would be better for them to sacrifice themselves than than to let humanity to become extinct. But then, don't they get blocked by the most powerful AT-Field ever which doesn't allow them to observe anything? I think THAT qualifies as losing contact with EVA-1. They then noticed (somehow, since they aren't supposed to be able to monitor anything anymore) that Kaworu entered the Terminal Dogma. So... why didn't they blow up headquarters then and there? Sure, Kaworu stops and lets Shinji kill, and sure, it wasn't actually Adam in the dogma, but Misato and her underlings didn't know that the former would happen or that the latter was true. From their point of view, it would seem pretty risky to let the battle continue, and even if they were willing to take that risk then what signal were they waiting for before they decided to push the button? Remember, they are being blocked out by the AT-Field so they can't watch anything.
• So... is Shinji bisexual, or what? He seemed to be into Misato, Rei, Asuka, and Kaworu at different times.
  • Everybody's gay for Kaworu?
  • You can be straight but still be willing to have a rare 'exception'.
  • He's obviously bi. You make it sound like it's impossible.
  • Or he's 14 and doesn't know himself.
  • Or, he's socially retarded and desperate for attention. Possibly his self-esteem is so low, he doesn't believe others could be sexually attracted to him, so he doesn't get the subtext to Kaworu's actions (unlikely, but he also doesn't pick up on some of Asuka's advances). On the flipside, maybe he does see it, isn't bisexual, but just really needed an emotional outlet. Of course, he could very well be bisexual, but not necessarily.
  • Personally, I've always seen it as Shinji being straight but being in such a sorry state by episode 24 that he would desperately cling to any affection he could get. After all, by episode 24 he's lost every single significant bond he has; Asuka's in a coma, as far as he can tell Rei III is an empty shell, Toji and Kensuke have moved away, and his relationship with Misato has become distant and uncomfortable. It's not necessarily sexual; he's just so desperate for some kind of human contact that he'll take whatever he can get, even from the creepy new guy with No Sense of Personal Space who seems to be attracted to him.
• One thing that's bugged me forever: how does the Omniscient Council of Vagueness, Gendo, Yui in her human days, Seele and anyone and everyone else who's in on the whole thing, even know that instrumentality is good? Putting aside the rest of their tangled plan, why do they (being humans) think that melting themselves and the rest of humanity down into an ocean of tang is a good thing? Gendo thinks he'll see Yui again... but why does he think that? He's never experienced instrumentality before, has he? What's making him think they'll get to live happily ever after in a Mental World? Why does Seele think it'll make humanity immortal, rather than simply dissolving humanity into primordial ooze? How does anyone know that there's even such a thing as "instrumentality" at all? If it's just ancient writings and Dead Sea scrolls, they're taking a hell of a lot on faith, and willing to kill the entire human race on the off chance that maybe some old Kaballic charts are right and what's left over afterward will still be sentient and happy. I guess what Just Bugs Me is, how in the world is everyone involved so sure about instrumentality, enough so to consider slaughtering the human race, not to mention losing their own lives, wealth, power and everything, an acceptable risk? Even if they're pure sociopaths, why do the members of Seele see potentially existing as an orange liquid as preferable to their mortal lives? We, the audience, know that it's a pretty nice existence thanks to the ending, but how did they know that? Not to mention, I'm still not seeing how being a blissfully unconscious drop in an ocean beats opposable thumbs and an awareness of the outside world. That sounds nice for individuals, but doesn't a corporeal, spacefaring species that goes out and makes its mark on the universe rank way above a euphoric sea of happiness on that "evolutionary" scale Seele's worried about?
  • They just wanted a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.
  • Instrumentality is about destroying the person's personal AT Field, which is actually the unconscious physical identity of a being. In other words, it is about destroying physical-based discrminations such as ageism and racism, and turning everyone into anonymous infomorphs. We also have the same instrumentality where everyone are anonymous infomorphs: The Internet. In this case, Seele was planning to make a biological Internet where everyone is Anonymous, and therefore be only judged by their ideas, not by their appearances. Also remember that Seele is a Cabal made up of Jewish people, so maybe they resented the racism between humanity.

• If Unit 01 is made from Lilith instead of Adam, why does it have a core? I was under the impression that the core was an Adam-type feature.
  • As far as I know, it's just core = soul container, in this case it's the home of Shinji's mom.
    • There's a image that is briefly seen in one edition of the show that shows Unit 01 still attached to Lilith, with what appears to be a surgical cloth over it's chest with a hole where the core is. It might be that they artificially created a core and stuck it into Unit 01.
• I just realized something... why do they even bother figthing the non-orbital angels normally when they have the Spear of Longinus? I mean, angels like Sahaquiel are out of the question because throwing the lance at them will do the same thing it did in the series; launch it into space where it cannot be recovered. But why don't they throw it at angels like Shamshel, Ramiel, and Zeruel? The spear seems to be a guaranteed OHKO against angels, being capable of breaking through their AT Fields even at great distances and obliterating the damn things as if they were made of paper. If thrown at ground level, it should be easily recoverable, just like the Evangelions are after their power runs out. So what gives?
  • For a good part of the series, they didn't have it. After that, they were using it to keep Lilith from growing. At the rate of growth implied from when Kaworu reaches Lilith, it seems that it would be fully regenerated shortly afterward. Presumably they can't reverse its growth, only stop it. Even if having it complete wouldn't do something Third Impact-y, they still probably didn't want it fully regenerated, in case it woke up and decided to trash NERV HQ. But, if they could halt Lilith's growth without it, that's a good question. Even the Evas themselves wouldn't even be necessary if they could use the Lance; they could have Jet Alone use it.
  • It's also possible that the Lance could be destroyed or even captured by an Angel and used against the EVAs. Neither of those outcomes is necessarily likely, but if either one happens Gendo and Seele's plans will be in a lot of trouble. You don't use your trump card unless you really need it.
• So why did NERV sabotage Jet Alone anyway? Why didn't they let it fight an Angel, and as a result fail horribly against the AT-Field; or better yet, use it as a support unit, wielding such things as the Positron Rifle, or at least making sure the Angel's AT-Field was actually down when they were attacking at range.
  • To take all the glory.
  • Also, if Jet Alone was approved, they would probably divert large amounts of funding from NERV to finance it—Something that NERV was against, for obvious reasons.

