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troperville

This is a "Wild Mass Guess" entry, where we pull out all the sanity stops on theorizing. The regular entry on this topic is elsewhere. Please see this programme note.

Eden Of The East

Number III is the Supporter.

Notice how, in the Spoiler Opening, the lines that seem to represent Selecao interaction connect III and XII? And again, in the first movie, lines connect III and XII before the purple line representing Number I's destruction of the trailers hits XII and destroys it/him/her. This could mean one of two things: either III has become the Supporter now that the all but confirmed previous Supporter, Number XII, has been eliminated OR Number III has always been the Supporter. Assuming the second leads us into...

Jossed. Number III is an elderly woman who apparently knew Ato Saizo personally.
- This doesn't actually Joss the theory. Who better to make your Supporter than your close friend of many, many years?

There was never a Number XII.

Let's review. The Selecao system was created by a Mister Outside who is a huge soccer nut. Now, there are always eleven players fielded in a soccer match, with the "12th man" being the audience who is Outside the game and always watching. Number XII was Mister Outside's personal phone, which he was using only to monitor the other Selecao. That's why the only charge was 5000 yen to move Juiz, and why it was only 5000 yen to boot - he used the phone in that instance simply to rub it in Mononobe's face how he'd clearly overstepped. Furthermore, getting Mononobe to waste a shot on the Number XII trailer was another ploy - as Mister Outside, he has complete control of the system which he himself created, and presumably doesn't even need the XII phone or XII trailer to access Juiz, particularly since as the owner of the company he would have ATO Corporation's entire operating budget plus his personal wealth to play with. The 10 billion yen charge on the XII phone was another (expensive) misdirection tactic.

He still exists. Even though it's all but confirmed that XII is Mr. Outside/Ato Saizo, he's still bound by the rules of the game he himself created.

Juiz is the Supporter.

Infinite ability to monitor everyone, immune to suspicion, can't be killed off to break the system. Why trust any one person to do the job when you can get an AI to do it?

Outside lied about "everyone winning the game" - the true and only winner was Number IX.

And the prize was not being mind-wiped by Ato's "one last trap to truly free them from the game."

During the series, we saw two Selecao eliminated. Number IV, who "gave up" and used his money in useless and foolish ways, was stabbed to death by his wife. Number V, on the other hand, who did the best he could but wasn't "grand" enough in his efforts, merely had his mind wiped by the Supporter / (presumably) Number XII. In the first movie, we learn that Number X was eliminated, but broke his phone to avoid the Supporter. This comes full circle in the second movie when he is killed by a newly mind wiped Mononobe as a direct result of acting on memories he should have otherwise lost.

From this we can infer: every Selecao who lost wasn't actually killed, except for the two who used their money in selfish ways. The rest all experienced a memory erasure.

Now, let's take a look, in order, at who was actually mind wiped at the conclusion of the game:

Number I - Admitted, albeit behind closed doors and with the expectation of confidence, to having lost to Akira.
Number II - Lost, or rather was eliminated by the destruction of the Number II Juiz - despite attempting to continue playing afterwards.
Number III - No major onscreen appearances, but presumably lost by failing to accomplish anything significant towards the salvation of Japan, or else by inadvertently leading at least two people including another Selecao straight to Mr. Outside[[supersecretspoiler:, and thereby revealing herself as the Supporter if an earlier WMG is valid]]
Number VI - Lost due to being arrested and detained in America where the Selecao system is at reduced effectiveness, leaving him unable to continue
Number VII, Number VIII - No major onscreen appearances, presumably lost by failing to accomplish anything of significance whatsoever
Number XI - Lost, or rather was eliminated by the destruction of the Number XI Juiz in order to protect the number IX Juiz.

Every single person who received the phone call from Ato at the end of the game can be inferred to have lost - except for Number IX.

One final nail in the coffin on this one: if Akira's guess that the memory wipe would not be effective because it was already used on him one time before, where does that leave the memory wipe he ordered for himself at the conclusion of The King of Eden? That would have been wipe #2, and if multiple wipes were truly ineffective, that shouldn't have worked either when it clearly did.

So, what was up with Outside's "you're all the winners!" speech, then? Simple. He wanted to make sure none of the Selecao hung up before getting their "prize." And you know at least two of the known Selecao would have hung up the second he said "The winner is Number IX," long before Outside could do anything to them.

Number VII is actually Kenji Kamiyama.

During the mid 2000's, Kamiyama was directing every single year, except for 2008. The gap in between Moribito and Eot E was the largest one since 2000. The reason? Mr. Outside saw Ghost in the Shell and noticed Kamiyama's prophetic look into of sociology and the future of technology and decided to make him a player in the game to save Japan. However, Kamiyama, struggling for inspiration for a new series at the time, decided instead to observe the game through the logs on his phone instead of making any moves himself. He took comprehensive notes of all of the moves made by the other Selecao, trying to come up with what personalities they all had based on that. In order to make it easier to sell, and not outing any of the players he outed, he changed all the names, pushed it a few years into the future, and added in all of the memory loss and missile attacks to move the story along faster. During the only ACTUAL memory wipe at the end, when he got the last call to from Mr. Outside to tell him the game was over, he forgot any involvement he had in the game, and used the notes he wrote down to write and direct Eden Of the East.

Also, on the Japanese Blu-ray of Paradise Lost, there is a drawing of Number VII, which looks suspiciously like Kamiyama himself. Director cameo? Or a slight resemblence of his memories coming back?

The reason for Kuroha Diana Shiratori's radical campaign against the misuse of Johnnies

Someone used his Johnny on Kuroha in a manner most despicable, but she took revenge by "reliving" the said punk of his tool of crime before sending him to hell. Since then, she dreamed of heading out on a campaign against other "men", who use their Johnnies for such awful things. Then she comes into the possession of the cellphone, and thus, just like a certain Britannian boy and his most amazing eye/s, uses this new powerful tool to head out on a crusade long dreamed for.

Eden's Sis is a Wholesome Crossdresser

She has a rather deep voice, flat chest, and heavy caked-on makeup. And there are several key moments where it seems possible. For instance, when they suggest everyone get naked to blend with the naked NEE Ts, she suddenly panics. One, if she were one of the girls, she wouldn't be able to blend, and thus would not be involved. Two, why would she panic unless of course she had something to hide? (There are a few incidents before this, but I can't think of them offhand) While it's never overtly brought up, it is a fact that many of the other members of Eden of the East are hardly what you'd call conventional (one guy sits around in underwear because he lost his pants)...

Earth Maiden Arjuna

WMG/Anime And Manga

Ef A Fairy Tale Of The Two