Another week, another double feature of Neon Genesis Evangelion. This was an odd pair, as our lead 3 actually take backseat for the most part. Being largely irrelevant to the goings on and events up until the end of episode 14. Meanwhile the Angels figure out a new way to attack, Ritsuko gets some backstory and Rei goes on an acid trip. So lets dive in!
Starting off, lets just hop right in to episode 13, An Angel’s Invasion. This was pretty interesting actually, as Evangelion introduces us to a new kind of Angel. One that works like a computer, or a series of small nanobots. It really calls into question exactly what the Angels are. As up until now, we have only seen them as giant monsters, something an Eva unit is required to fight. Yet here we see something that the Eva units couldn’t hope to defeat, something that attacks computers and code. Of course it’s not perfect, there are a lot of questions about whether or not such a thing would even work. After all, its apparently some sort of airborne replicating virus, evolving to deal with whatever is attacking it. If it were made just to kill humans, it would have won easily. But instead it somehow knew about the Magi. How?
Before getting to the Magi though, I want to follow up on this line of “Evolution” Evangelion introduced here. As our leads idea to defeat the Angel wasn’t to kill it, but to give it an ultimatum. Since it could evolve to deal with anything they through at it, in a way that made it predictable. And by attacking the Magi as a sort of parasite, killing the Magi would kill it. So they gave it an interesting choice: Join the Magi or die. Basically, they made it so the only way to survive was to evolve to work with and integrate with the Magi. It’s not perfect, and it has some holes, but it was an interesting way to defeat it. And it was one that didn’t involve our main 3 kids at all, which was nice. But it does raise some questions about the Magi.
Getting back to the aforementioned Magi, these AI are apparently part Angel now, which really fits the evolution theme. What I mean, we just saw the Magi become part Angel. The Magi are effectively an uploaded human brain, or based on ones personality. As we learn from Ritsuko, its just her mothers brain split into 3 competing parts. So when they agree, it means a good action has been chosen. This means that Evangelion basically just merged a human brain with an Angel. Now, follow with me here, the mind tech used to make the Magi is also used on the Eva units. To connect the pilot in the plugsuit to them, and allow them to operate like their own bodies. I think you see where I am going with all of this, but for arguments sake, lets go over episode 14 first, as it builds on this.
Episode 14 being of course SEELE, the Throne of Souls. What a name Evangelion, what a name. The elephant in the room with this episode, before the interesting stuff, is the recap. The first half of episode 14 is effectively a recap, though a novel one. It basically presents the first 13 episodes through the lense of other characters. Playing clips of what happened with narration by each character from something they wrote. Whether it be an after action report from Mikoto, or a school essay from Toji, it doesn’t really matter. It took what is normally, and arguably still was, a boring recap and… tries to spice it up abit. I don’t think we really needed a recap, as it introduced very little if any new information. But if we are going to have one, Evangelion could have done it a lot worse.
The 2nd half of the episode though is a tad more interesting, hinting at a lot going on underneath. Once again though we have to split this into halves, the first one being Rei’s weird poem. It was like a fever dream of sorts, and it actually raised some questions as to her sanity. It has made me wonder, is Rei imprinting onto the Eva? Or is it perhaps imprinting onto her in some way? As throughout the poem Rei seems to have trouble identifying who she is, whether physically or mentally. Like she is having some kind of dissociative episode. This is seemingly reinforced when Rei’s Eva, like a 2nd body at this point, rejects Shinji. Now whether that is because Rei already occupies it, or because it was trying to take him to, we don’t know. But after episode 13’s mind tech, it raises some interesting questions.
Meanwhile near the end of the episode, we start to get a lot of name drops from Gendo. “Adam”, the first man. “The Lance of Longinus”, the spear that pierced Jesus while he was hung on the cross, etc. A lot of Christian imagery being thrown in, though without too much to show for it just yet. Makes me a bit anxious, like we are finally going to start the plot proper. As up until now in Evangelion, our cast he been pretty reactive to everything. If Gendo is to be believed however, everything is going “according to Seele’s script”. Who is Seele? Why do they have a script? How did they anticipate the variety of Angel attacks? It makes one wonder… is Gendo responsible for the Angel attacks? Building power through Nerv, with these as an excuse? It doesn’t feel like it, but something is clearly manufactured here.
