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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
but for real, stop the “asuka abused shinji” shit. it needs to die.
when people say “asuka abused shinji”, i almost want to ask: what exactly are you referring to when you use a loaded term for a traumatized 13 year old girl in reference to her incredibly complex dynamic with a boy who would later go on and attempt to kill her twice? the fact that asuka is seemingly louder, more abrasive, and more unapologetically bitter than the seemingly meek, soft-willed shinji? is that abuse? the fact that asuka calls shinji stupid? is that abuse?
the fact that asuka doesn’t screen her righteous anger through a filter of kindness when she calls shinji out for his shit? is that abuse? or is it asuka, physically pushing shinji away from her after he invades her space and demands that she be nice to him? is that abuse?
when shinji sexually assaulted asuka at her lowest point? did asuka abuse shinji? when shinji tried to kill asuka for not shutting up as she yells at him for objectifying her? when shinji tried to kill asuka again, after figuring out that he’ll be stuck with her for an indefinite period of time? did asuka abuse shinji with her response - a gentle stroke of the cheek, that frankly, shinji did not deserve?
the best thing about evangelion is that every single character is initially introduced as having a “superficial self” up until the point where that shatters, and it is revealed to the audience that their ‘true self’ is in fact the exact opposite of their superficial self. shinji ikari, for all his pain and suffering and trauma, is introduced as the meek nonviolent boy inclined to retreat from any and all contact. up until anno rips the rug from underneath us – shinji ikari, quickly jumping on the chance to hurt asuka when it finally dawns on him that she’ll never be who he wants her to be. asuka? asuka is introduced as the violent and self-absorbed girl – a stark contrast to shinji – until that, too, crumbles. cue the last scene in end of evangelion: shinji’s trying to kill asuka –shinji’s literally the manifestation of every stereotype normally attributed to asuka, here – and what does asuka do? she responds with clemency and mercy and grace. she caresses his face. the real shinji (all bite, no bark) vs the real asuka (all bark, no bite).
and then – just like that – the story of evangelion ends.
asuka and shinji’s dynamic is destructive and ugly and unhealthy, but the cards were never stacked in asuka’s favor. they were always stacked in shinji’s.
how many shots are there of shinji’s quivering eyes as he witnesses the bodies of women, girls, and girl-aligned persons being violently torn apart? girls’ mutilation in eva are mostly ever processed through being the source of boys’ trauma.
i’ve been wondering lately - what is it about nge that was so cohesive, that one singular vibe you saw in each of the characters. like, they all felt like they were part of a set, the same notes in a tone, regardless of the different stages of life, motivations, they ways they held other people at a distance (or too close), etc.
it’s contempt. i’m pretty sure that’s what it was.
you see it most in ritsuko and asuka - but contempt is there in varying levels with the others; shinji, misato, fuyutsuki, even rei. they say that contempt/disgust is one of the 7 universal expressions of humanity and i don’t know how much of that is bs, but contempt is such a crucial element in viewing nge, i think.
you have to start with understanding that contempt is a defense mechanism, and go from there. you miss so much of the subtlety in shinji’s narrative if you don’t see how tiny bits of contempt leak out in how he interacts with everyone (especially the girls, holy shit); how asuka tries to use her contempt as literal fuel for her fire until she burns from the inside out, how kaji thought he had it under control and stuffed down too many layers of lies but it poisoned him in the end, too.
it’s there. but the pinnacle of nge is not just the exploration of contempt and what it takes to truly hate yourself and others, but ultimately how nge doesn’t allow you - or the cast - one bullshit excuse to wave off your issues because of it. instead, it sits you down and says ‘you can be better than this.’
imo that’s something that needs to be said more. with that kind of honesty.
Rei doesn’t know emotion, so there’s no difference between what she says and feels; there’s nothing ulterior about her. At first glance, then, you may theorize: this is where her very great beauty comes from, from her surface, without depth, but with the absence of its necessity – someone truly mystical.
No. Rei’s beauty comes from the truth that she has feelings. When she cried, it meant the waters of the pool were coming out at last. The struggle to draw feelings forth, the reconciliation between your surface and your depth – that, I believe, is when we truly become alive, truly become human beings. And when I found the warmth beneath the coldness in Rei’s words, I synchronized with her for the first time. And it felt so good and I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my own heart.
