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

[V V]

"

>>>Their motives are self-absorbed. SEELE will have no truck
with any

'god' which they didn't make or control. They certainly will have no

truck with a genuine monotheistic Western-style God! (Such a God might

inconveniently order them to stay alive and do good works.)"Verily.  Seele aren't really fanatic servants of a god or belief system:  they want to BECOME gods....--- that's a good point.  




">>>Hm? When does Asuka mechanically play video games? I know
it's been

too long since I watched the TV series but the only video game I

remember her playing was for fighting the twin Angel."Oh this was very intriguing:  in the original outline of the series shopped around to networks as a pitch-package of sorts, "Evangelion Proposal", it mentions that Asuka plays video games alot:  so this was an idea from the early days of the project...however, it didn't really come into the series that much.Still...bits of it filter in:  most prominently of course, is when Asuka starts falling into depression after losing the Zeruel fight (classic Narcissistic reaction to confirmed failure...)...anyway, you'll remember that she hangs out at Hikari's house...mechanically playing video games and refusing to sleep.So this WAS an idea for Asuka they had all along since the early planning days, and it seems that Rebuild decided to refocus on it:  Asuka plays video games alot in Rebuild.Basically...just as Shinji "zones out" with his headphones, Asuka has a hand-held, basically Nintendo DS video game
 system which she just whips out whenever she's bored.  It's a parallel Rebuild draws between the two:  BOTH have a way they "zone out" and basically..."self-medicate"Now at first this seemed like a brand new addition to Asuka...until you realize it's actually an idea from the early planning days of the original series that got basically cut for time, etc. but which *is* present in the final storyarc (at Hikari's house).If you rewatch the episode, you will notice that in the future of 2015, the Sega Saturn will dominate home electronic console entertainment.  

On Sat, 2/6/10, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote
From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [EVA] Concurrency tangent (WAS: Alternate Rei on DVD cover)
To: "The english-language evangelion mailing list." <evangelion at eva.onegeek.org>
Date: Saturday, February 6, 2010, 2:50 AM

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 5:44 PM, V V <frumious99 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes, as scientists, they have no reason to be using Angel-names as codenames, "Adam" etc.....because Seele (and thus, their lackeys at Nerv) are presented as religious fanatics with no grounding in reality.

Fanatics, yes. But religious?

> No, "the characters" do not interpret the story in Judeo-Christian terms:  at points, Shinji openly questions why the heck they call them "Angels" etc. and Misato and Asuka have no idea either.  The "normal" characters don't know why.

A good point. I'll have to remember that one.

> Keel, Gendo, and Ritsuko know why (rather, Gendo and Ritsuko know that Seele calls them that and are forced to themselves).....but they're not presented as rational people.
>
> Seele seems to be a direct stand in for the Aum Shinrikyo cult which initiated the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas attack of 1995....a cult which oddly mixed science and technology.

A connection which we'll probably always continue to wonder about
until something comes out like a Gainaxer was an Aum cultists or Anno
read some of their material. Carl pointed out the 'red earth
purification ceremony' thingie earlier.

> But "the religious overtones" have no more relevance than a UFO cult that says "Jesus is flying our spaceship!"
>
> There simply was no overt religious meaning to the show....well, in the sense that one can read moral meanings into practically any narrative, there's always that.  But there was never specific meaning.
>
> It is irrelevant, one way or the other, if Gainax actually "believes" in religion personally:  they could still write things meant to have a religious slant...but the point is, they stated they *didn't*.

> The point of the show wasn't "a battle against Angels".  It never was.  The whole point, the twist, was that *Nerv IS the bad guy* and it isn't really a generic "shoot space monsters" show.
>
> "in order for Man to approach God?"  you mean Instrumentality?  Instrumentality is presented as a *bad* thing in the story, a direct metaphor for when Shinji puts on his headphones or when Asuka mechanically plays video games:  "shutting out the world and living in a world of fantasy"

Hm? When does Asuka mechanically play video games? I know it's been
too long since I watched the TV series but the only video game I
remember her playing was for fighting the twin Angel.

> That's not God, that's hell.  Shinji rejects Instrumentality and chooses to live as a human being:  and of all the weak creatures in existence, so flawed...what being could also be so noble?  Such a piece of work is man....
>
> The plot of this show wasn't "Fighting through metaphysical angelic beings to achieve Instrumentality, the path to union with God".....it was "we got tricked into fighting giant space aliens who were in a warped way a reflection of ourselves, tricked by our own parents who robbed us of a future they don't care about (like in Gundam), who want to just give up on the world...but we don't want to give up on all of that"
>
> I mean,...it was either Sadamoto or Tsurumaki who said that the reason the Angels are so...abstract/ethereal, is because the problems facing Japan in the 1990's were so abstract:  as "Grapes of Wrath" said, during an economic collapse...who do you shoot?

This sounds right to me, but I can't seem to place the quote anywhere.
Nothing pops up in my usual sources.

> Seele is a religious cult that learned science and technology to further their apocalyptic goals, like Aum Shinrikyo.

I don't see anything religious about them except their symbolism and
terminology; the atheistic reality of Lilith and Adam and the Dead Sea
Scroll instruction manual precede the imagery of 'gods' and Trees of
Life and 7 eyes and whatnot. The analogy to Naziism isn't too inapt
here; both groups eclectically use symbols to try to borrow their
power, but they have no allegiance to the underlying systems. (Naziism
had no trouble invoking Odin, but when did they ever follow any Norse
tenets at all, like the sacred duty of hospitality? (ie. not roasting
alive Jews and mistreating POWs, or honest warfare minus things like
civilian reprisals), and similarly for Christianity.)

Their motives are self-absorbed. SEELE will have no truck with any
'god' which they didn't make or control. They certainly will have no
truck with a genuine monotheistic Western-style God! (Such a God might
inconveniently order them to stay alive and do good works.)

> The Kabbalah imagery was just to highlight "dude, they're a religious cult"....same as all of the Freemason and Illuminati imagery.
>
> -- V

Peter Svensson schreibe:
> I know it goes against your "Must purge Evangelion of any potential religious influences" stance, but there is legitimate difference between "shito" and "tenshi" and what is conveyed by each word.

'Good news! You don't have Ebola!' 'Great! So can I go now?' 'Nope. We
need to get started on that pancreatic cancer of yours.' 'what'

As with the LTP preface - I don't think 'disciple' solves the issue.
Disciple still has troublesome connotations. (Who are they disciples
of, for starters? Adam, mayhap, but then Kaworu and the Lilim? Adam &
Lilith? etc.) It's not *as* bad as 'Angel' itself, but the problem is
still there.

-- 
gwern
--
Evangelion mailing list - To unsubscribe, visit
http://eva.onegeek.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evangelion