Anyone care to go down a rabbit hole full of Anima spoilers and my own personal head cannon? I repeat Anima spoilers.

For a long time I have believed that Evangelion is a universe of reincarnation. You can call it death and rebirth. I always believed that it was absolutely not a loop, that time continued forward in one direction. The reason it appears as a time loop is because everyone is being forced to replay a predetermined path. The only thing that confused me was after the Anime/EoE, and also at the end of the Manga, I was unsure how they got from where it stopped to the entire planet being reincarnated and rebuilt to a certain state.

In one situation instrumentality is avoided and the world is left uninhabitable with only two survivors. It was noted that people would have the choice to live again due to the fact that instrumentality was denied, but I don't think that meant they would appear on the red Earth and all get to stare it the Lilith's head with Asuka and Shinji. I believe what that meant is everyone gets a chance to be reincarnated next time.

In the manga, it was a fairly happy ending with everyone being able to live what appeared to be normal lives except for the fact that there were obvious remnants of Evas in the background.

The only thing I could come up with was that Yui floated in space until the entire Earth ended however long that took, billions of years possibly. She would then reincarnate all the souls on the planet and somehow reformat the planet to a state where the environment was inhabitable yada yada we start over again but continue moving forward instead of resetting time.

Anima cleared up all of my failed attempts to determine what happened after instrumentality was avoided. It clearly depicts what happens after we defy the will of the universe. It clearly explains how everything gets rebuilt and the predetermined path is set up once again with the plan of proceeding with instrumentality. At the same time it supports My views that all the evangelion media are connected, and that is not a loop but a linear path with a clearly defined past and future. Last but not least it does use the body of the Evangelion that was the catalyst for the third impact. But in a much more direct manner. I'm trying not to get out any unnecessary spoilers.

I'm sure after reading all of this you probably think I accidentally put the wrong title on this post but I'm getting to it. Time to go down the rabbit hole.

Who is Mari? In the manga, there's a girl that appears to be the daughter of Asuka's stepmother. She was mentioned very briefly as a object of jealousy for Kyoko. The image of this girl, created by Kyoko's memory was a girl that was possibly in her early teens very typical design but not necessarily looking like Mari. The stepmother on the other hand looks very much like Mari. This image was from a memory before Asuka was conceived. This memory led Kyoko to go through medical procedures to overcome her inability to have a child. She wanted to have this child to compete with the mystery girl, and also compete with the man that left her. Asuka was 4 when she went to live with her stepmother, but the mystery girl was nowhere to be seen and never mentioned again the entire manga. Almost as if she no longer existed.

In the Anime we never hear about this girl, but I believe that's because we received most of our perspective from the point of view of Asuka. She never knew anything about this other girl except the potential that her mother may have mentioned her but at that age not being able to put face to the conversation she probably has no memory of it. Here's where the conversation gets deep. I believe this girl disappeared September 13, 2000. I believe she was the donor or the Adam contact experiment. I believe that she died during that experiment. At this point in time, Kyoko still wanted a daughter, she proceeded with the artificial insemination shortly after. Prior to her contact experiment with unit 02, she loved Asuka above all else. Therefore even though the original plan for Asuka was to contact with 02, she chose to do it herself and spare Asuka. Unfortunately this led for her no longer to love Asuka.

To sum up this idea. Mari was the original contact for Adam and she did not survive. She was the daughter of Asuka's stepmother. She was not alive during the original anime or Manga.

My theory is that Nerv US in every media was working to clone Mari and build the Wolfpack Eva. Unfortunately they never managed to complete it before the Third Impact. Therefore we have never seen her before.

In Anima, the third impact is interrupted and avoided. This allows three more years to pass on Earth uninterrupted. The world progressing three more years allows us to meet Mari for the first time.