What I learned from meeting a girl who didn’t know (1996, Megumi Hayashibara; translation by William Flanagan and David Ury)
it’s mindblowing how the phrase “the beginning and the end are one and the same” is so deeply entrenched in evangelion’s main narrative. forget about rebuild’s loops (for now), because it’s ridiculously important in the original series, too
take episode 1 for example. the establishing shots of the military attacking sachiel? repeats itself in end of evangelion. misato marching shinji down nerv’s corridors? repeats itself in end of evangelion. emotionally charged peptalks between misato and shinji? repeats itself in end of evangelion. unit-01′s hand moving on its own for shinji’s sake? repeats itself in end of evangelion. even our very first shot of ritsuko, which has her emerging from an LCL pool in episode 1, laterally echoes the very last shot her falling into the LCL tank upon being shot in end of evangelion.
the beginning and the end are one and the same.
ever wonder why asuka’s debut episode takes place in the ocean? because asuka emerges from the ocean, kicking and screaming, in end of evangelion. and to top it all off, rei’s bookend appearances in episode 1 and end of evangelion respectively recapitulate the overarching concept of alpha and omega so perfectly.
i’m just saying, if the bulk of your evangelion viewing/fandom experience puts kaworu, shinji, and kawoshin at the very Center of Importance, and in the process you neglect the other thirteen characters – especially the women – or put them on a semi-relevant backburner where all their nuance is lost or glossed over unless their narrative somehow implicates kaworu or shinji, no offense but what the fuck are you doing.
like i don’t know when the fandom will sit down and question why kawoshin has become instantly synonymous to evangelion, or why “OK BUT when’s the white haired boy gonna show up??” is the textbook viewing experience for most new fans, or why f/f gay subtext (ritsuko/maya, asuka/mari) is only mentioned in passing, or why 80% of the meta devotes itself to relatively minute dialogue between kaworu and shinji to the blissful oversight of everything else, etc. call it what you want but a boys fest is a boys fest, especially when one half of it is an interesting – but ultimately ancillary – dude love interest with 17 minutes of screentime in a 26ep series + feature film, pitted against 13 other characters (more than half of which are girls/women) with fully realized, multiform development arcs that are blatantly mischaracterized or oversimplified.
To think people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because of the lack of obvious sexual attraction between them takes me aback. That is the whole reason WHY kawoshin is so real and important and why shinji is so head over heels for kaworu
Throughout the whole series shinji is put into sexual situations. He is mocked and harassed for not experiencing sexual attraction i.e. them making fun of him for not wanting to bang misato, assuming his want to understand rei is because he wants her. He gets teased by adults to be more sexual (i.e. misato and then kaji in the rebuild which /:) and is constantly put in a sexual eye by asuka because of her own conditioned views of sexuality. He is surrounded by it and confused by it and hes obviously uncomfortable but he also seems to be frustrated that being close to someone must mean something sexual and it confuses him further
Then kaworu comes along. Kaworu doesnt expect any of this from him. They sit together naked and its nothing sexual. They just hold hands. They sleep together and its not sexual. Shinji feels for the first time he can open up to someone. Kaworu just loves him and showers him in affection. They learn and talk together. Theres nothing sexual there but thats what makes it so special. Its why shinji is so happy. Hes surrounded by this push to be sexual and he finally founds someone who will love him and not necessarily want that. He found someone who helps him understand that he can be loved regardless of that. Kaworu loved him without any conditions
yikes. this is an ugly post, and we need to collectively move beyond this line of thinking, asap
