Thread by @synonyms26

On the Tang of Penacony and the Family’s plan
Hypothesis: The Family’s plan is to Tang the universe to rezz Ena, Sunday is the sacrifice and the Kaworu of NGE, and Misha was the previous sacrifice.
Content warnings: blood, anime with suicide theme, death, nudity, NGE spoilers.

1. At the end of TB 2.0 quest, Sunday told us that he would bring about judgement day. So what is judgement day for Penacony?

But first off, what is Tang?

2. In HSR, Tang is shown to us through a hidden quest in the dream Reverie. There, a red tape was shoved into a clock by Clockie, and the tape tells us that Clockie and the Dreamjolt Troupe had gone crazy and started eating all the guests before.

3. This event is verified to have already happened by Quinn - an NPC in Golden Hour, and the scratch marks on the bar tables in the dream Reverie. Also, there’s a tea cup literally telling us to melt and become one with them, the dream.

4. For more examples of Tang in Penacony, please check out this thread for more details:

5. But to understand the Tang process of HSR, we must go back to the original Tang, and it all came from NGE (and Jungian psychology).

6. Tang is the NGE fan term for Instrumentality - the process of humans being melt into a puddle of blood during Instrumentality in End of Evangelion. In NGE, humans are not actually humans but Lilim, imperfect demons born from Lilith and made of Lilith’s blood.

7. At the end of NGE, all the Lilims literally melted back into Lilith’s blood to create a red sea/new god, which is the collective unconsciousness of humanity. However, due to censorship, they couldn’t make the blood red and had to color it all orange. Hence, Tang.

8. A clip from End of Evangelion during the Tang scene, trigger warning for blood, nudity, graphic violence, and the lyrics is about suicide:

9. So when NGE fans say “character A got Tang”, they mean A got melted into a puddle of (orange) water.

10. Ever since its inception, the concept of Tang has always been popular in anime. Some examples of Tang are Code Geass, Madoka, Darling in the Franxx, Guilty Crown, HI3, Genshin Impact, etc. It actually has its own TV tropes page: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.…

11. The Tang of NGE itself took inspo from Jungian Magnum Opus. To self-actualize (complete yourself), you have to deconstruct yourself (Nigredo), purity (Albedo), leaving the self to gain knowledge from the collective unconsciousness Sophia (Citrinitas), and reassemble (Rubedo).

12. For more info about the Jungian Magnum Opus and how it was used in Fontaine AQ and Narzissenkreuz, you can check this thread for more details:

13. Going back to Penacony, we can see that the Charmony’s festival is Tang, which involves melting people into the same dream/collective unconsciousness. It’s pretty 1:1. This is Citrinitas (leaving behind the self to gain knowledge from the collective unconsciousness Sophia).

14. Like Rene in Narzissenkreuz, presumably the plan of the Family is to enact Citrinitas (Gold) step to summon/create Rubedo (red, or Lilith in NGE). The loading screen text suggests that Rubedo is Xipe; however, a lot of clues in-game suggests that Rubedo of the Family is Ena.

15. For one, Ena’s eye is right there in the Penacony map.

16. The second clue is the Ena’s eye in the backdrop of Robin’s splash art.

17. The third clue is the Harmony mats in Penacony, which plainly told us that some people in the Family (most likely Sunday and Robin) are pieces of music fallen from Ena after her death.

18. The fourth clue is Xipe’s irl inspo, Xipe totec. Xipe - the Flayed lord, was a deity of seasons, agricultural renewals, death and rebirth. The Aztec used to flay people in ritual sacrifices to wear their skins. The people who wear the skins would then be the next Xipe Totec.

19. This means that the current Xipe is the conglomeration of past sacrifice victims wearing the flayed skin of Ena, and the Charmony festival should be more or less about the reincarnation of Ena as Xipe via ritual sacrifice.

20. The fifth clue lies in the Swarm Disaster event. Credit to @Lalodyslore for this discovery. In short, from the Beyond the Sky Choir story, we knew that the Choir used to accompany Ena everywhere to be her voice. However, at an unknown time, they got jailed by the IPC and HooH

21. While they were jailed, one of the two princes sacrificed himself, threw himself into the sea, and became Ena’s musical notes (probably sea of quanta, the one Penacony is sinking into).

22. In response, Ena then decided to create the swarm out of Mandalan islanders, turning them into a multi-colored sea of blood, which then became the bugs. One of the stories has a woman, Melchidek, losing all of her kids, and then the kids came back as bugs to her.

