[EVA] Concurrency tangent (WAS: Alternate Rei on DVD cover)

[V V]

">>I interpret it differently. Shinji can't join Instrumentality and help
patch the holes in everyone else's soul until he comes to terms with
himself. He has to learn that he has value, that he has worth if he's
going to be part of the unified whole. When he reaches that epiphany,
Complementation completes and Shinji breaks out of the limbo that he's
been in since his body dissolved and is reunited with everyone in the
endless happiness of Instrumentality."

No.  "Realizing he has value" is basically another way of saying "convincing himself he's perfect".  Asuka, for example, already thinks she's perfect, and is as wrong as he is.  The theme of the series, arguably and loosely, was the realization that "the real world is a scary place and the humans in it are very flawed, but they have the *potential to be more if they try harder and embrace life*"

Shinji "coming to terms with himself" was really just accepting that he can TRY to make his life better - i.e. in End of Eva, his conversation with Yui at the end that "this isn't a miracle-fix, I'm still going to be afraid and not be entirely sure what I'm doing with my life"...but it's real.  He took the first step.  It can't end "happy" because life is always growing (you can only really be sure you had a good life at the end, not when you're 14)

It's just...you're saying the message he had to learn was coming to terms with that he is "valuable"?  He's not "valuable", no one is....they're valuable because they're TRYING to be valuable, not simply *proclaiming* they're valuable.

Much like the "Densha Otoko" craze in Japan, Otaku...I mean the real hikkikomori....like to think that they're inherently really great and the world just needs to realize that;  with the "Train Otaku" thing, while a girl might be happy that this geek stopped some guy from harassing her, odds are she would actually be creeped out that he's a shut-in who is addicted to 2chan ( I mean, his SOLE source of human contact)

But the 2channing otaku of Japan latched onto this:  why?  They think the moral should be "we're all special, inherently" which is really...an excuse to keep being flawed people.

The real message...not just in Eva but a lot of shows....is that people have value when they're trying to strive out of the mud and be better.  

The show doesn't end with Shinji and Asuka being magically cured of their neuroses, but it ends with them deciding, finally, to *try* to be better people. 

--- On Sun, 1/31/10, Peter Svensson <sun1jack at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Peter Svensson <sun1jack at hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [EVA] Concurrency tangent (WAS: Alternate Rei on DVD cover)
To: evangelion at eva.onegeek.org
Date: Sunday, January 31, 2010, 7:59 PM


> I've talked about ending concurrency time and again, pointing out how
> Instrumentality must have been rejected in 26 like in EoE due to
> Shinji's own words of wanting to keep living in reality:


Any argument that has Shinji breaking out of Instrumentality in the TV ending has to come up with some reason why rather than a return to reality at the end, we get a transition into something even stranger and less real. Everyone is floating in a blue void between Earth and Moon and even the dead people are there, and they all smile and Shinji becomes one of them and then is able to speak as the narrative captions, as he's become Complemented.
 
> And the TV ending was *originally* going to be EoE, so I'm not sure why Anno
> would completely reverse his message instead of keeping it the same inboth
> ends.

As far as we can tell, the original plan was for something close to a first draft of Air as TV 25, and something we've never seen at all for TV 26. The original plan for TV 25 was made into Air, but Anno scrapped the original TV 26 and wrote something new. Heck, considering what we know about the live action segment that didn't make it into the final cut, it seems Anno had a lot of ideas for how to end Evangelion that he hadn't decided on yet.

I'll also point out that it seems TV 26 was done in about a week, a total rush job made under severe pressures and constraints, and that they were pretty sure they'd get to do the "real" ending as an OVA. Having the ending be different makes sense under those circumstances.
 
> Other then that, for now I'll just say the 26 "Congratulations!" scene seems
> to be a result (of sorts) of EoE Shinji's "I want to see them again, because
> I believe my feelings were real" (Note both scenes have the blue sky with
> clouds, everybody is happy and being portrayed as individuals in either
> scene, etc) just before Eva-01 leaves Lilith who physically dies as the
> Black Moon is destroyed.

But if you hadn't seen the movies, and only saw the TV show, how would you get that from the ending? 

Peter Svensson
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