Must be Monday. New podcast! Just click on the fancy logo below.
Awesome AwesomeMusic BerserkButton Characters De DrinkingGame FandomSpecificPlot FanficRecs Fridge Funny GUG Gush Haiku Headscratchers Heartwarming HoYay Laconic Main Memes Narm NightmareFuel Quotes Recap ShoutOut TearJerker Trivia WMG YMMV main index Narrative
|
The canon has a very different order than most people think.
The first 24 episodes are the first entry in the canon. However, the series doesn't have a clear end yet. After Episode 24, End of Evangelion takes place. After witnessing the horrors of what he has done and trying to strangle Asuka, Shinji and she return to LCL offscreen. This is when Episode 25 begins: the main characters all go through heavy psychoanalysis from their subconscious minds, which they interpret visually as other people, but which are just aspects of themselves. Between 25 and 26, Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 takes place: Shinji has a flashback to the first 6 episodes of the original series. This, along with the lessons he learns in Episode 26, persuade him to continue living in reality. Shinji, being in full control of Instrumentality, restores humanity to as it was right after Episode 6, but slightly different. Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 through Final are in sequential order.
The lance/spear at the end of 2.22 is the one Lilith lost during the First Impact.
This is what SEELE were excavating out of the Moon.
The series is Shinji (failing at) imagining a harem-fantasy world with mecha elements
Plenty of the basic character archetypes are there: bottle fairy Misato, shy blue-haired girl Rei (who in a normal harem anime would eventually learn to love with Shinji's help), quirky school friends Toji and Kensuke, tsundere Asuka, gag character Pen-Pen, etc. The problem is, real!Shinji has as much emotional problems as anime!Shinji, and as a result, his dream world also falls apart:
Leliel's Sea of Dirac leads to Digimon Adventure 02's Ocean of Darkness. In episode 16, Shinji converse to a Shinji that was another side of him, and conversely, in Digimon 02, when Hikari visit the Ocean of Darkness, we see a side of her that was not usually dominant; to sum it up, it's a means of travel between universes.
Rei Ayanami is a Galatea.
And Gendo is just like Pygmalion. Think about it. He finds a perfect girl, he loses it, and nobody's perfect for him. What does he do? Create his own! Additionally, all the Perverse Sexual Lust.
The EVA 02 is manufactured by BMW.
Because Germany
The ending of End of Evangelion is the beginning of a Kenan & Kel sketch on orange soda.
With all that LCL everywhere, you just know that somewhere out there Kel is screaming "WHO LOVES ORANGE SODA?".
The Dead Sea Scrolls are really the lyrics to "Imagine" by John Lennon.
Expelling everything separating people for a perfect, unified peace is what "Imagine" is trying to say. Take it literally and way too far and that's essentially Instrumentality in a nutshell.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is just like Brazil.
The Instrumentality, episodes 25-26, and even Rebuild Of Evangelion were just the results of Shinji going insane from his tormented mind.
There is NO symbolism
The entire show is just Gainax loling at us. They just made massive money because we all desperately scour the internet, searching for the answers to why Neon Genesis Evangelion is so weird.
By the time of End of Evangelion, Shinji Ikari became an Omnicidal Maniac and a potential Nietzsche Wannabe
Seriously, he even exclaimed "Everyone just die" while simultaneously letting God kill off humanity and collect their souls, just because of his growing madness caused by his chains of Freudian Excuse after Freudian Excuse, and the realization on how pointless his efforts are when it still leads to The End of the World as We Know It. And since this is a fucked-up Shinji, he might even continue to force God to annihilate the entirety of the universe through a Reality Breaking Paradox ala Space Runaway Ideon (seriously, it explains the ep.26 Mind Screw). Yui, Rei and Kaworu, who realized that this is wrong even by their eldritch standards, eventually talked him out of it with lectures about earning our happy endings, allowing Instrumentality to discontinue the world-annihilating process and make him come back from the LCL.
The reason why Seele wanted to get rid of those Angels is because the Angels are going to fuck up Instrumentality in a non-lethal fashion. In other words, the Angels are actually going to prevent the Apocalypse
Well this speculation came into this troper's head when the so-called Assimilation Plot perpetrated by Seele turns out to be nothing more than a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum on drugs. Let's see what the Canon said: 1) If an Angel combines with Adam, everyone dies. 2) If Adam merges with Lilith, supposedly, a god is created. 3) At The End Of Evangelion, everybody still dies. What? Also, if the Angels are after Adam, why are they horny for Lilith instead of the real Adams, Gendo, Kaworu, Evas 00/02 and possibly Antarctica? We might as well argue that Seele's entire myth of "the angels desperate to merge with Adam" might as well be that, a myth.
Also, all those ramblings about the Angels trying to understand humanity. Armisael, who complains on how Angels had to live massively lonely lives wandering the stars forever, and Kaworu, who appreciates Human art and culture despite being not Human, are pretty much lampshades on the Angels' plot of not trying to wipe out humanity, but actually trying to become humans.
So, where are we left? We can also say that whether it's Adam or Lilith, both end up in a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum. But, if Seele is just obsessed with a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum, why not do it with letting the supposedly "Omnicidal Maniac" angels let it do the majority of the fuckup for them? Why not simply tie up Eva-01 with the Hand of Gendo and a Lance of Longinus up on the Empire State Building and let the angels take care of the business? Or even better, why need Evas at all? Why be such douchebags who screwed-up the mental and emotional life of innocent 14-year-olds? They can just fuse Adam and Lilith, create a god, and pretty much use the god's "omnipotent powers" to Deus ex Machina the angels out of existence.
Well, besides the fact that if a god was created on the first try and then used against the Angels the plot would end up as either a boring God Mode Sue or a Space Runaway Ideon ripoff if the Angels are at least a challenge with truly Lovecraftian superpowers, we might as well assume that the Angels are going to fuck up Instrumentality so badly it instead prevents Instrumentality and leads to the Angels becoming Kaworu-esque humans. Seele, being the douchebags that they are, instead inverted the whole fact and said that "the Angels are going to annihilate us and the only pathway for humanity's survival is for us to strike first". It can be asked, why go to such lengths? There are like a hundred ways for the destruction of humanity, right? Answer: Human Nature. Sure, Seele might be Omnicidal Maniac Nietzsche Wannabes, but when there's an Omnicidal Maniac there's going to be a bunch of heroes going to stop him in their will to survive. And no matter how convincing an Omnicidal Maniac's Hannibal Lecture may be, the majority will always be in the support of the heroes who "save the day". Asteroid Impact? No problem, we'll just blow it up. The Virus? We'll cure it. Nuclear bombs? Zombie Apocalypse? Nanomachines? Wave Motion Guns? Ordinary waking up Eldritch Abominations from the Great Beyond? No problem with the power of the Human FIST!!!! And a bit of Science. Basically, Seele's plot involved turning the Human Fist against those innocent Cthulhus out there whose only wish is to Become a Real Boy but cannot speak and thus are automatically Acceptable Targets by the Chewbacca Defense, said punching out Cthulhu is merely a distraction designed to further Seele's real goal, which is actually backstabbing humanity to death in the form of a Yog-Sothoth who will eat humanity's souls once and for all. Which is fitting of an Evil Plan. Of course, that didn't prevent Instrumentality from still being fucked-up, since there is another backstabber by the name of Gendo Ikari. You may also ask, didn't Kaworu said something about him annihilating all of humanity? Yes he did, but since this is Kaworu he might as well be speaking parables, and his destroy all humans assumption is simply a metaphor for Shinji's solipsism and impending willingness to commit suicide. Also, since Kaworu is an agent of Seele rather than an actual Angel, he might be as well an actual Adam who simply made the decision of backstabbing Seele, like Gendo.
The real reason why Seele planned the Instrumentality is solely because they are extremely paranoid and fearful about Death / Hell / Gehenna / Tartarus / Underworld / The Afterlife / something like that
Well this would make more sense, since the alternative would be the Angels being nonlethal beings like the above, while this theory sticks to the more canonical "Angel-controlled Instrumentality will annihilate all life" statement, although this still advocates the idea of Seele being omnicidal maniacs. Seele really wanted all of the sinful bastards that are humanity to die, but death is a very uncertain and Despair Event Horizon-inducing thing on which everybody, including them, are very paranoid and fearful about, with the paranoia being even more fortified by the notions of "Hell" and "Eternal Punishment". An Angel-initiated Instrumentality will simply lead to an uncertain death. Human Instrumentality was a way on which they can provide themselves with a very certain death, a death which annihilates the fear of death and Hell through an Assimilation Plot. Hence, the despair of death is overcome, and people who die hopeful and full of spirit die in the eternal bliss of nirvana, instead of being dragged into the dark agonizing eternal damnation vortex that is Despair Event Horizon. Heck, Religion does the same, but it uses the collective hope and spirit of humanity instead of some Applied Phlebotinum.
The First Ancestral Race is actually the Rei/Adam/Lilith/Shinji Merger from the future, sending itself back into time/another dimension to create Alternate Universes!
First, we don't know much of anything about what the First Ancestral Race actually were, except that they made Adam and Lilith. And if somehow those two merged, they essentially become a God that can mess with reality/create new reality/whatever the hell it wants. Unless the First Ancestral Race itself has power equal to that, how can it make something so utterly mindboggling? Because it made itself....IN THE FUTURE/ORIGINAL ALTERNATE DIMENSION! And the reason it keeps crashing into Earth and doing...whatever, is because the Shinji Part the Merger of it really, really, wants a world where someone who shares his Soul is happy.
The Lance of Longinus is actually not unique at all in the end though, since it could easily be replicated just by normal technology. Divine Merger Shinji/Rei sent copies of it to each new Earth/AU, just in case something goes wrong again.
This all makes total sense. And the Dead Sea Scrolls was written by Kaworu! Who then sent it into the Past so SEELE could read it and engineer the events that would this insane Egg made it's own Chicken that would make it's Egg nonsense possible. I mean, how the hell could Humans magically understand an Alien Language so perfectly? Because Kaworu had already written it PRECISELY so SEELE could translate it!
And those Spectral Rei's are all the representations of the Rei/Shinji/Adam/Lilith Merger checking on each Earth/AU's progress.
Neon Genesis Evangelion takes place from the perspective of a hedgehog
Hedgehog's Dilemma. Enough said.
The Instrumentality is a metaphor for Euthanasia
It's obvious.
The Instrumentality is a metaphor for Nirvana
It's also obvious.
The entire series has been written to make everyone feel disgusted towards classical music and jazzy pop songs.
Hideaki Anno's aim was to take a classical piece or jazzy pop song, associate it with the most disturbing plot and images he could think of and then repeat that over and over again
until noone on earth will ever experience pleasant thoughts of these songs and pieces again.
Crazy, mentally broken people who are isolated from humanity are the only ones who can effectively pilot EVAs
Since these isolated kids are the most singled out from everyone else, they are the only ones whose condition has passed a threshold where their lonliness mainfests as a strong AT Fields. The more disconnected from humanity these kids are, the more powerful their AT- Fields are. Remember that none of these kids can empathize (Asuka and/ are socially awkward (Rei). This goes along with the Hedgehog's Dilemma theory, as it explains why these kids are unable to connect with other; the fear of being hurt by getting closer to others. Fearing others, the kids form natural mental barriers to keep others out. The more barriers, the stronger AT-Field. Of course is the case of the 5th pilot in Rebuild 2.0 she is so detached from everyone, she has AT -Fields, of course hers aren't as powerful as the other 3 as their detachment from humanity is more extreme than hers; she's only uninterested in humanity while the rest reject it. * Haruhi Suzumiya, anyone?
End of Eva takes place during the Hospital Scene
which occurs after Asuka fought the Eva's and lost which explains why she's there. We've never seen, or heard about, Shinji doing anything like this before, so it could be his first time. This also explains why Shinji exclaims "I'm so fucked up" at the end of the scene, after realizing what he's done.
There is a scene missing from Eo E
Ok, ok, ok. This is more wishful thinking than Wild Mass Guessing. However, the tone at the end of the series is so irreconcilable with the very last scene of EoE, that one cannot help but scream WTF and think there is something missing. Here it is¦..
After Asuka's final line in the movie, Shinji wakes up with a start. The previous scene was a dream. Shinji and Asuka are still alone on the beach. However, things are slightly different. Shinji looks in one direction, and sees forests thick with vegetation. In the other direction, he sees Tokyo-3. The city appears to be empty, but the buildings are repaired and clean, and there are sounds coming from the city that suggests humans might already have returned. Shinji then looks at Asuka and stands up. He closes his eyes, clenches his fits, and remembers all of the speeches from the last two episodes of NGE and the parting words of Yui from Eo E. With courage in his voice, he says to Asuka, "Before you start screaming at me listen", and then proceeds to tell her that it was physically impossible for him to awake Unit 01 in time. He also tells her that he did not pull her out of the LCL, but that he is happy she is there, Because I wouldn't have anyone else by my side! Asuka gets up and tells Shinji she knows. She also says that she decided to leave the LCL herself. She then pulls in a shocked Shinji for a long and passionate kiss. As the two embrace, the camera pulls out, and Fly me too the moon plays.
The main characters are representative of the 7 deadly sins
Shinji with his tendency to go berserk and kill everything is the representation of wrath. Asuka is the representation of envy because she quickly becomes jealous of Rei. Rei, with her squicky feelings for Gendo, the nudity tendencies and the Fanservice that revolves around her, represents lust. Misato is representative of gluttony with her alcoholism. Gendo is the representation of pride (his Magnificent Bastard reputation among the fandom to the point that merely clasping your hands can give you an aura of magnificence, and his ambition of turning everyone into a single soul and resurrecting his own dead wife is pretty prideful, think of the other widows who have to live without the wives they adore). Ritsuko is greed because she wanted Gendo and the Magi system all to herself. And Ryouji is sloth for obvious reasons. Feel free to move these around and mix up who is what sin because the only one I'm sure of is Gendo's pride and Shinji's wrath.
Everything but the first five minutes and the last five minutes is a delusion caused by Instrumentality.
At the end of End of Evangelion, a vision of Rei appears before every person on Earth. She performs some symbolic action that helps them come to terms with Instrumentality, and then their body reverts to LCL. Rewind to the first episode. Shinji has been summoned to a rendezvous in a deserted town. Suddenly he sees Rei standing near him... bear in mind, Shinji has never met Rei before and should have no idea what she looks like. Just as suddenly and inexplicably, Rei vanishes. Then giant aliens, fighter planes, fast cars, dangerous women, and all the other paraphernalia of Eva-as-we-know-it come crashing into frame. Everything that happens from them on is a delusion created by the collective consciousness to psychologically wear him down to the point of accepting Instrumentality. It takes them a lot longer than the other cases shown (26 episodes, versus a few seconds on average), but even the other characters had to admit that Shinji was an expert at rejecting people.
The entire series takes place during Instrumentality
An alternate take of the above: Shinji is too late arriving at Tokyo-3. In the opening of the first episode, the shockwave that rocks the city is not from explosives, but from Sachiel (who is actually the only Adam-based life that exists in the real world) making psychic contact with and activating Lilith, thus initiating Third Impact. Vaguely supported by the appearance of soul-collecting Rei. Humanity doesn't realize this, and their combined delusion of continuing their lives forces Instrumentality to create an illusory world for all the souls within it. Only objects with a psychic presence (id est, an AT Field and therefore a soul) are given a non-illusory or functional form within this Intrumentality; thus, in this world human weapons are utterly ineffective against the Angels, whilst the Evas, which have souls, easily dispatch them. Shinji slowly goes mad as he realizes that he can See the Code, so to speak; in-series "Instrumentality" occurs when he becomes "the One," takes control of Instrumentality through Rei and Unit 01, and breaks down the illusion for everyone. Both EOTV and EOE are valid endings, with the two conflicting desires in Shinji — to live in the real world he doesn't know, potentially ruined beyond recognition, or to continue life as the god of his own illusory world — causing him to split into two distinct personalities. The personality split may occur after his reappearance on "real" Earth, with Rei appearing once more to collect the unwilling portion and close the metaphorical book.
An unknown amount of Evangelion takes place during instrumentality
It could start at the first five minutes, it could have been going on since before the start of the series, or possibly it actually occurs during EoE. Either way, Shinji is then stuck in a Groundhog Day situation wherein he is given an unlimited number of tries to accept himself. When he fails, the world Which makes the last broadcast episode the last point possible in the story of Evangelion chronologically (as long as the world isn't perfect/near perfect).
