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

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:17 PM, EB <marestes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Lili on the Evageeks forum hadn't begun translating the 2 drafts of Episode 24
> Didn't she do it to prove once and for all that Anno's original intent for
> Kaworu was to make him be the series gary-stu in the sense that every gril
> falls in love with him, but he ends up falling in love with Shinji?

If that was the intent, she certainly did well. But neither draft was
written by *Anno*, my understanding was, nor does the Proposal (likely
by Anno?) contain the yaoi. But he did approve what survived into the
actual episode, which is suggestive that he liked that direction (if
not conclusive).

Peter Svensson wrote:
> 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.

I think multiple people will. Yui, for example, clearly would have
returned if she didn't have other things to do. Similarly, I've long
thought that Kaji had it all together much more than Shinji did.
(Except he's dead.) Fuyutsuki is, Yui aside, remarkably stable and
even-tempered; he might come back just to see what would happen. (He
sounds positively *curious*  in EoE.) So that's at least 3 characters.
In a world of billions of people, how likely is it that only 3 people
strong enough to return would exist and we would see them all in the
anime? I don't buy that all of humanity is so weak and unhappy that it
would remain dis-embodied.

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Peter Svensson <sun1jack at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

If that was the only point you wanted to make, just point to Gendo
starting 3I with a cooperating Rei! I think Kaworu's presence in one
and not the other is adequately handled by the out-of-universe
considerations we both agree on. (It's only if one *insists* on
in-universe explanation for this that I do not know.)

I mean, TV Shinji has plenty to anguish & despair over. He mentions
that he mistreated Asuka in both versions. And EoE Shinji is massively
over-determined. I was thinking of a _Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei_
parody, but I couldn't figure out what Shinji ought to Despair! over:
Misato's death? Rei's absorption/death? Asuka's apparent death? All
his NERV acquaintances being shot, stabbed, blown up, burned or
liquefied? Any one is enough. (And remember that in TV ending Misato
most definitely bites a bullet.)

In EoE, when does _Komm Susser Tod_ start? When Asuka says coldly 'No'.

>> 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.

You can't say we don't have evidence either way and then go right on
and assume it. If we never are given reason to believe there are
immortal souls, then we cannot use them, no more than we could
postulate that Yui wanted to float around as a beacon and also to
visit her good friend, the teapot in orbit around Mercury. (After all,
we're never told that she *didn't* want to visit the teapot, or that
there is no such teapot.)

>> 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.

So does EoE:
   Complement your imperfect heart, leave your useless body...
   Merge all souls into one.

   If you wish once more for the existence of others, the barriers of the
   heart will separate everyone once more...

   A world without AT Fields... without your own shape.
   An ambiguous world where it is impossible to tell where you end and other
   people start.
   A fragile world where you exist everywhere, and thus exist nowhere.

Puzzle pieces know where they start & end.

(Reading through EoE again, I find myself wishing the ep24 draft bit
with Shinji playing Yui's cello had survived. For some reason,
thinking of EoE Shinji playing Yui's cello in all those bits is
poignant.)


> 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.

I'm arguing that an ending where Shinji chooses reality and then the
last scene is actually in reality is possibly less artistically
satisfying and doable than Shinji simply choosing reality.

There is no obvious scene in reality regardless of what Shinji
chooses. This is shown by how the multiple possible reality-scenes all
vary dramatically, and also by how none of them are obviously better
or worse. (Is _kimochi warui_ *that* much obviously better than 'I'll
never let you kill me?' Or the Rei-arm that much obviously worse?)

The lack of clear choice or meaning is further emphasized by how
utterly randomly Anno chose the most crucial (and only) line in the
scene. Seriously, if there was a natural, obvious, satisfying ending
which took place in reality, would Anno go up to Miyamura with a
bizarre (if relevant) hypothetical and just use whatever she said as
the line?

That is an unsatisfactory way to end. Endings should not be gratuitous
and random like that. So, it's no surprise that while making episode
26, under a massive crunch, running out of cash, with
censorship/pressure from the network & PTA & internal, with the ending
they want still in draft form, that they simply punted on showing the
real world. It wasn't important.

It would be like, during the making of the last episode of _Otaku no
Video_, at the very last minute, someone says: 'Hey guys, why don't we
round off the triumphant launch with a scene in which Kubo & Tanaka go
to the cafeteria and have some beer?' and someone else says 'No,
obviously they should have Pocky', and another 'keep it all-ages,
folks - nothing wrong with some nice green tea'. Everyone else will be
giving this inane little group the hairy eyeball for trying to screw
things up at the last minute for something which is very important and
for which they can't even decide what color to paint the bikeshed!
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality)

With all these reasons given for the lack of a reality scene in the TV
ending, one no longer regards the lack as an indication either way
that it was fundamentally different from the EoE ending.

>> 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.

The LTP guy obviously didn't like 25 or 26. If he sees it as Gainax's
self-pitying, I'm not sure he is a useful datapoint.

> 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

The letters are very simple. They are either responses from viewers
who were helped by Eva, who saw themselves in it and grew - or from
viewers who looked into the abyss and became monsters. I will paste my
mini-essay on the topic.

