And it's me, or do part of her delirium imply that the consciousness inside Unit 00 is Rei I's?
It is Rei I's.
Hmm, has it been decided whether or not Naoko was assassinated for killing Rei I, or that she committed suicide?
She committed suicide.
or at least not on Gendo's side, which at this point is effectively the same thing.
I don't know... Ritsuko is... rather emotionally dependent on the belief that Gendo
needs her. That only she knows his secret self, and all that other crap that abused women tell themselves about why everyone telling them to abandon their abusive husbands is wrong.
I am certain that Ritsuko would choose Gendo over Rei, heck there are hints she views Rei as a rival and threat to her relationship with Gendo. I expect she would also choose Gendo over Misato. I just don't think that anything happening to Rei will get through to Ritsuko. Not because Ritsuko is malicious, but because she's broken inside, and she has convinced herself emotionally that Gendo is what she needs to feel whole. It will take Gendo rejecting her for her to turn on him.
A more effective way of turning her would be to convince her that she can bind Gendo to her more tightly by doing something different. For example, arguing that not drugging Rei will eliminate Rei as a rival and make Gendo more dependent on her. And unable to recover Yui from the Eva, thus effectively eliminating both of Ritsuko's female rivals for Gendo's affections. It's a crazy argument, based on insane assumptions, but the fact that is more likely to persuade Ritsuko says a lot about her state of mind.
I don't hate Ritsuko. I feel pity for her.
Well, when she gets confronted by Misato about the drugs she also has to consider a bit more than just her feelings about Rei. If she goes, "Oh, well Rei's death wouldn't be much of a problem." she is then confronted with the choice of either letting Misato in on the clone bit, with the entire can of worms that would open, or appearing, to her possibly last friend on this world, like an uncaring monster who would kill a child, who is 1/4th of humanities last chance of survival, through negligence.
Ritsuko isn't a bad manipulator herself, and the person she knows best how to manipulate is Misato. Her most likely response to Misato confronting her about drugging Rei?
"Rei is an angel-human hybrid, developed as way to determine how to control the EVAs when the first two attempts (Shinji and Asuka's mothers) killed the test subjects. We keep her drugged to make sure the angel part of her stays under control. Do you really want an angel without a leash under your command and in control of one of the Evas? Oh? You're angry about how this was kept from you? Well, we thought you'd be resistant to accepting an angel, but she provides 1/3 of our combat force, so if humanity is going to survive we have to use whatever tools we have."
While I doubt that no one, besides Maya and maybe Misato would miss her, (more truthfully Misato would miss the friend she had known in college) she does have information they don't and her turning up dead means someone else who they don't know could turn up to take over her job.
Most likely Maya would take over (like she did in the series). Gendo would not want to inject a stranger into his plans at this point.
I would hazard to say that Evangelion wasn't so much a deconstruction of the Giant Robot genre in specific as much as it was a severely different take on some core anime concepts. Enigmatic girls. Tsunderes. Teenaged protagonists. Giant robots powered by evil science with the power to be a god or a devil.
Umm.... some of those things only became core anime concepts after Evangelion. There is a reason we call them "Rei clones."
Eva is pretty clearly a deconstruction of Mecha anime in particular, and the Hero's Journey in general. Shinji is the classical anti-hero.
Mutter mutter stupid fetish fuel merch maiden with no backstory or point at being in the bloody movie stealing screentime and awesome moments from Best Eva Pilot and her blue-haired rival mutter mutter...
That's how I felt about Mari too. Give us some point to her being in the show.
Frankly I've developed the theory that Rebuild is actually a sequel, and this is all happening during third impact.
Shinji is running away from the reality of third impact so he's created this fantasy alternate reality where he's not a crybaby loser, but instead more of a brooding loner. He's much more put together during Rebuild 1, and then in Rebuild 2 Asuka appears in his idealized image of her. (Explaining why she is nicer and so much cooler). But his mind rebels against this fantasy, identifying it as false, hence everything turning bad and Shinji being at fault and hated by everyone, including Misato in Rebuild 3. Of course Kawrou has to die for him, even though putting the collar on his neck makes no sense except as part of a dream or fantasy.
In this theory I suspect that Mari is Asuka's projection into the fantasy. Since Mari basically teases and flirts with Shinji, makes Asuka look awesome, calls Asuka Princess, and teases Asuka about her affection for Shinji, encouraging a romance between Asuka and Shinji. She could easily be Asuka's inner desires run wild. (Also explains the connection with Kaji, the ability to pilot Unit 2 without switching cores, etc).
