Despite the praise and love the creator and director of the classic “Neon Genesis Evangelion” Hideaki Anno and his creation may receive from many fans. The same adoration cannot be said for the voice actress of the ever iconic Asuka Langley Soryu, Yuko Miyamura.
in case you missed it: asuka and ritsuko are the same character. i could talk about this for ages, but in the interest of brevity:
both asuka’s mother and ritsuko’s mother were emotionally distant in life, and compartmentalized upon death - asuka’s mother resides in unit-02, ritsuko’s mother resides in the magi
both watched their mothers commit suicide
both have a distant mother-figure - for ritsuko it’s her grandmother, for asuka it’s her stepmother
both fixated on an older man at a young age - for asuka it was kaji, for ritsuko it was gendo
both express a desire for never having children
both stand in opposition to rei/grow to detest rei over time
their entrance and exit scenes are laterally mirrored - both emerge from water, then die at their mother’s betrayal
in that same vein, both share in visual imagery: there’s a scene where ritsuko stops to wash her face in the bathroom that asuka goes on to mirror
this one’s a little more elusive, but all the more fascinating: i need you. gendo’s silent words to ritsuko, shinji’s words to asuka during instrumentality. guess what asuka and ritsuko both respond with? liar.
take it as you will, but in one of the supplementary games it’s said that asuka wanted to be a scientist after piloting. yeah.
i forgot the best one:
you know how many of the evangelion characters were named after japanese wwii battleships? battleship akagi and battleship soryu, ritsuko and asuka’s namesakes, were together deployed at the 1942 battle of midway, where they were both subsequently destroyed
I'm sure you've answered this before and if so I'm sorry but why don't you like bandaged Rei?
i’m really tired of rei being capitalized upon. first with the introduction of rei into the series in bandages which is used by gendo as a tool to guilt shinji into staying. that scene introduces us from the beginning to understanding rei as a device, specifically rei with bandages which is a marked sign for rei’s sacrifices for humanity (rei doesn’t ever need bandages, they’re always tools for manipulation exacted through rei’s body).
and also, all of the following is crucial to what i’ve said above: there is a lot to say with regards to rei and gender but rei is heavily coded and even an embodiment in a lot of ways of girlhood in the evaverse (in canon and fandom both) and i’m also tired of young girls’ suffering being made beautiful.
who’s the real canon gay of evangelion? kaworu, shinji, maya, and mari move aside - a lot of people don’t know that makoto hyuga was supposed to be canonly gay, too. anno and co. slipped a quiet allude to his sexuality in the original episode 24 drafts (the same drafts that had kaworu and shinji kiss). ultimately the idea was trashed and promptly replaced with his crush for misato, likely for the same reasons they trashed the original kawoshin kiss.
here’s the scene in question (you can read the entire draft here):
HYUGA: Seems like we’ve got ourselves involved in a pretty unbelievable organization.
[HYUGA hands MISATO more documents.]
HYUGA: Here’s my research on the Fifth Child. There’s nothing particularly suspicious in his history. He’s been in contact with the committee, but there’s no sign of involvement. As far as family goes, it seems there’s been some turbulence there. You could say he’s just a garden-variety pretty boy who’s had an unfortunate life.
evangelion is not a deconstruction of the mecha genre
evangelion is not a deconstruction of the mecha genre
evangelion is not a deconstruction of the mecha genre
everybody now
eva doesn’t deconstruct anything - deconstruction is a very specific approach to literary analysis with the intent of exposing semiotic contradictions within a genre - it doesn’t mean what western dudebros think it means (i.e: “dark and edgy storytelling”). space runaway ideon (1980) and gundam (1979) are both mecha shows that trade heavily on psychoanalysis, and anno Geek’d The Fuck Out on these shows (along with mazinger z, getter robo, ultraman, + many others) and wanted to pay his ultimate respects through evangelion. evangelion was paying homage to the mecha genre: anno didn’t reveal any ~hidden irreconcilable contradictions within it, he loved it and wanted to include his own OCs in the mix. (the ending of ideon and evangelion? exactly. the. same.) anno himself is a self-proclaimed otaku, and holds otaku sentiment to high regard. eva isn’t even genre-critical, it’s genre-exploratory
some interesting naming conventions in evangelion:
asuka calls rei ‘yuutousei’, not ‘wondergirl’,which can be loosely translated as ‘honor student’
shinji refers to asuka as simply ‘asuka’, but calls rei ‘ayanami’. likewise, rei refers to shinji as ‘ikari-kun’, adding the proper honorific at the end
