on one hand i know why like in online autistic space, people are really against assuming support needs online. because sure what put online is only a fraction of experience. some only want post positive things. and other people mask difficulties so appear better off than actually are, etc. know all that!
but issue comes when… there is consistent pattern of a specific type of lower support needs (LSN) autistic generalizing their LSN experience, pathologize every little experience as autism, spread misinfo, use aspie supremacist rhetoric,
erase higher support needs (HrSN) autistic experience, speaking over us, perpetuate extremely harmful ableism against us, do not reflect own privilege, pose self as most oppressed,
and misusing support needs label
and it’s important to note that it’s mostly being done by (a specific group of) lower support needs autistic. because they have more communication abilities, more self advocacy abilities or more able to learn self advocate, more independence, more closer to the mythical “neurotypicality” ideal, more able to mask, etc etc… loudest, most majority, most listened to.
“how dare you assume my support needs when you don’t know me” has been conveniently used as a shield to free them of responsibility. “if conveniently don’t mention that have lower support needs, or have level 1 autism, then they can’t criticize me of perpetuating aspie supremacy can’t criticize me of not reflecting on my LSN advantage, and i can become the victim and escape accountability.”
and. another layer of issue is. some of them genuinely think they high support needs or have substantial support needs because they need support and don’t have needs met. when they’re… not.
i have been putting off addressing this topic because i don’t want a slippery slope to fake claiming, or give off “i know you more than you” because i don’t.
but. i know the autism spectrum more than them. i know the support needs spectrum and autism levels more than you. and maybe even most important, i know what i don’t know about these topics more than you.
yes, HrSN autistics can achieve great things, as much or maybe even more than LSN and nonautistic nondisabled people.
yes, some HrSN autistics can speak relatively fluidly. some HrSN autistics may be able to mask. some HrSN autistic may be not as visible HrSN/autistic every single second of day—less likely, but who am i to generalize?
BUT. and i have addressed this over and over and over again in my posts. being HrSN is not just about needing help with “eating” (and by eating they mean cooking and not actually feeding), reminder to shower, budgeting, getting groceries, some of the time. being level 2/3 is not just about other people think you “weird” sometimes, or meltdown once in a while (like weeks apart).
overwhelmingly more HrSN autistics struggle with masking or unable to mask at all, with most or all communication, living independently is often not even an option to consider for us, can’t hold job (mayybe unless very specific employment support), visibly autistic, visibly disabled.—as in, you can tell. strangers can tell.
for many of us, there is no reasonable deniability, there’s no benefit of the doubt, there’s no hiding.
for many of us, we are concerned and focusing on basic living skills.
and i’m trying to be generous here. i’m trying to give these people & behavior i’m critiquing the benefit of the doubt. there are harsher things i want to say that im holding off right now.
not saying there’s nothing wrong with assuming support needs. not saying we should all start random assign internet people support needs labels.
but there is nuance. some people don’t like that nuance tho because it not in their favor and they can’t play victim anymore
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(Some of) The Achievements of Dr. Ratio
And Elaborations on Their Significance: A Review
As transcribed from the Keeping Up with Star Rail video because that shit was hard to read
Medicine: Developed serum for lithogenesis, completely lifting the shadow of the "King of Diseases"
Philosophy: Published What is Knowledge, acclaimed as the "ultimate answer to all 'epistemological' questions."
Natural Theology: Published the work Aeons: A Natural Phenomenon, hailed as the "most sacred prophet of Aeon non-theism."
Mathematics: Published a paper entitled "A Solution to the Marta-Cishian Undirected Connectivity Problem in Metric Spaces," successfully solving three of the "Seven Challenges in Contemporary Mathematics" left by Genius Society #56, Elias Salas.
Physics: Established the Ratio Unified Field Theory, thoroughly elucidating the spaciotemporal discrete structure that was once obscure to humanity.
Computer Science: Published a paper entitled "Existence Proof of the Fyangu Function," opening the doors to solving numerous problems in computer science.
Engineering: Led the research on the Energy Black-Body Radiation Generator, resolving the energy crisis of the century (multiple Amber Eras).
Biology: Published papers on "The Neurobiological Mechanisms of the Nesting Behavior of Witherflies" and "The Metabolism of the Ahriman Archaea." As Genius Society member #55 Yu Qingtu once said, these two papers "accelerated the scientific world's understanding of species evolution by 1000 years."
