#there's probably a more symbolic animal for eva

[thehmn]

I’m currently listening to Maren Uthaug’s book 11% about a world where most men have died. I should probably wait until I’ve finished the book but I’m so fascinated by the world building.

As of now it’s still unclear why the men died but when the story takes place there’s a mix of older women who fucking hates men and young women who have only met drugged up men at “breeding centers” and imagine “males” as violent boogeymen but otherwise don’t really care and just want to live in the new seemingly perfect society their grandmothers fought for. The only people who still fight for men’s rights are witches who believe masculine energies are as natural and Of Nature as feminine energies, but even they sound more like animal rights activists, standing outside breeding centers with signs every Friday. Their most provocative sign is a picture of a man with Human written on it.

Christianity has been completely transformed and is now run by priests (they don’t call themselves priestess) who can only hold ceremonies when they have their periods and snakes are their most sacred symbol because they gave knowledge to Eva and God is called The Mother.

Trans men exist but are referred to as Man Women and they all seem to be sex workers who have functional silicone penises, though I’m not far enough into the story to know if they have other jobs. They generally also still have breasts because working as a wet nurse is another source of income for them. Testosterone treatments is not an option because it would make them too masculine and dangerous to be allowed into society but they all have male names and everyone use male pronouns for them.

A really fascinating aspect of the world is how people want to get rid of the old “patriarchal architecture” of straight lines and boxes but refuse to tear it down with machines, instead insisting on letting Mother Nature reclaim it. Only Rat Girls are actively trying to destroy the old buildings by releasing hoards of rats into them and planting bamboo to break up the concrete. New buildings have round shapes and are build in ways that make them blend in with cultivated nature and inside they’re painting in beautiful colors with no hard edges. They sound a lot like colorful hobbit homes. Also, locks are considered uncivilized and of a time when violent men roamed the earth and made life unsafe so nothing, from front doors to bathrooms, have locks. For a while after most men died women would go for Night Walks to relish in the fact that they no longer had to be afraid, though they liked to visit the witches at night because it felt a little spooky, which the witches thought was good fun.

The story is naturally about a middle aged witch who is hiding a young boy illegally and gets milk from one of the trans men in the red district while also sleeping with a Christian priest who struggles with her sacred job because her periods are irregular.

I’ll come back with follow up thoughts once I’ve finished it. Unlike what you might think, Maren Uthau isn’t a scary man hater. I’ve listened to most of her other books and this isn’t a recurring trope so clearly she has something to say specifically with this story and it’s rated pretty highly by both male and female readers. I think I’m in for quite the ride.

[dracocheesecake]

Wondla Theory: Infected Redimus

Redimus is asymptomatic of the Vitae Virus- or it infected him at some point, but he somehow "recovered" and so didn't get the cool powers Eva did- but he was still mutated, to a far lesser extent.

How so?- Let's see:

Redimus is far more empathetic than most of his people, to the point that he cannot kill prey for sport like the rest of his kind. Even Rovender and Antiquus find that somewhat shocking behavior for a Dorcean, and it's not too far out to assume that other races might find the idea shocking as well:

In fact, Redimus was so empathetic towards his prey that his own father labeled him as a disgrace and an embarrassment to the entirety of their people:

Judging from this text, I don't think Reddie's dad was just entirely exaggerating: Redimus actively paused to consider the motivations of this extremely dangerous animal he was supposed to kill- instead of callously doing what needed to be done- and that moment of empathy cost his eye, but he doesn't even seem to be bitter about it. He understood that it was just trying to survive. We can assume that this wasn't the only time that he hesitated to act in such a manner.

He even considered his brother a monster for killing for sport, and himself even worse for what he did in the menagerie- Besteel (and maybe any other Dorcean) would have felt no such shame or horror- but Redimus did, and sought forgiveness for his actions.

There's even a few hints that Redimus has some of the ability- the "feeling really hard" that Eva described. Look here:

"Oooh but those are just his naturally sharp Dorcean senses!"

Is that so? We know Dorceans can sense heat, that they have a good sense of smell, maybe even sharp hearing- but not that sharp. Now, this could be a bit of a reach- but Redimus is able to sense things others cannot- he can read people and animals well.

...Maybe something about Eva felt familiar to him?

Besteel may not have felt it just because he was wild and reckless...or maybe because he didn't have the ability to. He would have been more careful, otherwise (but then again, this is the same guy who somehow nabbed a giant sandsniper, who did a bunch of other stupid stuff just to have a chance at getting Eva, so who knows?).

And here's another kicker:

Concept art of Eva Nine:

"Leaf symbol of peace tattooed on forehead"

...Look at Redimus' forehead:

Where did Redimus say he grew up?

"The forest north of Lake Concors. The woods there are wild and untamed, full of beasts unlike any you will ever see."

You mean like the Heart of the Forest? Full of strange, new beings no one can imagine?!! Because of the Vitae Virus generator mutating everything?!!

Alright, again, that part could be a bit of a stretch, because it's not that north of Lake Concors, but this is the Wandering Forest, and this is just a fun theory so bear with me a bit: obviously because of The Mother they weren't born/raised there, there- but probably close enough to it to matter. Close enough to it for it to have some sort of effect, for the virus to spread.

Perhaps even to infect a young Dorcean? If it could somewhat infect Eva Nine when she was still an embryo, is it all that improbable to believe that the virus has infected much of the water supply throughout the forest? Or maybe it was even being carried by some of those creatures that Redimus' family were hunting and eating. Redimus, for whatever reason, was just more susceptible- but not enough for it to change him in a major way. He hasn't been "purified", but only partially mutated- enough for him to have a heaping helping of empathy.

And that's my crack theory that I came up with with only a scrap of supporting evidence to stretch paper thin over an expansive imagination.

Mind you I've barely read the books yet so bare with me a bit.

[dephirium]

Dephi's predictions.

Hello. A bunch of people a lot smarter than me have already analyzed aspects of the prologue but I am bored and I want to get my thoughts out. General who I think survives or kills, ideas of what is going to happen, questions set up, directions of character arcs — That kind of stuff. It is just word vomit.

This is going to age like milk fast, I bet (I wrote this after the prologue was released). Also warning I have bad memory so correct me if I got a fact wrong or something, I rewatched the prologue sleep deprived so I am bound to make mistakes.

Spoilers for the prologue and stuff. Duh...

Also beware swearing, unfunny humor and the obligatory ''I am not above biases and personal taste'' warning.

Holy shit this took a while to make.

Miscellaneous hopes / guesses

(Considering the game's heavy ties with religion, here's a small blurb on that) I am not into religion and I have enough religious trauma as is but I think it would be very cool if there was a trial that paralleled the Ark of Noe situation; Someone saving only themselves, who god has deemed worthy, and leaving the sinners to drown is kind of similar to the death game premise. Also a case paralleling the Adam & Eve situation would be a neat but obvious pick considering the game's emphasis on it in their symbolism and themes. Just. The murders having some kind of tie-in with religion itself would be so interesting even if only on subtext.

Wonder why they didn't try to break the windows in the whole ‘Panicking bcs the gas’ bit (I mean yes it is necessary for the narrative for the characters to be put unconscious but it seems weird that nobody even attempted it or addressed it after-the-fact, nonetheless. Specially considering that they specifically addressed how helmet-wearing Jett was knocked out). Though Damon was very quick to fall, so maybe they did try it after he was knocked unconscious. Ah also it is very unlikely they were out for more than a day or two (because there are actually a lot of semantics involved in taking care of someone who is unconscious / unresponsive — and none of them are pretty y'all). Or maybe they did. Who knows with Danganronpa logic /shrug

Also the train was mentioned to be worse for wear than expected. Chekov's gun tells me it wasn't the actual train for Eden's Academy and they just yoinked the cast before the real one could arrive. As to the people Grace saw, it is likely that they were the mastermind group (The paintings depict many animals which could mean a group instead of a individual / the deadass confirmation we get with the tree of ignorance folk), hence why the knocking agent was planted beforehand.

What if Eden's garden is literally just a facade for talent yoinkers to kidnap and make ppl kill each other and who survives gets roped into the group lol. /hj

THE FUCK IS THE LIQUID ON THE BASEMENT??? It is not water, as it appears to be non-conductive, is way too much to seem like oil... Just. That whole sequence in the boiler room was so fucking weird, man. Is it water but doesn't touch any electrical wiring (Despite, I believe, the cables being mentioned as exposed)? is it NOT water? WHY IS THIS RELEVANT. IS THE DEATH GAME BEING HOSTED CLOSE TO WATER?

How fucking long did Damon and Eva take to get to the kitchen lol? Because they saw Akire on the floor (That was Akire, right? I remember the shoes looking like formal-wear...) and bee-lined to the kitchen afterward. Even supposing that canonically Damon checked every basement door to spite Eva (which isn't very long because Damon kind of gets bored after a bit of checking each room / is actually very on character so probably he did thinking about it), that leaves like... 10 minutes, tops. It just reads as weird in my opinion. Wonder if that is going to be mentioned later on.

I saw the walkthrough because my laptop had a aneurysm trying to load the game, but like. The tree of ignorance room has these... Egyptian hieroglyphs (?) Looking things that make me think that that's what going to open after each chapter / death. They look like mall stores what the fuck is this place (also it appears to have a second floor for what I remember ?)

Mara and Cara are very similar names. Wonder if they are related or something (they also both share a motif of guns) lol.

It is very likely that this isn't the first killing game, as per Cara's situation. However, it is very likely that it was a student council situation (meaning a "no trial just kill each other'' kind of deal), which would explain why Cara had a gun (because so far we haven't seen anywhere on the killing game ground that has access to fire weapons) and how the fuck the killer got away with such a simple killing plan.

Also considering the fact that all the cast calls Cara's murderer a man (idk why if gender neutral pronouns exist but ok) and that Tozu exists, it could be likely that he was Cara's murderer, and he won his killing game. or something. This also could explain why Tozu wanted them to solve how the culprit did it and not who the culprit is — He probably already knows who it was.

Considering what I said about Mara and Cara being similar, it kind of fits. That or he's related to a character of the cast. Maybe Wolfgang, considering his sheep-adjacent mask. Or both idk

It is very unlikely there's a mastermind amongst the students (kind of duh considering Tozu's whole ordeal, but still). However that doesn't remove the possibility of a traitor.

Speaking of, the death game grounds seem... Small? Like sure there's the living quarters, the "outside" and the tree of ignorance and they are somewhat big in their own right, but it just feels. Small in the context of official Danganronpa games. It is likely a engine limitation / self-imposed limitation for the devs sanity, probably, because doing a bigger environment would be more troublesome, but nonetheless I'm excited to see how they utilize the space. Maybe the areas that will open up in the tree of ignorance will help freshen things up.

GUESSES I HAVE FOR KILLING THINGS:

The locks in the living grounds are likely to become relevant in a trial (Probably the first), likely locking the cast out while the murderer is still inside? For what I remember the people who woke up on the tree of ignorance are not aware of the locks existence (Living quarters / outsiders are, however - Toshiko used them after all) and that could be weaponizable information in the trial.

I am super sure a death happens in the outside's fancy marble thingy and it will be beautiful and tragic.

Damon Maitsu

The vent connecting the boiler room to the kitchen is SO fucking obviously to be used as a killer's escape route I almost expect it to not be used just to spite us.

Start of prologue: Togami kinnie?

End of prologue: DAMON STOP UNLEASHING YOUR INNER TOGAMI GODDAMMIT

I have seen people speculating that Damon is going to die and there's going to be a Kaede / Shuichi protag switch, but honestly? I don't really see that happening considering the prologue already set up a very interesting character arc for him. BUT, I do see likely that there's a Komaeda chapter 4 situation where there's a POV switch for a bit with either Eva or Akire, most likely Eva because of her status as co-protag and/or sidekick.

Nonetheless, it is obvious that Damon is going to go through a character arc so he stops being such an ass to people. I love the guy but yes he needs to be knocked down that unhealthy mindset of his.

Because of his isolation from his peers it is likely that his motives to kill, if there are any, are family driven (It is also likely the fuck has heavy family issues because he kins togami too hard and that asshole didn't have a good relationship with his parents neither) the killing motives are likely to give us the context as to what nurtured this fuck’s god/inferiority complexes. Also because of this he would have the "protag doesn't have that big an incentive to kill" motive detachment like mister I Pissed The Bed Makoto Naegi.

Also people who are unable to see a nuanced / different take on the protagonist like Damon or Teruko on Despair Time without calling them names or misreading their characters pisses me off SO much, specially with Damon (Teruko is a different can of worms I am not opening today tyvm) because I am able to sympathize with him as someone ND who at some point decided to isolate from others and put this front of being a purely logical zero puny emotions individual because logic was just easier than facing complicated emotions I wasn't taught how to express and / or would be berated for. He's a interesting character a great deviation of the goody-two-shoes protagonist trope. I can't wait to see what they do with him and see him suffer and earn friendships with the cast.

Eva Tsukasa

I could go into detail but I am not that eloquent and other people have talked about it better. Here is a blurb-analysis of Damon in general and here is a analysis of him through the neurodivergent lens. Any opinion I have about the bastard is vocalized better by those two ngl (Eternity's Damon fics are also very good!) . I'll probably do my own separate blog about him if I have the energy, but I feel like I would just repeat points made better by other people.

Start of prologue: Pls don't be Kirigiri

End of prologue: PLS DON'T BE KOKICHI

Eva had a rough beginning because the first impression she gave was Kirigiri kinnie vibes and fun fact i fucking hated kirigiri on dr1 so i wasn't liking where this was going. That changed around 5 dialogues in with her saying she bridal carried Damon, which made me less prone to hate her on pure instinct. She's interesting! I like her a lot. I like the way that she and Damon share their pessimistic pragmatism and are the only two to shut down the whole buddy-buddy prospect; They both are very similar in a lot of ways, almost like character foils (but not quite — That's Akire) in a certain way. I cannot wait to see what they do with her talent, one of the most interesting ones I have seen in any fangan (though I do find it kinda dumb and a bit on the nose in a light hearted way).

Now onto the biased opinions — I think they shoot her shot way too early. While, yes, I found it very interesting that they didn't beat around the bush and didn't do the "ult ???" thing (I kinda find that troupe obnoxious at this point), I do view the fact that Eva's ultimate was revealed this early a very odd writing choice (and the reveal a bit clunky in personal writing taste). A good way to create intrigue and tension since the prologue to get the audience hooked, but I do wonder how do they plan to utilize her and this early reveal. In fact, if anything, this early reveal and her Eve motif - who doomed both her and Adam out of heaven's gates, and is literally implied to be bad since her conception out of Adam's left rib - make me wonder if she's being set up in a Rantaro fashion, and she'll be the reason the game starts (probably victim). I kinda hope not. She's an interesting character even if I believe that the most relevant part of her narrative was given far too early (although I do want to know how tf is Liar an ultimate talent).

Diana Venicia

Start of prologue: animal crossing character core

End of prologue: ... Are you a traitor lol?

She's a sweetheart and I don't trust it. With her sweet persona and her chameleon theming, she just screams killer red flags to me. I am unsure when exactly would she crack, but I think it would be kind of early on, like chapter 1-3 type of early. I think bears mention that everyone and their mom has called out the fact that Kara's dummy is way too realistic and her talent would enable to pull out that feat.

I don't see her being a particularly important blackened on the grand scheme of the narrative (unless she's in kahoots and she's like a traitor or whatever) but it would serve to show everyone the severity of the environment and how even the nicest person can crack against it.

The idea of yassifying a corpse to hide/obfuscate details of the cause of death or whatever is literally so so cool and I want it to happen so bad. But her and Kai's possible blackened situations (spoiler I do view both as killers as it makes the most thematic sense) seem a little too similar so probably if one is a killer the other will not.

Toshiko Kayura

Start of prologue: Hiyoko looking ass

End of prologue: Is your mouth fucked girlie

SIMILARLY, I don't trust the child. I am not sure why. She's good tho! I find her interesting enough for the setting and the prologue has set up enough with her character that I look forward whatever they want to do with her (and her formal way of speech is charming haha). I just hope it isn't a generic ''oh the kid is actually insane lol'' kind of deal as I am honestly tired of the Monaka twist, but I do see her being traitor adjacent at the very least. I don't see her killing (or, well, I hope™ she doesn't kill) but I can see her as a victim, probably in around chapters 3-4. I think the cast would try to be careful with her because she is the youngest of the group and that ends up being, partially, one of the reasons of her death. Everyone will be horrified if she does die.

Drawing it in the sand that her parents hated each other or something (or divorced), one had a meltdown and hurt her for whatever reason, hence why she uses her fan on her mouth. It'll probably become relevant later in her respective trial. Also this is the reason why she's a matchmaker.

Something something the bible story of Abraham being told by god to kill his child Isaac to prove his faith something

Cassy + Wenona

Start of prologue: Communism? / YOU'RE SO PRETTY

End of prologue: Oh so MrBeast then / Step on me!

Putting these two together because 1) I don't have much to say about them and 2) they are probably being used as character foils of one another so because of that my thoughts about them are interconnected. Here's my opinions of them:

Cassidy is... Okay. I like her well enough, she had her witty lines (the ace attorney reference was fun), and she feels cohesive enough for the setting and the other characters to not feel entirely out of place. Nonetheless, she is somewhat... irrelevant? Like, all her cards were played on the prologue itself, and there's no real way I can see her character becoming more relevant on the future or have any interesting development; She is a fun character, but not one I find interesting or relevant for the narrative. More like needing to fill lines because people need to die, probably. Her theming with spiders and that one sprite can prove me wrong, tho. Not saying she will kill, but that probably there's something else I am missing? (Addendum: this has taken me so long to write I had time to sit on my thoughts on Cassidy and I realized I kinda don't like how offhandedly mean she is lol. You know. Calling Damon bargain bin lawyer like that isn't an insult to his entire line of work and personhood and disguising it as a joke and all lmao. Wonder if this will be called out further down the line? Could be an interesting point of development for a otherwise stagnant character)

Wenona is interesting! Her design caught my eye since the train fuckery, and it made me deeply interested in her (also I like women so I am biased probably lol) and what her talent would be. While I kind of don't see how her appearance would convey the “ult entrepreneur” title all too well, I do forgive it because otherwise it is so fucking interesting and I am absolutely obsessed (and it's not fault of the writing and probably just personal taste of mine). Her possible character arc is a lot more obvious than Cassidy's, and ironically mirror Damon's "stop treating people like shit" own (Damon asking what is her deal when they are both assholes about talent and worth is very funny). I hope we get more information about her job and how she got where she is now are revealed because I am genuinely interested in her character trajectory and the parallels to the protagonist. Or maybe she stays in girlboss mode idk I wouldn't mind either way she can step on me regardless

I guess that in around chapter 2-3 Cassidy and Wenona are going to start to clash badly because of their different economic ideals (they probably clash on chapt 1 too but it is after a murder that things get worse as everyone becomes paranoid as hell). My guess is that they either end up killing each other or someone else uses the animosity to frame the kill on one of them.

I see Wenona having more chances of survival because so far Cassidy is kind of a (relatively) flat comedic character and doesn't have that many notes of character development / interesting said pieces. But I wouldn't be against her surviving to be honest. She's fun.

Grace Maddison

Start of prologue: SOYBEAN

End of prologue: You're literally a pacing risk huh

She's... a mixed bag. For one part, I like the fact that she raised a valid point in the trial despite the fact that she has been considered nothing more than the hotheaded, "stupid" vulgar one of the group. It gives her a decent amount of depth so far and makes me interested to see more of her. In the other... She's like disguised-Mukuro in dr1 for me, ngl. She's interesting, I can admit that, but definitely not a character I get too excited about (she's a bit annoying to me). Except I worry about how are they going to deal with her on trials, considering the fact that they had to literally knock her out on the mock trial so it could progress in a decent pacing (Which I kinda called out when I first saw her in the kitchen, but I thought she would've been a mukuro situation, details). Or maybe she dies first, which would be a shame ngl.

Wolfgang Akire

As she stands she seems to me like a pacing-risk character and it makes me worry about how they are going to use her going forward, although the fact that she was literally almost killed will probably chill her the fuck out while on trial. I just hope the writers manage to balance the fact that she's vulgar but not stupid as fuck. Oh and her and Akire's dynamic is very funny I love that

Trailer: Oh you get pegged™

Start of prologue: [Lost my shit laughing when I found he was called Wolfgang lol]

End of prologue: Unhinged bitch!! /pos

I like the parallelism of him and Damon! The attorney and the prosecutor, emotions and logic, the leader of the group (seemingly) and the social pariah. Akire is a character that works because in any other Danganronpa setting, he would be the protagonist. But the thing is this: He is not, here. This allows us to see raw sides of him that otherwise we wouldn't have — or that, in turn, we would have context for.

The mock trial meltdown works because we, as an audience, are seeing him through another person's (probably biased) perspective. The lack of interpersonal context of his thoughts or actions makes the slip of his calm demeanor to yelling—begging, almost—for reasoning of the killer's actions all the more jarring.

