History Headscratchers / Neongenesisevangelion

* Maybe it's due to not having done any extensive research on the real-world ones, but the Dead Sea Scrolls confuse me a bit, as in real-life they're just psalms and passages from the Hebrew Bible (along with Gnostic gospels that were hidden when they were considered Heresy), yet in this universe they're foretellings of the Angel attacks and are basically what NGE have for the {{Necronomicon}}. Basically, did Adam or Lilith just psychically reach out to some people in the year BC and say ''Hey, in several thousand years we're gonna have a fight, so get ready.'', or something?

* Okay, so the angels are all trying to bust through the geofront and make contact with Lillith, right? And if they do, then third impact is started. Then why the hell don't they just launch Lilith into space and be done with it? Did no one high up in the chain of command ever suggest that? Hell, get Rei to throw Lilith up there.

* A little over half of them are in the clip show episode that summerizes the Angel battles as they're a report for SEELE or something. The remaining names came from additional materials (an obvious Adam and Lillith are referred to by name a bunch. I think Kaworu might have been referred to by his angel name on one occasion too).

* This isn't an ItJustBugsMe, but it needs to be said. WordOfGod says that episode 25 and 26 happen during the time that Shinji is contemplating Instrumentality during End of Evangelion. He ultimately rejects it and him strangling Asuka is the ending. Accept that. Rebuild of Evangelion takes place in a world where everyone finally rejected Instrumentality but for some reason has also rewound the clock by a bit. Now stop asking questions about when things happen.

*** Whether they would be more effective than N2 mines is up to the writers, but that's not really the question. The question is, would the leaders of the nuclear superpowers be likely to be sufficiently alarmed at the sudden siege of Tokyo-3 by skyscraper-sized Gigeresque tentacled hellbeasts to panic and start throwing nukes at Japan? ItJustBugsMe that the scriptwriters didn't think of this.

*** That, and they were going through to the logical conclusion of the rather illogical false moral dilemma they set up for Shinji in the first place. Why the hell would Shinji choose that moment to dig in his heels and say "nuh-uh, I'm not going to kill another human," when it was neither necessary nor even desirable to harm the other pilot? He's an Evangelion pilot, he was (in the anime continuity) the first one to go into combat, he has more kills than the others put together by the end, and if anyone ought to know the secrets of Synchronization, it's him. He could have ripped the other Evangelion's arms and legs off without physically harming its pilot. It would have been extremely unpleasant but he could have done it, it would have worked, and no one would have gotten hurt. And he would have to have known this better than anyone else. It's almost as if the adults running NERV conspired to force him to react this way, which would be stupid and counterproductive, not to mention out of character for most of them. I know, if you asked Anno, he'd probably say something about "dramatic necessity," and showing there were limits on what orders Shinji would follow if he found them morally repugnant. But it sticks out at me. ItJustBugsMe.

* One thing that's bugged me forever: how does the OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness, Gendo, Yui in her human days, Seele and anyone and everyone else who's in on the whole thing, even know that instrumentality is ''good''? Putting aside the rest of their tangled plan, why do they (being humans) think that melting themselves and the rest of humanity down into an ocean of tang is a good thing? Gendo thinks he'll see Yui again... but why does he think that? He's never experienced instrumentality before, has he? What's making him think they'll get to live happily ever after in a MentalWorld? Why does Seele think it'll make humanity immortal, rather than simply dissolving humanity into primordial ooze? How does anyone know that there's even such a thing as "instrumentality" at all? If it's just ancient writings and Dead Sea scrolls, they're taking a hell of a lot on faith, and willing to kill the entire human race on the off chance that maybe some old Kaballic charts are right and what's left over afterward will still be sentient and happy. I guess what JustBugsMe is, how in the world is everyone involved so ''sure'' about instrumentality, enough so to consider slaughtering the human race, not to mention losing their own lives, wealth, power and everything, an acceptable risk? Even if they're pure sociopaths, why do the members of Seele see potentially existing as an orange liquid as preferable to their mortal lives? We, the audience, know that it's a pretty nice existence thanks to the ending, but how did they know that? Not to mention, I'm still not seeing how being a blissfully unconscious drop in an ocean beats opposable thumbs and an awareness of the outside world. That sounds nice for individuals, but doesn't a corporeal, spacefaring species that goes out and makes its mark on the universe rank way above a euphoric sea of happiness on that "evolutionary" scale Seele's worried about?

