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

[Peter Svensson]

>  If we don't know immortal souls, we must proceed as if there
> are no immortal souls. Burden of proof, neh?

But given the existence of souls, and that immortality is an attribute that is by default associated with them, it is in fact you who have the burden of proof that Evangelion is a setting that has souls, but ones that don't survive the death of the body, which given that's rather the entire point of a soul... 

> 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. 

Well, I would quibble over "less ambiguous" but given that the name of the film was "The End of Evangelion" it would seem that actually ending it would be necessary.

> 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.

Projecting. While you may have preferred it had Gainax done it that way, we aren't in a position to know whether they felt obliged to include action scenes, or that given their previous work Gainax was disappointed about not being able to include action scenes in the TV ending. 

> 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?

They already had the work on the original ending done, remember? Misato and Ritsuko's bodies are leftovers from the storyboarding of Air as TV 25. And if you're going to do the "real" ending later, why not make the TV ending a distinct seperate entity? Likewise, that some people would think they're the same ending is like people assuming that Misato killed Kaji, the evidence in the show is clearly against it but people responded emotionally towards it anyways. 

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

How do we know that the original script for TV 26 DIDN'T have Shinji accepting Instrumentality? We've never been privy to it. 

> Well, his 'information' doesn't agree with your theory either! 

That you can read the ending as Shinji entering a cult works with the idea that it ends with Instrumentality. If he had interpreted the ending as Shinji rejecting it, as him affirming his individuality, he would have responded differently.

You're saying "I don't like this man's reaction to the ending, which was written in the heat of the moment back when the show first came out and is one of the few English language sources we have of a Japanese fan's reaction to the ending" because you disliked someone else's theories. 

> How do they work for your choosing-Instrumentality theory? Are the majority
> deluded saps?

That the ending at the end has Shinji lose his individuality does not in any way diminish the message that you can be happy if you desire to. Please understand, the TV ending's moral got me through some bad times as a young man. Had I been living in Japan at the time, and had I not been horribly afraid of confronting Anno due to my insulting him inadvertantly when speaking with Yamaga, I probably would have written a similar letter. But no one said anything in their letters about Shinji rejecting Instrumentality. They don't talk about the spiritual mechanics at all really, just the emotional truth. 

Also, you're ignoring the selection bias. Anno isn't going to pick letters that go into detail about the nitpicky elements of the ending, he wants clear emotional response, not fanwank. 

I'm going to regroup here for a second.

My argument is that the two endings are not two sides of the same coin, but that there are major differences in the narrative of the two that require that they be treated as divergent timelines or alternate universes. 

TV Shinji is a passive participant in Instrumentality. He isn't given any sort of power or agency over what happens to him. Gendo appears to be in charge of what is going on. The Telop has to listen to Gendo. At the end, reality shatters and Shinji emerges into a blue void and is greeted by everyone, dead and alive alike, and Shinji then becomes the telop. 

Movie Shinji is an active observer in Instrumentality. He has the power to decide humanity's destiny. Gendo is killed and doesn't have the power to control anything. The telop (Lillith) is responsible for Gendo's demise. At the end, Shinji returns to the physical world and is reunited with Asuka. 

Now, whether you agree with my premise, the fact that there are differences in the two endings is obvious. The question is whether the differences are large enough to justify them not being treated as one and the same through different points of view. By focusing solely on those elements which ARE the same, Misato and Ritsuko's deaths, the use of the fan as symbolic for Misato and Kaji having sex, the idea of Instrumentality, a sequence not set in the "real" world of the series, fans are able to convince themselves that the two endings are synonymous. But where you look at the similarities, I look at the differences.

The big thing we're caught up on here is that you look at the ending of the TV show and go "Oh look, the script was all about Shinji finding his self worth, so then he's finding pride in himself, and so he must be escaping Instrumentality! He's returning to the real world!" But I look at the visuals, which have the auditorium (and what DOES having it be the setting for Death mean?!) shatter and Shinji floating in a blue void and then speaking with the voice of the omniscient narrator, as proof that we're not supposed to get the message that TV Shinji returned to reality.

That final scene is staged like a definitive ending. We have our big dramatic moment, Shinji deciding that he wants to exist and then reality crumbling, then the denoument of Shinji being congratulated by everyone, big happy moment, and then Shinji smiles just like everyone else, says goodbye the end. It doesn't read as a "to be continued!" It has the emotional content of an "And they all lived happily ever after! (because they don't have AT fields anymore)" It's an ending. Evangelion ends with Shinji in a surreal landscape. If it's supposed to be "Shinji returns to reality" then they sure picked a really poor way to illustrate that, and I tend to think that Gainax knows what they're doing. Mostly.

But hey, as I stated earlier, none of us will ever make any sort of progress in this discussion. We should instead focus on issues that can actually get somewhere, like why a single scene in TV 25 was altered to widescreen for the home video release. Or why we have two different versions of the scene where Asuka abuses Shinji in 26'? Or whether PenPen died in the explosion that took out Tokyo 3. 

Peter Svensson