Anyhow thesis out of the way here are more thoughts:

This set up could not be achieved without Akire being the role he is, an antagonist for the mere factor that his entire existence is an antithesis of Damon's persona. But unlike the debater, who hides the fact that he cares and craves human connection, the lawyer hides a far uglier underside that he doesn't expose unless he is in familiar territory — His area of expertise, in fact — The courtroom. Quite literally, his territory, his area of expertise, his playground; He is confident in his abilities until he is quite literally denied the closure he craves for a killer's despicable actions against a ultimate.

In more ways than one, he, like Damon, probably has a god complex because of his title / the ultimates. He just demonstrates it... Subtly. He is the textbook example of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Akire ends up killing I am like 70% sure of this. He's too unhinged, and we never had a rival who did commit a murder themselves on DR so it would be interesting? (Kokichi doesn't count). Also the "28 STAB WOUNDS" man committing a murder himself would be a interesting prospect, with the wolf in sheep's clothing themes he has going on; Specially considering that he is most likely going to become one of the surrogate leaders of the class.

Calling him out as the killer would probably generate a Mikan-esque situation (Not like Kai's levels of bad but more born out of respect and lie-ridden logic than pity/empathy hard emotion bait) of nobody believing Damon and it sounds fun. It would be an interesting prospect considering Damon's possible "getting people to trust me after isolating myself and overcome my own biases" character arc. What better way to make a climax for such than to go against the leader of the group and getting people to trust you despite the odds?

Oh also it is very likely a relative of his (probably his dad) killed a important woman in his life (probably his mom. Or like, someone else killed her and was never caught or something idk pick your poison mom dead either way) and that's why he became a lawyer / has such strong sense of justice and the reason why he had that more-or-less breakdown on the mock trial.

Some other stuff I won't go into detail

This is the dump of other things I wanted to mention but I am too low energy to dwell onto and I don't want to procrastinate on this draft more than I already have (ITS BEEN A YEAR SINCE I STARTED THIS)

Anyhow:

I view that Kai would also be a killer, using his charisma in the same way Diana would (in a very Mikan way, as he's used to playing his audience like a fiddle and fishing out emotional responses) but in a more hardcore manner. That and the fact that Kai has latched to Damon from the first second of the prologue, it's probably setting up the fact that Damon will need to bring down Kai for the sake of the truth - and probably the first example of hesitance as Damon will probably grow to be "friends" with the guy, having to fight puny emotions he never had before (not particularly romantic, but like. Damon purposefully isolated from peers, so having friends would be odd to him, especially since I think that Kai is getting close to him for self interest). I deem this happening very late, and probably a chapter before Akire kills, as it would be a decent pacing from progression of severity ("friend" social person using the group -> the literal leader of the class)

Jett and Mark are also being set up as foils to each other (or at least the closest thing to that. A really pronounced character dynamic I guess), and the fact that just like Toshiko's mouth Jett off the suit is not shown in the prologue nor any outside material makes it obvious that it'll be a plot point later down the line (if I recall the most popular theory - or maybe mentioned in the prologue, I don't remember - is that he got burned to hell in a car accident mid race?), which makes me think that Jett is not going to be a survivor for the same manner - specially since those two are in the path of having a character arc together and the tragedy of demise needs to be written. Mark is maaaybe going to survive in his stead. Similar to Cassy, Jett reads to me as a comedy character mostly so he's more expendable in that regard. Without mentioning the fact that Mark had the bitchface(tm) look in the train scene, which implies that something is going on with the guy (either referent to the train/the kidnap group, or Mark knows Damon from somewhere. It'd be funny if they were classmates or someshit and Mark couldn't stand Damon's ass back then please p:eg team it would be so funny)

Jean has so many death flags (WHY ARE YOU SWEARING TO PROTECT THE GROUP YOU ARE THE BIG CHARACTER IN A FANGAN YOU'RE NOT SAFE) and I am literally so fucking sad because I actually really like the guy. Like, I don't have any relevant notes of how he's written or implied of him or anything (although I have personal thoughts of his backstory which I included in the fic I made of Damon and the guy), he's a decent character. I just wanted to scream about the fact that I am 80% sure he doesn't survive and I will forever cry about it. Same with Ingrid.

Ulysses is being set up as relevant as a notekeeper (which is really cool!!!! I haven't seen that in a fangan before I don't think), but I sadly do think that anything relevant from his notes might be discovered post-mortem, either relevant to the killing game as a whole or the case that might have him as a victim. My dude is literally falling asleep standing I am deadass so worried for his safety.

I don't have anything remarkable to say about desmond or swan girl (I forgot her name sorry) besides the fact that swan girl is being kinda set up as the "oh the cinnamon roll killed someone", and "the shy girl is actually very dangerous" which I am not particularly mad about even if I deem a bit cliché at this point. I hope Desmond doesn't die tho he is cool.

That's everything. Sorry for taking forever on this shit I am not the greatest writing consistently

[shmowder]

I have some more dessert headcanons 🍰 I doubt I can explain but it's just a feeling I have. Daniil would like Turkish Delight. Lara and Artemy both like fruit pies, best is blueberry for Lara and rhubarb (it's a vegetable but whatever) for Artemy (oh god I'm stereotyping based on colors again). Candy corn for Clara. Candy corn is divisive but I actually like it. I think Grief would like candy in general, maybe those little chocolates with liquor inside, and cinnamon flavored things. Big Vlad - mincemeat pie. Rubin - bread. Just bread. Red velvet cake for Katerina, meringues for Eva. For Aspity, those dirt pies made out of oreo crumbs, pudding, and gummy worms lol. I think Grace, Notkin, Sticky, and Murky would like those too :o)

There's probably some obscure dialogue that contradicts something there but oh well~

What do you think of Victor's animal being a tiger? I keep thinking Basset Hound and yes that's almost entirely because they both have a high likelihood of being found sitting on the floor by the clock. He's some kind of scent hound to me - more calm and deliberate than sighthounds, and once they have their mind set on something, focusing on it to the extent that it's nearly impossible to pull them away. But at the same time, I can sort of see the cat thing.

🐿️ anon

Your brain is big and wrinkly all of those fit perfectly omfg. "Rubin = bread" I LOVE IT.

Here's what I think their preference in sweets would be in addition to yours.

Eva

Turkish delight, Honey soaked rose baklava, kanafeh with sweer syrups. The intensely sweet desserts are her favourite, think heavy caramel chocolate cakes. She'd sample a lot of desserts from different cultures but those would be her comfort ones.

Victor Kain

The dishes he eats are an acquired taste that wouldn't appeal to most people. Think blue cheese and something along those lines. think bitter chocolate, coffee, and pistachio flavours. Traditional creme burlee and dark chocolate mousse.

I like to think that Khan abhors these flavours and desserts out of rebellion and only demands the most sprinkle filled bubblegum bonbon cupcakes for his birthday.

Maria, however, goes for flavour-rich desserts that explode in the mouth, something with a heavy taste and an aftermath of wine.

Yulia

Cheesecake, lemon tarts. Subtle sweetness with the spin of something different sate her appetit the most. French Vanilla chiffon cake for special occasions, a blueberry muffin with her morning light cream cappuccino.

Rubin

He's absolutely not a dessert person, so when the craving strikes, he would rather go for a baked good. Almond bread, rosemary-walnut brow butter cookies and biscuits, English muffins too.

Taya

Fairy bread cookies, strawberry shortcake, and orange puddings. Fruit based desserts with cream are her favourite. Peach pie and cherry jello. Sadly, most of these would only be found in the Capital, and exporting them into the town wouldn't come easily. The kin might adjust their recipies to accommodate her sweet tooth and include more fresh fruits.

--

For Victor's animal, I was surprised to learn it's the same one as Rubin! They both have tiger in their descriptions. Especially when Khan's animal is an adorable hedgehog. Oh my god, so cute. But it fits. He really does go hide in that spiky polyhedron whenever life gets too troubling. He also has the Kains and Capella ready to protect him.

It's because of Victor's animal being a tiger that I add the "predatory" lines in the story. The sharp claws hidden in his clapsed hands.

He's a tiger in the aspect of the danger rather than the ferality. His mind is as sharp as a tiger's tooth and his focus and patience when hunting a prey or a goal is unmatched. You never expect him or hear him, how he'll as stealthy as a tiger when it comes to mind games.

For Rubin, however, I do see the symbolism centring on the ferality instead. He's like a caged tiger, one with filed down claws and broken teeth. He used to be so sharp and had so much potential. He's truly a force to be reckon with, but the cruelty of life stole away his prime. He's overcome with grief and appears as a docile, tired predetor because of it, like a circus tiger not caring anymore and just jumping through the fire hoops of whoever orders him to. Which is why he is so quick to join the army, he needs a purpose, a mentor, an end goal, a firey ring to make him feel useful because nothing is more terrifying to an imprisoned animal than absolute freedom.

[translationandbetrayals]

Demystifying Evangelion - Part 1: Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96)

(This is the first of probably three posts talking about the Evangelion franchise. I don’t know when I’ll make the other two, but they’re on their way.)

Throughout the short history of anime, few franchises have sparked more debate and discourse than Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion. One could call it animation’s equivalent to Bergman’s “Persona”, if not in depth of interpretation, then at least in volume of written work discussing it.

Between the heaps of praise, the mountains of outraged criticism, and more than two dozen death threats sent to the show’s creator, it’s hard to think of many other shows that have caused this much ink—digital or otherwise—to be spilled surrounding it. Rightfully so, as Evangelion stands out as one of the most impactful contributions to the medium. Between the stellar direction, the bleak tone of its story, the all-too relatable characters that live through it, the one-of-a-kind visual design that jumps at you in almost every frame, the soundtrack composed by the now-legendary Shirō Sagisu, an opening that’s set the blueprint for a generation to follow it and its… “cryptic” endings, something’s bound to catch your eye. It’s the kind of media that sticks with you, for better or worse.

You might spend days fuming, coping, and seething about how much you hate the 11th hour turns or spend years mentally spinning your wheels about the journey of its “hero”, Shinji Ikari and how that relates to you, otaku fandom, life or all of the above.

In case the overly-long introduction and the last 27 years of discourse didn’t clue you in already, Evangelion has garnered a reputation for being “complex”, “indescifrable”, and full of interlinking symbolism and metaphors that must be decoded to understand the “real meaning” of. Something only a real anime grenius could ever hope to understand.

I want to come out and say that this is bogus, to not use a word that would get this essay thrown out for improper language. It is the express goal of this post, along with the other two, is to tear down this myth, so that conversations about it will not stop and end about how trippy or complicated EVA purported to be.

For those who haven’t caught up with the material, you can consider these to be equal parts a primer for any Evangelion-related lectures you might attend in the near future, mixed-in with my own critiques and thoughts of it.

For ease of reading, from hereon these essays will refer to the original 1995-96 TV anime as “Neon Genesis” or “NGE”, the 1997 feature film as “End of Eva” or “EoE”, and the 21st Century rebuilds by their number, so “1.0”, “2.0”, “3.0”, and “3.0+1.0”.

Neon Genesis Evangelion, or “that time Anno read Schopenhauer while depressed.”

  Neon Genesis Evangelion is a mecha anime produced by Studio Gainax and directed by Hideaki Anno. It ran from October of 1995 until March of the following year.

Even by then, Anno had gained quite the notoriety thanks to his work in both animation, storyboarding and direction for works such as “Gunbuster”(1988), “Super Dimension Fortress Macross”(another show of the same genre), and of course, his part in animating the iconic God Warrior fight scene in Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaä of The Valley of The Wind”(1984).

The show’s story follows Shinji Ikari, a high schooler who lives in a world left shaken by the Second Impact, a cataclysmic event that culled the planet’s population in half. It had been brought on by the Angels, a series of massive and disturbing monstrosities that render all mundane weapons obsolete in the face of their other other-worldly terror.

With that context, Shinji has been contacted by his estranged father Gendo, beckoning him to the city of Tokyo-III. The latter had abandoned the boy shortly after the early and mysterious passing of his mother, Yui. Soon after arriving, Shinji is picked up by Lieutenant Misato Katsuragi, but not before the appearance of one of the aforementioned Angels, who are trying to finish their half-finished extermination from all those years ago.

After being driven to safety in an underground base, it is explained that both Gendo and Misato work for NERV, a secret organization dedicated to fighting off these monsters and allegedly preventing the coming of a Third Impact. How, you may ask? Well, of course, by forcing mentally troubled teenagers to pilot a series of massive robots that bear a striking resemblance to the very angels they fight. 

  I say “forced to” for comedic effect, but the more accurate term would be “conned into”. The first episode shows Shinji reluctant to enter the uncanny and iconic Unit 01, for obvious reasons. Putting aside the mountains of baggage between himself and his father, in a matter of minutes he goes from a random kid with daddy issues to the one and only hope for humanity’s survival. It is only after Gendo parades the body of the bedridden pilot Rei Ayanami that Shinji decides to get in the robot, and if that sounds manipulative or scummy to you, then let me tell you that that’s not even in the top 5 of the most messed-up ways people get Shinji to pilot a mecha.

It is here that we get our first hint into the fact that something is wrong with Shinji. He is the audience surrogate, that much is undeniable. However, he doesn’t come with the typical “power fantasy” traits we’ve come to expect from the male leads in this role, especially for anime.

  Shinji is not a “cool” guy, much less a role model. He’s not even heroic, a fact that will only become more pronounced with each entry in the series. He doesn’t want to pilot his EVA Unit, as displayed by the many, many, many times he complains about it, and he isn’t validated for his efforts the way other protagonists often are.

His father rarely, if ever, recognizes his work or worth; his peers are either distant or even ridicule him for his shortcomings; finally, even his classmates end up unhappy with his heroics. This is shown by our main character getting the stuffing beaten out of him by one of his classmates, Toji. The added irony of this moment coming from a line that immediately preceded it, Misato’s “people will thank you for what you did”.

As the show works its way through the tried-and-tested “monster of the week” formula, it becomes increasingly apparent that Shinji is not as blameless as he’d like to let on. Sure, his circumstances aren’t ideal, and he is being manipulated by… pretty much everyone, but he’s not someone without agency.

At many points in the series, it is shown to the audience that Shinji could just leave. If he refuses to pilot his Unit, then that would be that. His father can radiate as much disappointment as he wants or Misato can give him the most motherly speech imaginable, but that’s where their ability to influence him begins and ends. They can’t force him to get in the robot. And if he ever does refuse, it’s patently clear that NERV can and will find some other way to fight that episode’s Angel. In fact, both characters remind and even suggest Shinji quit at multiple points. However, each time, he willingly chooses to pilot the EVA, and each time, he conveniently exculpates himself from the choices he makes. He’s got a raw deal, but he’s far from a reliable source to explain it.

However, he isn’t just detached from his agency, but from the whole world. Shinji is the character who best embodies the idea of the “Hedgehog’s Dilemma”, a concept the show dissects in its fourth episode.

Originally coined by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the parable states that human intimacy is analogous to porcupines huddling for warmth in the rain. They want to get closer to each other for heat, but their sharp spines prevent them from getting too close to each other, thus needing to find a middle ground between both extremes where they neither receive the warmth they desire nor are safe from their fellow mammals’ prickly exterior. Likewise, us humans seek companionship from others, but inevitably have to distance ourselves to some level due to our fear of being hurt by others’ “many unpleasant and repulsive qualities and insufferable drawbacks”, as Schopenhauer puts it.

This theory is what inspires one of the main mechanics of the setting, the “Absolute Terror Fields”. Our innate fear of others manifesting as psionic barriers that both the Angels and the EVAs use in battle.

Shinji is this idea taken to its logical extreme. His mother’s death and subsequent abandonment by Gendo have made him so fearful of others and the outside world that he has isolated himself from all of it, to an extent where even he removes himself from even his own actions. He doesn’t talk to others, he doesn’t delve into any of NERV’s machinations, and he doesn’t really try to understand what anyone else is going through. The world and the people who fill it have taken too much for him to risk being hurt again, so he shuts himself off.

Paradoxically Shinji still needs that proverbial warmth. He is dependent on it, more so than anyone else in this show, which is saying something. When he finally finds his reason to pilot the EVA, it’s because he wants his father’s validation. He leans on any and all relationships he can find to derive self-worth. From his budding friendship with Toji, who becomes another reason for him to pilot the mech; his complicated relationship with Misato, who is tasked with acting as the mother he never had; and especially his fellow pilots, first Rei, Asuka, and finally, Kaworu.

Asuka herself ends up being the person Shinji ends up relying on the most. She is everything he’s not, but at the same time, she mirrors his same dilemma.

She’s confident, aggressive and hyper-competent, our protagonist’s natural foil. While the main character struggles to take a step when Unit 01 is introduced to the audience, when Asuka gets in Unit 02, the difference is night-and-day. Her first appearance feels as if it belongs on another show, donning Gundam-sized capes, pulling out Rider Kicks and tossing entire warships around like they’re nothing. No matter what version of Evangelion you’re watching, her fights are a visual spectacle at all times, except for that one time where she goes magma-diving, but I digress.

This pulls double-duty as both spectacle and characterization. Unlike Shinji, she has tied her worth as a human being entirely to her ability to pilot the EVAs. You see, she needs to Style on those Angels with a capital S, because as far as she’s concerned, all she needs is to be the best. As long as she can prove to everyone that she’s the best pilot that’s ever stepped into an Entry Plug, then she doesn’t need anyone or anything else. This rationalization, of course, being a result of her own set of parent-related trauma.

In regards to the Hedgehog Dilemma, she’s almost as obvious a fit for the parable as Shinji. Asuka is what anime fans know as tsundere, perhaps even the most iconic and formative example of that archetype and trope. For academic purposes, let’s go over this one last time.

A tsundere is a popular archetype in anime, generally(but not always) female, who acts aloof or even hostile towards others, but hides a sensitive interior, with the outward attitude often serving as a defense mechanism for the latter. Schopenhauer’s theory made manifest in the form of abusive remarks, crossed arms, pouty faces, the occasional blush, and the trademark “b-baka” at the end of a character-establishing sentence.

Her mere arrival emasculates our protagonist, visually represented by Shinji having to use the more feminine 02 plug suit and then having to wear her clothes in the next episode. The former, combined with the usual brand of teenage hormones, leads him to be viscerally uncomfortable, however, in the latter episode, as the two begin to bond and synchronize with each other, Shinji comes to terms with how Asuka makes him feel. A pretty sweet bit of subtle and entirely visual storytelling, that crescendos in an electrically choreographed fight perfectly synchronized to the beat of “Both of you, Dance like you want to win.”

Now’s as good a time as any to wind back from the heavy-handed use of philosophical pessimism and talk about one of the more universally praised aspects of the show. The fights, and more precisely, the direction that goes into them.

The fights themselves in Neon Genesis tend to be rather simple. Usually, the Angel of the week has a specific gimmick that NERV needs to work around, but that’s as complex as it gets. There’s no secret techniques to keep track of, or even much of a power system to sink your teeth into, as is the case with many shonen anime. The mechas don’t even receive that many accessories, and no one has a cool fused form where all the toys-sorry, all the robots come together into one neatly indestructible package.

Instead, the complexity and the tension comes in the intertwining systems and machinery needed for the fight. Even the act of deploying an EVA takes a laundry-list of checks and procedures, all with their own specialized staff that need to come together in order for humanity to have so much as an outside shot of surviving an Angel Attack. It grounds the action, while heightening the stakes of every week’s encounter, but more than that, it highlights another theme that runs through the director’s filmography.

In NGE, it’s not brightly colored, individually-sold robots that join to defeat the problem of the day. In Evangelion, its the people, like you or I, who come together to combat these massive and seemingly incomprehensible problems that besiege our lives. While this may at first seem superfluous, it’s a theme that persists in other works by Anno, like namely, Shin Godzilla, a movie that I promise I’ll gush about later in a more succinct manner.

Speaking of whom, none of this would be possible without the immense skill that puts these scenes together. Despite the above paragraph, there is nothing more boring to watch than a bunch of people listing off pre-takeoff checks and staring at screens, but Neon Genesis somehow makes this a must-watch activity. Every piece of information that comes from NERV headquarters is framed, animated, and edited with an explosiveness that I’ve only seen matched by Studio Shaft’s Monogatari Series. Adding to this, the all-time great soundtrack accompanying these scenes is used to perfection. Tracks like Shiro Sagisu’s “ANGEL ATTACK” or “DECISIVE BATTLE” are forever burned into my brain, injecting the action with a militaristic tone, but all the same vibrant energy that adds to the stunningly edited sequences.

There’s a real sense of tension to all the fights in Neon Genesis, like you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Not in the sense of characters merely saying that something is impossible or that the odds are inconceivably stacked against them, but we feel it in every encounter. There’s a certain improvisational feeling to the fights in NGE. NERV’s strategies never go as planned, and sometimes even fail outright, needing to be adjusted on the fly, as if these characters are racing against the clock for the fate of humanity. And in this show, the clock is always ticking.

