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So, in other words, you're conflating in-universe and out-of-universe, Watsonian and Doylist.
Evangelion Ideas Thread: You Can (Not) Rebuild
- Thread starter Teen Spirit
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Turing Decidable
𝕘𝕒𝕣𝕗
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I agree with Susano on this one. It doesn't supply any new information on how synchronization work.
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That's not how anything works. If an author wants to present themes in a work, he has to actually present those themes. If that presentation, that execution, isn't in the work, then the theme isn't there, regardless of what the author may later claim. A work needs to stand on its own, and any theme within a work needs to be able to stand on its own.
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It wouldn't be 18 either way, since age of majority is Japan is 20, not 18. There's even a holiday about it: Coming of Age Day, second Monday of January.
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"Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we're offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the all-about Eva manuals, but there is no such thing. Don't expect to get answers by someone. Don't expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers."
- Hideaki Anno
I really like this statement by Anno because it allow's us fans to come up with theories with the unanswered questions on the show he won't answer. Like Kyoko Soryu was her broken soul really reunited with her other half in Unit-02 or did Akuka imagine the words "Die with me!" as some viewers to argue that the second voice in EOE Asuka hears might come not from Kyoko, but rather from her own memories awakened by Arael in Episode 22.(I prefer the latter theory actually)
- Hideaki Anno
I really like this statement by Anno because it allow's us fans to come up with theories with the unanswered questions on the show he won't answer. Like Kyoko Soryu was her broken soul really reunited with her other half in Unit-02 or did Akuka imagine the words "Die with me!" as some viewers to argue that the second voice in EOE Asuka hears might come not from Kyoko, but rather from her own memories awakened by Arael in Episode 22.(I prefer the latter theory actually)
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But that's exactly the problem. If you want to include a theme, but the story fails to properly include it, or bends around unlogically and with no in-universe coherence so you can have thattheme, then that is in fact bad storytelling. Because then the story tells something different than what it was supposed to do. But that's the thing: The story DOES in fact tell something different there. What matters is what the story actually tells, not what the author intended.
Don't forget though, the Japanese didn't have complusory High School back then.
You was kinda expected to leave middle school at sixteen and work in your family run business or if you lived in a rural town, you helped out farming.
It's only in the....past decade or two? That Japans overall level of skill needed to get a job increased.
....It's basically Anno showing his age, as the children -still- have to wear uniform in the anime.
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Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
You say this like Japan has compulsory high school now. Does it?
From what I heard?
More or less.
Japanese school children now have to leave at eighteen.
It used to be 'just because' society started asking for High School diplomas, but now it is a full on thing.
I think you can avoid it if you live in a rural part of the country or in certain prefectures.
Oh, about the whole 'coming of age story' thing....Nausicaa Valley of the Wind is more or less built on 'Bildungsromans' and considering that Anno got the idea of EVAs from when he worked on it....
Mind you, originally NGE was supposed to have an adult audience with adult pilots, but Anno got tossed a children's slot so he had to mod it in a hurry.
He revamped 'Yui Ichijiro pilot of unit one' as 'Yui Ikari mother of the pilot of unit one'.
EDIT: Also, you can get married at eighteen, so the whole Coming of Age at 20 is due to their smoking law, rather than society.
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This is rich coming from the person who claims one of the big themes of Evangelion is that 'running away is okay' (stated in an interview with Japan's biggest boys love magazine) when every single time it comes up in the show running away only makes everything worse.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Yeah well, if we're starting with ad hominem, I could also point out that of course you want to say we should only look at out of universe reasons, so you can uphold your ridiculous theory about Shinji repeating Gendo's story in Rebuild 2.0, because of themes, even though nothing in the actual movie, where Shinji has no idea what he's doing, points to that.
Meanwhile, the series does in fact show Shinji sinking ever deeper into depression and despair because he can't free himself of EVA.
Warning: NO
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no
The next ad hominem gets threadbanned for a month. Be civil.
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But this claim that Shinji can't free himself from EVA and so falls deeper into despair, doesn't hold much water because for most of the series he actually gains relationships he never had before thanks to piloting EVA. He falls apart at the end because he starts making the decision to flee from those relationships.
Toji during Bardiel, where he abandons his friend in favour of doing nothing to help out of fear, and then abandoning his relationship with Kensuke out of guilt for crippling Toji.
Zeruel, where his decision to leave tokyo-3 to spite his father ends up with everyone coming within a hair's breadth of dying horribly.
Misato when she breaks down crying at her answering machine and Shinji talks himself out of going to help her.
Asuka during Arael when Shinji backs down from helping her in favour of obeying his father.
Rei when she wakes up after Armisael and doesn't act the way he expects.
Every single time he makes the decision to run away from those around him, his life gets worse and worse.
And Rebuild Shinji literally fuses Unit-01's core with Zeruel's (an idea that even someone who doesn't know anything would balk at) in order to save Rei, a woman who is already dead and the spitting image of his mother. He didn't know what he was doing, which prevents him from being just as bad as Gendo, but he still dooms the world for what he wants, which are the same things his father wants: to save a dead woman he loves.
And in Rebuild 3.0, when he does know what he's doing...He does the exact same thing. Even when everyone he knows is telling him to stop, he still goes ahead and tries to sacrifice everything for the sake of a dead girl.
And even then, he's perfectly willing to abandon her if she doesn't act the way he wants her to.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
It's still not an attack on the argument I actually made, that "themes" need to be presented in the work itself, and can't stand on themselves, but on the poster who made it. After all, that argument is true or false regardless of what I have may have said about a different but associated topic earlier. This is literally the actual definition of ad hominem. It doesn't mean "insults", as is it is often misrepresented. It means making arguments that aim at the opponent themselves, instead of their arguments.