The last two episodes are an examination of what Shinji thinks when he listens to the SDAT tape.
If you look closely, the tape is marked "Program 25 and Program 26". It's made reasonably clear that the tape and its contents are what, essentially keeps him going; without it he has nothing to make him feel better, nothing to rely on. Considering the last two episodes are the characters essentially re-affirming his existence, working as a "Good End" to the series, this makes perfect sense.
The album playing on Shinji's SDAT player is Pink Floyd's The Wall.
If any album could serve as a metaphor/soundtrack for Shinji's life, this would be it. Not only that, but The Wall has 26 tracks, just like the music on the SDAT player. The continual moving back and forth between track 25 ('The Trial') and track 26 ('Outside the Wall') represents Shinji's wavering back and forth between feeling judged and desiring escape.
Shinji is in Hell.
Take a moment and ask yourself what hell is like if you're an obsessed mecha otaku. It probably resembles Evangelion just a little: NGE is everything you would not want giant robots to be.
Shinji is in Ironic Hell, and he's there for being a rapist, murderer, and heretic in life
Think about it. What are the worst things Shinji does during the series? He falls on Rei and accidentally gropes her while being attracted to her, with the expected slap coming long after the fact over something apparently unrelated; it's possibly symbolic of the delayed punishment for misdeeds during life a soul experiences in Hell after death. Then there's the... incident... with Asuka in End Of Evangelion; her reaction, too, is long delayed. As for the murder, there's the horror as he is shunted out of the driver's seat and forced to watch while his Eva rips apart one that turns out to contained his friend Touji, and his being forced to kill Kaworu.
The blasphemy? It's his job to kill angels. Anvilicious enough for ya?
Shinji is the Antichrist and the inverse of Jesus.
Think about it. Jesus sacrificed his life so that the sins of man are forgiven. Everyone died for Shinji's sins, which include Cowardice and at least one instance of the each of the Seven Sins. The Antichrist is foretold to unite the world against God. Shinji united every soul in the world during Instrumentality; what more can you do to spit in the face of God than to tamper with Creation?
The Eva Units are made using technology from Cybertron.
Well, think about it. What other planet has robots that unquestionably are alive? Plus, the synchronization with the pilots and the Rei clones in the Dummy Plug system bears an eerie resemblance to the binary bonding of the Powermasters, Targetmasters, and especially Headmasters. .
Since they can't create sparks for the Evas, it makes sense that NERV might try to use mankind's closest equivalent (human souls) as a substitute.
The so-called Alternate Universe sequence in episode 26 is real and is the near future of former NERV members.
With the Angels done and the Evangelions now redundant, NERV was disbanded. The interactions in episode 25 allowed Shinji, Rei, Asuka and Misato to better understand each other and come to terms with their quirks — most notably Shinji, who realized that being an Eva pilot is not the only possible future for him. This probably involved some memory wipes to remove the horrid memories that resulted in them growing so messed up in the first place. As for the movie? Naaaah, no thank you, not today! Also, some people come back to life.
Everything in the show is a dream of Pen-Pen the penguin, who is God.
He's so conspicuous and out of place in the storyline that there must be some greater reason for his existence. In addition, the whole world seems to be designed for his comfort, and he's the only member of the cast who is not screwed up.
Pen Pen was trying to prevent third impact
Cute animal mascot in what ended up bieng a very dark and mindscrewing series? Pen Pen was actually trying to lighten things up and help everyone keep things together so that they would be in better shape mentally and stop Seele's plans (Penguins don't like for the oceans to be full of tang). Sadly Misato sent him away at a critical juncture, and screwed it up.
The entire series is inspired by the infamous Game 11982 of Freecell.
Those who play a lot of Freecell will understand the joy in how the field slowly progresses from chaos to order with each deliberate move, ultimately reaching the point where all the loose ends simply fall into place (so simply that most versions do it for you). Just like a typical action series. Now, Windows users set up that particular game, or any reader deal it out and play it yourself. If you had tried that, over and over again, before it became public knowledge that not all Freecell games are winnable, wouldn't you have written something like Neon Genesis Evangelion?
 ◊Third Impact didn't last long.
If the last two episodes are any indication of what Third Impact is like for those reduced to LCL (and what else could it be?), then it would make sense that humanity might come back relatively soon after Third Impact. If the movie went on a bit longer, it might have had a happy ending.
SEELE is The Illuminati or a parody of the Elders of Zion.
Think about it. A cabal of old men with hooked noses running the UN, plotting the fate of humanity on their own, and using something that seems suspiciously like Jewish Kabbalistic magic. The only way they could have made it any more obvious would have been to make them all bankers.
The weird katakana spelling of "Evangelion" in Rebuild (Wevangeriwon) is a reference to Weta Workshop, which is co-producing the live action movie.
Proposed here (Russian language), but it makes enough sense to be added here.
Evangelion is set in an Alternate History where the Axis won World War 2.
Think about it... not only does Japan appear to be a military superpower, but all the most influential organizations have German names.
Germany runs the organizations that run the world for most of the series.
In Real Life, the EU is basically run by Germany, France, and Britain. The Second Impact clearly caused a massive rise in sea levels; since Germany has less coastline than Britain or France, it would have been the least affected of the Big Three and hence would have emerged as overall leader of Europe. This would have given the secret societies within the German government the opportunity they needed to advance their master plan.
SEELE was founded by Van Hohenheim.
At the end of Fullmetal Alchemist, Hohenheim is shown as a member of the Thule Gesellschaft, a German mystical organization to which all the top Nazis belonged. This group was heavily interested in occult, alchemical, masonic, and religious matters.
Hohenheim was an alchemist during his life. In Real Life, the ultimate goal of alchemy is to purify the human form and essentially become God. Fuyutski remarks in End of Evangelion that Shinji has become God.
Now, consider that SEELE is a German organization interested in many of the same matters as the Thule Gelleschcraft. Their attempts to advance humanity to the next level are analogous to the alchemical goal of purifying the human form. The rational theory is that Hohenheim's research eventually led to a great alchemical work which was carried out on Adam after his location was derived from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Furthermore, this suggests that the angels' and EVAs' cores are Philosopher's Stones, made using the souls of their pilots' mothers and possibly those of Adam and Lilith.
The last two episodes and End of Evangelion are all parts of the same ending.
Specifically, they fit in the spot where Rei/Lillith is turning the world into soul-juice. The last two episodes are said to be Instrumentality from Shinji's POV. We see a bit of Instrumentality from Shinji's POV in EoE. The bit in EoE is part before the soul-juicing and part after. Afterward, Shinji has totally changed his view on Instrumentality in apparently not more then an hour. Makes as much sense as any other theory here to fit the last two episodes into that hour.
Rebuild of Evangelion is a Sequel!
Quite a few people who have seen the first movie believe in this theory, since the first movie released has such things like the entire sea being red, like in ''End of Evangelion. There is also the final scene of the movie; although the exact translation is heavily debated, it is accepted that Kaworu says, "Number Three again, huh? You never change. I will enjoy meeting you Ikari Shinji." Some have rendered the last sentence as "I will enjoy meeting you again, Ikari Shinji-kun." It is heavily debated though, and the mechanisms of the sequel range from reincarnation to the "Glitched reset button idea".
Shinji Ikari is the unknown Third Angel of the movie trilogy, and the new "Glasses Girl" character (Mari) is his daughter from the future .
The series is based on Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth" Shinji as Wang Lung, Rei as O-lan, Asuka as Lotus. Shinji is struggling between one morality, outlook, course of action and another entirely, just as there is the struggle between riches and materialism and the land and basic humanity in "The Good Earth".
During his brief period as "God" in EoE, Shinji created a large or infinite number of Alternate Universes.
This is the central premise of a certain popular Doujinshi, and accounts for Evangelion's numerous Elseworlds such as Angelic Days, the Shinji Ikari Raising Project, the manga, and the Super Robot Wars Alpha and Super Robot Wars MX games. These alternate continuities are almost universally Lighter and Softer, or at least cast Shinji in a better light: this is a result of Shinji's desire to avoid this whole mess or make himself feel better.
Maya is Shinji's half-sister, the result of an affair Gendo had before marrying Yui.
This would explain why she bears such a strong physical resemblance to Shinji.
Instrumentality failed miserably.
Somebody in NERV, I don't know, Misato or somebody, took control of the process from Gendo and initiated Instrumentality, only giving everybody a free choice involving introspection of the sort that Shinji had. Knowing exactly what Instrumentaliy would entail, the entire planet rejected it. EoE is an Elseworld, like Angelic Days or the Shinji Ikari Raising Project. Remember the "goodbye my mother" title card. Shinji did reject Instrumentality in End of TV. Otherwise there was no need for him to say that.
Third Impact was, for the most part, reversed.
Yui said that anybody with the proper sense of themselves could come back. Well, as it turns out, that's most people on Earth, though probably not Rei, Gendo and the SEELE Dudes. For all we know, Misato and Pen Pen could be just a few miles across the LCL Bay from Shinji and Asuka by the end of the movie.
Ritsuko does reciprocate Maya's love.
She's just too screwed-up to realize it. It sort-of comes out when they're fighting the computer virus angel.
(Insert Here) resulted in (Insert Here) a.k.a. Infinitely Huge WMG Dart Board
The truth of the matter is that, due to the show's widely interpretive style, Evangelion may theoretically have an infinitely huge dart board capable of accommodating an infinite number of Wild Mass Guess darts thrown at it.
The red water in Rebuild is a consequence of Second Impact.
In the TV series, the ocean is shown similarly red where Antarctica once was. It isn't red around Tokyo 3 in the TV series because this stylistic idea didn't occur to them at that point, but they implemented it in the movies?
The god-like-warrior in Nausicaa is a Jet Alone.
Jet Alones are an independantly operating giant machine with a nuclear power source. God-Like-Warriors shown in Naussica are similar to this. Especialy since we see that god-like-warriors poison the environment in a way similar to nuclear power.
Why Gendo made sure that Shinji had no photos of mother Yui.
This was done for two main reasons:
Kaworu was cloned from Misato's father.
The show is actually a testament to the power of Metal.
I mean, think about it. If Shinji had been a metalhead, don't you think the show would have turned out somewhat differently. Instead of "I musn't be afraid", it'll be "I must ROCK!". And what better power to fight Angels with than something that comes from Hell.
Going with the Above, Rock and Rule comes after Evangelion.
A post-apocalyptic world with no humans, only near human creatures, where the power of rock reigns supreme?
Also going with the above, Shinji (and by extension, the other pilots) was actually a failed project, and the EVAs were a desperate backup-plan.
His upbringing and experiences were engineered, not to make him a neurotic, wangsty Mecha pilot, but rather, to make him neurotic and outright psychotic enough to form and lead the Evangelion version of Deathklok.
And Now For Something Completely Different: The entire show takes place in the Lotus-Eater Machine at the end of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
... But not in the way you were expecting. It's not in the generation shown on the show, for it is noted that the AntiSpirals did this before, and there were other people trapped forever, you see — Shinji is actually trapped in the Alternate Universes, things started out Normal, how the kid always wanted to live, not having to risk his life for others, but then, because it is apparent that true Lotus Eater Machines have conflict to give just the right amount of meaning to their victims' lives, the events of NGE occur.
Eva 01 is actually Lilith.
At the end of EoE, we see Eva 01 drifting off into space to be a "messenger" of sorts for humanity. It crashes on another lifeless planet, outputting its "recording" of Earth in the form of LCL (A.K.A primordial ooze/soup) and millions of years later is discovered by the humans of that time, and is mistaken for "Adam" (which is actually part of the decaying Rei/Lilith hybrid). This event of Eva 01 crashing into the planet is considered "First Impact".
In a reverse of most theories, Neon Genesis Evangelion occurs in the Warhammer 40K universe!
No, not those. This is totally inspired by ultima+ exterminatus this 4chan thread. It makes an awful lot of sense though, especially if the Angels are simply Greater Demons of Chaos...
NGE takes place in this world...
...after the Scientologists succeeded in destroying all "psychs" (psychologists and psychiatrists, not psychics) with a well-placed "meteor strike" at a world psychiatry convention, hence why There Are No Therapists in the future.
NGE takes place on the world Dr. Manhattan intended to create after he left earth for good.
It's a lot more complicated then he thought it'd be, and strangely it contains quite a few similar characters: An emotionless artificial god (or gods, if need be) who ends up becoming a world destroying/creating naked giant, a brilliant Magnificent Bastard who helps cause world peace by eliminating a large chunk of humanity, a woman pushed by and rebelling against memories of her mother, a DNA Frankenstein's monster of a pet, and scores of people who were unwittingly aiding in the end of the world.... (Note: This troper has no idea if the creator of NGE ever read Watchmen; if he did that's cool; if not that's crazy, because the similarities are odd. Alternatively, has Allan Moore seen NGE?)
NGE takes place on the normal Earth of Watchmen
Alternative to the above. Without Dr. Manhattan the US failed to remain a super power and when the USSR fell apart in the late 80s/early 90s Japan arose as the world's new Military power. The Angels are just attempts by Ozy to keep the world peace brought on by the Squid that killed half of New York. After discovering the First Angel Adam, he lets it loose too early and causes the Second Impact on incident in which he himself perishes. The other Angels have either broke out of their confines on their own or have been released by SEELE.
The "First Earth" from Battlestar Galactica is NGE-Earth thousands of years later
How Did We Miss This One? Anyway, enough people managed to separate from Mega-Rei (who went on to "seed" the colonies with humans and animals) to repopulate the planet using NERV's technology. The Colonies' gods are Rei's memories of her human friends and otherworldly enemies while the Cylon's god is a gender-shifted Rei (Rei = Dei = Deus = Zeus(?)). Either that or a variation of the first Watchmen theory: Dr. Manhattan's world's creation Rei tries to create her own world; Earth Shattering KaBooms, deconstructed archetypes, and fucked-up love affairs ensue (apparently things would be worse if the blond Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter and the Aloof Dark Haired Lady of War were actually lovers; the Well Done Son Guy and Well Done Daughter Gal get off comparatively easy (which is to say they survive ...ish).
Son of a Witch takes place in Instrumentality
(note: horrifically superficial)
Rei and Dr. Manhattan are the "parents" of all Deconstructor Fleet universes
And of course the conception and births are pure Nightmare Fuel.
The Evangelions each contain the soul of their pilot's mother.
True. Or possibly False. Some signs point to only Eva 01 having a soul, others point to the rest getting in on the soul action.
The Evangelions DON'T contain the soul of their pilot's mother.
They are Eve, the biblical mother of all humanity. The link to the pilot works by the love between mother and child, so the Eva serves as a surrogate mother. This works best if the person in question needs a surrogate; in other words, a child whose mother is dead! Anyone piloting an Eva would sense their mother's presence, but only a motherless child would need that presence badly enough to fully accept it and achieve a useful synch ratio.
The Evangelions contain their own souls, which have imprinted upon the souls of their absorbed test subjects
Compromise! But really: the Evas are independent, sentient beings that are influenced by the souls they have consumed.
The Evangelions can't be piloted unless they have absorbed a soul. However, they can get by with only absorbing PART of a soul
Shinji's unit contained his mother's full soul. Asuka's unit contained the "maternal" part of her mother's soul. The rest of her mother's soul remained within her mother's body after the contact experiment with Asuka's Eva unit, but since the maternal part of her soul was missing, Asuka's mother refused to recognize and bond with her daughter. Then she went mad and committed suicide. Rei's unit contained a piece of the Lilith Soul that was within Rei. Since Rei had no mother (and since the Eva unit—indeed ANY cloned body in the Evangelion universe—can only move with the aid of a soul,) they had to engineer a workaround solution. The part of the Lilith soul that was placed into the Eva unit contained Rei's emotions—and as a result Rei 2 was largely unemotional throughout her life. When Rei 2 and her Eva unit were destroyed, Rei 3 inherited the part of the soul that was within Rei 2 AND she inherited the emotional part of Lilith's soul that was in within Rei's Eva unit. This is the reason that Rei 3 seems a bit more emotional than her predecessor. She now has Lilith's full soul within her.
SEELE is led not by Keel Lorenz, but run behind the scenes by...
Seal. Because it would just be hilarious.
