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

[Peter Svensson]

> Ah, drat. I was going to bring in the Proposal and ep 24 drafts to
> argue that Kaworu started as relatively unimportant, briefly bloated
> up to Shinji's first yaoi love, got toned way down for the actual TV
> episode (and hence wasn't considered for inclusion as too minor &
> brief a character) when fan response convinced Gainax to pump Kaworu
> back up to a major character and retcon him in for the edits & movies.

If it makes you feel any better, I totally agree with you here. 



That Kaworu went from being a nobody to Gainax discovering that the
fans loved him and bringing him back is illustrated best in Evangelion:
Addition's drama track personally.
 
> Fanwank: Kaworu was excluded because Shinji didn't want to be reminded
> of his guilt in killing him. Heck, I dunno.

A hit, a very palpable hit! You have to admit, I've got a strong point there as to why the endings should be treated as discrete and seperate branches rather than two sides of the same coin here. If TV 25 is set in the same universe as Air, then Shinji should have Kaworu show up given that the entire point of his anguish is over killing the guy. 

> In my long arguments with Carl Horn previously. :) You're welcome to
> try to show immortal souls inside the Eva universe, but I doubt you'll
> have any better luck.

As far as I can tell, we have no proof one way or the other. But since we can't prove whether there exists an immortal soul or not, saying "Well that theory doesn't make sense since there's no immortal souls" isn't fair game.
 
> Even puzzle pieces still have edges. If there are no edges - no AT
> fields - it's not a puzzle.

The TV ending seems to argue that's not how Instrumentality works. It's about each of us filling in the void in the others souls rather than becoming a gestalt entity.

Honestly, I feel that Anno refined what Instrumentality means and is after the TV series aired into the form that we're more familiar with, as you'll note that EoE doesn't bring up the "holes in your souls" argument at all. But I'm only concerned with what aired on TV, not what we bring to the table from  later revelations.
 
> Showing the real world is *hard*. Like Vernor Vinge was told trying to
> write the story of the first superintelligence, 'You can't write that
> story. Nor can anyone else.'

It's not as if Gainax hadn't spent a good 80% of the series in said real world. 
 
> Given how much contingency there was in picking the ending, and how
> much focus has been put on interpreting the actual one, this says, I
> think, that one *can't* show the real-world ending because there is no
> satisfactory ending.

I'm not entirely sure I follow where you're going with this.

Is it that the ending is purposefully vague so that we can interpret it however we want? I can see that. What I'm saying is that there's evidence in the ending as aired to support a reading of it where Shinji joins the cult of Instrumentality. Heck, go check out the Literal Translation Project's script for episode 26, that's what someone who watched the show as it aired in Japan immediately reacted to it as.

Is it that actually showing Shinji post-Instrumentality is impossible because Anno wasn't sure of how things would work out? Because I can't argue that. There's no reason to think that showing one ending in the TV series would forbid them from going another direction in the film, in fact that's my entire point. 

I get the whole "leave the ending vague so that we don't know what happens next" thing, but if you're trying to argue that the ending is A and I'm saying it's B, saying that it's Fish doesn't really seem to mesh.
 
> He has no choice - just like he has no choice about piloting Eva? Or
> squishing Kaworu? Or coming to Tokyo-3?

Yes. Shinji's AT field is removed, and he doesn't have the agency to restore it. Think about EoE, did Hyuga have a choice about whether to turn into LCL or not? Did Maya have the choice to restore herself prior to Shinji breaking causality and killing the Lillith Entity? 

The TV ending has Shinji as just another person undergoing the process, while the movie has Shinji observing the process but not part of it. 

> Well, why not go with the letters flashed in EoE? Hard to think of a
> better source of 'people who watched it'. You've seen the
> translations; they are mostly letters expressing sentiments of growth,
> healing, etc. These sound to me like they fit better with the
> accepting life and not running away interpretation, not to mention
> Anno's many remarks about not living in fantasies and anime.

I'll point out the literal translation project, but also that I felt that the message of the TV ending is inspiring and beautiful. It's also a tad creepy. It's like getting good advice about your life from the guy who is about to kill you. But the words, the message is great.

But we should probably discuss the reasoning behind each letter being chosen, and what the intent is. Should we table this discussion and tackle that instead? Because we can actually make progress on that one, and we're never, ever, ever going to on this topic. 

Peter Svensson