• There's something that's always really bothered me about NGE - that apparently the world they're living in is set a mere fourteen years after billions died. And yet all the characters live in a seemingly recovered and functional society. Misato owns nice cars and clothes, kids go to school in uniform, people have laundromats that plastic-wrap your clothes for you, Shinji watches late-night talk shows, and so forth. I know that it is mentioned that people are starving elsewhere in the world, but that just makes Tokyo-3 even more surreal. While you could argue that since it's a city run by NERV and they were prepared for the Second Impact, that still doesn't explain bizarre luxuries like Doritos, awesome cars, and kids going on trips to Okinawa. Hell, Misato and Kaji met in college before joining NERV - why the hell would a college be running normally fourteen years after a catastropic human dieback? There is no way in hell that any part of the world could recover so well in such a short time, NERV-backed or not.
  • Japan, being Nerv HQ and the home of Lilith, rose as the world's greatest superpower in NGE.
    • Superpower or not, that still doesn't explain such a huge recovery from a massive apocolypse in just 14 years. I mean, really, who is going to make fancy blue sports cars after billions of people die?
      • Perhaps that car was a vintage model? Also, The only slice-of-life we see is in close proximity to the well-funded Nerv HQ, so it's probably not representative of daily life anywhere else. Though it seems mundane by today's standards, the lifestyle of Tokyo-3's residents must seem positively decedent compared to any other major city on Earth at that time.
  • Second Impact was at Antarctica, at the South Pole, so the damage was probably mostly in the southern hemisphere of the planet. That's right: South America, Africa and Australia end up taking all the shit for the rest of us, again.
    • This. Of the 3 billion people who died in Second Impact, 2 billion were instantly wiped out by the tsunamis. Since the tsunamis originated from Antarctica, this implies that the countries which received the most damage were the periphery countries. By contrast, the technologically advanced and infrastructure-rich core countries and China (the world's factory) got off a lot more lightly and managed to keep the world going. God knows how much worse the impact would have been if Adam had been found in the North Pole instead... Also, note that civilian electronics seem to have regressed. NERV may get access to supercomputers more advanced than we have now, but school children use laptops with cheap monochromatic displays, everybody watches CRT televisions, and Shinji listens to music with a freaking tape player (yes, this is actually because Tech Marches On, but I think it works from an in-universe perspective as well, luckily enough).
• Ok, so here's what I understand so far. The huge giant guy under NERV in Tokyo-3 is Lilith. If an Angel merges with Lilith, then the whole "get hugged and turn into Tang" thing happens, whereas if an Angel merges with Adam, TI happens and humanity becomes extinct. The Angels are trying to initiate Third Impact by repeatedly attacking Tokyo-3 to try and reunite with what they THINK is Adam, but is really Lilith (Kaworu, at least, who is the only Angel whose thoughts we know, definitely thought it was Adam.) So why is SEELE, which pretty much pulls the strings of the entire "defend Tokyo-3" operation, not letting the Angels just unite with Lilith? It would complete their entire operation, wouldn't it?
  • Possibly due to off-camera technical details. SEELE had some pretty specific rituals regarding Instrumentality, involving the Spear of Longinus, Kabbalist Trees, Unit 01, several mass production units, and of course Giant Naked Rei. It looked like relatively advanced Magitech to me. Or maybe they just didn't want to chances with some Angel that they've no data about, because it MIGHT initiate instrumentality in a way SEELE didn't want, possibly because that Angel was just different from what they know about Kaworu, Lilith and Adam, or because it's a retarded Angel and has bugs or something in it's programming. And that's just scratching the surface or all these variables that they just CAN'T afford to take chances with. Gendo however has no excuse for not melting Rei, Adam and Lilith together and become a god as soon as Kaworu is taken care of, instead of waiting until SEELE can even think about sick the JSDF on NERV.
  • Gendo was struck with a mysterious disease. Little of it is known to mankind, but rumor has it that scientists have named it... "plot."
  • Did Seele know that Adam was replaced with Lilith? If they didn't, Gendo needed to keep up the appearance of defending, while in truth interfering(by, for occasion, driving all his pilots over the edge) with the defense. drifts more into WMG territory
  • An Angel merging with Lilith would've resulted in a 3rd Impact-type scenario aswell (everybody dies). Initiating the Instrumentality (everybody dies but their souls are collected and merged together) is the hard part, which is why SEELE required the Spear and the ritualistic stuff to controll the process.
  • Maybe the Angel wouldn't have merged with Lilith once it realised she wasn't Adam? It might have just turned around and started trashing the rest of NERV HQ looking for the real Adam - which, after a point, was in Gendo's possession right there in the building.
  • Due to analyzing Second Impact and Word of God (check Evageeks.com, it really helps with understanding the series) my conclusions are: Adam+Angel= resurrection of Adam, leading to him creating more Angels which would wipe out mankind; Angel/Adam+Lilith= A being similar to God (First Ancestral Race; Adam has the Body of God in the fruit of life, while Lilith has the Mind of God with the fruit of knowledge) which is forbidden leading to the destruction of all life on Earth to prevent the Godlike beings from florishing. Second Impact was when Adam was infused with human (i.e children of Lilith) DNA, causing the erasure of all life. That is why Antarctia has no life even at the microbiotic level. The only reason it didn't end all life on Earth is because the Lance of Longinus reduced it to an embryo and removed it's soul (the manga implies that this created Kaworu). The point is, that the Angels either go to Tokyo-3 to unite with Adam to create more Angels, unite with Lilith to destroy Lilith based life so that Adam can create more Angels later, or simply wander there (that's what Word of God says anyway). Humans destroy them so that they can use Adam and Lilith to achieve Godhood.
  • What I got from Evageeks was that Angel + Adam body = Adam reforming = Adam's AT field neutralizing ours and destroying all human life if uninterrupted. If I'm right, then they also turn into tang, but this happens by the force of Adam's power. Adam body +Adam soul + Lilith soul = The initiator is in control and becomes/is in control of a godly Adam/Lilith hybrid. This being collects the souls of the Lilin. Lilith was in charge and so she sent out reaper-like Rei beings to collect the souls of the dead. This may be because she did not wish to force her children, the Lilin; if Adam (Gendo) was in control at the time, perhaps things would have turned out like Second Impact. As for any Angel merging with Lilith, it seems that Kaworu would bring the Third Impact that Seele wanted, but I don't know what would happen if Adam's children made contact with Lilith. I like the above Troper's idea that it would result similarly to Adam and Lilith uniting. However, the Angel would be in control. Now here's a question that just came to mind: Could an Eva fuse with Lilith? Didn't they plan to use Unit-01 in case things went wrong and they couldn't use her?
• Why didn't they patent the "move soul into new body" process and market it as a way to get eternal life?
