qmisato:

“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.

This scene is pretty amazing. We know that a huge part of Misato’s inner turmoil is that she cannot face against her father’s killers head on – instead, she must exact her revenge on the Angels vicariously through Shinji, Asuka, and Rei. But in this one moment, framed in such a way that disturbs our sense of magnitude, Misato is forced into lethal proximity with what she hates the most and stares it down anyway. She doesn’t run like the others. Notice that grip on her cross – subconsciously protecting her father’s memory, his only essence, over her own life. In the tradition of ars moriendi, to die a good death is to die as you’ve lived: face death with resolution and maintain your deeply held convictions till the end. Shinji comes swooping in to fend off The End at the very last second, but it’s a good reminder that for Misato, killing Angels isn’t about saving lives or protecting the world - it’s personal. Not so noble – Evangelion being the kind of show that it is – but it is compelling. 

i’ve been getting a lot of messages about ogata/”episode 1 takes place on june 22nd” and how it lines up (or doesn’t) with the week by week breakdown. under the assumption that episode 1 takes place on june 22nd, i attempted to replicate the timeline using the dates we are explicitly given in the show and… it doesn’t add up. basically: there’s no way june 22nd works as episode 1 if you refer to the few dates and times listed in the show. let me explain why!

ok, so we have a good amount of in-canon dates to work with to verify “june 22th” – namely september 11th (israfel’s defeat), and operation yashima, which takes place on a full moon. we know that 22 days after rei is injured during unit 00′s berserk, episode 5 begins. so let’s say that shinji arrives at tokyo-3 on june 22nd – this necessitates that episode 5 would have to occur around june 11th per ritsuko’s statements in episode 2. but that can’t be right, because june 11th is waning crescent, not a full moon. by extension, we know operation yashima must occur at the end of july, i.e midnight of the 31/august 1, to make everything fit in narratively sound order.

we also have september 11th, the day of israfel’s defeat. i’ve worked backwards from that day, again under the assumption that episode 1 begins on june 22, and it also doesn’t fit, per hikari’s comments about rei’s school absences and a whole host of other very small and itemized details that i wouldn’t list out here for brevity’s sake.

ogata mentioned that she got this june 22nd date from someone else, who supposedly got it from a supplemental non-official magazine. i invite anyone to try their hand at this and see if it makes sense, because i couldn’t get everything to work in a way that doesn’t blatantly contradict canon dates. and at very least, i’m very confident that everything from september 11/ onward is accurate, or as accurate you can reasonably get with a series like evangelion.

Splitting of The Breast is remarkable for its striking, supersaturated visuals. It’s no accident that the episode is marked by such high contrast, light and dark, when the subject matter involves Shinji embarking on a psychoanalytical voyage within the surrealist confines of a shadow. The “angel of the week”, Leliel, is a massive floating behemoth in black and white – diametric opposites – and likewise the entire episode is built upon complementary inter-textual contrasts: the rational vs emotional, parent vs child, boy vs girl, physicality vs the soul. After 15 episodes of relative tame and exposition, Episode 16′s harsh colors, formalist diagonal structure, and oppressive shadows allow the more arcane Freudian undertones to finally take their command.

it crushes my spirit that the adults of evangelion aren’t talked about more. especially misato; she’s intended to be the secondary protagonist yet is talked of as though she were a supporting character, a sidekick, or a deuteragonist - forever doomed to be a talking point to the extent that her actions motivate shinji’s personal growth

whatever it is that makes evangelion good, misato, ritsuko, kaji, yui, fuyutsuki, and gendo are just as emblematic as the pilot kids. all of these characters have compelling and interesting stories of their own. but there’s nary a whisper when the adults get misinterpreted among casual and serious fans alike; the show goes to great lengths to debunk a lot of popular fandom interpretations that persist to this day (for example, think about how many people assume misato is a slut with a high “body count” when the show explicitly mentions her only having been with one man)

if you’re watching nge, focus on the eva adults! their backstories, their motivations, the parts of themselves they keep hidden or concealed. there’s plenty to learn and love by watching misato, ritsuko, and kaji’s old friendship that you can’t get by watching shinji, asuka, and rei interact with each other. you’re missing out, otherwise

Misato and Shinji are extremely afraid of being hurt. They both are unsuitable–lacking the positive attitude for what people call heroes. But in any case, Misato and Shinji are the heroes of this stories. - Hideaki Anno

his scene is loaded. there’s a whole constellation of themes that are finally being realized here, as shinji and misato – the two protagonists of NGE – share one of their more subtly powerful exchanges before everything goes to proverbial shit. this is the last ‘real’ moment of the show; come episode 25 and the audience is catapulted right into the throes of instrumentality.

a lot of people don’t know why misato says what she says, and what it actually means - for her, for shinji, and for kaworu (and others!). here’s my attempt at teasing some of that out.

discussions of self-alienating love, suicidal idealization, becker, feuerbach, and various other revelations below.

