Neon Genesis Evangelion: A Boy's Own Odyssey

or
The Dream of Shinji
Beginnings: From Space Radish to Atlantean Princess
In August of 1980 a group of science fiction buffs occasional students at
universities in and around the Kansai region of Japan were granted approval
to mount and manage the 20th Annual Japan Sci-Fi Convention in Osaka, Daicon
3 (1981). The conventions name, Daicon, is a combination of an alternate
reading of the first kanji character of Osaka () and an abbreviation
of convention. For the opening ceremony the group produced a short animated
film, now known as the Daicon III Opening Animation. According to Takeda
Yasuhiro, most of the work of creating this film was done by Anno Hideaki, Akai
Takami, and Yamaga Hiroyuki.[2] Despite the trios total lack of experience in
making cel anime, and impeded further by insufficient funds to buy professional
materials, the film was well received, as was the conference. The same group
held the following years convention, and another film,Daicon IV Opening
Animation, was produced under somewhat improved conditions.
The Daicon III Opening Animation begins with a pun between the conferences
title and the Japanese radish, daikon. A little girl receives a glass of water from
a friendly spaceman with instructions to water a daikon.[3] She does so and the
radish flourishes, growing into a spaceship while retaining its vegetable shape
and burst of green foliage.
These two shorts [available on the Web] are the stuff of legend
for a number of reasons: because amateurs succeeded in
producing animations that technically and artistically outshone the
work of major animation studios; because their themes and
materials highlighted the interests of a new generation of SF and
animation fans, later to be dubbed otaku; and because producing
these films brought together all the key figures who would go on
to found Gainax Studios and to produce such highly popular and
commercially successful films and series as Royal Space Force:
The Wings of Honneamise (1987), Nadia: The Secret of Blue
Water (1989-90), and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96).[47]

The last anime series produced by Gainax before Evangelion was Nadia: The
Secret of Blue Water, for which Anno Hideaki was the principal director. The
scenario for the series is a cousin of Miyazaki Hayaos Laputa: Castle in the
Sky (1986) in that they have a distant common ancestor in Jules VernesTwenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and are both based on a treatment written by
Miyazaki in the 1970s.[48] The series was originally planned for 26 episodes, but
its commercial success prompted the network (NHK) to demand an expansion of
that number to 39, severely straining the studio and especially director Anno.
At its philosophical heart Nadia confronts two issues. The first is a critical
examination of just war theory, carried out under conditions of actual combat.

The girl of the title, Nadia, is a strict pacifist and committed vegetarian, while
her romantic partner and occasional antagonist, Jean, is an engineering prodigy.
These two 14-year-old children are observers, actors, and targets in a hot war
between Captain Nemo of the Nautilus and Gargoyle, leader of the NeoAtlanteans, who are villainous aliens out to enslave mankind. In Nadia every
death counts, even those of the enemy, and each moral equation is exhaustively
fought over by Nadia (the idealist) and Nemo (the realist). The submarines first
mate, Electra, has her own problems with Nemos acceptance of collateral
death, and vacillates between love and hate of the captain. Jean is often caught
in the backwash of these conflicts, struggling to stay afloat while inventing one
technological marvel after another.
Nadias second core issue concerns mankinds problematic love affair
with technology. Each DVD opens with grim paintings of storms at sea,
environmental degradation, and beleaguered refugees on the move. The year is
1889, and industrial development and exploitive colonialism are competing for
the earths natural resources, generating international tensions that will
eventually erupt into two world wars. We are prompted by this preview of future
catastrophes to see conflicts in Nadia as emblematic of mankinds warlike nature
and compulsion to invent, maximize, and misuse technology. Once learned, the
story seems to say, technology cannot be unlearned; the best we can do is
adjust our relationship to it, optimizing technology for us, not us for technology.
In her moments of greatest ideological purity, Nadia insists that the proper
amount of technology is none at all; but another part of her cannot be happy
without it. After she and Jean (plus Marie and the white lion cub King) are
washed ashore on a tropical island, Jeans inventiveness supplies the realist trio
with food and shelter, while Nadias monomaniacal struggle to live in noncompetitive harmony with nature keeps her hungry and miserable.
The moral questions examined in Nadia are explicit and unmistakable. Lacking
any veil of artistic distancing, they play out right at the surface.
But Nadiacannot keep its camera eye on the main event. The grand existential
contest between humanity and the Neo-Atlanteans is set aside, while the focus
narrows to a seemingly endless array of petty interpersonal squabbles among
the characters. After a digression of about a dozen episodes the Neo-Atlanteans
return, Captain Nemo sacrifices his life to save the children and his crew, and
the survivors live happily etc. (Near the end of this drama hertears fall
on his face. A number of other prefigurations of Evangelion can be found,
including a preserved prototype for humanity called Adam.)
During or shortly after production of Nadia something happened to alter Anno
Hideakis view of television anime, but the details are elusive. Thomas Lamarre
presents the most thorough account I have found, but his comments are not
sourced, and are therefore unverifiable. Lamarre reports that Anno became
deeply distressed by what he perceived as fan obsession with Nadia as a sex
goddess, and a compulsion among members of the youthful audience to notice,

classify, and explain every object within every frame, activity now associated
with the word otaku.
Both directors [Miyazaki and Anno] would come to see a boyish
fascination with technology as a major part of the problem, and
would associate this fascination with something
like otaku activities. For Anno, the popularity of Nadia, its fans
intense erotic attachment to the character of Nadia, and the
demand to stretch out the series were all surely crucial in his shift
of attitude. [49]

After a pause of four years Anno returned to television anime with Neon Genesis
Evangelion, which he gradually forged into a stealth attack on otaku fantasies of
futuristic weaponry and adolescent eroticism.
Evangelion Strikes Back!
If Nadia is clear and forthright in its moral concerns, Evangelion is allegorical
and elliptical to the point of obscurity.[1] Densely packed with Kabbalistic,
Gnostic, and Biblical references, technology, psychology, quiet introspection,
politics, life, death, love, hate, admiration, envy, faithfulness, betrayal,
etc.,Evangelion appears to give unlimited license to every flavor of otaku
symbol detective, armaments engineer, shjo admirer, conspiracy theorists of
every stripe while hinting at theological dimensions on a cosmic scale. To
further complicate matters, at least three endings have been produced so far,
and a fourth is reportedly on the way. Such an embarrassment of informational
riches would surely seem to spell otaku heaven, but just as the party was
poised to explode into data overload, the punchbowl was whisked away in a
conclusion (or conclusions) that retroactively redefined the entire endeavor.
Convinced they had been watching a very different story and intensely
disappointed by the absence of a slam-bang finale, incensed television fans
turned their rage into a public scandal. Now that the dust has settled (though
not the controversy), sober reflection reveals that Evangelion had never been
the Manichean clash of absolute good and absolute evil that the mecha genre
seemed to promise, but something far more challenging and cerebral. In her
excellent paper on Evangelion Mariana Ortega characterizes the interpretive
problem as follows:
The shows proclivity for self-referentiality, parody, pastiche,
metalepsis, and, ultimately, deconstruction provides us with a
general instance of what Umberto Eco has termed opera aperta,
or open work, a piece that allows and even requires multiple
interpretations from the reader. There is no single or straight
interpretation of Evangelion based on its plot sources: like many
of the esoteric works it references, it is layered, crowded with
riddles, arguably overcoded.[50]

Professor Ortegas interpretation makes extensive use of material from the Nag
Hammadi Library, a number of theological writings that comprise a major part of
what is commonly known as Gnostic literature, written in the first two or three

centuries of the Common Era (CE = AD). While I also propose a solution to
the Evangelion puzzle based on Gnostic writings (in the section God the Father
Father the God), my chief interest is in locating Evangelionin a literary
tradition of epic journeys of self-discovery, and in applying these stories to the
psychological development of an early-adolescent boy, Ikari Shinji. In the next
sections we will take a look at some of the literary genres that seem useful in
giving shape to Shinjis story, then move on to an examination of the Japanese
context in which Evangelion arose.
The First Epic Wanderers: Gilgamesh and Odysseus
Among the oldest known works of literary art is the Epic of Gilgamesh from
ancient Mesopotamia. Akkadian versions of this poem date between 1300 and
1000 BCE, while the earliest known fragments were imprinted on clay tablets
another thousand years before that. After introductory material that establishes
the intimate relationship between Gilgamesh, fifth king of Uruk, and his friend
Enkidu, the two set out on a series of perilous journeys of conflict and discovery.
After the death of Enkidu Gilgamesh struggles with the implications of death,
immortality, and the nature of friendship.[7] Gilgameshis still read widely today
and occupies a firm place at or near the dawn of written narrative literature.
While the Odyssey has the outward shape of a journey of discovery, the famous
wanderings are entirely unintentional on the part of Odysseus, a tired,
homesick, middle-aged man who wants nothing more than to return to his wife
and son to live out a quiet life in Ithaca. Poseidon, enraged at Odysseus for
blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, delays the travelers homecoming
until Zeus forces him to relent. It is to the raging sea gods hostility that we owe
a marvelous and almost infinitely influential tale of strange lands and stranger
beings.
Yet Odysseus is no mere salaryman who has missed the last boat to the
suburbs. He is a king, a warrior, and a full accounting of his talents would have
to include, among others: master of disguise and espionage, military engineer
and tactician, facile rhetorician, smooth talker among the ladies, spellbinding
storyteller, serial liar, cattle rustler, and coldly efficient killing machine. Skills so
disparate and centrifugal do not sit comfortably within the frame of home,
hearth, and family toward which the poem moves.
An additional destabilizing element of Odysseus return story is personified by
his son, Telemachus, who has come of age (or nearly so) in books 1-4 and
whose role in the reunited family remains unsettled. In the normal course of
events there will come a time when Telemachus will displace his father to rule
both household and kingdom; but we are given no hint of how this might
proceed. We only know that Odysseus must someday travel to a place where
the sea is unknown and make an offering to Poseidon, after which, in old age, a
quiet death will come to him from the sea. The tensions implicit in Odysseus'
return are felt most acutely in the poems conclusion, which some critics have

found abrupt and inconclusive.[40] Scholars like neatly tied-up bundles with no
loose ends; but great art, like life itself, is seldom so obliging.
As the ur-text and paradigmatic example of extended, life-altering
journeys whether of the mind, through mythic kingdoms, or in deadly combat
with strange Cyclops-like beings above the streets of New Tokyo3 the Odyssey can, on occasion, illuminate and bring order to otherwise
difficult material. By the end of this paper we will have seen enough
correspondences in theme and character between
the Odyssey and Evangelion to permit a brief parallel summary of these two
epics that will help us understand Ikari Shinjis singular victory in surviving a
tragic childhood, and give hope for his success in the psychological wars of
growing up in a modern society.
The Bildungsroman
Novels of personal education and moral development are such a staple of world
literature that we barely recognize them as a discrete genre. Examples
include: Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749), Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn by Mark Twain (1884), Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (1922), The Magic
Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924), The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
(1951), A Separate Peace by John Knowles (1959), Norwegian Wood by
Haruki Murikami (1987).
The Rise and Fall of the Superhero
For a brief period roughly half a century ago, American popular culture was
sufficiently optimistic to throw up a number of reasonably uncomplicated,
altruistic superheroes: Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and others. In postwar Japan the child (or child-like, or child-friendly) technological hero burst onto
the scene with Tezuka Osamus Tetsuwan Atomu, followed in due course
by Ultraman, Doraemon, and countless others. Teams of five color-coordinated
crusaders appeared at least as early as Battle Fever J (1979). However, by the
late twentieth century these idealistic actors had taken on a distinctly retro look.
As the destructive potential of technology (both real and fictional) relentlessly
multiplied, apparently without limit, the resulting arms race blurred easy
distinctions between good and evil, leading not only to more dangerous
adversaries but to darker and more conflicted heroes as well.Kaneda
Shtar of Akira (tomo, 1988) fairly bursts with loyalty and purity of motive
(makoto), but he is a juvenile delinquent; the Colonel, too, shows purity of
purpose, but he overthrows the government; the human WMD Shima Tetsuo is
both victim and perpetrator of technological apocalypse. InNadia: The Secret of
Blue Water (Anno, 1990), the grand project of saving the planet is repeatedly
sidetracked by petty squabbles among the would-be saviors. By 1995 the world
was (almost) ready for Evangelion and the definitive end of traditional heroism.

Inversion
It seems almost standard practice in higher-culture Japanese anime to posit
some character type we think we know, then confound our expectations.
Miyazaki Hayaos young girls (shjo) are endowed with remarkable courage and
self-reliance, while the three female figures of Princess Mononoke Eboshisama, San, and the wolf Moro are far more inured to conflict and violence
than (former) Prince Ashitaka, the outlier and peacemaker of the group. The
1998 anime series Wolfs Rain depicts a debased, post-apocalyptic world in
which it is the wolves who most movingly embody those humanistic values of
aspiration, compassion, and group solidarity that we humans claim to admire.
The Japanese Cultural Context of Evangelion
The post-war association between children and technology in Japanese manga
and anime began with Tezuka Osamus Tetsuwan Atomu, a nuclear-powered,
child-like robot created by a scientist as a replacement for his deceased son
(manga 1952, anime 1963). Later artists separated child from robot, while
envisioning a variety of relationships between humans and technological armor
that led to Himitsu Sentai Goranger (1975), Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), BioBoosted Armor Guyver (1985), and Patlabor (1988). Even color-coded gangs of
five heroes became standard fare: Tom Gill lists sixteen such ensembles that
appeared on television between 1979 and 1994.[42] For young Japanese,
therefore, the pattern of children entering huge robotic shells in order to defeat
equally huge and demonic enemies was well known, if not approaching clich.
Given this history, one can imagine that the audience that began
watching Evangelion in October of 1995 would have felt quite at home for a
while. Yet as the story played out, some vague discomfort must have crept in.
Why isnt Shinji more heroic? Where is all this angst coming from? Why cant
the pilots just get along?
Roughly a century earlier something had happened in Japanese culture that was
to cast a long shadow over the art of fiction. Late in the Meiji period a literary
form that became known as the I-novel emerged from some of Japans most
prominent writers. These stories, told in first person by a narrator intimately
involved in the action, describe ordinary life in the most excruciating detail, on
the theory that out of such deeply personal observation and introspection
profound truths, if there are any, will emerge. Another Osamu, Dazai Osamu,
was such a writer. In 1949, after several unsuccessful attempts, he finally
succeeded in committing suicide.
Sadly, Dazai spent his life as an alien, unable to follow singlemindedly either the childish path of untroubled selfishness or the
mature path of effective personal relationships. For better or for
worse, the Osamu Saga was the result the record of daily
confrontation, real and imagined, with the naked self, a self
unprotected by either innocence or wisdom.[43]

Evangelion is remarkable in merging the intensely personal and psychological Inovel with the child-manned robot. Ikari Shinji, the ultimate otaku and maximal
I-novelist, shows us a realm that exists only in his mind and from which he
must escape if he is to avoid recapitulating Dazai Osamus sorry end. There is
reason to believe that writer/director Hideaki Anno was struggling to find a way
out of his own I-novel, and this confers upon Evangelion the psychological
resonance that has kept it continually fresh and terribly real. [44] Yet Evangelion is
not only a personal statement, but plays as well on themes that were and are
germane to the Japanese nations modern identity crisis.
In a sense, the search for a place in the world, which so torments
Annos alter-ego Shinji, is the insurmountable challenge facing
Japan. Our relief at finally putting the war behind us was brief,
for we immediately were confronted by our inability to devise an
independent future. Japan is now enmeshed in the search for
what it means to have a self.[45]