  • Because they probably can't do it to normal souls. Yui's soul wasn't moved into a new body, but rather her soul were absorbed into the Eva. Same with Asuka's mom (although in her case only a part of the soul was absorbed). The only case on moving a soul from a human body to another is Rei, and her soul is not that of a human, so it might not work the same with normal human souls.
• What is the meaning of the train sequences? Actually, to be more specific: Why trains?
  • A comment on the inevitability of fate maybe? To quote Cloud: No one lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train. It can only go where the tracks take it.
• It's stated numerous times that the climate changes brought on by the Second Impact lead to year-round summer weather - I'm blanking on what year this would have started, but it would've been well before the Children were of upper-school age. Why, then, do we see file photos of Shinji and some of his other classmates wearing winter school uniforms?
  • Maybe they made versions of the winter uniforms in summerweight fabrics, to keep the traditional uniforms, or as dress/formal uniforms. (also, the Second Impact happened the year the Children were born, so they probably never knew winter.)
• In episode 22 during Asuka's Mind Rape sequence what's that scary sound after Asuka spots Shinji behind Kaji and says "Why are you there damn you?!/What are you doing there?!" Just wanted to know so I could put it under the Neon Genesis Evangelion entry on the Hell Is That Noise page.
  • That would be the Helltrain.
• Since Kaworu was really an angel, doesn't that mean he's genderless? In that case, Kaworu and Shinji didn't have any Ho Yay after all right?
  • Or if you follow that one epileptic tree about the angels having genders and Adam being female, thus making Kaworu really a girl...
  • Kaworu is as much of a boy as Rei is a girl. Your Millage May Vary.
• In Rebuild of Evangelion... If they had to blow up a portion of the ground to pull Shinji off the battlefield in his first "battle" against Ramiel, why did Ramiel even bother using a drill to get to the Geofront? Shouldn't there still be a gigantic hole in the ground he could go down through?
  • They didn't blow a hole in the Geofront to rescue Shinji. They blew up the support rods so that armor section dropped back into its recess and got Unit 01 out of Ramiel's line of fire. Tokyo-3 is a giant dynamic battleground, they probably removed the Evangelion immediately after and re-set the armor.
  • If we are already talking about Angel battles...
    • Shamshel: if an AT-field can't be peneterated by conventional weapons and only another AT-field can neutralize it, then why the hell do you equip Unit-01 for ranged combat?! No offense Misato, but you're an idiot.
      • AT-fields can be disrupted from range. The spider-angel was machine-gunned to death.
      • And Shinji even lampshaded this to Ritsuko in a fanfic this troper read. Ritsuko was on the verge of crying when she realized he's right. At least someone else noticed too...
    • Ramiel: why did he bother with drilling when he could've just blasted the armor repeatedly until he could squeeze through? He even blasted an entire mountain for God's sake. Zeruel got the right idea and he had a weaker beam (sorta; if Zeruel is a gun, Ramiel is a plasma torch), yet he took out 18 layers in one blast. That's 82% of the Geofront's armor.
      • Why are you assuming the armor can be burnt through so easily? Ramiel's method might have been more efficient than him attempting to burn through with his laser cannon. And Zeruel is more powerful than Ramiel.
        • Also, trying to blast through with its laser would probably render Ramiel more vulnerable to counter-attack by Nerv; Ramiel needs time to recharge between blasts, after all. Even if drilling takes longer, it's a safer strategy since Ramiel can drill while still upholding that AT Field and being able to destroy any threats.
      • Rebuild version: you are about to snipe at a target that was left alone for several hours. Is it really a good idea to suddenly start taking potshots at it using ineffective weapons in the middle of the night? If Ramiel's got some intelligence (and he might have, seeing that Sachiel had enough to realize the Lilim is observing his regeneration and take out the scouts), it surely ticked him off that something's up. Misato... I don't care how pissed you are at the Angels, underestimating them WILL bite you in the ass.
        • We're talking about Ramiel, right? The Angel who worked out that Unit-01 was ascending before it actually arrived and blasted it just as it popped out of Tokyo-3? They don't know what kind of senses the thing has. If it can work out Unit-01 arrival-via-elevator, it's going to notice the bunch of dudes setting up a cannon nearby. The other guns are distractions from the positron rifle, they aren't supposed to be effective by themselves.
    • And it did. She certainly didn't expect Zeruel to eat Unit-00 and get it's clearance codes for Central Dogma. Must I say she got what she deserved?
    • Gaghiel: it looks like the Angels knew very well that Adam was located on land. Then why did he assume a fish form?
      • ...you mean when he attacked Adam which was on the water at the time?
    • Sahaquiel: the MAGI said that the Evas had next to no chance of catching him. Did it ever occur to Misato that maybe they could've equipped Unit-01 with G-Type equipment and blew it out of the sky with the positron cannon? In case it wouldn't work, the others could still stand below and hold it off until Unit-01 discards the cannon and comes running. Plus even if he misses the core, he still would've blown off enough mass to make it somewhat lighter. Or an extension to the above: Asuka and Rei catch it while Shinji fires at a now-stationary target.
      • It took ages to get a targeting solution on a stationary target with the positron cannon, and you think that it can snipe a target descending from orbit. Not to mention they ruled out sniping because the Angel's AT field was distorting their observation equipment and they couldn't get a clear shot. And they needed all three Evas to catch it because they didn't know where it was going to land.
      • What happened to all of Sahaquiel's kinetic energy? This thing was supposed to make a crater 420 kilometers across, which would take a release of energy on the order of hundreds of megatons, close to a thousand. Even if their damage estimate was off by a factor of ten and a full 90 percent of the energy release would have come from the angel exploding, that's still several megatons, all of which must be transferred from the angel into the AT Field and then into the ground, while the angel is moving at meteoric impact velocities (not less than 11 km/s). In this scenario, even if they slowed it down for an entire minute before it reached the ground, that would still mean the ground absorbing 1-10 Hiroshima bombs per second, and they are not shown to slow it down for anywhere close to a minute.
    • Bardiel: this troper simply can't believe that Shinji would let himself be killed rather than lift a finger to help Toji/Asuka. Instead of simply refusing to fight, he could've attempted to pin down Unit-03 and cut out the damn entry plug! Also, he could've actively attacked the command center instead of thrashing the pyramid's tip. THAT would've given his words enough weight to scare Gendo, even for a little bit.
      • The kid panicked, give him a break.
      • The Angel himself was stupid too. He had to rely completely on intercepting Unit-03's transport. And if he misses it?^[1]
        • What? Are you assuming that was its only method of infection? How do you know how mobile it was?
    • Arael: if the target is out of range of your weapons, what makes you think YOU are out of HIS range as well? That mistake cost them a pilot.
      • So... you'd prefer to not deploy the Evangelions?
      • Plus, that was much more Asuka's fault than Nerv's; she was playing Leeroy Jenkins all through that battle.
• Regarding Asuka's remark to Shinji in episode 14, while he's in Eva-00:

