Anno doing what he does best: iterative foreshadowing. Misato, Ritsuko, and Kaji are the only characters that die by the gun, and these two scenes hint at all three deaths with laserpoint exactness. Look at the position of Misato’s gun: she aims at the back of Kaji’s head and the crown of Ritsuko’s spine. Ritsuko later dies from a gunshot wound through the spine, and well – Kaji’s corpse isn’t shown, but you can make the required leaps of imagination. 

Misato confronts both Kaji and Ritsuko in the deepest belly of NERV, which is where she will eventually die. Both Kaji and Ritsuko cross-reference each other as they double-cross. Consider the history between the trio and you have what is best summed up by Kureishi: “Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history.”

recurring visual imagery: distance + gendo’s office
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)

recurring visual imagery: tracksuit + aggression
evangelion: 1.11 you are (not) alone, dir. hideaki anno (2007)
evangelion: 3.33 you can (not) redo, dir. hideaki anno (2012)

misato as the mother, shinji’s introspective
end of evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1997)

One arm across the side - Misato’s trauma in visual language, the inescapable and self-recurring cycle of lived pain. It starts bloodied and ends bloodied.

recurring visual imagery: sleepover + aerial view
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)

recurring visual imagery: downtime + recreation
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)

recurring visual imagery: scenery + phonespeak
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)

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. 

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.