When a countdown appears saying an EVA has five minutes before it runs out of power, they only get five real world minutes. If a data analyst says that something will happen in 12 seconds, then you can bet your bottom dollar that precisely twelve seconds later, it will happen, not a single moment sooner or later.

However, the direction doesn’t stop shining at the fight scenes, as highlighted by the bleak atmosphere of the rest of the show. When it isn’t busy turning NERV HQ into the world’s most exciting voice chat, Neon Genesis is fantastic at getting you knee-deep into the near perpetual funk that is its characters’ downright pathetic social lives. When Gendo does his signature move of “being disappointed at his son” you feel the full bore of that abuse; when Shinji’s melted down into goop and was forced to come to a glimmer of self-actualization, you’re in there; and when Asuka and Rei are forced to share an elevator together, well… just see for yourself.

Everything goes poorly… for everyone.

CW: Suicide.

As the show nears its second half, less screen time is devoted to the monster of the week. Instead, more of it is placed on the interpersonal lives of all main leads catastrophically falling apart.

Rei is revealed to be a clone of Shinji’s mom. A reveal foreshadowed by the fact that she looks and sounds almost exactly the same as her. It probably explains why the boy is so awkward around her.

After seeing her performance as a pilot beginning to drop, Asuka’s synchronization begins to plummet. To keep it simple, synchronization is a stat in the Evangelion franchise that dictates how well you can pilot the mechs. Higher number good, lower number bad, and our German Tsundere’s number is getting real bad. With her aforementioned relation between skill and self-worth, Asuka begins a downward spiral, which in this version, she never recovers from. Her synch rate drops to zero, making her unable to pilot Unit 02, which ends up being such a massive blow to her psyche that she ends up catatonic and comatose for the rest of the show, but not of course before remembering what that bit of trauma I alluded to entailed.

Woof.

Misato begins a romantic relationship with Kaji, an ex boyfriend who’s now taken up the jobs of being Asuka’s surrogate father and double-no, sorry, triple agent spying for and against NERV and SEELE, the global shadow government that bankrolls the operation(just roll with it). It seems that despite their combined efforts to stop the Angels, both organizations have their own plans to covertly bring their own mutually exclusive apocalypses, both under the name of the mysterious “Human Instrumentality Project”. However, just as soon as she rekindles her love for the man, he disappears without a trace, implied to have been killed by one of the two groups.

Apparently, he was killed by the main character of the videogame “Secrets of Evangelion”, but literally who cares about that?

However, by episode 24, the biggest trainwreck in the show is, of course, our hero, Shinji Ikari. After everyone else finished collectively losing their marbles, SEELE had sent a fourth and final pilot to meet our hero. The Fourth Child, a kind-hearted, soft-spoken and mysterious gray-haired and red-eyed boy by the name of Nagisa Kaworu. Surprisingly, he and our protagonist get along remarkably well. So much so that historians have theorized that at some point, they could’ve been “good friends” or perhaps, even “roommates”.

Jokes aside, there’s a real interesting and sweet element to their dynamic. Kaworu is the first person to ever show Shinji the unconditional love he’s been hungering for all of his life. And the reactions he has to him are so flustered that one can’t help but see the queer undertones from a mile away, which for like, an anime from the 90s is pretty impressive.

I won’t touch too much on the subject, both because… have you looked at this? It’s already too long and if I start getting on about Shinji’s potential bisexuality, we might be here for 3000 more words. Moreover, I’m just a boring cishet heterosexual man. I can bet you actual Chilean pesos that there are people with way more interesting perspectives on the matter, people who can better express both their emotional truth and how that relates to this part of the show in way better detail than me. 

Back onto the plot, Kaworu is revealed to be the 1st Angel, sent to infiltrate NERV and cause the Third Impact. This forces Shinji to kill the only being to have ever even said the words “I love you” to him. It’s quite a potent scene, especially when you realize what it means in the broader context of Neon Genesis and End of Evangelion. Tonally, this is the lowest point in the show, even EoE’s cruelest moments, things are never this bleak. Reality has crashed down on every character. There is no hope, and worst of all, Gendo reveals that he’s about to unleash his secret plan, the “Human Instrumentality Program”, which is… something I’ll talk about in a moment.

By this point, the show had run for 24 episodes, seeing both commercial and critical success. However, as pretty much everyone knows by now, at the final hurdle… plans changed, to put it lightly.

The story of how episodes 25 and 26 of Neon Genesis came to be has been told so many different times and in so many ways that it has turned into its own modern myth. Some say that the producers at Gainax had run out of money at the eleventh hour, forcing the showrunners to improvise a new ending employing a heavy use of creative shortcuts to make up for lack of funds. Other tellings explain it as a last second script change due to supposed parallels between the intended finale and the real-life Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack that took place mid-airing. Another possibility lies in the dwindling mental health of the show’s director, the fingerprints of which can be seen clear as day on the show’s second half. I’ve even heard rumors of someone at Gainax stealing a sizable chunk of money meant to fund the animation of these two episodes.

Whether any or all of the above is true, the fact of the matter is that the last two episodes of NGE were not what anyone had intended or expected at the start of this show’s production or airing. A massive departure in terms of structure, tone, and even animation style from the rest of the show, making copious use of subtext, metaphor, and recontextualized clips from earlier broadcasts to craft a new ending. One which would forever etch itself as one of the most divisive decisions in the history of the medium.

In a way, the show’s original ending supersedes the rest of it, at least in terms of reputation. No discussion on Neon Genesis can be complete without the obligatory question of “but what about that ending, though?” At time of release, people, especially otakus, were shocked at what played out on their TVs. Following the release of “The Ending World” and “The Beast that Shouted ‘I’ at the Heart of the World”, Hideaki Anno received real death threats from fans of the show. That’s how bad it got.

Following what modern gaming platform, Steam, would call “mixed reviews”, combined with the countless unanswered questions left in the show’s text, Hideaki Anno released two movies to try to better explain himself. “Death and Rebirth”, a recap movie that I will not be talking about, and “Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion.”

End of Evangelion follows a different telling of the events following episode 24. It hits a lot of the same emotional and thematic beats as the 1996 broadcast, but does so adding a lot of what was “missing” in it in areas such as drama, spectacle, and most of all, money. However, that story is for another time. Right now, we need to talk about what actually happened in the last 40 minutes of the most influential anime of the 90s.

The End of Neon Genesis Evangelion(not to be confused with Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion)

The last two episodes of the broadcast anime cover a version of the much-anticipated execution of the “Human Instrumentality Project”. A melding of all consciousness, where everyone’s fears and insecurities, the spikes that push our little porcupines away, begin to melt away and give way to a single unified being. There’s a lot to unpack in that sentence, but for now, we’ll leave at that, as we get a more detailed explanation of the process in both End of Evangelion and the Rebuilds, and saving this for parts 2 and 3 will give us more to talk about then.

If you want to make sense of what “Human Instrumentality” is, think of it this way. While watching the show, did you, at any point, think “wow, these kids need to see a psychologist?” If your answer was yes, then good news, Hideaki Anno agrees with you. The last two episodes of the show are spent with the entire cast receiving a cosmic therapy session to prime them for the whole “melding 7 billion hedgehogs into one being” bit.

And that is where the text of this anime ends, what happens strictly within the logic of the show, the specific actions characters take, are now secondary to something else. The subtext, which is to say, the ideas those specific actions and events are written to explore, like for example, the Hedgehog’s Dilemma from earlier. From hereon, the themes of the show take over the steering wheel and it doesn’t let go until the movies.

This ending, combined with the show’s vague, but intuitable lore and the heavy use of Christian iconography is what gives the show its infamous reputation. This is where the idea of Evangelion as this impossibly deep puzzle that can only be pieced together by decoding every metaphor to decipher the “real meaning” of it comes from. Its a misguided idea, one that poisons the otherwise fascinating discussions one can have on it. In reality, the ending is pretty straight forward, once you get over the presentation of it. To the point where at many times, it gives up on all the set-dressing of giant monsters and A.T. Fields and it just tells you what it’s about. 

By the end of the world’s best therapy session, Shinji realizes that, while life is scary and his fear of being hurt is legitimate, both are shaped entirely by his perception of it. It is only because of him shutting himself off and assuming the worst that his life becomes that frightening. Shinji, and everyone else, is capable, and even deserving of happiness.

Another central theme that the show just straight up tells Shinji about is the matter of self-worth. You cannot derive validation from outside sources. Your parents, your friends, your job, and even your partners, you can’t rely on these to serve as validation for your life. Everyone has their own problems, and well, things happen, people come in and out of your life, relationships can be severed by circumstance, and even death can swoop in at the most inopportune time. The only one who can serve as that barometer is you. Whatever value you derive from this life has to come from within you, no one and nothing else aptly provide it.

All of this is communicated, directly or otherwise, through the final minute of NGE. After the collective cast of the show tell Shinji that it is up to him to correct his frightening perspective only, Shinji finally stands up from his seat and achieves self-actualization. He realizes everything I just said, but in words a 14 year-old can understand. From there, the rest of the world flows outward from within him, including his relationships with his family, friends, pilots, and peers. And it is then, and only then, that Shinji receives the validation he had so desperately sought. 

It’s a nice ending, coherent with the themes communicated by the show throughout its runtime, and the story had even left enough for you to piece together a loose chain of events for the story. It’s certainly the kindest ending Shinji gets until the final Rebuild film, and it serves as an interesting contrast to EoE’s telling of these same events.

With all of that being said, though. I have some criticisms of those final episodes. While thematically, I find the resolutions given out by the show’s ending to be thematically resonant and in line with the rest of the show, it does leave something to be desired in terms of drama and how out of left-field it comes. There’s a few teases, then Kaworu dies in episode 24 and BAM! Shinji’s sitting on the proverbial couch. It feels very disconnected from everything else we’ve seen. To use a comparison, I feel it has the same problems as the final acts of Persona 4 and 5. Where after defeating the serial killer or corrupt politician the entire plot was about, the game switches gears and it makes up a massively powerful Shadow at the eleventh hour, so that it can use it to just outright tell you the themes of the games. While I think Neon Genesis is a whole sight prettier than either of those endings, it does share the problem that on its own, it makes you wonder what the importance or connection was with what came before. What were the Angel fights about if it was going to end with the End of the World happening offscreen? I personally think the ending is fine and coherent with the rest of the show, but it by no means sticks the landing.

Conclusion:

At its core, the 1995 anime is about capturing the feeling of loneliness in our age; it’s about feeling less-than, and how we can rise above that; a show that explores how uncomfortable it can feel to open up to others, and how the change needed to do so begins within ourselves. Ideas that resonated with the post-Housing Crisis audiences of late 90s Japan, and ones that are still poignant to this day. It’s not a show where you need to pay attention to blink-and-you-miss-it types of symbollism. It’s not a show where you need a guide on hand to make sense of.it at any given point. And most importantly, its not a show about lore.

That’s what the Rebuilds are about.

FINAL RATING: Neon Genesis Evangelion(1995) - 4,25/5

Nicolás Izaguirre Gallardo.

[thesimperiuscurse]

Can we get 3 + 4 for Mako and Eva in the ask thingy? :D

03 — Animal 

Black Cat; This can be interpreted as the black jaguar, ruling the shadows yet destined walk the nights alone. Or the black house cat, elegant and imperious yet winding around the ankles of his favourites. 

04 — Mythical Creature 

Basilisk; The king of serpents. Feared even by other monsters. Tales whisper of Death summoned by a glance. 

03 — Animal

Ina A Little Grey Cat; Rough-and-tumble and perhaps not the brightest, this house cat is incredibly cute and much beloved. 

04 — Mythical Creature

Mermaid; Divine femininity, born of the sea foam, the mermaid is a creature often depicted as wild but beautiful. She sings songs that can guide sailors to their salvation or doom. 

[hasquetzorkukudoneanythingwrong]

FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS!!!!

Rex and Quetzalcoatl had a pair of twins that they cared for very much. A girl named Maria, and a boy named Eduardo.

The twins were born on the 25th of September, and that date had arrived so it was time to celebrate their birthday!

In the morning, Mari was peacefully asleep.

Mari: *SNOOOOOOORE!*

Quetz, softly: mijaaaaaaa....

Mari: mmm....!

Quetz: mijaaaaaaa.....!

Mari, sleepily: mama..... I wanna..... sneeeeep......!

Quetz: but mija, it's your birthday today....!

Mari: hmmm.....

Quetz: did you hear me, mija?

Mari: *grumble* ok..... *sigh* I'm getting up already.

Mari got up, still very tired.

Mari: Da hell's my glasses?

Quetz handed her her glasses.

Mari: gracias....

Quetz: you should probably hurry, everyone else is already getting ready.

Mari: who the hell is everyone else?

Quetz: just the rest of the family.

Mari: hmmmm.... okay...... was worried I'd have to deal with a party.....

Quetz: don't worry, we know you don't enjoy those. It'll be just the family.

Mari: good....

After some time getting ready, Maria went out into the living room.

Mari, while yawning: ok.... how long will it take to get there again?

Rex: uh... not too long, maybe an hour or so on the serpent.

Ed: still crazy how fast he can be.

Quetz: well of course my familiar would be fast! It'd be a bit disappointing otherwise.

After a bit of time getting ready, the family went outside to see Quetz's pterosaur outside ready to go!

Quetz: ok everyone! Get on!

The family got onto the large flying reptile.

Rex: ok then. Now just a simple invisibility spell so we're not spotted on our way there.

Ed: radar won't work either right?

Rex: right, I've got everything covered, Mijo.

After that, the beast took off!

After some time in the air, their destination was in sight: Mexico City!

Ed: wow!

Mari: such a massive city.

Quetz: ah, it's been too long since we've been here.

Finally the pterosaur landed and they got off to go out into the city!

Rex: man, this place brings back memories!

Ed: so, where to first anyways?

Quetz: it's up to you guys

Mari: breakfast!

Rex: ok yeah, should probably eat first

*stomachs were growling*

The family went to a nice restaurant for their breakfast.

Quetz: mija, those are a lot of pancakes...

Mari: si, and?

Rex: your mother is just a bit concerned for you is all.

Mari: hmmm, sounds unnecessary.

Rex: also Ed, is that enough bacon?

Ed: hmmm.... maybe.

After breakfast, there were still many things that could be done.

First thing, was visiting the old site of Teotihuacan.

Quetz: *sigh* it's been a very long time.....

Mari: looks kinda.... decrepit.

Rex: kinda par for the course with old ruins and shit.

Ed: ....is there a ball court?

Quetz: si, but I doubt we're allowed to play these days.

Ed: awww....

Next stop, was the Aquarium.

Mari: Shork

Ed: Shork

Rex: ya real fascinated by those sharks huh?

Quetz: don't ya wanna see the penguins?

Ed: Penguins?!?!

Rex: also piranhas.

Mari: PIRANHAS?!?!?!

Next was the Zoo

Rex: mi corazon, it's just a random Jaguar. There's no need to cause a scene.

Quetz: I CAN SEE MY STUPID BROTHER TAUNTING ME THROUGH IT'S EYES!!!!

Mari: Mamá, not every Jaguar is Tio Tez.

Ed: we're gonna get kicked out if you don't stop.....

Rex: really hope there aren't any spiders too.

Another fun site, was the museum.

Ed: so..... this is Piedra del Sol?

Quetz: si

Mari: but... so is your noble phantasm?

Quetz: si

Ed: ....how does that work?

Rex: don't ask too many questions about this kinda stuff. You'll get it eventually.

Finally, it was getting a bit late. So it was time to return home.

Mari: we getting the presents now?!?!?

Rex: si, si. You relax will ya?

Ed: you already know she can be a bit greedy.

Quetz: it's better that you try to relax that, Mija.

When they finally got home, a Large assortment of presents were waiting for them.

Mari: Hell yeah!

Ed: hmmmmmm......

Mari: let's see.... which one first....

Mari first grabbed one with.... very unique wrapping, eyes and other odd things decorated the paper.

When she unwrapped it, what was inside was a plush wolf

Mari: AAAWWW!!!

Ed, opening a similar box, got a plush Narwhal.

Ed: oooooh!

And the horn started to glow

Ed: huh

Rex: ....that's a sword

Quetz: it's definitely a sword

Mari: also, my plush smells poisonous.

Rex: well.... that's par for the course for your Tia Quinny.

Next were.... slot machines?

Ed: so we just... pull them?

Quetz: I guess so?

The twins pull the levers of the slot machines.

The machines spun their slots for a time, until finally stopping on 3 symbols that looked like present boxes. Then out of the machines, popped out tickets for both kids.

Mari: oh

Ed: huh

From Mari's popped out VIP tickets to a Music Festival.

Mari: POG

And from Ed's popped out, a soccer season pass.

Ed: oh word?!

And finally, matching tickets for the two, for "5 hours of use of the Mooncell" from BB

Mari: ......

Ed: .......

Quetz: well that sure is.... interesting.

After that, was another box. Wrapped in blue wrapping paper. The two unwrapped it, and inside were two gecko eggs. Along with incubators and everything necessary to raise lizards. With a lil tag saying "from Calamity" (Chalchiuhtlicue)

Mari: LIZARD

Ed: they're cute!

Next were two VERY big gifts wrapped in bone patterned wrapping.

Mari: gimme!

After Mari unwrapped the gift, what she found was a VERY large obsidian Hammer.

Mari: ah hell yeah!

SLAM

Ed: damn.... ok.

For Ed, was a large Obsidian Club.

Ed: oh fuck, ok.

Rex: there a reason Xolotl decided to give such gifts?

Quetz: good question.....

Then a very deep and loud *CROAK* was heard

Ed: FROGE

Then hopping out, was a very VERY large bullfrog. About a foot and a half in length!

Ed: OH HE'S A LARGE LAD!

Mari: damn.

Rex: mija, look behind that tree.

Mari: hmm?

When Mari looked, she saw a Huge car! Modeled after the Batmobile!

(Tho, with bat theming replaced with skulls)

Mari: HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!

After latching onto the car, Mari was very happy.

Mari: finally.......! I can drive!

Quetz: can we trust her with that?

Rex: we'll play it by ear.

And in a small package near the center of the pile. Was a first aid kit, with a note.

"Happy birthday you two, hope you enjoy the car and frog. And don't forget to stay safe with the first aid kit love, Florence, Julius and Eva."

Mari: awwww.....

Ed: so sweeet....

There were many other presents from friends and family alike, more toys, clothes, even laptops too.

Then it was finally time for Rex and Quetz's presents for the kids.

Boom

Mari: the hell?

Then, out of the trees of the nearby jungle, came a large animal. A dinosaur known as Giganotosaurus.

Mari: oh...!

The creature stomped up to the family, until it stopped in front of Mari.

Mari: holy crap.....

Rex: now you have your own divine familiar too, Mija!

Mari: oh shit!

Quetz: si, wasn't sure why you didn't get one the same time as Ed's Pliosaur, but now we got you one!

Mari: finally!

Quetz: and for Mijo, it may not be as big. But since you already got your Pliosaur. We got you this instead.

In Quetz's hands, was what looked to be an electric eel. Tho it glittered with green sparkles, not unlike that of jade.

Ed: whoa, he's an odd lil guy.

Rex: he's very special too. He's not just any electric eel. But a divine construct at that!

Quetz: si, his name is Onotlachin. The storm fish.

Ed: hot damn!

Ed held the lil guy in his hands, and felt the energy within the fish. It also seemed perfectly fine without water.

Ed: he's amazing, gracias!

Mari: si! Gracias for this!

Rex: no problem you two!

Quetz: si, anything for mis hijos!

A/N: and there's the birthday story. Sorry it came out a bit late. Things happened irl. Hopefully everyone likes it! And the festivities can still continue on throughout the weekend and even longer if anyone wants to celebrate with us.

Tags

@hasbbdoneanythingwrong @havetheavengersdoneanythingwrong @hasspartacusdoneanythingwrong @haskamadoneanythingwrong @exmeowstic @grievouslyxorvia @panyum @witch-of-chaldea @chaldeamage-neo @hasnightingaledoneanythingwrong @renmeo @writer-and-artist27

[xoruffitup]

Sexuality In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Adolescence & Violence

(I’m literally 20 years late to the party here, but if anyone still cares for NGE metas, this hasn’t left me alone...!)

It takes only a few episodes into NGE to sense there’s some form of unrest beneath its surface. A palpable sense of unease and malcontent shadows the characters, seeping into the bleak cityscapes and following Shinji’s listless drift from one battle to the next - creating the unrelenting sense that this show has no intention to coddle or comfort you. Much will not be explained, or even directly addressed. Most of that unease you’re feeling as a viewer will be left for you yourself to decipher – probably in a manner uncomfortably and bracingly personal. I would call this a mark of artistry, in that the viewing experience becomes something deeply intimate and unique from person to person.

