In case you haven’t heard, Khara (the animation studio working on Eva Final/3.0+1.0) is liveblogging their progress as the film nears completion. Based on their tweets, they’re currently in the editing stage of the film (yes, that’s the back of Anno’s head there), and clearly have no qualms about interacting with fans. If you want to keep abreast of Final’s latest developments, I’d keep an eye on this account for when they inevitably set the hype train in motion.
in order to centralize my unrefined NGE-related thots
The child, in NGE, is positioned towards the border of a kind of humanity, which allows its intimacy with its mecha, a quasi-human materialization of his or her mother’s soul. If we conjure the stereotypical figure attached to what Sylvia Winter has called “monohumanist Man,” we see quickly that he is a tall, muscular, European man, not unlike that depicted in Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Specifying this generality further, we envision his full control of language, bodily ability and a divide between self-and-other. Sexualized and slimmed out, as in many anime depicting the young teenage age group, NGE’s children are visually marked as other to this imagery, a point that is dramatized whenever we see one of the characters next to one of the humanoid robots. In dominant ideology, the child is positioned on the way towards this position, but not yet with full access to its promises.
In Lacan’s psychoanalysis, the child does not fully suffer the “human condition,” insofar as he has not fully fallen into language, nor fully coordinated his body in aggressive relation to the mirror’s image and the other. Positioned on the road to the human but not yet at its high peak, the child also stands near the border of a distinction between bios and zoe, the Greek terms for life Giorgio Agamben developed as the qualified life of the citizen on one hand, and the natural life and life processes categorized as outside of political on the other. Weaponized in service of political maneuvers, yet with no ability to advocate for themselves politically, children in NGE contrast Agamben’s figure of the homo sacer, or the man who can be killed by anyone but not sacrificed. In their paradoxically protected status, Shinji and Asuka cannot necessarily be killed by anyone, and are irreplaceable, but they are positioned as sacrificial in the broader political machinations of Gendo, NERV and Seele; Rei similarly cannot be killed by anyone, but her life is produced in the space of the show as reproducible and fungible, and thus not her life at all. As numerous moments in the show demonstrate, because of her life’s artificiality, she is also not ideally suited to operate the EVAs, in a sense because she shares too much in common with them, on the level of existence. This fact is additionally what produces the final failure of the adult-driven, world-ending project. In thinking about the shows discontinuous borrowing from Christian mythology, then, Asuka and Shinji are conceived of as chosen forms of life, not unlike agnus dei, Christ-like figures or Lambs of God. While Asuka’s body cannot fulfill this holy program due to a mental breakdown and subsequent battle defeat (though she is pierced with the Lance of Longinus, like Jesus…), Shinji’s body and the EVA he operates ultimately do come to the precipice of this sacrificial glorification, where he are elevated above the earth on a glowing crucifix. (The swift disjuncture between Asuka and Shinji’s storylines and mental states towards the end of the TV series ultimately comes down to gender, as yet another factor that determines the child’s proximity to or distance from capital-m Man).
In other words, NERV’s project requires human blood, but of a specific kind. The notion of the cyborg might also be said to need the same, since the hybridity on which it rests must first conceive as its constituent parts as fundamentally distinct prior to their glorified combination. This is intimated by the genesis of the Eva’s themselves, which are driven by “engines” containing the souls of the pilots mothers, extracted once their bodies disintegrate into the fluid called LCL. (As exemplified in the infamous scene where Unit-01, motored by Shinji’s mother’s soul, goes berserk, mothers are also depicted as short of the status of Man). While it’s hard to call NGE a critique of anything, it’s clear that its position on the possibility of a post-human or cyborg future is ambivalent at best. The result of the attempt, driven by adults, is continual death, precarity and, ultimately, desolation. The show seems to meditate on how children fare in actually any imagination of the future, and the ways in which they are violently instrumentalized to bring about such futurity.
[lol what next…]
whenever people pit one eva character against another, call one a villain to name another the victim, blame one to justify the other, cheer as their favored one lunges to strangle his supposed abuser (you know what i’m talking about), i have to wonder if they skipped through this entire scene:
REI: You never understood anything.