"How do you like Mommy's breasts? Or is it her womb?"

• • ...What is it supposed to mean?! Seriously, is it a lampshade on the Freudian imagery in the series?^[2] Or was something lost in translation?
• One thing that genuinely bugs me. Kyoku Soryu, Asuka's mother. The series has been going and branching off into countless games and mangas and movies, and we still haven't seen what she was actually like. Her personality (before the Incident), her relationship with Asuka, how she talked, what she even looked like. I'm not talking the silhouette of her in the hospital bed, or that grainy gray-and-white image Asuka saw in EoE; I'm talking about her face, her non-insane voice, what she was like before the incident. We've seen Yui Ikari's face and heard her voice. We've seen insight to her personality, her relationship with Shinji, her view of humanity and the world. We know virtually nothing about Asuka's mother; the type of person she was, her appearance, anything. What Just Bugs Me? That just bugs me.
  • Asuka was still very young before the contact experiment. The moments of Kyoko, broken, deranged and negligent, are the only memories she has of her mother.
• Why is the mother of all humanity named Lilith and not Eva anyway? This troper read the kabbalahs and the Jewish references to Lilith: She was a human, just like Adam, but fled away from the presence of God because she believed in equality and refused to be a sex toy to Adam. In her exile she created the Lilin, which are seductive, lustful daemons, and because of Adam's loneliness God sent angels to kill Lilith's children and persuade her to come back. Lilith refused, but was angered on the death of her children, and after God made Eva as the new submissive servant of Adam, Lilith then took the form of the Serpent (references say the serpent of the Tree of Knowledge is Lilith, and referencing to the Serpent as Satan is Misaimed Fandom) and seduced Eva to eat the Tree of Knowledge and force God to banish both of them. Oh, I know, Humans Are Bastards who are extremely intelligent and lustful (that explains the Freudian psychosexual imagery) to the point where they rebelled against God and Angels, even taking Eva away from God and force-feeding her with human souls and brains. Also, in EOE where Shinji is protrayed as Adam, Rei as Lilith and Asuka as Eva, it seems to me that it's all wrong: Lilith is a defiant prodigy, therefore Asuka, a Jerkass feminist who graduated from a University, should be Lilith, while Rei, who is the submissive clone-servant of the Ikari family, should be Eva.
  • ... evangelion? Anyway, it's just a sci-fi story which uses Christian themes as dressing. The themes aren't supposed to override the characters and setting.
  • In legend, Adam and Lilith were equal human beings who were born and created at the same time. Eve (Eva) was created from Adam. In EVA, Adam and Lilith are similar beings born from another race and the Eva series were made (cloned) from Adam (except for Sho, of course). It's simple when you look at it that way, really. It's more of a matter of "who was born from who" and "who's the same as who" rather than "who's has the same behavior as who".
  • A good question here is why the names of Adam and Lilith are not switched. First Angel being the creator of the Angels, while the Second Angel created humans (like the progenitor of mankind) and has the Fruit of Knowledge. I suppose the answer would be that the First Angel was the first living thing on Earth, so therefore it is Adam. There's also the matter that the Evangelion are made from the First Angel.
• Why is the Lance of Longinus called "Lance of Longinus" when we already have a real life Lance of Longinus here, which can control destiny (too bad it was once possessed by the likes of Hitler)?
  • Maybe the Lance of Longinus used for Instrumentality was actually a casing built by Nerv, hence the seemingly mechanical properties of the Lance, with the actual Lance of Longinus inside.
  • Because no-one has ever decided to call an experimental weapon system Excalibur or Gungnir or Mjolnir, etc. It's a code-name, and not a particularly odd one considering it's physical shape and SEELE's obsession with judeo-christian mythology.
    • It's not the actual Lance of Longinus. It's an ancient weapon left behind by a Precursor race. NERV and SEELE just like to use judeo-christian terminology for some reason.

• What ARE the N-2 mines actually? It stands for Non Nuclear but wouldn't it make more sense to name them after what they are rather than what they aren't?
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo. Or a parody of it.
  • Eh, they're probably named that for publicity purposes. "So, we used a nuke, which totally wasn't a nuke.