This sounds like a load of honky, right? Yeah. So let's break it down and address what we can here. Keep in mind that while I am a biologist (officially, in five months) and intimately familiar with evolution and ecology, I know Very Fucking Little about everything else! I am looking into sources while I go through this.
So, the first thing: what is lithogenesis?
Looking into the breakdown of the word, we can split it into its prefix particle and the suffix particle: 'litho' and 'genesis'. The prefix 'litho-' refers to stones, such as in lithiasis, which is the pathological creation of stones (like kidney stones) in the body. -genesis refers, obviously, to the beginning, development, or production of something, such as in osteogenesis, the production of bone. But if lithiasis already exists, then what might lithogenesis mean? Given that it is referred to as the King of Diseases (which is another interesting note), my guess is that it is perhaps a more literal version of scleroderma (an autoimmune disease that causes the skin to thicken and harden), where the skin or other parts of the body literally turns to stone. This is significant for another reason, which is that Ratio is Greek (as well as Roman, but we'll get into the points of his character design with another post). Some of the most famous monsters of Greek mythology are the Gorgons, of which Medusa is the most notorious. What did the Gorgons do? Turn people to stone. I'd like to propose that lithogenesis is perhaps a degenerative disease that previously had no cure in which the body undergoes accelerated petrification caused by a creature not dissimilar to the Gorgon, though I hesitate to suggest that the disease is as fast acting as the Gorgons' stare is.
Second: What is Knowledge and epistemology
I don't have much to say about this one as I am not well versed in philosophy, but a quick google search says that epistemology is "the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion." AKA: What do people know, and how do they know what they know? Further digging says that epistemological debates revolve around four main areas: 1) the analysis of the nature of knowledge, as well as the conditions for belief to constitute as knowledge (truth, reason); 2) sources of knowledge or belief (memory, reason, perception, testimony); 3) the structure of knowledge or belief (foundations of belief vs. coherent justification); 4) skepticism, which basically questions all of that, and the implications for such skepticism. I found this to be neat because this is Ratio's fundamental approach to teaching, and I just thought that was fun. Epistemology has been debated since ancient Greek philosophy, and that tie-in to his entire character was nice.
Third: Aeon non-theism
Now this was real fun to see, and I ended up laughing about it to some friends because from the outside, it looks like Nous' rejection of Ratio left him so petty he became an atheist, and perhaps that is true, but it holds far more significance to his character than that. The Aeons, all of them, are higher-dimensional entities widely worshiped as gods by all sorts of people across the galaxies (also called Gods of the Stars in Chinese), and even the Genius Society treat Nous as a god with more than some level of fanaticism. The Aeons are prayed to, sworn by, given offerings, and bless followers with their powers. It's not hard to see why they are considered gods. Yet Dr. Ratio basically challenges that with a reference to the Aeons as natural phenomena, rather than divine beings. The idea of natural theology in general is interesting, and I guess it has to do with the fact that the Aeons, while perceived as gods, do have direct and tangible impacts and effects on the natural world. I imagine that Dr. Ratio argues that Aeons are the product of an entity (or multiple) embodying a belief, movement, or philosophy to its utter and exhaustive extreme, and that what makes a god is whether or not they are perceived as worthy of worship, yet every single thing in the universe is subject to scrutiny and criticism. Worship introduces blindness, tunnel vision, fanaticism, and ignorance, and erases scrutiny and reason. It is as he says: "the Path of Erudition has neither reason nor logic." As Ratio scrutinizes all things, he therefore worships nothing, thus directly challenging the widespread worship of not just the Aeons, but those they favor and choose to represent them (hi Genius Society ;) ).
Fourth: ....Math.
Again, not much to say here (I don't even know if the problems addressed are mentioned in-game as readables, but I might do some digging tomorrow to find out) but I find it especially significant to point out that he solved problems that even Elias Salas, one of the most famous Genius Society members, did not (or left behind). I need to stress that Ratio is a genius. He is. What gatekeeps him from the Genius Society is not capability, but principle. Elias Salas (along with #22, Aiden) is incredibly unique among the Genius Society members for being someone who actively shared his findings and inventions with the public, handing the rights to the Synesthesia Beacon as well as long-range communications technology to the Intelligentsia Guild. But Ratio's focus is less on the pursuit and breakthrough of uncharted knowledge and more on the sharing and use of knowledge to educate and help others. Though he's certainly made breakthroughs himself, it's clear he does so with the intent of bettering lives, not just because he can. Maybe one could argue that he isn't "genius enough," but really? I just think that he cares too much. This point just goes to show that he is on par with the Geniuses of the Society, and that the existence of said Society introduces elitism into the picture more than the word already does -- hence Ratio's repeated use of the phrase "ivory tower."
