i’ve mentioned this a little before too — while i’m rewatching this time around, i keep noting times where women and girls respond to moments of crisis and decide to assume responsibility. a few episodes in particular i just rewatched, 7 through 9, repeat this pattern pretty strongly.
there’s the corporate dinner to showcase the launch of jet alone, where we watch ritsuko press the company executive about the wide-reaching dangers of nuclear power, as well as assert her own knowledge and come up against public humiliation. later on, during the display of jet alone taking its first steps, we watch as the robot glitches. i’m gonna bring in my favorite analysis of glitch here: “a singular dysfunctional event that allows insight beyond the customary, omnipresent and alien computer aesthetics.” olga goriunova and alexei shulgin describe the glitch as an event — “a mess that is a moment“ — that users receive as unexpected, that may or may not come from a program error.
for jet alone, the program runs just as expected, exactly as told, but quickly its power begins to expand further that of the executive as well as any staffman there. though control of the program extends beyond the control of any personnel present, the robot runs exactly as it should be. like ritsuko reports after observing from the sidelines what we later learn is an orchestrated crisis unfold, “everything was done according to the plan.” and like a glitch does, the moment brings forth the structure of the systems from which it came. we view a montage of phone calls of men deferring responsibility, requiring approval — bureaucracy functioning at its finest as a procedural structure that splinters accountability and sanctions death.
we watch misato get fed up and take on the responsibility of shutting down the robot herself, and i read her stepping up as responding to the moral failure of the bureaucratic process by acting on what she describes as a moral imperative. she tells shinji, “i’ve got to give it my best shot, you know? my conscience won’t let me do otherwise.“
in asuka’s debut, we watch men assert dominance not through administrative processes, but through claiming sovereignty over the sea. when misato requests access to a power socket on deck, the captain states, “we’re in charge of anything on the sea. follow orders without question.“ even in a situation of almost certain death for both others and himself, the captain refuses to hand authority to misato and, by extension, nerv. misato says it best: “who gives a damn about your procedures?! this is an emergency!” here, asuka comes in and decides to take the opportunity to make her debut even grander, disregarding any potential pushback from the captain or even misato. here, we watch a girl decide to bypass any official authorities and clearance and maximize the moment as hers.
going back to the morning of the corporate showcase, we return to misato’s apartment to shinji washing dishes, then turn his head timidly and ask misato if she’s really gonna make his parent-teacher conference. she replies, “of course!” followed by, “don’t worry about that. it’s my responsibility.” he blinks back — “responsibility?”
in this moment, i took him as both receiving misato’s sense of responsibility as negating any care for him and, like many times in the series, grappling with where he fits in matrices of accountability to others, misogyny, and boyhood. it turns out, his training into manhood is running successfully too. in response to asuka voicing frustration about getting ordered to share her first battle in japan with shinji, shinji replies in what i heard as a pretty mellow and chipper tone: “that’s okay! that’s just procedures. you know!” in line with ongoing processes of inducting and training shinji into manhood throughout the series, the approaches he takes in interacting with others morphs to both contort and fit into forces of manhood that in turn shape him. though not (yet) the condescension and reverence for bureaucracy of the company executive, nor (yet) the blunt demands of the fleet captain, shinji, who always does as he’s ordered, attempts to placate a determined asuka, severing possibilities for her intervention by reminding her of and therefore upholding the limitations of their world. that’s just procedure (which is actually, really, misato’s, a person’s decision, as with any procedure and bureaucratic process)!
during this rewatch, i’ve noticed moments where i consider how women and girls respond to the violences of manhood, authority, and administrative forms of governance. i assume in evangelion and in the world around me a constant state of emergency in which accountability becomes dispersed, and women and girls bear the consequences. i take that note as a push to all together carry our responsibilities — to ourselves and each other.