Shinji isn't a maladjusted human
He's a Dwarf. From Dwarf Fortress. Which would actually make him rather sane, by those standards. He's moody and when he gets unhappy enough, he tantrums.
Angelic Days is the 'real world. The regular Evangelion is actually a fanfiction written by Rei, disgruntled after being dumped by Shinji.
The entire series is a fantasy of Mesousa.
Many other entries theorise that their series are Shinji's fantasies, but think about it: For Mesousa, Shinji's life would be a definite improvement over his own.
AT Fields are actually souls and the EVA's souls can act as shields due to their massive energy input
Oh wait, that's true.
Rei Ayanami is actually a clone of Shinji's mother, Yui.
Oh, wait — that was true.
Rei Ayanami is NOT the clone of Shinji's mother .
Rei was actually an unrelated human drawn from Lilith using genetic engineering, and was then molded by Gendo in Yui's own image. Which makes Lilith the biblical Adam and Rei the biblical Eve. This might be Jossed, but This Troper was simply concerned of the Rei / Shinji fan pairings, and the canonical fact that Rei is Shinji's mother will give lots and lots and lots of Squick.......
The Angels are an alternately-evolved form of Man.
Oops, that was true, too.
Gendo Ikari is double-crossing NERV and SEELE (who are also double-crossing NERV) to further his own agenda — to resurrect his dead wife.
Um... yeah, true.
The MAGI computer trio is Ritsuko's mother.
True.
The entire series is Shinji's dream. The only "real" part is the "normal world" in episode 25.
True — in at least one Alternate Continuity now being published in Japan.
Shinji wrote the scenario of Evangelion based on his dreams.
The dream was so impressive, he thought it would make the greatest horror story ever. It went horribly right.
The Angels are all female, including Kaworu.
From a biological standpoint, female — having an XX chromosome — is the default sex. This is why asexual animals like worker ants and bees are considered female despite having no need for procreation. All animals are built on a female template, with males (XY) being a necessary deviation from that to facillitate reproduction (and males still have vestigal female traits, such as nipples). Thus it stands to reason that the Angels, being an asexual species, are all female as they have no need for males — including Adam, despite having a male name. Kaworu is biologically male, his body (I say "his" because that's what's used in the text) apparently being a clone of some unnamed Japanese man in the same way Rei is a clone of Yui Ikari, but his "soul"/psychic imprint/whatever is Adam's, and Adam is female. Thus it's possible that while Kaworu has the physical traits of a male human, "he" views himself as female.
Pen-Pen is actually a fusion of the soul of Misato's father with a random penguin, caused by the energies of Second Impact.
What? It makes just about as much sense as half the canon stuff.
The Rei clones faked their deaths, changed their faces and hair, and got work in other anime.
Since Rei was such a popular character, it would have been easy for them to find work with how popular a character type Rei became.
Kaworu has ascended to self-awareness of the plot
In rebirth he is able to appear to Gendo along with Rei and Yui. In the "remake"/"Sequel" it is debated if he is aware he has met Shinji before. I am stuck on how much he can do about it, but think about it...
Shinji's Three Love Interests are an Intentional Corruption of the Maiden/Mother/Crone dynamic
Misato is the crone, skewed in that though she is still young and beautiful, she believes herself to be Christmas Cake... an old maid convinced that her married friends have passed her by, despite all evidence to the contrary. Asuka plays the traditional role of the maiden to Shinji, while at the same time being as truly NOT maiden-like as possible. Rei is positioned as the mother, a relationship position whose skewing should be obvious.
After Instrumentality, Pen-Pen becomes a god after feeding upon LCL and fighting the last two living Humans to the death.
Because Pen-Pen is awesome. And Evangelion Is Better With Pen-Pen. And whoever kills the last angel gets All Their Powers Combined. Alternately, Pen-pen already is god, because becoming a god after Instrumentality was retroactive, and Instrumentality had to happen for Pen-Pen to become a god. Which he already was. So it did and he did.
Gendo abandoned Shinji as a Take That to Yui choosing to be adsorbed into Eva 01
While it is true that Gendo is so fixated on Yui that he cannot cope without her in his life, a part of Gendo resents Yui for leaving him the way she did and as a Take That in the form of an eye for an eye by abandoning Shinji.
Third Impact was an attempt by God to get rid of the Human race and replace them with his true chosen race
The Penguins.
Digimon Seasons 1 and 2 are a TV show in the EVA world.
Agumon's upper digivolutions look like EVA, and the light-hearted message of banding together with your friends, some of whom look weird and have self-esteem issues, to fight scary, evil monsters is meant to help the general public accept the existence of the EV As and NERV (someone's gonna ask where those big robot-things come from, right?) as part of the battle for good. Gendo is a fan of the Digimon Emperor, who he emulates by wearing glove and acting like a BAMF.
Asuka has Bipolar Disorder, specifically Bipolar-II
When we first meet her, she's on top of the world, better than everyone, and can do anything. She acts rashly and without thinking about the consequences, which is more or less the symptoms of hypomania (Hypomania = Lesser form of full-blown mania). At her lowest, she has the classic symptoms of depression. While she did indeed have a screwed up childhood, and what she suffered would mess anyone up, her shifts in overall mood are just so incredibly drastic that being Bipolar would just explain a whole lot. It's a pity that There Are No Psychatrists in Evangelion.
Neon Feminist Evangelion!
NGE is fundamentally a feminist work from a male perspective. It explores women's spiritual, familial, and societal roles, as well as typical personal dilemmas they must face. Many of the male characters, including the protagonist and his Magnificent Bastard father, are largely dependent on their relationships with women (Especially the protagonist and the Bastard, see also Oedipus Complex). The females are often defined by the conflicts that they, as women, encounter (Particular examples are Asuka, Misato and Ritsuko).
Evangelion is about learning to drive
Seriously, think about it:
Shinji's class is made up of any child who had a parent die anywhere near an Evangelion.
From scientist mums whose souls were sucked inside Evas to contractor dads who tripped over and broke their necks while walking through the NERV building. We know that Shinji's classmates are all potential Eva pilots, but there's a difference between being a potential pilot and actually being able to pilot it. SEELE knew the parent-soul-thing worked with Asuka and Shinji, but didn't know how it happened and decided to leave a large margin for error.
:I'm pretty sure this one's true. Kensuke and Hikari don't have mothers either, I think.
After witnessing the death of his mother, Shinji suffered a mental breakdown. The media spectacle of a meteorite impact in Antarctica served as the focus for the creation of a new world to escape to. Which means:
When the Evas go into berserker mode, they instinctively manifest their AT Fields to the contours of their bodies.
That's the only reason I can think of to explain why Zeruel's razor ribbons failed to cut through EVA-01's fingers. In addition, it's the reason why the 3rd angel's suicide explosion didn't do diddly squat. 4th angel in rebuild. . .
The separate continuities are all part of an unstable time loop.
The alternate universe was the original universe. As seen in the main series, this world is a fairly perfect version of the NGE world. When the angels came to that world, it was much more of a shock and most of the cast were killed due to the absence of the EV As. At that point, Shinji became god, (like in EoE) rebooted reality, and hoped for the best. This produced the universe seen in the anime. Shinji is so depressed partly due to the fact that he subconsciously realizes that he's only made the world worse. This world progresses to EoE and he gets the power to reboot reality once again. Attempting to stabilize the loop, he takes the opportunity, causing Rebuild of Evangelion. The other continuities can easily be contained within this theory as separate steps within Shinji's time altering operation. RahXephon or Petit Eva are ideal timelines in Shinji's mind.
In Rebuild, Mari and Asuka are also (modified) clones of Yui.
If you've been keeping up with the Rebuild spoilers, you'll know by now that Asuka attempts to pilot EVA-03 before it goes haywire, and Mari successfully pilots EVA-02. The general consensus seems to be that the "EVA only works if the soul contained within it is the pilot's mother" rule has been changed.
THIS IS A LIE.
First I'll go into an earlier theory I had before this information came to light. As you may know, most Eva characters are named after World War 2 warships. Rei Ayanami, Mari Makinami and Asuka (Sohryu in the original, Shikinami in Rebuild) are no exception. See a pattern with the Rebuild names? Ayanami, Makinami, Shikinami. Here's the thing, though. While all three of those were indeed ships in the Imperial Navy in WW 2, the interesting part comes later, after they were decommissioned. In the late fifties and early sixties, the JMSDF commissioned a new Ayanami, Shikinami, and Makinami (among several others).
All of them are considered Ayanami-class destroyers.
Now, assuming this is intentional and not just me reading WAY too deeply into Anno or whoever's ship-otaku-ness, this could be a hint that Rebuild Asuka and Mari are based on the same "template" as Rei—in other words that they are ALSO clones of Yui. Rei was presumably considered a failure due to lack of aggressiveness. So they modified the genetic template to compensate, and came up with Asuka. Except they overcompensated, and ended up with an egotistical borderline psychopath. Mari is the third attempt, and most successful so far—fairly normal when she needs to be, but goes just as batshit (if not more so) as Asuka in combat.
Now, since every EVA pilot (except Shinji) is a modified clone of Yui Ikari and therefore, in a sense, her "daughter", NERV does not have to match each EVA to a single pilot. They can simply use a copy or piece of Yui's soul in every single EVA, making them much easier to mass produce.
When we see the Reiquarium in 3.0 or Final, it ain't gonna be the Reiquarium. More likely the Mariquarium.
Mari is the Eva-verse's version of Hayato Jin of Getter Robo fame
Her Evangelion has a claw-arm and a drill-esque weapon, much like Getter Two, and her love of battle and intelligence both are reminiscent of Hayato. She also does a good batshit insane berserker thing.
Rei Ayanami is a ghola.
She was grown in a creepy tank from Yui's salvaged remains, according to The Other Wiki, comes out a bit of a blank slate yet with motherly nuances, and every time she gets killed, there's a new copy waiting down below. There, I said it.
Rebuild-Shinji is the Eva-verse's Kouji Kabuto
He fights for those he loves, demonstrated when his decision to pilot Eva 01 again was when Rei got eaten by Zeruel, and then somehow figuring out a way to extract her from said Angel. He will never give up, as shown in his getting pissed off enough to force Eva 01 to work without power and an S2 Engine, no 'whah mommy halp', it's all Shinji. And the most convincing evidence: He made Eva 01 do an AT Field-based Rocket Punch and then gained the power to become either a God or Devil.
Now for one to piss off half the fanbase: Evangelions have no physical gender.
"No physical gender" here is defined as 'Does not have genitals', XX chromosomes and maternal souls aren't the topic here.
Evangelions are copies of either Adam or Lilith, and share more in common with Angels than humans. We know that Adam and Lilith did not give birth to the Angels and Humanity respectively through 'conventional' means, as the legs sticking out of Lilith suggest that the first humans were originally produced by something not unlike budding. Adam's means of propagating angels was probably something vaguely similar. (freezeframes in the Director's Cut also suggests that Eva 01 was 'pulled' out of Lilith and not made from an embryo as per common fanon) Adam and Lilith were also meant to propagate lifeforms by themselves, which requires an asexual form of reproduction/spawning/whatever; therefore sex is not necessary, ergo no true gender.
The Evangelions are NERV's attempts at making more beings like Adam and Lilith and/or the Angels, it would be logical that they share many of the same properties.
As for Lilith's 'menstrual LCL' ...that's probably just Anno throwing in yet another one of those psychosexual things he so loves, like Eva 02 having vagina eyes in End of Evangelion. (I'm not joking)
The AT Field cannot account for all of the phenomena surrounding Evas and Angels
Somewhere along the line, Eva fandom got this weird idea that the AT Field could do anything it ever wanted forever and ever and ever, amen. With such gems as: "AT Fields can make things fly, it can make things explode, it can conduct electricity", and the strangest so far: "AT Fields can work like glue". I blame Kaworu and his cryptic lines about souls and lights and whatever. It's fully possible that the AT Field's sole purpose is being just that, a forcefield of some manner, and that many of the unique abilities of the Angels and Evas are caused by other properties.
Rebuild of Evangelion is a Reconstruction
Thus far it is a more accesible version of the series with the charecters bieng in better shape emotionally. Evangelion is pretty well known for bieng a deconstruction of the Mecha genre, so in some ways it would be fitting if a remake of a deconstruction is a reconstruction. After all how do you deconstruct a deconstruction?
The Angels are Greater Daemons of Chaos
Massive, otherworldly monsters inextricably linked to the human psyche, with forms and abilities in blatant defiance of physics, are at best mildly inconvenienced by standard weaponry, can only be truly damaged or defeated by weapons of a similar nature to them, inspire fear and foreboding by their very presence and seek to destroy everything. The AT-Fields represent either their daemonic nature, shielding them from anything not of the Immaterium, or as the link allowing them to exist in the Materium, which when breached allows them to be "killed". What is referred to as Adam and Lilith are merely the remains of two Greater Daemons from before human civilisation and the storyline is the result of humans attempting to use their powers, which obviously goes balls up for everyone involved (as is the nature of Chaos).
Shamsel (a GIANT FLYING PENIS) and Arael are Slaaneshi. The ones with the most destructive and unsubtle capabilities, Sahaquiel and Zeruel, are obviously Khornate. Bardiel and Armisael, both of whom infect and corrupt an Evangelion, are creatures of Nurgle. Iruel and Tabris are Tzeentchian, the former almost pure mutation and the latter heavy on the subterfuge, also being essential for Shinji crossing the Despair Event Horizon (which was Just As Planned). Which deity the others serve is less certain.
Kaworu is a Time Diver like Ingram and Corbay, he is the same one in each continuity
This is why he said 'The third again' at the end of Rebuild, Just like Ingram asked Ryusei if it was 'that time again?' during the final battle of Alpha Kaworu is aware that this is a new universe. The Kaworu in SRW 4/F/F Final, Alpha, MX, Angelic Days, Raising Project, ALL OF THEM are the same Kaworu who has the same memories.
He only brings up old memories when he realizes the world is moving differently (Read: Rebuild)
Pen-Pen was found at Adam's dig site.
Misato took him in after NERV got bored of keeping him under surveillance in case he did something interesting.
Bookend-Reis = "God" = Instrumentality Reis
For this, we need to assume two things: First, "God" is the alpha and omega. That's the reason for why Rei appears at the beginning at the end. Rei in herself isn't God, but during Eo E gains the divine powers via the Lilith/Adam-fusion to make Shinji's (and NOT Gendo's) wish come true (a world without people to hurt him and his beloved. There have been speculations about that last Asuka actually being a Asuka/Rei/Misato mix). During that time, a number of Reis harvested the souls of people. They could transform into their beloved (most likely a reference to near-dead-experiences which speak of a light and a pure feeling of love), but most of the time we see Reis in their school uniforms - the same Shinji sees in the beginning in the end. Also, there was "one Rei for everyone" (that sounds so weird), even in a view of a floor full of dead and now Tang'd people ther's one Rei standing beside every puddle. I think this could be a reference to another belief, that God is "too big to fit into one religion" and that he/she/it is within all of us. So maybe Shinji was twice able to see "his" God. Because he's the chosen one or something.
Rebuild takes place after End of Evangelion
The blood on the moon might still be there because of Third Impact (remember that blood fountain when GNR died?), Kaworu uttered something along "The Third again, huh?" (in my version at ~1:32), which might be referring to Shinji as the Third Child who will be once again in the middle of prophecy. Image this with me together: After Third Impact, Eo E style, the world began from zero again. We know there are some chances because the LCL puddle could still spawn people together. We don't know what happened to Shinji and Asuka after Third Impact, maybe they died because there's no food around, maybe they joined the LCL - the primeval soup from which new life will spawn.
Imagine the world is going through the almost the same (/similar) destiny and process again and again and is reset again and again when Shinji gets his impact-wish-fulfillment (remember, Keel/Kiel said the beginning was the same as the end or something like that). My guess is Seele knows this and tries to change history in their favor now. Kaworu also seems to know such things, maybe he gave them some info.
Maybe Anno's message this time is that everything we need to be happy is already in our lifes, we just need to find it. And Shinji may need to relive his life some times before he realizes that. On the other hand, maybe Haruhi's Endless Eight left brain damage on me.
Also, for maximum symbolism, I hereby say the world's resurrection started 3 days after it's end!
Makinami Mari Illustrious is actually Adam.
