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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
This world I give, for you to live
Blessed are the ones that can live in peace
Forever, and ever
fiendswithbenefits inspired
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.
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.
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 yui ikari more
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 events in 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?
we need to talk more about yui ikari more