B (3:48)

I think so, too. And that's been one of the greatest joys of, like, this bizarre half decade of podcasting is like, just the strange Internet network that I've established where for, like, the first time in my life, I've been able to, like, meet and correspond with people who understand what I'm talking about, are interested in it, and can teach me new things about it. I felt so insulated growing up in Oregon and going to state school there, and then even in Japan. Just like the people surrounding me, it's so unusual to encounter anyone who I feel like inspires me with their taste. And I'm just so grateful to know people like you. And every time I see you show up on the timeline, it brings joy to see some esoteric fashion reference I've never imagined before.

A (4:41)

Oh, thank God. Thank God. Like, things like that. Having people who are aesthetically on your wavelength is increasingly rare these days. I think the Internet is bigger, sure, but I think it's easier to kind of get lost in the amount of people on there. So when you find someone you know, keep them close.

B (5:06)

Absolutely.

A (5:07)

Bring him on your show forever on

B (5:08)

your show forever and ever, and just keep doing it until you die. And then have decades of podcasting that. That's the mission. But, I mean, it really makes sense with Evangelion, which is all about connection and loneliness. But the reason I wanted to talk about this as kind of like, the center point of my fifth year anniversary, you know, special month of podcasting, is, I think, because, like, Twin Peaks and like, the comeback for me and all of Lena Denham's Girls, for instance, all of these things are pieces of media that I feel like you can still gather new perspectives from revisiting them many years in the future. And when I first encountered Evangelion as a high schooler, my relationship with it was so different from how it is now. And Evangelion is kind of like what put me on the map as a podcaster as well. I recorded my episode I Need you'd with Dasha Nekrosova, and that was the first time anyone took me seriously or listened to my show really at all. And so that episode was very short. It's like only an hour long or something. And we really only talked about Ava for 20 minutes. And it was just important. And I thought, interesting to kind of go back and address it again five years later just to see kind of how things have changed. But, Sasha, I know that you have so much knowledge about Japanese culture from like the 90s and 2000s and like hands on experience having been here. But please tell me about your history with Evangelion.

A (6:54)

Okay, so this is gonna be a trauma dump. So I was I believe 11 years old in Moscow, Russia and the only contact I had with Japanese culture was Sailor Moon. And I believe Candy, Candy, they, they showed a lot of good old fashioned anime on TV because no Internet, right? And I started reading magazines and a community started growing in Moscow and there was like an electronics market in Moscow, in the north, which sold VHS tapes. So at that time you could only get, could only get dubbed Russian dubbed VHS tapes. And of course my asshole friends recommended like Uretsuki Doji and Demon City and you know, Ghost in the Shell. Obviously you know, everyone was raving about Ghost in the show. And I bought all these and watched some random crazy stuff like Excel Saga and Dragon Egg, which was very funny. And then I, I met because I, I started drawing manga. I started drawing anime art like for deed in art and stuff. And I was like 12 and the lady who owned the website, which was like a deviantart type website but just for anime, had a girlfriend and she, they were both older ladies, like in their late 20s. And this girlfriend of hers started messaging me as a 13 year old kid and she was like, do you know what Evangelion is? And I was like no, no, I haven't heard about that. Well, you need to watch it. You need to find it and watch it. It's really good. I really recommend it. And you're so talented by the way, for a 13 year old kid. And I'm going like wow, that's, that's dope. And I go to this very exclusive, very expensive video store. I already had like a DVD player at that point. And I buy the box set, which I still have the black box set of all episodes and a separate DVD of the end of Evangelion. All released I think by Manga Video or something like. It's a British company that handled all anime releases in uk. And I bring it home and I watch the entirety of it with no sleep for like two days. And she calls me back, the lady with a girlfriend, the girlfriend of the lady. And she goes well, do you want to watch it together now? And I go sure. It's. I, I didn't understand anything. Like you know, my English was far from perfect back then. And she invites me to the apartment of her ex husband and I found out that she has a kid, an eight year old kid. And she's like 29 by that point. So she invites me over, and on his desktop computer is a bunch of Shotokan Doujins.

B (10:27)

Oh my God.