23. Another story has the bounty hunters talking about multi-colored blood of the bugs, while the islanders were noted to have multi-colored flame wings.

24. If you find this sounds familiar, then you would be correct. It’s the same Tang from NGE, and also a ref to the Exodus, where Yahweh turned water into blood and unleashed a plague to destroy Egypt to make the Pharaoh release the Israelites.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_o…

25. Effectively, Ena = Yahweh.
Water turned into blood = water turned into blood.
Israelites = the Beyond the Sky Choir.
Moses = the 2 princes of the choir.
The Pharaoh = IPC and Qlipoth’s followers.

26. And all of these stories about the choir are not only consistent with what we have learnt about the Family so far through the Penacony relic and the new harmony mats, but the sacrifice of the prince into the sea is also consistent with the nursery rhyme and What is Real.

27. The Oak tree that created paradise, the dreamer who sank into the sea yet never fell asleep, the prince who sacrificed himself and drowned in the sea as a musical note for Ena.

27. Line 1 of What is Real is Mikhail killing Misha, line 3 is Robin. Mikhail is the butterfly who left and died to the swarm in the second stanza. In the first stanza, the (Oak) tree was sacrificed to create heaven, so line 2 can’t be Misha but must be Kaworu

28. The choir was even described to have mostly lost their faith, but they left behind some records that look suspiciously like the record labelled “Dreamland Freeland” in the hotel Reverie.

29. If you’re interested, you can check out this thread for more details on why Ena was the culprit of Swarm and who killed Ena (it was a set-up by Equilibrium and Aha):

30. The sixth clue is in the origin of Ena’s CN name, Taiyi 太一. According to the Guodian Chu slip, Taiyi is a creator god of Taoism who created water, and then used water to create heaven, earth, and the rest of the universe.

31. In short, Tang-ing people is Ena’s thing.

baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%AA…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiyi_She…

32. As such, the Charmony plan to Tang people and summon Rubedo is to Tang people for (more likely to be) Ena, not Xipe.

33. So the Family’s plan is to Tang people for Ena, but who’s gonna be the sacrifice, the Kaworu of Penacony?
Well, it’s Kaworu.
It's not Misha because he was already, well, sacrificed.

34. In NGE, Lilith and her children, the Lilims, are the black moon and actually the usurper of Earth. Earth was originally intended to be the seeding ground of the white moon, Adam. Lilith hijacked Earth and created her imperfect children, the Lilim. Adam went into hibernation.

35. One day, some Lilim, an organization called SEELE, woke Adam up, creating the Second Impact (a huge chunk of the world and humanity turned into the sea of blood, but not all of them). The Earth was dying as Lilith’s terraform was reversed by the Second Impact.

36. SEELE then put Adam’s soul into a Lilim body in the hope of making him the first sacrifice to Lilith so that the next generation of Lilim would be perfect like him instead of flawed like Lilith. The being with Adam’s soul in a Lilim body was Kaworu.

37. Near the end of the TV series, Kaworu met Shinji (the MC of NGE and the Third Children of Lilith, yes that’s how they spelled it, Third Children). Kaworu fell in love with Shinji and the imperfect Lilim, and then he agreed to die so that Lilim would be reborn.

38. Kaworu’s decision to make Shinji kill him actually turned Shinji suicidal (he was already kinda suicidal before, but he actually made an attempt after). With his death, Kaworu forced Shinji to proceed with the Tang plan and rezz Lilith, triggering the rebirth of humanity.

39. The notable thing about this is that Kaworu as a character is heavily associated with Odes to Joy, Beethoven 9th. Kaworu was first introduced as humming Odes to Joy to a despairing Shinji, declaring that he loved humanity and Shinji:

40. Not only that Kaworu’s death scene was also to the background music of Odes to Joy (don’t mind the troll edit in the middle):

41. The usage of Odes to Joy in NGE has some strong symbolic meaning. This paper here has an in-depth analysis of how Odes to Joy was used in NGE: stockholmuniversitypress.se/site/chapters/…

42. In short, Odes to Joy in NGE represents Kaworu’s love for humanity and Shinji, and this love is expressed through his desire to Tang, to be the sacrifice in front of god, and to rezz God for the rebirth of the human collective unconsciousness (Cinitritas and Rubedo).

43. And this same song is now referenced in the background music of the Golden Hour theater, which is, in turns, associated with Robin and Sunday.

44. In HSR, instead of Odes to Joy, it’s Empyrean Hymnos · Odes of Harmony. Credit to Mari and Sei for the discovery.

45. So yeah, Odes to Joy = Odes of Harmony. It’s rather blatant, especially when Bocchi actually called Soulglad “liquid Odes of Harmony”, as the broadcast and the bad ending told us that the Charmony festival to rezz god needed Robin’s singing, aka Odes of Harmony.