In the course of Evangelion the entire ideological basis of the mecha genre its
celebration of the enabling and empowering properties of technology in general
and robots in particular is inverted and deconstructed. The cult of the expert
is demolished, along with glib assumptions that problems engendered by
technology can be solved by more technology. The current world-wide recession
(which began in the United States, not Japan) confirmsEvangelions dark
assessment that a nave belief in the transformative power of engineering
whether financial, technological, or social is a dangerous mirage. The twin
gods of free-market fundamentalism and faith in the inevitability of progress
have been struck a disabling blow, and the apostles of the new world order
thrown into disarray. In our moment of existential peril, grownups have failed
and only children can save us now.[4]
Reading Evangelion Backward
From the outset Evangelion presents the viewer with a Rubiks cube of puzzles
and riddles. Fifteen years earlier a mysterious planet-shaking catastrophe
known as the Second Impact melted Antarctica, flooding great swaths of
populated coastal territory, including twentieth-century Tokyo. Recently,
horrendous engines of destruction called Angels have begun invading New
Tokyo-3. The sole defense against these attacks consists in deploying
Evangelions (EVAs), enormous humanoid robots (mecha) that can only be
piloted by 14-year-old children. Christian and Kabbalistic iconography and
terminology abound, but religion per se is absent. The hierarchy of bureaucratic
and governmental authority is shadowy and ultimately unstable. DNA analysis
shows that Angels are genetically identical to humans, and various characters
are unexpectedly revealed to be related to one another. No one has a living
mother. Humanity seems deeply in conflict with itself, initially in petty
interpersonal squabbles, later in open warfare. Despite the global perhaps
cosmic dimensions of the action there is something rigidly contained and

claustrophobic about Evangelions world. In the series most striking inversion,

the personality of Ikari Shinji, the EVA pilot who is the storys protagonist,
stretches the heroic mold beyond recognition.
Some stories do not come to us complete, and in these cases we often feel
justified in asking, "How did we get here; where did all this come from?" This is
particularly true of narratives that make extensive use of delayed exposition,
wherein important information remains hidden until late in the story. For
instance, we do not learn the details of Gendo and Yuis marriage, Dr. Akagis
relationship to the Magi, or the circumstances of Reis first death until episode
21. Postponed until episodes 22 and 24 are shattering evocations of Asukas
traumatic past. But a still greater revelation is delayed until episode 26 (Part 2
of The End of Evangelion), and this changes everything.
The 2005 American film Stay, William Goldings 1956 novel Pincher Martin, and
the 1890 short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
have this singular feature in common: at the end, the events that have filled the
main body of the work are revealed to have been fantasies conceived in the
subjects mind in the final moments before death. Everything we thought was
real the sturm und drang, the survivalist melodrama, the self-regarding
memoir was a dream. Evangelions approach is altogether softer and more
hopeful. Yes, we learn that the epic battles and earth-shaking cataclysms that
have so engaged our senses are false, the product of an overheated
imagination; but while 200 pages of Pincher Martins ruminations teach him
nothing that outlasts the moment of his death, Shinji can take away from his
novelistic epic an expanded consciousness and deeper wisdom. He has suffered
the meaningless terror of battles that were not his own, seen through the
incompetence and selfishness of authority, and looked on as interpersonal
relationships soured and crumbled. He has learned that success defined as a
zero-sum game is ultimately self-defeating, and that true heroism may find its
proper place not on the battlefield but in the heart.
Yet if this is accepted, it leaves a hole in the story. Whose fantasy is this? Who
and where is the real Shinji? Answers to this question vary widely; there are
many roads to Shinji,[6] and it may make little difference which we choose to
envision. Perhaps the storyteller in me abhors a vacuum an anonymous
placeholder so I assemble and expand the few clues that can be found in the
drama into a plausible history for the real-world Shinji, whom I call Shinji-1.
Once created, Shinji-1 fades into invisibility, only to reappear at the end as the
student and beneficiary of the hard lessons about the fragility of life and love
that Evangelion has taught, and the irrelevance of technology in securing them.
The significance of a continuing Shinji-1 is in rescuingEvangelions Shinji and
us from a nihilistic world in which mankind is forever trapped in an endlessly
repeating tape loop of transgression and apocalypse. He is the bearer of our
hopes, our bridge to the future.
The Sins of the Fathers

Shortly after Shinji is released from the first of several hospitalizations, this
exchange between Akagi Ritsuko and Ikari Gendo is observed:
Ritsuko: So, how was Rei today?
Gendo: Shell be ready to work again in twenty days.
Ritsuko: It must be so hard on those children.
Gendo: There is no one else who can pilot the EVAs. As long as they survive,
that is what I will have them do.
Ritsuko: With no regard for what they may want?
Gendo: (silence)
Spoken or not, the answer is always the same: the children will be used. It is
worthwhile to examine whats going on here from the perspective of intergenerational politics. A group of adults, authorized by the United Nations and
the national government and led by Shinjis father, is systematically sending out
fourteen-year-old children to engage in mortal combat with horrendous
monsters. Ejected directly into the line of fire in a cruel parody of birth, they
risk death at every encounter and return physically bruised and mentally
violated. The unavoidable price for saving the world, their elders claim. But as
the drama unfolds these serial abusers of children will admit, privately and with
growing candor, that their actions are motivated not by concern for mankind,
but by personal and selfish agendas.
The subtext is clear: the hard work of cleaning up the wreckage left by past
generations will be shuffled off onto todays youth and their children. In the
hyper-condensed world of Evangelion, institutions that have failed to create a
world free from warfare, poverty, and oppression are symbolically subsumed
into Nerv and personified by Ikari Gendo and the old men of Seele.
In Evangelions universe of failed institutions (not so different from our own), if
there is to be a brighter day it will come not as a gift from the old order, but
must be created anew by children willing to throw off the self-serving platitudes
of arrogant paternalism and formulate fresh definitions of progress. The first
step in saving the world, as Shinji will learn, is not in doing what he is told to
do by those who have made of the world the mess that it is, but in recognizing
the lies of the past and the hollowness of the present, then striking out on a
path of his own choosing.
But first, Shinji will experience the old world at its worst passively and
obediently playing by rules handed down from above, while trying to convince
himself that he is doing something useful. Shinjis Evangelion world may be
imaginary, but it is filled to overflowing with pain and suffering, hard lessons
about failed interpersonal relationships, and punctuated by terror, loss, and
despair. These are the real Angels of death and destruction.
____________________

On the first trading day of 1990 the Nikkei 225 stock index began a plunge that,
by early 1995, wiped out more than 60% of its value, putting an end to Japans
post-war economic miracle. On 17 January 1995 the Great Hanshin
earthquake struck Kobe and the surrounding region. The response of the
national government was widely criticized as slow and ineffective. On 20 March
1995 members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas in five
separate Tokyo subway trains, killing twelve people and injuring hundreds.
[51]
Broadcast of Neon Genesis Evangelion began on 4 October 1995.
____________________
The Episodes
The following commentary on the episodes is intended neither as plot synopsis
nor plot analysis, but rather an attempt to trace certain psychological and
literary themes that run through the series. Religious symbols, especially
crosses, occur frequently but are redefined, requiring an effort on the part of
the viewer to ascertain their new meanings. With the exception of episode 24',
no attempt is made in the Episode sections to trace the meaning of religious
symbolism. For an example of how this can be done, see "God the Father
Father the God" near the end of this paper.
Episodes 1 and 2
The song and images that accompany the opening titles clearly identify Shinji as
the series heroic protagonist and hint at a mythopoetic arena for the action.
The last three shots of Shinji lasting only about two seconds show him first
looking skyward with confident defiance, then downward in pain,
finally outward in simple joy. Evangelion is the story of Shinjis long journey in
pursuit of that joy. The song ends:
You who embrace the heavens and shine,
Young boy, become a legend.

The final image of the opening sequence appears to be that of an ancient wall
covered with cryptic writing: the legend, perhaps. A comparison may be made
with the opening of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. He went on a
long
journey, was weary, worn out with labor. Returning he rested, then
engraved
on a stone the whole story.[7]

Episode 1 opens in the early stages of an Angel attack. Shinji has received a
summons from his father Ikari Gendo, who abandoned him ten years earlier,
and is picked up by Katsuragi Misato, who transports him to Nerv, the semi-

governmental agency responsible for building and running the EVAs, mankinds
only effective weapon against the Angels. Misato knows something Shinji does
not that Shinji has been called to service as an EVA pilot and that piloting an
EVA entails risk to life, limb and sanity but she covers this dark knowledge
with an exaggeratedly gay and breezy manner that Shinji detects and remarks
on. He thinks shes childish; she thinks hes a cold fish 'like his father.' They find
that they are both estranged from their fathers. While on their way to Nerv, the
United Nations military force attacks the Angel with its most powerful weapon,
an N2 mine. The attack fails and the top brass call upon Ikari Gendo and Nerv
to take over. Marduk[8] is reported to have identified the Third Child, Ikari Shinji
(Third Children in the Japanese script).
Shinji is escorted to the EVA assigned and attuned to him personally, Unit 01,
but is quite reasonably horrified at the absurd and daunting challenge of piloting
an enormous combat engine of which he knows nothing. He refuses. Gendo is
seen through a window far above.
Shinji: Why are you doing this now? I thought you didnt need me.
Gendo: I called because I have a need for you.
Shinji: Why me?
Gendo: Because no one else can.
At Gendos command the First Child, Ayanami Rei, badly injured and still in her
hospital bed, is wheeled in, ostensibly to take Shinjis place. Shinji is horrified by
his fathers callous cruelty. A direct hit by the Angel on the city far above
dislodges several light fixtures, which fall toward Shinji. Although under no ones
control, Unit 01 breaks its restraints and moves one enormous hand to shield
Shinji. Gendo smiles grimly he knows something about the EVAs known to
almost no on else. Shinji reluctantly agrees to pilot Unit 01.
At this point the standard procedure for launching an EVA is enacted. Each step
in the mechanical and electronic process of manning, activating, telemetering,
releasing, and raising an EVA to ground level is depicted in breathtaking detail,
specificity, and beauty. Yet this flashy twenty-first century high-tech maneuver,
which is repeated (with variations) many times in the course of Evangelion, has
an exact parallel in Homeric epic. In the Iliad, each time a major hero prepares
for battle, the same (or nearly the same) words are used to describe his actions
as he straps on greaves, breastplate, and helmet; then hefts his sword, spear,
and shield. This highly ritualized act precedes a heros aristeia, his moment of
brilliance in battle.
Unit 01 reaches the surface and Shinji is commanded to walk; he, in turn,
commands the EVA to walk. Together, they take a first step; but on the second
the EVA trips and falls flat on its face. The Angel lifts the stricken EVA and
breaks its left arm. Shinji screams in pain. Over the intercom Misato says,

"Shinji, calm down! Thats not your arm." After apparent defeat and a command
from Misato to break off the battle, Shinjis mind flips into berserker mode,
giving him complete control of Unit 01 and enabling him to kill the Angel. [35] He
wakes up later in a hospital bed.
By the end of Episode 2 the Angels existential threat to the world has been
identified and most of the major characters have been introduced. The intimate,
perhaps telepathic, rapport between pilot and EVA is now clear, as is the stark
peril of battle. Gendos "Because no one else can," establishes Shinjis de
facto status as the indispensable hero, but does nothing to alleviate the agony
and terror of piloting an EVA or lessen Shinjis feelings of inadequacy and
alienation. Shinjis exploration of the highly problematic relationship between
himself and his father, begun in these episodes, continues throughout the
series.
Crosses to two kinds appear in these episodes and recur repeatedly. The Greek
cross, first seen as a pendant on Misatos necklace, is similar in shape to the
Red Cross and the cross on the Swiss flag. The Christian (cruciform) cross
appears in the blast zone of explosions associated with Angels: not mushroomshaped clouds, but crucifix-shaped clouds. This pattern continues, linking the
Greek cross to life, compassion, and love; the Christian cross to death and
destruction. Some accidental crosses patterns of light and shadow,
architectural features, lines on pavements are intentionally ambiguous.
Episodes 3 to 7
Shinjis socialization begins. Misato has assumed responsibility for giving Shinji
a home and filling the role of legal guardian, tasks with which she has had no
experience. The relationship gets off to a rough start, each rubbing the other
the wrong way. Shinji shows up in school as a transfer student and becomes an
instant celebrity when he confirms that he is an EVA pilot. Later, outside in the
school yard, classmate Suzuhara Toji calmly explains to Shinji his alpha-males
obligation to beat up the new student, but afterward Tojis friend Aida Kensuke
adds that Tojis sister had been seriously injured in the last battle.
In the course of the next Angel attack Toji and Kensuke witness firsthand from
within Unit 01 the unendurable stress of piloting an EVA; the two are deeply
impressed and become Shinjis closest friends. Kensuke is initially portrayed as
a typical adolescent military-hardware geek and something of a psychological
lightweight, but Toji is more complicated a deep, quiet well of unexpressed
emotion. His alpha-male persona is the thinnest of defenses, as are his toughguy Osaka-ben dialect and his refusal to wear the school uniform. (Later, asked
by Asuka why she likes Toji, Class Rep Hikari says, "Because of his kindness.")

Because he never speaks his innermost thoughts, what we learn of Toji is

largely gained through his silences and body language, which are eloquent.
Overwhelmed by the agony of combat and feeling himself in hopeless conflict
with Misato, Shinji runs away. After walking through the sunflower field of
Kurosawas Dreams, and looking down on New Tokyo-3 from the hills, Shinji is
spotted and taken in by Kensuke, who is camped out on (imaginary) week-end
maneuvers. Kensuke reveals his sensitive side and the two find they have more
in common than they knew. In the morning Nerv agents show up to apprehend
Shinji and return him to Headquarters. Later, Toji berates Kensuke for not
fighting for Shinjis freedom, to which Kensuke sensibly replies that it is
pointless to fight when one cannot win.
Shinji formally resigns from Nerv and rides to the end of a railroad line as
passengers come and go. Misato drives out to intercept him and finds him
standing, head drooping and immobile, on a railway platform. "Welcome home,"
she says after one of Evangelions characteristic long periods of stasis (50
seconds, with train announcements). Shinji replies, "Im home."
Shinji progresses in competence and professionalism as an EVA pilot and his
relationship with Misato grows into one of mutual respect and even affection.
Their effectiveness as an operational team is displayed when they stop and
deactivate the runaway nuclear-powered autonomous robot Jet Alone.
Despite the brilliant spectacle of halting Jet Alone and deadly combat with Angel
after Angel, Evangelions inner movement remains steadfastly on the
psychological plane. This can be seen in the sensitive portrayal of Shinjis
relationships with Rei, Misato, Kensuke, and Toji; Shinjis hesitation at
thresholds; disturbing encounters with Gendo; landscapes; ceilings; Shinjis
ever-present SDAT; his hand opening and closing; and long silences that allow
deep emotions to germinate and flower.
Episodes 8 to 15
In Episode 8 the intensely irritating Asuka Langley Soryu arrives from Germany,
Toji drops his drawers, faces become cartoonish, and Asuka and Shinji go deepsea fishing. At this point Evangelion threatens to topple into slapstick mayhem.
(Seasickness, maybe.) Yet Asuka quickly wears out whatever welcome she may
have earned as comic relief.
In book 12 of the the Odyssey, Circe tells Odysseus how to escape the twin
horrors of Skylla, a man-eating female monster who makes her grisly living in a
cliff-side cave; and Charybdis, a roaring whirlpool. Describing Skylla, Circe says:

In that cavern Skylla lives, whose howling is terror.