* One thing that genuinely bugs me. Kyoku Soryu, Asuka's mother. The series has been going and branching off into countless games and mangas and movies, and we still haven't seen what she was actually like. Her personality (before the Incident), her relationship with Asuka, how she talked, what she even looked like. I'm not talking the silhouette of her in the hospital bed, or that grainy gray-and-white image Asuka saw in [=EoE=]; I'm talking about her face, her non-insane voice, what she was like before the incident. We've seen Yui Ikari's face and heard her voice. We've seen insight to her personality, her relationship with Shinji, her view of humanity and the world. We know virtually nothing about Asuka's mother; the type of person she was, her appearance, anything. What JustBugsMe? ''That'' just bugs me.

*** ...true, because neither science fiction nor fantasy has ever offered a commentary on human nature and culture, particularly this or that aspect, couched in a metaphysical allegory within a genre background. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to go watch a ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes'' / ''Film/{{District 9}}'' double feature, and then maybe read some Creator/KurtVonnegut right after my favorite episode of ''TheTwilightZone''. Unless they're showing ''2001ASpaceOdyssey'', that is...

*** "Weakening Shinji's mental state" is ''not'' just an "aside." It was a huge part of what made Third Impact go off in the first place. With or without Lilith, and with or without NERV as a whole, SEELE still needed the MP Evas to work with Eva-01, and that required Shinji to be as fucked up as possible. All the infrastructure damage is just tying up loose ends. No, SEELE couldn't have predicted for sure that, specifically, Kaworu would make Shinji fall in love with him and then make him crush him in Eva-01's hand. But they knew that Kaworu could do ''something'' to further their goals, either intentionally or by accident, and he did.

*** Telling NERV about Kaworu in advance requires SEELE to admit that they created an Angel and harboured him for the past 15 years. That's like whatever, I guess, because Gendo and Fuyutsuki obviously put two and two together and figure that out on their own anyway, but SEELE wants NERV to learn about Kaworu ''only when they need to'' and ''not a second sooner than necessary'', because the sooner NERV knows about Kaworu, the more time Gendo has to figure out more about SEELE's strategy and capabilities. SEELE having had control of Adam's soul in the form of an Angel this whole time is a gamechanger. There's also the fact that SEELE ''wants'' NERV weakened from fighting Kaworu; warning them about him defeats that purpose. As for "what if Shinji bailed on NERV again," warning NERV about Kaworu doesn't actually stop Shinji from doing that anyway.

*** Keep in mind that he was able to breath on the moon. His AT field is enough to block a bullet (or a not-nuke, seeing as it has been called "the strongest observed"), and his biology is inhuman enough to fight off any other simple means of assassination. While Angels don't need Eva to kill them, they don't go down without a lot of firepower.

* I get the broad strokes of Kaworu's character and what effect it has on Shinji, but every specific detail about him seems to be contradictory. First of all, why was he created? He's another angel, another obstacle stopping Seele from achieving their goals. Unless him merging with Adam actually would accomplish their goals, which would make sense of his actions, except Seele expressly say they want Eva 01 to kill him. So why send someone you want to lose? Is it just to fulfill the Dead Sea Scroll prophecies? There has to be seventeen angels? In that case, sure, create him, but then shoot him in the back of the head as soon as you can. It's not like EVAs are a divine requirement to defeat angels since the nanovirus one was defeated without an EVA. Hell defeating the last angel themselves would seriously help there move against Gendo since they could launch a surprise attack while he still thinks there's one more angel around.

Next is his motivation. He says he wants humanity to live, great idea. So then why is he going along with any of Seele's plans? Why attack Terminal Dogma? Why not just spend his days listening to Mozart and banging Shinji? It's not like there's mind control implants or anything forcing him to act out his angel goals. He seems to be entirely in control of his actions. Is it just because he's suicidally depressed? In that case why not just kill himself? He's not a robot. Self terminating should be within his abilities (Rei was able to do it after all, albeit via heroic sacrafice). Does he have an obsessive need for Shinji to kill him? Doesn't seem like it since he only goes that root after noticing it's lilith and not adam in the terminal dogma. Which brings me to the gratest headscratcher of all. Why was he surprised by this and why was he even attacking the terminal in the first place? Seele told him Adam has been grafted to Gendo just moments before he started the attack. Unless he thinks Gendo is down there then he has no reason to go to the terminal dogma. Unless his desire is to fuse with lillith which it clearly isn't because he didn't do it when he had the chance. The only reason he has to be surprised to see Lilith instead of Adam would be to confuse someone else which definitely isn't the case since he shit off all monitoring capabilites and the only person around (Shinji) is too clueless about all this, too far away to see his surprised exression (which was facing away from him) and too busy fighting Unit 02 to notice.