• For a show that prides itself on being realistic, this show had some pretty big gaps in logic: 1. SQUARE. CUBE. LAW. 2. So the Big Bad council wants everyone turned into tang, and the only way they can do that is by getting an angel to fuse with Lilith, but the aliens really want Adam. Why not make an Adam clone with Lilith's soul and then tie it to a skyscraper like a scarecrow? 3. AT field. Really. A field that holds human beings together is called an "absolute terror field". Why not "Organic Cohesion Field"? Oh, does that not sound pretentious enough? And if human beings need this to hold them together, what the hell holds inanimate objects together? Anno, you fail Physics, Biology, and Logic forever!
  • Wow, way to point out the break of realism in a Humongous Mecha show with supernatural elements.
  • "Prides itself on being realistic?" Flat What.
  • On the Absolute Terror Field as the Organic Cohesion Field of Humanity, it was probably just a reference to the Hedgehog's Dilemma, aka, Hell Is Other People. By naming the field that holds humanity together as the Absolute Terror Field, Anno pointed out that Other People are Absolute Terror, aka, Hell. What the Hell holds inorganic objects together, then? The answer is still the AT Field if one would go by the philosophy of Solipsism (aka, you are the creator and the only soul in the entire cosmos).
  • Also the first name we get for the AT Field is Absolute Territory Field.
  • As Kaworu says, it seems most people aren't aware that everyone has an Absolute Terror Field, so those in the know probably called it by another name to keep lower members of NERV in the dark. It's actually a pretty cool concept; taking the metaphorical separation of minds/beings and making it into a physical force that actually keeps oneself intact and prevents others from penetrating you.
    • Penetrating... But no such concepts exists in physics. I went overboard, for sure, but they said they made the evas out of flesh and blood because it's better than avtualy robots which are slow and bulky. Bull and Shit. The Square-cube law is more forgiving of giant robots because they have a higher strength-to-weight ratio than what are essentially giant humans. Muscle and bone are weaker than hydraulics and steel. Jet Alone is surperior to the EVAs when it comes down to it, but Anno doesn't seem to have any regard for physics...
      • While we know the Evangelion's are biological, we don't know what their body structure is like. It's possible that their flesh and bone is structured in a way that makes them far more stable then that of a human's, or that their flesh and bone are made out of different materials entirely. So for all we know, the Evangelion's muscle and bone might actually be stronger than hydraulics and steel.
    • One ironic part that bugs me a bit is that when they sent an Eva to stop Jet Alone, it completely ignored the physics. The Eva was dropped by a moving carrier, but when it landed, it was moving the opposite direction. And not only a little. Those that have a decent knowledge in physics know that a moving object will continue to move in the same direction unless some force butts in. The gravity would pull it down to earth and the resistance in the air would slow it down, not push it in the opposite direction.
      • I think the plane started going faster immediately after it dropped the Eva, which is why it looks like it is going backwards (with respect to the plane, it is).
  • Calm down there Troper. You know why Eva prides itself on being realistic? Because it's a DE-fucking-CONSTRUCTION. Deconstructions play tropes realistically to show them how flawed it is to defictionalise a plot, and the physics is pretty much unnecessary. As for the big gaps in logic:
    • 1) The Square Cube Law can be explained by the Evas' existence themselves; THEY. ARE. ELDRITCH. ABOMINATIONS. They evolved to the point where they do not follow our own method of biology. Sure their structure is similar to that of a human's but we don't know what they are made up of, and surely they are not carbon-based, thus we should just consider them as being made up of matter in the most basic sense.
    • 2) Actually, what the Big Bad council wants is to destroy humanity and usher a new stage of evolution. Of course, the only way to do that is using Lilith, and the only way to create God is to use an S2 Engine on her, but if she fell to an Angel, the Instrumentality will be fucked up because Lilith could be presumably destroyed in the process. They want complete and total control of the Instrumentality.
    • 3) We all know the AT Field does not exist in physics (but probably the closest thing we can get to a Real Life AT Field is the Electromagnetic Force, aka the Force that powers our brains aka souls, and can manipulate technology, and can create a Hive Mind) but why did Anno name an Electromagnetic Force-esque energy field as an Absolute Terror Field? Remember that Eva is a psychological anime that represents the mind of Hideaki Anno, not some physics tract. Anno wanted to prioritize the "Hell Is Other People" theme that bugged him so much before the physics. Remember, Evangelion is a Romanticist work about the human condition, not Enlightened sci-fi that can be easily defictionalised by our tech.
  • The short answer is that no, Anno really does have no regard for physics. I suppose next you'll want to know the how many pounds per inch an AT field can withstand before collapsing? And would you like a Do-It-Yourself kit for transferring souls from dead bodies with that?
  • Or, Gainax has no regard for physics. Gurren Lagann was so powerful it caused a reaction rippling through time so that Gainax did the impossible and kicked reason to the curb.

• Okay, so the angels are all trying to bust through the geofront and make contact with Lillith, right? And if they do, then third impact is started. Then why the hell don't they just launch Lilith into space and be done with it? Did no one high up in the chain of command ever suggest that? Hell, get Rei to throw Lilith up there.
  • At least two of the angels, Sahaquiel and Areal, actually manifested in low orbit: launching her or Adam (which is what the angels were really after) into space might have just delivered them right into their hands. Also, Gendo/SEELE need Lilith and Adam for their own Instrumentality plans (and in the meantime, they still need Lilith as an LCL source), and launching either one of them into space would've ruined things.
  • They can't launch things into space willy-nilly. They couldn't even recover the Lance from the moon after it got stuck there. The Lance is self-propelling, Rei didn't throw it into space, it flew into space. They don't have the capacity to launch a Lilith-sized object into any place beyond orbit.

• I find it odd that so much fuss is made of the Evas uncontrollability, when you could easily disable an Eva permanently by just removing the entry plug which serves as its spine.
  • Entry plugs are placed into the Eva's spines to control them. They aren't necessary components. Eva can move even without entry plugs serving as spine relays, see EVA-01 struggling as it rejects the dummy plug or EVA-00 remaining in a berserk state after its entry plug was ejected.
  • Original troper here, my bad I mistook the fact that Evas body is moved in a certain way when the plug is inserted with the idea that it did not have a complete spine, as the way it is positioned gives it such a look. My bad feel free to delete this and thanks for clearing it up.
• What does >100% synchronization even mean? Are the eva and the pilot lined up so perfectly that they are more alike than each other?? What???
  • My guess is that they normalized it such that 100% synchronization meant the pilot was as perfectly synchronized with the Eva as possible while still retaining their physical identity, and was thus the most useful reading for combat. Anything over 100% means that the pilot is so lined up with Eva that they get absorbed, which is a pain in the ass for NERV to deal with and therefore not desirable.
    • I think it means that they have quick reaction time, more control than they have over their own bodies, etc., with the unpleasant side-effect of feeling more pain than they would have if the injuries happened to them.
  • Well, the sync rate seems to be exactly that; how closely the nervous system of the pilot and the Eva are to each other. So maybe at 50%, response time is twice as long, and physical sensation is reduced by half, as compared to just living in your own body.

• I know this sounds like a petty question compared to all the others, but what's up with the Evas' guns? The sheer size and quantity of metal must make each one monstrously expensive, tnheir ammunition even more so, and overall they accomplish.... nothing. These guns are specifically built for Evas, but they're useless due to the AT fields that ALL THE EVAS' FOES HAVE. The conventional guns do something a grand total of once.
  • Actually, those guns could completely negate the need for the EVA units at all if they would take one of those guns, develop AT-piercing bullets via the dummy plug system or something, put tank treads on it, and call it a day.
    • Which is why giant robots are not realistic.
  • The guns, like the Evas, were made BEFORE the angels showed up. It was bad luck that they weren't powerful enough to do the job in all but 1 of the cases. Still, it was worth a shot trying them on each new angel to see if they would work like they did for the spider one.

