#big rigg mahoney

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 09

Okay, okay! I'll tell you all about it. You might want to sit down first. This will take a few minutes...

Last time, Asuka arrived in Japan to serve as the latest Eva pilot. She's already the most popular girl in school, and for some reason Suzuharu and Big Rigg Mahoney have started taking photos of her and selling them to her admirers. Well, the reason is money, obviously. That, and just being little shits.

Asuka seems to revel in the attention, but only because she feels entitled to it. She finds the other pilot, Rei, and introduces herself. Rei isn't particularly impressed.

Asuka wants to be friends, and Rei asks why, then says she'll do it if ordered by their superiors at NERV. Cold.

Oh, hey, remember Kaji? That asshole from the previous episode? The one who ditched the others and delivered that mysterious package to Gendo Ikari? Well, he's staying at the base for some reason. He seems to want to re-start his romance with Misato, but that doesn't stop him from just groping Ritsuko like they've been married for a year. Fuck Kaji, is what I'm trying to say.

Moving on, the real story of this episode is another Angel attack. This is the seventh one overall, and the fifth we've seen since the series started. Like the fifth Angel, this one is headed straight for the NERV base, but they're still reeling from that battle, so they can't afford to let it get that close. Instead, Misato deploys Units 01 and 02 to the shoreline, where they'll intercept the Angel as it makes landfall. If they can double-team the thing, they should be able to overwhelm it before it gets a chance to do anything.

That's the plan, anyway, but Asuka has her own plan, since she wants to make a big debut in Unit 02. She jumps into the surf and cuts the angel in half. Good job, except...

It splits into two monsters and continues attacking. Whoops!

We skip ahead to some time after the battle, but the photos tell the story. NERV was completely humiliated, because they had to call the UN for support. The UN dropped an "N2 mine" on the Angel to halt its advance. This is the same weapon used on the Third Angel from Episode 1. I should note that it didn't work at all in Episode 1, so I don't understand why it helps now. Each new Angel seems to be more powerful than the last, and this one defeated two Evas, which is unprecedented.

The UN's attack managed to burn off 28% of its mass, which temporarily incapacitated it, but it's only a matter of time before it regenerates and picks up where it left off. Okay, I guess that's fair, since the Third Angel needed to regenerate after getting N2'ed, but it didn't take very long. This one needs about a week.

Being, you know, literal children, Asuka and Shinji fail to learn anything from this debacle. Asuka defied orders and went into business for herself, but Shinji just stood there and watched like a dope. Maybe if he had taken some initiative and supported her play, they might have been able to make something work, but he always does as he's told. And this is a problem, because the two of them will have to fight the Angel all over again when it recovers, so they need to be on the same page.

I don't know why Kaji's even in this briefing. He observes that the UN strike bought them time to regroup, and "you can't ask for more than that," which is the stupidest thing anyone says in this conference, which includes bickering from literal children. Yes, Kaji, we can ask for more than this. The whole point of this meeting is to ask the Eva pilots to get their shit together and win the battle in a single engagement.

Another entry in my Kaji Sucks file: I hate this shot of him talking to Asuka. I hate that stupid look on his stupid face, I hate how Asuka has a crush on his useless ass. I hate his clip-on tie, which might be an animation error but it looks stupid either way. In this moment I'm rooting for the Angel to destroy the NERV base just to ensure he dies along with everyone else.

Kaji does have a suggestion to get the kids ready for the rematch, but he can't just say it in the meeting, he has to write it down on a computer file and give it to Ritsuko to give it to Misato, because fuck this guy.

Later, Shinji comes home to Misato's apartment and finds Asuka has moved in. She claims that she's taking Shinji's place, although she'd rather live with Kaji. I'm sure he'd love that too. Kaji is the worst.

Asuka gripes about how small the place is and wonders why all the doors in Japan have no locks, and then Misato shows up to explain that the Japanese way is to "consider the priorities and needs of others before one's own." Right, no other culture ever thought of that before Japan came along, Misato. And what does that have to do with the doors not having locks? If that made any sense, then why does the front door have a lock?

So what is the point of all this? Well, Misato explains that this was Kaji's idea: Shinji and Asuka will spend the next six days living together and doing everything in unison, in order to practice synchronizing their attacks when they face the Angel in six days. They both hate this idea, but there's no time for anything else.

This does not go well, mostly because Asuka is too proud to go along with it. This exercise with the Twister/DDR game is a failure, so Misato asks Rei to give it a try and she syncs up perfectly with Shinji's movements. So why not just have Rei and Shinji tag up for the battle? I mean, they worked well together a while back? It's a proven formula. Rei's Eva doesn't have weapons, but I'm pretty sure they can reconfigure 02 for Rei quickly enough.

So it's the Fusion Reborn plot, but with Asuka in the Vegeta role. She can either fight alongside Shinji, or she can ride the pine. This makes her upset, and her dumb friend tells Shinji to go talk to her because "he made her cry", but by the time he catches up with her she's already worked this out. She'll do the training.

And there's a training montage, and they succeed! I don't quite understand how this tranlates to Eva piloting, but at least they can stand to work together, which has to be an improvement.

Maybe it works a little too well. They sleep in separate rooms, of course, but one night Asuka gets up to use the toilet, then plops down in the wrong futon. There's a tense moment where Shinji's worried that his cassette player will wake her up, but it doesn't. She just lays there and murmurs the word "mama". He almost kisses her, but then he thinks better of it and sleeps on the floor.

Lips in anime are the worst. They always draw these characters with teeny-tiny mouths, which isn't a huge problem until they try to do a scene like this, where Shinji stares at a closeup of Asuka's lips, which look ridiculous because it's so badly misproportioned. He's trying to move in closer to kiss her except their heads are so weird that the pose ends up looking awkward.

I guess it doesn't matter, since he bails out at the last second, bitterly muttering that Asuka is "just a child". I'm not sure how to interpret that, but whatever.

Speaking of awkward kissing, Kaji makes out with Misato in the elevator. When they get to her floor, she steps out and tells him this is a mistake, and he replies with some bullshit about her words saying "no", but her lips saying "yes". Fuck this guy.

Later, she confides in Ritsuko that their relationship, which ended eight years ago, was "the biggest blemish" on her life. I'm curious to see why that would be, but that probably won't get paid off for a while.

Anyway, the big fight happens, and Shinji and Asuka execute the plan perfectly. This time they let the Angel come to them, but they cut their power cables and fight with the one minute of battery life they have. They cut the thing in half like before, then whale on the two halves before finally doing this double divekick move to destroy the Angel's core to end the battle.

The resulting explosion does leave the Evas in an undignified pose, but a win is a win.

This dude is embarrassed, but I didn't see him do a damn thing the whole time. He doesn't even have a name. I mean, they put his bio in the DVD extra features, but why should I care what they call him if they never say his name in the show? He usually just stands behind Gendo and tries to look important. Well fuck him. I'm calling him Clownshoes from now on.

And that's it. I guess this episode was good enough, but I'm not sure about the dynamic Asuka adds to the cast. She's at least active, which is more than I can say for Rei or Shinji, but a lot of time is spent just getting Asuka to do simple teamwork like "cooperating" or "facing reality". Even the NERV staff are getting frustrated about having to work with children, even though the Evangelion program seems to depend upon it for some reason.

In the end, that's just what the show is about, so I can't complain that it nails the depiction of putting children behind the wheel of a super-weapon. It's either a power fantasy or a nightmare, depending on your point of view, and this show tackles that pretty damn well.

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 04

"We have to use fourteen-year-olds to pilot the Evas. And we have to make rainbow scans of their skinny little butts! The future of mankind depends on it!"

This episode, Shinji runs away from home. Or maybe he's going back to wherever he lived before he came to Tokyo-3, so he's running away to home? He's running away is the point here.

Misato isn't very surprised to discover this, but she's still frustrated. Then Shinji's classmates, Suzuhara and the other guy... I was gonna look him up but I looked up Suzuhara and just got spoiled so fuck that. We're calling him Big Rigg Mahoney now. Yeah, Suzuhara's taller, but I don't care. We're going with it.

Anyway, Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney show up at Misato's apartment because they haven't seen Shinji at school for days. Suzuhara wants to apologize for punching Shinji in Episode 3. He only did it because he blamed Shinji for fighting the Angel so close to the city, which got his sister hospitalized, but his sister chewed him out for this, and he and Big Rigg Mahoney got a first-hand look at what it's like for Shinji when he's piloting that Eva. That's his motivation, Big Rigg Mahoney's mostly involved because he likes war movies and likes playing soldier, and he's fascinated by the Evas, NERV Agency, etc.

They did not expect a grown woman to be living in Shinji's apartment, so they hand her his assignments from school and leave, but now they think Shinji is even cooler, because he's a badass pilot and he's living with a hot babe.

Let me get this out of the way: I did find this episode much more enjoyable than the last one. I had a good feeling about it, since the next-episode preview promised that Shinji would run away, which was encouraging because at least Shinji would have to make a conscious decision and act upon it, like some sort of fictional character might do. But then it occurred to me that maybe Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney might have kidnapped Shinji and told him to run away, in a misguided attempt to help him. And Shinji would be like "hai!" and go AWOL simply because someone told him to. That would suck, so when these two show up early in the episode and they have no idea where he went either, it was very reassuring.

Not that it's too much of a change for Shinji. He's off on his own, but he's still mopey and dead inside. He rides the subway all the way to the end of the line, listening to his playlist of "Track 25" and "Track 26" over and over again the whole way. Then he realizes he has to "go back". I'm not sure what that means, but I assume he's talking about going back to Tokyo-3, since he doesn't seem to have a destination in mind. And yet, he's in no hurry, stopping off at a movie theater that's running some sort of film festival of Second Impact documentaries.

He watches a couple making out in the theater. I don't know if he's envious or fascinated or disgusted, or he just doesn't know what else to do.

Meanwhile, Misato discusses Shinji's disappearance with Ritsuko. We flash back to the aftermath of the battle in Episode 3. Misato had ordered Shinji to retreat before his Eva ran out of power, but Shinji went gonzo and killed the Angel instead. She scolded him for ignoring her orders, but he acted cavalier about it, reminding her that they won, so it doesn't really matter. She warned him that his attitude will only get him killed, and he replied that his attitude doesn't matter, because he's the only one who can pilot the Eva. It's either Shinji or Rei (who's still injured), or nobody, so they might as well let Shinji fuck around and find out. If he gets himself killed they're no worse off than if he doesn't pilot the Eva at all.

In hindsight, Misato is kind of relieved he's gone, because at least this way he won't bring this fatalistic mentality onto the battlefield. The disconnect here is that she's some sort of career soldier, with loyalties and duties and causes to respect. Shinji got drafted last month, and he doesn't want to do this and he's only participating because he's the indispensible man. But Shinji hates himself, so if he gets killed through incompetence, it's no better or worse than winning every battle, or abandoning his post. It's all the same to him, he's got nothing to gain or lose here.

Meanwhile, Shinji happens upon Big Rigg Mahoney, who's playing soldier out in the middle of nowhere. He's got a uniform and a tent and everything. When he spots Shinji he invites him over for whatever he's cooking, and they hang out. See, this is nice. Shinji took matters into his own hands, and now he's hanging out with his friend, Big Rigg Mahoney.

Finally, a bunch of goons from NERV show up and take Shinji into custody. The next day, Suzuhara is upset to hear the Big Rigg Mahoney let them take Shinji without a fight, but come on, man. Big Rigg Mahoney didn't get this far in life without learning to know when to fight and when to take it easy.

Back at the base, Shinji expects Misato to scold him, but she doesn't. She just asks him if he enjoyed his time away, and he says he doesn't know. Classic Shinji. They continue their argument from before. He doesn't want to pilot the Eva because he sucks at it and it's scary and painful, but he doesn't think it's right to leave it all up to Rei and the others. Misato tells him that has nothing to do with it. If he's only forcing himself to go along with this, then he'll never be in the right mindset to do any good as an Eva pilot. Better if he just calls it quits now and forgets he ever got involved.

Meanwhile, Shinji's dad could not give a shit less whether Shinji leaves or not. He's already figuring out what to do when he's gone. If Shinji won't pilot Eva Unit 01, then they'll just reconfigure it for Rei. Apparently that's a thing they can do now. I thought each pilot had their own specific Eva Unit they were bonded to, but I guess not. According to this conversation, Rei was injured while piloting Unit 00, but it wasn't in combat. They were just running experiments on Unit 00 to get it working, and there must have been an accident.

So some of this is becoming clearer. We still don't know why only certain teenagers can pilot the Evas, but we do know that there are others besides Rei and Shinji. They just haven't located very many candidates, so it's not like Shinji is completely irreplaceable. And Rei is recovering, so there's that. And Shinji can resign whenever he wants. He only got arrested last night because he left without resigning. Today, he's decided to go through with it, and NERV doesn't seem sorry to see him go. Shinji asks if he can say farewell to Misato, but they're like "You quit, so you're not authorized to see her." At this point all NERV cares about is escorting him off their base.

Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney do show up to see him off, though. Suzuhara finally apologizes to Shinji for punching him, and insists that Shinji punch him back to restore his honor. Shinji reluctantly agrees, and at first he kind of holds back, but then Suzuhara tells him to hit like he means it, and he does. See, this is nice.

Shinji apologizes for leaving Tokyo-3 in a lurch, but the boys are used to classmates moving out, and they know how hard it is for Shinji to pilot the Eva, so they don't blame him for quitting. Suzuhara promises to beat up anyone who doesn't respect Shinji's decision to leave.

Finally the NERV goons decide it's time for him to go to the train station, but he pulls away just long enough to tell Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney that he has been cowardly and weak after all. It's like he's having second thoughts about the whole thing.

Back at the base, Misato mulls the whole thing over, and it finally hits her that this is how Shinji expresses his feelings. He runs away and waits for someone to care that he's gone. Realizing this, she rushes to the train station to see him, but she sees the train pull out just as she arrives. For a second she thinks she was too late, but then when the train is gone...

They see each other on either side of the tracks. Shinji couldn't go through with leaving, I suppose because Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney were enough to make him question his decision. But now he looks up and sees Misato cared about him too, and that puts him over the hump.

Then Shinji declares that he's home, and Misato replies "Welcome home." And that's a beautiful moment. Everything kind of came together. Now I'm starting to see what the fuss is about here.

I stand by my criticism of Episode 3, though. I don't think they needed four episodes of this show to get to this moment. Two episodes, maybe. They could have ditched all those scenes of Shinji staring at Misato's beer cans in Episode 2, and trimmed a lot of fat from Episode 3. Suzuhara could have found out about Shinji being an Eva pilot some other way before the episode started, instead of that long scene in the classroom.

Still, we're here. Shinji has decided that he actually cares about Tokyo-3 and its people, and he wants to pilot the Eva to protect his home, not just because someone else told him to do it. We'll see how well that goes, but it's a big step forward.