A (10:28)

And a lot of them involve Misato, Katsuragi and Shinji. And. But there were many things there. And she goes like, oh, this is my ex husband's porn. Like he likes that sort of stuff. And I go, okay, okay. And then she starts showing me like official art of Misato and Shinji. And she goes, isn't that just like us? Huh? It's just like us. And she kind of like, maybe it's just projection from the up trauma, but she. She did have a resemblance. Like, she had big old titties and a big old butt and a tiny, tiny waist and like a, like a fringe. Like a. Not like a Misato fringe, but like a Gene Birkin type of French, you know, and she was kind of attractive, you know, in a conventional way. So she fucks me, obviously, in that apartment. And, And I go, wow, that's. That's. That's amazing. You know, I am living Evangelion. That's so cool. Obviously, this led to years and years of therapy down the road and like a lot of psychotrauma and a lot of like, really fucked up sexual things that I'm not going to go into. But at this point, my life was. And psychotically entangled with this fucking show. Oh, my God. It became so serious that, you know, as a. I'm like 14, you know, at that point after. After everything, after multiple sexual acts have happened with this lady, you know, and. And she's in a relationship with me for her, you know, apparently. And I began to feel so confused. I started sort of associating things in reality. When you're a kid, you know, you associate things from TV shows with reality. You're like, oh, it's just like my Japanese animus, you know, that's. That's kind of cool. And, you know, and this lasted for three years, I want to say. Yeah. And then we kind of broke off and I started like going to Europe more and going to America and things like that. And. But this feeling, this strange idea of, Of. Of this show mattering the most to my psychosexual development remained it. It was like one of the last things she said when we, like, finished watching it together was like, this show is about losing your virginity and you're about to experience that right now. And I'm like, wow, wow, that's. Whoa, that's really great. Okay. And it is about Losing your. It is about human conduct. It's about relating to others. But it's also, I think to this day, I think she was right. And it is about the egg cracking. And it's. It's so ingrained into me at this point that I don't even view it as an anime show really. I, I kind of view it as, as a part of my, my, I guess, puberty, a part of my growing up process. It really integrated into me very deeply to the point where I can't like just look at a figure on a, on a. On an auction on our website of like an angel or an ask or ask or whatever and go like, oh, yeah, that's funny. I, I think this is what I would change and this is how it relates to me. And you know, this is my narcissistic little view of it. So this was my introduction to Evangelion. It was, it was very bizarre. Not entirely healthy. But despite the fact that I had to work through a lot of shit, I still don't dislike it. I still love it because. And, and one last thing is like, I very quickly realized, why hide that? This show nearly killed him and he was suicidal throughout. And he. This was the worst time in his life. And his wife also talks about a lot like he, he was, he was mentally really unwell. And this show is in a way the best process of processing trauma that has ever been created. I, I truly believe that. I think, I think this show is. Was therapy for him and it is still therapy for so many people.

B (15:44)

You know, I mean, I completely agree and I mean, I don't mean to valorize your experience with being introduced to this show, but I, I actually find like the context in which you were introduced to it to be far more suitable than the way that people come to know it now. Even when I was in, I guess it was late middle school and not high school when I was first introduced, but it was like you couldn't just get your hands on Evangelion or honestly like any anime for that matter. And to become interested in the medium and in particular Evangelion, it required some dirty work and some active perversion of the mind to be able to swallow it whole. And for me, that manifests as being affronted by images of Elfen Lied that randomly showed up on the pay per view function of our television at home. And like having liked like Inuyasha and like Case Closed Detective Conan as a child, like seeing that it's like the same art style and all of that just kind of compounding into a state of sexual frustration. I do not think that this experience remains. And like the fact that you can just access Evangelion and its entire gamut of sexual maturation and depressive trauma, it's just available to you at the click of a button is one of the most mind boggling things to me because this didn't even have like a proper release until like five years ago for English speaking markets. This is the first time in my life in which Evangelion is easily and widely available and it's such a different world. But although I'm not glad to say that such horrible things happened to you, I am glad to hear that you like got to, you got to get into it in like the right way, which is like this is a dark

A (17:53)

experience

B (17:55)

and you have to be injured by it so that you can change.