• I was wondering about the situation with Ritsuko. After she destroyed the clones, did her friendship with Misato dissolve? Also, why did Gendou shoot her? I thought he had asked her to do some computer things for him. Was she perhaps on a suicide mission, as she says "A loving mother's final request"? Would Ritsuko be one of the ones who could return to life? She did get shot, but does that mean that regardless she can come back? One last small detail, did she die instantly? Or did she bleed to death in the water? Or did she die as soon as she hit the water?
  • Dunno about the later questions, but for the first, I am pretty sure her friendship with Misato was a lost cause by that point. If I recall correctly, she then gets imprisoned until EOE so they don't have any time for chit-chat, anyways. As for why Gendo killed her, she did something to the MAGI while she had access to it (I can't remember what; self-destruct, maybe?) and tried to implement it during her showdown but it didn't work. Gendo decided he couldn't take the risk of her interfering anymore and pulled the trigger.
    • Self destruct, yes. The thing about the mother is because the main computers had her mother's personality, she was asking them to die with her.
• So, Ritsuko has destroyed not only Rei's dummy plug, but the entire aquarium containing her clones. Murderer! Rei is dead, and Ritsuko killed her! Right?
  • Ritsuko destroyed what were effectively spare parts. There is only one soul, and therefore, only one Rei.
    • I think destroying spare bodies counts as a form of killing.
    • It might also be worth considering that it's pretty strongly indicated that Rei was not that upset about having the Reiquarium destroyed; she hated being an Expendable Clone after all.

• Am I the only one who thinks the series works just as well if most characters are gender flipped? Oh, and what's with all the Rei expies in recent years?
  • The gender-flip is actually a pretty popular idea. ^{[dead link]} As for the Rei expies...euh. Blame the weirdness that is moe. >_>; I don't get it either.
    • Don't forget the copypasta.
• Is there a single instance where the emergency shut down for the Evangelions does work? "It isn't accepting the signal!" seems to be one of the most common exclamations in the series. They should try to build a kill-switch that isn't apparently controlled by the very thing it's supposed to shut down.
  • They do manage to stop Shinji's rampage after the fight with Bardiel/Unit 03.
  • How often does the Enterprise successfully eject its warp core? In other words, a system's foolproof-ness is inversely proportional to its success rate. Surely there's a trope for that?
• Does the science of Psychology even exist in NGE apart from random quasi-symbolic phrases? Nobody seems to even remotely think that the main characters have serious problems and the concept of psychological trauma appears to be completely unknown.
  • The people responsible for the pilots have equal issues themselves. The people responsible for them want the pilots to go insane.
  • Perhaps the application of psychological knowledge to emotional therapy techniques went out of style with the second impact.
    • This. Going to the shrink is very unpopular in Japan today, lack of mental health care is hardly unheard of in modern militaries and, considering that it's fifteen years after SI, it's amazing they have the facilities that they do. Also, I'm not sure why you say "nobody thinks" the kids have problems; any time something bad goes down, the adults (Misato particularly, since it's her job) show concern that the kids might not be able to cope with it this time, and are unsurprised by breakdowns etc. They're putting the kids through all this with full knowledge of how mentally devastating it is because (they think) it's what has to be done.
  • Alternatively, it's possible that the kids are in fact getting the best therapy available and that, in the future, this looks nothing like sitting in a room and talking about your mom.
• In EOE, why does Aoba say that Maya went through basic training? She's a lieutenant. Isn't basic training for enlisted personnel?
  • I think the training regimen might be different fifteen years after an extinction event.
  • Going by traditional army rankings it's cadets (where basic training would occur), private, corporal, sergeant ranks, lieutenant ranks. The real question is how a pacifist reached lieutenant rank at 24.
  • Maya is rear-area tech specialist, so under any normal circumstances her pacifism would have no effect on her ability to fulfill her duties. Nerv hired her to run computers, not to shoot things.
  • NERV isn't any sort of real military. They're only trained to fight Angels for one thing, so it doesn't matter if Maya is a pacifist to people.
    • Also, it's hardly unprecedented for real militaries to take pacifists; plenty of conscientious objectors have still served in the military in non-combat roles, and back when everyone followed the Geneva Convention medics had to be pacifists.
• Why is no-one on Earth suspicious of the fact that every Angel makes their way straight for Nerv Headquarters after emerging? I would have thought the public would have questions about that.
  • All the political stuff happens off-screen. We don't know what the official cover story is for the Angel attacks, but it's pretty obvious that the political higher ups have a pretty good idea about what Third Impact involves.
• I'm not sure I get the Magnificent Bastard status Gendo has in the fandom. From what I can tell, his plans are fairly straightforward and even then they only work half the time. He spends most of the time sitting around steepling. I get the feeling he somehow gets credit for the fact that a lot of coincidences worked out in his favor.
  • He has a cool coat, cool glasses, and cool facial hair. Considering what Shinji's like, the fandom needs someone to call awesome. It's just your standard memetic hyperbole.
• I rather think of him as a more brilliant opportunist (like for example, how he used Asuka's Mind Rape as an excuse to throw the Lance of Longinus away) than a tactics enthusiast.
  • Also, his voice in the Japanese version. I spent the whole series certain that there would be a plot twist and he would be a good guy, just because his voice sounds like that's going to happen. Am I the only person who thinks that way?
  • Not to mention that he spends 99% of his time sitting around acting like a Magnificent Bastard. Just about every episode, the everything is either exploding or not responding, and he's just sitting there, hands folded in front of his face. You know he has a backup plan for coming up with a backup plan when his backup backup plan for the backup plan of the backup plan fails. Well, he actually doesn't, but it looks like he does.
• We know that Yui, Shinji's mom, is inside Unit-01, and she takes over when Shinji fails. And then, if we stop to think, we realize that whenever Unit-01 ripped off the enemies' limbs, almost killed Toji, a friend of Shinji, in last analysis, it was Yui all the time. So, what happened to her? Her isolation introduce her into a feral state?
  • What happened was the Dummy System took over. In this case it was based on Rei fighting for her life, so the artificial simulation of how Rei would fight is shown. Same goes for the MP Evas at the end, they are based on Kaworu. Why we never see Rei like this, not ever? I think we can chalk that up to her not being proficient enough or maybe cold blooded enough to make her Eva tear an enemy apart with it's bare hands.
    • Like the above troper said, the Toji incident was the Dummy Plug's work, not Yui's. Every other time Eva 1 goes nuts, though, yeah, it's all her. Say, speaking of Kaworu's dummy plugs used in the mass production Evas... does anybody know why they were such crappy fighters? They seem pretty slow and awkward, at least before the infamous scene of much gore and horror. Compare to the insane badassery of the Rei Dummy Plug. Is Kaworu just that much gentler than Rei or something?
      • One theory put forth by the fanfic The Second Try, was that they were just toying with her. Also, since a Dummy Plug-controlled Eva is sometimes described as being animalistic, one could argue they were playing with their food.
    • If you like you can read into this as being a man vs machine deal. Rei hesitated, knowing Touji was in the Eva. A computer copy of Rei on the other hand wouldn't. As for the contention the MP Evas were initially poor fighters? Asuka and her mommy had just gone through a Heroic RROD, like Shinji before the result is a Curb Stomp Battle. We get an idea of what this is like with Rei (the Dummy System and arguably charging an Angel with a can of sealed sunlight, sniping then spearing a foe and her Heroic Sacrifice) and Shinji when he flipped out. Now it was Asuka's turn.
  • The Dummy Plug going berserk on Touji was Gendo's work, remember? Gendo and the staff were in control the whole time. Which adds more Bastard points for Gendo.
  • Also, assuming it wasn't all the Dummy Plug, it's quite possible that a Mama Bear like Yui/Unit-01 would rather kill Toji than let Shinji be hurt.
• Why was there an eye in Giant Naked Rei's forehead vagina? Most of the things in Eo E seem to make sense in either a symbolic way (ie the forehead vagina is where Shinji 'enters' GNR), or clearly add the disturbing/mind screw nature of the film (ie Shinji returning to Earth by ripping open one of GNR's real eyes). But the eye doesn't seem to have either of these: I can't see any symbolic reasoning behind it, and compared to everything else it's not particularly disturbing. So, why is it there?
  • Lampshade Hanging? Anno saying the film's a total Mind Screw? Seriously I have no idea of the real reason but the thought just popped into my mind.
  • Third eye of wisdom? Some religions believe the third eye in the centre of one's forehead to be a symbol of higher spirituality or enlightenment. GNR was on her/its way to something of that nature. According to a quick Google (this troper cannot claim to be enlightened himself), the Hindu faithful believe that the opening of Shiva's third eye heralds the destruction of the physical universe. Also - the Sanskrit word for this third eye is also the Vedic Sanskrit word for "three mothers" (Yui, Rei and Asuka or Misato? Yikes!). I'm not even sure if Anno took anything much from Hindu and Buddhist beliefs but it's kind of creepy how it plays out anyway.
  • I always thought that it was reminiscent of a clit, based on placement and size and such. Despite showing fapping, cum, tits, nipples, asses, forehead vaginas and all the mindfucking gorn you could take in one movie, they decided that showing a clit went a bit too far.
• Why is Rei not considered an Angel? She's basically the same as Kaworu.
  • For the same reason the Evas aren't considered Angels. No attempting to cause human extinction. Well, until 2.0 anyway.
  • Rei might be more human than Kaworu because some of Yui's DNA was used to make her.
    • Wasn`t Kaworu also a human with an angels soul?