Also, the next episode preview shows Rei looking healthy and doing things, so that seems like a big improvement too. Everything's coming up Milhouse!

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 12

I'm old enough to remember when 2000 A.D. was kind of a big deal, and now it's just whatever 1976 was to people who lived in 2000 A.D.

Gosh, this takes me back. Remember back in 2000, when everything was mustard-toned for some reason? Triple H and the Rock kept trading the WWF title back and forth, and Antarctica was on fire?

We got a glimpse of Misato's past in that flashback, but in the present, she's been promoted to Major. Shinji and Asuka didn't even notice, but Big Rigg Mahoney caught on right away, because he's an expert on rank insignia and such. Suzuhara knows too, but come on, we all know he learned it from Big Rigg Mahoney.

The Eva pilots do some sort of "stress test" thing at the base. I'm not sure what this is for, but Shinji shows great improvement so he gets a gold star for it. He's uncomfortable being praised, though.

Later, the kids throw a little party to celebrate Misato's promotion. Oh, I didn't notice the sash she's got on, that's adorable!

Naturally, Big Rigg Mahoney organized this whole shindig, and the writers honor him by using his full name for the first time since Episode 4. It's too late, though. He's been Big Rigg Mahoney for too long now, and he won't go back.

Speaking of guys I had to rename because I don't dare look up what they're actually called, I think Vice Commander Clownshoes needs a cooler rank. "Admiral Clownshoes" has a nice ring to it.

The others make a lot of loud screeching noises, and Shinji and Misato have this quiet conversation in the middle of it, which seems kind of impossible, with the noise, but okay. They both don't handle praise very well, and Shinji asks why she joined NERV, and she dodges the question.

At the moment, Major Katsugari is in charge of NERV, because Geno Ikari and Admiral Clownshoes are on some expedition to Antarctica, or what's left of it. We never find out why they're there, so I'm just gonna skip over this.

No, wait. Imagine a "Steamed Hams" bit featuring these two. Clownshoes feeds him Krustyburgers and Gendo just clasps his hands over his beard and stares enigmatically.

Oh, this is the dumbest looking one yet. I thought the Angel from Episode 1 looked kind of weak, but I didn't mind because I assumed they would get cooler looking as the show went on. Now I'm starting to wonder if that guy was my favorite the whole time.

This Angel just floats in low orbit over the Earth and drops pieces of itself. The telemetry indicates that it's just practicing, improving its aim, but Misato figures it'll eventually launch an attack on NERV headquarters. Ritsuko further speculates that it'll drop its entire body when that happens, which would cause tremendous devastation. They seem very chipper about this.

So the Angel's attack strategy is.... falling. Really hard, I guess. Misato's counterplay is... catch the Angel before it hits.

Let me back up. A while back, it was established that Angels have an "AT Field" which protects them from conventional weapons. The Evas can neutralize this advantage, and this is apparently because the Evas possess their own AT Fields. I'm not sure if the fields cancel each other out, or if the Evas can use their fields to penetrate the fields of their enemies. Anyway, I think this Angel isn't just falling from a great height; it's also using its AT field to make a bigger impact when it hits. Likewise, Misato's plan seems to depend on the Evas' AT fields being powerful enough to halt the angel just before it hits the ground.

But this is still an objectively stupid plan. The calculations say it only has a 1-in-10,000 chance of working. Even the pilot kids can tell how stupid it is. Misato has already ordered the evacuation of Tokyo-3 and all non-essential NERV personnel. The kids still agree to do it, but they don't expect it to work. Misato offers to take them all out for a steak dinner if they win. You know, if the four of them all came out of this episode wearing Ribera jackets, that would be fuckin' awesome.

I'm not gonna photoshop it, but just imagine them all showing up for work the next day rocking these bad boys. Wait, the Ribera steakhouse is in Tokyo, so I guess it got destroyed in the wars that followed the Second Impact. Well so much for that.

Asuka doesn't plan to write a will because she doesn't expect to die. Rei also has no use for a will, but it's spookier when she says it, like she doesn't need a will because she cannot be killed in any way that matters. Shinji doesn't need to write a will because I'm pretty sure the only thing he owns is that stupid shirt of his, and the tape player that he's probably worn out replaying the same two songs over and over.

Also, Rei pre-emptively refuses the steak dinner. Not because she's afraid of failure, or because she is confident in her success. She just doesn't care for meat. Bad. Ass.

So they start getting ready for this, and Misato basically tells her crew that she has no idea what she's doing, and most of this plan is pure guesswork. It only works if the Evas manage to get under the Angel as it comes down, and they have no idea if it's even going to crash on them. She's just pretty sure it will, and she even trots out that "woman's intuition" line, which is one of the hackiest things in the hack playbook.

On their way to deploy, Shinji asks Asuka why she pilots the Eva, and you might want to sit down for this: She does it for the attention. Just the mere fact that people will acknowledge her existence, as if anyone could ignore this kid. She asks Shinji why he pilots the Eva, and he doesn't know. This is episode twelve, by the way. We'll get our answer today, but let the record show: this is episode twelve.

Then we get a flashback? Flash forward? At some point, Misato finally reveals to Shinji why she joined NERV. Her father was a scientist who threw himself into his work, just like Shinji's dad. Misato resented him for it, but when Second Impact happened, he sacrificed himself to save her, and she's felt a burning desire to defeat the Angels ever since. It's not just to avenge her father, but perhaps to spite him. Shinji can sort of relate to this.

Back to the mission, the Angel has begun to descend, so the Evas have to hustle those buns before McDonalds switches from the breakfast menu to the lunch menu. "McDonalds had all-day breakfast in 2015", you may say. Yare yare daze. In this world, where the Angels have destroyed half the world's population, the visionaries who made all-day breakfast possible no longer exist. The funding and logistical support for such an initiative has been siphoned away to fund the NERV agency. And so, manga man, the breakfast menu will end at 11:00am.

Anyway, yeah, Shinji gets under the Angel and catches it, then the girls swoop in to add their AT fields to his, and then Asuka stabs it in the eyeball to kill it.

I guess this makes sense.

With that settled, Misato receives a call from Gendo Ikari in the Antarctic. He congratulates her on her success, and handwaves the damage done to Eva Unit 01, since destroying Angels is their purpose. He then asks to speak with the pilot of Unit 01 and tells Shinji, directly, that he did a good job. Wow. I just assumed this would never happen, or maybe Gendo would say half of this with his dying breath in the final episode or something. But no, they just gave this away in Episode 12. Huh.

Later, the kids take up Misato on her steak dinner promise, but they choose a ramen stand instead, because they know she's poor as fuck. Also, Rei doesn't like meat, so this just makes sense. They should have gone to Taquiera Goku. This is so close, but yet so far.

Anyway, while they eat, Shinji tells Misato that he finally knows why he pilots the Eva. It's so he can hear the praise from his father, like he did today. That's what keeps him going, even if it took this long for him to get it.

Well, we're inching a little closer, I guess. This will probably all come together quickly, so let me use this space to throw out a few theories I've had in mind.

The Eva pilots have to be 14-year-olds for some reason. I can see no good reason for this, except that there must be some quality in them that literally did not exist prior to Second Impact. Either they got magic powers from it, or they've been genetically engineered to pilot Evas, or some other thing, but it's got to be some deal where the pilots were "invented" around the same time as the Evas themselves. NERV doesn't want to use fourteen year-olds, but there literally isn't anyone older who would be compatible, and they simply can't wait any longer for them to grow up.

I suspect that the Evas are Angels themselves, or some sort of technology built from Angel corpses, or something like that. That's why they have AT fields, and why no one else has any idea how to recreate the technology.

I also get a strong I Am Legend vibe from this whole story. I only saw the Will Smith movie, but as I understand it, the book follows a similar track, where this lone human is trying to get rid of the vampires, only to discover that the vampires see him as the monster, since he's this lone enemy who constantly tries to destroy their community. He's their legend now, just as Count Dracula was the legend in his culture once.

The Angels keep attacking NERV, getting bolder and smarter each time, and no one knows or cares why this keeps happening, because they're too worried about defending themselves. But it sure feels like the Angels are trying to defend themselves, since NERV is committed to their destruction. And if I'm right, it sure seems like Gendo Ikari is doing some shady shit involving Angels, which might make him seem like a major threat to the Angels. They're trying to destroy humanity before humanity destroys them. Second Impact itself may have been caused by Angels trying to stop Ikari or Misato's dad from hurting them.

So I predict this will get revealed near the end. The Angel attacks will get more intense and brutal, and then the kids will find out that they've been the baddies all along, and shit will hit the fan. Don't tell me if I'm right or not, but that's how things are looking to me right now.

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 18

"Hey, everybody, I'm Eva Unit 03! I just flew in from America, and boy are my arms tired! Heh. I'm just kidding, of course, we Evas can't fly. Anyway, I know I'm a little late to this show, but I'm looking forward to working with all of you, and I just know we'll all be the best of friends. Right? What's the matter, why is everyone looking away from me? Did I do something wrong?"

This one starts out pretty slow, mostly recapping things we already know. Toji Suzuhara's the new Eva pilot, Asuka doesn't like that one bit, Big Rigg Mahoney begs Misato to make him the next pilot, unaware that the job's already been filled. Shinji also doesn't know, because Misato never got around to telling him. Also, that girl with the pigtails is kind of into Suzuhara and started bringing him leftovers from the lunches she cooks for her sisters.

The one new bit here is when Rei goes to see Suzuhara brooding on the roof at school. He's surprised to see her showing concern for someone else besides Shinji, and she's a little surprised to hear him say that she cares about Shinji.

Whats-her-face sees the two of them on the roof and wonders if they might be an item, so she talks to Asuka about it, who assures her that Rei is too thick to relate to anyone, so there's no chance of this. Asuka is astonished that anyone would be in love with Suzuhara, though, but Pigtails says she admires his compassion.

Misato's out at the test site to get Unit 03 up and running, so Kaji stays over with the kids. That night, Shinji asks Kaji about his dad, and... have Gendo and Kaji even been on screen together at the same time? Wait, yeah, he dropped off that big suitcase with the fetus in it. The point is Kaji probably doesn't have a lot of insight into Shinji's dad, so he shifts the conversation to women. Kaji sucks.

The next day, Suzuhara's not at school, so Pigtails gives her extra lunch to Asuka. Asuka knows why he's not here, but she doesn't want to say.

You know, I'm not sure why nobody wants to talk about this. I mean, they each have their reasons. Asuka's ego is bruised by it, Rei's not very forthcoming in general, and Suzuhara himself is very pensive about the whole thing, and he's in no mood to brag about it. Even so, they seem to be going out of their way to not explain what's going on. At one point Shinji asks Asuka directly if she knows who the new pilot is, and the shuts him down.

I think part of it is that nobody wants to be the one who says it. But it's very ominous, like they all expect something terrible will happen to Suzuhara and they just don't want to speak it into existence. Which is a fantastic tone to set for the episode, don't get me wrong, but it feels like Suzuhara died last night and no one wants to say it.

Now, about here, it occurred to me that maybe Suzuhara doesn't even live long enough to die in a battle. Maybe he dies in this episode, during the test stages, and his pilot career ends before it can even begin. It's a new Eva, after all, and it could be defective. I could see this show doing an episode where Suzuhara dies on the launch pad, and everyone is haunted by the tragedy of random chance. But no... ha ha! No...

It's not what I thought. It's much much worse! As Unit 03 comes on line, they detect another energy reading inside it, and it turns out to be the 13th Angel. Whoops!

The entire testing ground is destroyed, and Misato and Ritsuko are lost, perhaps dead.

The other three Evas are deployed, and while Shinji is worried about Misato, Rei assures him that Gendo Ikari will assume command of their operation. Gendo orders the pilot to be ejected from Unit 03, but it doesn't work. They have no control over Unit 03 whatsoever. Gendo orders it to be abandoned "at this time", and for the unit to be relisted on the tactical readouts as the 13th Angel. He orders the Evas to go in and destroy it.

This does not go over well with the remaining pilots. Asuka wonders how an Angel could have possessed and Eva, perhaps worrying that her Unit might suffer the same fate. Somehow, the 13th Angel gets the drop on her and takes her out off-screen.

Shinji, meanwhile, is more worried about the pilot. He never did learn who was inside the thing, but he knows it must be a child his age, and that bothers him a lot.

Gendo orders Rei to try to sneak up behind it and attack from a distance, but it's no good. She gets a clean shot at it, but she hesitates, and that's enough for the 13th Angel to do a sick backflip and overwhelm her.

The Angel then secretes some sort of goop on to Unit 00's left arm, which damages it and hurts Rei's arm, since they're still connected. I think the Angel may have been attempting to take over Rei's Eva, just as it already took control of Unit 03, but I can't be sure.

What I do know is that Gendo is worried enough about this that he orders Unit 00's left arm to be severed completely. I guess they can just do that in the control room, just send a signal to pop off one of the Eva's arms. The people at the controls object that they have to disconnect the pilot first, but Gendo insists that there's no time. So they do amputate Unit 00's arm, and Rei feels like her arm just got lopped off at the same time. She's completely out of this fight.

So that just leaves Shinji in Unit 01. The only problem is that he still doesn't want to fight this thing, since there's an innocent child inside. So the Angel attacks him, and it's more than just an Eva now. For example, it has stretchy-arm powers, and it starts choking Unit 01, and by extension, Shinji.

Gendo demands to know why Shinji won't fight back, and Shinji reminds him that there's somebody in there. Gendo warns that if he doesn't defend himself, the Angel will kill him, and Shinji says he'd rather die. So Gendo resolves the dilemma neatly.

He orders Shinji to be disconnected from Unit 01 so they can switch to the Dummy Plug instead. Everyone's like "What the fuck? Ritsuko said that's not even ready for use." And he's like "It's better than the pilot, do it."

If you're just joining us, the Dummy Plug was introduced last episode as a way to operate an Eva without a human pilot. It contains a computer simulation of a pilot's brainwaves-- Rei's brain, to be specific-- and in theory it should at least trick an Eva into thinking there's a live pilot at the wheel. If it works, I guess it's the best of both worlds for NERV, as they can just order the Eva around remotely without having to worry about unruly children. If it works. Ritusko recommended against using it, which is why they recruited Suzuhara to pilot Unit 03 in the first place.

From inside Unit 01, Shinji can only watch helplessly. He's spared the choking sensation from the Angel, but he's powerless to do anything as the Dummy Plug takes over. He quickly realizes that his father is going to use the Eva to do what Shinji would not.

So forget Shinji, this is Dummy Plug's time to shine. First thing it does is choke out the Angel the same way it was choking Unit 01. Is this what Rei would be doing in this situation? Hard to say.

I don't even remember taking this scrreenshot. I think that's Unit 01 smashing Unit 03's head. Well okay.

I'm not quite sure what happens next. Unit 01 mounts the Angel-Eva and starts either pounding on it with its fists, or Unit 01 starts ripping the thing apart, piece by bloody piece. Even the goons in the command center are horrified to witnes this.