Her voice is indeed only as loud as a new-born puppy
Could make, but she herself is an evil monster. No one,
Not even a god encountering her, could be glad at that sight. [9]

It is perhaps no coincidence that both monsters, Asuka and Skylla, are

encountered at sea and that their names are so similar. Asukas joining the EVA
team is rather as if Odysseus, instead of avoiding Skylla, had taken her on as
his new helmsman. This much, at least, is Tojis opinion. The tactless gaijin(as
she is called at school) is loud, brash, arrogant, rude, assaultive, and endlessly
insulting. Her most characteristic outburst is, "Shinji, youre really stupid!"
Asukas persistence in the series can be seen as a never-ending challenge to
Shinjis still tentative self-assurance and dignity, rather like the allegorical
burden which the Pilgrim must bear on his back: "As for thy burden, be content
to bear it, as many others have born theirs before." [10] Shinji receives these
verbal blows with surprising equanimity. One only has to imagine how
devastating Asukas attacks would have been to the Shinji of Episodes 1 and 2
to realize how far he has come.
Though largely played for laughs, the choreographed coordinated attack by
Shinji and Asuka on an Angel that had twinned itself gives further evidence of
Shinjis new professionalism and maturity. In Episode 12 all three pilots work
together to foil an attack by the largest of the Angels.
In Episode 13 Angel-as-hacker nearly disables and takes over the trio of
supercomputers known as the Magi, upon which all the operations of Nerv
depend. This is an early indication that Nerv is potentially vulnerable to defeat
from within. Further evidence of institutional instability appears in Episode 14,
as Unit 00 goes berserk when Shinji attempts to synchronize with it.
In Episode 15 Shinji asks Rei, "Say, what kind of person is my father?" "I dont
know. Youve been looking at me all afternoon because you wanted to ask me
that?" Shinji remarks that for a moment earlier in the day Rei had "looked like a
mother." "What are you saying?!"
At the grave of Shinjis mother Gendo says, "Its been three years since the last
time we came here together." "I ran away then. I havent been back since."
Gendo observes, "Man survives by forgetting his memories, but there are some
things a man should never forget. Yui taught me about the irreplaceable things."
As Gendo walks away Shinji calls out, "Father! Im glad I got to talk to you
today."
Asuka comes home to find Shinji playing the cello. (J. S. Bach, Suite No. 1 for
Unaccompanied Cello, BWV 1007, Prelude.) He plays it quite well, if a bit slowly.
Asuka applauds, "Not bad! I didnt know you played." In this scene Asuka is

more complementary to Shinji than on any other occasion. Later, Shinjis love of
Bach will take on increased importance
Shinji-1 tries out some variations on romantic/erotic heterosexual relationships.
Misato, Ritsuko and Kaji attend a wedding, laying bare a still-simmering
romantic triangle. Meanwhile, Asuka and Shinji engage in a long breathless kiss
that turns Shinji first red, then blue. Asuka is insulting as usual, and the results
of these experiments are at best ambiguous.
By the end of Episode 15, Shinji has achieved a level of skill and self-confidence
that would have been unimaginable in Episodes 1 and 2. His relationship with
Misato is warm and familial in the domestic setting and coolly efficient at Nerv.
Rei remains withdrawn and Asuka insulting, but Shinji has learned to overlook
these quirks and the three work together as an effective team. The emotional
arc of Shinjis glorious fantasy has reached its peak; but the golden apple has a
worm at its core: Shinjis world is not real.
Episode 16
Until this point in the narrative of Evangelion, despite the exoticism of Nerv and
the horrendous Angels, the shape of a classical Bildungsroman is clearly seen.
Such stories often end in celebration over obstacles conquered and/or in sober
reflection on the cost of lessons learned. Yet Shinjis seemingly upward progress
has been entirely illusory: instead of facing and overcoming the demons of his
damaged childhood, he has learned to weave them into the fabric of an
elaborate lie a fantasy that clouds his vision and threatens to engulf him.
The road back to honesty and recovery will be complicated, dangerous, and
painful.
New synchronization tests are performed on the three pilots and Shinji scores
highest. Misato succumbs to an unprofessional temptation to tell Shinji in
English, "You are number one." The next Angel arrives in the shape of an
enormous black-and-white beach ball, casting a correspondingly huge shadow
on the ground. As usual, conventional means fail to destroy the Angel and the
three EVAs are deployed. Unreasonably buoyed by his recent successes and
Misatos careless remark, Shinji attacks the Angel without waiting for
emplacement of his backup. Shinjis Unit 01 sinks into the shadow, which Nerv
subsequently identifies as the actual form and substance of the Angel. Out of
communication with Nerv and unable to extricate himself, Shinji switches Unit
01 to minimal life support, hoping that Nerv will find a way to rescue him.
In an intense confrontation, Misato discovers that she and Ritsuko have different
agendas, and that the EVAs may have a more malignant history than she knew.

Fifteen hours later, as Unit 01s life support systems begin to fail and Shinji
nears death, he revisits images of his childhood and carries out an ontological
examination of his own innermost being. Part of this inquisition consists of
questions and answers in contrasting versions of Shinjis voice, which can be
read as a dialogue in catechistic form between Shinji-2 and a more mature,
dispassionate Shinji whom I will call Shinji-3.
Shinji-2: Whos there?
Shinji-3: I am you. People have another self with themselves. The self is always
composed of two people The self which is actually seen, and the self observing
that. There are many entities called Ikari Shinji. The other Ikari Shinji that
exists in your mind. The Ikari Shinji in Misato Katsuragis mind, the Shinji in
Asuka Sohryu, the Shinji in Rei Ayanami, and the Shinji in Ikari Gendo. All are
different Ikari Shinjis. But each of them is a true Ikari Shinji. Your are afraid of
those Ikari Shinjis in other peoples minds.
Shinji-2: Im afraid of other people hating me.
Shinji-3: Youre afraid of being hurt.
Shinji-2: Who is at fault?
Shinji-3: Father is the one who is at fault. The father who deserted me.
Asuka and Rei materialize to further confront Shinji with his weaknesses and
faults. Shinji recalls that he was once praised by his father, but Shinji-3 asks if
Shinji will spend the rest of his life ruminating on that happiness.
Shinji-2: If I believe in those words I can keep on living.
Shinji-3: Are you going to continue to deceive yourself?
Shinji-2: Everybody does it! Thats how everyone survives.
Shinji-3: Believe that youre fine with the way things are, or you wont be able
to keep on living?
Shinji-2: Theres too much hardship in this world for me to keep on living.
Shinji-3: For example, the fact you cant swim?
Shinji-2: Humans arent made to float!
Shinji-3: This is self-deception.
Shinji-2: I dont care what you call it!
Shinji-3: Youve shut your eyes and turned a deaf ear to the things you dont
like. See? Youre running away again. Theres no way you can live by linking
just the enjoyable moments like a rosary.
Shinji-2: Ive found something I enjoy! Finding something you enjoy and doing
nothing but that Whats wrong with that?!

Nerv Command reports that Shinji is approaching termination. Shinji continues

to ruminate on his fathers several betrayals and his own immanent death. "So
this is the end. Im tired of it all." Shinji is seen naked, floating in space. A
ghostly image of his mother reaches out to him. Suddenly, in violation of all the
laws of physics, Unit-01 reactivates and breaks out of the Angel in a horrendous
display of bloody, bestial ferocity that sickens even the battle-hardened Nerv
staff.
Ritsuko: What kind of monster have we copied from?
Misato: I know that the EVAs arent just copies of the first Angel. But what is
Nerv going to do with them once all the Angels have been destroyed?
A monstrous, blood-red apparition strides toward Nerv, roaring defiance at its
terrorized creators.
Misato opens the insertion plug and embraces Shinji in tearful relief. "I just
wanted to see you one more time," Shinji says, barely alive. Rei waits patiently
at Shinjis hospital bedside. When he regains consciousness she takes her leave,
finding Asuka outside. Asuka is livid that anyone has seen her in a moment of
emotional vulnerability, of caring. Shinji chuckles boyishly and knowingly.
Some dreams become nightmares, and fantasies can metastasize into
compulsive obsessions that threaten to swallow the dreamer. As the intrigue
within Nerv is gradually revealed and the death toll mounts, Shinjis epic world
turns steadily darker, deadlier, and more unstable.
Episodes 17 to 20
Toji is seen visiting his sister in the hospital, where nurses remark on his
brotherly affection and sense of duty. Unit 04, along with Nervs Second Branch
in the Nevada desert, vanishes as Shinjis fantasy world begins its long slide
toward disintegration. Kaji invites Shinji out for tea. "Im a boy, you know,"
Shinji warns. Kaji takes Shinji to his watermelon patch.
Kaji: Making something Nurturing something is really great. You can see and
learn so many things from the process. Like whats enjoyable.
Shinji: And about suffering too, right?
Kaji: Do you hate suffering?
Shinji: I dont like it.
Kaji: Have you found anything that you enjoy?
Shinji: (Silence)
Kaji: Thats fine too. But knowledge of suffering makes you all the more capable
of kindness to others. Because thats different from being weak.

Toji is informed of his selection as Fourth Child. He tells no one and folds into
himself. As usual, his silences speak volumes. An activation test is scheduled in
Matsushiro with Toji piloting the newest EVA. Misato observes, "but nothing
good comes of becoming involved with us and the EVAs." Shinji and Toji deliver
some papers to Rei, and Shinji cleans up the trash. Rei thanks him, but later
realizes she has never thanked anyone before. A new synch test shows that
Shinjis score is dropping.
Staying with Shinji and Asuka while Misato is in Matsushiro, Kaji observes to
Shinji, "The word we use for she literally means the woman far away. To us,
women will always be on the distant shore. Basically, theres a river dividing
men and women, deeper and wider than the ocean."
Infected by the latest Angel, Unit 03 (with Toji trapped inside) destroys the test
facility at Matsushiro and advances on New Tokyo-3. Units 00 to 02 are
launched. The Angel disables Asukas Unit 02 and invades Reis Unit 00. Shinji is
ordered by Gendo to destroy the Angel but refuses, believing correctly that
there is a child inside it. Gendo cuts Shinjis synchronization with Unit 01 and
transfers control to the dummy plug, which dismembers the Angel in a bloody
rampage, finally crushing the insertion plug with Toji still within.
Returned to Unit 01s storage bay, Shinji, still in the insertion plug, refuses to
relinquish control. He expresses disgust at the actions of his father and Nerv in
risking Tojis life.
Mission Control: But, Shinji, if we hadnt done that, you would have been killed.
Shinji: That doesnt matter.
MC: But it is a fact.
Shinji: Dont make me more angry by saying things like that. Unit 01 has 185
seconds of power left in its reserves. Thats enough to destroy at least half of
Headquarters.
MC, aside: The way he is right now, hell do it too.
MC: Shinji-kun, listen to us! If Commander Ikari hadnt made that decision,
everyone could have been killed!
Shinji: I said it doesnt matter. My father that bastard tried to kill Toji!
With my hands Father, youre there, arent you? Say something! Answer me!
Gendo orders a procedure that renders Shinji unconscious. "We have no time to
waste on a childish tantrum," he says.
Toji regains consciousness in a hospital bed, looks over and sees Shinji in
another bed, then dreams of himself, Rei, and Shinji riding in a streetcar. In the
dream Toji is standing.
Rei: Ikari-kun, why did you do that?

Shinji: Because I couldnt forgive my father. He betrayed me. I was finally able
to have a comfortable conversation with my father, but he wont try to
understand my feelings at all!
Rei: Did you try to understand your fathers feelings?
Shinji: I tried.
Rei: Why dont you try to understand him?
Shinji yells: I said I tried!
Rei: And thats how you run away from unpleasantness.
Shinji: Whats wrong with that?! Whats wrong with running away from
unpleasantness?!
Toji: What are those two arguing about?
The foregoing exchange, so radioactive that it is twice removed from reality
(Shinji dreams of Toji dreaming the conversation), is the central problem and
dilemma of Evangelion, which as a whole can be seen as an elaborate working
out of Shinjis highly fraught and conflicted relationship with his father. Within
the frame of the story, Gendo, as top dog of Nerv, exerts almost complete
control over the shape and content of Shinjis life, as Shinji-1s father once did
over his, at least in principle. At this point in the drama it is still an open
question whether any accommodation or reconciliation is possible, or if Shinji
will remain an incomplete person, enslaved to his fathers will. Three
possibilities can be seen: Shinji fails to escape the nightmare of submission to
Gendo; Shinji and Gendo are reconciled and Shinji moves on; Shinji escapes
Gendo by symbolically destroying him. As long as the thunderhead of this epic
father-son struggle continues to darken Shinjis life, his relationships with other
people will remain tentative and insecure. Not since Zeus overthrew his father
Kronos (who had castrated his own father Ouranos), has there been such a
cosmic father-son faceoff.
Class Rep Hikari visits Toji, who asks her to tell his sister that there is nothing
wrong with him. Not true: Toji has lost his left leg. Shinjis escapist drama is
becoming grotesquely destructive, bringing pain and loss to those nearest and
dearest to him.
Shinji is arrested and brought handcuffed before Gendo, who accuses him of
multiple crimes. Shinji says he doesnt want to pilot an EVA any more, nor stay
at Nerv. Gendo tells him to leave.
Gendo: So youre running away again? You disappoint me. I doubt well ever
meet again.
Shinji: Yes, thats my intent.