• Something that bugs me about Asuka's battle with the Mass Production Evangelions: Why does she not hit them in the core, or even try to, until she falcon punches the last two? She apparently knows that they have them, and that the core was pretty much the sure fire kill-spot for Angels, which the MP Evas basically are, so what gives?
  • She was running on a very tight schedule and decided to disable them in whichever way seemed most convenient rather than try to specifically target their one weak spot.
• Okay, so when the umbilical cord was first unplugged, and the back up power was put into effect, it was explained that the Evas could only run for 5 minutes and could only go "full power" for 1 minute. Problem is, this "1 minute limit" was never addressed again; every other time the plug was pulled, the Evas worked just the same for all 5 minutes. Why?
  • Not always... when Asuka and Shinji did their incredibly aerobic synchronized dance, they only had 1 minute of power. I guess that the "full power" mode is only required for ridiculously extreme movements.

• Should this Just Bugs Me page be divided into folders or sections? Because it's getting cramped over here, while the questions are getting harder and harder to find.......
• Kaworu Nagisa. Just. Kaworu Nagisa. Where do I start?
  • A bishie comes out of nowhere and dies all in one episode and we're supposed to care for him just because he's told the main character he loves him and is actually a decent guy to him? (I know he was introduced earlier in the manga and Rebuild, but this is about the TV series. I'm glad he at least got some acknowledgement in Eo E, though.)
    • I don't think we are supposed to care about him so much as we are supposed to care about the effect he has on Shinji.
  • Wouldn't some kind of detection system been ALL OVER HIS PATTERN BLUE SHIT? You'd think he'd be setting off alarms left and right inside the Angel-killing capital of the world.
    • Not necessarily. Half the Angels weren't detected until they appeared directly over the city.
• How does the blade of one MP-Eva, when thrown at Asuka, suddenly shapeshift into a copy of the Lance of Longinus? Is there a way that Asuka could have been at a deadly disadvantage without Diabolus Ex Machina? It's shown many-a-time that the Eva series can go berserk when the power runs dry, so the juice running out admittedly would not be an option, but why go with something so inexplicable?
  • It's not any more inexplicable than the Eva units are. Lances are lifeforms that can change their shape.
  • I didn't think it too bad. Just took it that NERV/SEELE had managed to reverse engineer the spear and improved its shape shifting capabilities to make it into a more flexible weapon (it already could change form some degree, as seen when Rei wields it against the orbital angel; it changes from a bident to a javelin in preparation for throwing and then into a self-propelling lance thingy when it needs to get past the angel's field).
• Is there any reason for the Angels be so powerful compared to humans? I mean, one of them can wipe out every Lilith-based form, so is there any specific reason for this (how they were created, or other thing), besides to have a plot and, considering it's Anno we're talking about, and to show how much humanity is weak?
  • Neither is technically better than the other. Angels can kill Lilim. Lilim can kill Angels. Whomever made both forms of life just made it that way. One type was weak and multiple, the other was powerful and singular.
    • Lilim can barely kill Angels, using advanced technology that not only runs the risk of wiping them out because it went berserk, but also is created using parts of an Angel. That's hardly what I'd call equal.
      • I'm sure if we managed to have about a billion people get right on top of one of the weaker angels (lets say Sachiel) without getting energy beamed (see: Vimy Ridge) we could take it down- a million people each take a bite out of his ankles and he falls over, a million more climb on him to hold him down, then we just have people claw at his core or smash at it with their fists/forehead until it shatters and he dies. The Lilim lose a fraction of their collective form (about as much as an Angel losing an arm) but there's only one Sachiel.