A (18:01)

Yeah, yeah, it was an immersive experience. And I, I don't really, like, this is the weird part, I don't really connect the two traumas together, but they like coincided. You know, I, I didn't have sex with Misato, right. I, I just had sex with someone who used kind of Evangelion as a meta narrative structure for why we, we should have sex. And so, yeah, so it, I think the show was sort of such a perfect storm back then because visually it was very different from the Animated series I usually watched. Plot wise, it was very structured. It was like there was an overarching narrative, but there was an. Also a kind of a monster of the week type of situation. It was, it's very solid as a show, if you know what I mean. Like, it's, it's like, it's like there's, there's a very concrete line going through it towards the end and there are diversions towards each character and you know, there are new people appearing and, you know, things happen to them. And then, you know, it all wraps up in the way that you do not expect, in a very Twin Peaks type of way that you do not expect. Things go in a very, very unexpected direction. And then it all ends in three or four different endings. If you include the manga, I think it might be five. You know, with, with things that people can choose for themselves. And you know, you, you know, the creators have always said, you know, you can, you can sort of believe what you want in regards to what happened. Just like David lynch, you know, I hate to come back to him again, but.

B (20:22)

No, but you're totally right.

A (20:24)

Yeah, you figure it out. You like, whatever you figure out for yourself that's what happened for you. It doesn't. It doesn't actually matter what I think, you know, so, yeah, I. I loved every single little part of it. And it, It. It was aesthetically, because we. We've talked a lot about aesthetics already, but aesthetically, I'm a very kind of addictive person. I like beautiful things, are like collecting beautiful things. And, you know, visually, it's. It's very pretty. It's got striking shots and it's got experimental stock footage, and it's got this incredible score that just overhangs all of it. So it was an attack on my senses and I fell in love with it for a very long time. And once again, I. I always say if. If you watch one anime show, I think it would.

B (21:29)

It's got to be Evangelion. It's always the first thing because I. I've had lots of Japanese boyfriends who are like, I don't like anime. Anime is for loser. It's creepy. And I'm like, well, yes, you're right, it is for losers and it's creepy. But that's the point. But besides that, it's like, if I'm gonna show them anything, it's gonna be Evangelion. Because like you said, it's so prototypical of how anime looks and feels and its archetypes that it doesn't even read as it. When you approach the show, it feels just like absolutely concentrated cinema, honestly. And it's really because of all these things you're talking about. The aesthetic, the extremely focused plot, the. The really minute machinations of these mysteries working in the background, the extraordinarily depthful depictions of every character's psychology. Even the side characters have acting motivations and libidinal impulses that color the way that they talk to other people. And this incredible Shiro Sakisu score behind it, the avant garde direction, it makes for what I think is honestly one of the most perfect experiences of cinema and film and literature all at once that has ever been introduced to culture. And that's why it is still captivating and idiosyncratic and its own unique monster to this day. I, like. I was kind of like dreading recording this because it was much easier to, like, do it, you know, with Dasha and like, have like, you know, a podcast, a lister rod, and just kind of like address the beats of it. But so many of the, like, the precise details and minutiae of this show are just hammering away at my worldview constantly that it's like, if I'm gonna, like, Summarize my thoughts and feelings for this. Like, it's like such a challenging lexisiphean task, you know, So I was like, getting daunted. But then when I reread the manga and I rewatched the anime in the last few weeks, it's just so brilliant and breathtaking and exciting and hurtful. Everything is so intensely felt that I was like, I'm just excited that I get to live in a world where I can talk about this and it exists.

A (24:07)

Yeah, yeah. And hearing you talk about it, I. I think it was also. I don't think it's like a situation where it's lightning in a bottle where it's randomly good. I think it's very thought through and I think it's very meticulously planned.

B (24:28)

I mean, it's also the climax of, like, all of animated culture in Japan from.

A (24:35)

Yeah.

B (24:35)

I mean, this isn't too far after, like, the birth of the medium. It's like within 40 years of it, you know, so it's like this is like, where all of it actualizes. And it makes sense that this is the most important anime in Japanese history, I think, in. In my opinion. And it seems to be endlessly popular, and it's images are just pregnant everywhere in Tokyo every day. I see an Evangelion character every single day of my life without going out of my way to do it, which means I'm in heaven. But it also means it's like, this is, you know, a really serious, deliberate thing and not, you know, just happenstance.

