Postby Reichu » Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:32 am

Many That Are One, One That Is Many, and Back Again

countless consciousnesses working together? how many souls can that thing possibly have??

"Collective Beings" in NTE

I was supposed to be “skimming”, I thought?

(A) 7th Angel (“Clockiel”):

(B) 8th Angel (“Sahaquiel”)

(C) The Eva-03 Situation:

(D) The “Give Ayanami Back!” Situation

(E) Radiant Giant Eva-01:

(F) Eva Mark.04A and 04C

(G) The Failures of Infinity

Connections & Conclusions

Main Points

As in NGE, Seele wanted to eliminate individuality as we know it, but how they hoped to achieve that is so different as to be unrecognizable.

they hoped to achieve that is so different as to be unrecognizable. The original Adam was the result of a successful Instrumentality in the indeterminate past.

The purpose of the Katsuragi Research Team was to reverse-engineer how Adam achieved this state and figure out how to apply it to us.

They caused Adam to destabilize, undoing its union; it splits apart into four beings.

While creating a global cataclysm, this event is partly successful: the research team are transformed into beings with the Fruit of Life (Angels 3 ~ 12), and at least some of these beings have achieved a form of complementation (a collective state of multiple souls joined together).

Eva-04 was a follow-up experiment intended to forward Seele’s goals -- possibly to see if a non-Adamsian Eva could be induced into opening the Gates of Guf.

Eva-04 fails to open the Gates of Guf, and via a pseudo-Impact event, the people of Second Branch are transfigured into near-Angel entities and modified with Eva tech to serve Seele.

Third Impact involved a failed attempt to turn humanity into collectivist Eva-like beings.

I also realize that I managed to accidentally omit nearly all of the insanity from the final third of Q from my listing of “collectives”; I might have to fix that...