Now - the only real point in your list where Shinji really "runs away" is maybe Misato. Touji? We had this before. Shinji made a principled stand of not fighting. It was maybe the wrong decision, but it wasn't running away. It was the exact opposite, really. He'd rather have died than to hurt Touji. Of course Touji still ended up hurt in the end, but the idea that Shinji was "running away" in that fight is absurd. Rather, regardless of whether you think it was good for him to do it or not, he made a principled stand.
I mean, in previous instances you then shifted towards "yes well it's still Shinji running away because he didn't visit Touji in hospital", but I see you have shifted the goalposts back.
And as for Asuka? He did try to reach out to her after the battle. But by then it was simply too late. Running away sure would have looked different, though. In that case he wouldn't have made any attempts to reach out at all. Plus - disobeying orders (Bardiel fight) is "running away", but obeying orders (Arael fight) is running away as well?
That seems mightily inconsistent to me.
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Shinji's decision wasn't a 'principled stand' unless that stand is 'I am perfectly willing to let people suffer if it means I can avoid the chance of failure'. He chose to not even attempt to help his friend, currently trapped inside a robot possessed by a horrible space goo monster, but instead thought it best to sit there and get killed without accomplishing anything. It was the wrong decision, and Shinji's failure to even check up on Touji afterwards is just another example of Shinji fleeing things he doesn't know how to handle, no matter what it costs him.
There's no maybe about Misato. He conciously talks himself out of going to help a sobbing woman he cares greatly for. There is no possible way that can be spun as anything more than Shinji running away from something unpleasant.
Asuka? He reaches out to her after it no longer matters, and does it in the most unthinking way possible. He was all fire and fury, screaming to help Asuka, but he folded up under his father, choosing to obey a man he has every reason to hate instead of helping someone he cares about.
And he ran from Rei the second she stopped acting like the Rei he knew, instead of showing even the vaguest concern about someone close to him.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
All he could have done was to fight, which would have hurt and possibly killed Touji. So yes, it was a principled stand. It is not one you like, that is plain, and maybe there is something he could have done (though I seriously doubt this) - but that doesn't change that fact. He would rather have let himself get killed than to hurt Touji. That is what his stance was all about. And that is the exact opposite of running away.
And yet, during the Bardiel, it's disobeying which is "running away". What is it now?
Like, what standards are you actually setting for Shinji here, because they seem absolutely inconsistent to me. And the fact is, he DOES reach out to her. If he were really running away, as you say, he wouldn't even have done that anymore. After he has seen some dozen versions of her disintegrate in a tank around him. Being then fearful or at least anxious seems like a pretty damn natural reaction to me then.
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And yet, during the Bardiel, it's disobeying which is "running away". What is it now?
Make even the slightest attempt to free his friend from the space goo monster. That way the idea that he is making a principled stand in deliberately disobeying orders to kill his friend actually has teeth instead of what he actually did, which was sit there and sacrifice both his life and the safety of the whole planet for the sake of someone he refused to even attempt to help.
Anxious, sure. Fearful, sure. But this Rei acts nothing like the ones he saw in the tanks, but he still refuses to even talk to her, someone who saved his life twice over and has been a steady comrade ever since he came to Tokyo-3. Shinji straight out abandons someone who has done him no wrong because he can't handle what she is/is going through, and he loses that relationship.
Every single time Shinji chooses to flee from someone close to him, he becomes much poorer for it. He even says as much during Episode 24, where he's sitting in a bathtub and listing off all the people he wants to talk to and bemoaning the fact that he can't.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Okay, but at this point we're at "This was a really bad and unproductive principled stand", which it may well be - but it was a principled stand nonetheless and hence the exact opposite of running away. At this point, you're accusing Shinji of being stupid, which may be valid enough, whatever, instead of running away.
I mean, this is obviously right - looked at from without the best choice would have been to keep in contact with Rei, maybe even to reach out about this. I mean, I of course would think so. But, uh, I still think you're severely underestimating the psychological impact of seeing such shit would realistically have. That isn't Shinji running away on account of his normal Shinji nature. That is Shinji simply being a normal boy, instead of a shonen hero protagonist.
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But that's exactly the problem with looking at Shinji's actions during Bardiel. Refusing to do anything while your friend is in danger and the thing putting him in danger is trying to kill you isn't a principled stand. It's being a bloody fool. Heck, during the strangling Shinji says that he has to save Toji, yet he does absolutely nothing to make it happen and in fact comes around to how his father sees the situation (while still opposing him), in effect giving up on his stated goal of saving Toji without even trying to.
But Shinji knows that his avoidance of Rei is wrong. He says as much during Kaworu's introduction. He literally says that he's "lost the courage" to talk to Ayanami, and he cries out for someone to tell him what to do, calling out for his friends, Asuka, Misato, his mother, all the relationships he's lost up to now to tell him what to do.
But Shinji knows that his avoidance of Rei is wrong. He says as much during Kaworu's introduction. He literally says that he's "lost the courage" to talk to Ayanami, and he cries out for someone to tell him what to do, calling out for his friends, Asuka, Misato, his mother, all the relationships he's lost up to now to tell him what to do.
And somewhere, a monkey's paw curls up as Kaworu immediately shows up. 
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Yes, he wishes he could have at least their old relationship back. But can you seriously not imagine that he is way too terrified for that after what he has seen? That is why he cries out for help. He can't do this on his own, after the psychological trauma of some dozens of Reis disintegrating around him as if they were nothing, I can't exactly blame him. It isn't so much that he decided to run. He really can't do any different.
I admit, the monkey paw thing went over my head...
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