This one can't even bear to watch.

Is this Angel blood or Unit 03's blood? Well, I doubt either of them had literal blood, but you get the idea. This is fuckin' sick.

The whole time, Shinji keeps screaming into the comm line, begging his father to stop this. And Gendo just sits there watching his monitors with satisfaction. That's what makes this shot of the bloody traffic light so amazing. At first I just assumed it was on a red light to suit the colors of this shot, but then I realized it's begging Gendo to stop, just like Shinji is.

And to think I was bored with this show last week! I mean, the early episodes were pretty dull, but look where we are now!

Shinji tries to use the controls, but that's just an exercise in futility. At last, the Entry Plug from Unit 03 is exposed, and Unit 01 picks it up, but there's no human at the controls, so there's no one to tell it that this piece isn't a threat.

And yeah, that's about what I expected at this point. Nice knowing you, Suzuhara.

Oh this was just awful to watch. The screencaps don't do it justice. This went on for an uncomfortably long time, and I'm pretty sure the Angel didn't even live that long into the beating. I'm blown away. Really.

But this show isn't done. Oh no, we now cut to that girl who was going to make lunch for Suzuhara, and she's planning her next meal. "I sure hope he's going to eat tomorrow." Just twisting the hell out of that knife.

Meanwhile, Misato wakes up. She was hurt in the attack, but she's going to be okay. Ritsuko survived too, apparently. She gets the news, then contacts Shinji to apologize for not telling him who the pilot was.

But Shinji's not exactly in a good place right now. I mean, what can I say? Obviously whatever relationship he's been rebuilding with his father is ruined forever now, right? And he still doesn't know who was in Unit 03, so that's another shock he'll have to deal with... wait...

He's alive?! How the fuck did he survive all of that? And this is how Shinji finds out who the pilot was. That's gonna be really interesting, but we'll have to wait until next time to see how this plays out...

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 17

"A solar eclipse. The cosmic ballet... goes on."

"Sir, the eclipse was last week."

"No, you're supposed to say 'Does anyone want to switch seats?'"

"I ask that every time we take the train, sir."

"No, it's a Simpsons bit. How have you never seen the monorail episode?"

"No one ever wants to switch seats with me..."

This one opens with the council of crappy old men questioning Misato about the events of the previous episode. They wanted to talk to Shinji directly, but Misato refuses to allow this due to his precarious mental state. I accidentally watched this scene early, because I thought it was Episode 16 and I clicked the wrong thing. So these guys are asking about Shinji getting swallowed up, Eva and all, by an Angel, and they want to know if it was trying to communicate with him telepathically. "What the fuck happened?" I asked, and then I realized I was on the wrong one.

So I guess I can relate to these old farts desperately trying to make sense of what's happening in this show. For them it's real life, and NERV isn't exactly forthcoming about the details. Hell, a lot of NERV personnel don't even understand any of this. Shinji was inside that Angel, maybe talking to it, and he has no idea what happened to him. The old men question Misato by proxy, and they ask some good questions. But Misato's answers mostly boil down to "I don't know, and neither could anyone else."

Like, the Angel probably contacted Shinji's mind. I think that's as valid a theory as any. Maybe the Eva was the one talking to him, but if so, it picked a strange time to do it. But I'm just speculating about what might have happened in a fictional cartoon. For the characters, this all actually happened, and they have no idea if the Angels are intelligent, if they recognize humans as intelligent, if they have the means or motivation to communicate, etc. The old man council that talks to Gendo is made up of the most powerful bigwigs in the world, from what I gather. And they only know just enough to be terrified. I can understand how they desperately wish they could just talk to Shinji and ask him what he knows, but then they'd be even more terrified to learn he's even more confused than they are.

All Gendo will say about the matter is that the Angels appear to be getting smarter, which was something I picked up on a while back. The Third Angel just rampaged its way into Tokyo-3. The Fifth Angel had a more coherent plan, and it seemed to know exactly where to point that big drill. The 11th Angel actually made it inside the NERV base and nearly won. But the 12th didn't actually attack. It's like it waited for the Evas to come to it, just so it could trap them inside itself and... do whatever it did. It seems likely that it sacrificed itself just to complete that task. If that's true, then it isn't just acting independently, as some of the characters believe. If I'm right, the 12th Angel was setting up a strategy that will be carried on by the 13th, and so on.

Speaking of the 13th Angel, did you know NERV has a second branch in Nevada? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it's not there anymore. It mysteriously vanished, along with thousands of staff, a new Eva, Unit-04, and everything else in an 89km radius. This wasn't an explosion, so Ritsuko theorizes that this was accomplished by the same "Sea of Dirac" effect the 12th Angel used to swallow up Shinji. So it's a safe bet that an Angel took out NERV-02 in a single stroke.

There was also another Eva being built in the United States, Unit 03, and I guess that one was already completed, so they're shipping it to NERV's home office in Japan. But Unit 04 was special, I guess. They were installing some new engine in it, and that's all gone now. Ritsuko begins to despair, like she's worried that anything less than five Evas won't be enough to survive what's coming.

Gendo, however, seems confident that the NERV base in Tokyo-3 is all they need, and Unit 01 is the only Eva they need. Unit 04 and the second branch were unexpected losses, to be sure, but he sees them as being of no consequence. So why did NERV bother building them in the first place?

I think I'm starting to get the picture here. I don't know what they're talking about when they refer to the "Dead Sea Scrolls", but it sounds like a set of predictions about future events, and NERV's mission is to navigate humanity through some predicted crisis. But Gendo seems to be the only one who really understands how any of this works. Ritsuko and Clownshoes seem to have some vague grasp of his plan, and maybe Rei knows a thing or two, since she seems to be an important part of it, but I doubt any of them have the complete picture. Then you have characters like the crappy old men, Misato, and Kaji, who know just enough to be concerned.

So I think the NERV branch in the U.S., plus whatever facility they had in Europe, were originally set up as failsafes, in case Tokyo-3 ever failed. But as the plan has progressed, it's become clear that those foreign offices only continue to exist to placate frightened governments. The U.S. insisted on being involved in building Units 03 and 04, and Gendo let the baby have their bottle. He doesn't even need those American Evas, he just let them work on it so they'd have something to do while he handled the important work.

That S2 engine was somewhat important, but this doesn't bother Gendo either, since the designs are still on record in Germany, so they can always build another.

Gendo and Ritsuko discuss the arrival of Eva Unit 03 while they look at a "dummy plug". Basically they built an entry plug with a computer recording of Rei's brain patterns. The idea is to load this thing, empty, into an Eva, and it will activate without a pilot. Ritsuko is skeptical that the Eva will be of much use without a human to operate it, but Gendo doesn't care. As long as it merely activates, that'll be enough for him.

However, the Dummy Plug isn't ready for use just yet, so they still need a pilot for Unit 03, which means they have to recruit the Fourth Child. So is this what Rei's been doing inside this contraption they're looking at? Is it recording her brainwaves to upload into the dummy plug?

But how can they locate the Fourth Child in time? After all, there are very few humans with the right parameters to be compatible Eva pilots. That's why the Marduk Institute was created, to carefully screen potential candidates from all over the world-- ha ha just kidding, there is no Marduk Institute. They put all the likely pilots in the same school in Tokyo-3. And they already have a guy picked out, it's Toji Suzuhara.

I'm skipping around a little, but Misato finds the whole thing fishy, because they just happened to get a Fourth Child lined up right when Unit 03 was ready to be delivered, so she asked Ritsuko about it and Ritsuko was evasive, saying the official paperwork from Marduk would be delivered tomorrow. So Misato asks Kaji what he knows, since he's secretly working for the Japanese government to spy on NERV, and he tells her there never was Marduk Institute or whatever. NERV identifies and selects the Eva pilots themselves, and they use "Marduk" to make it look like there's some convoluted process to it.

I think it probably also struck Misato suspicious that the Fourth Child just happens to be living in Tokyo-3, attending the same classes as the First, Second, and Third Chidren. It's like they already knew he was pilot material from the beginning, and they've been keeping him close by just in case the need arose.

A bunch of people moved out of Tokyo-3 after the battle in episode 2. But Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney stayed, and I'm pretty sure that was because they had family who couldn't leave the city. It's very likely that NERV quietly arranged for certain families to be tied to the city, so that their children would be here when needed.

Ha ha! Look at Ritsuko's coffee mug! That's adorable! Cat cat cat cat!

Anyway, there's a scene where Suzuhara has to deliver papers from the school to Rei, since she's been absent for a while. He doesn't want to go alone, so he asks Shinji to accompany him, although I think that one girl with the pigtails was hoping he'd ask her to join him. Suzuhara is amazed to see a girl's apartment look so dirty, but Shinji's been here before, so he's probably just relieved to see she threw out all the bloody bandages. He cleans up her trash, and when Rei finally comes in, she seems genuinely touched by this gesture. She even thanks Shinji, then later reflects on her words of gratitude. She never even said thank you to Gendo before, and she actually likes and respects him.

Also, Kaji reveals his secret hobby to Shinji: growing watermelons. I have no idea what the point of this is, except that gardening is both a source of pleasure and toil, and while Kaji finds the experience rewarding, Shinji can only think of the pain involved. Well, pain and hardship have some value in the grand scheme of things. As Kaji says, suffering can make it easier for you to be kinder to others.

So you might be wondering where Big Rigg Mahoney's been this whole time? Well, he was off on a trip. I think he toured some old battleship or something. Anyway, as soon as he comes back, Suzuharu gets summoned to the principal's office, and Big Rigg Mahoney's like "What'd you do now?" Ha ha! It's funny because he doesn't know his friend is getting drafted to fight in the robot war!

See, this episode doesn't actually come out and say Suzuhara's the Fourth Child. I mean, it's pretty obvious from the way they keep cutting to Suzuhara after conversations about the new pilot. But they never spell it out. I already know, though, becuase when I was looking up these guys' names so I could tag them on this blog, I ended up finding out Suzuhara is not only chosen to be the Unit 03 pilot, but he also dies later on. So that's why I didn't want to go any further to look up the other kid's names, and that's why I started calling him Big Rigg Mahoney.

Ironically, Big Rigg Mahoney wishes he could be the next Eva pilot. He asks Shinji to recommend him to Misato, but Shinji doesn't have that kind of pull. Neither of them know Suzuhara got the job yet, but when they do find out, Big Rigg Mahoney would probably be kind of envious. Hell, for all we know, Big Rigg Mahoney might actually get the job later on. I refuse to look it up and find out! But I do know there's going to be an opening soon...

But Suzuhara does know he got the job, and the look on his face says it all.

He's still sitting there hours later, and the school rep, who tried to go with him to Rei's place earlier, asks him to finish up his afterschool duties, but he's too bummed out. She mentions how he buys school lunches because he has no one to cook for him, and she says she cooks for her sisters and always makes too much, so...

Suzuhara offers to help her dispose of her leftovers, which is kind of this weird thing where she's doing him a favor, but neither of them want to make it look like a favor. This is powerful stuff, very subtle. Suzuhara's not looking forward to this Eva stuff, maybe because he's sat in the plugsuit with Shinji during a battle, and because his sister is still in the hospital from the Third Angel battle. Oh, right, he visits her twice a week because the rest of his family can't get out there as often, so if he gets killed (ha ha! "if".) there's be no one to visit her at all. I think he's seeing Pigtails here as though for the first time. Before, Suzuhara had his whole life ahead of him, but now he realizes he needs to make whatever connections he can in life, while there's still time to do it.

Meanwhile, Asuka tries to bug Kaji while he's working, and she find out about the new Eva Pilot. She doesn't take this well at all, which... I mean, Asuka never takes anything well, but I think in this case she's upset because Suzuhara being the next pilot just proves there's nothing exceptional about the job. In Germany, she probably believed--and might have been told-- that her compatibility with Unit 02 was a product of her skills and intellect. And she gradually came to recognize Rei and Shinji as peers, albeit begrudgingly. I mean, Rei was the first, and Shinji has the combat experience and stats to back him up.

But to Asuka, Suzuhara is just Some Guy. He didn't go to a fancy school; he's not a savant True Believer like Rei, and he's not the miraculous son of the NERV Director like Shinji. Suzuhara is just some dude she goes to school with, so how does he rate? Well, it's Episode 17, and I still don't know how Eva pilots are chosen, but I'm pretty sure it's just some sort of brainwave pattern that only so many people have. As long as the readouts are in-spec, they could slap anyone in there. Shinji had never seen an Eva before and he survived. Hell, NERV even has plans to run Evas with no pilot, save for a computer simulation of Rei's brain. It really doesn't matter who they put in there as long as it runs.

So naturally, this is huge blow to Asuka's pride. She doesn't understand. What is there to understand, Asuka? You thought you were a pilot, but all you really are is an ignition key.

And that's the episode. Once again, a real tour-de-force, which makes me wonder what the hell was going on with those first 13 episodes. At least now I understand why they've been doing that Rebuild of Evangelion thing. As popular as NGE is, it's an uneven production at best.

And the next episode looks like it's gonna be bleak as fuck. Ha ha! Misato promising fan service in that same cheery voice gets darker and darker every time she says it! This is gonna be terrible! Now this is what I signed up for!

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 07

Yeah, me neither, kid. Kind of weird that we're seven episodes in and we still don't know anything. I'm a little concerned, honestly.

This is another Misato episode. Actually, this one might be even more of a Misato episode than the last one, which is fine by me. This show had some trouble getting out of the gate, but now we're cooking. Cooking toast, that is, because that's what Shinji and Misato have for breakfast every morning. Wait... I misread my notes. Shinji has toast. Misato gets toasted. On beer.

No, wait, she's having toast too! Good, that explains why she has that second beer after Shinji leaves for school. Gotta wash it down. Shinji expresses disapproval for her slovenly, beer-swilling lifestyle, which is a big change from when he just passively agreed with everything she said. Misato is pleased that he's gotten more comfortable expressing himself lately.

Shinji is also embarassed at the prospect of Misato going to his school for some parent-teacher conference thing. Misato is essentially his guardian at this point, even though his actual dad is Misato's boss. I guess he would have signed off on this, since it seems clear he doesn't care.

All the boys at school think she's the coolest thing ever. She's a sexy lady and she's the NERV Ops Director. Shinji acts like they'd see her differently if they knew what she was like at home, but they don't care. Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney are like "you keep the Earth safe, and we'll take care of Misato." Big Rigg Mahoney knows what's up. If I had me a freak like Misato, I think I could learn to live with empty beer cans. The penguin droppings might be a problem, but I think I'd get over it every night if you know what I mean.

We don't get a lot of information on the Evas in this one, but I'll go over what we do get. They're making more of them. Ritsuko and Misato talk in an elevator about the repairs on 00 and 01, and they speak of Unit 02 like it'll be along any day now. On a plane ride, Gendo Ikari speaks of Units 06 and 08, so there's plans to manufacture even more of them, though finding pilots seems to be the main hurdle.

