recurring visual imagery: charge + spilled blood
end of evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1997)
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.”
IN THE SUMMER OF 1997, I REMEMBER MY YOUTH, Kameda Yoshimichi
This beautiful Misato Katsuragi illustration was drawn by one of Eva 3.0′s Key Animators for the 2014 Khara calendar release. Of particular note is the hidden figures in the background, whose identity invites interpretation - we have what appears to be a college-aged Kaji, a creepy visage, a Rei-like apparition, a Gendo looking figure, and the face of an unknown young girl.
Even more interesting is the word for youth (性春), which contains the character for sex/one’s nature - rendering the title an incredibly complex triple entendre.
you know the recurring gag about misato besting the odds of .000001% isn’t a joke - the reason she ‘just so happens’ to ‘fluke’ her way to victory is because seele has the dead sea scrolls, a prophetic text that fortells of every angel defeat ahead of time, and the magi was created under their clout so that nerv may be kept simultaneously unsuspecting, reasonably motivated, and constantly ready for death
the joke isn’t that misato just so happens to best the odds, the joke is that the odds of defeating an angel are always 100%, every time, and in believing that they’re .0001% misato plays right into seele’s hands, every time
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.
it just hit me that the first time we see shinji, he’s trying to call misato but there’s no signal - aka trying to communicate with her and failing - and that’s pretty meaningful and if the writers were so genius that they did it on purpose i’ll be forever impressed
shinji calls two people in the show: misato (episode 1) and gendo (episode 11) - in both instances his calls don’t go through or disconnect halfway in and both misato and gendo represent conflicting/addled parental authority. the telephone is nge’s interpersonal stage prop (misato gives shinji a cellphone with the hopes that he uses it to make friends at school, launching a discussion re: the hedgehog’s dilemma when he doesn’t) and helps to inform a lot of eva’s inter-cast relationships so 👁 🔍 whenever it makes an appearance
something interesting that i realized about misato katsuragi is that she’s essentially a reflection of the state of the world. her life is inexorably tied to the angels and their effect on humanity. when she was young, she was ‘whole’, much like humanity was with the angels being dormant, until second impact happens and she loses her father, and likewise the planet loses a sizable amount of its population
in her college and adult years, misato appears playful and lighthearted, but we know that’s just a facade: she’s destroyed by the loss of her father and totally consumed by her revenge against the the angels. likewise, life goes on seemingly undisturbed in tokyo-III, but the damage left behind from second impact and the angels is evidenced in the empty oceans, derelict buildings, and destructive climate change
in 3.0, misato is cold and calculating, lacking any apparent compassion at all. likewise, the world is cold and unforgiving as are its remaining inhabitants. basically each impact heavily alters the landscape of the planet and we see these changes reflected in how misato changes over the course of the series