Get in the Simulwatch - Neon Genesis Evangelion [End of Eva - 21/7]

Neil.T said:
On a related note, would anyone be interested in a (repeat) Nadia simulwatch at some point after we finish Eva? I haven't seen the series yet.
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Could probably follow along with it, but I don't know if I could spare the time to run the thread at the moment. Not to stop anyone else who wants to!

Also I'll be in an area without internet from today until thursday night, so I won't be able to change the episode number in the thread title, but just to recap the schedule in case there's any doubt:

Today (9th): Episode 19
Tomorrow (10th): Episode 20
Thursday (11th): Episode 21
 
Episode 19

I get that Shinji is annoyed but Gendo didnt use his hands to attack Toji. Literally the entire point of Gendos actions was that he removed control from Shinji so it wasnt Shinjis hands that attacked Toji. Anyway nitpick over.

What an episode!

Tojis fever dream/sunset train ride was very artfully done!

I love Gendos office in bright red. We can still see the religious diagrams from the intro credits on the ceiling and I see this time they are also on the floor too. He really has surrounded himself in his ideology!

An angel finally breached the geofront! The beheaded Eva had landing in front of you would be horrifying for anyone! But that's just the start!

Shinji going berserk while in control of the Eva is very reminiscent of when the Eva went berserk in the first 2 episodes. Just crazy and violent but when the Eva frees itself its purposeful destruction and devouring (cannibalism?) Of the Angel is far more shocking. Also that shot of the Eva on all fours turning to face the camera with its eyes lit up like an animal in headlights was quite the scary image.

Also Gendo not even flinching when he gets dowsed in Eva blood. It's like he looks for opportunities to make power moves.
It has begun...
 
  • Shinji was sleeping next to Kaji... no one... tell... Asuka...​
  • Liked that little tidbit about the Kanji for 'Girlfriend', pictographic languages are fascinating the more you know.​
  • Love how smart they were with their animation budget. We barely see anything of Unit 2 and 3s fight but they show really buikds dread and tension.​
  • Rei takes having the feeling of having her arm severed like q champ.
  • Casey Mongillo's scream of despair is so great.
  • So for their fourth child/children they picked the not too bright jock because of course they did. Not the nerd who actually wanted it, not the class rep with a sensible head on her shoulders. Nerve make such good decisions
  • Either way Kaji wants to die, it has to be near melons... XD
  • They should install a revolving door signposted 'Shinji.
 
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Mr L said:
Shinji was sleeping next to Kaji,,, no one... tell... Auska...
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Mr L said:
Either way Kaji wants to die, it has to be near melons... XD
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↑ These made me chuckle. 😆👍

Mr L said:
So for their fourth child/children they picked the not too bright jock because of course they did. Not the nerd who actually wanted it, not the class rep with a sensible head on her shoulders. Nerve make such good decisions
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I think, within the show's mythology, the choice of pilot for a particular Eva is actually wholly dependant on... whose soul is bound to its core, shall we say. Toji's mother is absent. Just like Shinji's. And Asuka's...

#####

Episode 20

Our assumption is that Shinji's body lost its ego boundary, and he's floating in the entry plug in quantum form.

Maya: "It's no good! The ego border is frozen in a loop!"

Ritsuko: "Irradiate the wave patterns in all directions!

"It won't work. The signals are trapped in Klein space."

Misato: "What does that mean??!"

Ritsuko: "It means... we failed."


It's just a tiny bit of a shame that all the gut-wrenching drama is compromised a little by a glaring continuity error: Shinji was wearing his civvies when he disappeared into the entry plug last episode, not his plug suit! Whoops. 😅

Gainax had a go at covering over their blunder by dropping in a reference to the rogue plug suit floating around inside Shinji's entry plug. (In the dialogue during the scene where Ritsuko, Misato and Maya are talking in silhouette.) The second volume of Essential Evangelion Chronicle, a guidebook to the series, plays along nicely with this clever bit of deception, and reads:
"The Entry Plug was empty save for a Plug Suit. Since Shinji hadn't been wearing his Plug Suit when he boarded EVA-01 to fight the Fourteenth Angel, this was taken as a manifestation of his soul."
Crafty. 😉

During Shinji's phycological journey within Eva Unit-01, some forgotten memories seem to flash before him, and he also accuses Gendo of killing Yui?! 😱


And those... off-screen sounds at the end of the episode...

I'd forgotten how... explicit that was. 😳
I guess this was one of the things that landed the show in a bit of hot water with TV broadcasters at the time.
 
Episodes 17 & 18
Professor Irony said:
What has crossed my mind a few times while watching the show this time around though is, what do other countries make of the Angel attacks?
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Professor Irony said:
It seems a little odd how incredibly focused the series is on the area around Tokyo-3.
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It's a show made in Japan by Japanese people. It's no different to a million Hollywood movies where America saves the day really!