Shinji also learns about Second Impact, the event that changed the world so much. First Impact was the hypothetical collision of the Earth with a protoplanet called Theia, which led to the formation of the Earth's Moon. Second Impact is widely known to be a meteor collision with Antarctica. According to the test in this screenshot, the meteor was only 4 inches wide, but it was traveling at 95% the speed of light, making the impact powerful enough to destroy Antarctica and cause upheavals that wiped out half of the world's population.

However, Misato tells Shinji that it wasn't actually a meteor at all, but the First Angel. It came to Earth on September 13, 2000, then exploded for some unknown reason, taking Antarctica with it.

NERV's mission, then, is to prevent a Third Impact. The Angels are still showing up on Earth, and if another one self-destructs in the same fashion, then it could cause even more devasation. So the only chance humanity has it to kill the things before they get the chance to explode.

Just to recap, we met the third Angel in Episode 1, and it self-destructed in Episode 2, but Shinji had nearly defeated it by that point, so maybe that's why it didn't produce the same destructive force as the first. And we met the fourth and fifth Angels in Episodes 3 and 5. No word yet on the second Angel, but it must have shown up in 2000, since everyone in Episode 1 talks about how there hadn't been an Angel sighting in fifteen years. It's also not clear how it was defeated, since Eva units weren't available for combat missions then.

My guess is that the second angel was susceptible to conventional weapons. That's my working theory on these things. Whatever they're up to, they seem to adapt and get more dangerous each time. The first one blew up shortly after it arrived on Earth, which might have been an accident, or some bad reaction to Earth's environment. The second one must have been killed by humans, which demonstrated that it could be done and it was a viable way to stop them from exploding.

The third angel was impervious to conventional weapons, requiring an Eva to defeat it. The fourth one... was basically the same deal, which is why Episode 3 kind of sucks. The fifth one targeted and disabled the Eva before it could get in range, requiring two Evas and a new-fangled weapon to defeat it. So the sixth one will probably be even harder to stop, which is why Gendo Ikari is trying to convince the U.N. to increase NERV's budget.

Meanwhile, Misato and Ritsuko are headed for Old Tokyo, where the Strategic Self-Defense Force are holding a demonstration. The SSDF are the guys who had that positron cannon Misato borrowed for her hail Mary play in Episode 6. Old Tokyo was destroyed in the chaos that followed Second Impact, but I guess someone decided to build a convention center out here on the remains.

I'm pretty sure the SSDF is just a continuation of the real-world Japanese Self Defense Force, but in this show they're mainly focused on finding ways to defend against the Angels, just like NERV. I mean, I guess that makes sense, given how the last three Angel attacks have been on Japanese soil. And their positron cannon did the trick, so they're not exactly bad at this sort of thing. This time, they're unveiling a new weapon, which is their own giant robot, Jet Alone.

NERV was invited to attend the ceremony, and Ritsuko takes the opportunity to question the premise of Jet Alone. It's powered by an on-board nuclear reactor, and it has no pilot. Everything is done by remote control, which seems like a really bad idea if they lose connection with the thing and the reactor melts down.

The SSDF guy laughs off her concerns, and attacks the Evangelion robots instead. They're powered by electrical cables, which is kind of impractical, and their pilots are subjected to intense stress and suffer mental instability. Also, the Evas are incredibly expensive, and every time the world increases NERV's budget, there's less money to care for the humanity they're trying to save.

So Jet Alone seems like a perfect solution. The tech is cheaper, there's no pilot to put in harm's way, and I guess they think it can hold its own in a fight, although that remains to be seen.

Misato keeps her cool at the dinner but gets furious afterward. By contrast...

Ritsuko calmly assures Misato that Jet Alone is nothing to worry about, as she burns one of the handouts they got at the dinner.

I'm pretty sure Ritsuko is awesome, but she really hasn't done a lot in this show other than provide exposition. She's practically the narrator in a lot of scenes, but damn. She can burn my papers anytime.

Soon enough, it's time to see Jet Alone in action. He looks a little primitive compared to the Evas, but I don't know, this thing kind of reminds me of Big O. I could see it getting its own show.

All they really do with it is have it walk forward, but for some reason they can't get it to stop, so it just keeps going and steps on the SSDF's control center.

And that's basically Jet Alone's whole deal. It just keeps walking in this same direction. Also its nuclear reactor is experiencing a pressure buildup, so yeah, this is turning out exactly like Ritsuko predicted at dinner. Maybe a little too exactly...

Anyway, the coolest thing about Jet Alone is its arms, which sort of dangle at its sides like tassels. I assume this is designed so it can wrap its arms around a hostile Angel like an octopus, but when it's just walking like this the arms flop back and forth and it looks adorable. He's just a struttin' and a strollin'.

Misato immediately takes charge, since the thing is headed for Atsugi and its reactor could go critical at any moment. She demands the SSDF give her an emergency shutdown password for the thing, but no one on-site has authorization to do that. So they call the authorities, but none of them want to take the responsibility without a written request. Disgusted, Misato decides to tackle the matter herself, and calls in Shinji and Eva 01.

Her plan is to just get inside JA and shut it down from the inside. For that, she needs a skintight suit to protect her from the radiation, and Eva 01 will get her close enough to the hatch to get inside. Once she's in, Shinji will have to try to hold Jet Alone so it can't move any closer to a populated area.

And Shinji seems to manage this pretty well, except he can't stop the reactor from exploding. That won't hurt Shinji, since the Eva can take it, but he's still worried about Misato, who will definitely be killed if she can't shut JA down.

Misato makes it inside, but the password to shut down the reactor (Hope), doesn't work. There's no time to figure out why that is, so instead she goes for broke and tries to shove the control rods into place manually. At least, I think that's what she's doing.

Fortunately, when she shoves one of them in, the others all retract with it. I'm not sure she knew that would happen, but it works. The red lights turn green, and Jet Alone stands down.

I'll go ahead and say it: This is actually really good fan service, as Misato promised in the preview for this episode. She said that a couple of times before, and never really delivered. I mean, she took a bath in Episode 2, but big deal. Most of the time she's wearing pretty normal clothing, and she's covered from neck to toe. Meanwhile, they keep showing Rei in various states of undress, or in her skintight pilot suit, which is the sort of thing you'd expect from fan service, except Rei's fourteen so that's creepy as hell.

But Misato wearing a skintight costume while she heroically dives into an exploding robot to shove its control rods into place? That's actually pretty sexy. YMMV, of course.

Shinji calls her success a miracle, but Misato is suspicious that it might not be as miraculous as it seems. Someone must have set all this up.

Later, Ritsuko reports on the incident to Gendo Ikari, and she says everything went exactly as planned, save for Misato's daring shutdown of the reactor. So it looks like NERV sabotaged Jet Alone, probably to discredit the SSDF and convince the UN that NERV deserves whatever funding they ask for. And since Misato's role in this was not part of the plan, it sounds like Ikari intended for Jet Alone to explode. That's why the password didn't work.

The only lingering question is whether Gendo intended for Jet Alone to explode in the middle of nowhere, or once it reached a populated area. That I feel the need to ask tells you everything you need to know about Gendo Ikari.

The next day, Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney are still horny for Misato, and Shinji is still trying to convince them that she's not as cool as she seems. He tells them about how sloppy and silly she is at home, and they realize he doesn't know how lucky he is. Shinji's the only one who gets to see that side of her, and that's because Misato allows only him to see it. That means she thinks of him as family.

And there you have it. I guess this is a big eureka moment for Shinji, and maybe it helps him understand why Rei and his dad get along so well. Anyway, the next episode is supposed to have Asuka Langley in it, so maybe we'll finally find out what she's all about...

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 08

Oh wow, it's Batman! Wait...

Let's get some details out of the way to start off. This episode is about Misato meeting up with a UN navy fleet to receive a new Evangelion model, Unit 02. I'm not sure why she brought Shinji along, though he does work for NERV, so I guess it tracks. What makes less sense is the way she invited Shinji's pals, Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney. She teasingly refers to this as a "date", which gets them all flustered because they've got it bad for Misato, but Shinji isn't buying it and neither am I.

And... that's basically their whole role in the story. Shinji and Misato have a part to play, of course, but Suzuharu doesn't do much and Big Rigg Mahoney just goes apeshit about getting to videotape all this footage of real live aircraft carriers.

The gang board the carrier Over the Rainbow, which is supposed to be a vintage craft from before the Second Impact. The captain is in charge of the fleet, and he's under orders to bring Eva 02 to Japan, but he won't turn over the unit to Misato until they reach land. The sea is his jurisdiction, and he's got a bug up his ass about these newfangled giant robots and their teenage pilots.

This is one of the not-so-subtle themes of this show, where it's ostensibly another sentai action-adventure story with giant robots, except those shows usually handwave the part where it doesn't make much sense. A kid in a unitard might look cool piloting a giant robot, but how is that a better weapon than an aircraft carrier, which actually works in real life? And NGE offers a lot of technobabble to rationalize this, usually involving that "AT Field" that all the monsters have, but it never shakes the question entirely. That's because this show is all about questioning this premise. The Eva Units work just well enough to justify their existence, but they're still presented as highly dubious to a lot of people. So no matter how many times NERV saves the day, it still looks shady as hell to send inexperienced child soldiers into battle with experimental weapons.

But the captain, like Shinji's pals, really don't do much in this story. The real draw here is the introduction of Asuka Langely Sohryu, the second of the three Eva pilots. If I'm following this correctly, she's been in Germany this whole time training and working with the people who put the new Unit 02 together. A gust of wind blows her skirt up, and she slaps Suzuharu for looking.

She calls the slap an "admission fee", so Suzuharu pulls down his pants to show her his entire wang? The fuck? Asuka slaps him again, but I'm pretty sure that's not how this incident is supposed to end. Like, this is a navy ship. I feel like they'd stick you in the brig for something like this.

Also, there's this dude named Kaji, I think. I'm not looking it up because I'll catch another spoiler. He doesn't seem to matter anyway. He seems to be Asuka's mentor, at least up to this point, and he had some sort of past relationship with Misato, which she isn't interested in rekindling. Mostly he just makes things awkward.

As for Asuka, she seems to establish a one-sided rivarly with Shinji. She tells him he doesn't look like much, but she seems concerned to hear how well he syncs with Unit 01 with so little training. So she shows him Unit 02 and tells him how this is the culmination of the Evangelion research. Rei's Unit 00 was the prototype, and Shinji's 01 was the test model, but her 02 is the finished model, actually designed for combat.

But while Asuka's showing off, the fleet comes under attack, and everyone quickly decides it must be another Angel. Misato wonders if it specifically came here to intercept Unit 02. And maybe she's onto something, but maybe not...

She tries to use her NERV authority to take charge of the situation, but the captain won't have it, and he orders his fleet to fire on the Angel. This is useless, as we've already seen in every other Angel attack so far. Hell, the Evas have struggled to beat these things.

However, Asuka has taken matters into her own hands. She's decided to launch Unit 02 herself and defeat the Angel without waiting for Misato's orders.

What I don't understand is why she insists on having Shinji join her. She even makes him wear her spare plugsuit, which he finds embarassing because it makes him look like a girl. Wait... these things are padded?

I just assumed these suits were basically skintight outfits. There's a whole thing where you put them on and then press a button and they sort of shrink onto your body. Except Shinji's got boobs now, where he didn't have 'em before. And his hips looked kind of different too. The implication here is that the plugsuits are designed to make you look more shapely than you actually are.

And that would explain why Asuka and Rei look a lot older in their suits than they do in their civilian clothes. The suits are padded to make them look less like eighth graders. And that probably goes for Shinji as well, but we haven't seen much of him in his plugsuit.

I'm not sure what this means. Maybe they were just going for a gag in this one episode, where Shinji is embarassed to wear a girl's uniform. But I feel like this runs deeper. For some reason, NERV requires fourteen-year-olds to pilot these things, but someone at NERV must have decided that it would make things easier for them if the pilots didn't look fourteen. I mean, there's only so much you can do with padded suits, but if you can "age up" these kids to make them look sixteen, it's a little less upsetting to send them off to war, right?

That's really fucked up. What makes it even more fucked up is that it's not just NERV's costume department trying to massage public relations. No, it's all the sexualized imagery we see of these characters in the real world. Asuka and Rei are staples of the sexy cosplay scene. The sexy fanart scene. The sexy collectable figurine scene. Whatever. Because you can kind of pass them off as looking like adult women, at least while they're wearing the plugsuits. Except it's just padding, and cartoon padding at that. NERV's propaganda is so insidious that it bled over into the real world.

Then again, I'm probably giving this too much credit.

Anyway, Unit 02 doesn't work properly at first because it's interfacing with both pilots, and it's been set for German, but Shinji thinks in Japanese. Asuka's all annoyed with him for interfering with her plan, except it was her dumb idea to bring him along. So she switches to Japanese and they're ready to go.

So she gets it operational, and Misato's thrilled since the captain won't recognize her authority, so this just simplifies matters. The only problem is that Unit 02 only has a minute of battery life, so Asuka has to jump from one ship to another to get to the one with the power cable she needs for power.

Wait, scratch that. The problem is that even after plugging in the power cable, the Eva still doesn't have all of its weapons, and the Angel drags it underwater, where the weapons it does have are ineffective. So Asuka's plan turned out to be half-baked. Luckily, Misato comes up with a way to salvage the situation.

Okay, so the Angel has the Eva in its jaws, and the Eva is tethered to the ship by its power cable. You would think that the Angel could just snap the cable, or drag the ship underwater. I mean, it's pretty big. But instead it seems like some sort of stalemate. So Misato suggests scuttling two of the ships damaged in the battle, and moving them towards the Angel. As it attacks, Unit 02 will pry open its mouth, and then the two ships will open fire on its core, which is located down its throat. This will destroy it.

I don't understand how this is supposed to work. The Angels are impervious to conventional weapons, so why are they suddenly useful now? And if Unit 02 can free itself, why doesn't it just get back on the boat where its weapons will be effective?

Well, it works at any rate, although the only reason Unit 02 escapes is because Asuka and Shinji handle the controls together, and their concerted thoughts prove to be more effective than either of them operating the Eva separately. Why would that make the Eva stronger? I could understand if the movements it had to do were complex, requiring more precise control, but all they need to do is push the jaws apart, which seems like a pretty straightforward command.

You might be wondering what Kaji was doing during all of this. Well, he buggered off in the middle of the battle, saying he had to make a delivery.

And after all the fighting is over, we find out he was bringing this box to Gendo Ikari at NERV headquarters. Apparently the UN fleet was carrying this as well, and Kaji's job was to get it to Ikari.

It's... an embryo or something. Kaji calls it the "keystone of the Human Instrumentality Project", and Ikari agrees, but he calls it "Adam". I don't know what any of this means, but this case reminds me of Nuclear Man's origin in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, so I'm all for that.

Back home, Shinji's pals reflect on the adventure and Suzuharu is relieved he doesn't have to see Asuka again, but then she shows up as their new classmate and he's all shocked. Dude, what did you think would happen?