---------

### EoE: Anno's Revenge
<http://wiki.evageeks.org/End_of_Evangelion_Death_Threats>

The initial reaction to EoE is bafflement. The viewer is repulsed when
Shinji masturbates to a comatose Asuka. NERV staffers are butchered,
non-combatants massacred. The montages are explicit and disturbing.
Misato's kiss of Shinji either incestuous or pedophilia. Asuka's
defeat is gory & wince-inducing. Ritsuko simply fails and is shot out
of hand, the viewer deprived of any closure. (What *did* Gendo say to
her?) Some scenes are simply obscene - when Eva 01 thrusts out of the
giant Rei's eye, with all the eyeball-fluid spilling that implies, I
simply had to look away. The rotting Rei chunks that set the
background for the last scene are eery. The ending is famously
inclusive; we know nothing of what will happen to Asuka & Shinji now
and it's unclear what connection there is to the TV ending (which
might have confused us, but the 'Congratulations!' thing at least fits
some sort of ending pattern).

We might be bothered by other aspects. The occasional live-action
sequence with 3 Japanese women/girls staring at us, the enigmatic
dream-playground sequence (just to cite one), what's really going on -
all these seem to defy a coherent analysis. Not for nothing has Eva
its reputation of being a labyrinth in which fans are devoured by the
minotaur of obsession.

This almost seems deliberate. Indeed, any viewer could see this, so
surely the man who conceived it and executed it must see how
unacceptable this all is. But he did it anyway. Why? Anno must be
deliberately seeking to displease the viewer. Why? Well...

We search for a motive, and we find that the end of the TV was greeted
with a firestorm. It was nothing like anyone had expected, nor did
they understand what they had gotten. As the quip about academia goes,
the smaller the stakes the more vicious the fights. Even better, EoE
supplies a ready-made reason for Anno to want to punish viewers: shots
of death threat graffiti and email ("Anno, I'll kill you!!!").

Case closed, then? Death threats are quite serious and from what I
know of Japan, even rarer than in America. One could forgive a man for
being disturbed and angered that his work could excite homicidal
hatred.

But then, the graffiti and email weren't the only material depicted.
There were a good 24 frames flashed, with about 11 or 12 different
responses.

Consider letter 1. It is displayed 3 times in varying formats, and
reads in part:

> I'm a middle school student like Shinji. First of all, I saw Eva and now it seems like I truly recognize myself, and this feeling is because of Eva. I want to say thank you for this. Why do I say this? To explain it would take a while, but Shinji and I are alike; depressed and helpless and introverted. I remember watching Eva and seeing Shinji being worried and troubled and I felt the same in my heart. In "EVA", there was an analysis that said how Shinji couldn't run away from the pain or the unpleasant feelings that were attached, and I have felt like this way too....
> In the last scene on TV, Shinji accepts everyone and they all congratulate him; that was a very nice end and I felt very happy....
> I'm worried about what will happen to Shinji in the movie (but I like the last scene on the TV series a lot). And thanks to EVA, I've started like myself and that has made me very happy....Mr. Anno, please keep working on EVA a lot more....and thank you so much for everything!!

Or the second letter:

> I also felt inside myself the same excitement that Shinji felt.
The last scenes made me appreciate my own existence even more.

Letter three:

> Thanks to Mr. Anno and all the staff for helping to liberate our hearts and souls, and for all of these feelings. Thank you very much.

Another letter:

> Shinji's falls into despair and Asuka's arrogance appears to be some sort of escape from the darkness in her heart. These people have difficulties in dealing with their feelings; and so in their own ways -- Shinji by totally collapsing and falling apart, and Asuka by letting her arrogance cover up her inner weakness -- they each work towards the same goal: to come to terms with themselves.

One last one:

> I could feel the pain of the TV series again. I could feel inside my heart the feelings inside Hideaki Anno's heart. So in my heart, I sympathized with "I'm not alone. To feel loneliness is better." I still feel a strange sensation even after watching the movie, because of these two opposite feelings mixing in myself. I'm waiting for the summer to see "End of Evangelion", and I know that that will be even more painful, but I will feel happy and enjoy it. I don't think that there are many people who feel this way, but in my case, EVA made me think about myself and was like a mirror of myself.

Think about what Anno chose to show. Of the many thousands of messages
they must have received, he chose to show 4 times one from a depressed
student like Shinji who has come to feel better about himself; another
who identified with Shinji; a message of gratitude simply for the
healing; some analysis of the psychological issues of the 2 most
important characters; an analysis & application to himself; and some
death threats.

Is it more plausible that Anno was so angered by the 2 death threats
that he abandoned whatever vision he had, than that the 2 threats were
chosen to be contrasts with the others?

Most of the messages were healthy responses. The writer grew or
learned in some way. Eva was not mere entertainment for them.

The death threats were pathological responses; to care that much about
Eva, one must be deeply attracted to it, sense that it says something
about oneself. I could not care less about whether some
[telenovela](!Wikipedia) series goes off the rails, because it says
nothing to me; but if I were watching a series that I identified
deeply with, that I felt expressed the things I valued as no series
before had, and by the end, it had called my life a crippled shell, my
ideals hollow and false, and urged me to become something else
entirely before it was too late, something I have spent years eluding
- then a equally deep sense of betrayal is to be expected. There is no
apathetic response to such a challenge. Either the viewer can accept
the diagnosis and strive for healing, or he can reject it utterly. A
therapist is always in danger from his patient.

-- 
gwern