The obvious narrative explanation for all this dark ambiguity is the evocation of Shinji’s troubled psychological state. He mopes in his dark bedroom, rides the train alone with his headphones in and no destination, and accepts the role of Eva pilot only when his refusal would make him feel yet more despised. He is utterly directionless and thus helpless – caught in a paralysis between his pathological need for external affirmation and his crippling fear of being hurt. He craves kindness and care from others, but is both unwilling and unable to forge such positive connections with others because he presupposes doing so will cause pain. Therefore, he makes few self-motivated choices and rebukes all notion of the driven, intentional protagonist. 

Shinji’s rejection of the traditional mantle of the hero’s journey, and his repeated regression into unassertive self-hatred also signals an unorthodox approach to storytelling - where the narrative flows around the inhibited, apathetic characters rather than through them. We as the viewers do not become invested in the narrative progression as an extension of Shinji’s own investment. Rather, a central part of the narrative becomes the self-aware exploration of its own impact upon Shinji and the wider cast of characters. Shinji, Rei, Asuka, and to a certain degree Misato and Ritsuko, do not determine the narrative direction through their own choices and thereby set events in motion; they are instead passive, reactionary presences drawn along by the provocations of seemingly inevitable series of events. (Angels attack – characters respond; Gendo or Seele give some unexplained order – characters react; Instrumentality begins – Shinji reacts)

As the curtain is finally drawn back from the human instrumentality project in the show’s final act, we realize Shinji was not simply whiny or poorly-written: His constant struggle between the fear of pain and need for intimacy is in fact the defining tension of the show as a whole. The “Hedgehog’s Dilemma.” This dilemma saturates each character’s personal trauma, fears, and desires, and finally elevates the characters’ internal reckoning in the face of instrumentality to create the show’s climax.

The show’s indirect yet masterful depiction of Shinji’s depression and undefined malaise is, in fact, keenly intentional and central to the story’s purpose. In a show defined by endlessly rich even if agonizing ambiguities and a narrative style that reveals itself only in subtlety, no minor detail is inconsequential. And so, I repeatedly found myself trying to discern the purpose of a recurring element that could be neither accidental nor innocuous. I am referring now to the show’s consistent and blatant preoccupation with the sexualization of its (female) characters and the infusion of sexuality into inter-character relationships. 

The sexualizing and/or objectifying gaze is applied far too often to be anything but an intentional layer generating narrative meaning. In a show that elegantly weaves together psychological, religious, ethical, and technological allusions to construct a cutting inspection of the human psyche, this preoccupation is not a mere trope or “fanservice.” The recurrent reference to characters’ sexuality and their depiction as sexual objects cannot be a neutral or peripheral element of narrative meaning. Beyond the impossibility of this element being unintentional or divorced from the show’s narrative purpose, we are also obliged to make ourselves aware of the gendered lens through which this depiction of sexuality is filtered, and the power balance or imbalance this depiction enforces upon the characters involved. Consistent nudity to the point of fetishism and sexual inferences to the point of defining character cease to be superficial and become something pernicious.

Below, I will explore two different frameworks through which to interpret the show’s sexual overtones. The first framework – adolescence and the fear of adulthood – aligns with my initial response to the anime, while the second framework – sexual violence –reflects my more troubled response to the End of Evangelion film. 

Framework 1: Shinji’s Adolescent Fears of Adulthood and Intimacy

Lest we forget, Shinji is only the tender age of 14. His internal struggle with self-worth and identity is exacerbated by its intersection with puberty and Shinji’s fraught understanding of his own budding sexuality. Shinji’s characterization of being highly dependent on the guidance and praise of his elders highlights both his adolescence and his own inability to confront his growth to adulthood. His unwillingness to navigate the perils of adulthood (as well as its corresponding sexual relationships) is probably evoked most clearly in his Episode 18 conversation with Kaji. After Kaji opines on men and women’s inability to understand each other – let alone themselves – Shinji merely replies dismissively, “I don’t understand adults at all.”

Given his 14-year-old perception of adulthood as something impenetrably mystical, it follows that his own budding sexuality acts as both a source of anxiety and a central aspect of his journey through adolescence. The often discussed parallels between Shinji’s relationship with Asuka and Misato’s relationship with Kaji further cements sex as something firmly belonging to adulthood; just as Asuka’s eagerness to present herself as sexually mature reflects her desire to appear independent and “grown.”

Coming to terms with one’s sexuality is of course a commonplace metaphor for the development from adolescence to adulthood. However, the characters’ understanding and comfort with their own sexualities also plays a key role in their internal reckonings and decisions which occur within instrumentality. 

During his moments of metaphysical introspection, Shinji’s confrontation with his deepest fears repeatedly presents itself in the form of sexual temptation. We see him translate this need for external validation into unconscious sexualization and desire for the women around him.  While fused with Unit 1 in Episode 20, Shinji is questioned by imagined specters of Misato, Rei, and Asuka. He reaches his breaking point when, after admitting he only pilots the Eva in hope of earning others’ praise, he cries out for someone to take care of him. After pleading, “someone be kind to me,” all three women appear to him naked, asking repeatedly, “Don’t you want to become one with me? In body and in soul?” In this imagined ordeal of self-examination, Shinji’s deepest, most fundamental need for approval and warmth from others is coded into the prospect of understanding and intimacy associated with sex. At a subconscious level, he perceives the offering of sexual union as the highest form of acceptance. Shinji therefore feels varying degrees of conflicted, guilt-ridden desire for the women around him, in the most primal form of his craving for acceptance. 

In this scene, the offering of sexual intercourse is also a direct foreshadowing to the prospect of union with all during instrumentality, and either the acceptance or rejection of that union. In End of Evangelion, Shinji’s crucial choice during instrumentality is again presented in the same terms: Asuka, Rei, and Misato’s voices all asking “Do you want to become one with me, body and soul?” Shinji’s mix of attraction and repellence (for he fears intimacy as intensely as he craves it) when confronting this question indirectly depicts his struggle to decide between a solitary but self-defined existence, and the sacrifice of his autonomous self to total union. Thus, Shinji’s repressed desire for sexual intimacy becomes in and of itself a key facet of both his decision to ultimately reject instrumentality, and his conclusive creation of an independent and capable identity.

In line with my earlier reference to Asuka’s desire to appear sexually mature, the anime consistently uses sexuality as a means of revealing character - often probing at characters’ deepest vulnerabilities. Misato is likely the most direct example. It is through her sexual relationship with Kaji that she confronts her conflicted feelings towards her father and their profound impact on her. During instrumentality, she also admits she enjoys sex as an escape mechanism from pain and a way to prove she’s alive. She seems to perceive sex in the opposite perspective from Shinji – who on some level finds it threatening. This could be attributed firstly to Misato’s maturity in age and correlating comfort with her own sexuality. Secondly, this speaks to the show’s use of sexuality to build character in ways beyond Shinji’s troubled adolescent shame. The show’s focus on its characters’ sexuality can therefore be viewed as a means of prying into the inner conflicts they each seek to hide from the world. Note it is also through the reveal of Ritsuko’s sexual involvement with Gendo that we understand the reasons for her troubled relationship with her mother, her dedication to NERV, and her knowledge of its secrets.

Though sexuality is used as a sometimes literal, sometimes symbolic, but often effective vehicle to portray abstract concepts and internal, non-physical conflicts, this does not fully explain or justify the show’s gratuitous use of the male gaze. Though the depiction of sexuality often serves the purpose of character development, this depiction is exceedingly gendered. Though Shinji is shown naked, his nudity serves comedic effect (when he runs out from the bathroom in Misato’s apartment in Episode 2) or appears highly stylized (embracing Rei’s equally naked form in End of Evangelion). By contrast, Rei and Asuka’s bodies practically serve as set pieces. The pilot suits and contrived “camera” angles incessantly present their bodies as aesthetic objects for consumption. 

Furthermore, early appearances by both female characters immediately define them as objects of sexual focus. The first time she appears, Asuka tells off Toji for looking up her skirt; Shinji ends up sprawled on top of Rei when she’s naked while first trying to get to know her in Episode 5. If we apply the interpretive framework of sexuality as a means of navigating adolescence, then it is exclusively Shinji’s journey towards adulthood with which the show shares its perspective and identification. It would therefore follow that Rei and Asuka serve merely as signposts or attractive obstacles along the path of Shinji’s development. Their bodies are exploited as tools through which to challenge and probe at Shinji’s psyche. While Shinji’s sexuality bestows him personhood and agency, Asuka and Rei’s often seem to do the opposite – instead reducing them to only the means towards Shinji’s end. Yet, even the justification that Rei and Asuka’s objectification may serve Shinji’s character development falls short, given that the girls are still depicted in a lewd and hyper-sexualized lens even when there’s nobody but us, the viewers, around to witness. 

Using sexuality as a key vehicle to convey the male protagonist’s psychology creates an inherently gendered narrative – one in which a male protagonist acts out his conflict upon female bodies. This uneven and highly exploitative depiction warps what might have been an adolescent journey of self-discovery and growth into something far less constructive and much more unsettling.

Framework 2: Pervasive References to Sexual Violence

As I argued previously, Shinji’s repressed and conflicted sexuality can be viewed as a mirror of his character-defining struggle between the desire for love and the fear of pain. In this case, Shinji’s exploration and acceptance of his own sexuality becomes in and of itself a central element of his character development and, by extension, the show’s narrative resolution as a whole, given that the outcome of instrumentality rests on Shinji’s shoulders alone. It then becomes crucial that Shinji actualize his latent desire for sexual intimacy and ultimately master his own sexuality – as the chief expression of his internal development towards accepting his relationships with others and the co-dependent process of creating his own identity, self-worth, and reality.

In the abstract, this idea seems relatively healthy. However, the “Don’t you want to become one with me?” scenes and essentially all of End of Evangelion left me with a distinctly uncomfortable impression that couldn’t have been more different from that of a guileless adolescent navigating puberty. Seeing the “Don’t you want to become one with me?” question repeated to Shinji in the End of Evangelion context made me circle around one key question: Why is this imagined physical offering by the women in Shinji’s life presented as temptation? Why does the timing of this sequence reappear while Shinji is experiencing instrumentality? Or rather, why is the experience of instrumentality itself presented with the air of sexual temptation or seduction? This all culminates into the depiction of sexual desire for the female body as something needing to be tamed or conquered – given that it is only through Shinji’s repudiation of these offerings that he ultimately also rejects instrumentality. This supposition implies an adversarial relationship between Shinji and the object(s) of his sexual desire. This implicit hostility paints sexuality now as a struggle for control and/or dominance, rather than a source of self-discovery and growth. 

I’ll note now that most of the observations and criticisms explored in this section speak almost exclusively to End of Evangelion. In my view, this implied hostility embedded into the exploration of sexuality is much more present in the film, whereas the show largely maintains sexuality as a means of fumbling adolescent growth and complex characterization. To frame what might be seen as an extreme interpretation, I’ll begin my closer reading of End of Evangelion with this Catharine MacKinnon quote:

“Once the veil is lifted, once relations between the sexes are seen as power relations, it becomes impossible to see as simply unintented, well-intentioned, or innocent the actions through which women are told every day what is expected and when they have crossed some line.”

The crucial dynamic supporting this darker interpretive framework – a dynamic much more palpable in End of Evangelion – is power relations. Referring back to my previous point wherein the persistent objectification of Asuka and Rei undermines their personhood to the same degree that it enhances Shinji’s – End of Evangelion takes this imbalance still further. Rei and Asuka’s sexualization not only serves Shinji’s development, but becomes the main stage upon which Shinji’s fight for self-determination plays out. This is to say that Shinji’s actions and key elements of the film’s narrative as a whole are acted out upon women’s bodies as both battleground and symbol. End of Evangelion resorts to a mode of storytelling that is explicitly gendered, portraying its conflict through a starkly male lens. Through the film’s imagery, brutality, and indulgence in the explicit, Shinji’s narrative is acted out through the depiction of women’s bodies as objects either with destructive power or being destroyed themselves; and as threats which much be conquered.

The Shinji we see in End of Evangelion experiences highs and lows far more extreme than his anime counterpart. EoE Shinji is shockingly depraved, powerless, and violent – in that order. His experiences in relation to the navigation of his sexuality take on a tone of violence and aggression. If he cannot act out his sexual impulses – if he cannot subdue the tormenting yet desired female body to the point that satisfies his desires (even if not always sexual in nature) – he resorts to violence to assert his will. During the kitchen scene within instrumentality, it is at the point when Asuka coldly rebuffs his pleading for her help that he first strangles her. Thinking back to the above quote re power relations – is this the “line” beyond accepted behavior where Asuka becomes deserving of male violence?

Violence takes many forms – all of them an embodiment of power relations. Yes, Shinji masturbating over Asuka’s stripped, unconscious form in the first scene is unequivocally an act of violence. No matter how “fucked up” and past sense Shinji may have been in that moment, he is still a man demeaning a woman and taking pleasure from the act – her inability to consent and even her comatose state all fueling male sexual gratification. Aside from the considerable shock value, this scene sets the tone of Shinji’s actions towards women throughout the film as relations of power and dominance. This scene further establishes repressed sexual desire and thwarted sexual frustration as the latent foundation of Shinji’s interactions with Asuka throughout the film; thus creating motivation and tension with the potential to drive him to further forms of violence. 

In EoE, Shinji shares some type of sexual experience with all three women to whom he’s closest. First, his repulsive descent into depravity at the film’s very start. In this moment when he’s at his lowest, it is his most base and yet powerful instinct that takes over. He exacts pleasure, comfort, and distraction from Asuka’s body despite its fleetingness and her lack of consent. Second, Misato realizes that physical intimacy is the only thing that will get through to Shinji in his shell-shocked state. With a heated kiss, she delivers on the show’s hints of sexual interest between the two. Demonstrating just how well she understands Shinji, she promises him “We’ll do the rest when you get back,” knowing the promise of this ultimate physical act of approval and care is likely the only thing he will fight for. To put this in blunt terms: Shinji is promised sexual access to a woman whose praise he values, and this prospect of sexual fulfillment is what motivates him to finally enter Unit 1. While he isn’t imposing dominance over Misato here the same way he did to Asuka, this keeps with the film’s overall gendered perspective wherein Shinji’s triumphs or rare moments of purpose are marked by his access to women’s bodies. 

Third, Shinji’s interactions with Rei/Rei-Lilith within instrumentality. It first must be noted that Rei is depicted naked for practically the whole movie. Sure, this might be necessary for the initiation of instrumentality, but it also serves to complete her objectification. I can by no means see it as mere coincidence that the advent of instrumentality and potential unleashing of the cataclysmic Third Impact is all represented by a giant, naked female form. What would be the greatest threat from the perspective of the male-gendered narrative? Precisely this – a female body that is overpowering, unconquerable, and unfathomable. By extension, I also don’t believe it’s coincidental that Shinji’s attainment of self-determination in his decision to reject instrumentality happens concurrently to his sexual union with Rei. She explains to him that no, he hasn’t died, “everything has just been joined into one.” This “joining” is depicted utterly literally, without any of the subtlety by which the anime presented sexuality as representative of total union within instrumentality. Thus, the resolution of Shinji’s character arc and the film’s climax as a whole occurs when Shinji finally attains fulfillment of the sexual desire he has harbored since the film’s beginning. The following shot of him and Rei naked with his head in her lap resolves the crisis of instrumentality with an unmistakable post-coital essence. 

After these three encounters, we have the much-debated final scene of Shinji reuniting with Asuka after emerging from instrumentality. By this point, Shinji has taken advantage of her comatose body and strangled her, but she still has not shown herself amenable to his sexual desires as Misato and Rei have. She remains beyond his ability to either control or dominate. And so, while Rei’s giant, naked, and broken (read: conquered) body rests in pieces behind them, Shinji asserts his newfound will to attack the woman who has resisted his desire and refused the gratification he sought – both physically and emotionally. 

This scene left me possibly even more disturbed than the film’s opening. To me, this ending implies that along with Shinji’s discovery of self-determination comes the male’s unfettered triumph following a struggle defined by sexual violence. In this final scene, we see the resistant woman subject to yet more violence at the hands of the protagonist – until at last, she no longer resists. In my view, this final scene was the occasion of Asuka’s capitulation. She is finally subdued to the point of acceptance and affectionate response even when being subjected to violence. She responds to Shinji’s aggression not with retaliation, but with a loving gesture. Her final words of “how disgusting” reminded me immediately of the hospital scene, and what Shinji had asked of her there: “Wake up, help me, call me an idiot like always.” Now, the man’s desire is at last satiated.

Beyond the narrative reliance on sexuality as a form of power relations, EoE also engages in gratuitous degradation of female bodies. They are either imbued with threatening, destructive power (Rei-Lilith), or experience destruction themselves (Asuka in Unit 2 and Rei-Lilith at the film’s end). Both Rei and Asuka’s bodies are subjected to extreme violence throughout the film, even while still being depicted as sexual objects. While suffering horrific, graphic injuries during her fight in Unit 2, Asuka is depicted writhing in agony in the entry plug with a disturbing sense of the erotic. After her body becomes the apocalyptic vehicle of instrumentality, Rei’s giant naked form is depicted crumbling to earth, stripped not only of her clothes but any sense of the human. Her split-open head rests beside the sea of LCL – a symbol of the male protagonist’s moral and psychological “victory.”

Framework 2: Counter-Arguments

Though I was disturbed by the rampant and dehumanizing sexualization in EoE, there were also plenty elements of the film I admired and remain deeply fascinated by. I don’t wish to seem overly disparaging, so I’ll briefly mention two counter-examples to this more critical framework.

1. Rei denying and rebuking Gendo and asserting her own will, while depicted as naked. It’s hard to overstate the enormity of Rei’s decision here. After existing as a seemingly unfeeling clone created for the purpose of realizing Gendo’s desires, Rei brings his plans to a crashing halt right at the pinnacle moment. The scene metaphorically traveled from 0-100 very quickly. It began with the insinuation of Gendo joining with Rei in a vaguely sexual sense, and his hand sinking into her breast in an unconventional bodily invasion while she showed discomfort. But then she asserts, “I am not your doll.” Her nakedness seems transformed from vulnerability to power. She is no longer the passive instrument of a man’s realization of his desires. Instead, she asserts her personhood and makes the individual decision how to employ the power within her. In so doing, she decides not only her own fate, but practically that of the whole world. 

2. Shinji and Kaworu’s dynamic could be seen as refuting a binary reading of gendered power relations. Taking Shinji for bisexual has the potential to revise my interpretation from ‘Shinji subconsciously desires sexual access and control over women’ to ‘Shinji subconsciously desires sex and control’ period, without the emphasis on women as the subjects of his struggle. If this gendered binary is removed, then his growth and self-actualization need not come at the expense of the female characters around him. Extending Shinji’s repressed sexuality to encompass desire for Kaworu also alleviates the connotations of dominance and confrontation embedded within heterosexual sexuality. 

Writing all this out was largely my personal means of resolving the million jumbled thoughts in my head after finally diving into this stunning masterpiece of a show. I’ll say again - what makes this show such a timeless work of brilliance is its highly personal resonance in the minds of its viewers. In the end, it isn’t a story about robots, aliens, or even sex at all – it’s a self-reflective act forcing you to wake up and confront your own role in creating the very reality in which you live. What kind of world have you made for yourself? Have you trapped yourself in confinement of your own making, or have you imagined every possible version of your world and liberated all the possibilities hidden in your creation of self? Evangelion can mean something different to every one, and no single interpretation is more correct than any others. So that said – a hearty thank you to anyone who actually read all the way here, and I’m always eager for discussion! :)

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

i love your commentary on the symbolism of the animal forms!! do you have any on tom in your fic series, regarding the way he uses the morphs that got handed to him like the king cobra or even morphing eva or stuff like that?

Honestly, I liked having Tom stick with the king cobra morph for my fics (even though he wasn’t the one to acquire it) because I like the contrast it provides.  None of the Animorphs’ battle morphs is anything quite like it.  The king cobra is a fragile speedster — able to dole out five or six hits in the time it takes for everyone else to get their first attack in order, but unable to take a hit in turn and incapable of sustained combat.  Although tiger is also quick to attack and quick to tire, and hawk is also better at dodging than absorbing hits, neither is as stealthy or as blindingly fast as king cobra.

Plus, there’s a whole other layer of contrast with the Animorphs being small (Marco, Cassie) or clumsy (Jake, Tobias) as humans and then big and bad in their battle morphs.  Tom is canonically quite large and strong in his regular human body, so it’s a lot more fun to play around with him having a relatively small and delicate battle morph whose major strengths (being dexterous and well-camouflaged) compensate for his human self’s weaknesses.

I also like that the king cobra’s specific brand of attack also gives Tom non-lethal stopping power — if he’s fighting a morpher.  King cobra venom is debilitating almost instantaneously, but can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 48 hours to kill.  (Apparently that setup optimizes snakes’ ability to hunt, according to evolutionary biologists.)  Ergo, I liked equipping Tom with the default strategy of poisoning the fuck out of opponents and forcing them to demorph — in the process buying himself time to get away or get reinforcements.  It’s not a strategy the Animorphs can really use, since they’re usually fighting non-morphers and want to avoid killing hosts, but if Tom’s facing off against Margaret or Rachel then he definitely doesn’t have that problem.