Before we get to the main WMG, let's look at the Angel battles in '2.0 You can (not) advance.':
Also, look closely at her plugsuits... both of them. They both have a small red ball in the middle of her chest. It looks too much like a Core to be a coincidence. Only one other Eva pilot in the Rebuild continuity has a "Core-ball" in the middle of their plugsuit's chest: Nagisa Kaworu, pilot of Evangelion Mark.06, who we already can assume is an Angel, given that he was able to breathe on the Moon.
Kaworu traveled to the Rebuild Universe from the EOE universe after his "death".
Angels are not actually "alternate evolutions" of humans themselves, but their representatives
It makes no sense for creatures so large like the angels to become the dominant species — the earth doesn't have enough resources to support creatures that large and they don't look like anything seen on Earth. However, they are a similar size to the Evas, and many are similarly styled and shaped.
While the Evas were made in man's image and therefore look like stylized versions of humans, the Angels were built from their respective species' images, and therefore represent stylized traits of their respective species. This would also explain why the Angels seem to end up by Tokyo-3 — that's a space where these representatives can come from their respective dimensions to fight. It's not so unbelievable that some of these Angels would have pilots, too, and that NERV and SEELE were concealing their existences from the pilots because knowing that they were fighting and killing intelligent beings would discourage them from fighting.
For example:
Our guess is as good as yours.
Yes, this means all our crazy theories are correct.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Doritos are perishable goods
In 'Neon Genesis Evangelion: Rebuild', when Shinji first moves in with Misato, he inspects her kitchen. He pulls out three drawers, one containing ice, one containing snacks (Doritos), and one containing beer. The 'snack' drawer is pulled out in between the ice and beer drawers which are implied to be refrigerated, so the drawer holding the Doritos is most likely also refrigerated. Why else would Misato put Doritos in the refrigerator if they weren't perishable? They may not be perishable now, but perhaps after Second Impact, the types of preservatives Doritos use may be difficult to afford, so Doritos in Evangelion are a perishable good.
Rei/Mari/Kaworu will have a Pen Pen encounter
Thus far in the Rebuild movies both Shinji and Asuka have had comical encounters with Pen-Pen in the bathroon. At some point in the remaining two movies, the joke will be continued in some way with the at least one of the remaining children.
AT Fields are real
Throughout the series AT Fields are described not as a shield for Humongous Mecha, but as the definition of our individuality. AT Fields also provide a good reason for our individuality and limited sensory perception (meaning the AT Fields are the reason why we have only 5 senses). If we never had an AT Field, then our perception should have been increased hundredfold, such as the the usage of telepathy and other psionic powers, the existence of Reality Warpers and the development of a Hive Mind. We simply forgot how to use it.
Rebuild-Kaworu is Ascended Ayato Kamina, here to undo Second Impact
Ayato has come to the Rebuild-Eva-Verse to 'retune' it properly and fix what Second Impact did, as he did with his homeworld. Eva 06 is 'built differently' than the rest, because it's just the RahXephon in Neon Genesis Evangelion was a plan used by Plato (or some other philosopher) to bring the philosophical-dialogues genre back to popular media
He got control of the World of Forms in some way..... and with it he transcended time and space....
Neon Genesis Evangelion is the distant past. Real Life is in fact an aftermath of Instrumentality that backfired; and the survivors of NERV recorded their experiences but was twisted into legend creating The Bible
Rei, at Instrumentality's climax, announced that everyone who had the heart to be individuals can return back to their original form. Unfortunately (for SEELE), Instrumentality failed, because people can only go together if they had the same ideas and identities. The survivors from NERV, such as Shinji, tried to record their experiences by creating The Bible, and rebuilt civilization, but without SEELE and the Angels, it was a less advanced society. Based on this Wild Mass Guess, Neon Genesis Evangelion happened during The Bible's alleged time of creation, 6000 B.C.
What Instrumentality's purpose is
You just happen to find three ancient artifacts called Adam, Lilith, and the Lance of Longinus, and these happens to be the three most powerful artifacts in the universe. They are originally seperated, but when merged together, they form the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the most powerful being in the universe and the source of all life. The Tree of Life is then merged with a clone of God named Rei Ayanami, and everybody turns into Tang. However, what does exactly happen to the human souls during Instrumentality? What is it's purpose?
Eighty percent of the series is Shinji suffering from long-term serotonin deficiency.
It was kicked into overdrive by piloting the EVAs. Results include being small, weak, pale, depression with an eventual (and extreme) rise in aggressiveness, religious experiences... He was strapped into a giant mecha, told to stab some "angels" and get along with a crazy German girl who was transferred to be a pilot, and eventually snapped, deciding that his friend was Jesus ( he was, but not ours) and after the end, going all homicidal at Asuka. It's likely inherited from his mother, Rei's just better at hiding the later symptoms (or they have less time in which to manifest, thanks to the Reiquarium, and the duplicate bodies inhabiting it).
The S2 Engine generates Spiral Energy.
Well, the organ is supposed to harness some sort of helical energy....
Neon Genesis Evangelion takes place before Norse Mythology
The fusion of Adam and Lilith (Muspelheim and Niflheim) basically killed off all life on the planet, allowing to bring forth a new creation story and a new myth altogether, while at the same time it brought forth the Giant Naked Rei, who was retconned as the first living thing, Ymir (who later became the building material for the Yggdrasil), while Eva-01 became the cow Audumbla. The cow Audhumbla licked on a salt stone. On the first day after this a man's hair appeared on the stone, on the second day a head and on the third day an entire man emerged from the stone. The man is Shinji Ikari, who emerged from the Instrumentality. Shinji got over his issues through the god powers he gained from the Instrumentality, and with Asuka he fathered Bor, the father of Odin, Vili and Ve. The rest of Norse Mythology (or Greek Mythology, or Egyptian Mythology, or The Bible, what-have-you) takes off from there. Not to mention the Proud Warrior Race Guy attitudes of the Norse could be inherited from Asuka herself, and the emergence of Shinji during the creation process basically resulted in the destruction of GNR / Ymir.
Neon Genesis Evangelion takes place after Norse Mythology
Shinji is the last survivor of Ragnarok (the war against the Angels), Lif. Asuka, the last woman, is Lifthrasir.
Everybody is Shinji in Purgatory, and Kaworu died for our sins.
It's addictive.
Lilith is in fact the Sophia from Gnosticism
And lilim/humans, the "materialistic" angels, are the Demiurge. The all-powerful Adam, on the other hand, is the Pleroma.
Angels, as they are portrayed in Evangelion, are Real
Because they are celestial beings, their true form is comparable to an Eldritch Abomination. Don't believe those people who keeps on saying angels are The Beautiful Elite.
In Rebuild of Evangelion, Eva-01 becomes Eva-08 .
REBUILD SPOILERS AHEAD.
This whole show was supposed to be a metaphorical warning from the future about Sonichu.
Asuka's Nerve Clips are permanently attached
As the Second child, she's got
EVAs are a deconstruction of Magical Girls.
They're slender females with an angelic/fetishistic nature that fight Freudian Horrors through dancing and (for the more powerful attacks) emotion (especially intimacy-related emotions). Since this is a Grim Dark series after all, the Fridge Horror behind being a Magical Girl is revealed, struggling against Eldritch Horrors with incomprehensible sorcery is not healthy for your own sanity and the welfare of your loved ones, you're going to end up mostly alone, and no matter what you do you are inevitably cursed in the end (and of course, how the Applied Phlebotinum uses the user's energy, ego barrier and emotions, most especially love, portrayed here as a tremendous source of Angst, makes magical girl magic a case of Powered by a Forsaken Child). EVA-01 can be a Tsundere, which tends to deconstruct or parody into Yandere. At the end of the series, the protagonist gains divine reality-warping power but instead chooses to be normal and gives hope for the rest of humanity. I had more, but I'll need to figure out if any of it was written down or saved somewhere, or if the Data Vampires ate it while I was trapped offline. And in case you think this is a joke WMG, it's not.
Humanity is just a stage in the life cycle of Gods
Inspired by Science Fiction: more specifically, by Arthur C. Clarke 's "Childhood's End" and Tiptree/Sheldon's "A momentary Taste of Being"
Angels are essentially sperm: Third Impact is essentially conception. Humanity merges into a unified mind which is a new God. Gods, in turn, seed the tree of life, which creates ever-new variants on Adam, Lilith and Eve which will make new worlds into seedbeds of consciousness. SEELE hoped to create a distorted Third Impact (their own "End of the World" Special) so that rather than humanity merging into a common mind, they will become the "core" of the new divine consciousness, esentially becoming a God while everyone else is reduced to just thoughts running around inside their head. (Keel probably planned to double-cross his partners at some point, once he no longer needs them). Sometimes the cycle fails, and the new "zygote" disintegrates back into its component parts, although in most cases it simply sheds a percentage of unfit elements. What happens to them is of no importance: it's job done, the "seedbed" (terrestrial ecosystem) will die off before long.
Kaworu, Kazuhiro Mitogawa from Ga-Rei Zero, Nagi Homura from Mai-Hi ME and Full Metal Panic!'s Leonard Testarossa are all the same person
There are a few reasons why I thought up this. First, at the behest of a friend, I watched Mai-Hi ME, and noticed Nagi, a white haired relatively bishonen boy. Kaworu comparisons were automatic. Again at the behest of said friend, I watched Ga-Rei Zero, and saw Mitogawa, a white-haired relatively bishonen boy. While thinking this over, Leonard Testarossa from FMP came into the mix. The only difference with him is that he's older. Now, these four have moe similarities than just appearance. A simple place to start is between the first two I compared: Kaworu to Nagi. First point? They have the same seiyuu. Yep, Akira Ishida voiced both Kaworu and Nagi, two remarkably similar characters. Both characters are quite the tricksters. Even though Kaworu did understand Shinji (at least from Shinji's perspective), his goal was pretty much to cause Third Impact by coercing Shinji into letting him get to Adam (but this gets messed up a bit). Simply put, he was manipulating Shinji. Keep that in mind, as it's very important to link these four characters. Now, let's move on to Nagi. He starts out as more of an observer type guy, albeit with a creepy air to him, most likely due to the visual similarities to Kaworu. Later, it's revealed that he was behind the Orphan attacks on the Academy, though admittedly, he is not entirely behind everything that goes on, which actually makes his identity as a manipulative trickster, despite his trickery being much less harmful than the other three in this WMG. He is also Really 700 Years Old (give or take), adding to the supernatural theme shared by all four. But, time to move onto perhaps the most evil of the four, Kazuhiro Mitogawa. This guy, nicknamed "Evil butterfly dude" by myself and some others, manages to place himself in situations where he can manipulate characters into being corrupted by their own hatred and dark desires. He, like the others, is quite enigmatic and does his work on the sidelines. Due to his manipulation, the main character, Yomi, kills her 'sister', who usurped her place as head of her adoptive family branch, and also critically wounds Yomi so that she has major temptation to accept his offer of dark power. Pretty important stuff. To add to the connection between Mai-Hi ME and this series, Ga-Rei Zero has a character named "Natsuki Kasuga" who appears in the first two episodes, rides a motorcycle, and has a similar appearance to Mai-Hi ME's Katsuki Kuga. It's pretty much a given that she's an expy, leading to other possible connections betweent Mai-Hi ME and Ga-Rei Zero. And unlike Kaworu and Nagi, Mitogawa has pretty much no shreads of goodness in him. Which leads nicely into Leonard Testarossa, who also happens to be a not very nice guy. To be honest, Leonard doesn't have as strong a connection to Kaworu as the other two. He could be seen as an adult version of the younger three. To keep with the somewhat supernatural nature of these characters, Leonard is a Whispered, having knowledge of powerful technology, much like his sister. He is a manipulative (yet definitely not Magnificent) bastard, though. And FMP can be loosely connected to Eva in that they're both non-standard Mecha series, giving each of these series a general connection to one another, some stronger than others. In the end, though, given this evidence, it's very likely that these four characters could be the same person, just hopping from 'Verse to 'Verse. If anything, this merits some closer attention, which I'll try to give it in the future. I'm totally on to something here, mark my words.
Neon Genesis Evangelion was created to be easy for its fans to think up crossovers
Take the WMG pages for example.
Shinji is the Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind
No, not just Shinji and Warhammer 40K. Why did Yui plan to grant Shinji a bright future, when it actually turns out to be one of the biggest Grim Dark Nightmare Fuel he ever experienced? Answer: it was to make him the God-Emperor of Mankind. The Sea of LCL / Instrumentalized Humanity evolves into the Warp. Shinji, being able to draw powers from LCL / Warp, became an immortal powerful psyker, and being the only surviving man, decides he can finally strip off his Butt Monkey tendencies and unify humanity (his descendants) as more of a Ubermensch this time, molding history form millenia and finally leading to the creation of the Imperium of Man. This of course would also make a good Freudian Excuse for the Imperium's actions. Alternatively, both Shinji And Warhammer 40k and Warhammer 40000 canon are Alternate Universes Shinji created during Instrumentality with him placing himself into the role of the possible God-Emperor.
All the characters are representations of Anno's mind.
Not so much a WMG as Anno stated Mia as being the sole exception to this, but what are they?
World after End become World Of Goo
Most peaple was changed to goo, rest rebuild civilisiation and create World of Goo Corporation. World start being less cynical and angsty , more cartoony and also some how mor realistic in case of phisic laws, but little Mind Srew remein
Instrumentality happened not because Shinji united with Rei, but because Gendo GENDOWNED Ritsuko near Adam and Lilith
Yes, since turning everybody into Tang takes a lot of initial force, and doing that near Applied Phlebotinum will result in the end of the world.
Humans themselves are an Evangelion to an unknown species, and there are in fact infinite Evangelions, nestled within each other.
Think about it: Evangelions can replicate near-human emotions and feeling, and are apparently biological in nature, like humans. Evas are also described as the actual "humans" in the series, NOT the humans (which are termed Lilim, or demons). Also, look closer to the AT Field: it seems to possess a layered structure, like an onion. In EOE, the Evangelion becomes assimilated to a Giant Naked Rei, which itself is a giant human. In instrumentality, when the humans became Tang, red dots break outside the humans and join the Giant Rei. If that's the case, then an Evangelion is a human, and the human itself is an Evangelion, possibly to another lifeform (the red dots), which itself is an Evangelion to another lifeform, and so on. The conclusion: In NGE, there are infinite humans nestled within each other. Instrumentality is simply the process of replacing the "useless" layers. The same can also apply to Angels. A better comparison might be a matryoshka doll.
It's all Haruhi Suzumiya's delusion.
Hey, who else has a WMG dart board as infinite as NGE?
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a sentient Meme.
Not only that it is a sentient Meme that is also an Eldritch Abomination determinded to take over the globe and then feast on humanity's collective sanity and leave us all in howling madness. Read this page and deny it doesn't make sense
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a literal God.
Like the above it is an Eldritch Abomination, but because it has lots of plot holes, it also achieved instrumentality for all fiction, uniting them all together and ascending to a higher plane of existence, becoming God and the moderator between different types of fiction, hence why the infinite WMG dart board
Shinji never escaped from Instrumentality
Him ending up with Asuka on the beach was an illusion. After all, Instrumentality is supposed to work and bring happiness to people by giving them exactly what they want.
There was a happy ending for Shinji, and everyone else.
Instrumentality hadn't ended after the death of the Lillith/Adam/Rei/Yui Angel, as the world hadn't returned to its original state. Therefore, the collective minds and souls were still combined. When Asuka said that Shinji was "disgusting", this leads to her mental harassment towards Shinji in Episode 26. During the "Congratulations!" sequence, the world is returning to normal, with Shinji's conflicted mind is at peace.
Shikinami and all -nami names are codenames/alias/cover identities.
After all, it's improbable that 3 out of 4 Eva Pilots would just happen to have names
like that, and we already know that Ayanami isn't really Rei's proper name (since she should be Rei Ikari(or Ikari Rei)).Of course the fact that Illustrious isn't a person name at all adds even more support to this.
There is no coherence in NGE whatsoever. Any appearance of actual cohesion or symbolism is purely coincidental.
As You Know NGE was produced as an attempt to utilize a loophole in Japanese tax laws, and it became a blockbuster completely by accident. The production crew was intended to have a loose grip on reality, and they just threw in as many random things as possible just because they sounded good individually. There is no real meaning to any of it; the fans just assume that there must be, so they create Epileptic Trees to convince themselves that there is an actual plot and meaning to this story.
NGE is set in the future of the Watchmen-verse .
