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

[Peter Svensson]

> Shinji isn't back in reality YET, yes.

Right, but without anything to suggest "Hey, he'll be back to normal after the show ends!" how would one make the distinction?
 
> Do you mean the DC episodes don't count for anything? Because visually and
> otherwise they help explain certain things in EoE.

Oh, they count for the purposes of understanding EoE just fine. Remember, I'm working from a "The TV series ending is fundamentally incompatible with the Movie ending and they are at best parallel universes that have similar elements." point of view. 

The DC episodes help rewrite the series to make it fit in line with the changes that EoE requires, such as Rei being a super-Angel and Kaworu being more important than Sachiel cosmologically. But if we're looking to understand the TV ending, none of that matters. It hadn't come out yet, Gainax couldn't have been counting on viewers to use information obtained from home video releases that weren't on the drawing board yet (we got the DC footage partially as an apology for the release schedule of the series being so fubared). 

> If he wasn't experiencing Instrumentality in EoE, he wouldn't ask Lilith
> what was going on and saying how it's not right.

See, that Shinji was capable of understanding what was going on and that he still had physical form during his discussion with Lilith suggests to me that Shinji was only observing it, not actually experiencing it. He saw what was going on, he was given a glimpse of the process but he wasn't Instrumentalitized yet. He actually had the choice given to him because he was in Unit01 when it all went KaBallah! 

I feel that the TV series shows us a Shinji who is just another person in the process, that he's going through the same treatment that Hyuga or Maya are recieving, while the Movie gives us a Shinji who is witnessing events and has the power to change them. That's why I don't think they're the same ending.

> *V:* My opinion of the ending(s) is that the series ending is more or less
> occurring mentally (the character's thoughts/feelings--insight we don't get
> too much of in the movie ending--that sort of thing) for the characters
> while EoE is what's actually occurring physically or metaphysically for
> them. I've felt this was the case for quite some time.

That is the most popular interpretation I've found. The TV ending is the mental/metaphysical mirror of the real world events, and the Movie is the events that actually happened. I'd be all for it if I wasn't hung up on the details all meshing up.

 > The only other thing I can say is I'm glad that on EML, the debates are only
> about "Instrumentality is rejected in both endings: Yes or No?" compared to
> Evageeks where a handful of members (3 or so) actually argue that Shinji and
> the cast in the TV ending transcended into some higher plane of existence or
> some such weirdness, something that clearly isn't an option!

Weird. I guess you could argue that Instrumentality is a form of transcendence, and given that we're likely dealing with an entire planet of orange goo, I can see where the idea comes from but I'm assuming it's more than just "They're all Instrumentality now." from your tone.

> The only choices with Instrumentality is that it's accepted (and thus people
> lose their individuality, staying as a unified being forever) or that it's
> rejected (and people one by one can decide to return to Reality. If they
> don't return, they stay as LCL in the LCL Sea since individual souls have
> nothing to merge with once 3rd Impact ends).

Hey, just on a related note, do you think that people will return? The scrapped alternate endings seem to put a real downer on that theory but then there's a reason why they were scrapped in the first place.

Peter Svensson