asuka calls misato ‘misato’ without honorifics. a child referring to an adult without honorifics is considered extremely impolite in japan - for point of comparison, shinji first calls misato ‘katsuragi-san’ and later eases into ‘misato-san’. before you say it’s because she’s german, asuka is steadfast in calling kaji ‘kaji-san’ (she even refers to him as ‘kaji-senpai’ on one occasion)
misato usually calls shinji ‘shinji-kun’, but sometimes she’ll jokingly refer to him as ‘shin-chan’ - a petname typically reserved for toddlers. imagine toji getting called ‘to-chan’ and you’ll get an idea of how cheeky this is on misato’s part
on a similar note, the petnames ritsuko and kaji reserve for each other are especially hilarious. ritsuko refers to kaji as ‘ryo-chan’ and kaji refers to ritsuko as ‘rit-chan’ (consequently, ritsuko is the only character in nge who calls kaji by his first name, which is ryoji). ‘rit-chan’ and ‘ryo-chan’ are weirdly infantilizing/overly-affectionate; they only do this within the earshot of misato with the obvious purpose of annoying the shit out of her
gendo still refers to fuyutsuki as ‘fuyutsuki-sensei’ (’professor fuyutsuki’); everyone else calls him ‘vice commander fuyutsuki’. old habits die hard
misato and kaji refer to each other on an entirely last-name basis; misato calls kaji ‘kaji-kun’ and kaji calls misato ‘katsuragi’
there are many different ways to refer to your father in japanese, but shinji refers to gendo as ‘otousan’. typically, children will use ‘otousan’ when speaking to their father and ‘chi-chi’ when speaking of their father, but shinji makes no such distinction, which says something about the emotional distance there. (interestingly, misato flip-flops between ‘otousan’ and ‘chi-chi’ when speaking of her own father. when does she use otousan? when she’s talking to kaji about her father)
rei never once calls asuka by her name. the name ‘asuka’ never leaves rei’s mouth once. rei refers to asuka as ‘the pilot of unit-02‘ or simply ‘anta’ (‘you’) when speaking directly to her
“rei ayanami was supposed to be creepy as a middle finger to fanboys!!”
this is an old western fandom myth fabricated during the early days of 4chan/evageeks. anno, hayashibara, and co. have never said anything remotely suggesting the sort (rather, anno’s described rei as the ‘most inexpressible’ part of him; hayashibara remarking similar) - this also evades everything rei is to justify never considering her beyond the surface level (if rei was supposed to be ‘creepy’, what else is there?)
rei is existential - rei is isolation, rei’s entire narrative gestures heavily at what it means to be a body (”the body as an identity involves resources”) - what it means to be defined by your trauma, physically and psychologically. people don’t relate to rei because she’s “creepy” (she’s not), people relate to rei because she’s othered, ostracized, abused, socially inept. rei was forced into a life of constant-dissociation by an abusive man, a life in which she is a stranger to herself, and pretentious nerds still have the gall to call her ‘creepy’ as if they’re saying something subversive
there’s nothing enlightened about calling an abused 14 year old girl “creepy”, nothing about rei is “creepy”, it’s sad and harrowing and existentially-laden
you know the recurring gag about misato besting the odds of .000001% isn’t a joke - the reason she ‘just so happens’ to ‘fluke’ her way to victory is because seele has the dead sea scrolls, a prophetic text that fortells of every angel defeat ahead of time, and the magi was created under their clout so that nerv may be kept simultaneously unsuspecting, reasonably motivated, and constantly ready for death
the joke isn’t that misato just so happens to best the odds, the joke is that the odds of defeating an angel are always 100%, every time, and in believing that they’re .0001% misato plays right into seele’s hands, every time
ya’ll: WHAT IF KAWORU DOESN’T KNOW WHAT A SNEEZE IS AND HE SNEEZES FOR THE FIRST TIME AND HE THINKS HIS HEAD’S ABOUT TO EXPLODE AND SHINJI HAS TO CALM HIM DOWN FDKSAJFLAFksggkD
in case you missed it: asuka and ritsuko are the same character. i could talk about this for ages, but in the interest of brevity:
both asuka’s mother and ritsuko’s mother were emotionally distant in life, and compartmentalized upon death - asuka’s mother resides in unit-02, ritsuko’s mother resides in the magi
both watched their mothers commit suicide
both have a distant mother-figure - for ritsuko it’s her grandmother, for asuka it’s her stepmother
both fixated on an older man at a young age - for asuka it was kaji, for ritsuko it was gendo
both express a desire for never having children
both stand in opposition to rei/grow to detest rei over time
their entrance and exit scenes are laterally mirrored - both emerge from water, then die at their mother’s betrayal
in that same vein, both share in visual imagery: there’s a scene where ritsuko stops to wash her face in the bathroom that asuka goes on to mirror
this one’s a little more elusive, but all the more fascinating: i need you. gendo’s silent words to ritsuko, shinji’s words to asuka during instrumentality. guess what asuka and ritsuko both respond with? liar.
take it as you will, but in one of the supplementary games it’s said that asuka wanted to be a scientist after piloting. yeah.