And yeah, I think that covers it.

Judging from the next episode preview, NERV seems to be aiming to build on the success of Shinji and Asuka working together, so we'll see where that leads. Did they just forget about Rei, though? Isn't there an episode where they all go out for tacos? I'm pretty sure that's a real episode.

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 06

Last time, Shinji went to go fight another one of them pesky Angels, but it kicked his ass before he could even get out of the elevator. I'm a little fuzzy on just what happened, but judging from the looks of him, I'd say it showed him some dirty magazines and it gave him a nosebleed so bad that he passed out.

With Eva Unit 01 out of the way, the Angel moves into Tokyo-3 and starts drilling into the city.

While Shinji receives medical attention, Misato assesses the situation. The Angel (that big octohedron there), has an "AT Field" to protect it from conventional weapons, just like the other Angels we've seen before it. Unlike the other Angels, it's attacking the NERV base directly. In ten hours, its drill will penetrate the underground shielding and compromise the base. And if it senses any threat within a certain range, it blows it away with the same pornography laser that took out Shinji.

Misato can't help but admire the thing. They can't drop a bomb on it because of the AT Field, and they can't send an Eva because the pornography laser would destroy it before it ever got close enough to attack. The one thing going for them is that the Angel is just sitting there in one spot while it drills. And that gives Misato an idea.

Basically, she wants to snipe the thing with a really big gun. The Japanese Self Defense Force has a positron cannon, and with enough power, she thinks it could be strong enough to kill the Angel in one shot. I'm not clear on whether this would penetrate the AT field or just hit the Angel so fast that it wouldn't have time to activate the AT field. But where will they get enough juice to power this operation? Misato plans to divert power from the entire nation of Japan. Eva Unit 01 will be repaired before the drill breaches the base, so at midnight she'll have Shinji take the shot.

But Gendo Ikari is in command, so she has to clear all this with him. "Can I stare judgmentally during the operation?" "Yes, sir." "Then you may proceed."

She even gives it a cool name: Operation Yashima. I looked it up, and this is an ancient name for Japan, so I guess this is in reference to how she plans to use the entire country's power grid to make this work.

The only downside to the plan is that Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney won't be able to play video games during the blackout, but that's war for you.

Rei brings food and orders to Shinji as he finally wakes up from the devastating effects of the pornography laser. He's still shaken from the experience, while Rei acts like this is just another day at the office. She even says she can pilot Unit 01 if he chooses. That isn't actually an option, but they don't know that part of the plan yet. Mostly, Rei doesn't want Shinji to report for duty in the buff. Well, now they've both seen each other nude, so I guess that's a bit of trivia I didn't know before.

Since there's no video games during the blackout, Big Rigg Mahoney and the gang all hang around near the hillside where the Evas come out. I'm not sure how any of this works. Eva 01 came out of the same elevator it always uses and got shot, so I guess this is like the back door or something? How would the kids know about it?

Both Evas, Units 00 and 01, head for a temporary base near their sniper position. There, Misato gives them their orders. Shinji will take the show with Unit 01, because he has better control over 01, and that means he'll be able to acquire the target more easily. Meanwhile, Rei will protect Shinji with Unit 00. This makes sense, because they're still having issues with 00. It will activate and Rei can pilot it, but apparently it's still not ready for combat. The Angel's pornography laser can melt right through the Evas, but NERV has prepared a large shield which ought to be able to resist the pornography laser for seventeen seconds, long enough for Shinji to take the shot.

So everyone knows what to do. Japan shuts down to give its energy to Shinji. Rei reassures Shinji by promising to protect him no matter what. Then she says "goodbye" before they get in their robots, because I guess Misato ordered her to say something fatalistic before the mission.

And Pen-Pen? His orders are to pray. Let's just hope he picked the right religion. Not one of those stupid penguin faiths, that's for sure. Antarctica was the first casualty of this apocalypse, so that should tell you how much Penguin-Zoroastrianism is worth.

At midnight, they start powering up the gun. Everything seems to be going okay. Be vewwwy vewy quiet. Shinji is hunting angews.

But just as he takes the shot, the Angel shoots its pornography laser at him, and the two beams seem to interact with one another somehow? Shinji's gun misses, and his Eva is damaged but still functional. I guess the Angel detected the power buildup in the gun, even from a distance. Shinji can try again, except the positron cannon has a cooldown period, and the Angel knows where he is, so it won't miss again.

But Rei's here to save him with that shield of hers. The only problem is that it's only good for seventeen seconds, and no one expected the Angel to draw a bead on them like this. Now it's just going to keep shooting until they're both dead, so if Shinji can't make the second shot, he won't get a third try.

But he pulls it off! The beam shoots right through the core, which is the thing you have to attack to kill the Angel, so that puts a stop to the pornography laser and the drill.

And just in the nick of time, as the drill had just reached the interior of the NERV base. Looks to me like the Angel was targeting their Bass Pro Shop pyramid. I guess that makes sense. It's a big diamond, so maybe it was naturally attracted to another geometric shape-- wait.

Was the Angel trying to fuck the base? Is that what this was all about? Rot in hell, you perverted alien monster.

Meanwhile, Eva 00 is badly damaged, and Shinji removes Rei's pilot tube to see if she's okay.

Actually, Unit 01 looks pretty badly melted too.

Shinji struggles to open the damaged hatch... which seems oddly familiar. Waaaaaait a minute!

Oh, he's doing the thing that his dad did in the other thing! It's poetry. It rhymes! As before, Rei has survived. Maybe she's hurt, but it's hard to tell with her.

He tells her not to act like she has no one else, which is what she said before they got in their robots. It's a lot like how Misato showed Shinji that he has something to live for in this city. Also, needless to say, Shinji coming to check on Rei is a lot like when Gendo did it, and that moment touched Rei so much she kept his broken glasses as a momento of it.

Rei admits that she has no idea what to say or do in this situation, so Shinji suggests she smile, and she does. I'll just say it: it's kind of creepy when she does that.

And that's it. This is the best episode so far. I think my only complaint is that they spent a lot of time talking about what they were going to do, then doing what they talked about doing, so it was a lot of scenes of preparation to set up this one climactic moment. But it's a sniper operation, so it makes sense, and more importantly, it works.

Mostly, though, I like how this episode showcased Misato's contribution to the NERV Agency. Up to now, it seemed like the sole option for defending against Angel attacks were the Evas, which basically reduced NERV to providing logistical support to their only effective weapon. But this episode threw a curveball at them and Misato rose to the occasion to find an alternative strategy. I kind of understood that she had to be capable of this sort of thing, but the first five episodes made it seem like it would never matter. So this was a good thing all around.

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 05

I heard they put a lot of crosses in this show, sort of like how Revolutionary Girl Utena put a bunch of phallic symbols everywhere. It doesn't really impress me much, although I just considered that Dracula must really hate this anime.

This is the episode where they really get into what Rei's whole deal is. Up to now, she's been a background character with only a few lines, but she's supposed to have been doing this Eva piloting thing longer than Shinji, so what's that all about?

To begin with, we flash back to the experiment where Rei got the injuries we saw in Episode 1. At first, I just took it for granted that she had been hurt in combat, or some sort of accident during a training exercise, or her Eva violently rejected her connection to it. But here we see that they were just trying to get Eva Unit 00 to turn on, and then something went wrong and the Eva went nuts and started convulsing and attacking the observation booth with Gendo and the others.

During this mayhem, Unit 00's power cable is severed, and the pilot capsule ejects. I think Rei caused both of those things in an effort to get the situation under control. The Eva still had a few seconds of battery power, and maybe the absence of a pilot helped. It's also possible that these were actions triggered by the computer jockeys monitoring the experiment, or it was random stuff that happened while the Unit went nuts. Anyway, the pilot capsule has thrusters to carry it away from the Eva, except this test is being run in an enclosed space, so it just flies into the nearest corner of the ceiling and then drops like a stone when the propellant runs out.

Horrified, Gendo rushes down to get Rei out of the capsule, and he burns his hands on the hatch. Not sure why it would be hot, but whatever. He's so upset that he just powers through it and removes the hatch anyway, burning his hands in the process.

And then we get this shot, which looks really fucking cool. There's a lot to unpack here. Rei's supposed to be an injured fourteen-year-old girl, but they drew her like Captain Marvel or something. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but I think it comes up a lot. Anyway, you'll notice how upset Gendo is about this. He's not just worried about losing his only Eva pilot. He genuinely cares for Rei's safety, showing emotions we've never seen from him until now.

Anyway, she nods to him to confirm she's still alive, and as he breathes a sigh of relief, we see his glasses break, I guess from the heat and the whole commotion or something. Anyway, that's the flashback.

There's a pointless scene in the present where Shinji accompanies Misato and Ritsuko on an excavation of... something. Maybe it's the remains of the Angel Shinji killed in episode 3? It doesn't matter, because Ritsuko's equipment can't analyze the samples. They know that the Angels are composed of some bizarre form of matter, analagous to light? I guess? And even though it's completely alien to them, there are patterns in the matter that match humans. Match them how, exactly?

Shinji notices his father at another part of this facility and he asks about the burns on his hands. So Ritsuko tells the story of that botched Unit 00 experiment we just went over. Shinji is amazed to hear that his dad would go to such lengths for Rei.

At school, the boys ogle the girls during their swimming practice or whatever, and Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney accuse Shinji of having the hots for Rei Ayanami. He denies it, but admits he's curious about her.

Later, during some training exercise, Shinji sees Rei and his dad talking, and they're both smiling, which is creepy as fuck. Ew, stop it. I'm not sure if Shinji is jealous or just confused that his dad actually feels affection towards another human being.

At Misato's house, everyone's eating curry and beer. Even the penguins.

Come on, Oswald, try a bite, it'll put hair on your chest.

Ritsuko gives Shinji a new ID card made for Rei. I guess the ID's have to be renewed every so often, and she kept forgetting to give it to Rei at work, so she wants him to go to her place and do it. Misato thinks Shinji has a crush on Rei, and he denies it. He's just curious about Rei getting along so well with his dad. Ritsuko explains that they're kind of like kindred spirits, in that they both aren't very good at "living." Ouch. In any case, he's got an official reason to go meet her and find out about her for himself.

Yeah, let me back up a bit.

So he shows up at her apartment and when she doesn't answer the buzzer he just lets himself in, and sees all the bloody bandages from when she was injured. Then he finds Gendo's broken glasses from the flashback and puts them on. Then Rei finally comes out of the shower, wearing nothing but a towel. She sees him wearing the glasses and immediately tries to take them back, since they clearly mean a lot to her. But they end up falling over and a drawer full of underwear spills and yeah, I think that gets us up to speed. Also Shinji's left hand is planted on her boob.

Yeah.

Shinji akwardly tries to explain himself, but Rei doesn't care. She just gets dressed and leaves to go to work. Shinji catches up to her when her ID card doesn't work, and he hands her the new one that does. He continues to follow her and asks if she's afraid of experimenting with Unit 00, since she already got hurt once before. Incredulous, she asks him if he has faith in his father's work.

Shinji's response intrigues me, because I had trouble telling before whether he and his dad are just really estranged or he's afraid of him or something else. But now it looks more like he's got some sort of grudge against him. He talks about his dad like he's a bitter enemy that everyone else would know to distrust as well.

She slaps him for that. Whatever happened between Shinji and Gendo, she remains loyal to him, perhaps to a fault.

At the base, Gendo and Rei resume their work on Unit 00, and it looks like they managed to get it right this time, but then another Angel attacks Tokyo-3, forcing them to abort the test run. Since neither Rei nor Unit 00 are ready for the field, Gendo sends Shinji in Unit 01 instead.

This is the fifth Angel, and the third one we've seen so far. It... well this was certainly a choice. Anyway, Shinji deploys to fight it, but...

Before he can even get out of the gate, the Angel fires some sort of heat ray at his Eva right away. It's like the Angel knew exactly where to strike first. Maybe this one studied the footage of Shinji's previous battles and learned a new strat.

And that's the end of the episode. The next episode preview says that Rei will come to Shinji's aid, so I'm starting to notice the pattern here. The Angels are showing up more frequently, and they're getting smarter and stronger each time. If this one knows to take the fight to Shinji, then it'll probably take two Evas to beat it, and that means the next one might be strong enough to need three Evas, and so on.

I don't think we got a complete picture of Rei in this one, but it's a two-parter, apparently, so that's okay. I'm not really keen on the parts where all the boys talked about how hot she is, or all the partial nudity, but we'll get into that at another time.

I'm much more interested in her friendship with Gendo, since they seem so distant from everyone else. But they're not going to spill the beans on that right away.

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 10

It's a shitty episode, that's what this is.

Why does this episode suck? Well, we start off with Kaji taking Asuka shopping for bathing suits. She's going on a school trip to Okinawa, you see. She asks him if he went on any school trips when he was her age, and he says he couldn't because Second Impact was happening back then. Anyway, Kaji sucks and I hate him.

As it turns out, she can't even go on the stupid trip, because NERV wants the Eva pilots on standby in case of an Angel attack. You'd think this would be a standing order year-round, but Asuka is gobsmacked to find out she's not allowed to just do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. You're in the army now, kid.

Here's the thing about Asuka. I was kind of looking forward to her introduction into the story, because Rei and Shinji were practically comatose throughout the early episodes of this show. At least she would bring some energy to this thing, I thought. And she does, but mostly it's a whiny, bratty, irrational energy that gets old pretty quickly. When Misato tells Asuka she can't go on the trip, Asuka demands to know who gave the order. Well, Misato did, dummy. She's your commanding officer. When she can't argue with that, she argues with Shinji, expecting him to say something to resolve this, like he has any control over the situation. But Shinji kind of expected this to happen, so he never got excited about the trip in the first place.

This is the origin of that "so you've given up?" meme. I always took it at face value. That is, I assumed the scene was Asuka asking Shinji if he was quitting something hard, and he just casually admits that he's collapsing in the face of adversity. But the actual context is that Asuka is trying to cajole Shinji into the impossible task of getting them a furlough from their indispensable child soldier jobs. When that doesn't work, he insults his manhood, then asks Misato why they don't just find the Angels and destroy them first, so they're not always on stand-by to defend against an attack. Misato's like, kid, if we knew how to do that, don't you think we'd have already done it?

Misato points out that both Shinji and Asuka can use the downtime to catch up on their studies, seeing as their grades haven't been very good. At this, Asuka tries to claim that the school's grading system is irrelevant. Kid, just shut up. You're not gonna win this one.

Anyway, Big Rigg Mahoney sends his regards from Okinawa.

So at the base, Shinji studies, and Asuka tries to do scuba diving in the pool, since she can't do it at Okinawa. Turns out Asuka's already graduated college? She claims the physics problem Shinji is working on is easy, but her grades were poor because she hasn't learned enough Kanji to read the questions. Also Asuka wonders aloud if thermal expansion would make her bust bigger. I wasn't going to say anything, but I think the animators on this episode already made her bust bigger, because Asuka looks like Boa Hancock in this turkey.

