Neon Genesis Evangelion – 9/10 – Throwback Thursday

Welcome to the first double feature for Neon Genesis Evangelion! A momentous day I know, but its nothing compared to what our cast went through. Evangelion threw everything from DDR to T&A to a fatsuit for whatever reason. Does it make sense? No. Are we gonna talk about it anyways? Hell yeah, lets jump in!

Starting off, in general these episode’s were a bit weird for me, in a number of ways. The most polite way to put it of course would be that the episodes were “problematic”. As both in terms of production and subject matter I were concerning. For the first, it’s not that it was bad per-se. The… performance, as I would call it, was actually well made. I never imagined I would watch multi-ton robots move that way. However I don’t think it worked as Anno intended, and actually took me out of the moment/point of the episode. Meanwhile laden through were a number of really concerning things in regards to Evangelion’s treatment of its female characters. There is a time and a place for these sorts of things, and in a serious character drama they can have weight. But serious is not how I would describe Evangelion.

To go in to detail, there was a lot of cringe Asuka/Misato fanservice these two episodes. An absurd amount, really. Evangelion gave us everything from stalker photos to jokes to just straight up nude shots. In general Evangelion was pretty damn gratuitous about it all, and I don’t think it really fits the show. It’s more like its just a trapping airing in the 90’s, as if it couldn’t get away from them. None of this is to say that fanservice is a deal breaker either, it’s a simple fact of anime life. Have cute girls in the show, odds are you will get a panty shot at some point. The issue starts to arrive with how Evangelion presents it. With Toji being presented humorously after having bought stalker photos of Asuka, etc. And this doesn’t stop with Asuka either.

Misato also had some terribly uncomfortable scenes, mostly with Kaji. The big no-no here is of course the elevator scene and oof. Originally I was all for Kaji, he was fun and teased Misato, being the only one who could get a reaction. Get her to lose control of a situation. Now though I am getting some seriously rapey vibes from him, basically molesting her in the elevator. The whole “Your lips didn’t say no” shtick was incredibly yikes. A similar, but not as serious, scene happened between Shinji and Asuka as well. Her being asleep, and him almost kissing her, etc. This one is less creepy, because Shinji is a kid and pretty socially retarded. Still wrong of course, but not “rapey” like Kaji. Evangelion also presented it in a more serious light than Kaji’s scene, though I fear the implications of Shinji’s growing harem.

It’s not all gloom and doom for Asuka though, as Evangelion continued to expand on her character. We saw a lot of her pride, her excess of confidence as a defense mechanism and her desire for attention. For example during the team training with Shinji we saw how she reacted to being told she can’t do something. To possibly being replaced/shown up. Meanwhile there is the constant demand for attention, whether it be from Shinji or from Kaji, Asuka can’t stand being ignored. Going out of her way to mess with Shinji to try and get a reaction, or doing missions so Kaji will look at her over Misato. Even seeming to revel in the weird creeper photos taken at school, she wants to be the center of attention, while simultaneously rejecting people and not letting them get closer.

If I had one complaint about it all, I would say that it’s hard to get a real handle on Asuka’s character at this point. There are just so many things going on around her. From Kaji to Shinji to her inability to sleep alone or calling out for her mother. Her arrogance, her genius and her pride, they all sort of bash around and conflict at times. Evangelion has established her well, now what it needs to do is give her room to grow. The last time I asked for this was back early on with Shinji, and Evangelion gave me just that with episode 5. So now I am asking again, do what you did last time and give us an episode all about Asuka. Tell us about her, expand on all these traits you threw in to a box. Do that, and you’ll be good.

Beyond the characters, Evangelion also gave us two very weird fights. In a way, it was nice. This constant escalation between Angels and Humans, seeing how strategies have to develop, etc. Yet then Anno gives us a synchronized dance number and its just… I don’t know how to feel about this. Was it ambitious? Stupid? Both? It was so far away from what I was expecting, I don’t even know what to write about it. In a way I appreciate it, because it was something different, a unique way of trying to show their joint growth. Yet at the same time they are pirouetting through the air, drop kicking Angels in to mountains backflipping through a city. All the while the Angel plays perfectly into their hands. If nothing else, it will definitely be one of the more memorable moments from Evangelion for me.

Meanwhile we had the volcano/lava monster fight. This was the first one that felt like a “Monster of the week” sort of scenario, and didn’t accomplish much to me. Seemingly really only bringing about fanservice and fat jokes. There was some political and historical stuff dashed throughout of course. Such as learning the Angel was an egg basically and growing up soon, or how Ikari was basically going to nuke them on failure. But ultimately none of this was anything new, it was all explored in a previous episode at some point. Seemingly only existing as a “The characters spend time together” sort of episode. In that sense it was fine I suppose. I’m just sort of expecting the story to start kicking in to gear soon. All of our cast is introduced, we have a team of giant robots and Angels. Lets go! Please?

So all in all, how was Evangelion these past 2 episodes? Best I can say is it ranged from alright to WTF, though the second is still very confusing. We saw Asuka get defined more as a character, which was nice. She got a lot of screentime really defining her character traits and the like. Sadly that came at the cost of a lot of fanservice however, with generally creepy undertones to it all. Hopefully Evangelion can steer clear of this moving forward, but I don’t have much hope for that. The main cast is primarily female afterall, with 2 of them living with Shinji and the rest in close proximity. So the best I can no doubt hope for is that Evangelion at least surrounds that with interesting plot and robot fights. Episode 9 gave me one of those. Now where is the plot Anno? Where is it?!