Kensuke calls Shinji at Misatos apartment and leaves a message on the

answering machine regretting Shinjis decision. "But why?" Kensuke asks. "Why
are you running away now? I wanted to be like you. I envied you. Youre
different from us. Damn! Even Toji became an EVA pilot, while I" The
connection is broken by Nerv security.
Misato leaves Shinji at a train station. She says, "If you keep cutting your ties
like this, youll have a rough life ahead of you." Shinji replies, "Thats your
philosophy, Miss Misato. I cant live like you." Misato says, "I was projecting all
of my dreams, hopes, and purpose onto you. I also know thats its been a huge
burden for you." Shinji has the last word: "I wont pilot an EVA again."
While Shinji is waiting on the train platform a new Angel attack begins. Unit 01
rejects Rei, who is then ordered into Unit 00, which has a defective arm. Shinji
watches the attack, examining his recent decision. The Angel descends into the
Geo-front and disables Asukas Unit 02. After rejecting Rei, Unit 01 rejects the
dummy plug as well, rendering it useless. While crossing Kajis watermelon field
in transit to an undamaged shelter, Shinji sees Asukas disabled Unit 02.
Shinji, to Kaji: What are you doing here?
Kaji: Thats my line. What are you doing here, Shinji?
Shinji: I Im never going to pilot an EVA again. And since I decided that
Kaji: I see. (Kaji continues watering his watermelons)
Shinji: At a time like this?
Kaji: Its because it is a time like this. Between Katsuragis breasts is nice, too,
but in the end I want to be here when I die.
Reis Unit 00 rises into view "without even a rifle." She penetrates the Angels
defensive shield and explodes an N2 mine, which fails to destroy the Angel.
Kaji: Shinji-kun, the only thing I can do is stand here and water. But you, you
have something that you can do. That only you can do. Nobody is forcing you.
Think for yourself, and make the decision by yourself. Think about what you
ought to do now. You know, so you dont have any regrets.
Shamed by Kajis lecture, Shinji returns to Nerv and appears before Gendo,
initially in an attitude of submission, then demanding to be allowed to pilot Unit
01.
Gendo: Why are you here? (Shinjis hand opens and closes, then clenches into a
fist.)
Shinji: I I Father! I am the pilot of Evangelion Unit 01, Ikari Shinji!
Shinjis decision to leave Nerv in this episode can be seen as an early and
unfocused attempt to escape the confinement of his consuming fantasy. A
parallel can be drawn with Odysseus desire to end his imprisonment on

Calypsos timeless island and break her ownership of his life. Hermes has
delivered Zeuss edict that she can no longer hold Odysseus by force, so she
makes one last attempt to detain him through persuasion.
Good luck then and farewell! But if you only knew in your heart
how many pains will fill you up before you reach home, you would
stay here with me, guarding this house, and be immortal[9]

Time has stopped in New Tokyo-3 as well. There are no seasons and only
repetitive battles with Angel after Angel mark the unspooling days, lending no
more than a quantum of meaning to an otherwise empty existence. In the
watermelon patch, Calypsos gender is inverted and we find Kaji upholding the
status quo through an appeal to Shinjis honor and sense of duty. Something
only you can do is at once moral blackmail and an insidious drug to an empty
and drifting soul. Shinji returns to his fathers domain with renewed energy and
determination, thoughts of escape temporarily banished.Hermes/Kaworu is
yet to appear to demand his release; instead, Calypso/Kaji has won this round
and Shinjis imprisonment within the Evangelion world continues.
The Angel penetrates all shield levels and enters the Command Center. Unit 01
crashes through the wall and restrains the Angel while the two are ejected to
ground level. After a savage attack on the Angel, Unit 01s power runs out and
the Angel proceeds to trash it. Unit 01 reactivates, regenerates an arm in
human form, destroys the Angel, and proceeds to eat it. The sight is sickening.
Ritsuko asks, "Does that mean that shes really awakened?" Unit 01 rises and
flexes its muscles, breaking its armor plating. Ritsuko explains, "Thats not
armor plating. Those are restraints that allow us to suppress the EVAs true
power. We can no longer stop the EVA." Kaji in his watermelon patch observes,
"Seele wont stay quiet for this." Fuyutsuki asks Gendo, "Was this also part of
your script, Commander Ikari? Its begun, hasnt it?" Gendo says, "Yes, it all
begins here."
This exchange between Gendo and Fuyutsuki echoes a similar line
in Akira (Otomo Katsuhiro, 1988) which predicts the emergence of the universe
(or a new universe) out of the final transformation of Tetsuo. Gendo works
toward a transformation as well, this one called the Human Instrumentality
Project, whose meaning and implications will be reveled later. Gendos role
becomes steadily darker.
Two EVAs and the Nerv Command Center have been heavily damaged. Control
is moved to a secondary command facility and repairs to Unit 01 commence.
Seele (previously referred to as the "old men" or the "Committee") are
displeased, though their ultimate goal is unclear. Shinji remains trapped inside
Unit 01, unable to communicate. Ritsuko reveals to Misato that EVAs are not
passive effectors of the pilots commands, but "imbued with a human will" and

possibly responsible for the recent chaos. "Do something, damn you!" Misato
yells at Ritsuko, slapping her. "You created it, didnt you? Take responsibility for
it!"
According to Ritsuko, Shinjis body has, in effect, dissolved into the LCL along
with his individual identity. His ego continues to exist, but in a thinly dispersed,
attenuated form; his plug suit floats lifelessly in the LCL, empty and shapeless.
Shinji: What is this? Where am I? In the entry plug? In Unit 01? But theres
nobody here. Im not even here. What is this? I dont really understand. These
people Yes, theyre people I know, people who know me. I see. This is all part
of my world. What is this? This is supposed to be my world, but I dont really
understand. An image from outside? An unpleasant image? Thats right! The
enemy! Enemy! Enemy! Enemy! Our enemies, the Angels, given the names of
heavenly beings. They are the targets of the EVAs and Nerv. The object of
revenge for Miss Misatos father! Why do I fight despite all Ive been put
through? "What are you, stupid?" asks Asukas voice. "Strange beings are
attacking us. If youre going through a fire, youve got to brush away the
embers, of course!" "Maybe I dont need a reason. Maybe Im not supposed to
think about it. Enemy! Theyre all my enemies! Those that threaten me us
they are the enemy. Thats right! Whats wrong with protecting my life, our
lives?! Enemy! My enemy! (Gendo appears) My enemy! How dare you hurt Toji
and kill my mother! Father!" (Rei appears) "Why do you hate your father?" "Of
course! Anyone would!" "You cant understand your father?" "Of course not. Ive
hardly ever seen him." "Is that why you hate him?" "Yes, my father doesnt
need me! My father deserted me!" "And am I the substitute?" "Thats right!
Thats got to be it! He abandoned me because he had you!" "As if you didnt run
away all by yourself." "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Its all his fault! That time, I
was actually going to tell him I hate him!" Shinji replays the scene with his
father at his first meeting with EVA Unit 01: "Are you telling me to get on that
thing and put myself in danger, Father?" "Correct. Because its impossible for
anyone else." "But Ive never even seen or heard of it. Theres no way I could
do it." In the present Shinji corrects himself, "No, I knew. Thats right! I knew
the EVA." Shinji sees himself running away from his mother and father.
At Nerv the recovery of Unit 01 is proceeding smoothly. Shinji meditates on the
nature of kindness and warmth and regrets that he has never experienced these
from any human being. Questioned by Rei, he reports that he has learned
something about loneliness and happiness he hadnt understood before, but
concludes that when he is treated well it is because hes an EVA pilot.
"Somebody be nice to me. Ive fought so hard! Im fighting with everything Ive
got! Treat me well! Be nice to me!" A succession of female figures ask Shinji if
he would like to become one with them.

To survive Evangelion and become a secure, grounded person Shinji must

confront and reject two temptations. The first temptation is to believe that
respect and love are in the nature of payment for services rendered: specifically,
for successfully piloting his EVA. The second temptation is to submerge his ego
his entire being as an independent, responsible actor in some warm, soft,
undifferentiated collectivity: in essence, abdication of personhood and return to
the womb. The extended excerpt from Shinjis LCL meditation (above) begins
with the first temptation and ends with the second. Translated into the corrupt,
malignant language of the Human Instrumentality Project, the second
temptation will increasingly dominate the conclusion of Evangelion.
All of Shinjis friends and colleagues call him back from dissolution in the LCL as
recovery continues then fails.
Misato: Shinji, you are here now because you piloted the EVA. You are the
person you are now because you piloted the EVA. You cannot deny it, that you
in fact piloted the EVA, nor can you deny the self that you have been so far,
which is your past. But as for what you will do from now on, you must decide for
yourself.
Shinjis mother is little more than a vague recollection of smell and touch to him
now, but even in this rarefied state she calls him back to life. Shinji pops out of
the LCL and lands naked on the deck.
Misato quizzes Kaji about the Human Instrumentality Project, then the two
make love. Kaji gives Misato a clue to the future.
Episode 21'
The plot elements of Episode 21' are described in some detail here because they
fill many of the gaps in the complex back stories of Shinjis parents, Misato,
Kaji, Ritsuko, Fuyutsuki, Seele, and Nerv.
Seele tells Fuyutsuki that because Unit 01 ate the last Angel the EVA has
become "an absolute being." "We have no use for an actualized god... Gendo
Ikari, is he a man who can be trusted?" they ask Fuyutsuki. In a flashback to
1999 the story of Gendo and Shinjis mother Yui Ikari is told. "Back then,"
Fuyutsuki says, "seasons and autumn still existed in this country." When Gendo
and Yui are married Gendo changes his family name to hers. Misato is revealed
to be the only survivor of the Second Impact, which melted Antarctica. Two
years later she has still not spoken. The United Nations announces that the
Second Impact was caused by a large meteor; in truth, it was a scientific
experiment gone wrong. Seele is implicated in the falsehood, along with Gendo,
whose well-timed departure from Antarctica the day before the catastrophe
strains credulity. Fuyutsuki threatens to go public with the truth about the

Second Impact, but Gendo shows him a cavern under Tokyo nearly identical to
that under Antarctica. Deep in the cavern Dr. Akagi, Ritsukos mother, is
preparing to bring on line three supercomputers nicknamed the Magi. Dr. Akagi
then shows Fuyutsuki an enormous robot prototype. "Yes," she says, "it is an
EVA, made from Adam by man." "A prototype for a god?" Fuyutsuki asks.
"Fuyutsuki, work with me to create a new era in the history of mankind," Gendo
says. Fuyutsuki, like others before him, is fatally tempted by the proximity to
power. The authority relationship reverses and Fuyutsuki becomes little more
than an appendage to Gendo. Misato recovers from her aphasia and she and
Ritsuko become close friends. Misato spends an entire week having sex with
Kaji. In a scene between Fuyutsuki and Yui we see Shinji at the age of two.
Fuyutsuki and Yui speak briefly about the organization intended to save
mankind from the Third Impact, due in about "a decade or so." Yui indicates
that she has agreed to become "an experimental subject," ultimately for the
benefit of Shinji. A year later, Yui has brought Shinji, age three, to witness the
crucial experiment. Yui disappears. A week later Gendo reveals to Fuyutsuki his
"path to godhead," the Human Instrumentality Project. The shadow of a large
Christian cross appears on the wall behind him. (By now we know that this
is really bad news.) Ritsuko joins Gehirn. In the year 2010 Gendo brings
Ayanami Rei to the construction site of Gehirn (predecessor to Nerv). Gendo
tells Dr. Akagi that this is a "friends daughter." She thinks Rei resembles Yui and
later attempts to locate Reis files, but they have been erased. Dr. Akagi finishes
work on the Magi computers and prepares to activate them. Ritsuko tells her
mother that Misato and Kaji have broken up. "You never know with a man and a
woman, because its not logical," she says. Her mother replies, "That cool
attitude of yours certainly hasnt changed. Youre going to let your own
happiness slip away." "Happiness is even harder to define," Ritsuko replies. She
leaves and Rei wanders in. Rei insults Dr. Akagi by repeatedly calling her an "old
hag," and insisting, moreover, that the director says the same. Dr. Akagi
strangles Rei, then commits suicide. Seele dissolves Gehirn and replaces it with
Nerv. Kaji releases Fuyutsuki from confinement in order to learn more about
Seele and Gendo. Shortly afterward Kaji is shot dead by an unknown assassin,
probably a Nerv security agent. Misato returns to her apartment where she
receives Kajis last recorded message. She breaks down and weeps
uncontrollably. Shinji looks in on her from his room.
Shinji: Right then all I could do was run away from Misato. There was nothing I
could do or say. I was a child. It made me realize that.
We should take Shinjis mea non culpa with a measure of skepticism because he
is, after all, the alter ego of the author of everyones grief, Shinji-1. In time he
will come to understand this, but not yet.

Episode 22'
Asukas synch rate is declining. Flashbacks reveal that her mother was insane
during Asukas early childhood and committed suicide when Asuka was about
four years old. Asuka increasingly sees herself in a zero-sum competition with
Shinji and Rei, even resenting Shinjis rapid recovery following his emergence
from the LCL. During a strained elevator ride Rei tells Asuka that the EVAs have
souls and will not respond to a closed heart, causing Asuka to fly into a rage.
"Why does a weapon need a soul anyway?" she demands of Unit 02.
A new Angel appears in high earth orbit, beyond the range of EVAs. Asuka
disobeys orders and launches Unit 02. As expected, her rifle fails to reach the
Angel, which retaliates by invading her mind. The "Halleluiah" chorus from
Handels Messiah is heard. Reis weapon fails as well. Further flashbacks force
Asuka to relive memories of her mothers suicide and her subsequent attempts
to de-fragment and redefine herself. The Messiah picks up again a few bars
before the end of "Worthy is the Lamb" and proceeds directly into the "Amen"
chorus.
Shinji asks to be allowed to join the ongoing battle, but Gendo instead directs
Rei to retrieve the Lance of Longinus from Central Dogma and hurl it at the
target The attack succeeds in destroying the Angel as the "Amen" chorus
concludes. The Lance moves into lunar orbit.
Why are we hearing music from the Messiah now? At the simplest level, its
because the words are right. The Lance of Longinus became holy when it
pierced the side of Jesus on the cross; Jesus is the Messiah of Handels oratorio.
At a deeper level, the music may be asking us, "Why are we bothering with all
these Angels and EVAs when the bliss engendered by such glorious music is
available back in the real world?" Evangelions answer is that bliss is not
something that can be casually switched on like an SDAT. If it were, Shinjis
story would have ended before it began. Instead, bliss must be earned,
sometimes fought for at peril of ones sanity and very existence. In Shinjis
Progress, were not there yet Shinjis not there yet but maybe Bach, Handel
and Beethoven can help him along.
Shinji expresses happiness at Asukas return, but she is consumed by
resentment at Reis successful attack on the Angel and says, "I wouldve rather
died than be saved by her! I hate everybody!"
Episode 23'
Misato continues to mourn the death of Kaji, while Asuka sleeps over with Class
Rep Hikari, still obsessed with her rage at the success of others. Called before
Seele, Gendo defends his decision to use the Lance of Longinus.