However, you asked about characterization.  Obviously I’m not going with the cultural analogy (snakes = eeeeeevil) because goodness knows K.A. Applegate never takes that route.  I also didn’t go with the emphasis in #20 on the cobra as calculating and cold, because honestly that’s not Tom.

What I do feel fits Tom is reptiles’ tendency to have two speeds: blindingly fast 1% of the time, glacially slow 99% of the time.  The saying “dead snakes still bite” refers to the fact that any given snake looks dead to any given mammal, until you get too close and an eyeblink later are poisoned to fuckall.  Tom probably doesn’t look dead most of the time, but he looks bored and/or distracted and/or harmless any time he’s not actively behaving like a non-zombie.  But that blank half-asleep look is an illusion, of course.  Because underneath that slow-moving exterior is a mind that’s quick to draw conclusions, quick to anger, and quick to strike back with deadly force if threatened.

[yumeka36]

Thoughts on Rebuild of Evangelion (all movies plus ending interpretation)

*Artwork credited to リオ on pixiv*

Now that Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the last movie of the Rebuild of Evangelion saga, has been released, I'm finally ready to discuss all the movies as a whole, including my interpretation of the ending...

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

I've been a fan of Evangelion for nearly 20 years, starting back in 2002. After hearing the series praised by some classmates, I asked for the DVD set of the original TV anime for Christmas that year. I was 15 years old and a fairly new anime fan at the time, so naturally I was blown away by the show. The Internet was young then, and since there were no fandom wikis or YouTube explanation videos available in those days, I had to rely on a few scattered fan sites and my own resources (mostly bonus features on the old DVDs) to try and figure out the lore and symbolism. Even though many aspects of the series, as well as the eventual "true ending" movie, End of Evangelion, left me scratching my head, I still loved it and it left a long-lasting impression on me. And now, here I am almost two decades later, sharing my thoughts about the new movies...

-Before Thrice Upon a Time was released, I hadn't touched Evangelion since 3.33 came out in 2012. I had forgotten many details, and since Evangelion is a franchise that is fraught with nuances and subtleties that can be key to understanding what the heck is going on, I wanted to watch all the Rebuild movies again before watching Thrice Upon a Time. So I plowed through all four movies this week, and I gotta say, after being away from the franchise for so many years, I'm happy to report that I still thoroughly enjoyed it. But I can also recognize that it is definitely not a series for everyone. The drawn-out technobabble, constant introduction of lore jargon with little to no explanation, and the ambiguity between what's real and what's symbolic, can certainly turn off casual viewers (it gives Kingdom Hearts lore a run for its money!) Funnily enough, as I was watching the Rebuild movies, I was thinking, "I understood the lore better 20 years ago than I do now, lol" (maybe it's because I was younger and didn't have as strong of a theorizing mind as I do now!) But after reading through a bunch of pages on the EvaGeeks Wiki, I learned enough to get a gist of the story's vaguer elements. But unfortunately, the fact that information necessary for understanding the plot can only be found by Internet research, could certainly be a turn-off for viewers. But at the same time, for those willing to make the commitment, or at least appreciate the series' other qualities even if you can't follow many aspects of the lore, it's definitely an anime unlike any other. There's a reason it's been such a well-known franchise in Japan for so long.

-Asuka has been one of my favorite anime characters ever since I saw the original Eva TV series, and thankfully, I'm happy with what they did with her character in the Rebuild movies. My only complaint is that I preferred her original backstory that emphasized her relationship with her mother, rather than having a "clone-complex" similar to Rei. However, her character development in this new storyline made up for it. The Rebuild movies really nailed her abrasive, no-nonsense personality that hides depth within. There were also more scenes that showed her "softer" side, something I always felt was lacking in the original series, such as when she confides in Misato towards the end of 2.22 and when she confesses her feelings to Shinji in Thrice Upon a Time. I also felt her initial dislike for Shinji and Rei was a bit more warranted this time; despising the fact that they were able to become Eva pilots purely by connection to Gendo while she had to work hard for it. But again, we get more hints at her kinder side when she makes the sacrifice to help Rei get Shinji and Gendo together. This is pretty contrasting to the original series, where she was always oozing hate for Rei. Even their infamous elevator scene ended differently in 2.22 compared to the TV series, where instead of hitting and yelling at Rei, she agrees to help her (in her subtle, Asuka-way). Asuka and Rei also had a brief scene together when they were at Village 3 in Thrice Upon a Time, and the way Asuka talked to her made me feel like she actually cared about her, or at least didn't hate her. But even with the Rebuild movies giving Asuka more scenes to show her goodness, they still stayed true to her tough-love personality - it's not like she suddenly started smiling a lot, or gave Shinji a passionate hug, or broke out in tears...they developed her character without making her do a 180 change, which I appreciated. Even in her final scene with Shinji on the beach before he saves her (loved that scene, and the shoutout to End of Eva there) she still reacted in her "tsundere" way (though not as harshly of course). I'd also like to mention that they made the fourteen year time-skip in 3.33 very believable in terms of Asuka's growth. I really liked the hardened, lone-wolf, protector role she had in Thrice Upon a Time because it makes sense - fourteen years had passed and she not only matured during that time, but she had spent all those years being the sole Eva pilot along with Mari fighting to protect humanity, so settling into that kind of identity makes sense for her. But yeah, Asuka's always been a great character, and the Rebuild movies made her even more awesome in my opinion.

-When I first watched 2.22 years ago when it came out, I was puzzled that they decided to put Asuka in the Eva that Unit-01 ends up destroying rather than Toji. But looking back on it it now, it worked better since they had a plan for Toji's character that had nothing to do with the Evas. I did kind of miss Asuka's friendship with Hikari though (they could have tied that into her staying with Toji and Hikari at Village 3 instead of with Kensuke). I actually wrote a WYDS fanfic for End of Evangelion way back in 2003 that emphasizes Asuka and Hikari's friendship (that's somehow still on Fanfiction.net!) But she got a friendship with Mari instead, so it's fine, lol (I also liked that they removed her crush on Kaji, which I never thought fit well in the original series). But I do wish we got to see what was going through her mind while she was stuck in the Eva and getting attacked by Unit-01. We know she was aware of what was going on because she knew what Shinji did (that he didn't try to save her or attack) so it would have been nice to see a scene or two of her reactions.

-Misato was always my second favorite character after Asuka, but I wasn't thrilled with the coldness she exhibited towards Shinji after the time-skip in 3.33. I know she probably got hardened after all those years and maybe still felt resentment towards him for initiating Near Third Impact (which killed Kaji among others). But even so, I felt like her coldness was more to keep the suspense rather than stay true to her character (plus she was the one encouraging him to do what we wanted at the time of Near Third Impact). It makes sense for Asuka to be cold to Shinji, since she was always standoffish like that, but Misato was always shown to be a source of warmth and the most "human" of the characters. But at least she made up with Shinji in the end and got to finish her story arc with a bang (literally).

-I'm not sure if it's still a thing now, but back in the day, Shinji got a lot of hate from anime fans for being too whiny and indecisive when confronted with his task of piloting the Eva. But even all those years ago, I always thought those reactions made him believable. Maybe it's because he's compared to anime shonen heroes like Naruto and Luffy, who are always cheerful and brimming with motivation, while Shinji is pretty much the opposite of those kinds of characters. But it makes sense for him to be like that...if I were a fourteen-year old kid who never knew my mother, had a father who abandoned me, and had to live on my own in a crumbling world while witnessing death and destruction all around, I'd be pretty hesitant and scared too. He's definitely not a "wish-fulfilling" protagonist like many shonen and super heroes are, but a protagonist grounded more in reality, representing a disillusioned youth. So it was nice to see him finally get over his insecurities and be proactive with saving everyone at the end of Thrice Upon a Time (compared to everyone giving him the pep talk at the end of the original series). Though I did think his personality shift was a bit abrupt...he was at his lowest point at the beginning of Thrice Upon a Time, but the one kind gesture from Rei seemed to immediately snap him out of it. A little more gradual build-up to his change would have been better, but it's a nitpick.

-Mari was an enigma in 2.22 and 3.33, so I was hoping Thrice Upon a Time would give us her origin story. Unfortunately, it didn't offer much and maybe brought up more questions than not. My main question is, we see that she knew Gendo and Yui when they were younger, yet if she was their age then, that doesn't match up to the age she appears to be when Shinji first meets her. So she must have been afflicted with the "Eva curse" all those years back, which means she must have become an Eva pilot around that time, but it seems too soon. I thought the first Evangelion pilots didn't exist until after Yui died, so Mari should have been older...I don't know, I'm still having trouble figuring out her place in the timeline. But besides that, I did like her relationship with Asuka that we see in Thrice Upon a Time. Again, it makes sense in terms of the time-skip that they'd develop a good friendship after spending all those years being Eva pilots together.

-I don't have a lot to say about Rei, since I feel her story arc is one of the simpler ones (which isn't saying much for this series, lol). The scenes of her in Village 3 in Thrice Upon a Time were endearing, though I knew they would end in tragedy. Actually, that whole part of the movie with the characters spending time in the village was great. The world-building in those scenes was fantastic too - it really felt like what a post-apocolyptic survival camp in that situation would be like. It was nice to see the characters partaking in and reacting to situations that don't have to do with Angels and Evas (spin-off series for this when?)

-And lastly, how did I interpret the end of the Rebuild saga? Was I satisfied with how it ended? Right after I watched Thrice Upon a Time, I wasn't totally sure. But after reading some more wiki pages and watching some explanation videos, especially this one here (it's a great explanation if you can forgive the bad pronunciation of the names), I've realized just how brilliant of a conclusion it is. There's been speculation that the story involves a time loop, with the events of the original TV series, as well as the Death & Rebirth and End of Evangelion movies, being different versions of the time loop, while the Rebuild movies is where the loop ends because Shinji finally overcomes the pain of his past and can restore the world this time (while he had failed to in the previous loops). I don't think it's a time loop so much as a cycle that keeps resetting and repeating. Further support for this theory is that Kaoru acts like he's met Shinji before, since he's reborn in each cycle to meet Shinji only to be killed by him later (all the coffins seen on the moon are for his past/future selves). I think the final movie title is symbolic of this too, with "Thrice Upon a Time" meaning "three times upon a time," the three times being the three cycles of the Evangelion story: the original TV series, the movies Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion, and finally the Rebirth movies. But mostly, the scene towards the end where Shinji meets Rei in the anti-verse, and they're standing in what appears to be a filming room while projected images from the Eva TV series are shown behind them. This to me symbolizes that the original Eva series exists in the Rebuild movies as one version of the cycle, and Shinji has now finally broken out of the loop. Once Shinji has saved everyone, the filming room (which symbolizes the old versions of the story, as I believe it's supposed to be the room where live-action footage used in previous Eva works was filmed) fades away and the literal animation around Shinji begins to break down into its purest forms, as key animation, then layouts, etc., - a near 4th wall-breaking depiction of the world resetting. However, Gendo and Yui had sacrificed themselves so that Shinji wouldn't have to, so Mari is able to pull him back into the world, just like she had promised. In the end, Shinji is able to join his friends in the new world that's free of Evas. Without the Eva curse, all the pilots are now their proper ages as well. The movie closes with Mari and Shinji heading off somewhere in their new lives while the environment merges into live-action footage, representing the fact that the story has now transcended animation and is now "real" because the cycle has finally ended and a true Neon Genesis took place. Like many aspects of the franchise, there are many ways to interpret this ending, but this is the interpretation I've settled on.

-While I am satisfied with the ending overall, I do wish the epilogue showed us more of what the other characters were doing, especially the survivors from Wille and Village 3. I know we can assume they're living out their lives as well, but it would have been nice to get confirmation of that with a few quick cameos. But there are some main characters whose fates are uncertain, particularly Misato, Kaji, and Fuyutsuki. I'm assuming the only people Shinji was able to save were the ones whose souls were still bound to Evas, namely Asuka, Rei, and Kaoru. I don't know about Kaji since I'm still not clear on exactly how he died. Maybe Shinji couldn't save Misato because she died "for real" and wasn't just trapped inside an Eva/Angel. But it is implied that many souls, not just Eva pilots, were saved when the world was restored...so maybe she was too? And like Kaji, I'm not sure what happened with Fuyutsuki. Did he turn into LCL because he gave up his humanity in some way, like Gendo? I'm also a little salty that we didn't get a decent shot of adult Asuka at the train station, lol. I'm not sure if the ending was hinting at Mari and Shinji being an item...possibly Rei and Kaoru too, maybe even Asuka and Kensuke. Like many things in the franchise, the eventual pairings, or lack thereof, could be interpreted in many ways.

In conclusion, while there were some aspects of the old Eva TV series and movies that I liked better, the Rebuild movies overall did an excellent job of retelling the story with the same rich lore and thought-provoking symbolism that we're used to for the franchise, but with enough new twists to make it stand out. And as I mentioned in my interpretation of the ending, these movies weren't just a retelling but a redefinition of the franchise as whole, bringing together the previous versions of the story and giving them true closure. Though we could see some spin-off material at some point, Thrice Upon a Time does seem like it was intended to be the final installment of the Evangelion series. While I was satisfied enough with the endings for the TV series and End of Eva movie, having watched the Rebuild movies, I do believe they're the "retelling we didn't know we needed." It's a tad bittersweet to know that such an influential franchise, and one of my favorite anime for years, has come to its true end. So, to translate the text in the below fan art...

"Thank you , Evangelion."

*Artwork credited to リオ on pixiv*

[dzamie-oc]

Smaugust 08 - Glass

Dzamie, HM, and William experiment with a glass dragon eating two of them. Y’know, for science. Or something.

Contains vore; do not read if you object to vore existing.

An unusual trio gathered around the table, looking at a small, hollow, glass figurine of a dragon. A green-scaled dragon, inspecting the tiny version of his species, a blond human idly swirling a gently fizzling solution in his hand, and a smiling anthro cheetah with a rapidly swishing tail betraying his excitement. "Okay, so run this by me again," William requested of the nonhumans. He knew what they needed the potion for, and, if not for the dragon, could probably guess the plan.

"And, what am I here for?" HM asked, reaching forward to poke at the transparent figure, "seeing as I'm certain you know I'll sooner melt this thing down than be eaten by it." The cheetah drummed his paws on the table, harmless trails of green magic flying off as he burned through some energy. "I'm so glad you asked; exposition is a forte of mine! Now then..." He set his paws down flat on the table and drew up an illusion of a blueprint for the other two to see. "This is a three-part - well, five, really, but who's counting - three-part plan of action. Now that I've got this ADORABLE dragon statue, I'm gonna-" Dzamie traced two furred fingers through the air, trailing a spell circle behind them that dissipated into sparkles, "- put together a quick spell to animate it. Then, you have that fantastic growth potion to make him get-" he threw his arms open for emphasis, "- nice and big, and then he'll eat us. Probably you, then me," he said, physically pointing at William, then himself, "so I can observe, record, all that fun stuff." HM watched his energetic explanation dispassionately. "That better not be all you have to say." Dzamie reached over to the dragon and pat his head, earning a quick snap of his jaws that his paw just barely escaped. "Me? Nothing more to say? Why, HM, I thought you knew me. Now," the cheetah giggled before holding up one finger to forestall an interruption, and addressed them both, "so, it turns out that making life, like, through magic, is REALLY hard. And also, even if I DID - which I could, it's just too much effort - I have, like, a TON of moral reservations about magically altering the being's entire mind to a specific state for the purpose of doing some observation and also fun. Now, you know what's actually super very much easier than creating actual life, AND gets the soon to be big glass dragon to do exactly what we want it to do?" The cheetah put a finger to each of his friends' mouths - and once again dodged a bite from HM - before continuing, "now hold on, I'm gonna tell you. "Right, so, it turns out it's a heck of a lot easier to just make something able to move, like a puppet but much, much, MUCH finer controls, if I then also have someone pilot it around. Like an Eva. Or full synchro Megaman. Or- actually, there's a ton of stuff that did it. Anyway, that's what you're here for, HM! According to my notes, you have-" Dzamie traced a few numbers in the air, mumbling "carry the six," then went on, "- nearly twenty-four years of experience being a dragon! So this should be super easy for you. All you have to do is continue being a dragon, just one that's not made of flesh and blood and bone and all that nasty stuff. Well, scales aren't nasty. They're pretty cool." He shook his head. "Anyway, so in a way, you're gonna be eating us! It'll just also be a big glass dragon. So, any more questions?" William asked, "so why are we doing this in the first place?" This got an even wider grin from the cheetah. "For SCIENCE! ...and cuz I have a thing for being eaten, and I suspect you have one too, mister 'dating an aroma dragon.'" He rubbed his paws together, then summoned a clipboard and pen with a snap. "But officially? I'm using these funds for a scientific studie of dragon-shaped elementals, which this will technically be." Neither HM nor William had anything further to ask, so they looked back at the dragon. HM watched as several green circles formed in the air in front of the glass figure, populated with shifting, arcane symbols. After Dzamie drew another circle in front of him, the dragon blew a lick of his flame into each circle. With a quick gesture, the circles settled over the dragons - one glass, one scaly. HM took a step back shortly before going limp, and the small glass dragon jerked to life. It shook its head, then looked down at its see-through paws, back along its body, and stretched out its legs and wings, before staring up at the human and cheetah. "This is just... unnatural," HM said, "you should absolutely not be that big compared to me. I don't know how Sylvia does it." "She's... used to it, I guess, like I'm used to being human," William hazarded, then offered the growth potion. "And hey, at least you won't be tiny for long." "Fair." The little glass figure strolled up to the potion and stuck his head in, lapping at the liquid. He withdrew once the effects began to kick in, growing his body a good inch or so in each direction, then changed strategies, wrapping his jaws around the mouth of the bottle and tipping his head back. Dzamie scribbled on his clipboard as he watched the trail of potion snake down the inside of the glass dragon's neck, then pooled in his paws, with a small puddle having landed in the curve of his belly. It didn't stay there for long, and the trio could each see or feel as the power of the potion - and the potion itself, it seemed - dissipated into the transparent body. After lapping out the last drop with a glass tongue, he climbed down off the table, still growing in size. William and Dzamie stepped back to give him some room, but HM reached a paw out and casually pinned the cheetah to the floor. He smirked down at the now much more bite-sized friends before him. "Yes, this is much better," he said. "Was this strictly necessary?" Dzamie asked from under his paw. The paw was perfectly smooth, and easily clear enough for the feline to see his body through it. "Obviously, or you would've teleported out from under it already. Now then..." he swung his head right in front of William and made a show of licking his muzzle. There was no drool to leave streaked across his snout, however. "I believe he said something about you going first?" "What, I can't even take notes? At least let me move my arms." The dragon and the human looked skeptically at the mage, who rolled his eyes at them. In a flash of light, he vanished and reappeared a few feet behind William, sticking his tongue out at HM. "You're no fun." "It is serious sciencing time. Now, in you go, Will..." HM opened his jaws and lowered them over the human's body. The curves in the glass slightly distorted him from view - and the way he saw the world outside the glass dragon - and William reached a hand out to the mouth, exploring its texture. Slowly, carefully, the dragon clamped down and lifted his head, bringing the man horizontal, and parted his jaws once more to scoop the rest of the human inside with a glass tongue. A quick lick, and a swallow, and then William was sliding down the neck, only a couple inches of glass separating him from the outside of HM. He put his arms out to brace himself, and managed to avoid slipping into the dragon's legs, coming to a stop in his belly. Out of habit, William began to rub at the dragon's "stomach." Dzamie walked around HM's temporary body, taking notes, then stood under his belly directly, staring up at William. He reached a furry paw out and ran it along the underside. It felt smooth, like the shallow glass bowl it looked like. When he pressed against it, there was no give at all. "Can you hear me?" he asked. "Yeah, I can. Little muffled, though." The cheetah nodded. "So, similar to normal glass. That's cool." He turned to walk back to HM's head to present himself for the dragon, when suddenly, the dragon's belly dropped towards him. As HM laid down on him, Dzamie noted that the previously static, unmoving glass shifted, bent, and curved to cover his body more evenly. And, as a quick struggle showed, the dragon being hollow did little to make his weight any more tolerable. "What, exactly, is your damage?" he grumbled. "I'm being fun, my dear, and you know it," HM replied, resting his chin on his front paws, "you know exactly how to get out of that, you could've easily avoided it, and you're still there. I know how you act around dragons!" His voice carried a smug, but not quite mocking, tone. Another flash of magic, and Dzamie popped back into existence in front of the dragon's snout. "Rude. But not wrong. Open up, please, and stay open. I do have some actual observations to make on this." HM opened his jaws wide. Dzamie summoned his phone, snapped a photo, transferred it to his notes with a quick spell, and dispelled the device as quickly as it had arrived. With the mawshot on record, he stepped one foot into the mouth, and nudged the glass tongue aside. Two yellow-and-brown-furred hands tried to touch each other through the glass, and the cheetah copied down the dragon's thickness onto his notes. With a snap, the clipboard, pen, and paper vanished. He stepped fully into the transparent maw, taking a seat on the smooth, cool tongue. "At your leisure, then." The dragon coiled his tongue around the feline, earning a quick laugh, before lifting his head up once more and letting him slide down the smooth slide. Dzamie pressed out against the firm, hard neck, noting that, while it was obviously much drier than most dragon throats, it was just as slippery - he could barely slow his descent at all. His trip to the dragon's body was swift, and rather fun, not unlike a plastic slide one might find at a funfair. His momentum carried him into William, though they didn't slide too far. "Oof. Whoops, didn't think I'd keep that much speed," Dzamie apologized. HM chuckled, curling his neck to look at them through his body. "For once, the cheetah admits to going TOO fast for his comfort." "For my comfort OR my necessity," the feline added, "someone call Ripley's. Oh, but really," he said, changing topics as his clipboard and pen reappeared in his paws, "opinions, both of you?" "The throat was a lot of fun," said William, "I mean- er, you can leave the personal bits out of the notes, right?" "Out of the report, absolutely," Dzamie nodded, "out of my notes? ...maybe. For my eyes only, though. And HM's." William thought for a few moments before nodding. "Right. Well, this doesn't really do anything for me in terms of... well, what I usually get when Vanille does it. This feels more like a theme park attraction, complete with this... observation deck sort of thing. Actually, HM, Dzamie, if there's a way for him to make this watertight, I bet it'd be really neat to visit the sea in this glass dragon." "That is," Dzamie remarked, pointing his pen at the human, "a really cool idea. We should do it sometime. At the very least HM and I. And it was neat to see that HM didn't manifest a throat and stomach to eat us, although I think the tongue is new. It makes me wonder what other sort of anatomy he could have that's inaccurate to the original statue." HM laid down again, then slid to his side, giving his two prey a place to rest that didn't have hollow legs to fall into. "For science, huh." Dzamie waved him off. "Don't be silly, it's for horny purposes. Though I would catalog it all scientifically and see if it'll get accepted, too. But that can wait." He yawned and stretched out inside HM's side. William gently shook the cheetah. "I'd still like to get out. Glass isn't the most comfortable thing to lay on." "Plus," HM chipped in, "I can end the spell, myself, and I don't think either of you are interested in guessing what happens if I do. The growth potion only works on living things, after all." Dzamie looked at William, then at HM, through the glass body, then snapped his fingers. He and William found themselves back at the table, and HM walked over before assuming a rather statuesque pose. A darker green magic flickered across the glass dragon's form, then over the dormant, green-scaled dragon body laying nearby. And just like that, HM was back in his body. The glass statue rapidly shrunk back to its original size, and Dzamie quickly put it back on the table. The three of them got up, talked for a bit about various things, and ultimately, William bade them goodbye to go check on a few of his own experiments. HM looked at Dzamie. Dzamie looked at HM. The dragon opened his jaws, revealing a soft, saliva-coated maw, pink flesh glistening and framed by white teeth inside a green muzzle. "Still wanna nap?" The cheetah smiled placed his head in his friend's maw, purring as the dragon lapped warmly at his fur. "Thought you'd never ask."                