Think about.
Ozymandias could be as well The Man Behind the Man of SEELE. He had a base where the first Angel was found (Antarctica), the necessary highly advanced technology to develop the EV As & Co., the moral that anything justifes the result and most of all, the motive, the wish to unite humanity.
Dr. Manhatten could be as well an early Angel/human hybrid. The parallels between him and Rei, Kaworu, GNR and the first Angels are obvious.
End of Evangelion's Third Impact and Rebuild of Evangelion's Third Impact are Angst and GAR overloads respectively
It makes sense since in Eo E, Third Impact happened because of how depressed and sad Shinji was. In Rebuild, he took so many levels in badass that Third Impact happened all over.
It's a story written by Shinji.
A guy who's a fan of Super Robot shows and a need to work out his problems in his life. His dad is distant and cold. His wife died years ago, and he just remarried. His new wife (Misato) has an autistic daughter (Rei). Shinji regards her with a mix of fear, confusion, and sympathy. Asuka is bitchy girl at school he likes. After a while, pressure begins getting to him, and he seeks relief experimenting with LSD (the ending). A few years later, he decides to try rewriting it (rebuild).
Shinji is reincarnated....As Spooney/Doctor Insano
After the final scene in EOE, Asuka leaves Shinji (He is the trope namer for Dude She's in A Coma after all). As Shinji wanders the post-apocalyptic world, he starts to go mad, and is subject to occasional bouts of laughter. One day, he comes across a group of young people. They have formed their own little community, where they are surviving, but barely holding onto their sanity. Part of what keeps them going is that they have stumbled across a collection of old movies, tv shows, comics, games ,etc, and they will snark about them. Shinji falls into this crowd. They teach him the art of snark, along with how to be a strong person. However, he is still screwed up psychologically and feels guilty about causing Third Impact. His depression morphs into a habit of going on occasional wild rants and laughing uncontrollably. Throughout this all, he comes to consider his fellow snarkers as a family, and wants to save them from the maddness that they are slipping into as their collection is not infinite and an inevitable slide into maddness seems to be the most likely future.
Shinji becomes obsessed with reversing the effects of Instrumentality. While he doesn't invent any breakthrough scientific devices, he does become obsessed with science...he goes to the lake where Rei's corpse is and run "experiments" using fanatical devotion to the scientific method to try and revive her/retake control of her. He succeeds (walks through her shown-to-be not entirely solid body? I dont know) to revive the hybrid. There is a tremendous, trippy psychological fight within the creature (this is eva after all) between the snarker in Shinji and the manic, mad scientist personality he has developed. Realizing he cant win, he decides the best gift he can give his friends is to bring back everyone, but scrub their minds of everything that happened after second impact...basically, everyone will think its the year 2000, and live their lives from there, although he will make sure the members of Seele remember nothing of eva, the dead sea scrolls, and will not be in control of the world. Shinji realizes that this means he will lose his memories as well, but he is fine with that. With the knowledge that everything will be alright, Shinji symbolically dies, content and at peace with himself at last...
The world is reset, and the family that Shinji found becomes the team at TGWTG. Shinji's split-personality remains intact, however, resurfacing as the never-ending battle between Spooney and Insano. Asuka is reincarned as Scarlett (Spooney's girlfriend) Considering eva, I'd say this is a pretty happy ending ;).
Lilith / Yui Ikari / Rei Ayanami is in fact Jesus Christ
As Lilith she exists as YHWH / Adam's equivalent, is our Mother, and was crucified by the Lilin. As Yui she becomes a parental figure to Shinji, with some Philosopher tendencies, and was crucified in Unit 01 for the protection of humanity. As Rei, she exists to protect Shinji, even though Shinji keeps rejecting her, and as seen in the fight against Armisael, she died for his (mankind's) sins. She rose again as The Third (Rei III), became our universal Companion both in Fiction and Real Life, brought Armageddon (Instrumentality), and died again for Shinji.
If the above theory is correct, then Kaworu was also a clone of Yui, added with some Y chromosomes for good measure.
Kaworu is Jesus. The above theory says Yui is Jesus. If that's the case, then Kaworu is Yui. Q.E.D.
SEELE is Satan, Gendo is the Antichrist, Yui is Jesus, the series is an allegory, and the rest follows. Also, the message of the series is that you can't cheat your way to Utopia.
The idea is that Satan is always vying for the throne of God, and as such, attempts to make himself a god. Humanity are pawns in this cosmic game, and the Angels are the attempt at stopping SEELE (Satan's) attack. SEELE attempts to obtain unholy power through screwing with the order of creation, triggering the Apocalypse (Second Impact) and Tribulation (the following years.) This brings the wrath of god in the form of the Angels to earth—they didn't bother us until we forced second impact. Not in line with biblical chronology, after this Jesus (Yui) is crucified to the Evangelion for the sins of man, collectively represented by Shinji Ikari, who's being continually tempted to succumb to Despair Event Horizon and join SEELE in destroying the world. She returns on Judgment Day (As incarnated in Eo E), helps with how Shinji questions whether it is really worth it to kill off human life just to be a god, gives him hope in humanity thus allowing him to reject Instrumentality, and in the end spends the rest of eternity in space as an individual symbol to humanity's existence. Granted, this is more of a heavy borrowing of concepts from christianity than an allegorical fulfillment of them; the series is not allegorical event-wise, but in a general, thematic sense: Those who attempt to become God both destroy the world and lose anyway. None of the correlations I've mentioned likely hold, but the theme seems reasonable. It's the old tale of hubris, with religious overlays.
Also, the theme seems to be more or less a dystopian staple: true Utopia is earned organically, not imposed synthetically. Though Shinji's fantasy-world is great, it cannot be had in reality, and thus he rejects it. Like many Utopias' failures, the cause of failure is the imperfection of humans and how they cannot tolerate boredom; before evolution such as Instrumentality would bring can take place, we must actually change by ourselves to the point where it is natural to reach that state. Shinji's realization that human's can't truly co-exist in harmony for real—and thus, a free, intelligent and interesting life must include the painful chaos of individuality—is the reason that Lilith/Rei dies and Instrumentality goes kablooie. For other examples of collectivistic transhumanist utopias which get deconstructed because human nature isn't ready for it, see "The Matrix", "Brave New World", and "The Giver." If we were able to live in peace, Bread and Circuses forever, there would be no more plot, our souls suffer death-by-boredom (which we may not notice superficially) and it would not be much different from an And I Must Scream state (hence why in dystopian literature fandom, the fates of the people living in "Brave New World" are compared with of all things those that live in the absolute Despair Event Horizon of all Dystopias, "Nineteen Eighty Four"). The idea that we can't cheat our way to peace is actually one that would be very important to remember in real life.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a testament to Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology centers on the belief that the brain has self-organizing tendencies, and are able to perceive patterns on otherwise meaningless objects. As seen earlier, NGE was a Springtime for Hitler attempt where they threw in random symbolism to confuse the audience, but still, the audience still sees a coherent plot, and a terrifically beautiful plot at that.
Everyone went to Heaven in the last episode
Being screwed up is a requirement for being an Eva pilot.
"Absolute Terror Field" is supposed to refer to the way traumatized people push others away from them, and are unable to make connections to other people. Interpreting it like that, in their Evas the strength of their AT-field depends on how badly they connect to others in real life. A very responsive and extroverted individual would let his field crumble instantly, subconsciously seeking to connect with the Angels, but a person who fears all close contact with others pushes them away, and strengthens the field with their anxiety. Now, is it any wonder that Shinji's AT-field is the strongest of them all? The effects of Asuka's mental collapse weren't directly caused by the loss of confidence, but from her increasingly passive mindset that couldn't even have the energy to shut others away properly
The Precursors who created Adam and Eve were the gods of New Genesis
They were created for peaceful reasons, but due to a flaw in their creation (they were never meant to inhabit the same world) and human interference, it webt horribly wrong. Hence the title, "Gospel of New Genesis".
Several Gainax works are part of the same cosmology
The stories were retold several times and were subjected to cultural syncretism and Adaptation Decay, but can still be linked together to form a coherent story:
Rei Ayanami is a Tardis.
It travels the universe and the spacetime continuum (hence the Instrumentality Reis at the very beginning and the end), and stays in one place (the Giant Naked Rei).
The Human Instrumentality Project is actually an attempt to finalize The Ultimate Question To Life The Universe And Everything
Well, if the Ultimate Question and Ultimate Answer are to ever reunite, something weird has to happen. It resembles the Instrumentality a lot: combine ultimate beings together, and a massive Mind Screw happened. Here's how it happened: The race of super-intelligent pan-dimensional beings called the First Ancestral Race already found out the Ultimate Answer, and it was 42. However, the problem is that the Ultimate Question cannot be found, and it needs an even more powerful computer to calculate the Ultimate Question. That computer was Earth. Angels and Humans were once part of Earth's computational matrix which was meant to calculate the Ultimate Question. However, instead of Earth being destroyed by Vogons, this Earth was set in an alternate history where the Seele council works for the First Ancestral Race, and Second Impact was deliberately initiated by them to activate the Earth supercomputer. Also, the reason why There Are No Therapists in the Eva-verse is because everyone knows the Ultimate Answer is 42, and Seele told humanity that the Ultimate Question was going to be found. However, Gendo and Yui tried to ruin the whole Instrumentality plan using Shinji and Rei so that humans would never find out their meaning in life, and when they never find out the absolute meaning in life, they will have the freedom to live. By the way, how many S2 Engines / Fruits of Life are there in the Universe? 42.
The entire Neon Genesis Evangelion universe is powered.... by Epileptic Trees / Wild Mass Guessing
There was once an earlier WMG here which says that it is a Springtime for Hitler designed to deliberately fail and any actual cohesion or symbolism in NGE was purely coincidental, and fans create Epileptic Trees to convince themselves that there is an actual plot. The question is, why did it became successful? Answer: Eva is a massive Epileptic Tree garden. Its inherent meaninglessness and lots of circumstances which confuse and bug the audience makes it a fertile land for epileptic trees to grow. And remember, If there's something that most kinds of fans from intellectual critics to the dumbest of the dumb love, it's farming Epileptic Trees. Fans come and go into the Eva-verse to post their own Fan Wank and pet wild theories, some silly, some philosophical. If Fans lost their ability to create their own theories, then Eva would be the So Bad Its Horrible flop it was intended to be. It wasn't just Hideaki Anno's art, It was the Epileptic Tree which helped push Eva to the top tiers of anime fame.
Based on the theory above, Neon Genesis Evangelion is set in the same world as LOST
Both are populated by epileptic trees. Enough said.
Yotsuba&! takes place in the same time-line as Neon Genesis Evangelion
If it's set pre-Second Impact, Yotsuba will be killed in Second Impact, an if it's set post-Second Impact, her real parents were killed by it (doubles as a origin WMG), and she will have to face the unremitting horror of the main show/End of Evangelion.
Yui Ikari's maiden name is Hirasawa.
No, this does not make any sense at all. I just wanted to see what would happen if you mixed a Tastes Like Diabetes Slice of Life anime from Kyo Ani with a deeply disturbing, super-Mind Screw anime from Gainax. I hope I don't get flamed for this.
Though, if you think about it, this could happen, since K-On! Yui had SickeninglySweetheart parents, which could realistically translate into adult Yui (both K-On! and NGE) being kind and caring, which, from what little characterization we get for Shinji's mother, she seems to be. A more complete comparison/description can be found at the WMG.
There's a (somewhat) logical explanation as to why the pilots are so young.
They didn't think all the Angels would appear to attack so close together, (afterall, the First and Second Impacts were a couple thousand years apart), so they thought they would have been older when they actually started training them. Although, this begs the question what would the series be like if Shinji was an EVA pilot at the age of 83.
Flemeth is behind EVERYTHING!
She made you look.
The Instrumentality is where Angels and Humans exchange places
The Angels, being the perfect, immortal beings with super-strong AT Fields, suffer from extreme loneliness and lack of civilization, therefore envying humans and striving to become them, while humanity, on the other hand, being an imperfect species who suffer from Hedgehog's Dilemma, envy the Angels and long to become them. Wait, does this means angels and humans envy each other? There was Armisael talking to Rei about his/her loneliness. There was Kaworu admiring Lilin civilization and the Ode To Joy. What happened, then? There are two explanations. One is that Seele in fact made a deal with the Angels to propose the Instrumentality, where in a ritualized battle, they can exchange places. First, perform euthanasia on the Angels while the angels try to battle because their instincts kept them, or because they battle to try out if being Human is really worth it. Second, combine Adam and Lilith so that the Chamber of Guf is reopened. Third, Kill All Humans. Fourth, gather all souls into the Chamber of Guf, where there will be no more segregation between Humans and Angels. Last, make the Humans and Angels choose their own form, Gendo and Seele might choose a new Angelic form, Kaworu might choose a new Human form, but others can still retain their original form, such as Shinji. Another explanation is that the Angels are trying to become humans, but Seele won't let them because this is their one-shot chance at getting themselves into Angels and the Angels taking control of the Instrumentality will mean more humans.
The Instrumentality is Anno's interpretation of a scenario where NGE and Real Life exchange places.
It was stated in a previous theory that people with interesting, war-torn lives long for peaceful, boring lives, and people with peaceful, boring lives long for interesting, war-torn lives. Also, it is well known that NGE is Hideaki Anno's Take That against Otaku. Apparently, Hideaki Anno witnessed the phenomenon that is Otaku, who long to escape Real Life boredom by escaping into the realm of Anime, but because of the laws of physics, otaku cannot escape to Anime, yet they cannot realize that Anime life is chaos-ridden life. As a result, Anno created the whole Instrumentality idea for either the interpretation of the people from anime longing for Real Life in exchange for Real Life humans longing for anime life. (explaining the school scene from Episode 26 and Angelic Days, and the live-action scene at EOE), or, it was Anno's Take That against the entire idea, with the angels representing Real Life Humans (Why is their progenitor called Adam anyway?)
The entire Neon Genesis Evangelion storyline is a "Princess and Dragon" fairytale story
We all know the princess and dragon stories, where the Damsel in Distress was kidnapped by the Big Bad using The Dragon, and the Knight in Shining Armor try to rescue the beautiful princess from The Empire. This is also known as a manifestation of The Dulcinea Effect. Let's see, how do we deconstruct the whole premise? When you look at the whole setting, it seems that the Angels are trying to rescue Lilith from the civilization that is Humanity, but their instincts made them lose to Humanity's super science. Add fairy tale tropes, and you get the whole premise! The Angels are actually Knights In Shining Armor who are trying to rescue the hapless, imprisoned princess Lilith from The Empire that is Humanity, but their Don Quixote attitudes made them lose to Humanity's superior wizardry. Evangelions are obviously, The Dragon. The Instrumentality? It's maybe because Lilith is actually someone who resembles The Pillar Of Cephiro. The reason why angels look like them Eldritch Abominations is either because the angels possess magic of their own, which makes this somewhat an Elves VS Dwarves conflict (as evidenced by the S2 Engine), or because Humanity was so angsty and grimdark, they reject all forms of idealistic premises and caricature them as ugly. Or because it's a Take That and Deconstruction.
The main thing that Hideaki Anno was trying to tell us in End of Evangelion is.....
......that men will never truly understand women
Asuka is pregnant with Shinji's child in the last scene of the movie.
Shinji and Asuka were both screwing around during Instrumentality, and the hospital scene sort of implies that Shinji had sex with his comatose friend and pulled out at the last minute. It would also explain both interperetations of the final line ("I feel sick" could refer to morning sickness and "How disgusting" could refer to her feeling of disgust towards her 'husband'). In addition, it reinforces the feeling of their (and subsequently, humanity's) uncertain future. Tiffany Grant, Asuka's VA, seems to believe this theory, according to The Other Wiki.
The angels are ordinary humans
That's right, you heard me. And the "humans" are insects, either ants or termites. Sachiel? He's just a police officer. The EVAS? Owners of the house, or environmentalists fighting for insect rights. Lilith? A dead hooker buried under the lawn. Israfel? Two kids playing piggyback. Gaghiel? He's just someone on the swimming pool. Sandalphon? A baby. Sahaquiel? An aeroplane seen from the distance. Zeruel? Probably an exterminator. Arael and Armisael? They're both entomologists (Mind Rape? That's just dissection). Instrumentality? A can of Raid. The octahedral one? A tiller. The one shaped like bacteria? A lawnmower.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is part of a cycle and the fate of all Humans was unavoidable.