• I've got one that bugs everyone: What exactly was it that Gendo said to Ritsuko before he shot her? He says, "Ritsuko Akagi...the truth is..." we then see him mouth something. Ritsuko faintly smiles and says "Huh. Liar!" before Gendo shoots her and she falls into the Lake of LCL (notably, she sees Rei standing over her body). So what was it he said? Did he explain Unit 00's soul? Was it something to do with Casper rejecting her plan to self-destruct the MAGI computer? What was it that Gendo said?
  • He told her that he was thinking of doing up his jacket.
  • Actually, there are versions where instead of Gendo saying something incomprehensible and silent, he says "I've always loved you!" If he did say that, then no wonder she called him a liar.

• In episode 5, when Unit 00's reactivation test is finished, bubbles escape Rei's mouth. Makes sense, seeing as she is in a liquid, and considering how her last test went, it would be understandable for her to be nervous, and hold her breath. But... she hasn't been holding her breath. She's spoken a few times since the plug was filled with LCL, and there were no bubbles then.
• How come the Eva umbilical chords are so inconvenient? They have limitations (the wire) and that same wire could presumably be pulled by an angel or even tripped over, among other things. How come they didn't make batteries or something. It's not like the whole "remote plug pulling to save the pilot or stop a rampage" ever worked at all in the series.
  • They did make batteries; the problem was, those batteries only last five minutes. The next effort at fixing the problem was the S2 Organ, and ... well we all saw the problems that had.
• In EOE, when Misato says that humanity is the eighteenth Angel, she also says that Adam is a child of Lilith. Was this a mess-up in the dub or did I miss something in one of the TV episodes?
• What happened to Lilith's soul (aka Rei Ayanami) after Shinji rejects Instrumentality? In the final scene, everyone but Shinji and Asuka has transformed into LCL, but Lilith's head is still intact. So, did Rei Ayanami transform into LCL as well, or did she just "fade away" or something along with her soul?
  • I think that Rei either stayed in LCL or came Back From the Dead somewhere we don't see in End of Evangelion, just like everyone else. As Lilith was dying, Rei was seen staring at Unit 01, just as Yui was seen sinking into LCL in the final scene when she was actually launching into the space as a testimony to the humanity's existence. Same applies to Kaworu, I suppose.
• How are the dead bodies of Angels dealt with? I mean, you can't just leave a gigantic corpse decaying in the middle of the street. Also, after the Third Impact, what happened to their souls?
  • I don't recall if it's explained in the anime, but in the manga, they dissolve into goop that's somewhere between ectoplasm and Grey Goo. After one of the first fights that take place in the center of Tokyo 3 without the buildings being retracted, some members of NERV are seen complaining to each other about having to shovel up the goo to make that area of the city livable again.
• Just how does the money financing the entire NERV and Seele apparatus come from? Just maintaining such power-consuming, immense mechas would take astronomical amount of money and resources...
  • Japan Takes Over the World. It's a government project, led by a single country that's politically and possibly economically larger than the sometimes-so-called American Empire currently is. Japan isn't the only superpower, but NERV seems to be what they pay for instead of having some more military and much more consumerism.
• Something has been bothering me recently, looking back on EOE. When Asuka's Eva ran out of power, why didn't they eject her plug?
  • Maybe the Eva did not have enough power to eject her plug.
• Kinda similar, why wasn't Asuka just aiming for completely demolishing the cores of MP Evas?
• When the Third Impact occurred, what has happened to the souls of the people who died before the Third Impact?
• Is there any particular reason everyone has normal hair/eye colours except Rei, Kaworu and…Misato?
  • Dark purple is (generally) animation code for 'Jet Black'. It's a style thing.
• What's up with the live-action bits in End of Evangelion?
• Is there any particular reason why Shinji rarely leaves a shadow on other surfaces? In most of the scenes, Shinji seems to be missing the the purpose of dropping shadows. Most notable is the scene in episode 2 or 3 where Shinji takes out the trash, and doesn't throw a shadow on the ground. Is there some hidden meaning to this, or is it just the animators being lazy (though everyone else leaves shadows).
• Alright, so the Lances of Longinus are supposed to be failsafes for Adam and Lilith to kill their offspring with if they get out of control. And it's Lilith's lance that was on the moon. So, if I'm remembering right, in the episode that Asuka is Mind Raped, why does it react to her Eva, which is a clone of Adam?
• So Tokyo-3 is a city situated over a cavern called Geo Front, which is terraformed to resemble the surface world. Got that. NERV's HQ is at the bottom of the Geo Front, next to a pit that goes down to where Lilith is. Got that. Question 1: How do the Eva units get to the surface if the elevators to the Eva hanger only go from the hanger to Geo Front, or are there some elevators that only go up to the Geo Front and others that go all the way up?
  • The elevator system is an entire vertical network that threads through the Geo Front and up into Tokyo-3. They never show the path from Geo Front to Tokyo-3 though, probably because they realized it would look stupid. (There's at least a kilometer of air between the Geo Front and the fortress-city.
• Question 2: How did Shinji get from the surface after Eva-01 shredded Eva 03 to stomping NERV HQ without blasting his way through Tokyo-3, 'cause I'm sure they wouldn't have let him use any elevators.
  • Well, in the original show he didn't flip out until they got back to the cages, and in Rebuild you can see the remnants of the rail system/transport they brought him to the Geo Front in, so presumably he waited till he was back in HQ.
• Question 3: Zeruel and the other angels attacking from the surface were shown blasting holes through Tokyo-3 to get at NERV HQ, but how did the MP Evas get into Geo Front to kill Asuka?
  • Through the big hole left behind by the N2 mine they dropped on Tokyo-3 ten minutes earlier.
• Why is it that Gaghiel is the only one who didn't fall for the Lilith-as-a-decoy-Adam ploy? If he figured it out, shouldn't the ones before and/or after him have done so as well?
  • Adam was presumably being stored somewhere where his field/scent/attractiveness was jammed, so it only became a big deal when he was in transit. Afterwards, he was still in the general area, enough to confuse Lilith for him again.
• In the end of evangelion movie during the first time Asuka and Shinji argue in the kitchen how come we see a shot of Shinji (or Asuka) licking their lips?
  • The way I see it, the scene is a commentary on her Tsundere nature. She is throwing a tantrum at Shinji for whatever reason, but deep inside her feelings are different (probably exemplified by the scenes showing parts of her body, and the lips thing), which is what prompts Shinji to ask just that, why is she so confusing? Why does she behaves like that? Why are her real feelings so uninteligible?

1. ↑ Humorously lampshaded in a fanfic where he became a "very sad cloud" due to Unit-03 being ferried via ship. It also effectively defeated him since he couldn't do shit without a host.
2. ↑ Yes