people really underestimate how darksided nge’s fandom is
on one hand you have the pretentious evageeks-type neckbeards who have systematically asphyxiated even the slightest insinuation of gay text/subtext by deliberately mistranslating the show’s subtitles and supplementary material, withholding key interviews, and recontextualizing the narrative to make it more agreeable to their tastes while parading around as ‘experts’ (evageeks/4chan) or whatever; all of this being exacerbated by their misogyny, by their ableism, by their homophobia and sexualization of the eva girls
but on the other hand you have the people exclusively fixating all their interest/discussion on the boys and paying the shallowest of lip service to the girls, where fandom love for kaworu+shinji generates tons of meta/passionate discussion but asuka+rei+misato get nothing except for some cute fanart/gifs with empty tags like “queen!/princess!!/badass lady!!!” attached, where rei only gets worthy mention as a footnote in kaworu-origin discussions, where an assbackwards misogynist sentiment like “asuka abused shinji because she forced him to snap/sexually assault her” is actually something that’s popularly expressed around here. because shinji ikari defense squad, right?? right
and it’s funny, because either way the female characters lose out. one way or another nge fandom stays idolizing boy’s emotions+narratives at the expense of girl’s narratives/pain/complexity, which is really ironic given that the source material, you know, deals with girls/women navigating male-dominated spaces and being punished for their girlhood/womanhood, and a boy mc navigating male-dominated spaces and being punished for his perceived effeminacy while also taking his frustrations out on girls because of his scarydeep internalized misogyny. life imitates art
Do you know/have any theories as to the pills that Ayanami has to take in the series? Are they to stave off flaws in her clone-body, since the AT-Field can't hold her together? To regulate her behavior? I know Ritsuko only implies the answer in the manga, and it's not even touched upon in the anime.
I assume they are to keep her alive somehow. It would be symbolically appropriate, if the A.T. Field is representative of the ego, for Rei’s to be in a state of progressive failure and to require constant maintenance. She has no sense of self beyond that which is dictated to her, and so her identity is prescribed and regimented much like medication.
it just hit me that the first time we see shinji, he’s trying to call misato but there’s no signal - akatrying to communicate with her and failing - and that’s pretty meaningful and if the writers were so genius that they did it on purpose i’ll be forever impressed
shinji calls two people in the show: misato (episode 1) and gendo (episode 11) - in both instances his calls don’t go through or disconnect halfway in and both misato and gendo represent conflicting/addled parental authority. the telephone is nge’s interpersonal stage prop (misato gives shinji a cellphone with the hopes that he uses it to make friends at school, launching a discussion re: the hedgehog’s dilemma when he doesn’t) and helps to inform a lot of eva’s inter-cast relationships so 👁 🔍 whenever it makes an appearance
something interesting that i realized about misato katsuragi is that she’s essentially a reflection of the state of the world. her life is inexorably tied to the angels and their effect on humanity. when she was young, she was ‘whole’, much like humanity was with the angels being dormant, until second impact happens and she loses her father, and likewise the planet loses a sizable amount of its population
in her college and adult years, misato appears playful and lighthearted, but we know that’s just a facade: she’s destroyed by the loss of her father and totally consumed by her revenge against the the angels. likewise, life goes on seemingly undisturbed in tokyo-III, but the damage left behind from second impact and the angels is evidenced in the empty oceans, derelict buildings, and destructive climate change
in 3.0, misato is cold and calculating, lacking any apparent compassion at all. likewise, the world is cold and unforgiving as are its remaining inhabitants. basically each impact heavily alters the landscape of the planet and we see these changes reflected in how misato changes over the course of the series
rei is the most tragic character in evangelion and that has everything to do with her becoming a goddess in eoe
it’s long been established that goddesshood is the pinnacle of femininity, because goddesshood is glorified objecthood: and objects, even divine and powerful ones, can’t be loved - they can be worshipped, idolized, and influential, but evangelion says that love is human and love depends first upon one’s ability to be empathized with. (that’s why it’s called cruel angel’s thesis, btw - angels can’t be loved). goddesshood requires no humanity, no feelings, and an inability to be empathized with, only worshipped and/or feared
when rei – who was already introduced as a girl who had trouble “being human” – becomes a goddess in eoe, she’s essentially carrying out the ultimate goal of femininity by molding herself into a vessel out of gendo’s cathexis, transferred to his son. i already mentioned how gendo symbolizes masculinity in that he is totally dependent on divine feminine energy: in keeping with the child/parent motif, shinji takes gendo’s place and rei appears to him as a goddess. notice when shinji reminisces the “friends he wants to see again”, rei’s head is blocked by shinji’s face (this groupshot includes all the characters who can come back if they want to: hence kaworu’s absence & rei getting literally and metaphorically photobombed by shinji’s smiling face). when asuka and shinji wake up on the beach, rei is a hallucination at best, and a forgotten and lonely spirit at worst
there’s also tragedy in not being a goddess – the “feminine imperfection” symbolized by asuka, misato, and ritsuko. the point is that there is no way for the girls/women to simply BE, to be human (”at least, be human”) without gendered pain. the irony inherent in kaworu, a nonhuman, still being able to choose the circumstances of his death (as the angel of free will) despite his inhumanity is 100% explained by his perceived gender as a boy while rei and the rest of the girls/women are barred from a proper self-determined death
this show is all about people seeking objectifying love instead of humanizing love, and hurting, limiting, and depriving themselves in pursuit of that objectifying love. the (other) point is that everyone needs love, including rei – but rei can never, ever be allowed it