Five: ...Physics.
So I did end up looking into unified theories for a more comprehensive understanding of what the fuck was so significant, and this is... admittedly far beyond the scope of anything I comprehend (obviously). But from what I could understand of current theoretical physics is that the unified theory is a goal of modern physicists, some single theory that can be used to marry the concepts of electromagnetism and gravity, as they're currently under two separate theories with no relation to one another. There is no singular, widely agreed upon theory as of right now, while the String Theory (vibrations of one-dimensional "strings" determine the properties of these strings, and each vibrational state corresponds to a particle) is one such attempt to do so it is not without its many criticisms. The idea of a unified theory was one that Einstein himself had tried, even on his deathbed, to formulate, but never managed to solve. It's been almost 70 years since then in our time, yet we can assume from the wording of the achievements that a unified theory that concisely joined forces (gravity) with fields (electromagnetism) was not proposed until Dr. Ratio, or at least was not improved until he posited his theory.
...In normal English: that's fucking huge. Truly, I wish I had more insight into the topic so that I could explain its applications, but I don't. Maybe this will be something I can return to later? I dunno. I'm not a quantum physicist adslkfjhsad
Six: ...Computer Science.
Okay this one actually genuinely holds no substance that I can write about aside from wow did you know Dr. Ratio is a polymath and super smart and cool and-
Seven: Energy crisis and black-body radiation
Back to the interesting things! So, to put it simply, black-body radiation refers to the light (electromagnetic radiation) a black-body emits when it is heated, as higher temperatures mean higher velocity of the charged particles on the surface of the black-body. The thing is that a black-body in the true sense is only a idealized object, not a realized one -- though black holes are predicted to get pretty close as they absorb almost all radiation rather than reflect it. After doing some reading, the reason this is so significant is that most real-world objects are not black-bodies, and thus only radiate a fraction of the energy that they theoretically would if they were black-bodies. Stars and planets are approximated as black-bodies when estimating their surface temperature, so... My guess is that Dr. Ratio was able to manufacture a material as close to a black-body as he possibly could, or discovered a celestial black-body that he could harness the radiation of, and engineered a generator that could use that power as efficiently as possible -- utilizing an isolated vacuum, the amount of radiated energy lost to gas particles or escaping the system would be reduced or near-entirely eliminated, thus providing far more energy than any systems or generators applied today.
Eight: Neurobiology and metabolism.
Now this is more my speed. The relation of neurobiological activity to cognition and behavior is actually specifically my major, but admittedly there is not much I can discuss without a mode of comparison. What are witherflies? What are they related to? How does their nesting behavior differ from that of other species related to them, and why is that significant for the understanding of cognition or their evolution? I could talk at length about sexual selection and intrasexual competition, about wars of attrition and the handicap hypothesis, but without something to compare to it's a bit of a moot point, especially since none of these nesting behaviors are described. Nesting is also very different from courtship, while both can (and do) affect the neurobiology (and physiology!) of both male and female individuals of a species, how and when they do so differs between each scenario. The metabolism of the Ahriman Archaea is an entirely different look into organisms which I find interesting for a different reason: archaea are single-celled organisms that, unlike bacteria, have genes (like us!) and unlike us are capable of utilizing far more energy sources than just organic compounds, such as metal ions or even hydrogen gas. Dr. Ratio's discoveries about the metabolism(s) of the species within the Ahriman Archaea could very well have provided immense insight into the evolution of life in that ecosystem, or whether or not said life can be traced to another galaxy or another point of origin. Another thing that I do want to point to here is the fact that he was acknowledged and praised by Yu Qingtu, someone that Ruan Mei mentions and I believe she considered a friend, or at least someone worthy of admiration.
TLDR: Dr. Ratio is absolutely a big deal and his spite towards the Genius Society is entirely justified, fuck you Screwllum.
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End of Evangelion: 25'
Yeah... that's...
"You don't understand!" is pretty much Neon Genesis Evangelion in a nutshell.
Or "You do (not) understand! (true²) Director's Cut" is how the franchise would put it.