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I don’t see a lot of people talking about this scene. Maybe it’s the tendency to refer to Misato as The Mama Bear™ over the Eva kids, conveniently failing to mention that by Eva kids, we really mean Shinji Ikari. Asuka never gets Mama Bear treatment from Misato, and this scene is in many ways emblematic of the real dynamic between the two: which is marked by a whole lot of indifference, neglect, and a latent sense of casual disdain – mostly on Misato’s end. Granted, Misato never actually comes out and says “Asuka, I care about Shinji a lot more than I care about you,” but after watching this scene I don’t think she even needs to.

Here’s Asuka having a very thinly-veiled, very public, very loud breakdown in Misato’s own washroom, complete with a heated display of water-basin flinging. The most Misato does is, well, nothing, if you disregard the glaring – which is exactly the point. Misato’s recent share of shitty life experiences aside, it doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to figure that she would’ve made an effort to reach out to Shinji if he were in Asuka’s place, just as she did in Episode 23, propelled by little more than a hunch that Shinji would be troubled after Rei II’s death. 

Once you peel away all the pleasant pretenses and platitudes behind a lot of their initial conversations, this scene makes a lot of sense. Asuka has always framed Misato as both a rival and an exemplary in all its counter-intuitive glory. For Misato, Shinji’s been the pilot whom she feels most comfortable flexing her quasi-maternal muscles, precisely because Shinji is a boy, and Misato thinks she knows exactly what he needs from her, by virtue of Misato being a woman. Asuka is the problem, the conundrum, the puzzle Misato never really bothers to work through, up until the very end.

We can even see shades of this dynamic play out in Evangelion 3.0 (which is more or less an answer to Episodes 22-24 in NGE), where it looks like Asuka has now graduated to overt dislike of Q!Misato and her modus operandi (fuck your Eva, the mission is your top priority… you get the point.)

ᴇᴠᴀɴɢᴇʟɪᴏɴ ǫ: ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ (ɴᴏᴛ) ʀᴇᴅᴏ ᴄᴀsᴛ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴠɪᴇᴡs

During the 2012 Q premiere, an exclusive interview pamphlet – which had the cast explain their character’s role in Rebuild and their personal thoughts on the Evangelion franchise – was made available to the Japanese audience. Three years later, and here they are –  translated in English for the very first time. There’s a lot of information to be gleaned in these, including: 

• Asuka’s seiyuu is certain Asuka Langley Shikinami will have a happy ending in Evangelion: 3.0+1.0.
• Mari’s seiyuu claims that it is possible to figure out where Mari “comes from” just by viewing Q.
  
• Misato Katsuragi is Sakura Suzuhara’s role model, according to information provided by Sakura’s seiyuu.
• Koji Takao’s seiyuu verifies that Kaji is indeed alive in the Q!verse.
• Hideaki Anno disclosed Rebuild’s “hidden nature” to Akira Ishida (Kaworu’s seiyuu) way back in 1.0.
• And more!

Very special thanks goes out to my friend Freshy (longtime JJBA translator) for tackling these. Enjoy.

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There’s a lot of subtleties in 3.0, one of them being how Anno uses spacials and dialogue to show how the main cast has undergone an implicit generational shift. Misato takes on a role that was originally Gendo’s (emphasized further with her visual upgrade, unfeeling shades and all), and Ritsuko takes on a role that was originally Fuyutsuki’s – others have already pointed out that this “evolution” was quietly alluded to during 2.0. (And by extension, Gendo and Fuyutsuki has taken on SEELE’s role upon SEELE’s demise, Asuka has taken on Misato’s role, Mari has taken on Kaji’s role, so on and so forth.)

It’s hard to say what this means for 3.0+1.0 – especially in reference to Misato and Shinji’s now-broken dynamic – but it’s definitely worth noting (and speculating) on.