Neil.T said:
Another thing that crosses my mind while watching Eva is that if only there wasn't a city built slap-bang above NERV HQ
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Maybe the government made it part of the deal to let them build a secret base. I would have left after the second attack. I think it's actually pointed out that people have left.

WMD said:
Suzuhara goes through quite a journey here. Seeing him go to visit his daughter
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cough sister cough 😉

WMD said:
Why does everyone freak out so much over telling Shinji who the fourth child is? I dont really get why him knowing its Toji would be so bad.
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Manga Time (chapters 34-40)
Not much difference actually apart from one biggy. Toji tells Shinji himself that he's going to be a pilot after inviting him to tea at his house. I'm not sure which one is worse. I think the bit where the plug is in the hand of Unit 01 and Shinji begs his father to stop would obviously be more personal and urgent than when it's an unknown person. As Shinji knows he talks briefly with Misato, who reassures him that she and Ritsuko will be with Toji.
A few smaller things. There's no visit to Rei's. This has already happened with just Shinji. Also no sleep over with Ryoji or watermelon scene.
When Asuka visits Ryoji she makes it explicitly clear that she likes him and doesn't want him to see her as a kid by taking her top off to show her figure in her bra. After Ryoji makes it clear that it ain't going to happen, she sees the computer in the same way.
The whole death flag stuff with Hikari liking Toji plays out a little differently. Shinji has an accident when having a play-scrap with Toji, Hikari treats him in the infirmary and keeps asking about Toji. Later Shinji tells Asuka and she's like "You know nothing Shinji Ikari" 😉 it obviously means she likes him. Then Asuka grabs Hikari and tells her she has to do something about it and then asks Shinji for a plan, to which he suggests the bento. She makes it and sees Toji as he's off to go do his new job, but forgets to give him the bento.
This is bit more one sided than the show where she tells Toji she might have lunch for him. So while it makes it even clearer she likes him and thus more heart breaking the scene with her making the lunch as he lies dying, he doesn't have a clue!
 
Episodes 19 & 20
Psychological noodling and techno-babble with a side order of MOTW.
I can see people checking out at this point with how weird it is getting. Maybe this is the point I stopped watching, I really can't remember the when and the why, just that I didn't finish it.

Manga Time
Episode 19 (chapters 41-47)
Again pretty much the same apart from:
Toji is dead!
Shinji dreams of Hikari showing up with a bento and Shinji protests he didn't kill Toji.
When he awakes Ryoji is there to take him to his father. He doesn't have the cuffs on like in the show and almost punches Gendo, but for Ryoji's intervention.
After the Angel shows up Ryoji finds Shinji, instead of the other way around, and drags him to a shelter under the station where he tells Shinji his back story all intercut with the battle above. One note Ryoji tells Shinji in the show, as he does here, that if the Angel reaches ADAM that it could kick off the Third Impact, but IIRC Shinji hasn't been told about ADAM in the show? He has in the manga when he followed Misato and Ryoji earlier.
The battle scenes are pretty much beat for beat.

Episode 20 (chapters 48-51)
Again largely the same, but:
Small extra scenes of the capture of Unit 01, SEELE revealing a secret weapon, Tabris! and Asuka and Rei worrying about Shinji. This includes Rei rejecting Gendo and internally talking about a void within her that she filled with Gendo, but now Shinji is the one she thinks of.
The scene with Misato and Ryoji takes place elsewhere with less sex. Instead it takes place within NERV and Ryoji kisses Misato to stop her from ranting too much, but she pushes him away and he leaves saying that he still loves her.
Shinji's vision within the EVA is much more substantial and includes stabbing Gendo and seeing a vision of a ghostly woman that looks remarkably like Rei, but it's not it's his mother! She tells him that his fight is over. Then the others come into his vision and tells him they need him, but he rejects this. Then as Ritsuko starts the procedure to get him out Rei seems to be talking telepathically with the EVA and asks for Shinji back. The vision of the woman is now an EVA as Shinji has changed his mind and struggles to get free. He calls for his mother and the woman floats out of the EVA which then lets go. He now sees his actual mother (still very much looking like Rei!) breast feeding the baby Shinji and talking to a young Gendo. She then turns to older Shinji and says he can stay or can go and that she will always be watching over him. He hears voices and then reappears in the real world.
 
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Episode 20

What a head trip!

First off the shot of Unit 1s head wrapped in bandages with its green eye and toothy grin showing while the team in silhouette try to figure out a plan was amazing. It had this sort of crazy Joker vibe to its expression.

So now hes been absorbed into an Angel and an Eva, Shinji really is starting to unravel. The way the word enemy flashes across the screen and is said so much and so quickly till it loses meaning and then boom! Ominous noise and pause on Gendos face. Shinji really does not care about the war for human survival anymore. He has daddy issues. And not just that, girl troubles, self doubt and self loathing are consuming hom at this point.
 