newsflash: people don’t discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because “it wasn’t obvious enough” or “there wasn’t any sexual attraction” - people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because of the wonderful intersection between homophobia and misogyny. people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because they are obsessed with het ships; they are obsessed with asuka; they are obsessed with shoving asuka into het ships that sanitize and make her complacent, especially with the boy mc who has tremendous power over her, the boy mc who has tried to kill her twice, the boy mc who barged into her hospital room, saw her emaciated and comatose, and demanded that she help him despite of it, the boy mc who deliberately locked her hospital room door before masturbating to her body. people discredit the legitimacy of kawoshin because they are obsessed with the ‘de-bitchfiying narrative’ by which asuka, The Red Devil, is knocked down a few pegs. if you’ve ever read evageeks or other asushin-dominated spaces it becomes evidently clear that shipping asushin for asushinners isn’t so much about not finding “merit” in kawoshin – they don’t care if kawoshin was “subtle” or “overt” b/c it literally does not matter to them. they’re homophobes. – rather, it’s about asuka, and their obsession with asuka fulfilling the perfect waifu role, with shinji
but how interesting that this whole second paragraph conveniently neglects/erases the fact that shinji was pervasively objectifying+sexualizing asuka (and rei! and misato!) throughout the entire show. did you forget wall of jericho, where shinji lingers at asuka’s breasts before responding? (but shinji doesn’t act like kensuke and toji do around misato, so that must mean he doesn’t sexualize her, uwu!!) or when asuka falls in his bed and shinji ogles at her breasts before attempting to kiss her in her sleep? (but asuka forced him into that uncomfortable situation, uwu!!) or the entirety of eoe, where it’s revealed that shinji is deeply repulsed by overt displays of sexuality on part of asuka+misato but secretly gets off to them, because he objectifies them, because shinji cannot comprehend the fact that women can be more than a mother, a madonna, or a whore? where shinji yells at asuka, misato, and rei (yes! even rei!) for not attending to his needs while his subconscious projects smiling, placated, and most importantly naked images of asuka, misato, and rei gazing at him fondly in the foreground? ‘men/boys feeling uncomfortable w/ “female sexuality” whilst simultaneously objectifying them for it’ is a classic misogynist cocktail - i.e the boy frustrated at patriarchy who copes by retaliating against women - this theme resurrects itself in evangelion (and other works) over and over and over again
but is this all just… not mentioned because it taints smol birb infantilized fandom shinji? because it attacks the dominating narrative that vilifies asuka, the very same narrative that paints her as an abuser and/or “equally complacent in the asuka-shinji abuse”, the narrative that claims asuka levies power over shinji and not the other way around?
and of course shinji and kaworu can sit, bathe, and sleep together sans sexual objectification from either side – shinji loves kaworu. kaworu is the only character in the show shinji loved and respected. like, that’s the whole point. shinji, like all boys under patriarchy, objectifies girls/women as a desperate vie for control. shinji does not feel the need to exercise power over kaworu because they are equally matched, their love is equally matched. c+p’ing this to underscore:
Specifically, it is important that Shinji takes to Kaworu immediately and how Kaworu’s Position as being a boy affects the way Shinji receives him.
Shinji’s sexual assault on Asuka in EOE is 100% motivated by Asuka being a girl and Shinji being a boy, and is about power and overpowering someone who is more vulnerable than you. & When you truly, truly look at who Shinji has the power to hurt the most, it all leads to Asuka. He objectifies Asuka, he sexually abuses Asuka in the hospital room, he strangles Asuka twice. The way that Asuka protects herself verbally as a defense mechanism is contrasted with the extremely violent ways that Shinji seeks power over her.
These events do relate to Kaworu, too, because who immediately resolves to forgive Shinji and encourage Shinji to forgive himself for whatever sins he may have committed? The thing with that is that it’s not exactly Kaworu’s place to do that, but Asuka’s.
i am so tired of these infantilizing metas that implicitly suggest shinji’s assaults on asuka are not shinji’s fault, but asuka’s, metas that obscure and shove context neatly under the rug. shinji is an incredibly complex character, and he’s one of my personal favorites, but yikes. yikes. yikes.
