Movies

Q:  Why did SEELE order the attack on NERV in the movie Rebirth?
A:  Because NERV had outlived it's usefulness. SEELE had only set up NERV to combat the Angels and keep them away from Adam (to keep them from initiating the "destructive" Third Impact) and to insure Lilith's safety. After Tabris was destroyed, Keel was free to initiate his own vision of the Third Impact (the "constructive" Third Impact) and continue mankind's evolution. But, the only way that he could do this was to capture NERV HQ and its most precious possessions (and especially EVA-01). First SEELE tried to in a peaceful manner (by using the other Magi Supercomputers of the world to hack into the Three Magi in Tokyo-3), but when it realized that an attempt on the Magi was futile, it had the JSSDF attack and subdue my GeoFront in a hostile and violent manner by claiming that we were going to start the Third Impact on our own (which I was, but that is what SEELE wanted too - Lorenz just wanted full control of it with either Rei's help, or the EVA-01[which showed that it could call the Spear of Destiny back to Earth]). 

Q:  Did Gendo and the rest of NERV know that SEELE was going to turn on them?
A:  Yes. Those in high posts, (Fuyutsuki, Ritsuko, and I) knew that they would do anything to get Lilith and the means to start the Third Impact in their possession. There just wasn't much we could do, or wanted to do as most of the NERV staff was expendable.

Q:  What elements were needed to launch the Third Impact?
A:  First of all, there are two kinds of Third Impacts: The Destructive Impact (within an Angel would return to Adam and every man would simply die);  and the Constructive Third Impact (where Lilith is the key Angel and every man becomes a single component and "evolves" into the ultimate of beings).

In order for the Destructive Third Impact to occur, a being known as a Shito must come into contact and return to Adam.

To simply let the Constructive Third Impact take place, mankind needed:

• to defeat all 17 Angels through a variety of difficult means, each one more complicated or intricate than the previous
• to contain Adam and Lilith (Adam to keep him from taking Lilith away and to in turn get the prophesied seventeen Angels to make their appearances, and Lilith to begin the Impact [while also combining with Adam and a human catalyst])
• and have the Lance of Longinus (also known as the Spear of Destiny) in their possession.

(Note, it has been proven that simple contact between an EVA, the Lance, and Lilith cannot cause an Impact before the Seventeen messengers from God have been vanquished and Adam is brought together with her. And even then, the EVA and the Lance (the Lance penetrating the EVA's core) are not even necessary for a "natural" Impact to occur.)

  Or, a pure Angel coming in contact with Lilith would do the job (which is why SEELE tried to trick Kaworu into touching her after the Lance was lost). However, the Angels do not want to come in contact with Lilith, they simply want to return to Adam. It's a game of deception and tricks in which SEELE is willing to play dirty at, especially after Keel Lorenz finds out that Rei and Adam are my own trump cards in deciding the fate of the world. (EVAs themselves cannot be used as a key to Lilith. They are not "Angel" enough. Only with the Lance of Longinus do they have enough "Heavenly Material" to start the Impact.)

In order to have my vision of the Third Impact take place all I needed was the above ingredients (once again an Eva and the Lance were not necessary) Rei, and Adam with whom I would merge and control the Impact and therefore be reunited with my wife, Yui (who was my only Complimentation and the reason for me doing everything I could to initiate the Human Instrumentality Project). However, Rei refused to combine with me and then Shinji and Eva-01 refused to combine with her therefore destroying mankind's only hope of evolving past its Darwinian dead end and my personal salvation....or maybe it did  proceed (see below for meaning)

The Lance of Longinus is named after the soldier that stabbed Christ in his side at the Crucifixion.

Q:  Why are all of these components needed to start the Third Impact?
A:  The Constructive Third Impact is the path to mankind's final evolutionary form..... You wouldn't think it would be a cake-walk to get to it, do ya? It has to be complex in order to test man's stamina and perseverance, and so that it could not be accidentally triggered. This was something that had to be deliberate.

Q:  So SEELE was helpless without the Lance of Longinus in beginning the Third Impact after Rei and Eva-00 hurled it into the moon?
A:  No. Keel Lorenz makes it clear that when the Lance was thought to be lost that they still had another key to our evolutionary jumpstart. All SEELE had to do was use an Angel like I was planning to use Rei or the EVA-01 with its new S2 Drive instead of Lilith herself (but with the Unit-01 nobody was sure if it would truly work). It is obvious that he originally wished to keep some control of the Impact by using the Lance, Lilith, and Adam. But when the Lance was gone he just wanted to get it over with. He must have decided that eternal sleep was at least a consolation prize for his long quest even though he could not become a god by controlling the Impact and merging with first Adam and then Lilith himself (the forbidden fusion that I attempted to do with Rei). SEELE had been working on an artificial Lance of Longinus, but it is assumed that unlike their fully functional S2 Drives, the Lances were never fully completed (although the EVAs 05-13 never got the chance to test the replicas themselves on Lilith before the EVA-01 called back the real Spear of Destiny from the moon). Although if we simply go by Keel's words, it would appear that the EVAs 05-13 were only meant to use the EVA-01 as their 'Lilith'.

Rei has the same DNA information that is encoded in the Lance. Therefore, she could be used as Lilith's Key too.