Meanwhile, a joint NERV-SSDF mission discovers a juvenile Angel inside a volcano. This is a huge opportunity to study the things and learn more about them, so the Eva pilots are mobilized to go in and retrieve it.

Asuka insists on being the one to actually made the dive, because I guess she drank like fifteen cups of coffee before this episode started. Settle down, dammit.

Asuka is chosen to make the dive, but her Eva will have to wear this dorky looking exosuit to withstand the temperature and pressure.

Also, Asuka herself has to wear a modified plugsuit that looks like this for... some reason? It's supposed to protect her from the heat, but she's going to be surrounded by the Eva, which will also be surrounded by an exosuit. How much more protection does she need? And why does inflating the plugsuit make it safer?

Asuka whines about these intolerable conditions, until Rei offers to pilot Unit 02 in her place. Asuka quickly changes her mind, since she can't bear the thought of getting left out of the mission. Geez, she's like a toddler!

So we go on the mission, and Asuka asks if Kaji will be here to see her in action, and Misato informs her that this is none of his damn business. It's called "professionalism", Asuka, look into it.

As they prepare, Misato explains that if the Angel can't be captured, or if it matures into adult form, then they'll have to destroy it. And if they fail, the UN will blow up the whole volcano, and all of them along with it. Shinji asks who would order such extreme measures, and duh, it's his dad, the guy in charge of the whole organization.

From here, most of the episode looks like it was filmed inside a Nintendo Virtual Boy. This probably was considered pretty badass in the late 90s, but no, it looks like crap. They just keep lowering Asuka further and further down in search of this thing, and then she finds it and puts it in some kind of rectangle.

Rectangle secured, mission accomplished, OR IS IT?

Turns out the Angel hatches just as Asuka starts heading back for the surface, and the device she used to contain the Angel can't handle its adult form. Misato orders her to release it and head back to the surface as quickly as she can.

The fight sucks because you can't see anything. Asuka had a "progressive knife" when she went down, but she dropped it during the descent. So Shinji tosses down his own and she catches it and fights back, but the thing is still incredibly strong and durable, becuase it lives inside a volcano for crying out loud.

At last, Asuka remembers that conversation about thermal expansion and uses that to win. Something about diverting the coolant in her Eva while she attacks with the progressive knife, but I can't see what she's doing and I probably wouldn't understand it anyway. The Angel disintegrates... I guess? And she returns to the surface.

So Misato takes them to a hot spring near the volcano to celebrate a job well done. The girls ask Shinji to toss them a bottle of shampoo over the retaining wall, and then he hears them... tickling each other? And he gets a boner? I guess that's a joke? A plot point? Why the fuck is this in the show?

There's also a cryptic exchange between Misato and Asuka. Misato has a scar on her abdomen which she says she got during Second Impact. Asuka asks Misato if she knows about her past, and Misato does but assures Asuka that they need to put it behind them. So I guess we'll find out what that means one of these days.

And there we are. This was dumb. Most of the show was Asuka babbling like an idiot, or people watching machines lower other machines into lava. The show continues to drop all these hints and clues about the characters' backstories, but it never puts any of the pieces together. It just gets really formulaic, and I think the best evidence of this is the fact that I got mixed up while playing this DVD, and I accidentally watched Episode 11 first, thinking it was 10. So I had to go back and watch this one, but I could have just as easily skipped it, because nothing happened that had any long-term consequences.

[duhragonball]

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 22

Are we...? Are we live? Can anyone read this?

Uh....... huh.

I think there's something wrong with the DVD player. Maybe if I take the disc out and put it back in again. Hold on.

Shoot. No good.

Uh, folks, I'm not sure what to say here. Might have to call this off until I can figure out what the trouble is.

"I was strangled to death in this building once."

"Shut your stupid robot mouth, you ugly little psycho!"

Oh, okay, there we go.

So uh, let me do some housekeeping first. An S2 is apparently some kind of organ in an Angel's anatomy, and the S2 Engine was NERV's attempt to duplicate this organ. They only managed to make one of these, which was supposed to be installed in Eva Unit 04 before it vanished along with NERV's Nevada Branch.

However, Eva Unit 01 scored a free S2 when it simply ate and absorbed the S2 organ from the 14th Angel. SEELE is concerned about this, becuase whatever playbook they're operating from didn't say anything about Evas running wild and getting upgrades without prior authorization. I believe this is one reason Eva Unit 01 is benched during this episode.

Also, the Eva series is named because it was created from Adam, the First Angel. "Eva", as in the Biblical Eve, who was created from one of Adam's ribs. So that's what that's about. So they're not the same as copies of Angels, or Angels themselves. I guess they're more like genetically engineered Angeloids or something?

NERV is still trying to get back to normal, more than a month after the battle with the 14th Angel. Repairs to Units 00 and 02 are still ongoing, but Asuka's synch scores have gone way down, probably due to the trauma of getting defeated so badly in the last battle. No one's really sure what to do about it, but if her performance keeps deteriorating, she'll get booted out of the program and replaced. With whom? Big Rigg Mahoney? The Dummy Plug? Maybe Suzuhara's ready to check out of the hospital.

Sorry, these goofs act like good pilots grow on trees, but Asuka's a college graduate or something and she's already on the brink of washing out. If she's cracking under the strain, maybe they should whip up some more Rei clones.

We get a few glimpses into Asuka's backstory, but it's kind of tough to make sense of it all. I think the upshot here is that her mother was a scientist who was eventually driven insane. She may have tried to kill Asuka? I guess she and Rei could bond over that........... forget I said anything.

Uh, she receives a phone call from her mother one night and talks to her in German, which is kind of weird because there's no subtitles, so for all I know the voice actress just kind of faked the whole thing. That might be appropriate since Asuka admits to Shinji that she just sort of goes through the motions on these routine calls, since it's not her real mother anyway.

Anyway, this would be a really bad time for another Angel to attack OH SHIT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS

This is the one from the title logo, so you know it means business. The 15th Angel's special power is to stay way the hell up in space, where the Evas can't attack it.

Misato's plan is for Rei to fire a big-ass cannon at the Angel while Asuka serves as backup, but Asuka insists on taking the shot. Misato allows this, figuring that she might as well play into Asuka's boldness. Either she'll rise to the occasion and get back in her groove, or she'll fail miserably, and they'll never let her pilot an Eva again. Asuka herself seems to have figured that out on her own, so maybe she only asked for this chance just to get this settled once and for all. But before she can take her shot...

Oh, I'm sorry, the 15th Angel's special power is actually long-range telepathic assault. Yeah, this is pretty bad.

I thought this might resemble the sort of telepathic visions Shinji was having during the battle with the 12th Angel, or when he was absorbed by Eva Unit 01, but this seems much more intense and violent, and much less theraputic. I think it's reasonable to conclude that the 12th Angel was not trying to make telepathic contact with Shinji, or otherwise the 15th Angel would have a little more finesse to its attempt here.

Under different circumstances, I might consider that this might not be an attack at all, and the Angel is trying to communicate and just isn't doing a very good job because human minds are so alien to it. But Asuka screams bloody murder the entire time this is happening, and she repeatedly cries out that it's "raping" her mind. It's pretty difficult to sit through.

Rei tries to shoot down the Angel, but it's still too far away for their weapons to do any good, and Asuka's charts are...

I mean, I'm no doctor, but that can't be good.

Shinji begs his dad to let him go out in Unit 01, but what good would that do? I mean, what can he do that Rei isn't already trying in Unit 00? Besides, Gendo refuses to risk Unit 01 getting hit with this telepathic attack. Instead, he orders Rei to go downstairs to the room with Adam's corpse, and fetch the Lance of Longius.

Admiral Clownshoes tries to talk Gendo out of this, apparently because the Lance will be necessary later on, but Gendo sees no alternative. Misato points out that if Rei's Eva gets too close to Adam's corpse, it could set off Third Impact. That's what everyone was worried about a few episodes ago, but now it's treated like it's no big deal. So Misato realizes this was more NERV bullshit.

But it's worse than that. If Angels and Evas going near Adam can't trigger Third Impact, then that means Second Impact couldn't have been caused by Angels exploding. So that must have been a lie, just like the other lie about it being a meteor strike. So what the fuck caused Second Impact, then?

In any event, we've seen Rei carrying this big fork before, so apparently she just sticks it in Adam's body when she's not practicing with it. So Unit 00 can go down here and horse around with Adam all day and not trigger Third Impact.

As Rei prepares to strike, Clownshoes and Gendo continue to argue the merits of using the Lance. Gendo acts like the situation justifies using it early, and Clownshoes accuses him of looking for an excuse. Anyway, Rei chucks this thing into space like a javelin...

... And it kills the Angel in one hit. Goes right through it's AT shields, smooth as butter. The only downside is that now the Lance is stuck in orbit, and they have no practical means of retrieving it. I guess Rei put a little too much pepper on that throw.

Asuka is safe, but she's far from okay. For all the mental trauma she just endured, she seems far more upset about her wounded pride. Bad enough that Shinji had to save her last time, but now Rei had to bail her out, and that's apparently a new low as far as Asuka's concerned.

So yeah, things are going pretty bad for the NERV gang these days. At least Kaji's still dead. I mean, that's a win for me, at least.

Oh, look, in the next episode Rei's Eva gets possessed and corrupted by an Eva, and she wishes herself dead. So cheer up, Asuka. You can Rei can commiserate over this.

You know what, I'm just gonna see myself out...

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 19

I still don't get how this guy is still alive. I mean, big ups to him, but I still don't get it.

So last time, Shinji refused to fight against the 13th Angel, which had an innocent pilot, Toji Suzuhara trapped inside it. So Shinji's dad hit the override on his controls and used a Dummy Plug to take over Shinji's Eva. Somehow the Eva was able to win the battle automatically, though it beat the Angel into a bloody mess and killed... well, it seemed to kill Suzuhara. Crushed his entry plug and everything, but he survived. Even so, Shinji is so furious about his father's betrayal that he refuses to relinquish his Eva, and threatens to use his remaining power supply to attack the NERV base.

Gendo orders the LCL fluid inside his plug to be increased, which... I guess is enough to incapacitate Shinji, I don't know. They end up prying him out of there, then he has to spend the night in the hospital, then they put him in a detention cell to cool off.

This finally culminates in Shinji being brought before Gendo to discuss the charges against him for his insubordination, and Shinji declares that he wants out of NERV. Gendo tells him to leave then. He accuses Shinji if running away again, of disappointing him again, but Shinji doesn't care. Gendo says they may never see one another again, and Shinji says that this is exactly his intention.

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, because we've already seen Shinji quit way back in Episode 4. Sure, this time it's different, because he's made a lot of strong connections here, and his reasons for quitting are much more strongly felt than the indecisive fear he had back then. But it's a lot of the same imagery. Big Rigg Mahoney calls him to talk before he goes, but his voice mail gets cut off by NERV security. Misato sees him off at the train station again. But this time it's not enough that she just shows up to see him. He's revolted by his father and the whole NERV agency, and no one can say anything to talk him into piloting an Eva again.

But as soon as Misato leaves, there's another Angel attack, and everyone has to go to emergency shelters. That's the main difference. In spite of all the character development, the plot has now gone into overdrive. Angels are showing up more and more frequently, so Shinji can't just go AWOL or quit like he did back then.

Oh this one looks especially stupid. It's like a puppy when you pick it up with your hands under it's front legs, and let the hind legs dangle. And the arms of the Angel are like strips of paper. Just an absolute crap design. I'm now looking forward to seeing how the last one looks, since they seem to get dumber and dumber looking each time.

So with Shinji gone, and Unit 00 damaged from having is left arm blown off, it's up to Asuka to hold the line. Rei is reassigned to Unit 01, except it won't activate for some reason. They switch to the dummy plug again, but it won't work either. It's like the Eva is rejecting anyone but Shinji.

So Asuka's on her own, and she has to fight the thing inside the NERV base, because the Angel is so powerful it's already breached the underground shields by the time she's ready to deploy. The battle is a debacle. Her AT field is supposed to neutralize the Angel's AT field, which allows her weapons to have an effect, but for some reason it doesn't work this time, and the Angel uses its silly arms to cut off Unit 02's arms. Both of them.

It also cuts off Unit 02's head, which lands in the shelter Shinji's hiding out in. Damn.

I was going to make a crack about Asuka not being very good at this. I mean, she joined the team talking about how she and Unit 02 were specifically intended for combat operations, but her actual record in combat isn't exactly that impressive. All the battle's she's won involved Shinji's assistance, and everytime she's fought alone she gets beaten. Still, the competition is a lot fiercer than it was early in the series. The 13th and 14th Angels are very, very tough, and you can't fault Asuka's grit. She loses Unit 02's arms and charges headlong into the Angel with everything she has left. It just doesn't work. None of it works. It's like she's out there fighting with no Eva at all.

So Shinji rushes toward the battlefield. He hasn't changed his mind yet, but if he really wanted to write off NERV, he's heading in the wrong direction. On his way, he meets Kaji, who's tending his watermelon garden. NERV found out about his double-agent bit and now he's been taken off the combat roster. And since he's powerless to help, he figures if he's gonna die, he may as well go out doing something he enjoys. Sex is out of the question, since Misato's busy, so gardening it is.

Shinji explains what he's doing out here, and Kaji explains to him that Adam, the First Angel is down below the base, and if an Angel manages to reach Adam, it's said that this will mark the end of humanity, the Third Impact. He doesn't tell Shinji how he knows this or who said it. For that matter, I'm pretty sure Shinji's never heard of Adam, or knew that he's being kept in NERV's basement.

Still, Kaji does convince him to take action. Kaji can't do anything about this battle, but Shinji can do something that no one else can, so it's up to him to look deep inside himself and decide whether he's going to do it or not. This isn't as simple as quitting a job because your boss is a jerk. The fate of the world is on the line.

While they discuss this, Rei tries a Hail Mary play with Unit 00. It only has one arm, and she's still hurt from the last battle, but she figures if she can get close enough with an N2 mine, she can use her AT field to get inside the Angel's defenses and set it off. But it doesn't work.

So Shinji balls up his fists and demands to pilot the Eva. Gendo asks him what he's here for, like he wants to hear it clearly, so there's no confusion about this, and Shinji is resolute. He wants back in, he wants to pilot Eva Unit 01, and he wants to kick the 14th Angel's ass.

Speaking of the Angel, it's headed for "Central Dogma", which turns out to be the room where Misato does all the command center stuff. Well, that's nice to know. Or maybe this room is just on the way to Central Dogma. Either way, she evacuates the staff, and it looks like the Angel's about to kill them all when...

Yeah, get Shinji'ed, idiot!

Not sure how to read Gendo's expression here, but seeing him covered in blood is a good look for him.

Shinji forces the Angel to one of the launch elevators and Misato has it activated to bring them both to the surface, further away from the base.