Let's just get on with this.
I watched End of Evangelion last night. Well, early A.M. I took a nap and woke up at midnight and it seemed like the right time to watch a thing like this.
I did not enjoy the movie. I'll explain this, of course, but I wanted to get that out of the way up front. There are positives, sure, but I went into this thing hoping for a more satisfying conclusion than what was presented in the TV show, and I didn't get it. Both endings suck. There you go.
Let me back up a bit. So the TV series ran from 1995 to 1996. The final episodes, 25 and 26, were controversial because they were expected to wrap up the whole story, but instead they went in a bizarrely abstract direction. Both of those episodes apparently take place inside Shinji Ikari's mind as he struggles to accept being part of a collective gestalt of every human mind on Earth. This is the result of the "Human Instrumentality Project" a concept mentioned in Episodes 1 -24, but never adequately explained. The final episodes just skip past the part where Human Instrumentality was achieved and shows the result, without bothering to discuss the background or the cause, or the long-term ramifications.
From what I gather, the main reason Episodes 25 and 26 were Like That was because the studio was short on time and money, so a more satisfying conclusion was not practical. But since the series turned out to be so successful, they were able to take another crack at it with End of Evangelion. The film is very clear about its purpose as an "alternative" to Episodes 25 and 26. It's divided into two sections, numbered 25' and 26'.
I'm not sure the viewer is expected to pick one over the other. The original 25&26 take place in Shinji's mind when Human Instrumentality happens. 25' and 26' take place in the outside world, showing the events leading to Human Instrumentality and the aftermath. There may be some continuity issues to iron out, but a fan could easily accept both endings as canon.
That's not my problem here. The problem is not that there are multiple endings, or that the endings are too "abstract", or that the endings aren't "happy". Fundamentally, my gripe is that the endings are confusing. Perhaps it might be said that the endings are pathologically confusing.
I think this is one of those Big, Emotionally Raw Works, where you can't really discuss it without revealing something about yourself in the process. So let's do that. End of Evangelion makes me feel stupid. There's parts of the movie where I'm just completely confused and I have no idea what is happening or why. It feels less like entertainment and more like I'm about to take a test I didn't study for.
Except I did study, because I've literally been taking notes on this thing for the past three weeks. I was looking forward to this, and last night I'm near the end of the movie wondering what the hell I'm going to write here, because I don't understand what the hell happened in the movie.
So I poked around a fan wiki for a bit, trying to get a handle on some of the major concepts, and as I read the articles, I realized that a lot of this information just stone cold never made it into the TV show or the movie. There was one thing I looked up that had to reference a Playstation 2 game that released six years after the movie premiered.
It's not that I'm too stupid to understand Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's that the franchise appears deliberately designed to hide information from the viewer. You're just supposed to roll with it, I guess. Or spend days researching all this side material. Read the manga, read the wiki, read fan commentaries. I hate this. I hate this so much.
So maybe I'm not stupid. Maybe the anime was just badly designed. That would be comforting, except I still feel stupid for investing so much time into trying to understand this thing that seems purposely rigged to defy understanding. It's not just the ending. That's what everyone talks about, but the ending is just a symptom of a bigger problem. The beginning is really slow. Then the middle starts to get weird, and there's a lot of mysteries and subplots and lore that gets set up with the implied promise that "we'll explain later". And the ending(s) drop that ball. The surgery was a success, but the patient died.
I feel stupid because I got a reply to one of my liveblog posts, I think Episode 12, in response to some comment I made about all the characters having the same backstory. Ritsuko has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother. Misato has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist father. Shinji has a complicated relationship with his workaholic scientist father. Is that a theme or did they only have one idea? My point is that eventually it stops being clever and starts being redundant. Later, we learn that Asuka has... a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother.
"What, are you stupid?" asked the reply guy to my wry observation. They deleted it a few minutes after I saw it, so maybe they felt some remorse over the comment. Normally, I let these things slide. I might respond if I get legitimately hot about it. But this one got to me. "Am I stupid?" I asked myself last week. I seem to be complaining a lot about this show, but it's supposed to be a classic. Am I not giving it a chance? Am I missing something here? Am I just not smart enough to appreciate this thing? Am I just not trying hard enough?
If you're reading this, Reply Guy, please know that I didn't take it personally. I'm not upset with you at all, but I am trying to be honest with myself about this. This Neon Genesis Evangelion business has been frustrating me all month long. Now I'm at the end and it all feels very hollow, like I wasted my time.