Q:  In the character section you had mentioned that Asuka died while fighting the EVA 5-13 series, but you also gave her fate as staying on Earth and living with Shinji after he screwed up the Third Impact. Well, which was it? It can't be both, can it?
A:  This is one of Director Anno's infamous mind f*** questions. He originally made the last two television episodes and the End of Evangelion as cryptic as possible because he was so tired of mindless anime with no real plot or thinking involved. "The End of Evangelion can mean whatever you want it to" is the final message.

Difficult to accept, maybe, but also fun (if you ask me). I was also sick of those mindless pieces of animated dung too (you know, the ones where you can tell exactly how the series is going to end 10 minutes into the first episode). The End of Eva leads one to believe that the world is what you make of it. It can be a good place to live (even through all the hardships) if you just want it to be one. Remember, this is the same message that Anno originally put in the final two episodes of the series (#25 & 26) and was booed at by the Japanese anime fans. It's kinda funny to see them applaud and love an even more confusing and untraditional ending than was originally produced (which they heckled and said that Gainax must have been rushed to finish it).

The End of Eva leads one to believe that Asuka was killed defending NERV HQ, all of humanity died (evolved), and that Shinji stopped the Third Impact after he had started it. It also leads us to believe that Shinji and Asuka are still alive (the last two humans on Earth [the new Adam and Eve?]), or maybe they did evolve with everyone else and this is Shinji's idea of what Heaven would be like. Maybe Shinji didn't stop the Impact and someday a new intelligent life-form will find the EVA-01 and the Lance of Longinus in space and find their own path to the final phase in evolution. There are many contridictions in the movie that can be used in defense of whatever fate you believe befelled Shinji and all of mankind.

If I had to decide right now what had actually happened at the end of the movie (and keep in mind that this is only one possibility in a hundred that I could back up) I would have to say that the Impact had occured and that Shinji and Asuka were in the next life. The fact that Asuka was still in one piece after the EVA 5-13's had ripped her and her EVA-02 to shreds and the fact that she is wearing her bandages exactly the same as Rei wore hers in the first few episodes leads the viewer to believe that this is Shinji's idea of Heaven.....being together forever with the one person that he thought he needed. He finally made a choice for himself and he's going to stick with it (although he seemed to recant a bit when he started to strangle her -_-... what a wuss). Also, how did Shinji get back on Earth from his high orbit? The EVA-01 was still in space at the very end! And who bandaged up Asuka (who seemed to be a mixture of Misato, Rei and Asuka herself)?

Q:  I've seen the TV series (and personally I love the ending^_^) and saw how it talks about the "Human Complimentation Project" on a psychological level. From what I've read about the movies, this "complimentation" is of a more physical nature. Are the two endings compatible, and do the TV episodes 25-26 actually occur in the movies' timelines? Also, aren't the movies a little too dark as compared to the TV series?
A:  Lots of questions and lots of answers coming up.

First, yes, the endings are compatible. Director Anno has shown his displeasure of the Japenese fans' outcry over the ending of the TV series and has stated that even in the movie timeline the actions and thoughts that occur in the last two episode of the show did indeed happen. Shinji comes to his conclusions about life and death at the same time that the Third Impact is taking place around him. His decision to live and make his world what he wants it to be is the last thought in the TV series, and the one that causes him to break away from the next step in evolution. He chose to be an individual, not one of the mass.

Asuka comes to her conclusion about how she must go on when she is in the bottom of the lake. Rei decides that she is a human (a genetically cloned human, but a human none- the- less) and not a doll or my personal plaything in the moments prior to the time I go to retreive her to begin my own Third Impact. And Misato realises who she really is as she lay dying in NERV HQ.

Second, the Human Compliment Project refers to merging mankind into one physical and psychological being (while his 'human' bodies return to the Link Connection Liquid or 'Primordial Soup of Life' that is the basis of all life and all of his seperate minds come together and fill the empty voids that each seperate Lilim had in its soul [hence humanity 'compliments' eachother only in the form of one giant being, like it was in the beginning]) to complete his evolutionary path.

As to the movies being too dark, well, maybe. Evangelion is all about pessimism. Until the very end it seems that none of the main characters believes in themselves too much and therefore an air of hopelessness does shroud the series. But the open ending can lead one to believe that the greatest thing has happened and mankind was given the happiest ending imaginable (or if you are pessimistic, the worst ending imaginable).

Q:  Okay, so episodes 25 and 26 of the TV series really happened, but what do they really mean? They're pretty farged up, ya know.
A:  It's a little difficult to explain, but in reality it's not Shinji that's questioning if others like him and why he exists at all if all he does is run away, it's Hideaki Anno. Try this: Whenever Shinji says "I" or "me" in the final two episodes of Eva, substitute either "Studio Gainax" or "Anno". Whenever the EVAs are mentioned, substitute "Project EVA" (the animation). And anytime Shinji wonders if "other people" like him, replace it with either "rival studios" or "the audience".

You see, Anno was almost as screwed up as Shinji-kun is, but he got better (in his own mind at least, where it counts). One has to remember that Gainax was the ugly duckling of the Japanese Anime community. They were doing things that nobody had ever done before and other studios (and even the otaku) were calling them stupid and insane. Anno simply put these fears to animation and made the best damn series the world has ever known. He has since said that Project EVA has helped him figure out who he is and that he is OK now.

 

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E-mail me if you have any more questions at uber_rossman@yahoo.com