Buckle up. It’s time to go on a massive analysis of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s unsung secondary protagonist, Misato Katsuragi, presented by GC fiendswithbenefits.
Featuring!
A look at some of Misato’s most important relationships, such as Ritsuko, Shinji, and Ryouji.
An explanation of the infamous “kiss” scene from End of Evangelion.
The three roles Misato wears and conflates.
Who is Misato, really?
And more!
She’s not just the attractive older woman, y’know.
Warnings for suicide, thanatophobia, discussion of sex, discussion of parental abuse, mothers and fathers, violence, abuse, profanity, abandonment, nudity, pregnancy, general negativity, and basically any trigger warnings for Evangelion etc.etc. It’s also pretty long, clocking in at ten thousand six-hundred twenty-five words. If I miss anything, let me know.
just to be clear, it's because they are all underage right?
i can’t believe this simple concept has to be posited even further simply because i’m referring to fictionalized characters here
this is not a matter of preference or personal squick. this is an objective fact — asuka, rei, kaworu, and shinji are all 13-15 yrs old, middle-schoolers, juveniles, whatever term you want to use that makes it easier for you to conceptualize. placing them in sexual situations is repulsive.
if you’re referring to them as “girlfriend/boyfriend/etc” and you’re over the age of 15, you’re repulsive. i include kaworu and shinji because tumblr suffers from this awful case of cognitive dissonance wherein they think it’s okay to spout “protect asuka/rei from gross neckbeards!!” out their ass then turn around and reblog nsfw/18+ kawoshin doujins constantly.
i am so disgusted by the fact that so many people take ayanami rei’s genuine development, multilayered complexity, struggle with an abusive caretaker, existential conflict, genuine difficulty with expressing emotion and socialising due to an isolated and artificially rigid upbringing, and acceptance of an inhuman origin even whilst validating a very human identity - and transform rei into a generic, childlike moe archetype that does not know or understand anything beyond humbly accepting orders from a master
It’s time for another Evangelion post, this time to address a question sertraline-queen posed about whether the Angels are attacking NERV in an attempt to stop Gendo and his machinations.
A while back someone asked, “Can you please explain the Human Instrumentality Project like I’m five?” and I hope that post can partially clarify the answer. It will also give you the basic rundown of SEELE’s goals and why they are actually disparate from Gendo Ikari’s.
As far as I can tell, the answer to that question — whether the angels are conscious of Gendo or SEELE’s goals and wish to stop them — is no. Remember, the Angels are Adam-derived beings (that is, borne from a Seed of Life and not a Seed of Knowledge) and their behaviors more or less conceptually echo this. While they are far from totally unconscious creatures, they do behave very much like children or babies. They have a basic survival drive, exhibited by their retaliation against NERV’s attacks, but whether they have a unified or even sensible motive is unclear. Kaji suggests that their reasoning is varied: some of them are looking to recover Adam and wipe out mankind, some are looking to engage or “reunite” with Lilith, and some — according to him — seem to have no motive whatsoever. Now, I’m not sure how accurate his assessment actually is, although the actions of the various angels would corroborate these conclusions. I think the only thing we can safely surmise is that the Angels have this intense, passionate drive to “get at” what is fundamentally their parent, Adam, or what arguably represents an object of sexual unification, Lilith.
In jest and in passing I have suggested that the Angels are “pissed,” but if they feel any rage, I think it is over these figures — parental and sexual objects — being made inaccessible to them, prompting a reaction that is like a kid single-mindedly shrieking for what it wants and ignoring anything unrelated. Whether or not they have some complex reason for their behavior is symbolically unnecessary, and I doubt they do; I think the Angels’ activity is meant to represent the unconscious desire to essentially crawl back into the womb (see: Otto Rank and The Trauma of Birth) or, alternatively, fulfill a sexual inclination (see: Freud). They don’t grasp at Adam or Lilith very elegantly, as is to be expected of a life form that lacks a full grasp of the meaning of its own intent; they seem sort of like naive, scared, and relentless id-machines. Aside from Zeruel, whether they feel a discrete antagonism toward humans specifically is debatable.
When the Angels DO express any sort of discernible reasoning, it is emotional and childlike in nature — and Kaworu, Tabris, displays these characteristics as well (albeit with more awareness and complexity than previous angels, presumably because he contains human DNA). Armisael is capable of expressing pain and a need to merge with the nearest entity to try and resolve that pain, but it lacks the insight to characterize what it is feeling as loneliness without Rei’s “help.” And Armisael communicates strictly through mimicking her image — like a baby, it doesn’t yet have a fully developed sense of self; instead, it just copies what it sees and pushes to do what it desires (at Rei’s obvious expense).