I think that's my philosophy on life. I try to seek out new things to explore, usually stories, and sometimes they don't work out the way I wanted them to, and that's okay, because it's the journey that counts. Shinji Ikari keeps shutting down throughout his story, asking why he should bother doing anything, because he's too terrified of the possible outcomes of his actions. My thing is that bad stuff happens all the time no matter what, and you just sort of have to recover and move forward, because that's the only way to see what happens next. So I'm not sure if I can relate to Shinji or not.
Anyway, let's talk about Shinji masturbating in a hospital room over Asuka's comatose body.
I had heard about this scene, but I didn't realize how long and pathetic it is. Asuka had a nervous breakdown in Episode 23. This movie has to follow up on that, becuase Episodes 24, 25, and 26 each refused to pick up on her character arc.
Meanwhile, Shinji is wracked with guilt and dread over his battle with the 17th Angel in Episode 24. He had to kill Kaworu, but in spite of Kaworu's betrayal, he was still a friend to Shinji when he needed it the most, and he was such a good sport about getting killed, you know?
So this movie has to get us back to that moment, when Shinji and Asuka are at their lowest ebb, and I guess they decided that Shinji should go see her in the hospital because he's desperate to talk to someone about what's he's been going through. But Asuka's unresponsive, so he starts shaking her like he's trying to wake her up. Instead she just rolls over, which somehow exposes her half-naked body, and Shinji is so overcome with lust that he rubs one out right there and then. Doesn't even get a Kleenex, doesn't find a place to sit, he just whips it out and goes to town right in front of her.
I guess this is supposed to be a joke, but it doesn't land. It's not even a matter of the joke not aging well. Yeah, this is a 27 year old movie, but Shinji admits this is terrible behavior almost immediately. The "joke" didn't age at all. It was stillborn. This is like when you go to a graveyard and you see one of the tiny graves and the dates are from the same year. That's how funny this is.
The most charitable reading I can give this scene is that it represents the hypocrisy of Shinji's whole deal. He constantly insists that he can only do as he's told, because he's afraid of people not liking him if he makes a mistake or thinks for himself. But here he's doing some pretty disgraceful shit, and I sure as fuck didn't tell him to do this. did you? Did anyone? Of course not. He goes limp for most of the rest of the movie, but not here. Nossir. Seems pretty sure of himself in the minute or so it took him to finish his business.
The other aspect of Shinji on display here is that his ideal social interactions are one-sided. He's most comfortable with people when they can't see what he's doing, when they can't touch him back. That's why he wished for isolation in Episode 25. Here, with Asuka unresponsive, he's basically got the same thing.
I suppose the flip side of this is when Asuka kissed Shinji in the TV series. Her hangups are kind of the opposite of his, where she wants to be in charge of everything and everyone constantly showers her with praise for her achievements. She wants to kiss Shinji but she can't be vulnerable enough to admit that, so she orders him to just stand there and be kissed because she wants to "pass the time". And she makes him hold his nose shut because she doesn't want to be breathed on while she does it. I mean, they both have intimacy issues, but at least Shinji had a chance to consent to her weirdness.
In the NERV base, the crew wonder why they're still on alert status, since the last Angel was defeated. There should be no more threats, and it kind of makes sense for NERV to be disbanded. The only business left is the Human Instrumentality Project, and none of these ham-and-eggers know what that is.
But Misato has some information about it, which she mulls over while she's in her car. I guess? Let me explain this in more detail, because the movie never totally gets into the "why" of it all.
Okay, so the SEELE group has access to something called the "Dead Sea Scrolls". According to the NGE wiki, SEELE got it from the two angels that came to Earth, Adam and Lilith, in the distant past. SEELE has used the information contained in the scrolls to establish themselves as the secret rulers of the whole world. And they founded NERV, and its predecessor organizations, to study the Angels and figure out how to preserve the human race.
They talk a lot about Second Impact on this show, but they never explain exactly what caused it. Second Impact was not a meteorite strike or a rampaging angel who self-destructed, or even a lab accident. It was caused deliberately by SEELE, as part of an effort to contain Adam, who lay dormant in Antarctica.