A (25:18)

Yeah, yeah. It is like Godzilla.

B (25:21)

Right?

A (25:21)

It is basically for. It's going to be forever. It's going to be there forever. It's going to be endless reboots. It's going to be merch forever. It's going to be re releases and remasters forever. It's going to be a forever thing. It's going to be a Japanese cultural staple.

B (25:43)

It's going to become a Shinto God, you know, like. Like it's going to become a Gundam. In the same way that it's like, this is no longer just an animated image. This is fundamentally a part of the cultural spirit of a nation.

A (25:57)

Yeah. Forever. And it is so cool to see because as you said, it was. It was a hard anime to find. It was very difficult to watch because there wasn't all of these Reddit boards going to explain to you exactly what happened in each episode. It was not easy to find a recording of it with good translation. If you don't know Japanese, it's a pretty Long show. So you have to sit through it. It's. And then, you know, after all of that, after all of these barriers, cultural barriers, it's still the most popular animated show from Japan abroad. Like, it's. It's by far. And I think the reasons for that is that it's got. First of all, it's really geared towards young people. It's very specifically targeted towards younger audiences. And it catches them off guard because it's got Slice of life stuff. It's got Mecha tropes. Mecha tropes. So cool. Pokemon. Like angels. Every week. Every week there's a new Angel. Then there's obviously the maturity story, the coming of age story. There is sexy stuff. There is fan service, obviously cute girls, very nice. There is horror, like, literal body horror, especially towards the end. So it doesn't just take you for a teenager who wants to shoot guns and be around chicks. It's got, like. It takes you seriously, and then it kind of gives you a question like, what do you do with this? We've given you this now you're. If you identify with Shinji, which is what we kind of been urging you to do, because he's a flawed protagonist who is imperfect and who is human most of all, what do you do now? Like, this is what you've come to with us. What do you do now? This is like, we're. We're standing on a beach. Oscar is being choked out. Like, what, What, What? What are we going to do with you now? And that's the most interesting way to interpret the ending for me, because you are maturing with the character and you are growing in your spirit, in a way, and getting closer with. To the world of the narrative, with the character. Because at first he doesn't want anything to do with any of this, and then at the end, we've almost, like, graduated, which is why they're congratulating him on graduation. It's almost like we've graduated with him. And it's like, what now? And that's the reason why I liked. I know we're not talking about the end of the Evangelion, but that's the reason I like the ending. Because it doesn't give you, like, an easy, happy ending where everything is fine and you can.

B (29:31)

I like both. And. And it's kind of like the thing that Gainax, the studio that is responsible for the production of Evangelion in its early era, that's why it's, you know, this Japanese habit of remixing and representing media in different situations. Which is that it's not the necessity that there's like a canon, because Westerners are obsessed with canon. What's canon? What's not canon? Is this canon, that endless, like, Reddit question. Instead they're like, these are the characters and archetypes. These are the images that we have derived out of this anime, like, set of aesthetics. And we're going to give them to you in different forms. We're going to show you things you've already seen before, give you new films, and you will rely on your high context understanding of all of these. And then you can just figure it out and deal with it yourself. Because I love the happy resolution of the original and I love End of Ava, which I'll talk about next week as well. But it's like what you're saying is like, it's presenting like a provocation of a question, like, what are you going to do? And for me, it's. I would say that like, the role Evangelion has on my life is not just merely as something that I like, but. But it's like something that honestly gave me a soul. And I do believe that really honestly, like, it's an extreme thing to say, but it's like when you're individuating as, you know, an early adolescent and you're trying to imagine what you're going to do with your future and your existence and there's limited models for figuring out what you're going to do with your life, there's not anything you can compare it to because the onslaught of modernity is so fast. I remember watching Evangelion at a very young, impressionable age and just hearing from Misato like, you have no idea what's going to happen to you. All you can do is make decisions. And so long as you has, you have a will to live on Earth, everything is going to be fine and there's always a chance for heaven. And whenever I've been in the shadows of my life, that's been my prescription is that so long as there is the earth, the moon, the sun and the stars, there's always a chance to be happy. And I really think that this show and its provocations and its questions is what has enabled me to live as who I am. So this is the gravitas of what we're talking about here. That's why I was so nervous, is cause this is just such an important, important part of my life. Really?