Then he kind of goes apeshit and starts tearing the Angel's face off. At some point the Angel managed to cut off one of Unit 01's arms, but that isn't stopping Shinji, who seems to have things well in hand, until...

The battery runs out of power. Whoops.

So now everyone's fucked. Unit 01's a sitting duck without any power supply, and the Angel starts carving up its middle, like it's trying to get at the pilot, I guess. Luckily, that section is sturdier than the shoulders on these things, so it takes a while to penetrate. But it doesn't matter much, since Shinji can't do anything with the time he has left. All he can do is jerk at the controls and impotently plead for Unit 01 to move, even though he knows there's no power left to move it.

But wait!

Impossibly, Unit 01 has awakened, and it rips off one of the Angel's arms! Yes, through the power of Greyskull, a pure righteous heart, the ancient prophecy, a mother's love, clean living, eatin' me spinach, seeing Android 16's head getting stepped on, uh, to be honest, I have no idea. But it sure looks like Shinji has tapped into anime protagonist super powers and he's performing a miracle. Wait, why is the Eva putting the Angel's arm on its stump like that?

Oh! Okay... so it can do that now. Just absorb the enemy's flesh and use it to grow new limbs. Huh.

Apparently Shinji's synch ratio is over 400%, whatever that means. I don't know how they can tell any of this when the battery is dead, but okay.

Unit 01 defeats the Angel pretty handily from here, but it's not done. Nossir. It climbs on top of the Angel and...

Yeah, it's eating the Angel. This is not some bit where Shinji accesses the Light Hawk Wings and fulfils his destiny as the Legendary Super Pilot. The Eva was alive the whole time. The battery, the armor, all the other bells and whistles NERV put on the thing, they were designed to restrain and control the Eva's power. But now, with the battery dead, and Shinji begging it to act, it's free.

Ritsuko explains this, and also refers to the Eva as "she", so that's a thing. Anyway, she also says that the Eva is "taking the S2 engine into herself, which I don't understand at all. The only S2 engine was the one NERV-02 had in Nevada, and that's long gone. Is Ritsuko saying that the 14th Angel has it now, and Unit 01 is eating it? I'm confused.

This is so fucking cool. I'm glad I finally sat down to watch this show. This Eva is rad as hell.

That one girl on the laptop, who couldn't bear to watch the Dummy Plug Carnage from the last episode, well now she's dry heaving. I don't blame you, lady, this is nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuts. Also, we're in kind of a pickle now, because the 14th Angel may have been defeated, but now there's only one Eva left, and NERV can't control it. Also Shinji's in there with it, and how can they possibly get him out of there?

I'm mostly disturbed by how human the new arm looks. Anyway, Kaji watches all of this with some satisfaction. The crappy old men and Gendo Ikari can't just talk their way out of this one. From his office, Gendo observes that "this is the beginning", but the beginning of what?

Well, we'll just have to see next time...

Next episode preview is just Misato reaching for her glass. She doesn't even try to promise fan service to the audience anymore. Now she's just gonna get drunk and try to forget this is happening.

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 24

All right, this is it, the 17th Angel. Let's see what gonzo powers this one has...

Not quite what I was expecting, but I am impressed.

Uh... So Asuka's completely incapable of piloting her Eva, so I guess she ran away for like a week and she's been living in the bathtub of a wrecked house. The episode opens with a vision of Li'l Asuka running home to tell her mother about how she got accepted into the Eva program or something, and then she finds her mother hanging from a noose. Her dad had died sometime prior to this, I guess.

Later, we see her lying catatonic in a hospital bed, and that's baiscally it for Asuka this episode. Her arc was getting bleak but this is just awful. Let's move on.

Meanwhile, Gendo Ikari questions Ritsuko and asks why she destroyed the Dummy Plug system last time. Ritsuko talks about how her cat recently died, and she hadn't seen it in years, because of her work at NERV. Then she says she's not happy anymore, even when Gendo makes love to her. Oh wow. Well that settles that, then.

Do you think Gendo holds his hands over his mouth while he's doing the deed? Just props his elbows on the head of the bed and stares into the wall pensively while he thrusts his hips? Maybe I should find something else to talk about. Sorry.

Gendo says she's disappointed him, and she says he can't be disappointed, because he never had any expectations of her at all. She's nothing to him and she always was. This does put into perspective all the times Gendo has expressed disappointment in Shinji. Like, it's just a thing he says. Ultimately, it's meaningless.

What about Shinji? Well, he could really use someone to talk to after the startling revelation about Rei. The trouble is that there isn't anyone left. Asuka's... yeah. Misato's off doing her own thing. Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney left town. I didn't realize it at the time, but Tokyo-3 got wrecked in the recent Angel battles. Probably the 13th Angel, mainly.

There is Rei, but Shinji has no idea how to even act around Rei. I mean, it was never easy interacting with Rei, but now it's not even the same Rei? Or something? He can't talk to her is the point.

Then he meets this kid singing to himself amongst the wreckage. He introduces himself as Kaworu Nagisa, the Fifth Child and newest Eva Pilot. He's been recruited to replace Asuka, although it isn't clear if she's been kicked off the team just yet.

Everyone's kind of suspicious of the new kid, probably because he's so damn chipper and he isn't dealing with the trauma of dead parents or whatever. Also they have him do sync tests and his scores are excellent even before they reconfigured Unit 02 for him. He's a little too good to be true, and everyone in NERV seems to know it.

After the tests, the boys take a shower together, and when Shinji says he prefers to stay at the base late because he doesn't like spending time at home anymore, Kaworu invites him to sleep over at his place.

He also flirts a little with Shinji, and Shinji blushes. Today I was looking up what people were so angry about when Neon Genesis Evangelion was added to Netflix, and one of the gripes was that they edited out a scene featuring "a key piece of gay subtext". I wondered what that was, and yeah. I may not be the sharpest knife in the crayon box, but this looks pretty gay to me.

I will admit, this isn't something I usually think about when I watch or read stories, but in Shinji's case it probably never would have occurred to me, because of all the emotional baggage we've seen in the first 23 episodes. But now that we're here, it kind of makes sense. This kid's got so much trouble expressing his emotions and figuring out what he wants that it might have taken him a million years to work out that he's into boys. I mean, he apologizes for things that aren't even remotely his fault, and is desperate for the approval of others. He's not going to come out of the closet if there's even the slightest chance that someone might disapprove.

They don't go any further than that, but they do have a sleepover, and Shinji tells him that he hates his dad, which he's expressed in the past, but never quite so directly and succinctly. Shinji wonders why he would tell Kaworu this, of all people. I think, Shinji's sexuality aside, Kaworu showed up in just the right place and time and made himself available in just the kind of way Shinji needed at that moment. He wanted someone to talk to, and suddenly Kaworu's there to grant his wish. Kaworu just makes Shinji feel at ease, maybe for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, SEELE has resolved to put a stop to Gendo Ikari and his usurpation of NERV. SEELE created NERV to further its own agenda, but they feel Gendo has warped NERV to service his agenda instead.

Meanwhile, Gendo Ikari talks to Eva Unit 01, and addresses it as Yui, his dead wife. According to him, the Lance of Longius was in their way, so he wanted it thrown into outer space, whether SEELE liked that or not. He believes the 17th Angel, the last one, will appear soon, and with its death, he and Yui shall have their wish granted at last. Huh.

Oh, also earlier on, Kaworu introduced himself to Rei and told her that they were alike. She stays up all night wondering why she's still alive, and what Kaworu meant. What is it they have in common?

Meanwhile, Misato does some digging on Kaworu and discovers that he has the ability to increase his synchronization with the Evas at will. Like, he can control it completely if he wants, or he can lower his sync score to make it seem like he's not as good at it. That's supposed to be impossible, so Misato goes to Ritsuko, who I guess is in a NERV detention facility. She asks Ritsuko what Kaworu is, and she speculates that he's the final Angel. I was about to ask why Ritsuko never mentioned this earlier, but I forgot, she's turning against NERV, so her answer would probably be "'Cause fuck'em."

But before Misato can act on this informaiton, Kaworu makes his move. He activates Unit 02 and takes it down to the room where Adam is. Everyone's shocked, mostly because Kaworu doesn't even have to be inside the Eva to control it. He just floats alongside the thing as they head downstairs.

But also, as Admiral Clownshoes points out, SEELE is behind this. They knew what this kid was and they sent him to NERV knowing he would launch an attack.

And just so there's no confusion on this point, we cut to SEELE who talk amongst themselves about how they planned for this to happen. They expect this to be Gendo's final stand, and that he'll use Eva Unit 01 to stop Kaworu. So do they plan on NERV winning this fight? I assumed this showdown with the 17th Angel would happen regardless, so maybe SEELE's play here is to force the confrontation on their terms, so that the outcome is more favorable to them than for Gendo.

Because, the worst case scenario here is that Kaworu wins and destroys the world. Right? I mean, that's what this has been about from the start. Why would SEELE take such a gamble? How did they even arrange this? Did they look up "17th Angel" in the Yellow Pages, call him up and go "Hey, we want to pull a prank on Gendo. You want in on this?"

Maybe they just discovered Kaworu's infiltration and chose to let it play out. This implies that they can detect Angels much more effectively than NERV, which seems kind of backwards. If they have superior intel on the Angels, then why is Gendo the one running NERV?

As SEELE anticipated, Gendo sends Shinji to intercept in Unit 01. At first, Shinji refuses to believe that Kaworu is an Angel, but then he gets furious at Kaworu for betraying him and using his emotions against him. Kaworu's as bad as his father, Shinji says, which is as good a motivation as any.

But Shinji can't attack Kaworu while he's got Unit 02 to back him up. Shinji asks how he can control Unit 02, and Kaworu explains that he and the Eva are both made from the same type of Angelic tissues, from Adam. So it's child's play for him to control the Eva. Shouldn't that mean the other Angels would have had the same ability? I guess it doesn't work when they have pilots inside. Whatever.

As the battle progresses, Misato orders her dude at the controls to initiate a self-destruct on the whole base if Shinji's signal is lost. She reasons that it would be better to destroy the whole facility and die than to allow Kaworu to reach Adam and trigger Third Impact. Wait, is that still the lore? I thought they debunked that a while back?

But as Kaworu draws closer, they detect another powerful AT field, and they think it's another Angel. Well, no, it's just Rei. Your guess is as good as mine.

As Kaworu draws closer to Adam, he waxes philosophic about this. From the way he speaks of it, it's like he's compelled to return to Adam, because he was born from Adam. So maybe this was why all of the Angels headed for Tokyo-3. It's an instinctive compulsion, like salmon swimming upstream. But Kaworu seems to find it tragic that his instinctive compulsion will lead to the destruction of humanity.

Then he gets closer and realizes this isn't Adam at all but... Lilith? Who the hell is Lilith? Apparently this wasn't what Kaworu had in mind. He refers to humans as "Lilim", implying that they're the descendants of Lilith, just as the Angels and Evas are born of Adam, but... I dunno.

And in this moment of confusion, Shinji manages to catch up to Kaworu and grab him. If I understand correctly, Rei's AT field is neutralizing his own? And Shinji managed to overpower Unit 02, so Kaworu is defenseless. He seems more relieved than worried.

Kaworu explains that one one life form can inherit the future, Angels or humans, and he seems to have developed an admiration for humanity, perhaps from the time he spent living among them. Now that he's reached this place, he's content to die here, for life and death are of no great consequence to him. But he warns Shinji that he must kill him, because if Shinji doesn't, humanity will surely be doomed.

It's weird how this is the only Angel who can talk and he's even more cryptic and weird than the rest. I wonder if they all felt this way about it. It was all just a weird routine for them, and they don't particularly care if they win or lose as long as it's over.

Shinji begs him to explain what the fuck he's talking about, but this is all the explanation he's going to get. Either kill Kaworu or the whole world dies. At this, everyone just sort of freezes in place for... maybe two minutes? And then finally Shinji crushes him and his head falls into the Tang pool beneath Adam. Or Lilith. Who cares?

Later, we see Gendo and Rei watching Unit 01 getting the blood washed off it.

Elsewhere, Shinji talks to Misato and mourns Kaworu's death. He told Shinji he loved him, and he had never heard such kind words before. Shinji thinks Kaworu should have survived, but Misato counters that Kwaoru had given up his will to survive, and thus forfeited his right to live. That's kind of harsh.

Here's my version: Whatever Kaworu was, he seemed to only value his life as far as the time he spent with Shinji. And so if he had won, and Shinji perished with humanity, what would Kaworu have left to live for? That's why he said life and death are equal to him. It didn't matter because in his view, both were the same fate, but at least Shinji and his kind could grow and evolve to find new purpose. So if only one or the other can have the future, then it's only fair that it go to the one that can actually do something with it.

Anyway, the bigger picture here is that we just saw the last Angel die, and yet there's still two more episodes to go. What, does everyone just have a pizza party now? Asuka was despondent about not being an Eva pilot, but what good is being an Eva pilot when there's no more Angels to fight?

There is, of course, the SEELE vs. Gendo conflict to sort out, but it's hard to get invested in that when both sides are assholes, and I have no idea what either of them wanted. For all I know, they both won today.

Also, Shinji won, but he's still not happy. Kid, there's other boys in the world, if that's what's bothering you.

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 14

Don't worry, only half of the episode is clips from previous episodes.

But the second half manages to repeat a lot of stuff we've seen before as well...

Okay, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on this. Suffice to say, the first half of this episode is just a highlight reel focusing on all of the Angel attacks seen in this series from Episode 1-13. There's sound effect, but no music. There's some voice-overs on some of the footage, like Toji Suzuharu talking about how he blamed Eva Unit 01 for getting his sister hurt, or Big Rigg Mahoney expressing admiration for Rei's performance in the battle against the... fifth Angel? The octahedron one.

Objectively, it's a good introduction to the series if you've come in late, and I was talking before about how Japanese TV is organized into thirteen-week blocks called "cours", so it kind of makes sense that Episode 14 might benefit from bringing new or returning viewers up to speed.

Also, I'm sure the staff working on this show needed a breather. I read the Wikipedia article for this series and it talks about how they had trouble meeting their deadlines and the plot started to get... weird around this time. So from that perspective, I'm happy they got a chance to take it easy for a little while. It probably wasn't enough, but it's something.

However, as a guy liveblogging the whole series on DVD, this kind of sucks for me, because I just got done recapping the first 13 episodes, and now I'm stuck with nothing new to talk about. Also, Episodes 1-13 were kind of repetitive to begin with. An Angel shows up, the gang at NERV breathlessly discuss the threat, then they come up with some daring plan to kill it with giant robots. Some team-building happens, and maybe one or two of the characters opens up a little about their feelings. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, there's only been so many Angels in this show, so we wrap up with the 11th Angel from Episode 13, and it's mentioned how the existence of this Angel still hasn't been confirmed. That's because Gendo Ikari ordered NERV to cancel the alert and report it as a false alarm. Which brings us to the present, and...

