"DBM" <dbmacpherson@uq.net.au> wrote in message
news:agurft$60m$1@bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au...
> Dear Mike, thanks for the points given in your post, &
> for the illustration in question!

You're welcome. I'm going to post some more in this response
but they wont come close to the same quality. I had EoE handy,
my copy of the series however is buried somewhere in my house
and I wouldn't know where to start looking for it. Trusty google
image seach turned up what I wanted, but the quality is rather
poor.

> From looking at your illustration, THAT is the 'Chibi-Rei'
> from the train & mind sequences, who is drawn SMALLER
> than the Rei-1 first seen beside Gendo.  If you can check
> the episode where Rei-1 is first seen beside Gendo, you'll
> see what I mean, especially if you then compare the image
> to any official 'Group height' shot of the cast from EVA.

Alright I want to introduce a number of "exhibits" here if I may.

Exhibit A: The Trinity Picture

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~wignall/Trinity.jpg

Exhibit B: Rei-002 standing next to Gendou

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~wignall/ReiGendou.jpg

Exhibit C: Rei-001 standing next to Gendou

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~wignall/FirstRei.jpg

Exhibit D: Far back shot of Rei-001 standing next to Gendou

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~wignall/GendouRei.jpg

Alright, now as I mentioned above, all of these pictures except
for A I found by doing a quick google image search, so please
excuse the quality.

Alright so lets ignore Exhibit A at the moment and focus on the
others.

Exhibit B shows Rei-002 standing at shoulder height to Gendou.
Exhibits C and D show Rei-001 standing at around "belt height"
as you put it, compared to Gendou.

You are suggesting that Rei-001 is around 5/6ths the height
of  Rei-002 (about a head's difference you said).

If you take Rei to be 160 cm (that's being generous) then
"one heads" difference is 26 2/3 cm.

So am I right in interpreting what you are saying that the
effective distance between Gendou's shoulder and his
"belt area" is 26 2/3 cm?

That is tiny in anyone book, especially for a tall man such as
Gendou. I my opinion there is a good 45 cms between
Gendou's shoulder and his "belt". Exhibit D shows this
best I think. The difference between Rei-001 and Rei-002
the the entire length of Gendou's torso.

Going back to Exhibit B, you can see the using the "Rei's
head" measurement, Rei-002's head only part of the way
(I would suggest a little less than half the way) down Gendou's
torso. Meaning that Gendou's torso (from his belt to his
shoulder) would be (as I suggested originally) a little more
than two heads long.

So back to Exhibit A, despites that Rei-001 having the same
clothes on as the Rei from Exhibit C, I do agree she looks
too small there, 3 heads smaller than the other Rei's as
opposed to the 2 hears smaller she is supposed to be.

As per the figures I posted before, an average 10 year old
girl is around 138 cm tall. Lets say that is around 20 cm
smaller than the current Rei-002.

I can't see how you can say that Rei-001 even comes close
to being just 20cm shorter than Rei-002. In my mind she is
much closer to the 45-50 cm shorter that would put her around
108cms tall, the average height for a 5 year old girl.

> As far as Rei's age & sizing goes, as with other Anime
> productions, I wouldn't be surprised if continuity was
>  'compromised' in the story telling - I'm not sure if the
>  existence of the 'Director's cut' is an example of this
> or not -

I don't think the DC episodes compromised any of the
continuity (except perhaps for the fact that Karou is
_told_ that Adam is in Gendou's hand, so it's hard to
believe that he would "mistake" Lilith for Adam after
that).

> I'll let you decide for yourself whether the saga of the
> last 2 TV episodes & subsequent movies fall into this
>  category.

Evangelion: Death stuffs up the continuity completely.
In it episode 21 is supposed to take place in 2016 which
contradicts what is shown in the both episodes 25 and
episode 25'.

> I don't suppose Gainax would have done it deliberately
> just to get confused fans to spend their times & bandwidth
> on it on the Internet?

Gainax deliberately didn't put in lots of dates, and also got
rid of seasons, specifically because they didn't want to worry
about continuity. A difference of 5 years is rather major though
in this case.

> Re Ritsuko bending down to talk to Rei-1.  She was being
> 'maternal', & was doing a common adult to child behaviour.
> At least in my mind, her attitude simply screams out, 'Maternal
> Instinct Engaged' (Run for your life, Gendo!  A man taking
> care of a child is seen as 'suitable partner material' by many
> women - if he's a 'father', he's a 'catch'...)

Perhaps we have different perceptions of who is actually a "child".

A 5 year old isn't in school, they are small, and fragile beings with
whom it is perfectly natural to "protect" and act maternal to.

A 10 year old has twice the experience of its 5 year old counterpart.
They have been at school 5 years, are only 2 years away from going
to hichschool, they are treated very differently to 5 year olds. Most
would probably resent someone trying to be "maternal" to them.

Just think about the difference in your reactions when you first
meet a 5 year old compared to when you meet a 10 year old.

> Re Lillith's regeneration...  Was there any illustration of
> when Rei-2 put the lance INTO Lillith?

No, just Rei in Eva-00 carrying the lance down terminal dogma,
in episode 14, _after_ Gendou retrieved it from the South Pole.
The lance was at the South Pole (it was used during the Second
Impact) until episode 12 where you can see it strapped to the
deck of an aircraft carrier.

> Or for that matter any 'canon' about Lillith's state at the time?

