A handwritten letter sent to Hideaki Anno from a Japanese middle school student. This message was featured during the tail end of End of Evangelion, among a quick series of communications that can only be read after slowing the movie down frame by frame. It reads:
I decided to send this letter because I am in awe after watching Evangelion. I’m a middle school student just like Shinji. I feel like I truly understand myself now, all because of Eva. I want to thank you helping me with that. Why do I say this? Explaining everything would take too long, but long story short, Shinji and I are very alike. We’re both depressed, helpless, and introverted. I remember watching Eva and seeing Shinji feel worry and anxiety and feeling the same. In Eva, they say over and over again how Shinji can’t run away from his pain or the unpleasant feelings that come attached. I feel that way too. In the beginning of the show, I really enjoyed the light feeling this anime gave me. But eventually, Ms. Ogata [FRAME CUTS LETTER OFF]
In the last scene, Shinji accepts everyone and they all congratulate him. That was a very nice ending and I felt very happy. Another friend [FRAME CUTS LETTER OFF]
This year I graduate from middle school. Now my focus is on being a high school student, and I’m going to put my best effort into doing well. I’m going to see the new Eva movie when it comes out, but I’m worried about what will happen to Shinji because I really enjoyed the last scene of the TV series. And thanks to Eva, I’ve started like myself more, and that has made me very happy. [FRAME CUTS LETTER OFF]
Mr. Anno, please keep working on Eva more. Thank you so much for everything!!
the 1967 version, specifically! for those who don’t know, king ghidorah is godzilla’s arch nemesis - a three headed, lightning wielding dragon who was, interestingly enough, not featured in anno’s own shin godzilla.
i never noticed until recently, but the episodes where ritsuko forgoes her signature red lipstick (ep 5, 8, 12) coincide with the days gendo is off-post, conducting business overseas, or otherwise awol.
The scribble next to young!Fuyutsuki reads “David Bowie.” Anno seems to have a love affair for British eletropop, what with Q!Ritsuko closely resembling Annie Lennox.
this is actually so wild to me because of the violence against women used in all three of these movies, with the body of the mother as the vessel for pain and suffering
+ aronofsky’s plagiarism is well established. he’s a hack who purchased the rights to satoshi kon’s perfect blue to steal wholesale scenes for black swan and requiem of a dream without fear of suit. knowing him it’s likely he turned to eoe for inspiration, and knowing anno he likely borrowed from karel thole likewise
Some insight into the guns used in Evangelion and the obscene amount of detail that goes into them.
Gendo carries a CZ-75 pistol. As its name implies, this is an old gun, designed in 1975 under a secret patent. Currently, this the most popular handgun in the Czech Republic, where it was first designed.
Misato carries a Heckler & Koch USP, a personal handgun distinguished from the standard issue Glock 17s all NERV personnel carry. The H&K is a German gun, implying that she’d obtained it during her military stay in Germany.
Ritsuko carries an R-92 revolver, an obscure conceal carry originally intended for Soviet security in the 1990s. It’s not widely distributed, and has been put into disuse after the advent of the Udar revolver, so it’s uncertain as to how Ritsuko acquired such a rare gun in the first place.
In the show, Kaji’s gun is never actually revealed even though he is shown adjusting it in Episode 15. In Rebuild, Kaji pulls out a Heckler & Koch USP at an unknown assailant. Because Eva is so painstakingly detail-oriented and because of Kaji’s uncharacteristic show of fury, this leads many Japanese fans to speculate that this H&K is actually Misato’s gun that Kaji is using temporarily for whatever reason.
animation errors in evangelion. there are probably more, but these are the ones that stuck out to me.
in the first scene, the dss choker around shinji’s neck disappears for a split frame before mark .09 cannonades the wunder’s interrogation room.
in the second scene, misato greets shinji wearing gold dangle earrings before they are replaced by her standard white pearls upon entering nerv hq.
attentive viewers might have noticed this, but ritsuko and kaji’s congratulations! do not feature cloud backgrounds, setting them at odds with the rest of the cast.
end of evangelion begins with a nameless NERV officer standing guard, wearing a beret that resembles misato katsuragi’s - since no other character has worn this hat it’s safe to say the semblance isn’t mere coincidence. a JSSDF soldier stabs the officer in the back just minutes before misato is shot in the back by another member of the JSSDF. the man collapses in his own pool of blood. so does mudstone. both the man and other beret-wearing officers are then blown to shreds in a manner evocative of misato’s horrific and untimely death.
I’ve never seen a protagonist - male or female - so effortlessly hide their ugly, unrepentant ego behind a veneer of warm compassion. Misato hits children, she hits wounded friends, she hits herself. My favorite Misato scene is when she just barely restrains herself from striking Shinji across the face, and slaps herself in redirected aggression. That’s her prerogative: redirected, impotent aggression, against the Angels and against herself.
Misato’s a walking advertisement of her own desperation, which probably nets her more sympathy than she otherwise might deserve. Her violence aggrandizes her, but behind the display is total disempowerment. She tries to win back the control she lost during her childhood and it gets her nowhere. Her authority is skin deep.
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