: Thanks for taking a look; I'm glad you like it! That whole Adam/Satan part at the end there is ... a mess, definitely. I'm considering removing it altogether until I can let my ideas for that finish cooking... but at the same time, part of me is hoping that someone here will see what I have going, and help 'crack the code', so to speak. Wonders of crowd-sourcing! I guess I'll decide what to do in a couple of days.----------------This next part could be done better, but it's a necessary step, as will become evident toward the end. Unfortunately, some of these arguments don't lend themselves too well to Text Only, and will definitely benefit from a methodical wiki-style expansion later on.At first glance, altering the setting so that Adam is an entity that splits into four different ones might seem a little out of left field. So, before we move on — and then loop back around to subjects that many will find more enticing (*side-glances at topic title*) — I want to take a closer look at this phenomenon and how it fits into the bigger picture.One way the “many from one” phenomenon is often handled in mythology and fiction involves a single entity being divided according to its “aspects”, so to speak. We see a form of this in NGE with the MAGI: Naoko effectively “splits out” three different components of her personality, and yet each one is a complete program unto itself. Those who follow American animation may have seen this trope in play recently on Steven Universe as well — an example that could lead to quite a few cross-franchise jokes, not the least of which because it involves a godly being, who happens to glow white, and who split out three of her aspects into “little sister” gods (for a total of four parts total, including the original).Was this necessarily the case for Adam, however? Did this splintering actually create completely new entities out of what was once a single ego — or were those four parts at one point separate, and then, through Second Impact, made separate once more? Does it even matter?The exploration of collectives has always been a theme, in some sense, in Eva, and it’s obvious in other Anno works such as Shin Godzilla. The collective nature of humanity, and both the power and pain that brings. Humanity’s “fate” to be artificially evolved into a single being — one made of billions of lives, blended together into a perfect whole. Collectivist enemies, like Israfel (two beings capable of acting as one, to the point of literally joining their bodies and souls) and Ireul (a single consciousness exercising control over its individual ‘cells’?).Shin Godzilla, due to being created between Q and Shin, provides a sort of parallel look into where Anno’s mind is currently at. What we have here is quite interesting as well, a thorough exploration of human organizational and cooperative structures and how, quite similarly to the Lilin vs. Angel conflict, human ingenuity and hardship comes through to defeat the giant monster — or, as the case may be, to bring things to a temporary draw. The tantalizing, horrifying final shot of the film — incredibly reminiscent of certain imagery within Q — carries within it the suggestion that Godzilla, having been defeated by a committee, is attempting to evolve into one itself. (Very nice write-up on that here which also makes reference to our favorite anime.)Now, how is this subject approached in New Theatrical specifically? Let’s go through the most obvious examples (ignoring Adam, which has already received some focus, and will receive even more later)… (This entire section would benefitbadly from both images and from being more to the point.It’s arguable whether this counts in any meaningful sense, but the “one from many” theme is, at the very least, present visually, in the way that its body is constructed of many individual building blocks. However, interestingly, these blocks falls apart temporarily when the Angel’s decoy core is destroyed, and only return to their former positions once the Angel has finished moving its main core into the position the decoy previously occupied. Was the decoy just a decoy? There is room for ample speculation here: it’s portrayed with two faces; it has two halos (maybe); three rainbows appear when it dies...: When this Angel “unfolds” from its original spherical form, you can see countless little… SOMEthings also fold out, all the way along its edge. The spikey-looking things framing the central “eye” part are in fact stylized angels playing trumpets , whereas the feathery things framing the wings are ]highly stylized little… Israfels . (This explains the trumpeting angels; those are a reference to the “original” Israfel, as opposed to the NGE one.) While it’s common to call this Angel “Sahaquiel”, it is in fact a fusion of two. The inclusion of Israfel does not seem to be merely for show, either.We’re shown that when the Angel faces some difficulty getting past Eva-01, the “eye” in the middle opens, revealing an iris-like concavity from which a massive humanoid being unfolds to grapple with Eva-01 directly. What does this represent? The center of a collective. What are all of the little Israfels? All the others who are part of it; we see them working together to help the central figure when it requires aid. Their little arms even link together , as if they’re all holding hands. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the cooperation-assisted “boost” results in countless stacked halos radiating from its center — something seen nowhere else — and its death, similarly, produces a rather spectacular number of rainbows , overlapping each other like so many Olympic rings.On a final note, this is the only Angel in these films where our three "main Evas" (00, 01, 02) cooperate to take it down. Coincidence? I don't think so!9th Angel merges with Eva-03 merges with Asuka. Fun times for all. It’s not entirely clear what, if anything, is inside Eva-03’s core — the only Eva we have even the slightest inkling about there is Eva-01, as far as I know — so it’s arguable how much of a combination-being this really is. Dialogue from Seele that didn’t make the final cut , and may or may not still be implicitly true, has them effectively saying that they wanted this shitstorm to happen. (They gained useful information, so the sacrifices that they personally didn't have to make were worth it!) One note worth making about this fusion is that the Angel actually internalizes the pilot inside its core.: 10th Angel eats Eva-00; supposedly changes its “pattern” to Eva-00’s; partially turns into a deformed ghost-white lady instead. (Was Eva-00 keeping some interesting secrets under that armor?) Weirdness about Eva-00 aside, an Angel once again internalizes a pilot inside its own core, except this time, instead of growing its core AROUND the pilot, it somehow moves the Eva’s core into its own and … puts the pilot’s soul in there for safekeeping? Angel metabolism is weird, man.One core with its linked