A new Angel appears and Rei is launched to attack it, but she is invaded and
disabled by the enemy. Conversing with another copy of herself, Rei
acknowledges her loneliness: "There are so many of us, and yet, you hate being
alone. That is you own heart, overflowing with sorrow." Gendo lifts the
suspension of Unit 01, which launches immediately. Asuka finds yet another
reason for resentment: Unit 01 has been activated to save Rei, but had not
been sent to rescue her during the previous battle. Shinji is invaded in the same
manner as Rei. "Is this my heart wanting to become one with Ikari?" Rei asks
herself. "No." Rei refuses a command to abandon her EVA, sacrificing her own
life (again) to save Shinji. Gendo is seen smiling sadly.
Seele observes that only one Angel remains. "The promised time is near. We
need another human sacrifice to counter Ikari. And we need someone who
knows the truth." At home with Misato, Shinji says, "I feel sad but the tears just
wont come." He recoils violently when Misato attempts to touch his hand. "Is he
afraid of women?" Misato wonders. "No, hes afraid of being intimate with
people." A call comes from the hospital; Rei is alive but does not remember the
recent battle. At this point it is not clear how many times Rei has died, or how
many copies of Rei have died. "I think Im probably the third one," she says. At
home, within earshot of the incessant pile-driver, Rei, apparently uninjured,
cries.
Ritsuko, naked, is quizzed by Seele. They insult her by claiming that Gendo
surrendered her in place of Rei. Later, Misato prepares to decode Kajis last
message. Seele reflects, "The annihilation of New Tokyo-3 will be good material
upon which to advance our plans. Hurry their completion." Pistol in hand, Misato
forces Ritsuko to reveal Nervs darkest secrets. Shinji accompanies them to a
dank, filthy basement. Ritsuko explains that this is where Rei was born. At a still
lower level the three visit the graveyard of failed EVA prototypes piled in
cruciform trenches. "This is where your mother disappeared," Ritsuko says to
Shinji. "I believe you were also watching the very moment your mother
vanished." Next, Ritsuko shows them an enormous tank containing dozens of
Rei clones the basis of the dummy plugs, Rei replacements, and even EVAs.
"People?" Shinji asks. "Theyre human?" "Yes, theyre human. The EVAs do not
intrinsically have souls, but they have human souls imbedded in them. The only
vessel that contained a soul was Rei. These things here that look like Rei have
no souls. Thats why Im going to destroy them. Because I hate them." She
presses a button and the Reis disintegrate. Misato observes, "The tragedy of the
people possessed by the EVAs But that goes for me, too."
In book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus travels to Hades to learn from the blind
prophet Tiresias how to get home. After speaking with Tiresias, he meets the
shades of Achilles, Agamemnon, Herakles, Sisyphus, his mother, and several
others. At the deepest point of Shinjis descent into the catacombs beneath

Nerv, he meets only silence and death. He will have to learn how to find his own
way home.
Episode 24': The Beginning and the End or, "Knockin on Heavens Door"
The main title invokes Revelation: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end." (21:6). The second title is a song by Bob Dylan in
which a man contemplates his own death.
In flashback, Asuka discovers the dead body of her mother hanging from the
ceiling. In the present, Asukas synch rate has fallen to zero, disqualifying her
from piloting an EVA. "Theres no reason for me to live now," she thinks. Nerv
agents find her, possibly in the act of committing suicide, and return her to
Headquarters. Misato says, "And today, Asukas replacement, the Fifth Child,
arrives." She observes that the course of recent events is "too convenient," and
suspects a plot. Shinji ruminates on intermingled feelings about Rei and his
mother. "What are you doing, Father?" he asks himself.
Gendo asks Ritsuko, "Why did you destroy the dummy system?" "Not the
dummy system," she replies, "what I destroyed was Rei." "I will only ask you
this once. Why?" "Because I am no longer happy, even when you make love to
me. You never hoped or expected anything from me to begin with. Not
anything! Nothing!"
Shinji stands at the edge of a red lake that occupies a blast crater in New
Tokyo-3 caused by the latest battle. "Everyone, including Toji and Kensuke, lost
their homes and left. My friends I dont have anyone I can call a friend
anymore. Theres no one. I cant see Ayanami. I dont have the courage for it. I
dont know how Im supposed to face her. Asuka, Miss Misato, Mother What
should I do?" Shinji stares into the orange setting sun hoping for an answer.
The central event of Episode 24' reenacts the Passion of the Christ, [12] reimagined in Shinjis adopted symbolic language and constituting the entry point
into Shinjis own Passion.[13] Pivotal to this episode is the densely ambiguous,
seductive, and oddly impassive Kaworu.
But before Kaworu there was Jesus. As Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov [14] reminds
us, Jesus is a troublemaker. His miracles and his grant of moral choice are
subversive of the Church, and his elevation of the powerless and poor are
subversive of the State. His gospel and character are both deeply ambiguous.
He curses the fig tree because figs are out of season. (Matt. 21:18-20) He
warns, "I come not in peace, but to bring a sword." (Matt. 10:34-36) And yet,
"Honor your father and mother; love your neighbor as yourself." (Matt. 19:19)
"The meek shall inherit the earth." (Matt. 5:5) Shinji has been forced to live in
the unbearable gaps between his own concept of morality and the increasingly

perverse machinations of Nerv, Seele, and his father. Poised at the edge of the
abyss, he yearns for a savior for an end to equivocation.
The Fifth Child, Nagisa Kaworu, is as close to a real angel as Shinji will ever
meet in fact, too close, embodying all the conflicting attributes
of angelnessthat constitute the contorted symbolic vocabulary of Evangelion.
Kaworu appears in the apocalyptic ruins of New Tokyo-3 (described above)
seated on the head of a phoenix,[15] humming the main theme from the final
movement of Beethovens Ninth Symphony, the glorious "Ode to Joy." [16]
"Singing is great," Kaworu says. "Singing enriches the soul. Its the crowning
achievement of the civilization that the Lilim [mankind] created.[17] Dont you
feel the same Ikari Shinji-kun?" "My name" "Everyone knows your name. I
dont mean to be rude, but I think you should be a little more aware of your
position." "You think so? Uh who are you?" "Im Kaworu, Nagisa Kaworu. One
of the Children whore part of the design, just like you. Im the Fifth Child." [18]
While driving to Nerv Headquarters, Misato discusses Kaworu with a colleague.
"The Committee sent him directly to us," she says. "Theres bound to be
something to this." During tests, Kaworu synchronizes with Unit 02 as if it had
been made for him. Kaworu meets Rei and asks, "Youre the First Child, arent
you? Ayanami Rei. Youre the same as me. So, both of us ended up in the same
form as the Lilim while we inhabit this planet."[19] Rei scowls. "Who are you?"
she says. Misato asks rhetorically, "Who in the world is that boy?"
Kaworu returns from his synch test, meeting Shinji in a corridor. "Hi," he says.
"Were you waiting for me?" Shinji blushes. "No, not really. Thats not what I
was all I have left is to take a shower and go home, but But the truth is,
lately, I dont really want to go home." Kaworu says, "A place to return to The
fact that you have a home will lead to your happiness. Its a very good thing.
Id like to talk more with you. May I come with you? To take a shower. You still
need to go take one, right?" In the shower Kaworu says, "You go to such
extremes to avoid first contact. Are you afraid of connection with other people?
If you dont get close to others, youll never be betrayed and youll never hurt
each other. But youll also never be able to forget your loneliness. Humans can
never banish their loneliness for good, because being human means being
alone. But humans are able to go on with their lives because theyre able to
forget this every so often." Kaworu places his hand on Shinjis, much as Misato
tried to do. Shinji accepts the gesture. The lights go out. "Yeah," Shinji says,
"we'd better go to bed." "Together?" asks Kaworu. "Oh, no! I think theres
probably a room ready for you. A separate one." "I see." Kaworu frowns.
"Humans constantly feel pain in their hearts. Because the heart is so sensitive
to pain, humans also feel that to live is to suffer. Youre so delicate, like glass,

especially your heart." "Me?" "Yes, you have my regard for it." "Regard?" Shinji
asks, blushing. "It means," Kaworu says, "I love you."
Mid-episode title: The Final Messenger
The old men of Seele complain that Nerv has become the possession of Ikari
Gendo and conclude that it must be taken back "before the promised
day.""Soon," Gendo says, standing before Unit 01, "the final Angel will appear. If
we destroy it, our wish will come true." He displays his burned hand his
stigmata. "Just a little longer, Yui."
Rei asks, "Why am I here? Why am I alive again? For what? And for whom? The
Fifth Child that boy I feel as if hes the same as me. Why?"
Kaworu lies on a futon, Shinji next to him, on the floor. "Come on," Kaworu
says, "Ill sleep on the floor." "No. Youre the one whos doing me a favor by
letting me stay over. Im fine where I am." Kaworu asks, "What shall we talk
about? There are things you want me to hear, right?" Shinji tells of living with
his teacher, of not having to do anything. "Did you hate people?" "Not really. I
think it didnt matter, one way or the other. But I did hate my father." "Maybe I
was born so that I would meet you," Kaworu says.
Appearing before Seele, Kaworu is instructed in what he was made for and what
he must do. Misato spies on him but cannot read either his words or his
thoughts. Bowing his head slightly, Kaworu says, "All will be as the Lilim direct
it." (Compare: Yet not my will but thine be done. Luke 22:42) "Come on, lets
go," Kaworu says, looking up at Unit 02. "Come with me, Adams alter ego and
servant of the Lilim."
The Passion of Kaworu[20]
Shinji has taken a first tentative step along the path toward openness. Yet,
tragically, this is not to be not, at any rate, with a living Kaworu. In what
follows it is important to keep two things in mind: 1. The god (or king) who
must be killed by his own people in order to save them. [21] This is a not
uncommon myth in ancient cultures and is Christianitys central paradox and
miracle. 2. Throughout this segment we hear the choral music of Beethovens
Ninth Symphony, a starkly ironic counterpoint to martyrdom.
Kaworu hijacks Unit 02, yet never enters it, and descends to Terminal Dogma
(for Terminal Dogma, read: the termination of all dogma). Shinji, in Unit 01, is
commanded to follow Kaworu and destroy him as the seventeenth and last
Angel. (Only selected portions of the dialogue are reproduced here.)

Shinji first doubts Nerv: Its a lie! Its a lie! Its a lie! That Kaworu is Hes an
Angel?!
Then he doubts Kaworu: You betrayed me! You betrayed my feelings! You
betrayed me, just like Father did!
Kaworu: Ive been waiting for you Shinji-kun. The EVA series Born from
Adam, they are an abhorrent existence for humans. The AT field is the wall
that everyone has in their heart.
Kaworu reflects: The fate of man, the hope of man, is written in sorrow.
Shinji: Kaworu-kun, why?
Kaworu: Because its my destiny to continue to live, even if it may result in the
destruction of humanity. But I can also die here. Life and death are of equal
value to me. Dying of your own free will. That is the one and only absolute
freedom there is."
Shinji: What? Kaworu-kun, I dont understand what youre saying! Kaworu-kun
Kaworu: My last will and testament. Now, erase me from the world. If you dont,
you will be the ones who are erased. Only one life form will be chosen to survive
the time of destruction and be given a future. And you are not a being who
should die. Your people need the future. Thank you. Im glad I met you.
Shinji holds the defenseless Kaworu in Unit 01s monstrous grasp. Long stasis as
Beethoven continues. The chorus sings:[22]
Brothers over the starry firmament
A beloved Father must surely dwell.
Do you come crashing down, you millions?
Do you sense the Creators presence, world?
Seek Him above the starry firmament,
For above the stars He surely dwells.[23]

Shinji kills Kaworu. Beethoven stops. Blackout. Torrents of water fail to wash the
blood from Unit 01s hand.[24] Mankind has been spared yet forever stained by
the saviors martyrdom.
Shinji, later, to Misato: Kaworu said that he loved me. It was the first time
someone told me they loved me. He was like me and Ayanami. I loved him.
Kaworu was the one who should have survived. He was a much better person
than I am.
Misato: Youre wrong. Only those who have the will to live get to survive.
(Phoenix reappears, reminding us of Kaworus connection with death and
rebirth.) He wished to die. He abandoned his will to live, clinging instead to a
false hope. You did nothing wrong, Shinji-kun.
Shinji: Youre cold, Miss Misato.

Misato is certainly cold, but she is articulating a common criticism of

Christianity: that it worships Thanatos, that it is a religion of death, and that its
central symbol is an instrument of torture and execution. [25] In addition, Misato
is pointing to the uselessness and waste of suicide, a further implicit criticism of
martyrdom. Yet Misato is both creature and captive of the Evangelion world and
lacks the wider perspective necessary to understand what has just transpired,
especially its meaning for Shinji.
The bleakness and irony of this episode are unequaled elsewhere
in Evangelion, and we may wonder at the apparent inadequacy of Shinjis grief.
Shinjis despairing outcry at the injury of Toji (for which he was not responsible)
is consistent with our sense of his empathy and sensitivity. His relative
equanimity at having killed Kaworu is not. Bracing as a pail of icewater in the
face, Misatos coldhearted reproof of Shinji feels frigidly insensitive to the
gravity of Shinjis loss. "Youre cold, Miss Misato," is understated to the point of
invisibility.
Yet there is a deeper dramatic purpose here that this criticism misses. By ending
quickly and quietly, Episode 24' leaves the mind struggling with a far more
important image: that of Kaworu in Unit 01s grasp, suspended time,
Beethoven, and the dread of imminent darkness. Shinji will grieve later.
Nothing is more devastating to the heroes of Greek epic than the thought of
being forgotten. Dead or alive, without fame (kleos) a man is nameless, and to
be nameless is to be nothing at all. In his first remarks, Hermes/Jesus/Kaworu
invokes Shinjis name, alludes to his notoriety, and extols the soul-enriching
virtues of song, which, in Homeric times, was the medium by which fame was
broadcast and sustained. With these few words Kaworu has given Shinji new
hope and lifted him out of a deepening well of purposelessness and non-being.
But an integrated and empowered Shinji who knows who he is and is capable of
love is not someone who needs to wrap himself in a hermetic, self-indulgent
fantasy world. In the manner of a malignant organism struggling for its life, the
dreamworld strikes back, inducing Shinji to do the most horrendous thing
imaginable: kill his own savior. With this, Shinji is plunged back into a chasm of
impotence and self-hatred darker than ever.
Episodes 25' and 26' (Parts 1 and 2 of The End of Evangelion)
It is appropriate to remind ourselves once more of the central theory of this
paper: that there exists a real-world Shinji-1 who is the dreamer, fantasizer, and
puppet-master of the drama. The fictional Shinji-2 is his creation and avatar,
and is in all essentials identical to Shnji-1 excepting only that he lives in a
fictional parallel universe that includes EVAs, Nerv, Gendo, the Angels, etc. Yet

this simple bifurcation overstates Shinji-1s mastery of his fantasy, which has
taken on a deadly life of its own and threatens to draw him into a maelstrom of
psychological fragmentation and regression. Shinji has sunk so deeply into his
dream that he cannot simply switch it off, but must find his way back through a
maze of horrendous complexity, alternately hideous and beautiful imagery, and
portentous iconography. In these final two episodes the wall between the living
and the dead, and between the reality of the Evangelionworld and Shinjis
thoughts about it, gradually dissolves. Officially dead people reappear to
deliver judgments and messages, and the roles of Rei and Kaworu converge, as
suggested several times in Episode 24'.
Both Seele and Gendo work to achieve the Human Instrumentality Project
(HIP), but for different reasons. In either case, HIP represents the dissolution of
individual human egos into a homogeneous continuum of all life. Gendo seeks
this as a path to reunion with Yui. Seele sees it as the next evolutionary stage of
mankind. For Shinji it could end the pain of collisions with other people. Yet the
loss of any sense of identity, of the self, is operationally indistinguishable from
death. Shinji must make his choice.
Seele, Nerv, and the national government are in open warfare. Elements of the
JSSDF attack Nerv Headquarters with soldiers and battlefield armaments. Nerv
was not designed to repel conventional forces, and this new enemy penetrates
all the way to Central Command, stopped only when CC personnel take up small
arms. A new level of violence is reached in this battle, in which visible people
are visibly shot, bleed, and die in horrifying numbers.
Asuka is placed in Unit 02 and hides at the bottom of a lake, but is bombarded
with depth charges. Inspired by a vision of her mother, Asuka rises from the
lake and in a ferocious battle destroys all the conventional armaments brought
to bear against her. Seele orders the deployment of nine new EVAs but she
disables them as well, then runs out of battery power. The new EVAs regenerate
and eviscerate Unit 02 in a ghastly tableau that is an unholy marriage of the
torment of Prometheus with the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.
During much of Asukas battle we hear the sharply incongruous "Air" from
Bachs Orchestral Suite No. 3.[26] The effect of this music is one of
overwhelming sadness, a requiem for all of Evangelions maimed and dead, and
invites us back to a better world where harmony and beauty are possible.
Misato locates Shinji hiding under a stairway, intending to send him into battle
in Unit 01. Grief and guilt over his killing of Kaworu, as well as all the other
agony and death his fantasy has entailed, have reduced him to a state of apathy
approaching catatonia. Misato rescues him from JSSDF assassins and drags him
to the only remaining access route to Unit 01. "Get up. Move it," Misato says.
"Like it or not, youre still alive. Get moving and do something. You can die

