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Evangelion 3.33.




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arromdee



Joined: 15 Mar 2010
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 12:40 pm Reply with quote
I managed to see this at NYCC, thus enabling me to read the old Animesols episode thread that had a lot of discussion of Evangelion 3.33 too.

The person sitting next to me pretty much spontaneously said that the whole thing could have been avoided if Shinji had been given a proper debriefing.

And I completely agree, because it's what I was thinking too. Ville doesn't tell him anything. So he runs away to where Rei, his father, and Kaworu are. Nobody tells him anything there, either, until Kaworu decides to tell him a little bit by, not taking a minute to tell him, but rather taking him on a journey that's so dangerous he needs to wear a suit or die--and he really was pretty close to death considering just tripping could get him killed.

Fuyutsuki then tells Shinji a few things that the audience already knew based on years of Eva media coverage, but which aren't actually useful to Shinji in understanding the current situation. Then Kaworu tells Shinji what to do but fails to explain why Shinji should think he's an authority on anything. Fortunately for the plot, Shinji goes along anyway. Kaworu also fails to adequately explain what the plan would accomplish (restoring the earth is a pretty vague phrase. Did Shinji think Kaworu was offering him a Cosmo DNA from Iscandar?)

And I don't buy the argument that everyone at Ville hated Shinji so they wouldn't talk to him. They're military professionals and know better. I also don't buy the argument that they wouldn't tell him because they're afraid he's an angel--most of the plot elements he was kept in the dark about were not exactly secrets (and besides, an angel that has to guess what's going on has as big a potential for disaster as Shinji doing so.)

Of course, we know why nobody ever tells Shinji anything. First of all, the entire story depends on it as a plot device, no matter how stupid it is. Second, the Eva writers want to keep the audience in the dark about what's going on, and because they don't want to explain it to the audience, they can't explain it to Shinji either. Much of it reamined unexplained--the audience could guess, but there was no way to know . Third, the whole thing feels like they're making it up as they go along, especially with the comment about rewriting Shinji's history (translation: whatever they put in movie 4 that contradicts previous movies, it won't matter).

There were also other stupidities. Shinji expecting a 14 year old player to work (great batteries, man). The whole pilots not aging thing to begin with (that's too obviously a plot device to have a time skip without inconveniently aging the characters). The movie not seeming to follow from 2.22 (which even implied no third impact), and Shinji being able to cause Third Impact in the first place.

I could add Shinji continuing to go with the plan after Kaworu tells him something is wrong (especially since Shinji completely trusted Kaworu when Kaworu told him to do it in the first place), but I'm sure someone's going to say that Shinji's mental condition was irrational enough that he'd do stupid things.

I also managed to Google up an Eva 3.33 FAQ on Eva Wiki. It's a whole list of "what does (unexplained thing) mean?", followed by an explanation which is perfectly plausible, but which is not actually in the movie.
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ZorgonXtreme



Joined: 23 Feb 2004
Posts: 251
Location: Anchorage, AK
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 12:55 pm Reply with quote
Uh, I have two walkmen from the early nineties that still work wonderfully....

Also, "Wille". Germans, you see.

The animation was stunning, though.
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jl07045



Joined: 30 Aug 2011
Posts: 1527
Location: Riga, Latvia
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 2:12 pm Reply with quote
arromdee wrote:
Third, the whole thing feels like they're making it up as they go along


Hi, welcome to Eva, the jazz piece of anime. If you can't bite this, you're (not) gonna like it.

Some of your arguments are completely understandable (why didn't Wille say a bit more to Shinji), some are irrelevant (we don' t even know, how that player still exists), some explainable (Shinji trusts what Kaworu says, because he's the only one who opens up to him) and a couple are just wrong (at the end of 2.22 Ritsuko said in plain text that Shinji is starting Third Impact).
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FenixFiesta



Joined: 22 Apr 2013
Posts: 2581
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 2:40 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The person sitting next to me pretty much spontaneously said that the whole thing could have been avoided if Shinji had been given a proper debriefing.

Coinciding with Shinji's initial awakening in the third film, the fleet is attacked by the Nemesis series, after that is resolved Shinji is placed in a cell for what can be assumed is the "debriefing moment" while certainly there are no warm feelings for Shinji and very much "you will do nothing any more" rhetoric going about, it is eventually cut short when Eva unit 09 assaults Wunder to take Shinji back to the remnants of Tokyo 03.

If we can assume the events after it is confirmed that Shinji is awake take less than a half a day to occur, there may have simply have been no time to go into extensive interaction (such as a 'proper debriefing') between Shinji and the Wille crew.
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arromdee



Joined: 15 Mar 2010
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 3:07 pm Reply with quote
jl07045 wrote:
(at the end of 2.22 Ritsuko said in plain text that Shinji is starting Third Impact).


Yes, but it seemed to imply that third impact had then stopped.
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jl07045



Joined: 30 Aug 2011
Posts: 1527
Location: Riga, Latvia
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 4:44 pm Reply with quote
arromdee wrote:
jl07045 wrote:
(at the end of 2.22 Ritsuko said in plain text that Shinji is starting Third Impact).


Yes, but it seemed to imply that third impact had then stopped.


Sure, but in 3.0 we see what "stopped" actually meant. It's not hard to see why people hate him. Willingly or not, but he had a hand in destroying half the world in order to get his mom girlfriend back.
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Sajuukkhar





PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 5:28 pm Reply with quote
arromdee wrote:
I also managed to Google up an Eva 3.33 FAQ on Eva Wiki. It's a whole list of "what does (unexplained thing) mean?", followed by an explanation which is perfectly plausible, but which is not actually in the movie.

This is Evangelion, half of it was never directly stated in the TV/movies/games to begin with.
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