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

[Gwern Branwen]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 3:48 PM, Peter Svensson <sun1jack at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> Oh, totally. Which is why he had to die. Shinji couldn't have a stable factor like Kaji in his life (and I can't believe I'm calling him that) and reach the depths of depression he did in the show.

No harm! Kaji is a favorite because he's one of the most human humans.
I moderately dislike the manga for its Kaji backstory.

>> I don't buy that all of humanity is so weak and unhappy that it
>> would remain dis-embodied.
>
> Personally, I don't either, but I worry that we're supposed to think that, that the moral of EoE is that while you can thrive as long as you live, most people don't.

If most people do, then there was no need to make EoE. cf. Tsurumaki's
nervous interview comments about NGE's popularity.

>> (It's only if one *insists* on
>> in-universe explanation for this that I do not know.)
>
> Well, that's my entire thing here. If the TV ending is the exact same ending as EoE, the details should match up perfectly because Gainax would have known they'd need to make it mesh with what had previously been established. That they were willing to change things that dramatically suggests to me that they didn't consider the two endings to be one and the same.

I don't think Kaworu's roles in the movie change the substance. This
is in accord with the out of universe explanation.

>> You can't say we don't have evidence either way and then go right on
>> and assume it.
>
> You can't say we don't have evidence either way and then go on denying it either. Given that souls DO exist in Evangelion, it's not the same sort of argument as "Yui could have visited the teapot." I know you're very much of the "Religion has no place in EVA!" mindset, but arguing that my evidence suggesting that immortal souls do exist is false because they don't is circular logic.

If you don't have evidence for something, you don't believe it. You
don't believe the teapot has a 50/50 chance of existing because you
have no evidence for or against; you assume 0 until you have some
evidence. If we don't know immortal souls, we must proceed as if there
are no immortal souls. Burden of proof, neh?

>> 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.
>
> And now we're getting somewhere.
>
> The issue I have is that without that scene of Shinji actually in reality, it is difficult to discern whether that was the intent or not. I mean, going from your argument EoE should have just ended with Shinji's goodbye to Yui.

It should've. It would've been less ambiguous, and lead to fewer 'zomg
Asuka is a fusion/is pregnant/is Eve/is a fake/is a werewolf*'
interpretations. But I guess this time around they couldn't stick to
their guns; much like they *had* to include an awesome mecha battle to
appease fans, they *had* to include a real world scene. Even if they
had nothing really to do with it. They didn't have the excuses of
deadlines, resources, more important psychological scenes to do, or
time to work it out.

* this last one is a joke. For now.

>> 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.
>
> See, the way I see it, under all that pressure they decided to make an ending that was the opposite of what they had in mind. Like a sort of twisted revenge.

So, because they didn't have the time to do the ending they wanted,
they did all the work to outline the ending they wanted in enough
detail to show things like Misato or Ritsuko's bodies, create it so
close to the 'real' EoE ending that countless people would be fooled
for decades into thinking they're the same ending, and then figure out
and create an appropriate evil twisted ending?

Wouldn't it have been easier to just do a cut-down/mental-focus
version of the real end? (Like my theory suggests.)

>> 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.
>
> Now you're ignoring information just because you disagree with it. Not kosher.

Well, his 'information' doesn't agree with your theory either! He's
not much more useful a datapoint than Mari Kotani is with her bizarre
feminist interpretations of the ending. (In the archives.) Do we
really think that 'the supreme commander  Gendo Ikari seems to attain
the status of the Gnostic Supreme Being,  by grafting the femininity
of his wife Yui Ikari into the cyborg  structure of Evangelion'?
Kotani's essay says something about how *a* Japanese perceived the
ending, like that LTP preface, but nothing about how it was generally
perceived. Better to just look at the material Gainax received &
specially selected.

>> 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.
>
> *snip*
>
> Very well done. It is really important to mention that the death threats aren't the point of the sequence, that it's not "HA FANS! I HATE YOU! NOW ASUKA DIES AGAIN!"
>
> Peter Svensson

So, you know how I interpret the minority of death threats and the
majority of letters for the choosing-reality TV interpretation. How do
they work for your choosing-Instrumentality theory? Are the majority
deluded saps?

-- 
gwern