misato as she features in 3.33 feels right to me. this is the same old misato, without the forced, over the top, cheery veneer of bullshit she labored so hard under throughout her 20s and 30s. i cringe at the suggestion misato’s changed or seen a personality overhaul in Q - in way of evidence most people reference the “cruelty” with which she treats shinji in the movie. i would invite them to remember the myriad of times misato was actually, legitimately cruel to shinji in NGE/1.0/2.0:

1. threatening to slap him across the face in 1.0,
   
2. slapping him in the manga,
   
3. screaming at him in episode 6,
   
4. manhandling him in EOE,
   
5. sexually abusing him, not once but twice, as the official eoe film book reveals
   

in a surprising departure, q!misato behaves comparatively tame, suggesting at least to me that she’s matured enough to realize that bullying shinji, strong-arming him, or forcing her will upon him doesn’t work. it’s ineffective at its best, abusive at its worst.

misato sternly instructed that shinji stay in his lane - you get the sense she wants to create a wide swarth of distance between them, emotionally and physically. it’s as though misato’s come to the realization she’s not good for shinji - not good for his mental health, not good at motivating him, not good at placating him or cheering him up (that’s probably why she allowed sakura to chaperone him - sakura is nice, friendly, and open, aka all the things misato tried to be in 1.0 and 2.0). misato is doing shinji a favor and not subjecting him to her exhausting, overpowering, and often-selfish neurosis. as far as “cruelty” goes, i’d much rather have that then the screaming, slapping, (sexually abusing).

shinji is treated exceptionally well for someone responsible for the deaths of untold millions of people, at least logistically speaking. sakura kindly chaperones him around, he gets to roam semi-freely, he’s not in solitary confinement - he gets to speak to misato and ritsuko, let alone demand questions of them, to which ritsuko answers fully, truthfully, and in good faith. worse things happen to real life kids who get caught stealing from their neighborhood grocery store. some of you all act as if misato/wille threw him in a 5x5 pen and told him to eat his own shit for nutrients. when UN soldiers caught kaji stealing a can of beans from a warehouse post-impact, they proceeded to A) beat the shit out of him B) pin him to the floor with their boots and C) murder his only remaining family and friends in cold blood. compared to that, shinji is living the high life. and any angst he (rightfully, understandably) experiences, is not of misato’s doing. 

rayanamei:

i’ve mentioned this a little before too — while i’m rewatching this time around, i keep noting times where women and girls respond to moments of crisis and decide to assume responsibility. a few episodes in particular i just rewatched, 7 through 9, repeat this pattern pretty strongly.

there’s the corporate dinner to showcase the launch of jet alone, where we watch ritsuko press the company executive about the wide-reaching dangers of nuclear power, as well as assert her own knowledge and come up against public humiliation. later on, during the display of jet alone taking its first steps, we watch as the robot glitches. i’m gonna bring in my favorite analysis of glitch here: “a singular dysfunctional event that allows insight beyond the customary, omnipresent and alien computer aesthetics.” olga goriunova and alexei shulgin describe the glitch as an event — “a mess that is a moment“ — that users receive as unexpected, that may or may not come from a program error.

for jet alone, the program runs just as expected, exactly as told, but quickly its power begins to expand further that of the executive as well as any staffman there. though control of the program extends beyond the control of any personnel present, the robot runs exactly as it should be. like ritsuko reports after observing from the sidelines what we later learn is an orchestrated crisis unfold, “everything was done according to the plan.” and like a glitch does, the moment brings forth the structure of the systems from which it came. we view a montage of phone calls of men deferring responsibility, requiring approval — bureaucracy functioning at its finest as a procedural structure that splinters accountability and sanctions death.

we watch misato get fed up and take on the responsibility of shutting down the robot herself, and i read her stepping up as responding to the moral failure of the bureaucratic process by acting on what she describes as a moral imperative. she tells shinji, “i’ve got to give it my best shot, you know? my conscience won’t let me do otherwise.“

in asuka’s debut, we watch men assert dominance not through administrative processes, but through claiming sovereignty over the sea. when misato requests access to a power socket on deck, the captain states, “we’re in charge of anything on the sea. follow orders without question.“ even in a situation of almost certain death for both others and himself, the captain refuses to hand authority to misato and, by extension, nerv. misato says it best: “who gives a damn about your procedures?! this is an emergency!” here, asuka comes in and decides to take the opportunity to make her debut even grander, disregarding any potential pushback from the captain or even misato. here, we watch a girl decide to bypass any official authorities and clearance and maximize the moment as hers.