46. But between Sunday and Robin, who’s Kaworu the sacrifice and who’s Shinji the starter of Tang?

47. Not only can you hear some similarities to Odes to Joy, but you can also hear Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute in the Odes of Harmony. Credit to @Himeshxt and Sei for the identification of the refs.

@Himeshxt 48. The plot of the Queen of the Night aria is a girl being forced by her mother - the Queen, to kill Sarastro, the high priest of Isis and Osiris, else the Queen of the Night would disown her.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic…

@Himeshxt 49. Additionally, Robin is associated with angel’s trumpet, which was historically used as a hypnotic drug and an entheogen for the sacrificial victims in South America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brugmansia

@Himeshxt 50. And if you really think about it, if Robin’s the singer, then she can’t be Tang, at least she can only be the last to Tang, like the pair of princes in the choir: One drowned in the sea to create heaven, and the other would live to lead the choir.

@Himeshxt 51. So yeah, Robin is Shinji/the daughter, and Sunday is Kaworu/Sarastro/Queen of the Night lol. Even his design is similar to that of Kaworu.

@Himeshxt 52. So the gameplan of Sunday? It’s to sacrifice himself for Tang to summon Ena, with Odile!Robin being the singer who actually does the Tang of the universe.

@Himeshxt 53. This would be consistent with the Silent Hill ref, too, where the god in Silent Hill also needs a consistent stream of sacrifices to manifest into the world. And also consistent with Xipe Totec from irl.

@Himeshxt 54. But will Sunday’s plan of Tang go through like Kaworu’s did?
Probably not, because Sparkle plainly told us in her animation that she is going to burn down everything.

@Himeshxt 55. Probably gonna try to hijack the ritual to gas the entirety of Gotham!Penacony with Aha’s laughing Tang or sth.

@Himeshxt 56. In addition, Sunday actually quoted Ecclesiastes 10: 13 in 2.0 TB quest. Ecclesiastes is supposedly written by King Solomon in his old age, when (some of) his faith has been lost.
biblegateway.com/passage/?searc…

@Himeshxt 57. Him directly quoting Ecclesiastes is 1) highlighting Sparkle’s opposition to him in the story despite her being hired by the Family, and 2) suggesting that his faith to Ena is itself fading, a very different situation from Kaworu’s bone-headed devotion to Shinji and humanity.

@Himeshxt 58. Means he could change his mind later.

@Himeshxt 59. For all its worth, it doesn’t seem like Sunday’s the true mastermind of the Family anyway. The true mastermind is the unknown Dreammaster who hasn’t appeared yet but controlled Penacony through the Oak family, like how the true mastermind behind Kaworu’s death was SEELE.

@Himeshxt 60. Conclusion 1: In the Swarm era, Ena’s Beyond the Sky choir was jailed by IPC for an unknown reason. In response, Ena created Tazzy and the Swarm to punish IPC à la Exodus’ Plague of Egypt. Unbeknownst to her, it was all a set-up by Equilibrium to kill her.

@Himeshxt 61. Conclusion 2: After being jailed, one of the princes of the choir sacrificed himself, became a music note of Ena, and drowned in the sea (of quanta, presumably). The remaining prince… did something and led the choir in prison. The remnants of the choir became the Family

@Himeshxt 62. Conclusion 3: Robin and Sunday were probably created by the Family (Dreammaster, presumably) from the memory pieces of the prince who drowned in the sea (of quanta), the fallen music note of Ena, like how Rei and Kaworu were created from Lilith and Adam respectively in NGE.

@Himeshxt 63. Conclusion 4: The Family wants to Tang the universe to rezz (probably) Ena, using Sunday as the sacrificial Kaworu and Odile!Robin’s voice as the catalyst, mirroring the story of the 2 princes of the choir, and of Kaworu and Shinji in NGE.

@Himeshxt 64. Conclusion 5: Their plan will probably get hijacked by Sparkle, who is likely to gas everyone in Gotham!Penacony with laughing gas/Aha’s Elation. Sunday, as a ref to Solomon in Ecclesiastes, will probably change his mind on the Tang plan, unlike Kaworu in NGE.

@Himeshxt 65. Addendum: Now you know why I put Sunday as Jesus/Nahemah on the Date A Live tree of Kabbalah. Because Jesus = Kaworu, and Nahemah = Queen of the Night.

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