You do have to wonder why the First Ancestral Race, upon the knowledge that it was going to become extinct, would decide that its descendants could not possibly be endowed with both the Fruit of Life AND The Fruit of Knowledge, even though they themselves possessed both; recall that their Lances of Longinus are programmed to prevent this evolution from occurring again. I’m inclined to believe that there is something about this dual nature that originally led to the FAR’s own destruction, hence why they would try to protect their own progeny from inheriting the condition. But we are unlikely to ever get an answer beyond what we feel suits our own personal interpretation of events.
real talk time why don’t we talk more about the adults of evangelion like put away your shinjis and your asukas and your hikaris and toujis and kensukes and even your reis and kaworus
talk to me about the adults. talk to me about misato and ritsuko and ryouji and yui and ritsuko and naoko and gendo and fuyutsuki and maya and shigeru and makoto. talk to me about maya battling between hir loyalty to hir akagi-sempai and hir simultaneous deep sense of justice and morality. talk to me about fuyutsuki working as a doctor in the hell of the post-second impact world despite the lack of supplies and the shortage of food—or anything else.
talk to me about yui taking a younger ritsuko out on the town in her effort to meet her friends’ children, and the two of them discussing naoko, with yui cautioning ritsuko to try to make amends with her mother and ritsuko ignoring those in favour of discussing what’s happening with the EVA project because if she can bury her emotions in science she doesn’t have to feel them. talk to me about misato laughing her ass off at the thought of ryouji never having any experience with torrents and setting up a seedbox with ritsuko’s help in university. talk to me about makoto and maya celebrating shigeru’s birthday by dragging him out while they’re on break and making huge nuisances of themselves by window shopping at the mall and ending up at the bar somehow and getting shitfaced, then talking through their issues with their respective crushes, and shigeru’s the only one who remembers the following morning (because he’s the only one who didn’t completely drunk in the course of romantic talk).
talk to me about misato lying awake at night listening to her mother scream over the phone with her father and turning up the music in her earbuds and promising God that she’ll be a good girl, she’ll be the perfect girl, she’ll be the sweetest girl that ever walked the earth if only God would give her a happy family again. talk to me about naoko and fuyutsuki enjoying lunch together as they talk about the logistics of the project and naoko assures fuyutsuki that everything they’re doing is for the good of humanity and fuyutsuki wants to believe her, and she wants to believe herself, too. talk to me about yui growing up as the daughter of a member of SEELE and hiding behind doors and learning to sneak her way through computer databases to find out what lurks beneath the surface.
talk to me about ritsuko meeting maya in college during some completely unrelated comparative history class and the two of them having to work on a project regarding the cold war together and the entire time maya is just thinking about how smart and incredible and talented ritsuko is and ritsuko doesn’t even remember maya but imagine maya’s face upon hir first day at NERV out of nowhere—“my name is akagi and i’m your superior”. talk to me about how the one time misato’s mother comes down to the university to talk misato doesn’t even show up because she’s tried so hard to push that part of her away and ritsuko comes down to meet with her. talk to me about how when misato’s professor calls her in to ask her about the second week of missed classes this semester—“you did this just a few months ago!”—and misato quietly explains that her mother’s funeral was last saturday.
talk to me about makoto and gendo being stuck in the elevator one day for a long time and makoto is terrified of saying anything and gendo asks him what he thinks about the cafeteria food and makoto’s sure that he’s about to get fired and then he realises that gendo is trying to make small talk. talk to me about ritsuko carefully tending a bonsai tree even in the middle of the rush of finals because if she can keep a bonsai tree neat and clipped then she can figure out the rest of her life, at least until the day her cat knocks over the pot and it shatters and she doesn’t have the reserves to start over with a new one. talk to me about yui picking out ryouji’s potential and giving them a helping hand and taking time out of her day to talk to them and always had that gentle smile that ryouji would later adopt for themself in the years to come.
talk to me about fuyutsuki going out new year’s shopping and trying to figure out what to buy ritsuko as a gift and shigeru popping by to suggest that new album from her favourite punk rock band and fuyutsuki’s eyes vanishing into orbit at the thought of ritsuko loving punk rock. talk to me about ritsuko and misato and ryouji trying to quantify whatever the hell their relationship is after ryouji spontaneously moves into ritsuko and misato’s dorm and never being able to figure it out but as long as the college kids see ryouji as “boyfriend” and misato as “girlfriend” and ritsuko as “friend” then it doesn’t make a difference. talk to me.
ok just talk to me about the adults of evangelion. i’m serious and i’m waiting.
thought-provoking dynamics that i wish were more thoroughly explored in evangelion:
1. awkward, bumbling extensions of friendship between misato and rei, with subtle overtures of appreciation on the elevator
2. “disgruntled mom vs bratty teen” vaccination checkups with ritsuko and asuka, complete with extremely irritable glares (asuka), tired one-liners (ritsuko), and maybe asuka lunchtray-smacking ritsuko’s clipboard out of her hands
3. quasi-uncle & wayward nephew-type acquaintanceship between professor fuyutsuki and kaji, including philosophical debates and shogi dates over lunch (making the abduction scene a forced betrayal)
Played during the last few minutes of Q, this explosive, darkly apocalyptic track is arguably the leading highlight of You Can (Not) Redo’s original score. But many people don’t realize that the seemingly pseudo-Latin chants are actually English verses reminiscent of the Biblical Genesis.
