Sunday 15 January 2012

Mother 3 and Evangelion connections and similarities.

I never thought I'd be able to connect Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Mother 3 directly. But I stumbled across this music similarity.

One of the most iconic songs from the series is Komm, Suesser, Tod. It plays over some pretty surrealistic end of the world phenomenon during the End of Evangelion movie.



Pay attention to the beginning, especially from 0:26 to 0:50. It's the theme song for the Magypsies in Mother 3!



Listen to the one without sax if you can't hear it.



I doubt this was a coincidence!

If you are unaware, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a pretty influential anime from 1995. Basically Shinji Ikari has to pilot a purple cyborg giant named an Eva, to defend Tokyo3 from the Angels, mysterious beings that seek to penetrate Nerv's headquarters and bring about the end of the world. It was a 26 Episode TV series and had a follow up movie. It was pretty surreal.

It got me thinking about the possible similarities and connections Evangelion has with Mother 3. I think most of these are probably coincidences, unlike the songs I've posted which I think was intentional. (Potential spoilers after this!)

Mother 3 and Evangelion both have strong themes of Motherhood, and more importantly losing your Mother. The only people who can pilot the Eva Units are children who have lost their mothers. The 3 Eva pilots don't have a mother. The three main characters in Mother 3 are also motherless. Evangelion relies on strong Freudian symbolism. The Evas are the pilots mothers. Their mother's souls have been extracted and used as the evas soul. The pilots sit in a red orb, which is a symbolic womb. At the end of Mother 3, Porky enters a symbolic womb. The Absolutely Safe Capsule. He even rocks back and forth like a baby, and apparently seems content.

Absolute Safe Capsule

Both the End of Evangelion and end of Mother 3 had similar concepts. Once again, another spoiler warning.) Anyways, in EoE, project instrumentality was completed. It's pretty surreal and up for interpretation, but basically everybody apparently died, as the human race evolved into its next step. Shinji rejects this, because he finds his sense of identity. Anyone who wants to return has the ability to do so. In Mother 3, after the last needle is pulled, the Dragon destroys everything and resets earth to its natural balance. But, if you walk around you can talk to characters who have survived somehow. There's a very small flickr of hope during each of the endings.

Then there's the Diamond enemies from Mother 2 or Earthbound. It would appear as some other creature when in battle, however. Mother 2 was created around the same time when Evangelion first aired, so I think this was a coincidence. However, Mother 3 which was released in 2006 featured the diamond's returning as an actual enemy. It looks like a certain Angel from Eva. Still may just be a coincidence.


Minerali

Ramiel


Oddly enough, there is an enemy located near the end of the game with the previously mentioned diamond shaped enemy. It's only made out of light and energy. There was an Angel in Eva who appeared in the same fashion. It is strange that they both appear together. I may just be grasping at straws.

Fenomeno
Arael

I also want to say the barrier trio is an Evangelion reference, but, the only similarities is that they are possibly organic/biomechanical beings that are purple and in a group of three. Whatever, they're spectacular and deserve a mention anyways.

4 comments:

  1. I always thought it reminded me of this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPRh_ly6JM

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kom, Süsser Tod is a piece by J.S. Bach; that it was used in both Eva and Mother 3 says nothing about a connection between the two.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kom, Susser Tod from The End of Evangelion just shares the name with Bach's piece. I think Bach's piece was originally going to be used, but I don't remember where I read that.

    ReplyDelete