i’ve been thinking a lot about misato, and why she resorts to alcohol and sex, specifically as means of self-medication/preservation
obviously there’s this tendency to characterize her as this errant drunkard, despite the fact that she only saves her binge-drinking for the home. she’s smart as hell - we know that misato hates the dark, that darkness begets all these traumatic memories of second impact – and i like to think that misato literally drinks herself to sleep every night, quite plainly self-medicating with alcohol, harnessing the ways in which it suppresses debilitating memories and emotions so she can function during her waking hours, as a military officer no less: a functional alcoholic in every sense of the term
and with regards to sex; how misato’s childhood is characterized by a very conservative, purity-fixated upbringing, and then the trauma of years long isolation in a bare-bones holding cell with no means of communication, no therapeutic companionship, just a couple of toys to keep her sound. for years. sex, for obvious reasons, so intensely connecting person to person in the most tangible form… misato’s going to find that especially useful in preserving function, feeling alive (”to prove i exist”) versus the isolation symbolically associated with death. (it’s interesting, then, when misato is shoved into a holding cell again in episode 21, kaji dies the very same day.)
but much the same with alcohol, misato exerts this unbelievable amount of self-control and restricts her sexual expression to just one person - yet shame and guilt plague her still, shame that shapes and defines how she thinks others are perceiving her as a woman. misato has self-surveillance, self-awareness, and self-policing in incredible spades. she’s only allowed herself to ‘medicate’ under very narrow, very specific contexts, and that’s pretty fascinating, i think
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 (”shinji is a depressed wimp!”), by their homophobia and sexualization of the eva girls
but on the other hand you have the people exclusively fixing all their attention on the boys and paying shallow lip service to the girls, whereby fandom love for kaworu and shinji churns out tons of meta/passionate discussion but asuka+rei+misato get squat except for some cute moe-y fanart/gifs tagged “queen!/princess!!/badass lady!!!” et al, where rei only gets serious 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/complexity, which is ironic given that the source material, you know, centers around girls/women navigating male-dominated spaces and being punished for their girlhood/womanhood, and a boy mc similarly suffering for his perceived effeminacy while also taking his frustrations out on girls because scarydeep internalized misogyny. life imitates art
So something I’ve noticed is the huge amounts of art/meta/gifsets showing Asuka & Rei and Kaworu & Rei as visual/mythological opposites, or talking about the differences between them wrt externalizing/internalizing mental processes.
While I think discussions about Asuka/Rei and Kaworu/Rei are important, I don’t think those two relationships are necessarily representative of a true oppositional force in the show? (I would label those relationships as a symbiotic duality that define one another in a vaguely codependent or complementary way.)
Anyways, here’s some meta about Kaworu and Asuka as Opposites and the space they occupy in the show as it relates to Shinji and misogyny.(god this is so long rip @ me)
This nails Asuka and Kaworu’s diametric opposition so well: why it’s thematically necessary that Kaworu and Asuka never get to interact, pertaining to who really gets to “forgive” Shinji within the larger narrative, and how gender circumscribes the right to unconditional love. Everyone needs to read this.
So, I recently discovered that the yellow shirt worn by Asuka during Episode 9, 15, and End of Evangelion is not actually Asuka’s shirt. It’s Misato’s.
I’m not pointing out this seemingly insignificant fact for the fun of it – because it definitely seems like a trivial, if not somewhat interesting, little detail – but like most things in Evangelion, Anno’s taken steps to imbue it with hidden and revealing character subtext. Eva often uses sequences of recurring, outwardly unimportant visual cues to tie some underlying theme to a character or characters. So why a yellow shirt? Turns out, it’s actually a pretty interesting symbol for womanhood and ill-fitting sexual expression.
More under the cut.
re: gendo ikari, and how gendo as a character is talked about within the fandom and the selective attention/dissonance that’s implicit in the framing of him solely as “The Bad Dad™”
when i think of gendo, i don’t necessarily zero in on his shitty parenting, because that’s basically a given for any parent in eva ever. i think of his using women – orienting women so that they directly (rei, naoko, ritsuko) or indirectly (misato, asuka) further his goals. obviously yui (and rei iii, since she’s ‘half’ yui) beatifically trumps his ace in eoe, but for the most part, he exercised unlimited amounts of emotional, physical, and psychological control on rei i+ii (and the whole thing is excruciatingly uncomfortable and suggestive in its visual language - something that i hardly, if ever, see people talk about); he used naoko/ritsuko for their minds and their bodies; it’s suggested that he deliberately capitalized on misato’s righteous anger by allowing her access into the paramilitary+gehrin, and what would later become nerv. remember when fumihiko tachiki said that gendo embodies the central core of evangelion, in that everyone’s moving around him while he stays still? passive, atypical control – even his relationship with shinji is unassertively neglectful. gendo doesn’t need to do anything because he’s relying on what’s dubbed ‘divine feminine energy’ (ultimately realized in lilith, his secret ace in the hole) to do his bidding for him.