If I understand correctly, this was necessary because at some point, Second Impact would occur anyway, and then Adam's children, the fifteen Angels we saw in the TV series, would come looking for Adam's body and unite with it, triggering a Third Impact that would definitely wipe out humanity. This is all supposedly explained in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
So SEELE's play was to trigger Second Impact deliberately, so that they could confront the Angels on their own terms. This gave NERV time to develop the Evas to fight the Angels, and to shrink Adam down to a more manageable size so he'd be harder to find.
Once the Angels were all defeated, SEELE could then trigger Third Impact. See, the TV series made it seem like the objective was to prevent Third Impact, but that was never possible. Third Impact is inevitable, I guess, so the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to evolve humans into something that can withstand the disaster. Thus, the Human Instrumentality Project, which will combine all human minds into some sort of disembodied superorganism at the moment of Third Impact.
However, throughout the TV series, SEELE has butted heads with the NERV Director, Gendo Ikari, about how this plan is to be implemented. Gendo wants to transform humanity into something new. But SEELE seems to want to retain their human nature and just use the plan as a lifeboat until the disaster has passed. At least, I think that's the disagreement here. Like I said, I had to learn about SEELE's agenda from the description of the PS2 game. It's not exactly a shock that the cabal of worldly oligarchs should want to save themselves and hold onto their wealth and power at the same time.
Gendo, on the other hand, seems mostly fixated on reuniting with his wife, Yui Ikari, who apparently died in 2004 during an experiment with Eva Unit 01. In the TV series, it was heavily implied that Yui lives on inside of Unit 01. Since Gendo's version of Human Instrumentality involves drawing up human minds into a noncorporeal union, I guess he figures that this will include Yui's mind, even if she has no body. It's unclear in this movie if Gendo actually intends to include anyone but himself and Yui in this merger, but in Episodes 25 and 26 of the TV show, Human Instrumentality is presented like it's all humans, even dead ones, and Gendo Ikari talked about it like that's what his version of Third Impact was supposed to be.
I suppose the only thing keeping Gendo and SEELE from turning on each other was the Angel threat, but now that this is over, SEELE attacks. First they try to hack NERV's supercomputers, but this is foiled when they recruit the aid of...
...Ritsuko Akagai, who betrayed NERV in Episode 23 when she destroyed all the Rei clones they had in storage. But she's the only one smart enough with computers to block the hack, so she crawls back inside one of them and uses her dead mother's notes to build a more robust firewall or something. I think she j-pegged a RAM or something, I don't know.
Ritsuko wonders why she's even bothering, since she already turned on Gendo. They had been banging on the down-low, but she got fed up with him when she realized he loved his dead wife more than Ritsuko or her mother, who also used to bang Gendo on the down-low.
With that cyberattack fended off, NERV now has to brace for an actual attack. Admiral Clownshoes notes the irony of NERV defeating all those Angels, only for their final opponent to be the humans they were trying to save.
Tactically, the entire battle is a formality. SEELE runs the whole world, and they can send wave after wave of soldiers into the NERV facility, which is already badly weakened after months of Angel attacks and budget cuts. NERV's defenses were designed for dealing with Angels, and their greatest weapons were the Evas, except Unit-00 was destroyed in Episode 22, and Unit-02's pilot has lost the ability to sync. Nonetheless, Misato wants the pilot kids secured, since she knows SEELE's goons will try to take them out first. She orders Shinji to deploy in Unit-01, and even though Asuka's in no condition to fight, she has her put in Unit-02 and then sent to the bottom of the lake. It's not much of a hiding place, but at least she'll be safer there than inside the base.
Where's Rei? Well, no one can find her, but she's gone down to the room where they keep Lilith and she's soaking in that orange goop they have down there.
Perhaps anticipating this, Gendo excuses himself and orders Clownshoes to take over the defense of the base. Clownshoes seems to know what he's up to, and sends his regards to Gendo's dead wife.
At this point, it's basically a race to see who can trigger their version of Third Impact first. SEELE wanted to use the Lance of Longinus and Lilith somehow, but since the Lance is in space now, they now plan to use Unit-01, the only Eva created from Lilith. That's what makes it special, apparently. Units 00 and 02 were made from Adam, I guess?
Anyway, Gendo plans to do it by combining Adam and Lillith together. He's got Adam's body within his own, and he wants to join with Rei, who contains some essence of Lillith. This was Rei's main purpose all along, I think.
Meanwhile, Misato leaves her post to find Shinji, who was sulking in some corner instead of reporting to his Eva like she ordered. She saves him from some goons, but they're cut off from Unit-01, so she has to find a way to get him where he needs to go. She also has to convince him to cooperate, since Shinji's completely gone to mush in the midst of this new crisis.
