Ritsuko Akagi by Hiroaki Samura
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
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 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.
it’s been a while since i’ve dropped some freebies! here’s all 4 volumes of the official evangelion LINE stickers, full sized and transparent. feel free to use for just about anything.
all 167 stickers are sorted by character/pairing. this post will be updated if any new stickers are released – enjoy!
fixation (german: fixierung) is a concept in human psychology to denote object relationships with and attachments to things in general persisting from childhood into adult life.
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)
Anno Hideaki has often admitted to drawing much of his Evangelion inspiration from vintage UK sci-fi and media (check out the character comparisons charts for Gerry Anderson’s UFO or The Avengers British original, to name a few) but this one takes the cake.