A (32:23)

Yeah. Because it is a heavy show. It. You're right, it. It asks some pretty substantial things. Of you asks them out. Right? Like who are you? What makes you the person that you think you are? Okay, so is that it? Like that's the essence of you? And if that's it, then why don't you just die then? Why, why don't you just end it all? Oh, is something else moving you?

B (32:53)

Yeah, and it's not even like figurative. It's not like ass in a figurative way. It's ass like literally.

A (33:00)

Yeah. Into the camera too. Like breaking the fourth wall. You know, it is, it is a heavy show at times. And at times it's like them fucking cook. Cooking food and you know, it, it. It's not heavy handed always, but especially when the show is about a midway point and later it starts getting into. I'm not gonna go into the whole philosophy of eventually because obviously there's been influences from philosophers for philosophical works. I'm not gonna like say that this is the greatest philosophical work of the 20th century, but it's, it's definitely goes into some pretty heavy stuff. It. It prompts people to have existential questions about themselves. It also keeps them strangely engaged in the plot while doing that, which is like a feat of its own. It really is.

B (34:12)

Yeah. For sure.

A (34:13)

Yeah. But I was surprised to read that people consider the manga more positive and the anime series very nihilistic and negative. I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say that the. The show ends on a somber or defeatist note. I think even though in the manga, like, I don't know if I should spoil her. The manga, I mean, by all means

B (34:47)

because I mean it's been out for 11 years now. It's your fault if you haven't caught up.

A (34:53)

Yeah. Spoilers. You know, I'm gonna be talking about the end of the manga for the next 20 seconds. It's all fine in the end of the manga. Everyone's alive again and nobody remembers anything. And Shinji and Asuka end up together. And it's really cool because the bang and you know, it's very positive. It's like very life affirming, you know, it's like Shinji essentially remakes it all. So it's all okay, you know, and there is nothing like that in the show. But I don't think it's like a truly apocalyptic it ending.

B (35:40)

I don't think so either. I think that it is easy to slot that way if you're just like looking at the visuals of it. But I did just want to give. Because this. Although I'm sure I'll revisit Evangelion one day, many years in the future. This is like my. My chance to like really present it as it is. So I wanted to kind of give a little bit of history to why this show is how it has turned out to be, and kind of just some of the history behind it. But Gainax was a studio of otaku and really nerdy guys that basically they grew up watching late 70s and 80s anime. The lead director and creator, Anno Hideaki, who will all be familiar with by now, had done work animating for Miyazaki Hayao and studio Studio Ghibli, and he was a big Gundam fan. And Gainax had made some pretty successful films with or, sorry, films and series with anime like gunbuster, etc. I think NAS, not Nausicaa. I don't remember what it's called. There's one about some sea people. It's quite popular.

A (36:58)

Nadia.

B (36:59)

Nadia. That's it. Nadia. Thank you. That one's quite popular as well. But this is kind of like their big shot at a blockbuster show. They were able to procure more budget for it than they ever had. And basically what made the show so captivating to its audience was this cast of familiar but slightly distorted cliches and archetypes of anime women. So there's like the beautiful fighting girl, which is Ayanami Rei, and her extremely gelid and cold personality. Her lack of emotion and her sensual presentation became a huge media phenomenon and brought on a ton of marketing for the show. She's probably one of the most popular anime characters of all time in Japan, if not the most. And Evangelion obviously is. To give a brief synopsis, it is a mecha anime about a young boy who is recruited by his father to pilot biomechanical machines to fight against an onslaught of monsters called Angels. It is very violent, it's intense, it's unusual. But it also has these usual trappings of anime things that you would see in kind of run of the mill shows of people having gags over dinner, going to the onsen and hot springs, accidentally revealing their genitals and everyone laughing. As it also approaches the the creator, Arno Hideaki, his entire psychosexual point of view. So he completely unloads all of it into this cast of characters and kind of questions himself to the degree that he became, like you mentioned earlier, very suicidal. Making this show not only because of the reception, which is what lots of people think, but more so because of the intensity of his kind of Freudian and Schopenhauer Adjacent realization of the world and the will to live. So that's what we have on our plate here. And I don't really think it's possible to go through all the plot, but I thought we might approach this by kind of talking about like the, the characters a little bit. And of course, the protagonist here is the much defamed Ikari Shinji. He's a 14 year old boy asked by his father to pilot the Evangelions. And he's very famous for being a wimp and geeky, I guess you could say, not actualized, not masculine. He's a 14 year old boy with very little will. But Sasha, you encountering this as a 13 year old, what. What did you initially make of Shinji when you first met him?