From the black of space I will create, earth and in my image incarnate
Heaven is to be a place of rest, earth is where the people I will test
Six days have passed, on the seventh I will render myself
To a day of rest and to contemplate, what is to be
Mankind begins its fateful journey faced by trials and tribulations
War and peace, of my presence, to this end my work is done
like, the level of impartiality you have to take in assessing the cast of evangelion’s morals is really precarious and pretty much impossible for an audience to ‘neatly’ rationalize without feeling at least a little uncomfortable. the range of utter grossness includes child neglect/manipulation (gendo), destructive utilitarianism (yui), collaborating with plans of global genocide for entirely selfish reasons (ritsuko and fuyutsuki), utilizing chauvinistic shields to navigate the workplace (kaji), repeated sexual intrusions of a minor’s personal space (misato), emotional belittling (asuka), casual justifications for sexism (toji and kensuke), and sexual violence (shinji). the real stinger is a lot of this comes from characters the narrative wants us to sympathize with, to root for, and to encourage in some capacity. that’s why it’s so important to understand the whys and hows of each characters faults, because in a decontextualized setting with no consideration to intent, motivation, and circumstance, everything and anything lends itself to myopia and overgeneralizing.
Your tags on that kawrou post are perfect. You made me laugh so hard. Kawrou, you really blew it buddy.
3.33 Kaworu really makes me want to bite through my space bar and ascend to the next direction of pure, unadulterated anger. Certainly, characterisation in the Rebuild of Evangelion series in general was almost certainly intended to piss off fans (or rather, to pander to certain demographics to showcase how incorrect those demographics’ views of “what Evangelion should be” are, but that’s another post for another time and is more speculation of Studio Khara’s motives than actual analysis/etc.), but 3.33 Kaworu/Qworu strikes me as a particularly obvious example.
Brief discussion of anime Kaworu, Q Kaworu, and the disparities therein below the cut.
around 00:01:40~ into the beginning of end of evangelion, the morning after shinji has his talk with misato by the lake.
granted, it’s never stated outright, but little in evangelion is, and the above cuts stand on their own merits. this wordless scene is pretty indicative of an huge shift re: shinji’s character development (albeit a negative one) since anno has always described shinji as someone who has “convinced himself that he is a completely unnecessary person, so much so that he cannot even commit suicide.”
some of anno’s most important cuts are brief, ambiguous, and very easy to miss. personally, this is one of my favorite ones.
“rei or asuka?” really baffles me because they’re presented as inverse contrasts in the show, and you can’t really derive any concrete analysis or understanding of their characters by taking them in separately. you have to examine them together through a comparative lens – their backstories, how they view themselves, their respective methods of coping/internalizing neglect and validation (or lack thereof). this goes for literally every single character in evangelion, but rei and asuka are most prolific for the grossest and most nauseating reasons.
when people say they like asuka more than rei for “x” reasons or visa versa, to me that’s just another gauge of how badly they missed the point.
I have gotten the impression that you really like Mari Makinami. Could you explain why? Because she was introduced so late in the game, her character design (personality wise) and position in the anime has always seemed a little rushed to me.
Introduced “late in the game,” with actual motives and alignment shrouded in mystery, and serves a major role as a foil/object of interest for another character…
Maybe you already see what I’m getting at here.
I don’t really understand the disregard for Mari from the perspective you just outlined, because it also describes Kaworu. Why isn’t he similarly written off by the fanbase?
Mari may be new, and we may not understand that much about her, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a valuable and thought-out addition to the series. We have very little idea what she’s up to, but I wouldn’t confuse that with poor development; I’d argue that she has a very distinct personality and one that suggests real depth, the same way Kaworu’s speech and behavior — though we get comparatively little of it — implies as much complexity. Hideaki Anno may be wacky, and he is definitely reticent, but rushed he is not. Quite the opposite. I think he enjoys taking his sweet ass time.
I am a fan of Mari because she is passionate, funny, irreverent, and quirky. She’s possibly the only character that can go toe-to-toe with Asuka in a way that she actually respects. In fact, I see her relationship with Asuka as comparable to Shinji’s relationship with Kaworu. I’m biased as a hardcore Asuka/Mari shipper, but I’m very happy about their dynamic thus far, and excited to see where it goes.
I honestly think some Eva fans are disappointed by Rebuild’s direction come the end of 2.0/3.0 and are simply misdirecting those feelings at the glaring bit of novelty, which is Mari Makinami. I urge you to give her a chance. At least until 3.0+1.0.
can we talk about how she was a truly brilliant scientist who came up with the first functioning EVA after years and years of work plus the ultimate sacrifice?
can we talk about how she still did her duty as a freaking EVA? Nevermind how that must have affected her mental state and her worries over shinji?
can we talk about she was so important to gendo and fuyutsuki that they (with ritsuko’s help) made an entire army of clones to fulfill her wishes, and to close the holes in their hearts and to attempt to be closer to her?
can we talk about how she masterminded the entire freaking set of eventsin evangelion, way before any of it happened? (and smashed the attempts of SEELE at their own thing despite their ridiculous resources?)
can we talk about how she never lost hope for humanity, even seeing the absolute worst in her loved ones?
can we talk about how her final moves were to sacrifice her connection to the entire world and to float in space for eternity, just to see humanity have a chance for happiness?