i’m not very interested in gendo commentary/analysis/etc that acts like his neglectful parenting is the main cornerstone of his character, especially since that doesn’t uniquely differentiate him as a character from dr. katsuragi, naoko akagi, asuka’s father, etc. gendo being a terribad father isn’t the point – gendo is more so an expression of insidious power, masculinity, and immortality. and i think people stress on his parenting because shinji is the main character, and by being constantly privy to shinji’s adolescent frustrations and anxieties it’s harder to see how shinji and gendo are so fundamentally alike – more than anyone is willing or ready to admit. because what does shinji end up doing with his adolescent frustrations and anxieties? he takes them out on asuka, rei, and misato. the “gendo as the nondescript, one-note evil mastermind dad and shinji as the flawless cinnamon roll we must protect at all costs” is so hilariously ironic for that reason.
“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.
more thoughts on this. i don’t believe in the idea “if you like asuka more you like rei less”. it’s interesting how both rei and asuka suffer disproportional amounts of bodily harm in the show but the emotional focus/concern rests solely on shinji (both in-show and fandom).
asuka and rei’s dynamism plays out in how they interpret and react to their their “maternalness” and “materialness”: rei, contemplating on never becoming a mother (which is complicated by her connection with yui and lilith) - and then asuka, who hates menstruation, hates the idea of having children (complicated by her forcible rejection from her mother; rei is removed from motherhood in the bodily sense but closer “spiritually”, while asuka is the inverse)
then there’s rei and materialness (corporeality) vs the soul, how rei can’t retain memories after each resurrection (memories being connected bodily, stored in the brain), but she possesses base latent comprehension of emotions and relationships (as these are stored in the soul) – how rei morphs through bodily trauma and repeated physical resurrection, and then transcends corporeality completely, because rei is rei without a body. this is in contrast to asuka, who marrys her entire identity to her body, tries to find validation in the body, presentations of the body. when asuka’s body and her ability to use her body crumbles, asuka crumbles. rei grows/transcends with each instance of bodily trauma while asuka regresses/ebbs with each instance of bodily trauma.
asuka and rei compliment each other so beautifully in their characters and i love them both so much.
It’s worth noting that both SEELE and Gendo have mechanisms for eliminating the fundamental Death Anxiety in ways that Ernest Becker suggests are doomed to fail.
The terror of the mind/body dualism – which, in Evangelion, is symbolically represented by the Fruit of Knowledge and Fruit of Life – cannot be resolved through carnal reverence nor traditional religious means. Both are alternate versions of personal delusion in which existential meaning is sought through faulty channels: the body, which by definition cannot lend itself to spiritual transcendence, and monolithic faith systems, which are themselves imposed hero systems that cater deceitfully to the fear of oblivion they intend to absolve.
SEELE = a symbol for the classical religious pathway, in its singular control and perversion of spiritual goals. This is echoed by the imagery that represents SEELE, from the angel-like appearance of the Mass Production Evas to the biblical/numerical significance of the seven organization members.
Gendo Ikari’s agenda = a symbol for the bodily pathway, since his desire to reunite with Yui is precisely that: desire. His goals are rooted in the corporeal dimensions of human love and attachment, and he is clearly not satisfied with her occupation of a purely spiritual space, or at least not one that is separate from him inside Unit 01. His obsession with this physicality is so all-consuming that he creates a clone of her – Rei – to serve as the body vehicle for his ultimate plans.
The focus is then on Shinji, the despairing boy, the individual, to discover his own purpose and existential value for himself. And his only hope for doing this is by directly confronting the terror of oblivion, the terror of death and of fundamental aloneness, in all its forms. Only then can he truly transcend. There is a reason why he is the hero of the story.