As she drives him to where they need to go, she explains (most of) the necessary backstory to him. Second Impact was triggered deliberately to buy time for Human Instrumentality, and humans are descended from Lilith, just as the Angels came from Adam. So in that sence, the human species is collectively the 18th Angel, just another candidate to inherit the future of Earth. Humans, like any of the fifteen Angels spawned from Adam, have the opportunity to trigger Third Impact and secure their place as the dominant life form of Earth, but we had to beat all the Angels first to do it, and then find a way to survive Third Impact when it finally happened.
And while Gendo plans to do with with Adam and Lilith, SEELE wants to use the Eva series, somehow, so it's vital that Shinji use Unit-01 to destroy all the other Evas.
Speaking of destroying Evas, Asuka finally wakes up in Unit-02, which is currently getting battered with depth charges. She still can't control the Eva, and she just keeps whimpering that she doesn't want to die. Eventually, she hears her dead mother promising to protect Asuka, and she realizes the truth: that Asuka's mother, Kyoko Zeppelin, was absorbed into Unit-02, much the same way Shinji's mom was absorbed into Unit-01.
Now, at long last, Asuka can operate her Eva again, and she goes apeshit on the SEELE troops. They sever her power cable, but she doesn't care, boasting that five minutes is plenty of time to take out these creeps. This is honestly the best part of the movie, because they had reduced Asuka to a pitiful shell for so long, and now she's finally taking charge and whoopin' ass.
It won't last.
With the conventional forces beaten, SEELE sends in nine Eva Units of their own. These are units 05 through 13, but they all look the same, and I'm not even sure they have pilots. It's a pretty cool design for a "bad guy" Eva, but they don't figure into the plot very much. They're here to destroy Asuka and Unit-02, and Asuka has to destroy them to stop SEELE.
Meanwhile, Misato has almost gotten Shinji to the Unit-01 launch bay, but she got shot, so she tells Shinji he's on his own from here. Shinji continues to resist taking any responsibility here. He says he's not worthy to pilot the Eva because he hurts people. He killed Kaworu, and he "did something terrible to Asuka". So at least the movie recognizes that. I guess it was included just to show the audience that Shinji isn't exaggerating when he doubts himself like this.
Misato refuses to indulge his self-pity, and she doesn't care how much he cries or tries to use his past actions to disqualify himself. She tells him she's made plenty of her own mistakes, but she still learned something about herself anyway. Hey, I guess Misato kind of gets what I was saying earlier. I guess this makes her my favorite character?
Well, yeah, but I don't like how she gives him a long kiss goodbye, then promises they'll "do the rest" when he gets back. I mean, she dies immediately after he leaves, so I think she was just feeding him empty gestures to motivate him while she still could, but... that's kind of fucked up.
Meanwhile, Gendo and Rei reach the room where Lillith is to begin their attempt at Third Impact, but they find Ritsuko waiting for them. She pulls a gun on Gendo and tells him that she sabotaged the supercomputer while she was reprogramming it to stop SEELE's hackers. Except... when she tries to execute her plan, the computer doesn't do it. This is because it's been imprinted with the mind of its original creator, Ritsuko's mother, and apparently mom still carries a torch for Gendo, even after Gendo screwed both Akagis over. Gendo then pulls a gun on Ritsuko, and says "I truly..." but the sound cuts out as he says the rest of it, so we don't know what he wanted to tell her.
In any case, she calls him a liar after she hears it, so either he told her he loved her and she didn't buy it, or he said something really cruel and she knew he didn't mean it. Either way, Gendo shoots, her which normally would suggest his true feelings, except I think this Human Instrumentality business works on dead people too, so life and death kind of becomes meaningless in this movie. We see a ghostly apparition of Rei as Ritsuko falls into the LCL fluid. We also saw ghost Rei when Misato died, so this seems to be a thing now.
Meanwhile, Shinji makes it to Unit 01, but it's immersed in Bakelite, which Misato had ordered dispersed through the base to impede the invading goons. I'm not sure how it got here, though, unless the bad guys used Misato's own trick to secure Unit-01. So it looks like Shinji can't get in the robot, even though it's not a robot, and he doesn't even have to be inside the stupid thing to control it. He literally proved that on his first day on the job. Yo, Shinji, get in the robot, your mom loves you.