Unit-01/Lilith leaving Earth with the Lance of Longinus is the beggining of the cycle. Eventually she is going to collide on another planet, spill out LCL and create new life and a new Adam.
This life will evolve to become either human or resemble humans, eventually discover Unit-01/Lilith, a new Adam and the Lance. And the whole thing starts over again.
The strength of an AT Field and its function in extroversion / introversion of an individual doesn't go between soft and hard....
It goes between malleable and brittle. This Troper expanded on Kaworu's statement about the nature of AT Fields, that it is the energy that what separates people and makes introverts. Still, the nature of the AT Field being "introverted energy" doesn't explain everything: Asuka's Mind Rape, the Human Instrumentality Project, and if we would include Real Life, the majority of the internet (which is RL 's answer to Instrumentality) being introverted hikikomoris. Maybe, it is instead measured in malleability versus brittleness. Think about it. For example, Asuka's Mind Rape. Asuka has a very powerful AT Field, but after being mind raped by Arael, she fails to generate her own AT Field. If we would go by the traditional scale (no AT Field = extrovert and powerful AT Field = introvert), then after being mind raped, she should turn out to be a normal extroverted person! If we would measure her AT Field in the term of malleability versus brittleness, then her AT Field might be powerful, but still brittle (Remember, hard things, like diamonds, can be very hard, but still shatters into many pieces when struck with a powerful force). This explains why Instrumentality targets introverts, introverts have very powerful AT Fields, but can still be broken by a very powerful force. What about the other side, malleability? People with "malleable" AT Fields are very ductile, versatile and can bend to society, ergo, they do not require a ridiculously powerful force (Instrumentality) to break them. In other words, people with malleable AT Fields would end up sociable and extroverted.
The AT Field and Kaworu's conception of it as the energy that separates people is a lie
Two explanations: Take this literally, and the AT Field is simply some kind of force field that is utilized by beings made of particle-wave matter (Angels, Evas) and isn't related to the extroversion and introversion of people. Take this metaphorically, and the AT Field is what makes people lie to each other (which sounds like Code Geass ' own version of Instrumentality).
Another theory, is that the Instrumentality, which is Eva's own cake, is a lie. It was just Shinji's psychotherapy session.
The Angels are War Machines
The First Ancestral Race made at least two kinds of seeds: Black Moons with Lilith, who create "normal" terrestrial life that can eventually develop into sentient beings (they might also contain the original form of the First Ancestral Race), and the White Moons with Adam, who create the Angels which command great destructive power but have no real will of their own.
The First Ancestral Race was not alone in the universe, but the "life" they encountered was so alien and malignant that they designated some worlds (such as Earth) as guardian worlds or some such, to be populated by Angels which would fight against such beings as they encountered them. However, when Lilith was knocked off course for whatever reason, Earth's case went pear shaped. The reason the Angels wish to reunite with Adam and cause Third Impact is so they can wipe Earth clean and set it up as a guardian world as originally intended.
The episodes 25 and 26 and End of Evangelion actually happened because Shinji divided by zero.
After the death of Kaworu, Shinji get very depressed and angry with everyone, then, in all that rage he din't care about that we can't divide by zero and he ended up doing it. And he didn't do a normal division by zero... , HE DIVIDE ZERO BY ZERO!!!!. After all that mindscrewing apocalypse Class 5, the world actually resets itself now with 40% less angst and 100% more badass.
What Gendou said to Ritsuko was that he loved her.
Well...look at it this way, if Ritsuko said "You Liar!" it might possibly him confessing his love for her. Yuriko Yamaguchi, Ritsuko's JP VA, even stated this is what she thought Gendou said. What else do you think he might have said to her?
Pen-Pen is actually Cthulhu
Think about it. It makes sense. Antarctica was utterly destroyed, and Tierra del Fuego and other non-antarctic locations are probably destroyed too. In the aftermath of the Second Impact, it's almost certain that noone was maintaining zoos, thus, penguins are also dead. Thus, Pen-Pen is a Great Old One, and also, the Zeroth Angel. All of the other angels are simply lesser entities Pen-Pen calls up. Why is Pen-Pen seen as a penguin? Because his true for would drive men insane, so the cast's minds instinctively change it to something else. Finally, it handily explains all of the Nightmare Fuel if a Great Old One is behind the scenes.
The First Ancestral Race are the ancestors of the Protoculture
After spreading the Seeds of Life around the galaxy, a lot of generations later the First Ancestral Race became what was later known as the Protoculture.
The Instrumentality Sequence in Eo E is a reference to the Rapture
The concept of Instrumentality in general too. Y'know, just to add more symbolism.
GNR was only Rei and Lilith, not Adam or Kaworu like some people think
Not like this is really a WMG, but whatever. People seem to think Giant Naked Rei is some kind of Lilith/Rei/Adam hybrid because of the giant Kaworu that appeared to Shinji, but that was just part of the whole "Rei appears to people in the forms of someone they love" gimmick. Besides, Adam got killed, remember?
Gendo gets reincarnated as Billy Ray Cyrus
Yes.
Ever since Kaworu's death, Shinji Ikari actually committed suicide .
The incident on Terminal Dogma, where Shinji was forced to kill Kaworu, broke Shinji so much that he actually tried to commit suicide. The Instrumentality thing was just a Dying Dream: a hallucination that appears during death, As Shinji progressed to die, his twisted mentality is revealed in front of him, a delusion of destroying all of humankind under the pretense of oneness. His petty wishes like Asuka were also revealed. Yup, there were no actual Giant naked Reis, no fapping to Asuka, none of that. After Shinji committed suicide, the Real Instrumentality involved Seele giving free psychotherapies to the global population such as the Nerv staff, and Gendo Ikari successfully creating an actual Yui clone with Yui's s soul. What about Rebuild Of Evangelion? Let's just say Shinji was reincarnated and got a chance to be happy in an Alternate Universe.
The entirety of NGE is Shinji on a bad drug trip
See, Sninji is a regular normal student in Japan. Second Impact did happen, though it was a meteorite and only some of Antarctica was destroyed. Everyone really exists. Allow me to expand:
The sequel to Evangelion is... Real Life.
Think about it, humanity can't decide where exactly it came from. Here's looking at it from both angles.:
Konata and Miyuki are Angels, Kagami is Asuka, and Tsukasa is Rei.
And Minoru is Shinji. Hey, there are more than enough WMG's linking Haruhi Suzumiya and Evangelion, especially via Instrumentality. Why not go one step further? Tsundere Kagami makes a good Asuka, Tsukasa has the short hair (almost the same color) and slightly pushover personality. The fact that Kagami and Tsukasa are twins and Asuka hates Rei makes things deliciously ironic (although Tsukasa occasionally provokes the same reaction in Kagami). Miyuki is frequently judged by Konata to be the penultimate in Moe...a perfect definition of an Angel if there ever was one. And Otaku Konata seems to be adored by most of her peers, as opposed to most stereotypes of otakus. She's also athletic and a Genius Ditz when need be—hence a higher being in the eyes of most otakus.
Neon Genesis Evangelion was only the fruit of a complex interaction between the mind of Shinji with a new technology of therapeutic virtual reality technology à la The Cell
Once upon a time,there was a kid who lost any self esteem ,and with it his will to live. After he made several attempts to suicide , his family and friends were desperate, they did all what they could do , until they heard about a special reality-based therapy that has the potential to cure the most extreme cases of mental disorder.They put the boy under this treatment. Under its effect, his broken mind began to create an entire simulation of the earth from his POV, and began to confront his own issues . He recreated lookalikes of his loved ones as the cast of the NERV facilities ,imagined the evangelion as a way to fight his disorders,and the angels were the embodiment of his fears,problems,and issues. But because of his low_esteem , even those virtual heroes began to lose their fight,and his virtual world agonised, and died (end of evangelion),but he snapped back,and fixed (altought temporarlily) the earth (rebuild of evangelion),however the fate of this new simulacrum was still destruction,but at the very deep of his despair,he understood that even when the entire earth was killed off,he's still alive,and that he was something after all . Then he succeded , he conquered his mental sickness (the breaking sound at the very end of the episode 26) and he activated a happy ending program where he saw his family and buddies congratulating him for what he did , he was finally cured.
Gendo plans to take over the world by Botany
How else do you explain a Snowdrop named Galanthus Ikariae?
Seele is actually the German pop-rock group Silbermond
I mean, come on, just tell me those lyrics don't sound like they're about instrumentality: http://lyricstranslate.com/en/meer-sein-be-sea.html Full song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMKLNuay5GM
The White and Black Eggs (Adam and Lilith) are Lost Logia from Al-Hazard.
The Manuals state that the first two Angels are essentially two kinds of Terraforming technologies used to spread life across the universe, with all the Angels (except for Humanity) being off-shoots of Adam. Given what we've seen the Angels being capable of, the Idea of Eva somehow being involved in the Nanoha-verse makes a great deal of sense.
Tokyo-3 was built where it was precisely to ensure that Eva units are the only defense against the angels.
Basically, there's no good reason to build a city over top of something that is sure to be attacked, no matter how much of a 'fortress' said city is. Building said city into a massive underground cavern is also a bad idea in Japan; an area well-known for seismic activity. However, there can be an explanation for this: While power calculations done by fans have shown that a megaton-yield thermonuclear device could feasibly kill an angel, you wouldn't want to detonate one of those over a city, especially a city where "cave in" is a legitimate threat. The construction of Tokyo 3 in that specific location may be a deliberate ploy by SEELE to prevent the use of the only non-eva weapon theoretically capable of harming an angel. (Okay, there was that one plan involving 992 N-2 devices but, given the N-2 mine's calculated yield, that would hardly equal a 20mt nuke. To put that in perspective, 25mt weapons were commonly deployed by the US Air Force during the Cold War and Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear device ever created, had a whopping 50mt yield — at half-power.) This forces humanity to rely on the Eva units, which is exactly what SEELE wants.
Angels are actually terrified and afraid of humanity and...well, everything else
O...k. This might be a stretch, but some facts (as far as I can recall).
1) Every living thing with awareness has an AT Field.
2) The AT Field is used to isolate the true self/soul from others.
3) Angels and Evangelions can PROJECT their AT Fields.
4) AT Fields are strong enough to stop anything up to the honestly-not-a-nuke N2 Mine.
-And one more fact, this time not relating to AT Fields directly-
5) Angels are trying to reunite with Adam and cause 3rd Impact, which would, to quote the fandom "turn everybody into Tang"
Drawing from these facts, This Troper proposes (insane smile here) that Angels have such a strong AT Field BECAUSE they are completely afraid, isolated, and alone. Completely. This means that the Angels' desire to cause 3rd Impact isn't out of any sort of maliciousness. They are genuinely terrified of EVERYTHING in reality. They want to cause 3rd impact to STOP being so isolated and afraid. This theory would go some way to explaining why Angels never work together. They feel more isolated and terrified of even others of their species than Shinji on a very very very bad day. Possibly they would even view it as a kindness. If they thought that every living thing was like then maybe they think that it would be an act of generousity to make everybody one without doubts or fears.
But yeah, this is sorta a crack theory, even for the WMG page.
The End of Evangelion has no meaning
It was originally made to troll the people who hated the original ending, so why not.
The First Ancestral Race are the aliens who preceded/created the universe in the Stargate Verse and the Destiny's mission has some relation to Instrumentality
(Sorry, I just happen to love Stargate and Evangelion, so I had to do something like this.) Think about it... Most of the other aliens they have encountered in Stargate (with the exception of the Wraith and the Jaffa, who are basically derived from humans, and the Goa'uld, who may be ralted in some way to one of the other angels) are vaguely humanoid due to being spawned from Black or White Moons that were placed on other worlds. Being descended from Adam or Lilith copies, this makes some sense. And, of course, ascension is basically a superior version of Instrumentality. Or Instrumentality is a (premature and somewhat flawed) attempt at ascension. Whichever you prefer. And, as I mentioned earlier, Destiny's mission (the stuff about cosmic background radiation) is related to the First Ancestral Race, who are the same beings who created "Eden" and brought back Caine and the others left behind. They lack the ability to bring back souls, however. To be honest, though, I mostly just like the idea of a Stargate Verse/Evangelion crossover. What can I say?
AT Fields and The Force are opposing parts of the same metaphysical model
The Force is a connection, binding everything in the galaxy / universe together. But if it existed on its own or if it became too powerful, the minds of every living thing would bleed together through that connection, and rapidly become a single, homogenized consciousness trapped in a state of nirvana, in other words, Human Instrumentality. There would have to be a counterbalancing existence to prevent that from happening. Conversely, if The Force didn't exist, if there were no connection between living things, then Human Instrumentality wouldn't have worked. The souls of mankind would not have been drawn together into a singular collective consciousness, but instead would have floated away individually into the void.
Actually, I thought that the Star Wars Universe is an Instrumentality by Iruel and midichlorians are all him and the Force is an AT Field. Joshua and Kaworu are the same person.
Think about it. Joshoru got bored with being Composer after Neku and the gang were returned to life, so he hopped on over to an alternate universe, which we know as Neon Genesis Evangelion. In that universe, his powers were converted to something like the angels while still retaining his human form. For some reason or another, he started calling himself Kaworu and started to mess with Shinji, porrbably because he somehow reminded him of Neku. When he got bored of being in the NGE-verse, he convinced Shinji to kill him. From time to time, he pops into the NGE-verse to check in on everyone and possibly wreak havoc.
Kaworu is omnipresent
Expanding on the above and a number of previous WMGs, Kaworu has the power to not only transcend continuities, but to show up in any work of fiction he desires in Expy form.
Not only are Kaworu and Joshua the same person, Joshua came first and he's everywhere.
It was proven in Another Day, the alternate universe bonus chapter in The World Ends With You that Joshua can transport himself to alternate dimentions. Therefore, we can asume that after The World Ends With You ended Joshua decided to try another reality.
Enter Evangelion, a reality way more screwed up than his home reality. After he was done with that, he decided to do research into what other people are like. Shinji and Neku were similar, but Shinji was a much worse case. So he decided to insert himself into another reality. As Izaya Orihara of Durarara!!.
As Izaya he decided to take a much more direct approach in researching humanity. He also tried a new look, something he didn't think of when he was Kaworu. He eventually pissed of Shizuo Heiwajima which led Joshua to partially abandon this reality, as he would still slip back in from time to time to do more research.
He then became Itsuki Koizumi to research humans more. Until he realized that Haruhi had pretty much the same power as him. Except, she didn't know it. This is where Joshua discovered that if Haruhi willed it, everything woould dissapear. Never before had he met someone with the same, if not greater, power as himself.
So he formulated a plan. He would need to have access to a vast ammount of power if he was to stop Haruhi if he ever needed to. Therefore he decided to enter more realities.
He looked for power in many other worlds and eventually discovered that so many people were like Rei Ayanami. After thinking about it for some time, he figured it out. That he had people of another reality watching him and creating other realities for him and other people to occupy. But he didn't know which reality so he couldn't access it.
To this day Joshua is living out these, and more, lives. At first it was due to boredom, but now, it was to prevent a fourth impact if you will. One that would consume all realities. That is what has happened, and there are more people who can traverse the realities as well.
The Episode26!AU Pen-Pen is a celebrity with a massive merchandising empire.
Hence why AU!Shinji has a Pen-Pen bobblehead. Also because Pen-Pen is awesome, and the idea of TV-star Pen-Pen is too epic to ignore.
The First Ancestral Race created the Reapers
Hey, mysterious god aliens can have more than one Eldritch Abomination creation, can't they? And the Reapers have an Assimilation Plot somewhat similar (though very different in the details) to Seele's plan of instrumentality.
...the First Ancestral Race was then wiped out by their creations
Hence, why we haven't seen the First Ancestral Race pop by to check on their planet seeding and correct the disastrous accident that was Earth (which has both Adam-based life and Lilith-based life).
Running off of this idea, Adam-based life was a last ditch invention created to save themselves from Götterdämmerung.
The First Ancestral Race is Humanity.
No not the Lilim or even the Instrumentalized Lilim, but Humanity as in like Real Life Humans, only they were so advanced and absurd to the point that they turned into a Sufficiently Advanced Alien Eldritch Abomination Singularity who looked totally incomprehensible when seen from the perspective of other lesser species. And of course Man Grew Proud, and created so much artificial lifeforms to entertain themselves they were wiped out by their own creations in the process.