later." Thrust into the storage bay, Shinji finds Unit 01 encased in defensive
Bakelite and collapses again. Outside, Misato dies of gunshot wounds. Like
Asuka, Shinji calls to his mother. As it has done once before, Unit 01 breaks its
bonds and draws Shinji into itself. (Or into herself, if one buys the theory that
Shinjis mothers soul resides in the EVA.)
Shinji, in Unit 01, explodes upwards through Nerv Headquarters, but upon
finding the grisly remains of Asukas Unit 02 flips into a state near madness.
Unit 01 appears in the sky as an enormous, satanic, orange-winged monster.
Gendo attempts to merge with Rei but is rejected, losing his right hand. Rei
merges with Lilith and a huge white composite of the two rises into the sky to
face Shinji. Seele intones a chant welcoming the dissolution of all humanity.
Shinji approaches mental breakdown as Unit 01 is subjected to a stylized,
geometrical crucifixion but the image of Rei/Lilith wilts backward to be
replaced by a similar image of Kaworu; they are joined at the hip. "Have you
been there the whole time, Kaworu-kun?" Shinji asks. Kaworu stretches out his
ghostly hands toward Shinji, whose face melts into a warm puddle of bliss. The
demonic wings melt away and a lance transfixes Unit 01, forming a threedimensional cross.
Fuyutsuki narrates: "The fate of mankind now lies in the hands of Ikaris son."
It certainly does. Only he can destroy the Evangelion world, saving himself and
by extension us and the rest of humanity.
Kaworu and a purified Rei exchange positions. "This Rei is your heart. She
embodies all your hopes and your dreams. What is it you wish for?" Shinji sees
himself at the age of four in an empty playground. Invisible children call to him,
"Come, Shinji-kun. Lets build a sand castle." Illuminated by studio lights and
the setting sun Shinji builds a model of Nervs pyramidal headquarters, then
kicks it apart. Shinji giveth and Shinji taketh away. Shinji ponders the
imponderables of motherhood, love and sex. Hes shocked. "Does Misato really
do things like that?" "Yes, this is also me. The me when two hearts are joined as
one. The me that Shinji has never known. Reality can be painful, but its
something that you must learn to accept." Asuka berates Shinji, "You dont
understand anything. You just stay away from me." "I do understand." "You
couldnt possibly, you big jerk!" Rei asks her perennial question, "Did you ever
really try, Ikari?" "Of course I did." "I know all about your little jerk off fantasies
about me," Asuka says. "Go ahead and do it like you always do. Ill even stand
here and watch you." The inquisition continues until Shinji cries, "Please care
about me!" Asuka replies, "Youre all you have and youve never even learned to
like yourself. Pathetic." In a wild rage, Shinji throws the furniture about. "Dont
leave me alone. Dont abandon me. Help me." "No." Shinji begins to strangle
Asuka, lifting her off the floor. Childish crayon drawings red with pain and anger

fill the screen. Like an emotional scalpel, the relentless examination of Shinji
cuts ever more deeply while the world of discrete beings approaches its end.
Rei: This world is overflowing with sorrow. Its people are drowning in
emptiness. Loneliness fills their hearts.
Seele: The beginning and the end are one and the same. Yes, all is right with
the world.
Gendo: Ive waited so long for this moment to arrive. I will finally be with you
again, Yui. When Shinji is near me, all I ever do is cause him pain. It was better
when I did nothing at all.
Yui: Were you afraid of Shinji? I didnt believe that anyone could love me. I
dont deserve to be loved.
Kaworu: So you were running away. You rejected others so that you would
never be hurt.
Yui: You were terrified by the invisible bonds that people form.
Rei: You were afraid, and so you closed your heart.
Gendo: This is my retribution. Forgive me, Shinji. (Unit 01 bites off Gendos
head. Gendos remorse has come too late. No reconciliation.)
In a storm of painful images, all the insults and accusations ever hurled at Shinji
fall like acid rain.
Bachs Jesu, Joy of Mans Desiring[39] accompanies video footage of a bustling
city. We see the microwave tower and telephone poles weve grown to recognize
and respect, if not love. Thousands of people crowd the streets. "Hey." "What?"
"What are dreams?" "Dreams?" "Yes, dreams." A theater audience restlessly
awaits what? perhaps the end of The End of Evangelion. Bach continues.
Shinji: "I dont understand. I dont understand what reality is." "You cant bridge
the gap between your own truth and the reality of others." "I dont know where
to find happiness." "So you only find happiness in your dreams." "Then this is
not realty, this world where no one exists." "No, its only a dream." "Then I dont
exist here either." "This convenient fabrication is your attempt to change
reality." "Is that wrong?" "You were using fantasy to escape reality." "Why cant
I dream that Im alone?" "That is not a dream. Thats a substitute for reality."
"So, where is my dream?" "It is a continuation of reality." "But where is my
reality?" "It is at the end of your dream."
The HIP has melted all identities into primordial soup, yet Shinji can still talk
with Rei. "This is the world you wished for," she says. "But this isnt right,"
Shinji objects. "It feels wrong." "If you wish for others to exist, the walls of their
hearts will separate them again. They will all feel fear once more." "Okay, then.
Thank you."

Shinji: I only felt pain when I existed in that reality. So I thought it was alright
to run away. But there was nothing good in the place I escaped to either,
because I didnt exist there, and so no one existed.
Kaworu: Is it alright for the AT field to cause you and others pain again? (AT
field = "the wall that everyone has in their heart.")
Shinji: I dont mind. But what are the two of you within my heart?
Rei: We are the hope that people will one day be able to understand each other.
Kaworu: And we are the words, "I love you."
Shinji: But thats just a pretense. A selfish belief. Like some kind of prayer. It
cant possibly last forever. Eventually, Ill be betrayed and it will abandon me.
But still, I want to see them again, because at the time I knew my feelings were
real.
Kaworu: Reality exists in a place unknown, and dreams exist within reality.
Rei: And truth lies in your heart.
Kaworu: The contents of a persons heart shapes their appearance.
Rei: And new images will change their hearts and their forms. The power of
imagination is the ability to create your own future, and the power to create
your own flow of time.
Kaworu: But if people dont act of their own free will, then nothing will change
at all.
Rei: So you must regain your own lost form by your own volition. Even if it
means your words become lost or confused with the words of others. Anyone
can return to human form as long as they are able to imagine themselves within
their own heart.
Misato: Dont worry. All living creatures have the power to be brought back to
life and the will to go on living. Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have
the will to live. After all, you are alive, so you will always have the chance to be
happy.
Rei: As long as the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth exist, everything will be
alright.
Rei, to Shinji: Will you be alright?
Shinji: I still dont know where my happiness lies. I still think about why Im
here and whether or not it was a good thing to come back. But thats just
stating the obvious over and over. I am myself. But, Mother What will you do,
Mother?
Fuyutsuki to Yui: When we created the EVAs were we trying to create a clone of
God?
Yui: Yes. Humans can only exist on this earth, but the Evangelion can exist
forever, along with the human soul that dwells within.[33] Even five billion years

from now, when the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun are gone, EVA will exist. It
will be lonely, but as long as one person still lives
Fuyutsuki: it will be eternal proof that mankind ever existed.
Shinji: Goodbye, Mother.
Title frame: One More Final: I need you.
The setting is the same as that in which Kaworu first appeared, pared down to a
surreal, minimalist Golgotha. A red sea laps at the featureless shore, fallen
telephone poles and ruined buildings are accompanied by two cruciform EVAs
leaning outward from a central cross which is not there. For a moment Shinji
sees a distant, silent Rei. We can almost hear her asking one last time, "Have
you really tried?" Shinji rises, kneels over Asuka and attempts to strangle her.
Asuka slowly raises a bandaged hand to gently caress Shinjis cheek, then
lowers it. Shinji relents and cries deeply, his tears falling on Asukas face. Asuka
says, "How disgusting."
Whats going on here? If we accept that Asuka, Rei and Kaworu are rejected
aspects of Shinjis own personality, his return to reality can only be
accomplished by reabsorbing into himself those problematic companions. This
has already been done for Rei and Kaworu, but Shinji still resists owning the
anger and violence in his nature. In an act which is both rejection and
performance of his anger, Shinji makes one final attempt to exclude Asuka, then
tearfully accepts her. With this, Shinji is almost home. True to form, Asuka is
disgusted.
One More Final bit of analysis: Rei, Asuka and Kaworu have returned to Shinji.
Rounding out the Five Children, we must include Toji as well. He, too, appears
briefly near the end, his arm draped affectionately around Shinjis neck, in a
snapshot of Shinji-1 and his colleagues. Tojis distinguishing traits are his
kindness and vulnerability: he is totally defenseless in a world overloaded with
pain, fear and loss. Tojis return is silent because silence is his native language
and because, of all the pilots, his personality is most similar to Shinjis and
therefore has the least psychological distance to travel.
Shinjis recovery has required the reintegration of his full personality, but he was
in need of some letting go as well. Now at the end of his journey he has said a
final goodbye to his mother and erased the evil image of his father. Henceforth
he will no longer need to define himself through the deficiency of his parents
who, in their separate ways, have failed him. Not all of his questions have been
answered, nor all his doubts assuaged, but
The dreamer has awakened and a new world opens before him.

Epilogue

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.[29]

Further Discussion

The Five Children

It is now possible to summarize the psychological and metaphorical roles of the
Five Children. Shinji, in constructing his fictional self, has chosen to run away
from parts of his makeup that were painful or in other ways problematic for him.
However one imagines the process conscious or unconscious it is clear that
Shinjis act of exclusion is only partially and temporarily successful. Those
rejected pieces of Shinji have not vanished, but continue to impinge upon him in
the forms of the four other Children. His final epiphany is that he is incomplete
without them. The correspondences between traits and Children is clear. Rei is
apathy and withdrawal from human contact. Asuka is rage, resentment, and
self-involvement. Toji is sensitivity and vulnerability. Kaworu is the capacity to
love and the willingness to risk being hurt as a result. It is the arrival of Kaworu
that precipitates the final crisis, and that event is discussed more fully below.
Five Short Essays on Nagisa Kaworu
Who is Kaworu?
Unlike the other important characters of the drama, Kaworu has no past, no
future, no friends, no connections, no context. He steps out of the blue, the

absolute master of every situation, devoid of fear, anxiety, resentment,

embarrassment, or regret. He knows Shinji better than Shinji knows himself
because he is free from the distorting effects of strong emotion, or, indeed, any
emotion at all. Despite Kaworus strangeness, Shinji warms to him immediately
and intimately. Ritsuko opines that he is "probably the final messenger," though
this is a odd claim since none of the prior Angels has shown any inclination to
convey messages.
A personification of the capacity to love, Kaworu really is a messenger and
delivers his teachings to Shinji by word and example. Shinjis old strategy of
avoiding pain by avoiding other people, Kaworu explains, is a dead end that can
only result in further pain and alienation. Commitment to others entails the risk
of being hurt, but to avoid involvement is to embrace social death. Retreat into
a fantasy world of carefully manipulated relationships may work for a while, but
that, too, is a path toward death. At the moment of Kaworus appearance
Shinjis Evangelion world is badly out of control and collapsing in on
itself; loyalties are in doubt; truth is falsehood; and the Establishment decrees
that Kaworu must die by Shinjis own hand. The deadliness of the dream world
is revealed, the messenger becomes the message, and Kaworus task is
completed.
Is Shinji in Love with Kaworu?
Judging from the conventional cues of anime (blushing, hesitation,
embarrassment) one might think so, but the encounter with Kaworu displays
even stronger hints of reunion, which is its true subject. In Platos dialogue The
Symposium several Athenian intellectuals, among them Socrates and the comic
playwright Aristophanes, compete in delivering speeches on the nature of love.
Dramatist to the core, Aristophanes proposes that humans were once physically
and emotionally whole, lacking any need to form dyads with other humans; but
in their lust for power they challenged even the gods, and in retribution Zeus
cut each of them in half.
Now, since their natural form had been cut in two, each one
longed for its own other half, and so they would throw their arms
about each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to grow
together.[36]

Throughout Evangelion Shinji is far less than half of himself. Not only does he
lack Kaworus capacity to love, but, as well, those other faculties that have
reconstituted themselves as Rei, Asuka, and Toji. His program to free himself
from strong emotion has reduced him to a bland, passionless shell to which he
attempts to give meaning by piloting Unit 01 (itself a shell) and destroying
Angels. Kaworus appearance at a time of emotional crisis momentarily
awakens in him the tantalizing hope that his emptiness might be filled by

affirmation rather than negation, by love rather than violence. Shinji's love for
Kaworu is a first step toward loving himself.
When Shinji, still not his own person, obeys the command to kill Kaworu, he
commits not only homicide but (partial) suicide as well. By the time Misato
attempts to rouse him to battle in Episode 25 he is more dead than alive.
The Apotheosis of Kaworu
The old men of Seele chant, We need another human sacrifice to counter Ikari.
And we need someone who knows the truth. Ritsuko anticipates the final
messenger. Shinji, at the edge of the abyss, asks, What should I do?" Martin
Heidegger suggests, Only another god can save us [now].[5]Conjured out of
nothingness by these prayers, perched on the head of a phoenix, nearly as
immobile as the icons of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, immersed in a cool
nimbus of white radiance, Kaworu materializes amid the wreckage of New
Tokyo-3. He preaches life and love, but chooses death to save mankind.
With this striking image before us, we might take a moment to reflect on the
Passion of Kaworu not as a re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus, but as a
universal symbol of selfless altruism, liberated from cross, blood, agony, and
centuries of sectarian baggage. What we are looking at here is not just the
central mystery of Christianity of many Christianities but at the ineffable
paradox of life itself: that death and life proceed one from the other in an
endlessly recirculating stream of loss, change, and regeneration; cyclical yet
evolutionary. The miracle that Evangelion has wrought is to appropriate this
symbolic performance with all its ancient power, yet in a refined form that strips
away every stain of dogmatism and cant. Floating in his shaft of purest light,
Kaworu is all of us: exposed and vulnerable, hopeless yet hopeful. This is his gift
to us not eternal life, but the eternal challenge to deserve the gift of life.
Yet this picture of humanitarian suicide is deeply disturbing to both Misato and
Shinji, though for different reasons. The ideological manipulation of symbols
especially symbols as powerful as this one is examined more critically in the
next essay.
The Perils of Symbols
In An Essay on Man, philosopher Ernst Cassirer has this to say about symbols
and myths:
Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as mans symbolic
activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves
man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so
enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in
mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know

anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium. He

lives in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in
illusions and disillusions, in his fantasies and dreams.[30] (italics
added)