entry plug, representing Yui and Shinji, and the other core (originally that of Eva-00) representing Rei. Three beings sharing a single body. This gets slightly more messy (pun… intended?) if you start to wonder exactly what the 10th Angel contributed (through its body fluid, which Eva-01 ultimately absorbed), and how, precisely, that worked...: Oh boy, these things. They’re called “Evas”, but in good ol' Eva tradition, you are left completely on your own with just the name and some scattered hints to work on. The name, which is the only instance of an Eva ordinal being reused, makes it pretty clear that they have something to do with Eva-04, and for what that something is, you have to look no further than the shot in Ha spelling out the Eva’s fate. We’re shown something that looks KIND OF like an Impact , but isn’t quite there. (For instance, there are a couple of red rings that are maybe pitiful attempts to open the Gates of Guf, but this Eva is clearly still lacking a certain special something.)Meaning, yes, these bizarre, sad-looking things are probably a result of that pseudo-Impact event, somehow or other. And what are they, exactly? Well, they’re Evas, supposedly. Both 4As and 4Cs are equipped with Eva-style pylons, but you could slap those on anything; the more concrete link comes through with the 4As, which have the deformed lower torso of an Eva, complete with crazy scissor legs, sticking out of the saucer’s bottom. The 4A’s saucer section, furthermore, has an image on it of two Evas holding hands — same motif that we saw in the 8th Angel. And it just so happens that it has two cores, as well. In other words, the 4As are two souls working cooperatively through a single shared body.The 4Cs are far more complicated and abstract entities, comprised of multiple parts with a large “core block” — a component that holdsindividual cores — that they prefer to keep hidden in a "cloaking cocoon". Even four entirely different "core blocks" -- 128 cores altogether! -- are capable of coordinating their consciousnesses in perfect unity, as we can see with the devastating "laser lattice" attack they use.Are we supposed to take anything significant from the fact that these abominable multi-cored beings seemingly originated from a botched Impact-style event? I dunno. *I* would.: Much of what we “know” about these things is done solely through juxtaposition and implication, but by Eva standards that’s more than enough, really. Now, to get one thing out of the way, what Kaworu actually refers to as the Failures are the things in Central Dogma, which are perfectly formed (albeit headless) Eva-01s made out of core. The only information we really get at that point is ‘they failed to reach Infinity’ and ‘don’t worry about them’. (Thanks, Kaworu.)Now, that said, earlier in the film, when Kaworu monologues about Human Instrumentality, we’re shown suspiciously similar-looking entities — the only real difference being that they are more variable in size and form. Given the dearth of information, we tend to assume that all of these things are “Failures of Infinity”; just that, maybe… they’re at different stages in the process of being total failures? Unclear. Anyway, it’s implied that these beings are the result of a failed attempt at Human Instrumentality during Third Impact. Just about everything that could be different in the envisioning of HIP is. One does not get the impression that everyone is supposed to be melted down and merged into a single super-soul — or, if that *is* the end goal, it’s arrived at in a completely unrecognizable way.Looking at the city outskirts full of variably-sized deformed crystalline Evas just popping out of the (core-ified) ground and buildings, my impression of how this MIGHT possibly work is that individual humans souls have been individually transfigured into little deformed core-Evas. These beings are then driven to merge with one another , becoming progressively larger and smoothing away the flaws in their physical forms until, ultimately, you get the perfectly-formed ones that are seen inside Nerv HQ and the Black Moon. This would, of course, be a visual metaphor for the smoothing away of personality flaws by merging with individuals that complement those flaws, until “perfection” is achieved. This is only the first step, however, as the failures are all clearly still missing something: a head, which here represents the Fruit of Life. (Think about it.It’s unclear what caused this process to ultimately fail, but suppose it hadn’t. What would the ultimate result have been? The entirety of humanity, transformed into gods — each god representing its own perfectly balanced collective of souls? Could this be true? Could this be what Seele want?Now think back to the Mark.04s. What was the REAL motivation behind Eva-04 and what it was a "testbed" for? Could its experimental nature possibly have been a way for Seele to collect data on executing their version of Instrumentality properly? They had that entire branch to use as their guinea pigs… and look at those poor souls now.This brings us back to Second Impact, and the mysteries of not only (the) Adam(s), but the Angels, which have so far resistedkind of in-film explanation at all. Consider again my suggestion: Seele wanting to transform humanity into gods, where every god is a perfectly balanced collective of souls. Does that remind you of anybody? Anybody at all?It’s Adam. Adam was their original model for our evolution — the product of a successful fusion of multiple individuals into a balanced whole. (Exactly who they were, and where they came from… remains for only them to know.) This is what Dr. Katsuragi and his team were probably investigating for Seele — how to reverse-engineer Adam’s success and make it usable for us.Clearly, something went terribly wrong along the way. But did it go ALL the way wrong? We don’t know where the Angels came from, or how they were created. But those Mark.04s, along with Seele’s motivations, give us a pretty strong inkling. Seele don’t have the best record with human sacrifice here, exactly… Meaning, yes: the Angels were created directly as an outcome of Second Impact, and they most likely contain the souls of the research team. (That's one way to turn the "Angels are people!" revelation on its head, isn't it? Sorry, Misato, but you kinda killed your dad when you thought you were killing the things that killed him...) The Angels have cast aside the human form in part or whole, for reasons unknown, but the fact that at least some of them have achieved a fine-tuned collective state indicates that they are not completely removed from the fulfillment of Seele’s wishes.(...keeping in mind that much of this is far from definitive, and simply provides a framework for further explorations that will test these ideas.)That is all quite a lot to take in, I’m sure -- and it only goes downhill from there. :3: just what were those crazy folks at the Artificial Evolution Labs up to…?