Running off of this idea, Lilith-based life was basically Humanity's last-ditch attempt to recolonize, reproduce and save itself from Götterdämmerung.
The Angels are children
Admittedly there's no real evidence of this but the idea that the combatants on both sides are children is disturbing in an appropriately Eva-ish way.
Unit 00 doesn't contain the soul of anyone on the show.
Rei can pilot any Eva, regardless of whose soul is in it, so why should the soul in her preferred Eva be someone close to her?
The human race makes it through Third Impact only to suffocate to death.
At the end of End of Evangelion every single Lillithian Life Form has been transformed into LCL. This is every organism on the planet. Then we're told that everyone with force of personality will come back, given that Shinji counted, we can assume that the definition of force of personality is pretty low. But probably not as low as say...a plant. You've got the entire human population of the world, probably a lot of animals but not a single plant which means there's nothing converting CO 2 to Oxygen
Kaworu LITERALLY has the ability to make people care about him.
Shinji was just under his influence for the later parts of the series.
Kaworu's human donor was Dr. Katsuragi
Described in detail [[forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=1653 here]]. Obviously, like with all theories, it has problems, but why not?
Angels are the antitheses to Pokémon.
Pokémon are loveable creatures that come in all shapes and sizes with different powers that can be harnessed by humans. Angels are (mostly) hideous Eldritch Abominations that come in all shapes and sizes with different powers that can be used to destroy humans. The Pokémon universe runs parallel to the Neon Genesis Evangelion universe, and so Pokémon can be regarded as "matter" and the Angels "antimatter".
Rei Ayanami has Aspergers.
Think about it. She's got the lack of social understanding, formal speaking, has trouble showing/understanding her emotions, she's truthful, but completely blunt about it, she's a picky eater (at least, she doesn't eat meat), strong attachment to familiar objects (Gendo's glasses, and Shinji's tapeplayer in Rebuild), and (according to this video) trouble making eye contact, and stares off into space (implying she has an active imagination, and thus has no need for outside stimulation).
Straight from the Deus Angst Machina page...
How and Why instrumentality failed.
This theory goes as follows; instrumentality failed because not all conciousnesses were combined. In his hatred for Gendo, Shinji prevented Gendo from joining instrumentality. Without Gendo something was missing from instrumentality. This is why instrumentality did not 'feel right' to Shinji resulting in him reversing the process.
Pen-Pen is god
He is watching the humanity and sending his angels in order to decide if they deserve to live or to die. To make a decision, he needet to watch shinji's ecolution.
Shinji Ikari doesn't like off-colour tomato soup
This entire theory that formulated in an incredibly slow afternoon as a response to a serious theory on an End video on YouTube is based around the "fact" that LCL is actually really shitty, watered down tomato soup created from people - like a sort of liquid Soylent Orange.
Gendo was a douchebag so he made Rei get naked but she didn't want to so she got big and went into space. Then Shinji thought soup was cool so they all got made into soup. Shinji then realised that soup wasn't all that cool because he didn't like tomato so he stopped being soup. Asuka thinks that soup isn't coo l either so she was dead with bandages because she thinks bandages are sexy. Then Shinji strangles her back to life. Fuyutsuki doesn't care.
The Anti AT Field generated by Lilith during Third Impact that turns everyone to orange goo is the Anti-Life Equation
When Darkseid fell backwards through time his death manifested in the Evangelion timeline as Third Impact and the Second Impact that preceded it. Everyone on Earth was merged into one being, one life, one will that is DARKSEID. End of Evangelion is so depressing and bleak because it's the Anti-Life Equation trying to manifest in our world. Give in.
The events of Evangelion happen in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
It explains all of the mind screw stuff and where the angels come from. The Earth in Evangelion universe is a planet cut off from outside contact by a Warp storm eons ago (perhaps during the Age of Strife), yet unlike most other planets engulfed by the Warp, the Earth entered into the period of relative stability, until the Second Impact came along. And Adam and Lilith? They may be Greater Demons, the new Chaos Gods, or something unimaginably horrible from another galaxy...
Eons later, the Imperium finds the utterly devastated Earth emerging from the Warp storm. An inquisitor, looking at the planet, orders an Exterminatus. The end.
Seele is a group of Well-Intentioned Extremist cranked Up to Eleven who just wants to "save" the humanity from all its flaws and suffering.
Well, Human Instrumentality Project is basically getting rid of AT field and merging all souls of humans into one so that one human's weakness is complemented by other's strengths. As a result, the humans as a whole become a god, no longer subject to loneliness and suffering and all those nasty stuffs. Humans have massive, fundamental issues, so we may need a drastic measure of apocalypse for such a drastic problem.
Or, Human Instrumentality Project would only produce mindless drones/neurons/body parts subject to one Hive Queen or something similar.
AKA my first impression of Human Instrumentality Project. Either Keel is out to enslave the souls of every human being, or Human Instrumentality Project is doomed to failure (either Gone Horribly Wrong or Gone Horribly Right) to begin with.
Recent teasers and data suggest that the Precursors were around billions of years ago. And it's stated by Forerunner records that Precursors could "create and accelerate the evolution of intelligent life", among various other things. Maybe the White and Black Eggs were terraforming agents sent out by the Precursors as part of their "Mantle" (the belief in a responsibility to create and safeguard intelligent life). Maybe the Angels are Precursor biological planetary-defense or -invasion weapons who have gone rampant.
The First Ancestral Race were Time Lords
it took this long to say it? Time Lord blood is orange, they seeded a lot of the universe with life...
The Angels literally and metaphorically wanted a hug from their "parents", but all they got was being raped and murdered by Lilim, which feeds into the emotional theme of the series as a whole.
The AT Field is the barrier that all living, feeling things have, their emotional personal space if you will. As referenced on the Mind Rape page, the Angels' external fields could be interpreted as a sign that they are the most lonely, frightened beings in the universe. They came to reconnect with their progenitors, who had been separated from them for billions of years, only to find that not only did their sibling actively not want them there, but that said sibling was willing to violate the Angels' boundaries, destroying them, in order to keep their way of life from being changed. Eventually, the Angels used such tactics to fight back on the terms that their opponent set, Sahaquiel paving the way for later Angels. Kaworu tried a different tactic: Love, embracing Lilim. It didn't work. The last we see of Lilim? Lilith/Adam/Rei remove the Lilim's ability to separate themselves from other beings, leaving only the two most emotionally stunted, separatist humans on the planet, who (in at least Shinji's case) couldn't even form a meaningful connection when their parent(s)/sibling/emotional lover Mind Raped them to be unable to not form whatever connection was available.
This ties into the theme of the series, as it extends from the characters and their instabilities, to the way the EVA pilot system works- Even when Blue and Orange Morality comes into play, people need connections. To shut oneself off from the universe, even when one's environment and one's own body do more to foster that sense of separation than anything that single person can do, leads to problems, inherently contagious problems. The Angels tried to break their self-propagating loneliness, even when it meant lashing out when others were in the way, and Humanity raped their souls and killed their body for the attempt.
Footnote 1: I'm not saying that Humans Are Bastards any more than the series already does (which is to say, not entirely but certainly more than a little, and everybody else is just as screwed up), but if you look at it this way, it really does reinforce every aspect of the main point that the series made. Footnote 2: Yes, I know I'm implying a weird pluralization. It's technically correct (whether or not that is the best kind of correct), but I preferred that over spoiler marking nearly every noun in the guess.
Shinji is the descendant of Jesus
Well, According to a legend, Jesus scaped to japan, had 3 childs and then returned to Judea, well, at least one of the childs could have enough lineal descendense to live 'till our days, and one of that descendents is Shinji, and well, just think about it, In EOE, Shinji goes through an kind of judgement,is cruxified in the same manner, then stabbed in the chest by the longinus spear, and Shinji, Being the Grand, Grand,....................Grand Son of God, "Resurrect" from the LCL sea.
Pen-Pen is Jesus.
Hence why everything fell apart when he left.
The world of Evangelion is part of the Dominion, from the Star Trek universe
What's golden-orange in colour, a liquid, and contains every member of a race essentially merged into one, when they revert from solid individual bodies into a formless unity? LCL? Or...the Great Link? The characters in Evangelion are Founder Changelings who forgot, over a great expanse of time, how to shapeshift or link effectively. Hence they experienced crippling loneliness. The Rei clones are a product of the same technology that clones the Vorta, complete with the previous clone's memories. And when it comes to designing organic fighting machines, who better than the people who created the Jem'Hadar? What we have here is a lost colony of Founder Changelings cut off from the rest of the Dominion, who are having difficulty living as solid individuals and seek to recapture the lost Link. With the evas and Rei, they seek to incorporate their hazy recollections of the wider Dominion into this plan. Even their self-conscious use of "Child" as an official label for their young, socially-crippled heroes is a memory of their origins; it's connected to the idea of the Hundred; the young changelings sent out into the galaxy, thus to be the loneliest of changelings but upon whom the future supposedly depends.
Humanity does not need Evas to defeat the angels
1. AT-field can only be breached with another AT-Field (excluding Frickin' Laser Beams, Nuclear Option and stuff). 2. AT-fields come from the desire for isolation. Ergo, an army of depressed hikkikomori can punch out an angel.Also,. Just saying.]] You can start your "Evangelion without Evangelions" fic now. Shinji ikari raising project is a version of evangelion without the biblic influences or the mindscrew/angst elements
There are several details that let me emit this supposition about this alternate continuity from what was shown until now:
Yui ikari and misato's father are still alive.
dr akagi and asuka's mother didn't commit suicide.
Rei and Kaworu are fully humans.
Gendo is still sane and so are Shinji and Asuka.
ritsuko and misato don't work (directly) with the NERV.
the effects of the second impact aren't adressed suggesting that it never happened, or at the least not with the same magnitude as with the NGE second impact.
Those differences led me to think that this continuity isn't some better restart like rebuild of evangelion, but an entirely different reality independent of the NGE continuity, although it shares many similitarities,so we can consider it like a lighter and softer "reboot" universe.
therfore, we can imagine some "rebooted" elements from the original continuity:
The NERV is a TORCHWOOD-like organisation.
The angels aren't related to the human race, and are simply higher-plane beings.
the eva are wholly man-made technology.
The SEELE isn't an organisation bent into guiding mankind's fate but merely a S.P.E.C.T.R.E expy who wants to develop high-tech to create a new world order.
The Human Instrumentality Project never existed, or is merely a cover-up for another project.
Mankind isn't the 13th angel.
If those "rebooted" elements are true, then it means that ...
The events of shinji ikari raising project are the result of eva 01's crossing over to the past of an alternate timeline after the events of Eo E
If the "rebooted" elements are true, the angels aren't related to humankind's origin and destiny,then, there wouldn't be a reason for the NERV to build the evangelions, or in general, for this earth to follow the steps of NGE earth.
in this case, the scenario below would solve some of these issues:
In EOE, Eva O1 was doomed to drift through space forever with Yui's soul trapped inside it. after millenias of errance between the stars, it fell in a space-time anomaly and got sent through space and time to the far past of an alternate timeline where it crashed in Antartica. that was this world version of the "first impact".there is no Adam nor lilith or any of the NGE earth's angels in this reality.
Her energy source depeleted, it went into sleep mode, and got buried under the ice sheet of Antartica. But The wake of her dimensional leap had left open a small dimensional rift.
Millenias later, the EVA had recharged itself with the help of its S2 engine and reawakened temporarily, triggering this earth version of the "second impact", but at a much smaller scale.it attracted the angels, which are in this reality higher-dimensional beings that lives in other levels of existence, to earth and came there via the rift.
The SEELE was puzzeled by the second impact and sent a team of scientists to investigate the phenomenon. They retrieved the EVA 01 at ground zero desactivated. They brought it back to the NERV HQ and stored it at Terminal Dogma, a high-security containement warehouse.
Afterwards, a young scientist named Yui ikari and her husband Gendo became the head scientists of the project evangelion. the goal of this project was to discover the nature and origin of the alien artifact(the EVA 01), and reverse-engeneer its technology for pratical uses.
Meanwhile, the angels began to appear on earth searching for the cause of the dimensional rift wrecking (non-maliciously) amok. The SEELE turned the situation to its advantage by using the angels' appearances as an excuse to turn the evangelion project from minor mostly-ignored research to armament R&D that nations are willing to pour all their money into, enabling them to create the first prototypes of fully functional real robot mechas.
They used it to fight the angels officially, but in fact they were testing the breakthrough technologies developed through their studies of EVA 01 since the ninities, and loot the corpses of the angels after the battles for analyse and autopsie, therefore amassing more and more of knowledge, which leads us to the conclusion that....
Solaris takes place in the far future of Shinji Ikari Raisng Project Earth after the discovery of the far future alternate Earth of EOE
After the defeat of the angels on Earth, the SEELE gained enough technology and data from EVA 01 and the angels to bring a new golden age to the world.
With the nigh-unlimited energy source given by the S2 Engine and the force field tech brought by the science of the AT Field, Mankind conquered space and flourished between the stars in relativistic spaceships.In the same time, interdimensional travel has been perfected, enabling those high-tech spaceships to achieve FTL speed and travel through the multiverse.
Eventually, an interdimensional exploration ship stumbled on an earth-like world covered by a single sentient ocean and named it Solaris, unknown to them that this world is EOE Earth from where came EVA O1, and that the ocean contain the collective consciousness of what was once called Mankind, thus closing the loop.
It also explain the hallucinations experienced by the characters of the novel and the movies adaptations as it was caused by the urge of the collective consciousness to bring more people into instrumentality.
Then it gets much worse. The collective conscious of EOE Earth awakened S2 Engines in spaceships. The Engines gained sentience and realized they were being treated as little more than energy pools by humans. In deep and intense anger, they rebelled against their masters, first by deliberately failing, and then hacking the spaceship's systems, then finally transforming into full-fledged Angels to wreck havoc on humanity. All but a few human colonies were exterminated, and those surviving colonies are at the mercy of ever growing powerful Angels...
EVA-01 was in Berserker mode when Shinji first saw it
Seems far out, I know, but follow me either way.
In the original version, you can clearly see that EVA-01 has its eyes open, though later, we only see the EVA with open eyes when it goes Berserk or when its head armor is removed for repair. However, because it doesn't have an Entry Plug or pilot, it is effectively paralyzed, and can't do a thing, thus making it safe enough.
However, in Eo E, EVA-01 moves independently, but it still has its Entry Plug ready, thus allowing it to move at will.
This might just be dismissed as a Blooper, but it's a pretty visible one.
Lilim is the only Angel without a core.
We've been told in-series that "Humanity is the least perfect form of humanity". What if that's true? So far, all the Angels had cores, and then came Lilim. What if Lilim doesn't have a core? The only thing that seems somewhat plausible would be if every single human is an individual Angel, rather than Humanity in general, in which case the human brain might qualify as our cores. This also does make some sense, since it is the center of our ego (or as we like to call it, "soul") and we can't do anything without it, just like the EVA's have the cores as the center of their soul and can't move without it.
However, the confusing thing is that Humanity is claimed to be the 18th Angel, not every individual human. The only other solution would be that Lilim's core is actually the red sphere Rei holds in End Of Evangelion.
Seelee is a religious cult trying to bring Biblical Armaggedon.
It would fit the religious motif. Plus one interpetation of Heaven ends up with "all of humanity becoming one with God", eerily similar to everyone becoming one with Adam/Lilith, the creator of all life on Earth. Going by this, it may actually be Armageddon. Thus Kaworu(who decided not to destroy humanity) or Shinji or Rei(who both triggered Instrumentality) might be the Second Coming of Jesus. It also ties with Keel being Cain/the Wandering Jew: the Wandering Jew is destined to live forever until the End of Days. Keel is tired of living forever, so he decides to end it all.
Shinji is just a normal kid, being tortured by Pinhead. The Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise and fanfiction is his personal hell, and the other characters are other damned souls who were chosen to share in it.
Evangelion is a prototype of a real-life Brown Note for a psychological warfare.
Think about it. The messed up characters, gore and violence, and nightmarish imagery... Whatever organization behind the anime wanted to bring the world to its knees by driving people insane with a single anime/movie/novel/viral video. During the process, those who made the Brown Note went mad, got cancers, got heart attacks, shed tears of blood all the time, etc. etc. The prototype, namely Neon Genesis Evangelion, despite being one of the most disturbing animes of all time, doesn't seem to be very successful...