Cassirer wrote these words during the last year of World War II, having fled a
country (Nazi Germany) that had appropriated and redefined a range of
"mythical symbols or religious rites" in the service of constructing a (not
entirely) new mythology of the superiority of the Master Race and the inferiority
of everyone else. By this process the Jews were reduced to a symbol of
Germanys decay. As symbols they could be extinguished without regret, along
with Communists, Gypsies and homosexuals.
In appropriating and redefining Christian and Kabbalistic
symbols, Evangelion (in a sense) plays in the same sandbox as that of Nazi
Germany's Ministry of Propaganda and demonstrates an important point:
redefinition does not necessarily rid symbols of their prior meaning and power.
On the contrary, symbols are most effectively deployed when the emotional
weight acquired by them over time is turned in a new direction; not lost, but
focused on something else. The emotional power of symbols is
therefore fungible. Like money, once acquired it can be spent to any end.
Evangelions Ikari Shinji is "constantly conversing with himself," attempting to
find meaning and guidance for proper action in many of mankinds most revered
totems fatherhood, motherhood, courage, compassion, group solidarity,
loyalty, honesty, generosity, love. Among his discoveries is that these qualities
are not simple absolutes, but context-dependent puzzles. As symbols they are
not of much use, and it is necessary to search backward through mankinds
"symbolic activity" toward the particularity of that "physical reality" which has
been lost or obscured through the misuse of words or the misrepresentations of
convention.
The Passion of Kaworu is a case in point. Shinji is not a literary theorist and
truly believes that he has killed someone tragically, someone whom he loved
and who loved him. In his literal-minded refusal to see the world through
symbols he has understood the Passion for what it is: human sacrifice. In doing
so he has seen through the "symbolic activity" to the "physical reality" of
murder and condemns himself accordingly. We sophisticates might be inclined to
send him back to remedial New Criticism, but his is arguably the purer vision.
Like Ashitaka (Mononoke-hime), Shinji has seen "with eyes unclouded" and
found the world not to his liking. Whether he will grow up to be a crusading
existentialist hero like Ashitaka is unknown.
Kaworu as Trickster

Coyote of Native American legend, the Japanese shape-shifting raccoon dog

(tanuki = or ), and the Greek god Hermes (messenger and agent of
Zeus) would seem to have little in common, but they are all instances of a
figure ubiquitous in world folklore: the trickster. Displaying nearly the entire
catalog of the tricksters transgressive, transformational, and chaos-inducing
talents, Kaworu fundamentally destabilizes the Evangelion world, impelling it
toward final disintegration. As in cowboy Westerns of a earlier era, a stranger
comes to town, death and destruction follow in his wake, and a new world is
born.[37]
Unimpeded by passwords or protocol, Kaworu steals Unit 02, guiding it through
every blast shield and barrier to Terminal Dogma, where he confronts and
confounds mankinds most fearful dogma, the impermeability of the boundary
between the living and the dead. Life and death are of equal value to Kaworu
because he travels easily between them and leads others to do so as well: Yui,
Misato, and Rei. In Kaworus subversively transformed space, death shall
have no dominion.[38]
Exceptional even for a trickster, Kaworu violates the border between male and
female, occupying two bodies, two places, and two genders at once. "I feel we
are the same," taken literally, equates Kaworu and Rei, and we realize that
Rei/Kaworu has been moving between life and death ever since Rei was
murdered by Dr. Akagi, if not before. (Athena performs this gender-switching
trick several times in the Odyssey.)
Under the influence of Kaworus transformative chaos, the outermost shell of the
dreamworld is shattered, the camera draws back, and we glimpse demiurgic
Shinji in the sandbox under studio lights, the crowded streets of a living city,
intact telephone poles, even ourselves in the theater audience. With a final kick
that unites Asuka and Shinji, Kaworu ejects Shinji from the static world of his
fantasy into time, change, and the possibility of growth.
I have just laid out five rather divergent views of the role of Kaworu: as
Message, as Reunification, as Messiah, as Atrocity, as Trickster. No doubt there
are still more. It is the great virtue of Evangelion that it invites us to see the
world from so many different points of view and allows us to come to our own
conclusions.
Evangelion and the Odyssey One Last Time
Stories of the return of a hero successful or otherwise are a staple of ancient
Greek poetry and drama, but they are seldom without complication: Achilles
dies before the fall of Troy; Ajax goes mad and kills himself; Agamemnon is
murdered by his wife and her lover; Menelaus is delayed in Egypt; Odysseus

return takes ten years. Return is an essential part of Shinjis story as well, but
we must take two steps back and start at the beginning.
Departure, Absence, Return. These are the three essential elements of the
generic heros tale, and they are all present in Evangelion. Shinji, in fact,
experiences a series of departures. The first departure is forced on him: he does
not run away from home; home runs away from him. At the age of four his
mother dies and his father abandons him. In the course of the drama we are
reminded of this traumatic break repeatedly in flashback. It is the defining event
of Shinjis early life and the bitter beginning of the heros wanderings.
The next ten years are hidden from us, but we can imagine a gray period of
loneliness, aimlessness, and mounting resentment of his father. Telemachus,
Odysseus son, grows up without a father as well, but his resentment is held in
check by his mothers love and the hope that the absent king will one day return
to restore order in the family and in Ithaca.
Shinjis second departure takes place on at least three distinct levels, and it is
necessary to distinguish between Shinji-1 (real-world) and Shinji-2 (imaginary).
For Shinji-1, loneliness, isolation, and self-hatred have made life almost
intolerable, and he hopes to reverse these misfortunes by escaping into a heros
life of mortal combat in a psychologically distant land the
imaginary Evangelion world. For Shiinji-2, two more departures follow at once.
He leaves his teachers home to move in with Misato, and he runs away from
those aspects of his personality that, one by one, reappear as the four other
Children.
Once the parameters of the Evangelion world have been established and the
story begins, Shinji attempts to appropriate the role of Telemachus, who is
called to arms by his father to defeat the 108 suitors of Odysseus' wife
Penelope, and reassert the canonical family order. As in the Odyssey, the
objective dangers are great, and survival let alone victory is not assured.
For a considerable time Shinjis escapist fantasy appears to be working for him.
His circle of friends expands to include Kensuke and Toji, and a bond with Misato
develops that promises to go beyond the purely professional. Asuka joins the
elite pilot corps and Angels are destroyed one after the other. Yet in one
important respect Shinjis futuristic re-imagining of the homecoming of
Odysseus never gets off the ground. Gendo, unlike Odysseus, is incapable of
generosity and warmth, treating his son as no more than an impersonal tool of
his will.
Without a plausible Odysseus, the Telemachus plot has no center no
benevolent protector or role model and so the entire burden of fixing the
world falls onto Shinjis shoulders. As the agendas of Gendo, Seele, Nerv, and

the national government diverge and chaos ensues, the tenuous superstructure
of Shinjis fantastical dreamworld begins to collapse, threatening to take Shinji
with it to Gendo and Seeles special version of hell: dissolution and death of the
ego. Shinjis absence from the real world has outlived its usefulness, and his
need for a happy homecoming is urgent. Unable to see a future free of pain and
death, Shinji reaches criticality and cries out for a redeemer.
At critical moments of danger in the Odyssey Hermes or Athena appears on the
scene to shore up the heros mental and physical resources, allowing him to
move on to the next stage of his journey. The closest analogue to those divine
intercessors in the Evangelion world is Kaworu; but like the typical trickster he
is, he moves by indirection. Instead of confirming Shinji in his role as the last
indispensible hero of Nerv, he attacks Nerv at its very foundation by breaking all
the rules, especially those that govern life and death. The malignant world of
Shinjis fantasy fights back by creating corpses on an industrial scale, but the
carnage is no more than the terminal paroxysm of a dying delusion.
A final door is closed and the Evangelion world fades into memory. Misato, Yui,
Gendo, and Shinjis rejected alter-egos appear in a liminal space between
fantasy and reality to talk Shinji back from his dream and prepare him for the
inevitable ups and downs of life in the real world. But whatever the
circumstances of his return, it cannot be to the home from which he departed
ten years before, because that one is irretrievably lost.
The Odyssey ends in joyful reunion, and Evangelion does as well, but subtly and
a little out of temporal sequence. We see a snapshot of Shinji surrounded
by his imaginary friends; but then, as if in recognition of a neglected duty, he
returns to a ghostly image of New Tokyo-3 to perform one last act of symbolic
reunion. With this, Gendo/Odysseus is gone forever, but the former power
relationship is reversed and Shinji/Telemachus has no further need for him. At
last Shinji can say, I am myself.
God the Father Father the God
The abundance of religious terminology and iconography in Evangelion clearly
invites a corresponding interpretation, and Mariana Ortegas paper "My Father,
He Killed Me; My Mother, She Ate Me: Self, Desire, Engendering, and the Mother
in Neon Genesis Evangelion" answers the call.[50] Here, I present a somewhat
different account based on one book from the Nag Hammadi Library, then
address the problem I see with such projects in general.
God the Father / Mother

In books 1 and 2 of Genesis are found two (conflicting) accounts of the creation
of the cosmos by a single supreme God, and the subsequent vivification of
the world through the addition of plants, lower animals, and finally humans. It is
in these aspects as first cause, lawgiver, divine ruler, judge, and protector that
the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) envision God the Father.
Unlike the deities of most other religious traditions, the God of the Abrahamic
religions is both monadic (singular) and male.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, after extensive scholarly debate and negotiation,
a selection was made of which extant written texts would be assembled into the
first official canon of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. In the year 367
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, circulated a list of the 27 approved books, and
required further that all other previous candidates for canonization (inclusion in
the Bible) be immediately destroyed. In a plausible modern reconstruction of
events, In upper Egypt, someone, possibly a monk from the nearby monastery
of St. Pachominus, took the banned books and hid them from destruction in
the jar where they remained buried for almost 1,600 years.[52] Discovered in
1945, these codices (center bound, folded books in the modern style) are now
referred to as the Nag Hammadi Library, after a nearby Egyptian town.
The Nag Hammadi Library, together with a few other codices, constitute most of
the primary[53] source material suggestive of a strain of early Christianity now
loosely termed Gnosticism. The roots of Gnosticism are multi-cultural, and
scholars still debate whether these writings are the product of a self-recognized
Gnostic movement, or simply represent a cross section of diverse points of view
within late pre-Christian Judaism and early Christianity.
Gnostic texts solve the problem of the existence of evil in the world by a threestep process. First in time and in rank they posit a monadic,transcendent
God. The following is an excerpt from the Apocryphon of John, one of the books
of the Nag Hammadi Library (Apocryphon of John = SecretBook of John,
hereafter ApJohn):
ApJohn: The Monad is a monarchy with nothing above it. It is he
who exists as God and Father of everything, the invisible One who
is above everything, who exists as incorruption, which is in the
pure light into which no eye can look He is immeasurable light,
which is pure, holy (and) immaculate. He is ineffable, being
perfect in incorruptibility.[54]

Next, the Monad (the transcendent God) creates Sophia (Wisdom), who is
androgynous, embodying both male and female attributes:
ApJohn: And his thought performed a deed and she came forth,
namely she who had appeared before him in the shine of his
light She is the forethought of the All - her light shines like his

light - the perfect power which is the image of the invisible,

virginal Spirit who is perfect she becamethe womb of
everything, for it is she who is prior to them all, the MotherFather, the first man, the holy Spirit, the thrice-male, the thricepowerful, the thrice-named androgynous one, and the eternal
aeon [emanation of god] among the invisible ones, and the first
to come forth. (Italics added)

Unlike the transcendent God, Sophia can make mistakes and does so when she
creates Yaltabaoth:
ApJohn: And the Sophia of the Epinoia, being an aeon [emanation
of god], conceived a thought from herself and the conception of
the invisible Spirit and foreknowledge. She wanted to bring forth a
likeness out of herself without the consent of the Spirit, - he had
not approved - and without her consort, and without his
consideration And she called his name Yaltabaoth This is the
first archon who took a great power from his mother.

Yaltabaoth, the first archon, in turn creates additional archons and other beings,
including 365 angels:
ApJohn: This [Yaltabaoth] is the first archon who took a great
power from his mother. And he removed himself from her and
moved away from the places in which he was born. He became
strong and created for himself other aeons with a flame of
luminous fire which (still) exists now. And he joined with his
arrogance which is in him and begot authorities for himself.

Yaltabaoth lays claim to the transcendent status of a monadic God, but in his
choice of words he inadvertently gives himself away as an inferior god:
ApJohn: And when he saw the creation which surrounds him, and
the multitude of the angels around him which had come forth
from him, he said to them, I am a jealous God, and there is no
other God beside me. But by announcing this he indicated to the
angels who attended him that there exists another God. For if
there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?

Finally we come to the creation of mankind, carried out by Yaltabaoth and his
retinue of archons, angels, and other attendants, each individually assigned an
organ or other part of the body to work on:
ApJohn: Come, let us create a man according to the image of
God and according to our likeness, that his image may become a
light for us He created a being according to the likeness of the
first, perfect Man. And they said, 'Let us call him Adam, that his
name may become a power of light for us And all the angels
and demons worked until they had constructed the natural body.

And their product was completely inactive and motionless for a

long time.