I will skip a lot of unnecessary spoilers once again. But unfortunately there will be some more Anima spoilers right here. All of the souls in Evangelion are saved and resurrected every time instrumentality is avoided. This time because of the circumstances around Mari's cloning procedure and the combination of animal souls. Armaros, the antagonist of Anima attempts to completely erase Mari from existence. Combining with the souls of animals is seen as a sin in his eyes. Asuka is able to save Mari from the void, and afterwards Mari clings to Asuka like a child to it's mother for a short time. Mari spends much of her time in Anima wanting to be like Asuka. There's a very strong attachment and admiration that she has for Asuka. Shinji also spends quite a bit of time during the battles giving advice to Mari. I'm sure she has strong feelings for the both of them.

Here's some really heavy spoilers so if you haven't read Anima don't read this. At the very end of Anima, where is Mari? What does she have in her possession? She is resting at the remains of Eden, the birthplace of humanity, the Apples core. She has the Ark which has all of the information of all the souls of all the animals and humans that were living on the earth. She has the spear of longinus. The Moon followed her in the spear to the apples core. And she has also merged with Armaros. The being created from the previous Ava that was the catalyst for the third impact. The being that controls the recreation of Earth. Why would they end Anima in a place where Mari has all of the pieces and all of the materials required to recreate the world? Why did Anno take so much influence from Anima and put it into rebuild? That is because rebuild is a world that Mari created to attempt to destroy Evangelion and give Shinji and Asuka the chance to be free from the punishment of original sin. She wants to repay them for saving her from being erased, for mentoring, caring for her, and showing her what it means to be loved. She created an entire world to accomplish this. That is also why in rebuild it appears that she knows more than she should. She created an entire world for Asushin, somehow people still get confused about the train station scene.

Now let's take a look outside of Evangelion. Let's take a look at some of the inspiration for the last movie.

Thrice Upon A Time is a science fiction novel by British writer James P. Hogan, first published in 1980. Anno loves to reference books in his media.
The slogan for Nerv "God is in his heaven all's Right with the world." Was the last sentence from the book Anne of the Green gables.(I know this is not the origin of this quote but this story is one of Anno's top 10 favorites) Anne is a red-headed girl with lots of spunk, the book follows her journey. The anime adaption of this book is in his top 10 favorite anime, uses the same last sentence.

The book thrice upon a Time follows the story of a group of scientists that have found a way to send messages back and forth through Time which allows them to change the future. Unavoidably every time they reset the future things started to go wrong and they had to once again perform a reset. The woman in this book also is named Anne. She is the love interest of the main character. Every time they reset the world because of disaster they forget each other. Every time they start from scratch and still fall in love. Every time there's a cat involved that somehow causes them to meet each other again and fall in love. Mari has always been portrayed as a cat like character. Mari has existed in other media than rebuild and has even had cat ears in some occasions (Anima, which also heavily influenced rebuild) . At the end of the book thrice upon a Time, the world has been reset, Anne and Murdoch (main character) have yet to meet this go around. They just so happen to be at the same train station at the same time unknowingly. One was arriving and one was leaving. The same cat belonging to Murdoch's uncle somehow made it to the train station. The appearance of the cat lead to Murdock not boarding the train and meeting Anne just as fait has always brought them together. Mari wants Asuka and Shinji to be together. Anno don't want to give you the answers straight forward. He wants you to think and pay attention to his hints. In an interview at the one year anniversary of 3.0+1.0 he jokingly mentioned that Mari was taking Shinji to a local coffee shop. After they left the station to meet "someone".

If you made it this far I applaud you. I can only assume that most of my opinions are way too crazy to be useful. But this is what you get. Thank you for your time and would love to hear your thoughts.

Seriously, I don't get it. Not once in this story so far has Shinji done anything so egregious as to make his son hate him like he does. He has panic attacks, threatens to kill himself...he's obviously extremely sick. Yet the author has his son hate him like Shinji hated Gendo. What the actual fuck? Kazuya himself has PTSD too and is in his 20s. You'd think he would grow up and gain empathy for his poor father and understand what he's going through. But nope, let's have him hate his dad just like Shinji hated his, because it's like poetry, it rhymes, right? This fanfic is bs. It's well written, but God, I can't get behind the protagonist's hatred of his dad!