  • Episode 20 really breaks down the dam and lets all the crazy in the story flow out.
  • Ok, now the budget limitations are showing through in a bad way.
  • Did we just gey audio drama style hentai?!
  • She thinks Ritsuko doesn't get along with boys because she only mad a mother? Lady, your degree definitely isn't in psychology.
  • The raw body of Eva 1 is an unsettling sight.
  • Scientists are messed up and evil and we shouldn't trust them. That's what this show is teaching us.
 
D1tchd1gger said:
One note Ryoji tells Shinji in the show, as he does here, that if the Angel reaches ADAM that it could kick off the Third Impact, but IIRC Shinji hasn't been told about ADAM in the show? He has in the manga when he followed Misato
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Yeah, that's right. In the show, Kaji's mention of Adam as Zeruel attacks is the first time he hears about it.

D1tchd1gger said:
He now sees his actual mother (still very much looking like Rei!) breast feeding and talking to a young Gendo.
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She's breastfeeding a young Gendo in Sadamoto's manga??! That's more disturbing than anything in the anime!!! 😱

😛
 
Neil.T said:
She's breastfeeding a young Gendo in Sadamoto's manga??! That's more disturbing than anything in the anime!!! 😱
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Syntax error!

I forgot to mention, I looked into the meaning of the names Gendo chooses for his children.
He says Shinji for a boy and Rei for a girl.
Seems mostly not to be of any significance really:

Character Name Origins - EvaWiki - An Evangelion Wiki - EvaGeeks.org

wiki.evageeks.org wiki.evageeks.org

Shinji is a friends name and Rei for the Zero fighter. The kanji for Shinji, the friend 真嗣 means 'true' and 'succeed'. Ando apparently just stuck with the Katakana, シンジ, but maybe could have gone with 真子 'true' and 'child'?
japanese-names.info

Shinji - Japanese boy(male) name meanings

Japanese first name Shinji, 107 kanji variations. Kanji choices and meanings are listed here!
japanese-names.info japanese-names.info
 
D1tchd1gger said:
Shinji is a friends name and Rei for the Zero fighter. The kanji for Shinji, the friend 真嗣 means 'true' and 'succeed'. Ando apparently just stuck with the Katakana, シンジ, but maybe could have gone with 真子 'true' and 'child'?
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I tried typing 真子 into Google Translate and, hilariously, it returned "Mako". 😅
I reckon Shinji is about as different from Mako from Kill la Kill as you could get!

That Evageeks article is one I've never come across before, so cheers for that, dude. 😀👍
 
Looking through the Wiktionary entry for the two symbols it seems the Shinji pronunciation is more from an older Chinese sound and Mako is more modern Japanese sound. At least that's what I could fathom!

My mind was on the verge of imploding more than watching episode 20 trying to read those Wiktionary entries!
 
Episode 21

Hey. You're a little late, aren't you?

An extended flashback episode resulting from SEELE's kidnapping and inquisition of Fuyutsuki. We see how Fuyutsuki and Gendo meet, Gendo's cynical reason for pursuing Yui, and Dr. Akagi's moment of madness in a fit of jealousy that leads to a double tragedy.

The backstory deepens as we learn how NERV was originally born from an organisation called GEHIRN. And at the end of it all, Misato is left broken after Kaji is murdered. Was he waiting for a contact of his to show up at the end? Or did he already know his time was up?


(For what it's worth record, my personal simulwatch will consist of the original versions of episodes 21 to 24 found on ADV's 8-volume DVD release. These are the episodes that lead to episodes 25 and 26, and the series' original conclusion. After that, it'll take in the director's-cut versions of those penultimate four, which contain new and reworked scenes containing extra details that pave the way to the alternative story continuation of The End of Evangelion. 🙂)
 
Episode 21 directors cut

The CCTV grainy footage intro with a mess of panicked voices over the top for the 2nd impact is such a tense way to start this episode! Also think it may be the first episode to have a scene before the intro credits?

The non linear story telling is a great way to keep the pace of the episode up as we jump around the timeline piecing the story together. Framing Gendo and Yui's backstory from the point t of view of Fuyutsuki is brilliant. I think its the first time in the whole series we've had his point of view. Pretty bold storytelling decision to save it for now.

The shot of Gendo in a totally bare office explaining how a new genesis for mankind will happen and as the camera pans back the shadow shows a tilted cross coming out from his shadow is so ominous. Will this really be a glorious genesis?

Wow at little Rei! She really managed to push Akagis buttons all wrong. How can she be dead back then and still alive today?!

Its interesting that we find out Shinji was present at his mother's disappearance from existence byt we never see a young Shinjis reaction to it. Just an older Shinji who cant help a crying Misato when she always tryst to help him. He even acknowledges that all he does is run away.

The safety first sign on the ship Gendo is on seems highly ironic!
 
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