[EVA] Concurrency tangent (WAS: Alternate Rei on DVD cover)

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Peter Svensson <sun1jack at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Kaji is an issue for the acceptance ending, not the rejection. Why is
>> Kaji there? He's dead. He died long before anything started. All
>> that's left of Kaji is memories. If the sky scene is part of the
>> complete Instrumentality entity, how can he be there?
>
> How do we know that being dead prevents you from participating in Instrumentality?

Why don't we see Kaji in the case of Misato? Why don't we see all the
Angels with Shinji? Naoko would have been relevant to Gendo's little
laying down session in EoE. They all had things to say, I suspect. In
both endings, we only see people who were alive very close to
Instrumentality: Ritsuko, Misato, Shinji, etc. or who plausibly
survived to then in some form - like Kaworu or Rei I&II (Adam & Lilith
resp.).

Since there are no immortal souls in NGE, where are the dead people coming from?

>> Fuyutsuki:      And the things recorded in your memory will be your truth.

Out of context, I think.

Asuka:          One sees things with the truth, given by others.
Misato:         Happy on a sunny day.
Rei:            Gloomy on a rainy day.
Asuka:          If you're taught that, you always think so.
Ritsuko:        But, you can enjoy rainy days.
Fuyutsuki:      Through different ways of conceiving, the truth
                will change into very different things; it's a weak thing.

> As long as he is remembered by others, he exists. The Kaji that exists in Kaji's mind is the same as the Kaji that exists in the minds of others. Being dead is irrelevant to Instrumentality.

Well, then we get into time-traveling Reis or Lilith's projection -
plausibly everyone gets absorbed just before dying.

>> How exactly would they have to congratulate Shinji before you would think that
>> it's evidence against your interpretation?
>
> Differently. Look, when I see that scene it is so obviously a case for being inducted into a cult that I find your attempts to go "But they're all individuals! Look at their different phrasing and posture!" hard to swallow.
>
> Let's just pass on this one, since you can't help but see the individuality in that scene, and I can't help but see the conformity.
>
>> I suspect this is simply an example of someone not thinking things
>> through.
>
> Agreed. The Instrumentality of Bacteria while possibly amusing, leads to some really horrific possibilities.

The Rei monologue about all the Reis would actually work very well for
bacteria...

>> That's the point.
>
> Instrumentality Shinji can have PenPen congratulate him if he wants since reality is malleable and based on personal desire.

But Instrumentality Shinji has no particular like for PenPen or
personal desire! All of humanity doesn't want to be congratulated by a
penguin. If you admit that Shinji still retains individuality and
self-control and persona (dis)likes even at this point, then the
'Complemented smile' quote no longer helps your case: an individual
Shinji is still an individual Shinji  regardless of whether he has
decided to accept or reject.

>> And as I've said before, Shinji has chosen to return but hasn't yet.
>
> See, while I can understand that as an interpretation, would you honestly be able to come to that conclusion after only seeing the TV ending? Especially when they make a big deal about the limbo theatre shattering? It's a dramatic moment, and had the intent been to put Shinji back in reality, they had the transition necessary to make it happen. The limbo shattered. That to me doesn't feel appropriate for a "he's slowly drifting back to the real world" scenario.
>
> The limbo shatters, and Shinji is adrift in a magical void where people who are dead and people who are not are. I can't really see that as Gainax trying to suggest that Shinji has chosen to live in the real world given how unreal the imagery is. When they could just have easily set that final scene on say, the grassy hill overlooking Tokyo-3, just as easily and established that he's back in the physical world.

A grassy hill that might well contradict the nascent EoE ending. Any
real ending in reality proper would be even more confusing and
distracting than EoE's beach. What is going on in reality is not
important: we get static scenes of Misato & Ritsuko's deaths and
nothing about Asuka! (With all the time spent on the cases of Misato &
Asuka, they could spare a minute or two for their deaths, or at least
summarize them - if they cared more about showing the real world than
about what's going on in peoples' heads.)

Also, lack of time yadda yadda.

> I'm adamant that the TV ending has to stand on its own, and I can't see that anyone watching it without having seen the films would be able to make the assumption that Shinji ends it in a transitionary state and will eventually return to the physical world. Not when a simpler answer, that he's off in la-la land forever, exists.

Even the first time watching it, ignorant of all the ancillary
material, there was one thing very obvious to me about episode 26:
Shinji goes in one direction for a while, but then suddenly does an
about-face and is congratulated.

The only questions are, what are the 2 directions/choices, and which
is first (and rejected)?

Instrumentality and not-Instrumentality are the obvious 2 choices.
Instrumentality, even if we ignore the specifics and just go with
buzzwords, is about 'running away' and dissolving oneself and avoiding
pain.

This seems to be the first direction, alright. Shinji dissolves all
boundaries (the whole experimental art segment with Gendou bestowing
lines etc.) and is isolated from everything. I don't see how one can
interpret the first direction as not-Instrumentality: Shinji isn't
frantically trying to escape back to the real-world.

So, when Shinji suddenly reverses course after the fake dramedy NGE,
reversing from hating himself and wanting to run away and die, where
is he reversing to? There's no other choice but to reject
Instrumentality and return to the real world.

As I've said before, the telops are consistently skeptical about
Instrumentality; it would be a bizarre ending if SEELE and Geno were
utterly vindicated.

-- 
gwern