Eva-01 was "made" out of Lilith's legs, this happened around
2004 when Yui was "absorbed". You can see shots of Eva-01
attached to Lilith while Ritsuko is talking in front of the tank full
of Reis in the Japanese "video" version of episode 23. The liner
notes also state explicitly that it is Lilith and Eva-01 linked.

> It's just that Lillith DID regenerate when the Lance was
> removed, & I'd question if Gendo had the Lance put in Lillith
> to slow down any regeneration she was doing, regeneration
> that may have been 'prompted' by the attacks of the Angels.

Yes it did regenerate instantly when the lance was taken out.
The continuity of it goes like this.

Lilith loses legs (sometime around 2004).
Episode 12, the Lance is retrieved from the South Pole
End of Episode 14, Rei takes the Lance down to terminal dogma.
Episode 15, we see legless Lilith impaled on the cross with the lance.
Episode 22, Rei removes the lance and Lilith regenerates her legs.

As I said before, I think the lance acts as a catalyst. It prompts the
regeneration, but it still has to be removed for her to actually
regenerate (hence the legs forming instantly when the lance is
removed). The lance is stuck in, it "does its work" and when it
is taken out she regenerates her legs.

This makes more sense when you think about what the lance
actually is. In EoE SEELE state that they cannot use Lilith
because they have "lost" the original lance, and thus they must
go with Eva-01, Lilith's sole clone. The lance is important to
Instrumentality, it was needed if they wanted to use Lilith.

So why can they use Eva-01 and not Lilith? What has Eva-01
got that Lilith doesn't?

I think the answer to this question is an S2 Organ. Eva-01 obtained
one, and it appears Lilith doesn't have one (if she did she could have
regenerated on her own). I think the Lance itself is an S2 Organ,
providing unlimited energy (more than enough to penetrate any
AT Field it comes across) and providing the input needed to prompt
the regeneration of Lilith. Of course she couldn't regenerate with the
Lance still in her, but it was needed to give her the ability to
regenerate once it was taken out.

> Re our form is limited by our minds - 'Before the Mind
> shapes  the Body, the Body shapes the Mind' -

In the Eva Universe I don't think our form is "limited" by our minds
so much as it is directly constructed by it. We give ourselves a self
image and this image is maintained by out AT-Fields.

> Yui produces an AT Field in Unit 1 -  Is it because Unit 1 is
> producing the AT Field, at Yui's command?  That is, Yui herself
> cannot do it, but utilises the abilities of her new 'body'?

How could Eva-01 produce an AT-Field itself? The AT-Field is
produced by the soul. The soul is responsibly for the generation
and deployment of the AT-Field. Yui, a human soul, can produce
an AT Field in a non-human body. Rei, with Lilith's soul, can
produce an AT-field, in a human body. The Body isn't important,
the soul is. The Evas have Human souls, it is these souls that
produce the AT Fields.

> Re physics & EVA's, as we don't know the exact nature of
> their construction, we cannot say how it influences their abilities.
> If they incorporate Neutronium as vital parts of their S2 organs,
> that would tend to prevent Humanity from building S2 organs.

But again my point is that it is not about "non-terrestrial" matter.
The issue is about the technology that humans can apply to the
situation, about the knowledge they have, not about the Angels
appearing to be "alien".

> Rei-3's 'regeneration' in EoE - another question, where did the
> extra bio-mass come from?  From bodily reserves, or was it
> assimilated from surrounding atmospheric material?  Or for that
> matter, from the hand that Gendo so kindly donated?

I think it had to do with Rei "obtaining" Adam from out of Genou's
hand. That was the start of the "forbidden merging of Adam and
Lilith". Questions like this though are almost impossible to answer.
For instance how did Lilith gain an almost impossible mass, and
grow tremendously in size, yet at the same time become partly
incorporeal.

> The more you go into NGE, the more questions there are.
> And it kinds of irks me that there are so many unanswered
> ?questions & 'what ifs' about the show, let alone the cultural
> icons & references that I won't 'get' because they aren't an
> integral part of my own culture.

You can "learn" over time to get the cultural reference, and just
but reading a lot of SF and watching old anime you can get a
lot of Anno's references. The _true_ unanswered questions though
are there to be argued in my opinion. There isn't supposed to be
a _correct_ answer, "We all have to find our own answers".

> When Lillith took on Rei's (Yui's?) aspect, was that because
> Lillith was becoming Rei, or because Rei was becoming Lillith?
> Or because the two were merging together into a greater whole,
> symbolically changing their appearance as they did so?

Also Lilith half became Kaoru, Adam took on Kaoru's form just
like  Lilith took on Reis.

> For that matter, the whole Yui-Lillith switch that creates 'Rei'.
> If Lillith was a 'mother' herself, is it relevant that the only
> Human souls we KNOW to be part of EVA are both female,
> & mothers themselves?

I think the "mother" aspect has more to do with the fact that
the Entry Plug as acts a sort of artificial womb for the pilots
and that the synchronisation between pilot and Eva takes
place over the mother-child A-10 nerve link.

> Could that be why Yui was absorbed 100% in one go?
> Because Asuka's Unit 0, derived from Adam, wasn't
> 'wired' to have a 'gender change' in it's soul, & couldn't
> properly absorb Asuka's mother?

I think Yui was absorbed and stayed because she wanted
that, while Kyouko didn't.

> Location - Queensland, attend IJC meetings.

I've went to one or two IJC meetings ages ago (I'm a UQ boy,
so it's  my duty ^^) I go to the occasional BAS meeting as well
(though not for years now).

--
Michael Wignall
"Tomorrow's just an excuse away..."