*** But then why have Seele tell him that in the first place? Narrativly speaking. Have one character tell another character something that isn't even new information to the audience, only for the character to dismiss it completely while pretending he doesn't? That's just poor writing. Nothing about the following events would have changed if Seele didn't tell him where Adam was. If they want us to know Kaowru thinks Seele is lying then they need to show us that. Something like "They just want me to kill their enemy. But I can sense where Adam really is" or "So they weren't lying after all." Using the logic that he assumes the information given to him is faulty, you can rationalize pretty much any behavior ever. The character actually needs to show disbelief for it to be credible. And how do they even know Gendo literally had Adam inside him? Speculation? Dead Sea Scrolls?

*** What changed his mind? Nothing Shinji did. It was seeing Lilith there instead of Adam. Why would that cause him to switch sides completely? Humans are crafty enough to have this bait and switch tactic so they should live? Seele wasn't lying about where Adam is so maybe humans are alright? Adam's all the way upstairs and I don't feel like levitating that far?...That last one actually seems like the most possible.

* So what broke Shinji out of his funk? I don't have an easy time empathising with the character (or themes of the series) since I've always been firmly in the Humanity is Awesome camp. So correct me if I'm wrong but from what I can see there isn't anything to actually change Shinji's opinion of the world and himself. He never witness any acts of kindness or selflessness. The world is shit, nobody likes him (except that one guy he murdered), everybody is selfobsessed, daddy never gives him the love he craves and the world got destroyed by selfish people for their own selfish reasons. Why would he have any positivity in such a situation? I mean I probably would but I can't see any rationale as to why Shinji's character would get over his problems in the given situation. Is depression really so easy to conquer that all it takes is some navel gazing and introspection to realise that being happy is better?

*** So then why not tell Nerve he's an angel? Kaworu got damn close to succeeding. He pretty much let Shinji kill him. They had no way of knowing Kaowru would fancy Shinji and choose suicide. If thier plan was always to get Unit 01 to kill him (which is what they state privately among themselves) then they should have prepared Unit 01 for that job. Instead they sent him right where he needed to be, gave him legitimate information to succeed (which he apparently ignored) and didn't actually make any sort of plan to kill him. Moving Unit 01 and Shinji to his location and letting them duke it out there would have been far smarter. What if Shinji was taking a shower or something when Kaowru attacked? Or running away again? For wanting him to fail they certainly gave him a lot of advantageous and Nerve a lot of disadvantageous. And this is all assuming you can't just shoot him in the back of the head while he's sleeping.

Next is his motivation. He says he wants humanity to live, great idea. So then why is he going along with any of Seele's plans. Why attack Terminal Dogma? Why not just spend his days listening to Mozart and banging Shinji? It's not like there's mind control implants or anything forcing him to act out his angel goals. He seems to be entirely in control of his actions. Is it just because he's suicidally depressed? In that case why not just kill himself? He's not a robot. Self terminating should be within his abilities (Rei was able to do it after all, albeit via heroic sacrafice). Does he have an obsessive need for Shinji to kill him? Doesn't seem like it since he only goes that root after noticing it's lilith and not adam in the terminal dogma. Which brings me to the gratest headscratcher of all. Why was he surprised by this and why was he even attacking the terminal in the first place? Seele told him Adam has been grafted to Gendo just moments before he started the attack. Unless he thinks Gendo is down there then he has no reason to go to the terminal dogma. Unless his desire is to fuse with lillith which it clearly isn't because he didn't do it when he had the chance. The only reason he has to be surprised to see Lilith instead of Adam would be to confuse someone else which definitely isn't the case since he shit off all monitoring capabilites and the only person around (Shinji) is too clueless about all this, too far away to see his surprised exression (which was facing away from him) and too busy fighting Unit 02 to notice.

From what it seems, Kaowru's character consists of someone who was made purposely to impede his creators progress, doesn't want to destroy the world yet tries to anyway and then immediately stops trying and forces someone else to kill him the moment he discovers a vital piece of information he already knew.

*** See, what bugs me, though, is that according to TheOtherWiki, Adam was the First Angel and Lilith was the second, with the third being the first one battled in the series. If Lilith is expressly ''not'' an Angel, then how can humanity be number eighteen?