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Serial Experiments Lain, Episodes 11-13

In which it all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, god is dead and Lain has killed him, and one last reset button brings it all home.

Drink the Tang

Serial Experiments Lain is not an easy show to “get” by any conventional standard. It’s abstract and obtuse right from the start, and it doesn’t waste any time coddling its audience or leading them toward the desired conclusion. If you want to figure this show out, you’re gonna have to put in most of the work yourself. And I know for a fact there’s plenty of stuff that passed over my head on this first watch. Moments I didn’t understand, symbols that slipped through my fingers, collisions of dream and reality so blurred that it was near impossible to tell where reality ended and dreams begun, if there even was a difference in the first place (don’t even get me started on that weird Freddy Kruger alien thing). Suffice to say, I’m probably gonna want to re-watch this show a year or so down the line to catch everything I missed. But as confusing as Lain can be, you can still figure it out to come extent. And it was in the midst of the most hilariously confusing recap episode I’ve ever seen, swirling the entire first ten episodes of the show together in a soft-rock stream of consciousness for eleven straight minutes with almost no coherent throughline, that it finally clicked with me:

Serial Experiments Lain is basically just the final two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion stretched out to a full cours.

Like, think about it. The nominal antagonist’s ultimate plan is to turn people into a collective consciousness, leaving their body’s behind and devolving into the supposed primordial state. The real world is lonely and shitty, he says, so why not leave it behind and connect with all of humanity so you won’t have to struggle with the existential terror of being known? It’s Human Instrumentality all over again, complete with intense Biblical symbolism, the concept that your existence is defined by other people’s memories and perceptions of you, and the protagonist ultimately rejecting it because it doesn’t offer them the human connection they truly seek. That makes a lot of sense, considering how Lain came out just around 2 years after Eva: this was right around where Eva’s influence on the developing anime ethos was at its most prominent and far-reaching. But it’s a testament to Lain’s originally that it’s still putting its own unique spin on that idea by tying it so explicitly to the developing internet culture of the time. In a way, the internet is the closest thing to Instrumentality that real life is capable of, a vast, nigh-infinite network of information that allows most of humanity to share in the same collective experience. We may not literally be software programs with bodies as Lain is, but the internet’s ubiquity has made the physical manifestation of humanity less important than it’s ever been. We don’t even have to be in the same continent any more to hold a conversation. Perhaps the concept of digitally uploading ourselves to become beings of pure psyche isn’t as far from reality as it might seem at first glance.

God is Dead

But the problem with that concept- the problem that this show rightfully recognizes- is that the real world is still, well, real. Eiri may have incredible power and influence, but if he’s truly the God of the Wired, then he’s only been god for the small handful of decades that the Wired’s actually existed. In the billions of years that reality has been around before then? Or even just the couple tens of thousands of years that humanity’s existed? If god exists, then he’s been around for far, far longer than Eiri has. And this self-proclaimed divine being has no power over that domain. He claims that Lain has no need of a body, that it’s just a piece of outdated hardware she needs to upgrade and leave behind. But without a body, he has no way of understanding the power of existing as a physical being. He has no counter when Arisu takes Lain’s hands and presses them against her heart, forcing her to feel the warmth of her skin and the pulse of the rhythmic beats. Lain is alive. She exists. Even if her body is cold and pale, she still feels happiness, sorrow, fear, love, sensations of touch and so much more. That’s a power no digital world could hope to match.

And Jesus Christ, that entire scene in Lain’s bedroom where Arisu pulls her back to reality is incredible. The pain in Arisu’s voice, the trembling fear in Lain’s, how small and pitiable this all-powerful girl looks on the outside, how a simple act of kindness and love is enough to stop her from melting humanity into digital tang. It’s that simple human warmth, the feeling of the world around you, that Eiri will never understand. And in absolute pro gamer move, Lain goads him into making the biggest mistake of his life: forming a physical body so he can cross into the physical world. Good. Fucking. GOD. Not since Akira have I seen flesh warp and distort in such visceral, horrifying ways. It’s such a fucking nightmarish arrival, plunging the show out of its usual metaphor-driven detachment and into full-on Cronenbergian body horror. But because Eiri’s only a god in the virtual world, he has no power in the real world. Lain, though? Lain is both the ghost in the machine and the girl in her bedroom. She has a foot in both worlds, neither fully human no fully programming. And once Eiri sets foot on her turf, there’s nothing stopping her from crushing him into the world’s most grotesque piece of modern art, literally ripping the computers that form her digital world apart and using them as weapons to destroy the symbol of the Wired’s lonely escapism. It’s triumphant and fist-pumping in a way I genuinely didn’t expect from this show. Who would’ve thought such an abstract, cerebral experience would be able to match the finest shonen stories for cathartic curb-stomps?

Rewrite

But as much as I wish it was, that’s not the end of the show. There’s still one more episode to go, and Lain’s journey cannot end so easily. Because in putting this monster down and reclaiming her connection to the real world, she ends up driving a stake through the one person who still made that connection worthwhile. Fucking hell, Arisu’s terror in the face of Lain’s true nature destroyed me. After everything Lain’s tried to do for her, after all the ways she’s tried to repair the damage she’s done, it all falls crushingly, agonizingly apart. Lain loves Arisu, on such a desperate level that she keeps making all the wrong choices for her. In trying to fix things between them, constantly rewriting reality to take the burden off her shoulders, she only makes things harder and harder for a friend who can’t so easily forget everything she’s been through. And finally seeing her failures reflected in Arisu’s screaming face, all Lain can do is hold her as tight as she can and apologize for messing everything up. It’s utterly fucking heartbreaking, the desolation of everything Lain was trying to hold onto. And all she can think to do is reset the world one last time, the scene progression mirroring the early episodes once more... but this time, she’s removed herself from the picture. No one remembers her, so she might as well have never existed. The world can keep on spinning, all the people who died alive once more, leaving a single lonely girl behind in an empty white city beyond the human veil. With no one to hate her, no one to fear her, and no one to love her.

But that is the price of being human, isn’t it? We hurt and hurt again, sometimes in ways we can never fully recover from, in ways we can never understand, and yet, we’re still here. We’re still here, body and soul, figuring things out one step at a time. And even if it takes ten years, Lain can’t keep herself from returning to the world at last. So what if she doesn’t need to be anywhere anymore? That doesn’t mean it’s wrong for her to exist. So what if she never fully understands how the Wired connects with the real world? Humanity’s come plenty far already knowing far less than she already does. So what if she’s wiped herself from the record of everyone’s memories? Networks are meant to be in constant motion, taking in new information and sending it along and never staying still. Forget godhood and omnipotence; Lain loves humanity too much to live apart from it. She is here. She is now. And with a little time and patience, maybe that can be enough.

Odds and Ends

-”I kissed an angel!” Lol, sure Jan.

-”And now the following message: Let’s all love Lain!” Well, that’s one way to cure loneliness. Just hack the entire world into worshiping you.

-Okay, somehow that discordant doorbell sound was the creepiest thing yet.

-Alright, there’s neglecting house cleaning, and then there’s... this.

-MOTHER FUCKER WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE

-DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE MASTER HAND

-”Um... I’m confused again.” You and me both, blue CRT Lain.

-Lol, and they’re just construction workers now. Nice.

And we’re done. God damn, what a show. Expect my series reflection later tonight, as well as what show will take its place!

[translationandbetrayals]

Demystifying Evangelion - Part 1: Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96)

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/doblaje/images/a/a6/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_-_Poster.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20220519030722&path-prefix=es

(This is the first of probably three posts talking about the Evangelion franchise. I don’t know when I’ll make the other two, but they’re on their way.)

Throughout the short history of anime, few franchises have sparked more debate and discourse than Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion. One could call it animation's equivalent to Bergman's "Persona", if not in depth of interpretation, then at least in volume of written work discussing it.

Between the heaps of praise, the mountains of outraged criticism, and more than two dozen death threats sent to the show's creator, it's hard to think of many other shows that have caused this much ink—digital or otherwise—to be spilled surrounding it. Rightfully so, as Evangelion stands out as one of the most impactful contributions to the medium. Between the stellar direction, the bleak tone of its story, the all-too relatable characters that live through it, the one-of-a-kind visual design that jumps at you in almost every frame, the soundtrack composed by the now-legendary Shirō Sagisu, an opening that's set the blueprint for a generation to follow it and its... "cryptic" endings, something's bound to catch your eye. It's the kind of media that sticks with you, for better or worse.

You might spend days fuming, coping, and seething about how much you hate the 11th hour turns or spend years mentally spinning your wheels about the journey of its "hero", Shinji Ikari and how that relates to you, otaku fandom, life or all of the above.

In case the overly-long introduction and the last 27 years of discourse didn't clue you in already, Evangelion has garnered a reputation for being "complex", "indescifrable'', and full of interlinking symbolism and metaphors that must be decoded to understand the "real meaning" of. Something only a real anime grenius could ever hope to understand.

I want to come out and say that this is bogus, to not use a word that would get this essay thrown out for improper language. It is the express goal of this post, along with the other two, is to tear down this myth, so that conversations about it will not stop and end about how trippy or complicated EVA purported to be.

For those who haven't caught up with the material, you can consider these to be equal parts a primer for any Evangelion-related lectures you might attend in the near future, mixed-in with my own critiques and thoughts of it.

For ease of reading, from hereon these essays will refer to the original 1995-96 TV anime as "Neon Genesis" or "NGE", the 1997 feature film as "End of Eva" or "EoE", and the 21st Century rebuilds by their number, so "1.0", "2.0", "3.0", and "3.0+1.0".

Neon Genesis Evangelion, or "that time Anno read Schopenhauer while depressed."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lnf2ZD_25A

  Neon Genesis Evangelion is a mecha anime produced by Studio Gainax and directed by Hideaki Anno. It ran from October of 1995 until March of the following year.

Even by then, Anno had gained quite the notoriety thanks to his work in both animation, storyboarding and direction for works such as "Gunbuster"(1988), "Super Dimension Fortress Macross"(another show of the same genre), and of course, his part in animating the iconic God Warrior fight scene in Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of The Valley of The Wind"(1984).

The show's story follows Shinji Ikari, a high schooler who lives in a world left shaken by the Second Impact, a cataclysmic event that culled the planet's population in half. It had been brought on by the Angels, a series of massive and disturbing monstrosities that render all mundane weapons obsolete in the face of their other other-worldly terror.

With that context, Shinji has been contacted by his estranged father Gendo, beckoning him to the city of Tokyo-III. The latter had abandoned the boy shortly after the early and mysterious passing of his mother, Yui. Soon after arriving, Shinji is picked up by Lieutenant Misato Katsuragi, but not before the appearance of one of the aforementioned Angels, who are trying to finish their half-finished extermination from all those years ago.

After being driven to safety in an underground base, it is explained that both Gendo and Misato work for NERV, a secret organization dedicated to fighting off these monsters and allegedly preventing the coming of a Third Impact. How, you may ask? Well, of course, by forcing mentally troubled teenagers to pilot a series of massive robots that bear a striking resemblance to the very angels they fight. 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/89/a7/a3/89a7a3ea3e241c1ee36121f6de0975de.jpg

  I say "forced to" for comedic effect, but the more accurate term would be "conned into". The first episode shows Shinji reluctant to enter the uncanny and iconic Unit 01, for obvious reasons. Putting aside the mountains of baggage between himself and his father, in a matter of minutes he goes from a random kid with daddy issues to the one and only hope for humanity's survival. It is only after Gendo parades the body of the bedridden pilot Rei Ayanami that Shinji decides to get in the robot, and if that sounds manipulative or scummy to you, then let me tell you that that's not even in the top 5 of the most messed-up ways people get Shinji to pilot a mecha.

It is here that we get our first hint into the fact that something is wrong with Shinji. He is the audience surrogate, that much is undeniable. However, he doesn't come with the typical "power fantasy" traits we've come to expect from the male leads in this role, especially for anime.

https://i0.wp.com/codigoespagueti.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/neon-genesis-evangelion-shinji-ikari-hideaki-anno-relacion.jpg

  Shinji is not a "cool" guy, much less a role model. He's not even heroic, a fact that will only become more pronounced with each entry in the series. He doesn't want to pilot his EVA Unit, as displayed by the many, many, many times he complains about it, and he isn't validated for his efforts the way other protagonists often are.

His father rarely, if ever, recognizes his work or worth; his peers are either distant or even ridicule him for his shortcomings; finally, even his classmates end up unhappy with his heroics. This is shown by our main character getting the stuffing beaten out of him by one of his classmates, Toji. The added irony of this moment coming from a line that immediately preceded it, Misato’s "people will thank you for what you did".

As the show works its way through the tried-and-tested "monster of the week" formula, it becomes increasingly apparent that Shinji is not as blameless as he'd like to let on. Sure, his circumstances aren't ideal, and he is being manipulated by... pretty much everyone, but he's not someone without agency.

At many points in the series, it is shown to the audience that Shinji could just leave. If he refuses to pilot his Unit, then that would be that. His father can radiate as much disappointment as he wants or Misato can give him the most motherly speech imaginable, but that's where their ability to influence him begins and ends. They can't force him to get in the robot. And if he ever does refuse, it's patently clear that NERV can and will find some other way to fight that episode's Angel. In fact, both characters remind and even suggest Shinji quit at multiple points. However, each time, he willingly chooses to pilot the EVA, and each time, he conveniently exculpates himself from the choices he makes. He's got a raw deal, but he's far from a reliable source to explain it.

However, he isn't just detached from his agency, but from the whole world. Shinji is the character who best embodies the idea of the "Hedgehog's Dilemma", a concept the show dissects in its fourth episode.

Originally coined by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the parable states that human intimacy is analogous to porcupines huddling for warmth in the rain. They want to get closer to each other for heat, but their sharp spines prevent them from getting too close to each other, thus needing to find a middle ground between both extremes where they neither receive the warmth they desire nor are safe from their fellow mammals' prickly exterior. Likewise, us humans seek companionship from others, but inevitably have to distance ourselves to some level due to our fear of being hurt by others' "many unpleasant and repulsive qualities and insufferable drawbacks", as Schopenhauer puts it.

This theory is what inspires one of the main mechanics of the setting, the "Absolute Terror Fields''. Our innate fear of others manifesting as psionic barriers that both the Angels and the EVAs use in battle.

Shinji is this idea taken to its logical extreme. His mother's death and subsequent abandonment by Gendo have made him so fearful of others and the outside world that he has isolated himself from all of it, to an extent where even he removes himself from even his own actions. He doesn't talk to others, he doesn't delve into any of NERV's machinations, and he doesn't really try to understand what anyone else is going through. The world and the people who fill it have taken too much for him to risk being hurt again, so he shuts himself off.

Paradoxically Shinji still needs that proverbial warmth. He is dependent on it, more so than anyone else in this show, which is saying something. When he finally finds his reason to pilot the EVA, it's because he wants his father's validation. He leans on any and all relationships he can find to derive self-worth. From his budding friendship with Toji, who becomes another reason for him to pilot the mech; his complicated relationship with Misato, who is tasked with acting as the mother he never had; and especially his fellow pilots, first Rei, Asuka, and finally, Kaworu.

Asuka herself ends up being the person Shinji ends up relying on the most. She is everything he's not, but at the same time, she mirrors his same dilemma.

https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/metroworldnews/MEA4275TABFCZE5U5MCLWPPTQA.jpg

She's confident, aggressive and hyper-competent, our protagonist's natural foil. While the main character struggles to take a step when Unit 01 is introduced to the audience, when Asuka gets in Unit 02, the difference is night-and-day. Her first appearance feels as if it belongs on another show, donning Gundam-sized capes, pulling out Rider Kicks and tossing entire warships around like they're nothing. No matter what version of Evangelion you're watching, her fights are a visual spectacle at all times, except for that one time where she goes magma-diving, but I digress.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b98ac5664da87d1a923eda40b8f373c7/tumblr_pz0ragwSaK1sxkjwwo1_540.gif

This pulls double-duty as both spectacle and characterization. Unlike Shinji, she has tied her worth as a human being entirely to her ability to pilot the EVAs. You see, she needs to Style on those Angels with a capital S, because as far as she's concerned, all she needs is to be the best. As long as she can prove to everyone that she's the best pilot that's ever stepped into an Entry Plug, then she doesn't need anyone or anything else. This rationalization, of course, being a result of her own set of parent-related trauma.

In regards to the Hedgehog Dilemma, she's almost as obvious a fit for the parable as Shinji. Asuka is what anime fans know as tsundere, perhaps even the most iconic and formative example of that archetype and trope. For academic purposes, let's go over this one last time.

A tsundere is a popular archetype in anime, generally(but not always) female, who acts aloof or even hostile towards others, but hides a sensitive interior, with the outward attitude often serving as a defense mechanism for the latter. Schopenhauer's theory made manifest in the form of abusive remarks, crossed arms, pouty faces, the occasional blush, and the trademark "b-baka" at the end of a character-establishing sentence.

Her mere arrival emasculates our protagonist, visually represented by Shinji having to use the more feminine 02 plug suit and then having to wear her clothes in the next episode. The former, combined with the usual brand of teenage hormones, leads him to be viscerally uncomfortable, however, in the latter episode, as the two begin to bond and synchronize with each other, Shinji comes to terms with how Asuka makes him feel. A pretty sweet bit of subtle and entirely visual storytelling, that crescendos in an electrically choreographed fight perfectly synchronized to the beat of "Both of you, Dance like you want to win."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u6V6UisBz8

Now's as good a time as any to wind back from the heavy-handed use of philosophical pessimism and talk about one of the more universally praised aspects of the show. The fights, and more precisely, the direction that goes into them.