Given how he acknowledges how Asuka and the others have moved on with their lives, particularly his feelings towards Asuka, do you think if he had went back to the rebuild universe he would have stayed to live with everyone or lived somewhere else to get a fresh start to not be burdened being around the people who lives he unintentionally ruined?

Apparently it’s page 129 that I found on Pinterest, can someone tell where I can find the rest. Maybe it’s Re-Take

I think the ending to EoE is primarily a metaphor for human nature, and how we consistently hurt ourselves and others.

Humans are flawed, dysfunctional creatures. We hurt those closest to us, burn our bridges, and are the primary source of pain in our own lives. To be human is to fail, hate yourself for failing, and then fail again. In this final scene, Shinji is representative of this aspect of humanity. He is given a second chance— and with the person he has been the worst to, no less— but rather than fix his behavior, or show love and compassion, Shinji acts out in violence. Personally, I believe his motive to be the same fatal flaw that plagues him throughout the entire series… his fear of rejection. At this point, Asuka has seen inside of his mind, knows how he has wronged her, and in the same manner, he has come to know her pain. When he wakes up next to her on that beach, I think that Shinji assumes that Asuka will hate him, and reject him. Shinji can’t handle this, and opts to kill her before she can hurt him again. This is reminiscent of how Gendo removes Shinji from his life because he assumes himself unlovable, and is afraid of being hurt. Shinji is doing something very similar here; he assumes that she will find him unlovable, and so he tries to remove her from his life before he has to suffer a rejection.

However, Asuka does the unthinkable.

Asuka, the arrogant, aggressive, and angry counterpart to Shinji’s introverted and reclusive character, does something completely unexpected: she shows Shinji a meek sign of compassion and understanding. She gently strokes his face as he is hurting her… and this destroys Shinji. He realizes that he has already reverted to hurting others by projecting his own self-loathing onto them, and this devastates him, and makes him impossibly disappointed in himself. Hence the tears. To make matters worse, he is hurting Asuka, who is seemingly the most polarizing relationship Shinji has in his life. (I am fairly confident in this point… think about it, Asuka’s death is a powerful enough catalyst to power up EVA 01, and her rejection of him during instrumentality is painful enough for him to trigger the third impact.)

Asuka takes the first step towards progress by caressing Shinji; one small step for mankind, if you will. She might not forgive him for what he’s done to her, or for how he’s failed her, but she makes an attempt to understand him. She gives Shinji the “in”, and the acceptance he’s been hoping for his entire life, despite his horrible behavior towards her. Shinji is ashamed, and feels undeserving of this, and thus breaks down and stops strangling her.

Finally, I think that Asuka saying “disgusting” is mostly done to show a reversion of sorts, or at least to show that love and progress between the two (and in the larger sense, between all people) will be slow. Keep in mind that in this moment, being kind to Shinji is even harder for Asuka than it was before, given the additional hurt from his hospital escapade and instrumentality. In the same way that Shinji is still the same insecure, fearful boy he was prior to instrumentality, Asuka is still the same insecure, walled off girl as before. In other words, Asuka is still Asuka, not some newly mature character without fault or flaw. Her saying “disgusting” strikes me as a reversion to her desire for total independence, and her disgust at herself for showing Shinji compassion (something she never would have considered doing previously). It also is probably a response to his tears on her face, which in typical Asuka fashion, she finds gross.

From the EoE onwards, Asuka and Shinji will undoubedlty hurt each other over and over again, and will have to learn to move beyond their defensive mechanisms and joint fear of rejection… but to me, Asuka taking that first step forward indicates that change is possible, and that Shinji/Asuka are the embodiment of (in the words of Rei/Kaworu) “the hope that people might be able to understand each other…. And the words ‘I love you’”.

This is why I think that the EoE’s ending is ultimately a hopeful one… Mankind will always screw up, but we have to keep trying in spite of this. We will always hurt others, and will be hurt by others, but we cannot give up.

気持ち悪い

Took me 16 hours(minutes) pls like🙏🙏🙏🏥🙏🙏

Looking for fics that are post fourth movie that specifically takes place in the rebuild universe where asuka wakes up at Kensukes can continues living but without Shinji. Know any?