Finally, we can return to the Magic, the Eva units and the Angels, because I have come to a conclusion. I believe that the Eva units NERV has are Angels, possibly the Angels from the Second Impact. Captured, neutered and restructured so as to be used to fight other Angels. That or clones, since they have that embryo from earlier. When our leads go in, they are connecting with the Angel, and controlling it, but this no doubt goes both ways. Resulting in Rei’s… weirdness, so much so that she may no longer be Rei when Evangelion starts. But instead the Angel inside her Unit has merged with her like the Magi did with the virus Angel. So when Shinji plugged in, it rejected him, or tried to consume him like it did most likely did Rei.
At the very least, we know that the Angels are not simple machines. As throughout the series we have seen them act independently, and when armor is destroyed, we see their limbs. And every time they appear organic, either human or something else. Meanwhile Evangelion made it very clear early on how much DNA we share with the Angels, which is no doubt helpful when plugging in and trying to pilot one. Now how does this tie into Adam and the Spear of Longinus? No idea, maybe they are going to try and kill the original Angel “Adam” or “God” or something, who knows. Evangelion is weird. But regardless, I am expecting some mind shenanigans moving forward as our leads spend more and more time inside these Eva units. Exposed to this alien mind. Least I hope so. I could just be MASSIVELY wrong.
So all in all, how was Evangelion this week? Pretty good. Kept me engaged and got me asking a lot of questions about the series. We are seemingly finally moving into some actual proactive plot as well, which will be nice. It’s still weird in places, like dedicating the first half of episode 14 to a recap, but hey. It wasn’t terrible. Moving forward though, I hope to start getting some explanations. Some history, some confrontations, on what the Angels are, the Eva’s are, the spear is, etc. We have just passed the halfway point folks, that means it’s time for shit to start going down. I hope you will continue to follow along with me, and I will see you next week!
Kudos to the production team for creating a recap episode that is so different from the typical one, and actually worth watching. But its not even just the first half, but the second half too, which actually is mostly recycled footage, with new dialogue and some edits (like coloring Unit 00 from episode 5 as blue instead of orange).
Ah nice catch on the recolored unit, I didn’t notice that. That’s actually really clever.
The show never really explains Rei’s vision in Unit 01 or why Unit 00 rejects Shinji. (It generally has other things it wants to do other than lore.) However, the manga adaptation revealed a lot after the original show finished. Once you’re done reviewing the series, you might find it worthwhile to read through the fan wikis to fill in the gaps.
Good, if a little disappointing on the manga end, to know.
I always thought the rejections (all of them except perhaps for Ritsuko’s during Rei’s experiment) were possible to explain conclusively (once one understand the underlying principle behind Evas).
Aren’t lot’s of these visions, like, metaphors and/or thematic narrations that do not need explanations? They do not operate within the physical in-universe rules. One could explain it, but the explanation would only take away from the actual meaning, right?
But man, I also should read the manga!
Lenlo, I think the Angel from ep13 is dead, no funny meta-Magi stuff. Id have to rewatch the exact ending of the episode to be certain.
Anyway, Lenlo, you impressed me with your theories. I think it requires quite outside the box thinking to nail even elemental stuff down, because it hinges upon an implicit never revealed information (and I will admit it took me until middle of End of Evangelion to figure it out’), but I think I can at least say that the reality is very simple (and cruel?) – more that it appears*. This is why this is human-first show, everything in it (and even its science) is reducible to humanity itself. This makes all kinds of unexpected elements hit straight home (to hearth), which makes the show multi-layered, interesting and relevant after 30 years, arguably more than ever.**
* I’d argue this too makes the show similar to Utena – The End of the World seemed absurdly distant, but implicitly materialistic (once you reach it, it will be plain visible and obvious), which turned out to be such a feint. It was always right there for Utena and Andy to grasp all along, but its immaterial nature turned it invisible for them.
** It is so relevant, yet it’s influence would not make it far nowadays. I wonder what Anno even thinks about this stuff at this point. Like why does he bother with the Rebuilds, particularly now that they are repurposed (rebuilt) into a soulless vessel after they rewrote the script, possibly to better fit the current audience? Is that a good thing and does that audience even care? We clearly got beyond anything he or anyone imagined back then. I’m talking about degeneracy, media consumption and so on. Asukas from then became legends, Asukas now are consumed whole, instantly, by meme loving community living in constant-present, desiring only instant gratification and endlessly thriving. Seeing the junkies in VRChat terrifies me, honestly.