The fights themselves in Neon Genesis tend to be rather simple. Usually, the Angel of the week has a specific gimmick that NERV needs to work around, but that's as complex as it gets. There's no secret techniques to keep track of, or even much of a power system to sink your teeth into, as is the case with many shonen anime. The mechas don't even receive that many accessories, and no one has a cool fused form where all the toys-sorry, all the robots come together into one neatly indestructible package.

Instead, the complexity and the tension comes in the intertwining systems and machinery needed for the fight. Even the act of deploying an EVA takes a laundry-list of checks and procedures, all with their own specialized staff that need to come together in order for humanity to have so much as an outside shot of surviving an Angel Attack. It grounds the action, while heightening the stakes of every week's encounter, but more than that, it highlights another theme that runs through the director's filmography.

In NGE, it's not brightly colored, individually-sold robots that join to defeat the problem of the day. In Evangelion, its the people, like you or I, who come together to combat these massive and seemingly incomprehensible problems that besiege our lives. While this may at first seem superfluous, it's a theme that persists in other works by Anno, like namely, Shin Godzilla, a movie that I promise I'll gush about later in a more succinct manner.

Speaking of whom, none of this would be possible without the immense skill that puts these scenes together. Despite the above paragraph, there is nothing more boring to watch than a bunch of people listing off pre-takeoff checks and staring at screens, but Neon Genesis somehow makes this a must-watch activity. Every piece of information that comes from NERV headquarters is framed, animated, and edited with an explosiveness that I've only seen matched by Studio Shaft's Monogatari Series. Adding to this, the all-time great soundtrack accompanying these scenes is used to perfection. Tracks like Shiro Sagisu's "ANGEL ATTACK" or "DECISIVE BATTLE" are forever burned into my brain, injecting the action with a militaristic tone, but all the same vibrant energy that adds to the stunningly edited sequences.

There's a real sense of tension to all the fights in Neon Genesis, like you don't know what's going to happen next. Not in the sense of characters merely saying that something is impossible or that the odds are inconceivably stacked against them, but we feel it in every encounter. There's a certain improvisational feeling to the fights in NGE. NERV's strategies never go as planned, and sometimes even fail outright, needing to be adjusted on the fly, as if these characters are racing against the clock for the fate of humanity. And in this show, the clock is always ticking.

When a countdown appears saying an EVA has five minutes before it runs out of power, they only get five real world minutes. If a data analyst says that something will happen in 12 seconds, then you can bet your bottom dollar that precisely twelve seconds later, it will happen, not a single moment sooner or later.

However, the direction doesn't stop shining at the fight scenes, as highlighted by the bleak atmosphere of the rest of the show. When it isn't busy turning NERV HQ into the world's most exciting voice chat, Neon Genesis is fantastic at getting you knee-deep into the near perpetual funk that is its characters' downright pathetic social lives. When Gendo does his signature move of "being disappointed at his son" you feel the full bore of that abuse; when Shinji's melted down into goop and was forced to come to a glimmer of self-actualization, you're in there; and when Asuka and Rei are forced to share an elevator together, well... just see for yourself.

Everything goes poorly... for everyone.

As the show nears its second half, less screen time is devoted to the monster of the week. Instead, more of it is placed on the interpersonal lives of all main leads catastrophically falling apart.

Rei is revealed to be a clone of Shinji's mom. A reveal foreshadowed by the fact that she looks and sounds almost exactly the same as her. It probably explains why the boy is so awkward around her.

After seeing her performance as a pilot beginning to drop, Asuka's synchronization begins to plummet. To keep it simple, synchronization is a stat in the Evangelion franchise that dictates how well you can pilot the mechs. Higher number good, lower number bad, and our German Tsundere's number is getting real bad. With her aforementioned relation between skill and self-worth, Asuka begins a downward spiral, which in this version, she never recovers from. Her synch rate drops to zero, making her unable to pilot Unit 02, which ends up being such a massive blow to her psyche that she ends up catatonic and comatose for the rest of the show, but not of course before remembering what that bit of trauma I alluded to entailed. CW: Suicide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b46F7afDQbE

Woof.

Misato begins a romantic relationship with Kaji, an ex boyfriend who's now taken up the jobs of being Asuka's surrogate father and double-no, sorry, triple agent spying for and against NERV and SEELE, the global shadow government that bankrolls the operation(just roll with it). It seems that despite their combined efforts to stop the Angels, both organizations have their own plans to covertly bring their own mutually exclusive apocalypses, both under the name of the mysterious "Human Instrumentality Project". However, just as soon as she rekindles her love for the man, he disappears without a trace, implied to have been killed by one of the two groups.

Apparently, he was killed by the main character of the videogame "Secrets of Evangelion", but literally who cares about that?

However, by episode 24, the biggest trainwreck in the show is, of course, our hero, Shinji Ikari. After everyone else finished collectively losing their marbles, SEELE had sent a fourth and final pilot to meet our hero. The Fourth Child, a kind-hearted, soft-spoken and mysterious gray-haired and red-eyed boy by the name of Nagisa Kaworu. Surprisingly, he and our protagonist get along remarkably well. So much so that historians have theorized that at some point, they could've been "good friends" or perhaps, even "roommates".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=zbYipwR3YqA

Jokes aside, there's a real interesting and sweet element to their dynamic. Kaworu is the first person to ever show Shinji the unconditional love he's been hungering for all of his life. And the reactions he has to him are so flustered that one can't help but see the queer undertones from a mile away, which for like, an anime from the 90s is pretty impressive. I won't touch too much on the subject, both because... have you looked at this? It’s already too long and if I start getting on about Shinji's potential bisexuality, we might be here for 3000 more words. Moreover, I'm just a boring cishet heterosexual man. I can bet you actual Chilean pesos that there are people with way more interesting perspectives on the matter, people who can better express both their emotional truth and how that relates to this part of the show in way better detail than me. 

Back onto the plot, Kaworu is revealed to be the 1st Angel, sent to infiltrate NERV and cause the Third Impact. This forces Shinji to kill the only being to have ever even said the words "I love you" to him. It's quite a potent scene, especially when you realize what it means in the broader context of Neon Genesis and End of Evangelion. Tonally, this is the lowest point in the show, even EoE’s cruelest moments, things are never this bleak. Reality has crashed down on every character. There is no hope, and worst of all, Gendo reveals that he’s about to unleash his secret plan, the “Human Instrumentality Program”, which is… something I’ll talk about in a moment.

By this point, the show had run for 24 episodes, seeing both commercial and critical success. However, as pretty much everyone knows by now, at the final hurdle... plans changed, to put it lightly.

The story of how episodes 25 and 26 of Neon Genesis came to be has been told so many different times and in so many ways that it has turned into its own modern myth. Some say that the producers at Gainax had run out of money at the eleventh hour, forcing the showrunners to improvise a new ending employing a heavy use of creative shortcuts to make up for lack of funds. Other tellings explain it as a last second script change due to supposed parallels between the intended finale and the real-life Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack that took place mid-airing. Another possibility lies in the dwindling mental health of the show's director, the fingerprints of which can be seen clear as day on the show's second half. I've even heard rumors of someone at Gainax stealing a sizable chunk of money meant to fund the animation of these two episodes.

Whether any or all of the above is true, the fact of the matter is that the last two episodes of NGE were not what anyone had intended or expected at the start of this show's production or airing. A massive departure in terms of structure, tone, and even animation style from the rest of the show, making copious use of subtext, metaphor, and recontextualized clips from earlier broadcasts to craft a new ending. One which would forever etch itself as one of the most divisive decisions in the history of the medium.

In a way, the show's original ending supersedes the rest of it, at least in terms of reputation. No discussion on Neon Genesis can be complete without the obligatory question of "but what about that ending, though?" At time of release, people, especially otakus, were shocked at what played out on their TVs. Following the release of "The Ending World" and "The Beast that Shouted 'I' at the Heart of the World'', Hideaki Anno received real death threats from fans of the show. That's how bad it got.

Following what modern gaming platform, Steam, would call "mixed reviews", combined with the countless unanswered questions left in the show's text, Hideaki Anno released two movies to try to better explain himself. "Death and Rebirth", a recap movie that I will not be talking about, and "Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion."

End of Evangelion follows a different telling of the events following episode 24. It hits a lot of the same emotional and thematic beats as the 1996 broadcast, but does so adding a lot of what was "missing" in it in areas such as drama, spectacle, and most of all, money. However, that story is for another time. Right now, we need to talk about what actually happened in the last 40 minutes of the most influential anime of the 90s.

The End of Neon Genesis Evangelion(not to be confused with Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion)

The last two episodes of the broadcast anime cover a version of the much-anticipated execution of the "Human Instrumentality Project". A melding of all consciousness, where everyone's fears and insecurities, the spikes that push our little porcupines away, begin to melt away and give way to a single unified being. There's a lot to unpack in that sentence, but for now, we'll leave at that, as we get a more detailed explanation of the process in both End of Evangelion and the Rebuilds, and saving this for parts 2 and 3 will give us more to talk about then.

If you want to make sense of what "Human Instrumentality'' is, think of it this way. While watching the show, did you, at any point, think "wow, these kids need to see a psychologist?" If your answer was yes, then good news, Hideaki Anno agrees with you. The last two episodes of the show are spent with the entire cast receiving a cosmic therapy session to prime them for the whole "melding 7 billion hedgehogs into one being" bit.

And that is where the text of this anime ends, what happens strictly within the logic of the show, the specific actions characters take, are now secondary to something else. The subtext, which is to say, the ideas those specific actions and events are written to explore, like for example, the Hedgehog's Dilemma from earlier. From hereon, the themes of the show take over the steering wheel and it doesn't let go until the movies.

This ending, combined with the show's vague, but intuitable lore and the heavy use of Christian iconography is what gives the show its infamous reputation. This is where the idea of Evangelion as this impossibly deep puzzle that can only be pieced together by decoding every metaphor to decipher the "real meaning" of it comes from. Its a misguided idea, one that poisons the otherwise fascinating discussions one can have on it. In reality, the ending is pretty straight forward, once you get over the presentation of it. To the point where at many times, it gives up on all the set-dressing of giant monsters and A.T. Fields and it just tells you what it's about. 

By the end of the world's best therapy session, Shinji realizes that, while life is scary and his fear of being hurt is legitimate, both are shaped entirely by his perception of it. It is only because of him shutting himself off and assuming the worst that his life becomes that frightening. Shinji, and everyone else, is capable, and even deserving of happiness.

Another central theme that the show just straight up tells Shinji about is the matter of self-worth. You cannot derive validation from outside sources. Your parents, your friends, your job, and even your partners, you can't rely on these to serve as validation for your life. Everyone has their own problems, and well, things happen, people come in and out of your life, relationships can be severed by circumstance, and even death can swoop in at the most inopportune time. The only one who can serve as that barometer is you. Whatever value you derive from this life has to come from within you, no one and nothing else aptly provide it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TISVubPMeM

All of this is communicated, directly or otherwise, through the final minute of NGE. After the collective cast of the show tell Shinji that it is up to him to correct his frightening perspective only, Shinji finally stands up from his seat and achieves self-actualization. He realizes everything I just said, but in words a 14 year-old can understand. From there, the rest of the world flows outward from within him, including his relationships with his family, friends, pilots, and peers. And it is then, and only then, that Shinji receives the validation he had so desperately sought. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs8U6I-Z7Zo

It's a nice ending, coherent with the themes communicated by the show throughout its runtime, and the story had even left enough for you to piece together a loose chain of events for the story. It's certainly the kindest ending Shinji gets until the final Rebuild film, and it serves as an interesting contrast to EoE’s telling of these same events.

With all of that being said, though. I have some criticisms of those final episodes. While thematically, I find the resolutions given out by the show's ending to be thematically resonant and in line with the rest of the show, it does leave something to be desired in terms of drama and how out of left-field it comes. There's a few teases, then Kaworu dies in episode 24 and BAM! Shinji's sitting on the proverbial couch. It feels very disconnected from everything else we've seen. To use a comparison, I feel it has the same problems as the final acts of Persona 4 and 5. Where after defeating the serial killer or corrupt politician the entire plot was about, the game switches gears and it makes up a massively powerful Shadow at the eleventh hour, so that it can use it to just outright tell you the themes of the games. While I think Neon Genesis is a whole sight prettier than either of those endings, it does share the problem that on its own, it makes you wonder what the importance or connection was with what came before. What were the Angel fights about if it was going to end with the End of the World happening offscreen? I personally think the ending is fine and coherent with the rest of the show, but it by no means sticks the landing.

Conclusion:

At its core, the 1995 anime is about capturing the feeling of loneliness in our age; it's about feeling less-than, and how we can rise above that; a show that explores how uncomfortable it can feel to open up to others, and how the change needed to do so begins within ourselves. Ideas that resonated with the post-Housing Crisis audiences of late 90s Japan, and ones that are still poignant to this day. It's not a show where you need to pay attention to blink-and-you-miss-it types of symbollism. It's not a show where you need a guide on hand to make sense of.it at any given point. And most importantly, its not a show about lore.

That's what the Rebuilds are about.

FINAL RATING: Neon Genesis Evangelion(1995) - 4,25/5

Nicolás Izaguirre Gallardo.

[very-grownup]

THE YEAR IS 2020 AND I WATCHED NEON GENESIS EVANGELION FOR THE FIRST TIME, PART 12

Episode 24.

It seems very unfair of us to watch Dorohedoro after Evangelion, because each episode of the former concludes by telling us things we've learned. I feel like all I've learned from Evangelion is "fuck the colour orange".

This is also the episode where I cursed that the episode length of Devilman Crybaby and Madoka didn't sync up with Evangelion so we never got the power trifecta of 'my first homoerotic teenage nihilist crush'.

The actual episode report under the cut.

So, so, so after last week's upsetting underground tang aquarium of Reis adventure the series remembers to check in on the super-traumatized Asuka (which is more than the adults within the series do). We get a greyscale small child Asuka running down an orange (bad) corridor. She's excitedly telling her mother about how she's been chosen to pilot a giant robot and protect humanity and it'll be with other kids and she won't be alone and won't need to depend on her father or anyone else and the excited child shots keep cutting to an ominous door. Eventually the door opens enough to show the red behind it and, knowing what we know from the Asuka episode a few weeks back, you can interpolate pretty easily and upsettingly what opening door onto solid red means.

There's a fight between Shinji and Asuka that we're catching the climax of, with thrown and shattered mugs, and Asuka calling Shinji a liar and Shinji apparently reiterating that fuckin' Kaji is gone (I can't tell if he's trying to tell her Kaji is dead or just that he’s bailed on them).

Misato's gotten notice from Seele, the obelisk council, that the Fifth Child is being sent to replace Asuka and Misato recognizes something hinky is going on and senses conspiracy which is ... pretty reasonable at this point. I'd also be seeing conspiracies everywhere. I wouldn't know what they meant or even whose conspiracies they were, but I'd definitely suspect multiple conspiracies going on if literally anything new happened.

Asuka, naked, maybe bloody? in a bathtub in a destroyed apartment with the ceiling crumbling down. Her eyes are vacant and her cheeks are hollow and she's mumbling about her sync rates falling. It's weird and haunting and the building is as destroyed and non-functional as Asuka. Someone from NERV finds her and it turns out Asuka's been missing for a fucking /week/ in this destroyed city and they've only just found her since I guess she ran away after her fight with Shinji and you know it's at least partially because they don't care about finding her. NERV barely cared about Asuka back when she could get in the robot, they absolutely don't care about her now and it's unclear who, if anyone, is responsible for her since fuckin' Kaji's death. Is there even law in Tokyo 3?

My point is, everything is falling apart in the structure of the show and the world within it and the first ball to truly get dropped and broken is the used up and now valueless teenage girl and it's heartbreaking.

Things are getting so real that Misato is /sending Penpen away/ for his own safety and I'm glad Misato cares about Penpen but I wish Misato could find it in her to care about, say, Asuka (Misato is a fuck up and trying her best, but at the end of the day she's still a fuck up). Is Misato the best adult in the series or is she actually the worst adult in the series because she recognizes how she is failing but fails to take action to correct her failures? As a viewer I can't be disappointed in Gendo because he's shit and I have no expectations of him. But I love Misato and so it hurts more when she lets me down and by this point she is letting me down HARD (but I suppose Misato disappoints herself).

Shinji is also in a bad place and he's contemplating the orange tang wreckage of the city and how the small thread of normalcy has gone now that everyone's evacuated. Shinji misses his friends who ... hoo boy.

The one Shinji last saw in the hospital after nearly killing him via giant robot and the other he last heard calling him to tell him how much he sucked for not wanting to pilot a giant robot. It's sad that those two are as close to friends as Shinji has had.

Shinji desperately wants to talk to someone right now about, you know, the /underground tang aquarium full of Reis/ which it seems to be implied is a result of forbidden science experiments combining Adam Trevor flesh with the remains of Shinji's mother? No one SAYS it but yes?

So Shinji can't talk to Rei about this because he feels weird about the whole thing. Asuka's missing. His friends, such as they were, are gone. The poor kid just needs someone to talk to, to confide in, and he asks Asuka, Misato, and his mother, in that order, for help. Are all women ultimately mother for him? Rei, Misato, and Asuka all got conflated when he was absorbed into the EVA which were all part of an ur-mother thing so ... maybe? I don't know. Probably nobody knows. Shinji certainly doesn't know.

Then Shinji's thoughts are interrupted by Akira Ishida humming "Ode to Joy" (gorgeous piece of music, loved it since I was a little girl) and Akira Ishida is here! Things are not going to get more sensical when Akira Ishida just appears in your anime.

So this is Kaworu, who is sitting on some picturesque rubble jutting out from the orange tang, and he's the replacement EVA pilot. His hobbies are having mysteriously deleted records, perching on things, knowing about Shinji, and talking deep and cryptic, but in a friendly way.

AT SOME POINT IN THIS EPISODE Gendo talks to Shinji's EVA and refers to it by his dead wife's name and is glad the spear of Longinus is on the moon, actually, because with it on the moon it can't stand in the way of their plans and Gendo has an eyeball in his palm.

The obelisk council have a meeting where they are once again berating and complaining about Gendo and it is unclear if they realize that Gendo's not there.

Misato is pretty sure Kaworu is a spy or agent of some sort sent by the obelisk council and she and the dude NERV subordinate who's always around are trying to do some side snooping to figure out what his deal is.

Hey where's Ritsuko? Sitting on a chair in a black void telling Gendo about how her cat died and she didn't think about it at all for years until her grandmother called to tell her it was dead and now she's having feelings about it and Gendo doesn't care about symbolism. Gendo wants to know why Ritsuko destroyed the dummy plugs and Ritsuko is like, I didn't destroy the dummy plugs, I destroyed Rei which ... I don't know, I don't know, are we all operating at cross-purposes here Ritsuko? Are you and Gendo even having the same conversation?

Gendo's like ... is this because I stopped having sex with you? And ... maybe that conversation went further but I think my brain strangled itself rather than contemplate Gendo viewing sex with anyone as a favour he's doing them and one Gendo finds inconvenient (and gross at that).

Rei's having a time and as is often the case with Rei it's unclear what she thinks about what she's thinking? Rei seems like she's a cypher to herself more than she is to anyone else. Rei's maybe trying to figure out what her purpose in life is or who she's alive for? She thinks about Gendo's glasses and something's different with this Rei, I guess, compared to the other Reis. I think something's breaking down, like maybe each new Rei is less and less connected to Gendo? I don't know.

At some point, Rei encounters Kaworu and he's like oh hey, you're like me, I thought so! Maybe they're at NERV or on their way to NERV? Look, the budget ball got dropped with Asuka, this shit is getting impressionistic. So maybe Kaworu doesn't have any background for Misato to dig up because, like Rei, he's a construct from some weird genetic fuckery (I think Misato even compares his lack of background to Rei at one point) anyway he's like it's episode 24 time to drop Lilith references!

Why are you doing this to me, Akira Ishida? If I had one of those murder evidence string boards it would be such a mess right now as I tried to find room for /Lilith/.

Misato's reached the point of fuck it, let's just throw all the kids into the robots for tests and Kaworu is /suspiciously good at robot numbers/.

After robots, Shinji is just sort of hanging around when Kaworu exits ... something NERV-y and Shinji is awkward and shy and doesn't want to go home and needs to take a shower and Kaworu is ... intense and suggestive and friendly. So they shower together and then bathe together and there's, like, an entire wall in the baths that's dedicated to a screensaver slideshow of NERV propaganda and Kaworu just wants to talk to Shinji and get to know him and hold hands in the bath and it's obviously weird.

Shinji is so desperate for friendship and someone to talk to and you don't want to see conspiracy or shady shit here because at this point I just want something /good/ to happen to Shinji for once in this constant tragedy train of a show. Just let him have this weird friend who wants to talk to Shinji about his intimacy issues and how his fear of being alone makes him keep to himself and causes the aloneness because chosen aloneness is better than risking connection and getting rejection. So probably the biggest red flag about Kaworu is that he's talking to Shinji about the things Shinji is concerned about without any overt robot-centric motives.