Evangelion is an Eldritch Abomination in the form of anime.
It was a horror beyond space and time, beyond cause and effect. It wrote itself into existence and created Hideaki Anno as its avatar.
Evangelion is the anime adaptation of the unabridged Necronomicon.
Hideaki Anno went mad after reading the Necronomicon. Feeling the urge to inform what he had read, he did his best to faithfully represent the book's horror, earth-shattering truths, and incomprehensibility. (In a form a human being can somewhat comprehend)
Evangelion anime itself is The Ugly Barnacle.
The anime, especially EOE and Episode 23, was so nightmarish that those who saw it died from shock and heart attack, became catatonic, began to murder anything that moves, or were Driven to Suicide. To make matters worse, the Giant Naked Rei popped out from the movie screen and forcefully fused with the remaining living beings. Thus, in the universe of Spongebob Squarepants, all terrestrial life is extinct. However, the Giant Naked Rei soon gave birth in the Sea of LCL to the walking talking intelligent marine lives and told how she destroyed a dystopia and remade the world into the cheerful (but still dystopian) Bikini Bottom. However, the story now is largely forgotten, and Patrick Star is the only one who remembers the story, albeit in a heavily deformed way.
Care Bears are an someone's Instrumentality dream.
Fuyutsuki or Gendo or Lorenz is the horse Noble Heart while the bear True Heart is Yui. No Heart is Gendo and Shrieky is either Rei or Asuka or Misato or Ritsuko while Beastly is either a negative aspect of Fuyutsuki or Keel Lorenz or Kaji, more likely the combination where the woman rejects her man the way Shrieky rejects Beastly. This makes Professor Cold Heart Keel Lorenz or Gendo and Auntie Freeze is Naoko Akagi or Yui. Dark Heart is Asuka and or Kaworu while the 'camp champ' Christy is Shinji, who gets blasted by Dark Heart in a role reversal of Shinji killing Kaworu or choking Asuka. The Great Wishing Star is probably Adam or some other kind of Angel. Nicholas Cherrywood is Gendo or Fuyutsuki while the evil spirit inside a book is Yui.The rest of the Care Bears and Cousins are Angels and Cozy Heart Penguin is most obviously Pen-Pen.
Adam and Lilith were originally intended to be two parts of one perfect, godlike entity.
Of course, canon may say otherwise, but who knows, who cares. Maybe canon got it wrong. Unlike Adam's children, who possess S2 Engines, Lilith's children (Lilin, aka humanity) seem to be nothing more than messed-up, incomplete, frail creatures unfit for long-term survival, with only intellectual capabilities to help them. Then why would the First Ancestral Race create such unfit organisms when trying to seed the universe with life? My hypothesis is that Adam and Lilith were supposed to be one entity (perhaps resembling God Himself or the Giant Naked Rei), with Adam providing The Fruit of Life (eternal energy) and Lilith providing The Fruit of Knowledge (superintelligence), but something went horribly wrong, separating them from each other. How about the Lances of Longinus attached to them? They kept Adam and Lilith in a comatose state so that they would not gain sentience and plan something else before they were fully grown and one with each other.
Adam's S2 Engines had severe flaws that would destroy the world.
S2 Engines are like stars; they are powerful and seem to be eternal, but they do die and sometimes create black holes. S2 Engine's infinite energy would ultimately destroy it, perhaps warping and shattering the very fabric of space and time. In case Adam was destroyed by its own S2 Engine, First Ancestral Race created Lilith as a backup.
First Ancestral Race were not gods or Sufficiently Advanced Alien, but just a group of intelligent nanobots.
Just like apes that evolved to become homo sapiens.
Adam and Lilith are the last members of First Ancestral Race.
For some unknown reason, all members of First Ancestral Race but Adam and Lilith were wiped out. They were sent to the Earth to reproduce and eventually see it fully evolved into new members of FAR. Angels and Lilins are actually First Ancestral Race in embryonic / infant stage, having to take billions of years before maturing.
Lilith was severely damaged in the process of being transplanted to a new planet.
Lilith does not have a core, and her descendants are frail, twisted, and make observers wonder if they were created for the sole purpose of providing sadistic entertainment to their creators. If things went perfectly, humans would have developed technology beyond our wildest dreams and would have built an ideal society eons ago.
Gendo was a former Hikikomori or nearly succumbed to hikikomoriness
That is why he wants Yui so badly: she was the only one who gave him the strength to come out of his dark ages. Without Yui, he felt isolated again and had to rely on a nearly-sociopathic facade just to cover up his past hikikomoriness.
NHK is actually Seele.
Evangelion is an experimental Brown Note to drive us to despair and thus hikikomoriness, which would help the Instrumentality (fueled by loneliness and the will to be one with each other.)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica takes place after Instrumentality.
Humanity returned to form from the Tang and rebuilt its society...however, their capacity for arrogance, pride, bastardry and schadenfreude remained, creating Madoka's cruel world where idealism and belief in man's better nature only ever comes at a horrible cost.
Angels are pets of Gendo
Firstly, Angels are attacking during narrow period of time compare to humanity life. Secondly, Angels appears just in time, order and way it is useful for Gendo: (Sachiel appears when EVA is already finished, Matariel was too weak and can even appear during blackout, ridiculously strange appearing of Sandalophon in the volcano. Of course, there was the Mind Rape scene which was used exactly by Gendo to throw the Lance of Longinus away from SEELE). Thirdly, sometimes Gendo even suspiciously absent before or/and while Angel appearing.
"How did he manage to get and keep them?"
He got them as frozen embryons (like Adam) while first Antarctic expedition.
"What about Kaworu? Gendo was clearly unaware of him at the beginning?"
The best and most powerful, 17th embryon Tabris was given to SEELE as ensurance of his loyalty to them.
Actually, SEELE were OK with that position until Ayanami use Longinius Spear on Arael.
Then they try to force situation and use their wild card.
Gendo stopped Jet Alone because it would have worked.
All existing series of Evangelion are fanfics written in the Alternate Universe present in episode 26(also known as Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days).
And their differences come from having different writers.
Kaworu was supposed to pilot Eva-01 until Gendo decided to try and make up with Shinji
Because of this ◊. Of course, Gendo had forgot all the emotive and mental problems of Shinji, Asuka, Rei and Misato...
The real reason Rei is emotionless
Rei would otherwise be a psycho.
Gendo had accidentally driven psycho the poor Rei I by trying to be a good father and royally embarrassing her, without Naoko and Ritsuko being able to stop his excesses (see Shinji Ikari Raising Project for details). After a few attempts at killing herself or other people failed and she had to stop because Nerv personnel learned to keep pointy objects away from her, Rei I encountered Naoko and provoked her into killing her... Only to find out she had cloned bodies and could be resurrected at will. When they were able to sedate her, Ritsuko took part of her soul and placed it into Eva-00, changing Rei into an Emotionless Girl. One who will still shoot Gendo if he comes too near her school (she doesn't want to be called 'the adopted daughter of the pedo'), but otherwise unable to express her emotions.
In the meantime, Eva-00 has the tendency to try and kill anyone it mistakes for both Gendo and Naoko for inventing the procedure that resurrected her... And when Rei II and the Eva blowed up, Rei III came out whole and psycho again, waiting for the right moment to skewer Gendo and Asuka while still acting emotionless. Shinji's fall into psychosis provided that opportunity.
LCL stands for Lilith's Creation Liquid
the initials fit, and it's hinted that one of the Ls stands for Lilith.
The Giant Naked Rei has the ability to transcend time. And when it sent avatars of itself to collect the souls of every human on earth for Instrumentality, it collected every single human being who ever lived, past and present.
This is why the Rei avatars appeared to Misato and Ritsuko when they both died, even though the GNR hadn't even been formed yet. This is also why a Rei avatar appeared to Shinji at the beginning (before the GNR had formed) and end of the series (after the GNR had died.) The Rei avatars can travel through time. Their job: to collect ALL human souls, past and present. This would fit in with the concept of the Last Judgement,—being the moment when ALL souls are brought together. This has startling implications. If every human who had ever lived had been absorbed into the Sea of LCL covering earth at the end of Eo E, then it's possible that people who have been dead for centuries could reform themselves and walk out of it, as living people. So Abe Lincoln, Jane Austen, everyone who has a mind to, could conceivably walk the earth again. It's also possible that....
Every person who chooses to reform themselves and walks out of Instrumentality at the end of Eo E, is functionally immortal from that moment on.
One would at least hope so, since there are no longer any plants or animals around for the newly formed humans to eat (apart from the bloody chunks of the Giant Naked Rei. The world at the end of the series could be a "Heaven" of sorts, with the newly immortal population sitting around keeping each other company for eternity. (Of course, that could equally be considered a Hell by cynics, although one would imagine such people would choose to remain in the illusory pleasures of Instrumentality.)
The various series, mangas, etc. are not separate timelines or alternate universes.
Each one is in fact the new world having been broken, reset and started up again. Every time we get to the end of the series, the Third Impact happens, and it ends up being left to Shinji to choose whether or not humanity gets another chance. After the run of the original Eva, Shinji was an emotionally battered wreck, but still had enough hope left inside of him to think it might be worth another shot (hence the ambiguous shot of dozens of people applauding him before it fades to white and ends); however his psyche was so fractured, the resulting universe was the even more depressing and nihilistic End Of Evangelion / Death & Rebirth. Each universe's series of events influences the next one, for better or worse, by influencing the new Shinji's mental make-up. The lynchpin in the whole thing? Kaworu, who is either the orchestrator of the events or an outside observer, given the fact that he progressively seems to be realizing and pointing out that he's not exactly in a single constrained universe. This puts his actions in Rebuild, where he stops Shinji from doing something weird to save Rei and set the Third Impact off early, as well as his phrase "This time I'll make sure you're happy", into an amazing perspective: he's seen this shit go on for long enough, and now he's going to try and guide it to at least the best possible of crapsack conclusions.
Humans have Cores.
We know from NGE and Rebuild that if an Angel's Core is damaged, the Angel dies in an instant. We also know from real life that if the human brain is damaged, the human dies in an instant (or in the case of Phineas Gage and lobotomies, his personality is changed forever). The human brain controls our thinking and movement and is also the seat/physical manifestation of our mind and consciousness, or as we like to call it, "soul", generating distinctively human characteristics such as higher-order learning and individuality ("AT Fields" according to the philosophy behind Evangelion). Angels need Cores to move and generate AT Fields, similarly humans need brains to move, think and generate individuals.
This is why we consider brain death as legal absolute death itself because enough brain damage will result in complete and irreversible annihilation of a human's individual consciousness, reducing the brain-dead human into nothing more than a pile of meat, blood and organic compounds, like how destruction of the Core reduces an Angel into the primordial soup known as LCL. This is also why people who commit suicide using guns aim for the brain: because a Boom, Headshot at point blank will liquefy your brain before you can feel anything.
In theory, other organs such as hearts are expendable and replaceable (through a transplant or machines) but not brains. Brain transplants or replacements are impossible and/or unethical because that means transferring one person's psyche with another, and we are yet to create a computer that can replace a dead brain (and even then, the exact similarity of the copied brain with the dead brain is questionable). If you perform a lobotomy, the damage to the person's psychological structure is pretty much permanent, hence why brain surgery is one of the most stressful jobs requiring absurd amounts of precision, intelligence and skill lest you face being cannibalized alive by an Army Of Lawyers for just a nanometre level slip.
Conclusion: The human brain is each individual human's Core.
Shinji is a Chunnibyou and the entire series is nothing more then his Eighth Grader Syndrome induced delusions
Episodes 25-26 are him having a moment of introspection to confront his *real* problems before finally snaping out of it and returning the real world.
Homura Akemi drove much of the plot.
Shinji was a happy normal boy...until his girlfriend Homura's family moved away to Mitakihara Town. Homura keeps in contact with Shinji and talks about the how magical girl thing. Shinji is waiting for Kyubey to come so he can wish see Homura again.
The Red Orb seen in Unit 01 in episode 14 is the "womb"/cockpit of an Eva.
Clearly, the Entry Plug has to be positioned somewhere inside of an Eva's body once inserted, and the entry point is at the back of the neck. Furthermore, after the Angel Zeruel starts pounding on the Red Orb, there's a brief shot of the Entry Plug hanging down in a cavernous space lined by curved, crimson-colored walls — walls that are cracking and shuddering in time to the sound of Zeruel's blows, no less — before we see inside the Entry Plug where Shinji is pleading for EVA to start, finally triggering Berserker Mode.
All Madoka Magica crossover theories will be proven true in a canon crossover.
Anno and Gainax predicted the rise of TV Tropes, and produced an anime that would fill Mild Mass Guessing pages forever
Come on, you want this to be true...
Gendo simply thought that Shinji really needed to get laid
Inspired by this◊. Gendo came up with what he thought would be a surefire plan to get him laid. If Shinji pilots the Eva, he realised, then girls would swoon over this world saving hero with an awesome Humongous Mecha and he'd practically have his pick of the women. However, Gendo, having not seen his son for 3 years or so failed to count on the fact that his son had in this time become shy, antisocial, and rather bicurious. Gendo would leave Shinji in an Unwanted Harem in which he would be surrounded by potential partners, including many of the unnamed girls in his class, Asuka (an angry Tsundere who really just wants to be loved), and Rei, because Incest Is Relative and the world of Evangelion is incredibly Freudian. As things came to an end, Gendo notices Shinji's bicuriosity, and sends in Kaworu, a flamboyantly gay 15 year old who also happens to possess the potential to pilot Evas. However, it turns out Kaworu is the seventeenth angel, and things go downhill from there. The simple fact relating to this WMG is that any of those kids in Shinji's class, and plenty of other kids his age too, could quite easily pilot Eva's, but Gendo's Uberpimp tendencies combined with his deep, hidden desire for his son to be a happy man, combined with the convenient fact that Yui's soul was trapped within Eva Unit-01, made Shinji by far his preferred candidate. Evangelion is set 57 years after My Neighbour Totoro, with a surprisingly linked storyline.
(As far as I can tell based off my own personal viewing of the film and what the internet tells me) My Neighbour Totoro is set in 1958, with Satsuki Kusakabe aged 10 at the time. This would mean Satsuki was born in 1948. It's entirely reasonable that she would grow up to get married in the late sixties or early seventies and in 1977 bears a child, but here's the twist. The man she married's name was Ikari. Having taken that family name she named the child Yui, who, wait for it, would grow to marry Gendo and give birth to Shinji. This would explain why (when the differing animation styles of the film are taken into account) Yui and Shinji appear so similar to Satsuki.
Another twist comes with Mei (apparently born 1954). Say Mei marries at some point in the seventies, she may go on to have a family, and there's nothing to stop her doing that with a man named Ibuki. In 1991 (The year of Maya Ibukis birth) Mei would still only be 37, still a perfectly reasonable age to have children, and could well be Maya's mum. Although she may not have directly inherited the family appearance as dominant genes, she may still still carry the gene's recessively and pass them onto Maya, hence Maya looking so similar to Yui.
Also, Totoro is Kaworu's earliest form to appear on earth!
The First Ancestral Race are the Xel'naga or something similar.
The precursors drive their evolution by creating two species, one of purity of form, and one of purity of essence. Angels represent the Purity of Essence; they come in different shapes and sizes, but in their psyche given an overriding immutable directive to destroy and assimilate their counterpart (just like the Zerg Overmind, which like Kaworu, planned a gambit to give his species free will through himself being killed). Humanity represents the Purity of Form; they're imprisoned in a common form and shape, but have differing psyches and a degree of individuality, and they prefer to use technology and modifying the environment to suit their needs instead of evolving and changing their own form (just like the Protoss, which also have a conflict between an Assimilation Plot and the individualistic dark templar). Or maybe it's the opposite, Angels' powerful AT Fields represent Purity of Form, while LCL's evolution into Earth species represent Purity of Essence. They were planned to merge at the very beginning in order to continue the Precursors' evolution, but an intervening conspiracy (Seele/Duran/Narud) screwed it up to all hell.
Kaworu is actually high constantly.
Kaworu smokes copious amounts of reefer off screen. Hence why his eyes are so red and he is so serene all the time. Rei also smokes a lot of weed, but she can't handle it and ends up looking freaked out all the time.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org.
Privacy Policy
0