Meanwhile, Asuka seems to be doing just fine killing the bad guy Evas without Shinji, but just as she finishes the last of them off, the Lance of Longinus suddenly flies back to Earth and improbably stabs Unit 02 through the face. Uh... how? Why? What the fuck?
Also, all the Evas Asuka defeated suddenly reactivate. With her battery drained, Asuka is helpless to stop them as they crack open Unit-02 and eat it. I'm pretty sure Asuka herself is killed during this, but we don't see a body.
I guess this was the catalyst to get Unit 01 off its duff, as it finally breaks out of the Bakelite and grabs Shinji like it's gonna put him in. Unit 01 busts out to join the battle, and it's thig big impressive spectacle. It even has angel wings now.
But it doesn't actually do anything. Shinji just gets a look at what's left of Unit-02's mangled corpse and screams.
And that's the cliffhanger for 25'. There's a credits sequence, then a dedication note from the director, and then the second half starts as Episode 26'. So this is a good place to take a break.
If you're curious, the part where Eva 05-13 show up to confront Asuka is about where things ended in "Evangelion: Rebirth". But 25' is about twenty minutes longer than that, so I'm not sure what the significance of that cutoff point was supposed to be. I guess it works as a cliffhanger, but it's kind of dumb to have Asuka finally wake up and kick ass, only to get utterly destroyed a few minutes later. Then Shinji shows up to set up the real cliffhanger.
To be fair, this half of the movie is better than the second half. Mostly, it benefits from the parts where they actually show the characters recovering from Episode 24 and beginning to move to the next phase of the story. This was what the TV show failed to do with its Episode 25. Now, we get to see the SEELE vs. NERV battle that was only implied before, and we get to see how Human Instrumentality is arranged.
We also see why it needs to be done. In the original ending, it seemed completely arbitrary, like Gendo Ikari just decided this was a cool thing to try and he just did it to the whole world without asking anyone's permission. Here, it becomes clear that if Gendo doesn't pull the trigger, SEELE will, and it's just a race to see who can get their vision accomplished first.
And we actually get to see the other characters in this version. Asuka wakes up and gets her groove back, Rei's part in the drama is revealed, and Ritsuko and Misato get shot. Seeing this stuff makes me even more irritated that the TV series just jumped right past it all.
Still, this half of the movie has problems. For one thing, a lot of runtime is spent just showing troops slaughtering NERV personnel, and showing Misato leading Shinji to his Eva. Also, there's a healthy dose of Gendo and Rei just staring pensively at Lilith without actually doing anything. A lot of the footage doesn't actually progress the plot, and only Misato and Shinji's scenes are useful for providing exposition. Gendo and SEELE's words are too cryptic to be of much use.
The main point of this installment was to reinforce things we already knew: Rei's important to all of this somehow, Shinji is a sad sack, and Asuka is helpless. And maybe it needed to be reinforced in July 1997, more than a year after the TV show ended, but I don't think it needed to be hammered home this much.
And like I said from the start, this whole thing relies on a lot of ridiculous stuff that I feel like I should have been told about in the TV series. How did the Lance of Longinus come back? SEELE couldn't have arranged this, since they were the ones who were so upset about losing it in the first place. Why are there two methods to trigger Third Impact? How did Asuka's mother get sucked into the Eva and yet she remained in human form long enough to go insane and hang herself? Why did the bad guy Evas suddenly recover from their injuries when it was convenient for the plot?
Perhaps most critically: Why are they just treating Third Impact and Human Instrumentality like the same thing? Like if you do one, then the other one just automatically happens? Is that how it works? Then why were they so worried about the progress on that project? It could be done at will, right?
Oh, and how did SEELE figure out how to do all this stuff? They have their own fleet of Evas, which seem to work better than NERV's. They made their own Angel in the form of Kaworu. They seem to know how to make Third Impact happen, without Gendo's help. And however they got this far, they seemed to pull it off without anyone from NERV knowing about it. So why did SEELE even need NERV in the first place? As it currently stands, the only reason Gendo's ahead of them is because he's physically closer to what he needs to work with. SEELE could have nuked the base from orbit and hauled Eva Unit 01 from the wreckage.
Again, the whole movie just makes me feel like I missed an episode, except I didn't. I watched the whole thing, which leads me to assume that the next chapter will clarify everything, except it doesn't, as we'll see next time. See you there.
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