A (40:09)

I. I hated him. That's right.

B (40:11)

Everyone hates him when they first watch

A (40:13)

this as a teenager. I think, I think it's purposeful. I don't think you're supposed to like him very much. He is a wet rag. He. He starts as a wet rag. He. You're not supposed to like his defeatist, wimpy, cowardly attitude. He's almost completely. Until like the end of the show, he's almost completely like devoid of male libido. Like, he's scared of women and he's scared of girls. Women in this show are, are. Are very forceful. Even Rey, who is, as you mentioned, kind of cold and passive. Even her passivity is forceful. It's aggressively passive. And Shinji is, is. Is almost feminine in, in this, I mean, traditionally feminine in this role where he is, you know, forced to rely on stronger people. He is confused. He is, you know, afraid of, of. Of everything around him. And I disliked him greatly. I thought that he is a terrible protagonist, which I think was the point.

B (41:44)

I mean, how often have you come across the iconic phrase get in the robot Shinji? This is like kind of like the like ejaculatory spam of. Of this show. Because whenever you encounter normal anime people who watch like Naruto and like Shonen Jump Cape Shed, they're always like, wow, Shinji is so. And then getting the robot Shinji surprise. This is on purpose because he's a 14 year old, like barely pubescent little boy. And the tragedy of all things is that the identifiable age of Shinji in the last 30 years since this show came out. This year is its 30th anniversary. I would say most heterosex heterosexual men act like Shinji up to the age of like 45 now.

A (42:47)

Yeah, basically. Basically, they cover it up well they mentioned do have. Shinji is in them. And he is. That's why you're. You hate him because you hate that part of you. You hate being weak. You hate showing weakness, you hate crying.

B (43:06)

You hate being anxious over girls that you're attached to.

A (43:10)

Yes. You hate being thrown into situations you have no control over. Because that's, that's the, the first big arch of Shinji's story that he has no control over anything. Because as a child, you don't have control over, like your dad, who you haven't seen for the majority of your life, thrusts you into an incredibly dangerous and suicidal position. And you have no say in the matter, really. You can either disappear, which is something. The choice that Gendo Shinji's father gives him. He can. He. He says, well, this tiny girl who is weaker than you and is also injured is also like bloodied and bruised. She'll take your place because you're not a man. You're. You're so emasculated that you can't even do the job of a girl. So a girl will do your job. And that's the first episode, by the way. So he's constantly emasculated. He's constantly losing control over his own life because he is sort of. He wants to run away. That's the, that's the tagline, kids, I mustn't run away. Right? He wants to run away all the time. He wants to hide and he wants to not be there. And he's told explicitly that he's not great at piloting these giant robots. He's not the best. Rey is the best and Oscar is like the second best, although, you know, doubtful. But Shinji is like, he's not great at piloting anything. And his wrestling with, with this idea of duty that as an adult you can't just run away. You. You can't. It's just gonna ruin your life. Your life. You're never going to be able to forgive yourself. You're gonna be living as a debased animal for the rest of your life. If you do that because you betrayed everyone like people asked you and you said no. And that's. For me, that was the motivation to keep watching, actually, because I was always very guilt oriented as a kid growing up in like a. A small family, like, where there's a big, big emphasis on maintaining the family legacy, musical legacy and, you know, Al family name and all that. I was like, oh, so being an adult means doing you hate because it's right. And that's the thing that sort of stuck with me for the rest of my life. And I'm, like, nearly 40, right. It's. It's like the sense of duty, the Shinji slowly develops, even though it all kind of falls apart in the end anyway. But at least he tried, you know, like this. This. This is this masculine idea.

