One of the cooler epiphanies from Japanese fandom. The areas where Unit-02 sustained damage in End of Evangelion correspond nicely with the duct-taped injury sites on Asuka’s plugsuit in Q.

Notice too the cat sticker on Maya’s laptop (better seen here) and Asuka’s corresponding cat helmet.

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: charge + spilled blood
end of evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1997)

the layers

sir-argues-a-lot:

Honestly, I’m surprised it took me this long to pick up on what Rei’s feelings towards Asuka really are.

She doesn’t express herself, but apart from some biting remarks, Rei seemed to be legitimately indifferent towards her, while Asuka was pretty clear in her dislike of Rei, and made it explicitly known to us.

But honestly? Rei hated Asuka much sooner and much harder than vic versa. In this scene from episode 14, also known as the clipshow we don’t talk about, Rei makes it very clear that she absolutely despises the color red. She associates it with blood and mankind in her monologue, but given its prominence in the show, there are at least two noteworthy elements heavily associated with the color red.

The first, of course, is Asuka, who is drenched with red in everything she does. This association is easily interpreted as Rei secretly despising Asuka from the start, even if she never acted on it. In this case, it’s interesting to note that while Asuka was rather rude in putting Rei down, Asuka did initially make several genuine attempts to befriend Rei: the most obvious effort in episode 12, when Asuka went out of her way to ensure that Rei could join them in their celebratory dinner. Meanwhile, Rei simply didn’t give a shit about the redhead. She’s ice cold.

The other notable instance of the color red in association with Rei is seen within Rei herself, specifically her eye color. Eyes are the window to the soul, and the use of the color red here is largely symbolic. (A similar instance of such symbolism with regard to eyes is seen with Gendo, whose shades metaphorically close him off from the world.)

Rei’s soul, as we later learn, is not truly hers, but in fact comes from Lilith, a monster which isn’t human at all. Rei detests this, and tries to assert that she is her own self, even if she cannot shake of the feeling of this “wrong" presence within her, serving as one of her primary personal conflicts throughout. Essentially, Rei hates this presence inside her; Rei hates her “soul". Rei hates herself.

It’s quite an interesting visual metaphor, and the subtle allusion to Rei’s actual feelings helps to add to her character.

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.

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

Rare animated scenes from Neon Genesis Evangelion: Second Impression, a 1997 Sega Saturn videogame distributed in Japan.

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!

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