The "Human Instrumentality Project Special Conference". I'm halfway into this show, and I still don't know what this is or who these spooky guys are that Gendo talks to on the holographic phone. They're supposed to be important, but when the call is over, he always dismisses them as toothless. NERV holds all the tiles, as he puts it. Admiral Clownshoes cautions him against irritating them, so I guess that they must have some pull in this thing, but not much.

Basically, they think an Angel did enter the NERV base and at least threatened the integrity of the Human Instrumentality Project. For all they know, it spoiled the whole works, but Gendo is covering up the entire incident and denying that the base was in danger at all.

So they're mostly upset that they can't get a straight answer out of Gendo about what happens. He insists everything is fine, but the know he's good at hiding the truth, so they'll never know for sure if he's lying. But they can't proceed with the HIP without Gendo, so why are we even having this conference? Because these guys just want to voice their frustration, I guess. I can see why Gendo doesn't respect them.

Gendo insists that everything is on track, in accordance with the timetable in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and "Seele's" plan, whoever that is. Oh, wait? Seele as in "the seven seals" from Revelation?

The thing about this show is that it tries to act all slick with these Bible references, but from what I can tell they're all just peppered in without any significance. There's something called "The Central Dogma", but I don't even know what it is. The Three Magi are the trio of Persians who traveled to Bethlehem to see the newborn Jesus Christ. In this show they're supercomputers. So for all I know, Gendo could be talking about the literal real-world Dead Sea Scrolls, or a schedule he pinned to the NERV company bulletin board.

It's all meant to sound very hoity-toity and intellectual, but they never really explain what the Human Instrumentality Project is or how it's to be accomplished. I assume it involves all of the times Gendo and Admiral Clownshoes have been off-site, like their recent trip to Antarctica. It probably also involves that embryonic thing Kaji delivered to Gendo from Europe, and so on.

And I don't demand an answer on the thing. It's clearly meant to be explained later on, but scenes like this where they talk about the thing without ever directly identifying the thing... well they just go 'round in circles.

Meanwhile... whatever this is. NERV is running an experiment to see how well Rei and Shinji can sync up with each other's Evas. So this is Rei's first time in Unit 01. She has some sort of psychadelic experience that culminates in her asking "What am I?" over and over again, and when she finally comes out of it she observes that it "smells like Ikari". I assume she means Shinji, although it might smell like Gendo too, I dunno.

Asuka isn't included in this experiment, and when she asks why she's not participating, Misato reminds her that she doesn't want to pilot the other Evas anyway, so why bother? All right, but why is she suited up, then? Are they doing a different test with Asuka, or did they have to let her sit in on this so she wouldn't feel left out? Because I'm betting it's the second one of those.

Yeah, definitely the second one.

So Shinji also observes that syncing up with with another Eva feels strange, and he thinks it smells like Rei. Then he reports that something is "trying to get into my brain", and he has hallucinations of Rei.

In the control room, they call this "mental contamination", so it sounds like Shinji's description is accurate. As far as I can tell, when you pilot the same Eva long enough, you leave some sort of "psychic residue" behind, which the next pilot might encounter when they try to use it. That's what caused Rei to experience that identity crisis earlier, because she was picking up Shinji's thoughts. But when Shinji picks up Rei's thoughts...

Unit 00 goes berserk, just like it did when Rei had that accident pre-Episode 1. The only difference this time is that when Unit 00 attacks the control room, Rei herself is standing at the window. Also, they can't eject the plug for some reason, so Shinji's stuck in there until the battery runs out of power. I think he might be better off that way, since ejecting the plug seemed to be what got Rei so badly hurt.

Misato and Ritsuko discuss the accident afterward. Misato notes that this is almost exactly what happened back when Rei got hurt, almost like they're in a cartoon, and the animators reused the same cels of the Eva punching the wall in an attempt to save time and effort. That can't be a coincidence, but Ritsuko tells her she can't say much until they run more tests. Privately, Ritsuko considers that Unit 00 was trying to attack Ritsuko, specifically.

Anyway, Shinji is okay. We see him wake up in a hospital bed, just like he did in Episode 2. Almost exactly like in Episode 2. It's like he's in a cartoon and they reused the footage from that previous stay to save time and effort. Nah. Nevermind that shit, it's time for Math Puppy.

Okay, so in this dystopian world, there's a puppy from Niigata who somehow knows how to solve math problems. It's insane, right? Only humans, pigs, and certain horses know how to do math, but Kana somehow has the same power. And Kana's only a puppy. Imagine the kind of mathematics Kana will be capable of in the future.

Naturally, Kana is excited to be on the radio, barking "Wan! Wan! Wan!" over and over. Then they ask Kana what 325 minus 324 is. Damn, that's a hard one. I think it's six, but I don't know. But Kana gets it right! I checked it on my calculator and boom. 325 - 324 = 1. Good dog!

We close on Gendo and Admiral Clownshoes, still discussing that conference from earlier. They talk about SEELE interfering. Wait, I thought it was Seele's plan they were following. Why would SEELE interfere? Fuck this cloak and dagger shit.

Also Rei is no worse off from the experiment, and she's already retrieving the "Lance of Longius". That seems like the sort of plot development that should be elaborated upon, but oops, the Math Puppy segment went a little long, so we're out of time.

Next episode... Misato is having a quarterlife crisis and she's worried that she won't find a husband, so getting back together with Kaji might be her only chance. That sounds really, really bad, actually. For the first time since I started this, I actually kind of want to skip this episode.

She does promise more fan service, so maybe Misato did me a solid and burned all the footage, forcing them to air Episode 16 in its place. A man can dream, can't he?

[lubufengxianyt]

I think in Ep3 when he was introduced they did mention his name, at least my sub did, as Aida

I prefer big rigg mahoney tho

Neon Genesis Evangelion 07

Yeah, me neither, kid. Kind of weird that we're seven episodes in and we still don't know anything. I'm a little concerned, honestly.

This is another Misato episode. Actually, this one might be even more of a Misato episode than the last one, which is fine by me. This show had some trouble getting out of the gate, but now we're cooking. Cooking toast, that is, because that's what Shinji and Misato have for breakfast every morning. Wait... I misread my notes. Shinji has toast. Misato gets toasted. On beer.

No, wait, she's having toast too! Good, that explains why she has that second beer after Shinji leaves for school. Gotta wash it down. Shinji expresses disapproval for her slovenly, beer-swilling lifestyle, which is a big change from when he just passively agreed with everything she said. Misato is pleased that he's gotten more comfortable expressing himself lately.

Shinji is also embarassed at the prospect of Misato going to his school for some parent-teacher conference thing. Misato is essentially his guardian at this point, even though his actual dad is Misato's boss. I guess he would have signed off on this, since it seems clear he doesn't care.

All the boys at school think she's the coolest thing ever. She's a sexy lady and she's the NERV Ops Director. Shinji acts like they'd see her differently if they knew what she was like at home, but they don't care. Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney are like "you keep the Earth safe, and we'll take care of Misato." Big Rigg Mahoney knows what's up. If I had me a freak like Misato, I think I could learn to live with empty beer cans. The penguin droppings might be a problem, but I think I'd get over it every night if you know what I mean.

We don't get a lot of information on the Evas in this one, but I'll go over what we do get. They're making more of them. Ritsuko and Misato talk in an elevator about the repairs on 00 and 01, and they speak of Unit 02 like it'll be along any day now. On a plane ride, Gendo Ikari speaks of Units 06 and 08, so there's plans to manufacture even more of them, though finding pilots seems to be the main hurdle.

Shinji also learns about Second Impact, the event that changed the world so much. First Impact was the hypothetical collision of the Earth with a protoplanet called Theia, which led to the formation of the Earth's Moon. Second Impact is widely known to be a meteor collision with Antarctica. According to the test in this screenshot, the meteor was only 4 inches wide, but it was traveling at 95% the speed of light, making the impact powerful enough to destroy Antarctica and cause upheavals that wiped out half of the world's population.

However, Misato tells Shinji that it wasn't actually a meteor at all, but the First Angel. It came to Earth on September 13, 2000, then exploded for some unknown reason, taking Antarctica with it.

NERV's mission, then, is to prevent a Third Impact. The Angels are still showing up on Earth, and if another one self-destructs in the same fashion, then it could cause even more devasation. So the only chance humanity has it to kill the things before they get the chance to explode.

Just to recap, we met the third Angel in Episode 1, and it self-destructed in Episode 2, but Shinji had nearly defeated it by that point, so maybe that's why it didn't produce the same destructive force as the first. And we met the fourth and fifth Angels in Episodes 3 and 5. No word yet on the second Angel, but it must have shown up in 2000, since everyone in Episode 1 talks about how there hadn't been an Angel sighting in fifteen years. It's also not clear how it was defeated, since Eva units weren't available for combat missions then.

My guess is that the second angel was susceptible to conventional weapons. That's my working theory on these things. Whatever they're up to, they seem to adapt and get more dangerous each time. The first one blew up shortly after it arrived on Earth, which might have been an accident, or some bad reaction to Earth's environment. The second one must have been killed by humans, which demonstrated that it could be done and it was a viable way to stop them from exploding.

The third angel was impervious to conventional weapons, requiring an Eva to defeat it. The fourth one... was basically the same deal, which is why Episode 3 kind of sucks. The fifth one targeted and disabled the Eva before it could get in range, requiring two Evas and a new-fangled weapon to defeat it. So the sixth one will probably be even harder to stop, which is why Gendo Ikari is trying to convince the U.N. to increase NERV's budget.

Meanwhile, Misato and Ritsuko are headed for Old Tokyo, where the Strategic Self-Defense Force are holding a demonstration. The SSDF are the guys who had that positron cannon Misato borrowed for her hail Mary play in Episode 6. Old Tokyo was destroyed in the chaos that followed Second Impact, but I guess someone decided to build a convention center out here on the remains.

I'm pretty sure the SSDF is just a continuation of the real-world Japanese Self Defense Force, but in this show they're mainly focused on finding ways to defend against the Angels, just like NERV. I mean, I guess that makes sense, given how the last three Angel attacks have been on Japanese soil. And their positron cannon did the trick, so they're not exactly bad at this sort of thing. This time, they're unveiling a new weapon, which is their own giant robot, Jet Alone.

NERV was invited to attend the ceremony, and Ritsuko takes the opportunity to question the premise of Jet Alone. It's powered by an on-board nuclear reactor, and it has no pilot. Everything is done by remote control, which seems like a really bad idea if they lose connection with the thing and the reactor melts down.

The SSDF guy laughs off her concerns, and attacks the Evangelion robots instead. They're powered by electrical cables, which is kind of impractical, and their pilots are subjected to intense stress and suffer mental instability. Also, the Evas are incredibly expensive, and every time the world increases NERV's budget, there's less money to care for the humanity they're trying to save.

So Jet Alone seems like a perfect solution. The tech is cheaper, there's no pilot to put in harm's way, and I guess they think it can hold its own in a fight, although that remains to be seen.

Misato keeps her cool at the dinner but gets furious afterward. By contrast...

Ritsuko calmly assures Misato that Jet Alone is nothing to worry about, as she burns one of the handouts they got at the dinner.

I'm pretty sure Ritsuko is awesome, but she really hasn't done a lot in this show other than provide exposition. She's practically the narrator in a lot of scenes, but damn. She can burn my papers anytime.

Soon enough, it's time to see Jet Alone in action. He looks a little primitive compared to the Evas, but I don't know, this thing kind of reminds me of Big O. I could see it getting its own show.

All they really do with it is have it walk forward, but for some reason they can't get it to stop, so it just keeps going and steps on the SSDF's control center.

And that's basically Jet Alone's whole deal. It just keeps walking in this same direction. Also its nuclear reactor is experiencing a pressure buildup, so yeah, this is turning out exactly like Ritsuko predicted at dinner. Maybe a little too exactly...

Anyway, the coolest thing about Jet Alone is its arms, which sort of dangle at its sides like tassels. I assume this is designed so it can wrap its arms around a hostile Angel like an octopus, but when it's just walking like this the arms flop back and forth and it looks adorable. He's just a struttin' and a strollin'.

Misato immediately takes charge, since the thing is headed for Atsugi and its reactor could go critical at any moment. She demands the SSDF give her an emergency shutdown password for the thing, but no one on-site has authorization to do that. So they call the authorities, but none of them want to take the responsibility without a written request. Disgusted, Misato decides to tackle the matter herself, and calls in Shinji and Eva 01.

Her plan is to just get inside JA and shut it down from the inside. For that, she needs a skintight suit to protect her from the radiation, and Eva 01 will get her close enough to the hatch to get inside. Once she's in, Shinji will have to try to hold Jet Alone so it can't move any closer to a populated area.

And Shinji seems to manage this pretty well, except he can't stop the reactor from exploding. That won't hurt Shinji, since the Eva can take it, but he's still worried about Misato, who will definitely be killed if she can't shut JA down.

Misato makes it inside, but the password to shut down the reactor (Hope), doesn't work. There's no time to figure out why that is, so instead she goes for broke and tries to shove the control rods into place manually. At least, I think that's what she's doing.

Fortunately, when she shoves one of them in, the others all retract with it. I'm not sure she knew that would happen, but it works. The red lights turn green, and Jet Alone stands down.

I'll go ahead and say it: This is actually really good fan service, as Misato promised in the preview for this episode. She said that a couple of times before, and never really delivered. I mean, she took a bath in Episode 2, but big deal. Most of the time she's wearing pretty normal clothing, and she's covered from neck to toe. Meanwhile, they keep showing Rei in various states of undress, or in her skintight pilot suit, which is the sort of thing you'd expect from fan service, except Rei's fourteen so that's creepy as hell.

But Misato wearing a skintight costume while she heroically dives into an exploding robot to shove its control rods into place? That's actually pretty sexy. YMMV, of course.

Shinji calls her success a miracle, but Misato is suspicious that it might not be as miraculous as it seems. Someone must have set all this up.

Later, Ritsuko reports on the incident to Gendo Ikari, and she says everything went exactly as planned, save for Misato's daring shutdown of the reactor. So it looks like NERV sabotaged Jet Alone, probably to discredit the SSDF and convince the UN that NERV deserves whatever funding they ask for. And since Misato's role in this was not part of the plan, it sounds like Ikari intended for Jet Alone to explode. That's why the password didn't work.

The only lingering question is whether Gendo intended for Jet Alone to explode in the middle of nowhere, or once it reached a populated area. That I feel the need to ask tells you everything you need to know about Gendo Ikari.

The next day, Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney are still horny for Misato, and Shinji is still trying to convince them that she's not as cool as she seems. He tells them about how sloppy and silly she is at home, and they realize he doesn't know how lucky he is. Shinji's the only one who gets to see that side of her, and that's because Misato allows only him to see it. That means she thinks of him as family.

And there you have it. I guess this is a big eureka moment for Shinji, and maybe it helps him understand why Rei and his dad get along so well. Anyway, the next episode is supposed to have Asuka Langley in it, so maybe we'll finally find out what she's all about...