B (46:37)

I mean, yeah. The episode where he finally, like, takes action for the first time is, like, literally called, like, a man's battle. So.

A (46:44)

Yeah.

B (46:45)

And when you said earlier that this show is about losing your virginity as well, I think you're totally right, because this is about how to graduate out of childhood and face the horror of reality as we know it, which means being affronted by women you find attractive and making decisions and being responsible for your own existence and doing shit you hate. And even to this day, I'm turning 29 at the end of this month. Every day I have to go to work, I feel like Shinji, when he's just, like, coiled up, listening to classical music in the corner of a room and moping, it's like, oh, I have to go to work again. I feel exactly the same way. Once again, the Shinji Ikari Syndrome leaks far greater into adult life than it should, and probably did when this program was released. But despite all of his weaknesses and his fear of taking on this responsibility of piloting the Evangelion, I really think he is one of the most exciting and, like, unique protagonists in anime or, like, any contemporary medium. Because seeing someone who's just a totally unactualized loser have to kind of come to terms with making decisions is not something you ever come across anywhere, ever. Because it's not entertainment, it's not pleasant. And that's why this show turns so many people off so hideously, is because it's not fun to watch him be a little.

A (48:40)

Yeah, yeah. And he. Once again, it's not a typical anime protagonist who's like, I'm going to release my true potential. He doesn't have any potential. Right. He. He either does this or. Or doesn't do this. He doesn't. He doesn't open up any secret superpowers. He doesn't go Super Saiyan. He doesn't like. He. He. He does what he's supposed to, which is what ends the show. And it is, in fact, as I said, I think it's very purposeful, and I think you're supposed to dislike him at first. Yeah. And I think other characters move him in the right direction. It's not just himself.

B (49:28)

Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you Then after Shinji, I think the most iconic character in the entire show is, of course, Ray. And her relationship with her reception is bizarre, to say the least. I find that Westerners are typically really baffled and kind of disgusted by her because she is, as we later find out, she is a clone of Shinji's mother. She is the body of his very mother with this ancient alien species, Lilith, entombed within her. She's expendable, she's injured, and she is subservient to Shinji's father. This really disgusts a lot of people, and they don't get it. And I actually found, like, rewatching this. Like, I love Rey very deeply, but I was curious what your. Your makeup of her is.

A (50:35)

Well, it is a very complicated character because at the. At first you think that she is just the. The tsundere girl, right? She's cold, not tsundere. I guess. I guess there's a. I guess there's another girl who's worn tsundere, but she's. She's kind of unemotional. And then she slowly warms up to Shinji. And

B (51:03)

it's funny because, like, in the manga, she opens up a lot, but in the anime, like, she is barely. Barely moved until her final gasping moments.

A (51:15)

It's so strange because to me, it was always kind of a mystery. She. She reacts to Shinji's father a lot, and she almost works out of a motivation to please him. But we get the sense. I think the most revealing parts about Rey is the episodes in her apartment, which is barely an apartment. It's. It's like a. Like a concrete box with. With like, bloody bandages all over the

B (51:48)

place and pills everywhere.

A (51:52)

Yeah, yeah. And even when the. The uncomfortable fondling moment happens, she's barely emotional about this. She doesn't have a concept of sexuality. She. She only reacts sporadically with the. The face slap and things like that. It's. It's almost as if we're seeing, you know, not a person, but, like, a set of personality traits that his mother had as a. As a young girl. Like, it's almost like we're seeing an echo of a person. Like, sometimes she's kind and sometimes she's shy, and sometimes she's quiet, and sometimes she's resilient, you know? But these. All of these moments are, like, fractured. And then, of course, we find out spoilers again that there are many rays and we were only seeing disposable clones who kind of change but sort of regain the same consciousness, kind of.

B (53:05)

They kind of do because she has this Lilith spirit in her. So it kind of like gives her this quantum quality. But I was wondering what, what do you think it is that makes her so fascinating to Japanese people? Because she is the mascot of the show and has endured as this icon, and yet Westerners are typically quite disgusted by her. What do you think it is about her that's so appealing?

