FUYUTSUKI (MONO):“Later, I would hear rumors that this organization was called Seele.”
Dr. Nick: Talking about mystery motivations, according to CI, Gendo married Yui so that he could become a member of Seele himself. But as an outsider, he obviously wouldn't have been initiated into Seele's deep secrets until he was in, and I doubt Yui spilled the beans ahead of time, as they would've probably been under the heaviest of surveillance while dating. So what was Gendo's goal then prior to his initiation? Was he simply after power as a member of a secret society?
UrsusArctos: Apropos of the discussion of the murderous Aum Shinrikyo cult in Cut 019 I've read translated Japanese articles that talk of how Aum gained substantial popularity among the Japanese intelligentsia and on college campuses in the late 1980s and actively recruited all over the Japanese academic scene. That makes me think Gendo was recruited by Seele at the lower levels, far from the occult secrets, and married Yui in order to gain a quick path to the top as a social climber. Maybe he was tired of being beat up in bars and wanted to make himself one of the glitterati? If so, it'd make Gendo's own ascension in social rank something of a gender subversion. Social climbing through marriage has historically been associated with women in many cultures and continues to do so in romance novels marketed to straight women - it's apparently one of the reasons why works as dreadful as Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey got so popular.