SHINJI: I thought this was supposed to be a world without pain and uncertainty.
REI: That’s because you thought everyone else felt the same as you do.
SHINJI: You betrayed me! You betrayed my feelings!
REI: You misunderstood from the very beginning. You just believed what you wanted to believe.look, anno is often vague and ambiguous but not in this case. it’s all there written out for you.
see, shinji has lived in a closed world even before the instrumentality lets him turn that into a physical reality. his is a world where only his views and his feelings are valid, with others reduced to paper cutouts, not allowed to be as complex, as flawed, as unsure, as hurt as he is. only when forced by the dissolution of the barriers between souls does he see that others are just as real, and even then he rages against the revelation and tries to exonerate himself: “how can I ever understand you if you won’t say anything? you never talk to me, but you expect me to understand you! that’s impossible!”
to which rei replies: “did you even try, ikari?” so, are you trying?
eva isn’t the kind of show where you can conveniently place yourself in the protagonist’s shoes and have the moral of the story fed to you in predigested form. shinji is an unreliable narrator at best, and so are all the other characters. to varying degrees, they all failed to understand, they all believed only what they wanted to believe, and that’s precisely the point. in carl jung’s words: “people will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.” but face their own souls they must once instrumentality begins. suddenly, the person next to you is as real to you as you are to yourself, their suffering no longer something you can turn away from, and that’s frightening, isn’t it? because suddenly the villains become the victim, the victim becomes the villain. suddenly you’re confronted with the reality that your interpretation of your own experiences could be entirely wrong (cue shinji’s “i thought this was supposed to be a world without pain and uncertainty”)
so the next time you watch eva, question each character’s intention, especially your favorite ones, the ones you identify with. don’t let them get away with believing they’re right. don’t allow them the luxury of always saying the truth about themselves or others. don’t allow them, and yourself, the luxury of writing off the unpleasant parts. don’t deceive yourself. question everything. after all, to give you the second part of jung’s comment: “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
that, imo, is the greatest thing that eva has made me do.
i feel u buddy
#so many people have reblogged this without knowing it’s hideaki anno’s cat and it’s weird #like this is not just any relatable cat this cat belongs to the man who made neon genesis evangelion
2018 update: Per Moyoco Anno’s twitter, Anno’s cat passed away on March 9th. He would’ve turned 14 years old soon - his name was Mighty Jack. rip to the most iconic.
anno wanted to kill toji off - he was supposed to die in episode 18 when unit 01 crushed his entry plug. but anno was forced to uphold two conditions on the part of eva’s production company, king records, to ensure his show would get airtime:
Takekuma: Toji lost his leg. Why didn’t he die?
Anno: I couldn’t kill him.
Takekuma: Of course.
Anno: No, um, I made a certain promise, though I think I might have broken it by now. From the start, when we drew up the plot, I met with the producer, from King Records, who told me, “I will approve the plan you submit, whatever it is, because I have faith in you. However, there will be two conditions. The first one is that you will remain with me for five years. You cannot, for example, do a film version with another producer. The additional condition is that you will not kill any children. The adults can die, but I don’t want children dying.” Because of that condition I couldn’t kill Toji. (interview excerpt from schizo/parano by mitsunari oizumi)
as anno alludes, sometime between episode 18 and episode 24 anno went fuck what da teacher said proper and killed off kaworu on a 6:30 primetime weekday timeslot. king records reportedly lost it and demanded to clear all storyboards before subsequent episodes would be aired.
recurring visual imagery: door sign + home alone
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)
if you think western/english evangelion analysis tends to go off the rails, you haven’t seen jpn level analysis. the japanese fandom is vibing to a higher frequency; they’re tuned into energies beyond our grasp or comprehension. just a small sample of what i mean:
i wouldn’t be surprised if Anno used this scene as direct inspiration for the end of NGE
Neanne Greengables Evangelion
he did! i think it’s important to note that the original anne of green gables is widely considered to be the most adapted story of all time, influencing creators from at least 20 countries since the novel’s release 109 years ago.
end of evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1997)
love and pop, dir. hideaki anno (1998)