|
Well the trick here is one that I think ep7 might actually call into question (pay attention to Maria).
How does Ange verify that the message bottles are genuine? She compares the handwriting. Okay, so they match. That proves Professor Ootsuki's explanation that the message bottles were found shortly after the event, must have been written before it, and only eventually wound up somewhere he could access and study them.
Wait. It doesn't prove that at all. It proves one thing, and one thing only: That the same person wrote in both documents.
If you doubt the authenticity of Maria's diary, the authenticity of the message bottles is in question. Alternately, if you doubt Ootsuki's story (and he has no way to demonstrate that a fisherman/the police actually found the message bottle versus just being told a fisherman/the police did), any or all of those documents could have been produced at any time, whether before the incident or for some time thereafter.
Why would Ootsuki believe a story like that? Well, he's someone who is inclined to believe that. He wants a mystery to exist. Even if he genuinely believes it, can we trust his explanation? Can Ange?
Of course Ange is going to be a biased source. There is no doubt in her mind that Maria's diary is authentic at the time. That doesn't make it so.
Mind, they could still also predate the event. But they would be much easier to make conform to events as appropriate if they came after. And note that, in the message bottles themselves, Sakutaro doesn't exist. Which he wouldn't, if the only one in the world happened to have been destroyed before the conference. Which squares with the diary. But is the diary real?
EDIT: And yes I realize the Eva thing but the fact that Eva doesn't survive in ep1-2 doesn't necessarily prove that the message bottle writer has to have been writing before she was known to have survived.
|