going back to the morning of the corporate showcase, we return to misato’s apartment to shinji washing dishes, then turn his head timidly and ask misato if she’s really gonna make his parent-teacher conference. she replies, “of course!” followed by, “don’t worry about that. it’s my responsibility.” he blinks back — “responsibility?”

in this moment, i took him as both receiving misato’s sense of responsibility as negating any care for him and, like many times in the series, grappling with where he fits in matrices of accountability to others, misogyny, and boyhood. it turns out, his training into manhood is running successfully too. in response to asuka voicing frustration about getting ordered to share her first battle in japan with shinji, shinji replies in what i heard as a pretty mellow and chipper tone: “that’s okay! that’s just procedures. you know!” in line with ongoing processes of inducting and training shinji into manhood throughout the series, the approaches he takes in interacting with others morphs to both contort and fit into forces of manhood that in turn shape him. though not (yet) the condescension and reverence for bureaucracy of the company executive, nor (yet) the blunt demands of the fleet captain, shinji, who always does as he’s ordered, attempts to placate a determined asuka, severing possibilities for her intervention by reminding her of and therefore upholding the limitations of their world. that’s just procedure (which is actually, really, misato’s, a person’s decision, as with any procedure and bureaucratic process)!

during this rewatch, i’ve noticed moments where i consider how women and girls respond to the violences of manhood, authority, and administrative forms of governance. i assume in evangelion and in the world around me a constant state of emergency in which accountability becomes dispersed, and women and girls bear the consequences. i take that note as a push to all together carry our responsibilities — to ourselves and each other.

some of my favorite obscure 90s evangelion cameos 

top to bottom: kareshi kanojo no jijou, seikimatsu darling, gasaraki

it’s done! this is a gift i commissioned from the talented vwyn19 to my insanely smart friend @khalayak. it’s a redraw of the petit eva calendar illustration feat. misato, ritsuko, and kaji getting absolutely fucking sloshed at a picnic. in this house, we stan a trio

kōshoku ichidai otoko/the sensualist, dir. yukio abe (1991)
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)

recurring visual imagery: head shake + disbelief
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)
end of evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1997)

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

maggisystem:

whenever people pit one eva character against another, call one a villain to name another the victim, blame one to justify the other, cheer as their favored one lunges to strangle his supposed abuser (you know what i’m talking about), i have to wonder if they skipped through this entire scene:

REI: You never understood anything.
SHINJI: I thought this was supposed to be a world without pain and uncertainty.
REI: That’s because you thought everyone else felt the same as you do.
SHINJI: You betrayed me! You betrayed my feelings!
REI: You misunderstood from the very beginning. You just believed what you wanted to believe.

look, anno is often vague and ambiguous but not in this case. it’s all there written out for you.

see, shinji has lived in a closed world even before the instrumentality lets him turn that into a physical reality. his is a world where only his views and his feelings are valid, with others reduced to paper cutouts, not allowed to be as complex, as flawed, as unsure, as hurt as he is. only when forced by the dissolution of the barriers between souls does he see that others are just as real, and even then he rages against the revelation and tries to exonerate himself: “how can I ever understand you if you won’t say anything? you never talk to me, but you expect me to understand you! that’s impossible!”

to which rei replies: “did you even try, ikari?” so, are you trying?

eva isn’t the kind of show where you can conveniently place yourself in the protagonist’s shoes and have the moral of the story fed to you in predigested form. shinji is an unreliable narrator at best, and so are all the other characters. to varying degrees, they all failed to understand, they all believed only what they wanted to believe, and that’s precisely the point. in carl jung’s words: “people will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.” but face their own souls they must once instrumentality begins. suddenly, the person next to you is as real to you as you are to yourself, their suffering no longer something you can turn away from, and that’s frightening, isn’t it? because suddenly the villains become the victim, the victim becomes the villain. suddenly you’re confronted with the reality that your interpretation of your own experiences could be entirely wrong (cue shinji’s “i thought this was supposed to be a world without pain and uncertainty”)

so the next time you watch eva, question each character’s intention, especially your favorite ones, the ones you identify with. don’t let them get away with believing they’re right. don’t allow them the luxury of always saying the truth about themselves or others. don’t allow them, and yourself, the luxury of writing off the unpleasant parts. don’t deceive yourself. question everything. after all, to give you the second part of jung’s comment: “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

that, imo, is the greatest thing that eva has made me do.

ritsuko, misato, and kaji helping you learn

recurring visual imagery: door sign + home alone
neon genesis evangelion, dir. hideaki anno (1995)