In order to bring life to Adam, Yaltabaoth appeals to his mother Sophia, who in
turn appeals to the monadic God:
ApJohn: And when the mother wanted to retrieve the power
which she had given to the chief archon, she petitioned the
Mother-Father of the All, who is most merciful. And he sent,
through his beneficent Spirit and his great mercy, a helper to
Adam, luminous Epinoia which comes out of him, who is called
Life... And the luminous Epinoia was hidden in Adam, in order that
the archons might not know her, but that the Epinoia might be a
correction of the deficiency of the mother. (Italics added)

We see here that the monadic God sends the spark of life, luminous Epinoia,
to Adam by way of Sophia, but in a manner that bypasses Yaltabaoth and his
retinue. The final act of vivification, blowing life into Adam, is carried out by
Yaltabaoth, but when he does so, the power of the mother went out of
Yaltabaoth into the natural body, which they had fashioned after the image of
the one who exists from the beginning.[54] At his moment of creative triumph,
therefore, Yaltabaoth loses much of his power and Sophia regains the status lost
by her careless creation of Yaltabaoth.
Father the God
In episode 4 Shinji travels by rail, bus, and foot to the countryside; but at the
furthest point of his journey he finds himself looking down on New Tokyo-3, a
lonely city that seems only to exist for and because of Nerv. In the classroom,
convenience store, movie theater, everywhere, the talk is of Nerv, the Angels,
and the Second Impact. Despite the monumental verticality of the city, it
appears almost entirely empty; empty, that is, of everything but Nerv. At the
summit of Nerv, the apex of the pyramid, sits Shinjis father, Ikari Gendo. As
creator and director of Nerv and sole identified father in Evangelion, Gendos
position is indeed generative and godlike; but he shares power with a shadowy
council of old men called Seele (German for soul), and is gradually revealed to
be anything but wise and benevolent. In the Gnostic hierarchy of deities, Gendo
is a parallel with Yaltabaoth, and Seele with the archons. Together they created
the decidedly imperfect (Evangelion) world, but cannot bring life or lasting order
to it.
Mother the God
Shinjis vanished mother has been reified in Unit 01. Whenever Shinji takes his
place in the entry plug he symbolically returns to his mothers womb,

submerged in LCL (amniotic fluid). Insertion of the phallic entry plug into Unit
01 has the appearance of sexual intercourse, but because it is with his mother,
the act recalls the transgression of Oedipus, for which the punishment was
blindness and exile. Once inside Unit 01, Shinji has effectively been engulfed by
his mother and is totally dependent on her forbearance for his continued
existence. She is not always careful. Absorbed into the Angels shadow in
episode 16, Shinji and Yui gestate within the beach-ball-egg, then hatch in a
bloody breakout that, given the incestuous conception, can only produce a
monster, horrifying and sickening the Nerv staff. In episode 20 his mother even
digests him, then spits him out later. (He dissolves into the LCL, but is later
reconstituted.)
Shinjis relationship with his mother is one of radical dependency. He remains
trapped in the oral stage, unable to bring about the splitting of the breast
that will free him to become a complete and independent person. [55] Worse, each
time he enters Unit 01 he commits an unnatural act that places at risk his
sanity and bodily existence. Caught in a vicious cycle of false conception and
false birth, he desperately needs another vivifying spark from Sophia (Wisdom)
to set him free.
The tripartite nature of Sophia is clearly indicated in ApJohn, as is her
polysexuality: the Mother-Father, the first man, the holy Spirit, the thrice-male,
the thrice-powerful, the thrice-named androgynous one. Several trinities can be
identified in Evangelion, but two stand out. The three Magi embody Ritsukos
mother in her three aspects as mother, woman, and scientist. Of far greater
significance to Shinji is the trinity of Yui, Rei, and Kaworu. The trinity of the Magi
is functional and whole from the beginning, but the latter trinity appears in
stages, fully merging only at the end.
In episode 24', in response to Shinjis critical need, a spark of insight from
Sophia luminous Epinoia materializes in the form of Kaworu. Bathed in
divine radiance and speaking out of the wisdom of his birth, Kaworu delivers a
sermon on the reflexive paradox of love and pain, and the abhorrence of
existence within the EVAs. Shinji denies Kaworu, using Unit 01 to kill him. After
further trials for Shinji, Sophia acts once more: Yui, Kaworu and Rei return in
episode 26, this time as a team, to help Shinji break the bonds of Gendos
domination and reject the dissolution of his personality (instrumentality, heaven,
nirvana, whatever). Rei and Kaworu then combine antiphonally to start Shinji
along the road to independent personhood. With a final caress, Yui takes her
leave and Shinji is released alone into the world. Bobbing to the surface of a
lake of LCL, he asks, But mother, what will you do? Following a brief final
memory of her, Shinji can say at last, Goodbye mother.

One dependency remains to be broken. Shinji finds himself at EvangelionGolgotha, the crucifying place of EVAs, and picks up where he left off in an
earlier scene, as he was attempting to strangle Asuka for refusing to help him.
The gentle touch of Asukas bandaged hand (which echoes Yuis gesture)
releases him from any lingering delusion that self-realization and self-definition
can come from outside the self. As Shinji cries and Asuka insults him, the
children emerge from their long nightmare whole, free of the jealous gods
they have served, and bearing the glad tidings of a new genesis promised in
the dramas title.
The pieces of this Gnostic/psychiatric puzzle fit together well enough to suggest
intent rather than accident; but such an interpretation leaves uswondering,
What does this have to do with us? By removing the power of agency from
individuals and placing it in the hands of competing gods (or psychiatric
complexes), do we not make Shinji and everyone else into mere paper dolls
driven by forces beyond their control? If this is Evangelionsstance, it is dark
indeed. If, on the other hand, the demiurge is Shinji himself (Shinji-1), the story
opens into one of enlightenment, self-discovery, and growth.

Acknowledgements
It seems almost a certainty that no character in either anime or live-action film
has ever been examined as relentlessly and brutally as Ikari Shinji, nor has any
character so bared his innermost thoughts and feelings to the viewers gaze. Yet
Shinji remains throughout surprising, touching, fascinating, and deeply human.
This achievement is enormously to the credit of writer/director Anno
Hideaki, character designer Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, voice actor Ogata Megumi, and
the animators who have brought him to life. The other characters as well
embody in abundance the immediacy and universality that is the hallmark of the
best amine. Despite Evangelions apparent membership in the giant mecha
genre, its main movement stays throughout resolutely with the psychological,
giving intellectual depth and emotional resonance to events that they would
otherwise lack. In sticking with this agenda and carrying it to
completion, Evangelion lays claim to new territory. As the culmination of a
daring effort by a crew of dedicated people expended over a period of years, it
will live on as an epic masterpiece of psychological drama and a unique
examination of the human condition.
Special commendation must be given to the sound effects, which throughout are
astonishing, beautiful, and utterly convincing.

Some readers will object to my theoretical real-world Shinji, Shinji-1, because

there is no reference to him in the text. I would simply ask in turn who the
Shinji is to whom the dream-world Shinji returns as Episode 26' draws to a
close. Hes my Shinji-1. This conceptual device is the literary equivalent of the
(usually invisible) vanishing point of geometrical perspective that locus on the
virtual horizon toward which lines seem to converge. In a similar way, the Five
Children (five pilots) all point back to a Shinji, who has attempted to avoid pain
by pushing out from himself the most problematic facets of his psyche. Shinji-1
also has the virtue of erecting a firewall against attempts to trace Shinji back to
the artists who created him. If you wish to avoid a nasty bite on the arm or
worse dont press artists too hard on why they do what they do or what it
means.
I am the farthest thing from a Biblical scholar and certainly not given to finding
Christian iconography under every rock, so I must thank the Internet and
Wikipedia for help with many of the references to Christian symbolism, as well
as other supporting material. Japanese is not one of my languages so I have
relied on the English subtitles and episode titles. I apologize for the chaotic
footnote numbering, but FrontPage has no provision for footnotes. Instead, it's
all done by hand and becomes increasingly disordered as deletions and
additions are made.
The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homers Odyssey by Thomas Van
Nortwick contains a wealth of fresh insights into the Odyssey, and was
especially helpful to me on the role of the trickster.
I highly recommend Susan J. Napiers book Anime from Akira to Howls Moving
Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation.[31] This excellent
account of the forms and themes of contemporary Japanese anime introduced
me to many fine productions of which I was unaware, including Neon Genesis
Evangelion.
Sheldon Danielson

March 2010, December 2011

Footnotes
[0] Footnote.

[1] This paper refers to the Platinum Complete edition of Neon Genesis
Evangelion, substituting the Directors Cut Episodes 21' to 24' for the originals,
and substituting The End of Evangelion for the original Episodes 25 and 26.


[2] Yasuhiro Takeda, The Notenki Memoirs (ADV Manga; Wani Books, 2002,
2005).

[3] Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine (Minneapolis: The University of

Minnesota Press, 2009), 130.

[4] Lamarre, The Anime Machine, 169. Lamarre is paraphrasing Heidegger:

"Only another god can save us." In this citation Lamarre is writing aboutLaputa:
Castle in the Sky (Miyazaki) and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Anno), but
his observation applies equally well to Evangelion. For more, see the next
footnote.

[5] In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published in 1966 philosopher

Martin Heidegger said, "Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten." (Only another god
can save us.) In later commentary this sentence was expanded by the addition
of now, but that word is not in the German original. For more on Heidegger, see
Lamarre, The Anime Machine, p. 168 and index

[6] This excellent sentiment is expressed by UrsusArctos

at http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=8142 .

[7] N. K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics, 1960, 1972).

[8] Marduk is the name of a Mesopotamian god who became the patron deity of
Babylon in the second half of the second millennium BCE. Because Marduk does
not appear in Gilgamesh this is not quite a reference to the epic, the text of
which had apparently become fixed before the ascent of Marduk.

[9] Homer, The Odyssey, Richmond Lattimore, tr. (New York: Harper Perennial,
1999).

[10] From the libretto of A Pilgrims Progress, by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

[12] The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and
suffering physical, spiritual, and mental of Jesus in the hours before and
including his trial and execution by crucifixion. Wikipedia: Passion. Later in
this paper the sense of this word is broadened.

[13] A dramatic change of direction in a persons life is often described as a

kind of death and rebirth. In this limited, metaphorical sense the evolution of
Shinjis painful education, particularly as motivated by Kaworu, might plausibly
be termed a Passion.

[14] Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: "The Grand Inquisitor."

[15] The object on which Kaworu first appears, and which recurs twice more, is
ambiguous. When first seen it might be understood as a phoenix (hi no tori).
This could be a reference to Tezuka Osamu's phoenix, of which there is a
sculpture near the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Japan. In
Kaworu's scene with Seele, the winged creature seems to have arms that
suggest an EVA. It should be noted that in all but a few close-ups Kaworu is
shown immersed in a glow of white light, an anime version of an aura or halo
(exceptions: first appearance and on the synch test monitor).

[16] There is an urban legend that Schiller would have preferred to write An die
Freiheit (to freedom) rather than An die Freude (to joy), but was constrained by
political circumstances. True or not, this is an attractive story.

[17] Kaworu is here referring to the idea that mankind descended from Lilith
and/or Adam, making them the Lilim, by which he means mortal.

[18] The spelling Kaworu is used in the visuals and subtitles of the Platinum
Complete edition; Kaoru is used in the subtitles of The End of Evangelion.
Thekatakana arguably supports the transcription Kaoru because the w
sound of is considered obsolete. (See Timothy J. Vance, The Sounds of
Japanese,2008. p. 90.) The romanization Kaworu may have
been preferred because it's easier for non-Japanese speakers to read and
pronounce.

[19] In other words, Kaworu has temporarily taken on human form in order to
achieve some purposeful end. He implies that Rei has done the same.

[20] One of the most problematic and paradoxical (and to some, like
Misato, unattractive) features of Christian theology is the interweaving of love
and death in the Passion of the Christ. Think, too, of Tristan und Isolde. This
excruciating duality is fully represented in the Passion of Kaworu and gives it
much of its power.

[21] See, for instance, Mary Renault, The King Must Die. Frazers The Golden
Bough makes mention of this phenomenon several times.

[22] In German.

[23] From http://edboyden.org/beet9.html. Translator unknown. Purported

quote from Beethoven: "I will seize Fate by the throat. It will not wholly
conquer me! Oh, how beautiful it is to live - and live a thousand times over!"
This, surely, is what Shinji would most like to be able to say.

[24] Think of Duncans blood in Macbeth and Pontius Pilates hand-washing

ritual.

[25] I.e., the cross. Throughout Evangelion we have seen the Christian cross used as
a symbol of death and destruction. Misatos cross has the opposite sense.

[26] Also sometimes called the Air on the G String. The full suite is also called
Overture No. 3.

[29] William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1.

[30] Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: an Introduction to a Philosophy of

Human Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962).

[31] Susan J. Napier, Anime from Akira to Howls Moving Castle: Experiencing
Contemporary Japanese Animation (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2005).

[33] We neednt take Yuis the human soul that dwells within literally. The
EVA will be an everlasting artifact of mans intelligence and aspiration, his hopes
and his dreams. In this sense it has a soul.

[35] In relation to people, berserker mode has the following meaning: "Now
usually as adjective, frenzied, furiously or madly violent." Oxford English
Dictionary (online). In relation to the EVAs, to go berserk has a meaning closer
to violently malfunctioning, though the action of an embedded human soul is
suspected.

[36] Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett

Publishing Co., 1997)

[37] Here is the original version: A stranger arrives in town, and death comes
in his wake. This pattern recurs frequently in Greek epic and dramatic literature:
the Iliad, all the Orestes plays, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Medea, The
Bacchae, and many more are based on it. Thomas Van Nortwick, The Unknown
Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homers Odyssey (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 2009). See also: "If Hermes is involved, after a touch of chaos
comes a new cosmos." Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

[38] And Death Shall Have no Dominion, Poem by Dylan Thomas, 1936.

[39] In German: Jesus bleibet meine Freude. This is the tenth movement of
Bach's cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147. The piano
arrangement is probably that of Myra Hess.

[40] For instance, [T]he end of the Odyssey reads like a hurried composition
A reconciliation is scrambled together by a hasty and inadequate deus ex
machina, which ends the epic.[9] By an odd coincidence the same has been said
of the original ending of Evangelion. This was fixed to the satisfaction of at least
some with the production of The End of Evangelion.

[41] Thomas Van Nortwick, The Unknown Odysseus, 2008.


[42] Tom Gill, "Transformational Magic: Some Japanese Super-heroes and
Monsters" in The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. D. P.
Martinez(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

[43] Phyllis I. Lyons, The Saga of Dazai Osamu (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1985),180.

[44] Takashi Murakami, ed., Little Boy The Arts of Japan's Exploding Popular
Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 131.

[45] "Shinjis own identity crisis, apparently a reflection of the director Annos
own psychological dilemmas, epitomized the difficult obstacles faced by postwar
Japan, a nation that had recovered from the trauma of war only to find itself
incapable of creating its own future: like Shinji, Japan is probing the root cause
of its existential paralysis." Little Boy The Arts of Japan's Exploding Popular
Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 33.

[47] Lamarre, The Anime Machine, 129.

[48] Lamarre, The Anime Machine, 155.

[49] Lamarre, The Anime Machine, 179.

[50] Mariana Ortega, "My Father, He Killed Me; My Mother, She Ate Me: Self,
Desire, Engendering, and the Mother in Neon Genesis Evangelion,"
inMechademia 2, ed. Frenchy Lunning (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2007).

[51] Haruki Murakami, Underground, tr. Philip Gabriel (New York: Vintage
International, 1997, 1998, 2000).

[52] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1989).

[53] By Primary source material I mean that which was written by (presumed)
believers in Gnostic theology in the ancient world. The secondary material
consists chiefly of arguments against "heresy" written by Roman Catholic
scholars who may or may not have had access to the primary material.

[54] All quotations from the Apocryphon of John are from The Gnostic Society
Library: The Nag Hammadi Library: The Apocryphon of
John. http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn.html

[55]

"Splitting of the Breast" is the title of episode 16. Splitting of the breast

is a term used by British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein in her account of the

emotional life of infants. See, for
instance: http://www.meridian.org.uk/Resources/Individual/Klein%20II.htm .
"Oral Stage" is (part of) the title of episode 20. "In Freudian psychoanalysis the
term oral stage denotes the first psychosexual development stage wherein
the mouth of the infant is his or her primary erogenous zone." Wikipedia: Oral
stage.

Bibliography
Note: Not all books in this list contain discussions of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Bolton, Christopher; Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan Jr.; Tatsumi, Takayuki, eds. Robot
Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to
Anime. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Brown, Steven T., ed. Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese
Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 2008.

Lamarre, Thomas. The Anime Machine. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota

Press, 2009.
Lunning, Frenchy, ed. Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and
Manga. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Lunning, Frenchy, ed. Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Lunning, Frenchy, ed. Mechademia 3: Limits of the Human. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Lunning, Frenchy, ed. Mechademia 4: War / Time. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2009.
Lyons, Phyllis I. The Saga of Dazai Osamu. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1985.
Martinez, D. P. ed. The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Murakami, Takashi, ed. Little Boy The Arts of Japan's Exploding Popular
Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Napier, Susan J. Anime from Akira to Howls Moving Castle: Experiencing
Contemporary Japanese Animation. Palgrave McMillan, 2005.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1989.
Sandars, N. K. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Classics, 1972.
Takeda, Yasuhiro. The Notenki Memoirs. ADV Manga; Wani Books, 2002, 2005.