More rare scenes from Neon Genesis Evangelion: Second Impression, a 1997 Sega Saturn videogame distributed in Japan.
recurring visual imagery: rooftop encounter
evangelion: 1.11 you are (not) alone, dir. hideaki anno (2007)
evangelion: 2.22 you can (not) advance, dir. hideaki anno (2009)
i thought this was supposed to be a world without pain and uncertainty.
end of evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1997)
some interesting naming conventions in evangelion:
- asuka calls rei ‘yuutousei’, not ‘wondergirl’, which can be loosely translated as ‘honor student’
- shinji refers to asuka as simply ‘asuka’, but calls rei ‘ayanami’. likewise, rei refers to shinji as ‘ikari-kun’, adding the proper honorific at the end
- asuka calls misato ‘misato’ without honorifics. a child referring to an adult without honorifics is considered extremely impolite in japan - for point of comparison, shinji first calls misato ‘katsuragi-san’ and later eases into ‘misato-san’. before you say it’s because she’s german, asuka is steadfast in calling kaji ‘kaji-san’ (she even refers to him as ‘kaji-senpai’ on one occasion)
- misato usually calls shinji ‘shinji-kun’, but sometimes she’ll jokingly refer to him as ‘shin-chan’ - a petname typically reserved for toddlers. imagine toji getting called ‘to-chan’ and you’ll get an idea of how cheeky this is on misato’s part
- on a similar note, the petnames ritsuko and kaji reserve for each other are especially hilarious. ritsuko refers to kaji as ‘ryo-chan’ and kaji refers to ritsuko as ‘rit-chan’ (consequently, ritsuko is the only character in nge who calls kaji by his first name, which is ryoji). ‘rit-chan’ and ‘ryo-chan’ are weirdly infantilizing/overly-affectionate; they only do this within the earshot of misato with the obvious purpose of annoying the shit out of her
- gendo still refers to fuyutsuki as ‘fuyutsuki-sensei’ (’professor fuyutsuki’); everyone else calls him ‘vice commander fuyutsuki’. old habits die hard
- misato and kaji refer to each other on an entirely last-name basis; misato calls kaji ‘kaji-kun’ and kaji calls misato ‘katsuragi’
- there are many different ways to refer to your father in japanese, but shinji refers to gendo as ‘otousan’. typically, children will use ‘otousan’ when speaking to their father and ‘chi-chi’ when speaking of their father, but shinji makes no such distinction, which says something about the emotional distance there. (interestingly, misato flip-flops between ‘otousan’ and ‘chi-chi’ when speaking of her own father. when does she use otousan? when she’s talking to kaji about her father)
- rei never once calls asuka by her name. the name ‘asuka’ never leaves rei’s mouth once. rei refers to asuka as ‘the pilot of unit-02‘ or simply ‘anta’ (‘you’) when speaking directly to her
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)
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
recurring visual imagery: sleepover + aerial view
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)