Then Kaworu invites himself over for a sleepover. Shinji takes the floor because of course he does and they talk more philosophy and fate and destiny and depression and Kaworu is intense and tells Shinji he likes him and no one has given Shinji even this crumb before.

The obelisk council has a meeting that isn't in the void but is over the tang craters of the ruined city and they're meeting with Kaworu because of course Kaworu is their construct of some sort being sent to ... something ... Gendo ... moons ... Lilith ... Adam ...

Misato is watching all of this from the highway through highspec binoculars and cursing that she can't read Kaworu's lips. She's looking at the back of his head, mind you. But I heard what Kaworu said and I don't fucking know, Misato, so don't feel bad.

Misato meets Ritsuko in the black void at some point and if I knew why in the moment I have since forgotten. I don't take notes. I just watch. Misato's angry, though and Ritsuko is just ... overcome with a sense of her own failure or maybe grief or anger at her inability to not repeat her mother's mistakes? There's definitely mom-stuff involved.

I'm aware that these reports are becoming longer and less coherent and also probably less interesting for people to read but once I decide to do a thing I do it. There's definitely a loss of narrative cohesion as the series nears its end, probably due to budget stuff.

It's an episode for people to talk to the EVAs in their giant hangers and Kaworu goes to have a chat with Asuka's robot where chat means 'starts floating and establishes some kind of mental link with the EVA and turns it on'.

In the NERV control centre everyone starts freaking out at the sudden activation of the EVA. IS IT ASUKA? they ask (no, she's shown to be barely conscious in a hospital bed, so someone's caring for her to some degree). NO PLUG, NO PILOT, JUST KAWORU'S PSYCHIC MANIPULATION.

Oh, and Kaworu's an Angel which means an Angel is now using an EVA to punch through ... NERV ... ground ... basement ... heading to where Adam Trevor is, the orange tang ocean, and that's really bad. If he/they succeed ... Third Impact?

Shinji's called in (and Misato hasn't talked to Shinji once about Kaworu even though the last time there was a new surprise EVA pilot it went ... poorly and, well, here we are now) and he's angry and sad and disbelieving (echoing Asuka's disbelief at the beginning). Shinji feels so /betrayed/ and he compares what Kaworu has done to his relationship with his father which is ... a lot to unpack. I suppose the friendship Kaworu offered is the most obvious affection Shinji has been offered by anyone. He wants affection and recognition from Gendo. But any affection, any seeing and noticing of him, must be like water in the desert to Shinji at this point, and if Gendo's greatest betrayal of Shinji's hopes was overriding his will to make Shinji nearly kill Tohji I guess Kaworu, the only character who's shown any interest in being Shinji's friend, being revealed to be an Angel, something Shinji /has/ to kill, is comparable. I'm sorry, Shinji.

Shinji fights Asuka's EVA, controlled by Kaworu, as they descend deeper and deeper into the bowels under NERV, the two EVAs locked into a very cool looking combat that Shinji doesn't want to be involved in, and Misato and her underling confirm plan SELF-DESTRUCT NERV.

"Ode to Joy" is playing throughout this. It feels very natural.

Kaworu gets to where Adam Trevor is, weird and white and bulgy, looking very pregnant and Adam Trevor is also Lilith and they are the parent of humanity while the Angels are maybe less tainted children of god and are siblings to the EVAs?

Shinji throws Asuka's destroyed EVA through the ... wall? into the orange tang ocean zone with Kaworu and Adam Trevor Lilith and since Shinji's the victor of that fight, he seizes Kaworu, who he still does not want to fight, let alone kill. Kaworu's calm about all of this, though. He's ready to die. He expects to die. He also is ready to live but he recognizes this is a situation where for one of them to survive, the other one can't, and he smiles and tells Shinji he wants Shinji to live.

There's once again a really excellent use of the budget and animation limitations the show was hitting at this point, as there's a long, still shot of Shinji's EVA holding Kaworu as "Ode to Joy" soars, the music the only sound for the static shot.

Then the screen flashes and a small shadowy shape sinks into the orange.

Gendo and Rei wear raincoats as blood is hosed off Shinji's EVA.

Shinji sits by Misato, devastated, and tries to express his feelings to her, express his grief and regret. Kaworu was a good person. Kaworu was his friend. Kaworu told Shinji he liked him and Shinji confirms that /no one has ever told him that before/. Shinji feels like he should have died instead of Kaworu. He felt awful about Tohji's near-death at his unwilling hands. Tohji wasn't even really his friend. His grief and culpability in his own loss here is ... huge. And all Misato can say is that Shinji did the right thing in killing his friend. She's the only adult who's been sometimes sympathetic to Shinji, who he's been forging a real connection with, but by this point she's had to deal with so much shit of her own that the fragile pseudo-parent-child relationship between them has shattered. Misato is just another adult who isn't hearing Shinji. He doesn't know why it's changed, he just knows she's telling him killing his friend was right. This concludes my report on Episode 24 of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Edit: I know there was a lot of discussion and criticism when Netflix released their new dub and sub, particularly with respect to the line "worthy of his grace" and we can all agree, I think, that Netflix's subtitles are sloppy, their localization flawed. But regardless of the words used, it's clear that Kaworu offers Shinji everything he isn't getting from the rest of the world: affection, understanding, intimacy, a sense of being valued, a sense of safety. Love in whatever form, every form Shinji needs and wants.

I guess I wonder how genuine this offer of love is although I suppose it doesn't matter to Shinji because the betrayal happens, the universe punishes him for risking emotional intimacy, and Kaworu's sincerity doesn't change how awful Shinji is left feeling.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

BnHA 84 - 86 | Uchitama 9 - 12 (FINAL) | Eizouken 10 - 12 (FINAL) | Magia Record 8 - 13 (FINAL) | ID: INVADED 12 - 13 (FINAL) | ACCA OVA

BnHA 84

Ey? So Gentle is basically Luffy, only he can do stuff with air too.

“Tokoyami, it’s in lesson 3.”

Eizouken 10

LOL, you can see a name similar to “Rachel Enyoung Choi” in one of the credit lists. Update: Euyoung Choi is credited on one of the other folders.

“Kanamoney” is catching on, I see.

“Well, dough.” - Sarasoju, where soju is some alcoholic Korean beverage.

The back of the clock reminds me of that Skipper and Skeeto game I used to play.

Did Kanamori get a fringe cut…?

You can see the symbol for Eizouken on the (imaginary…?) warehouse.

Uchitama 9

The video got encoded funny again…

I‘ve heard of AIBOs before. They’re robotic dogs, although with newfangled drones, Google Nests and stuff, they went out of fashion years ago.

Aibou (with kanji) means “partner”, come to think of it...

While everyone else is talking in the foreground, I’m staring at Beh in the background…

Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen Kuro and Nora interact all that much.

Natsuki Hanae as Leo, huh?

Uchitama 10

Second-last episode!

Neko (cat) -> Koma -> ari (ant)…isu (chair) -> suika (watermelon) -> tamago (egg, or sometimes it sounds like tabako/tabacco to me) -> ??? -> koi (carp) -> ???? “Kooten” seems to be a nonsense word.

The video got encoded funny again…

…and that’s twice now…

LOL, this is based on Millionaire.

…thrice…

The original quote is (something like), “It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man.” (Yukichi Fukuzawa)

The answer was C, obviously.

…4 times.

Bull does his best Thinker impression.

Oh my gosh, they’re bringing that joke back…? (LOL) Update: The portal joke.

“chunk of meat” – Uh…what?

Holy s***! It’s Bull’s dad! Bull time travelled!

Magia Record 8

I like how the anime introduced Gomakashi, then had the proper OP.

Chuo Ward (Chuoku)? In Hypnosis Mic, that’s a sign Ayappe is definitely a girl…but this ain’t HypMic, so no worries!

The greeting is “Kamihama” because it sounds kind of like konbanwa and the host is Mr Hammer because that sounds like the back half of Kamihama, I guess.

Magia Record seems more overt about its lesbian undertones, I see.

I noticed a piano on a poster in the back. Wonder what that means…?

Just reading translations of radio transcripts like this makes me think of the HypMic radio show. I’ve been using that (and all of HypMic, to be honest) to cope in these tough (COVID-19) times, which is why I’m mentioning it a lot.

Mami!

Eizouken 11

So this is how they met, huh? I never knew Kanamori could have such little faith in people, considering how she is now.

ID:INVADED 12

What I don’t get is Hayaseura’s motive…

Uraido…”from behind”? I need kanji to figure this one out…

Whose well is this Bliss background, ayway…?

Momoki and Matsuoka pass a sign saying 大井南 (Minamioi), which is in Shinagawa.

Why does Momoki need drugs…? To subdue Asukai…?

Oh no. Inami is going to have a vendetta after her man was killed!

According to Ramuda, the optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole…I think’s that’s important for that moment.

…Welp, when a hole in the brain doesn’t kill you, a shot to the stomach does.

In this time of COVID-19, I think talking about people coming back to life is inappropriate…

Post-credits segment!

Uchitama 11 (FINAL)

According to Ramuda, the optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole…

“Tullip” (sic).

Oh, so instead of “Tama” it said “tanu___”, so the kids assumed it said “tanuki”.

Ooh, cat meeting. This should match the dog meeting from earlir in the season. Plus Nora’s face on the title card.

The video got encoded funny again…

“I’m busy right now.” – Nora, sleeping – Yup, that’s my mood. In fact, I was woken up by a call this morning…

I still think the Momo x Bull ship is stupid…

Nora can talk to crows…?

BnHA 85

…huh? What’s up with Bibimi?

Oh, in La Brava’s room there’s a graduation album. No one translated that.

Seriously, Deku’s gotten kinda creepy these days…

Tobita = essentially “to fly” + “field”. Makes sense when the Quirk is elasticity.

“It’s dangerous to go alone!” – I want to reply with “Take this!”…LOL.

This bouncing around thing was basically done by Sonic in OPM.

Update:  Turns out the kanji for elasticity is read dansei, which is th same rading for the characters for a man (but with characters meaning “male gender” instead and the last kanji being shared betwe the two). That’s why Danjuro is Gentle Criminal.    

BnHA 85

I noticed some of the decorations around the school look like heroes we’ve seen – there’s a Midnight one and a Thirteen balloon.

Why is the crowd chanting for YaoMomo…?

It’s in English, huh?

End of credits segment! Keep watching!

“Guys like you who say there are no do-overs in life…”

Hawks! This is the first time I see him outside spoilers!

ID:INVADED 13 (FINAL)

Was gonna finish this the day I got it, but I got access (limited to 1 week)…to Akira, which is a movie I’ve never seen before.

The sharks are a nice touch…(LOL…?)

Welp, John Walker has his hat back now.

Uraido…Hayaseura. Of course, how the heck did I not make the connection?!

The video got encoded funny again…

…wow, after learning a thing or two about CPR, this part actually makes sense to me now…Amazing. (Also, I learnt about comminuted fractures from Double Decker.)

COVID-19 is entering these notes too…because if you cut yourself off from society, you won’t know about pandemics…

Why do I get the feeling Kiki’s gonna kill herself…?

She…almost did it. (Wow, I should try predict things more often.)

That pool…is basically the one from Minority Report!

Wow, that just did an Eva…

Why did they choose such a lively ending song…? Anyways, that wrapped up really well (no pun intended!). See you next time!  

Magia Record 9

The tower appars to be modelled more after Tsutenkaku rather than Tokyo Tower.

For some reason, the subbers like to capitalise “Magical Girl”.

One of the speech bubbles in the back says koneko no gorogoro, or “the cat’s laziness”.

“Stand alone!” This is probably some kind of wordplay on the Solitude (Hitoribocchi no Saihate), since “alone” is hitori de.

Interestingly, the word for “delete” here is keshite (literal meaning: “to erase”).

The sign that passes Sana by while she’s on the boat says “Futaba” on it.

The blue letterboxing is an interesting effect.

“Sorpredente” = surprising.

Eizouken 12 (FINAL)

“They have their own business to run.”

I’ll miss this OP song when it’s gone…*sigh*

LOL, the contrast between Asakusa’s imagination and reality is huge and that’s what makes Eizouken so fun.

“I’m here to deliver the promised data,” Kanamori says (which I think is a more literal translation, ut works better).

It’s unfortunate Comiket 98 was cancelled…

Hey, why didn’t Anime vs. Real Life cover Eizouken?! That would’ve been so good!

I noticed one of the viewers had a “No Disc” pop-up of some sort. Also, the moving logo exists now, too (LOL).

I like how 1 of the UFOs hits the windshield.

The arrows really bring your attention to what’s the same in the split screens.

Magia Record 10

The Mifuyu in the previous episodes was either a flashback or a fantasy, right?

Mami is wearing a Wings of Magius badge…!

On the titlecard, there’s what seems to be a radio tower with a small lightning bolt above it.

BnHA 86

Hey, Tsu has a sister..?

Ah,so this is Mirko! I’ve heard of her too!

Is it just me, or does Endeavour hav CGI on him…?

Hawks reminds me of Fubuki from OPM…

Wow, even Endeavour’s trying to be funny…the world really is different now. (This humour has a terrible success rate with me, though.)

There seem to be holes in Hawks’ jackt for his wings.

So basically, Hawks is being the Iori to Endeavour’s Riku (but without too much of the homoerotic overtones that come from being close in age, since Endeavour is 46 – 7 and Hawks is 22), so to speak.

Oh! That punch is based on All Might’s! Same framing and everything!

Hajimari no doesn’t suggest a pronoun, so they must have chosen that based on the manga or the production company or something.

Magia Record 11

Shaft headtilt!

This Witch…apparently it appears early on in the OG series according to This Week in Anime. It does give off that vibe.

…wow, that fight was fast.

The video got encoded funny again…

Why are all the magical girls Naruto running???  

Hachibey = Kyubey (where kyu = 9), but for 8.

ACCA OVA

Who’s this-oh, never mind.

I don’t remember the OST being so…cool.

Jumo, where ju = tree I guss.

Nino! Who’s the blonde though? I forget…

Jumo for Jumoku…right. I forgot.

Shinro, literally “path of advancement”. I’ve grown a lot since I last watched ACCA, but I only feel I’ve gotten dumber since then…to be honest.

I like how the flashback is saturated in blue…actually, that reminds me of Given, now that I think of it.

Where’s Grossular? I liked him the best because he’s basically older!Kyosuke Kuga. Update: Spoke too soon.

Now that I’ve learnt keigo between the OG and now, I can understand more of what Mauve says.

Magia Record 12

(no notes, sorry!)

Magia Record 13 (FINAL)

Is it just me, or can I see a feather-like object floating down the screen…? (Or is that static?)

You can see one of the hooded Wings (on Touka’s left) has dark blue hair – roughly Sayaka’s shade.

Ooh, Mami and Sayaka fight! (I’ve never been one for catfights, but this is certainly a match-up I want to see!)

Mami’s fate really sucks, huh? Her head came off in the OG and now she’s a tool for the Magius…

Yachiyo does look a lot like Togo from Yuki Yuna, doesn’t she…?

Anyways, this is all for now. There’s an s2 on the horizon, but COVID-19 means it could be years down the line…see you when s2 arrives.

[smileykeijser]

Skam NL Clip 1 Goedmorgen  Analysis

This is crazy long so it’s under the cut, but it’s broken up into symbolism, the aesthetic, feelings, random stuff and things I want to see this season based on this clip.

Obviously this is speculation, I’m not truly trying to figure out their characters or stories with one clip, and some of this stuff probably wasn’t intentional, but it’s fun to imagine that it was.

Symbolism:

We see them both wearing metal necklaces, when I first saw them I thought of chain mail, and then armor. We don’t see Liv putting hers on, but we see Noah putting on his, Liv’s types of additions are more masks than armour. This makes me think that Noah has more recently begun using his playboy status and other parts of his life as protection against himself feeling some sort of trauma, vs Liv who may have this protection as more of a long time solidified sort of protection.

They both wear masks though, Liv puts on makeup, Noah covers up his shirt with 10x the personality of the one that covers it (which strikes me as odd because in so many ways he’s so outspoken with his personality and style)

The second type of symbolism I see is the idea of showing Liv and Noah are cut from the same cloth (this also includes the protection symbolism) but also giving us a way to see their differences. Noah’s rings are chunky and bold, Liv’s is delicate and dainty, Liv’s nails are done in a light colour, and very evenly applied, whereas Noah’s seem much more sloppy in application, he doesn’t paint them all the same colour, let alone paint all his nails in the first place. His nails are also much less manicured than hers. While he slides his sunglasses on as if he doesn’t particularly care, she carefully fluffs her hair and when he just throws on his shirt, we see Liv delicately putting on her bra and socks.

There’s also a section where Noah was rolling a joint and Liv is singing. They’re both at the end of getting ready, so they have their masks on, and then they both do something that everyone expects of them. Noah is known by the fandom as the guy who rolled a joint in the middle of the school, and Liv sang in her first appearance. I think that they’re playing into the whole mask thing by showing things that everyone would expect from them, they’re some of the base level, rudimentary basics about either of them, not like the patterned shirt hidden under Noah’s button down.

Lastly, and this is slightly different than the previous point, the clip is trying to show they are equals. The montage shows this, but there’s a great cross fade between Liv looking into the camera and Noah walking toward her apartment. It’s a long cross fade, and there’s a good five seconds where there’s overlap. As this is happening, it’s panning up on Noah so that by the time it’s entirely his screen, Liv’s head is as high as his, where as when the cross fade started, his head was far above hers.

Then when we get into the actual meat of the clip, the equality is plain and simple, they both give the other the middle finger, and at the point when they each do, they have the upper hand. Liv is behind the shutting doors, Noah is the one on the other side unable to get in. Then Noah is the one who’s surprises Liv by being on the ground level and then by disappearing. 

The Aesthetic:

This clip reminded me of how Skamit uses colours to differentiate their seasons, peach for Eva, blue for Martino. In a similar vein, I think that Skam NL is trying to create an aesthetic palette for each of their seasons. The first half of the clip is basically a mood board, and the mood is one vastly different from Isa’s season. It has a cooler, or less violently colourful palette immediately. Isa’s season was full of warmth , especially in the first half of her season when it was still transitioning into Autumn from Summer. If I was to guess, we’re going to be seeing a lot of white and black, and a lot of colours like deep green, tan, burgundy and blues.

The tone is sensual, delicate, and intimate. Most of the shots are close ups, showing the intimacy of a spray of hairspray, or the couple of freckles near Noah’s nipple, or the sensuality of putting rings on or slipping a sock onto a foot. Beyond the act of getting ready to go, we’re watching two humans get dressed, which means that we get to see the curves of shoulders or a small hint of a lacy bra, or toned chest, and the intimacy is increased by having Liv facing away from us, creating a secret. This contrasts with Isa, because unless Isa was having sex, nothing was like this, because Isa crunched loudly on chips and licked dip off her phone screen. She never had one of these slow motion montages, because Isa wasn’t a slow motion montage type of gal, but Liv is.

We get an abrupt tone shift as soon as Noah arrives, the dreamy atmosphere is gone, and it’s immediate, with the woman hobbling past with her cart and her dog. From then on, the things she handles are treated with absolutely no fantasy, she’s in an elevator, has headphones shoved in her ears and then she fumbles with the key and bikes off on a battered up bike with a canvas bag over her shoulder.

Feelings:

One of my favourite moments is when Liv storms away from Noah and she doesn’t stop walking, but you see her take a steadying breath and close her eyes. Even in season 1 they were doing a great job showing Liv’s feelings via her facial expressions, and this is a step up. We also see at the other end, when Liv strides forward, completely determined to just ignore the absence of Noah, but you see that she can’t find the lock hole on the first try, and then she spends a good chunk of time just looking for him.

The whole middle finger thing is so effing cute, and it’s not the first couple on skamnl to do it, Kes and Isa did it sometimes too, alongside their animal game. And the idiot boy Noah, running down the stairs just to give the middle finger to his crush, what a lovable idiot art hoe.

Random things

- The first words Liv says (or mouths) are song lyrics, I think that shows how important music is going to be.

- There’s a moment when she flips her hair that she breaks the fourth wall and looks right into the camera. I’m not sure the meaning or purpose, but it’s a gorgeous scene.

- “Hello ma’am” is yet another thing to love about Noah

- Both the first clip of last season and this one have people going away on a bike/scooter nice parallel

Things I need from this season based on the clip:

- Noah calling Liv baby or vice versa

- Liv unbuttoning Noah’s shirt.

- Both of them riding off to school on the same, or two separate bikes.

- A parallel to the scene with Liv’s back facing the audience, except she drops her bra and Noah comes up behind her.

- Them painting each other’s nails and swapping rings duh.

- Liv helping Noah put on his necklace.