A (53:31)

Well, I can only speak to my experience in Japan. I think that Asuka, she's the perfect foil to ask, obviously, because Asuka is a foreigner. She's loud, she's emotional, she's explosive, she's extremely abrasive. And Rey is almost like this Yamato Nadeshiko. Right? So she's almost like this personification of a quiet, resolve, reserved Japanese woman, because she's Japanese and she is kind of has this hidden wisdom of keeping yourself under control and keeping yourself poised and, and, and keeping yourself dignified, which is a very Japanese thing. You know, it's very stiff upper lip usually. Not to say that Japanese people don't have emotions, but it's encouraged in polite society to keep yourself dignified. You know, you have it exactly right.

B (54:42)

I honestly think it's that because of her, like, actually unusually cold and divorced sense of emotionality, it's so concealed and underdeveloped that it suggests like a vast infinity of more profound feelings beneath it. And I think that really like, excites Japanese imagination because of all of the things you could picture that transforming into when you get to know someone intimately and they take their mask off. Maggie, my co host, said to me a while back, she was like, she was quoting a story and she said Japanese people like to edit is what one of her friends told her. I'm like, that's so true. And so when you see like this like completely like snow white canvas with no suggestion of what's actually about to be put atop, really gets the imagination going. So she ends up being the perfect lovable object for anyone who wants to project upon her.

A (55:49)

Right. And also, I forgot what the term is. It's like kooky something. It's, it's, it's like catching the wind. Yeah, yeah. It's like she barely says anything and. And you sort of have to guess her emotions, guess her inner world. Right?

B (56:14)

And she's cute too. I mean, she's cute.

A (56:17)

Yeah, well, and she's cute and she's got the blue hair and she's like a little doll and things like that. And Westerners don't like that. Westerners especially when it comes to women it's like, why don't you speak your mind? Why don't you be straight? Being straight is the best way forward. Be straight with each other.

B (56:38)

Be.

A (56:39)

Be real with each other. Be real. Why don't you be real? Tell me what's on your heart. And Japan is the polar opposite of that. It's like all the art is beauties looking down. They're looking down, they're hiding their emotions. It's like this doll face, completely unemotional face. Gentle, gentleness and covering of yourself and covering of your emotions. And you know, not to say that this is going to be forever, but when it. Japanese people love to rape, don't they? So, so it's like when, when this facade crumbles, when this facade falls and the emotions underneath develop and show themselves. It's twice as sweet and twice.

B (57:30)

This is why, like ahegao and like the Gooner face.

A (57:32)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

B (57:34)

So why it originates in Japan in the first place is because like you have to have this extraordinarily pristine outer shell so that when it cracks, it's all the more delicious to see the extraordinary gap between the projected image and then like the squirming sexual disaster inside of it. So it makes sense to me that like Rey is popular in that sense, but also in the context of like watching this show through Shinji and his experience. It's scary. And you're afraid of her because this, this unknowable, mysterious woman who won't just say everything clearly to you. It's like horrifying to have to interact with because it is this just ice, like frigid abyss behind a beautiful face that you can never conquer completely. And just knowing that anything could jump out of those waters and attack you. You really feel his anxiety very lucidly interacting with Rey.

A (58:44)

Yeah. And I also don't think they wanted to give him a love interest, a true love interest, too early. I think he is put off by her a little bit. He's scared of her a little bit because she's so uncommunicative. She's so unapproachable. She's. She's just non verbal to, to some extent and he, he, he stays out of pity for her, but she never really reciprocates. There isn't really a moment where, where she gives in to him, you know, in any, in any sort of emotional. Although she does react to him with warmness after a while. But I'm not sure which clone was that? I think it was the second one.

B (59:38)

The second one.

A (59:39)

Ray 2 yeah. Who's the nice. Who? She was the nicest. And then they fixed her. So, yeah, they. They did want to give him, like, a love story immediately. Like, oh, my God, he fancies the girl. He wants to stay because of the girl. No, he. He wants to stay not just because of the girl. He just also doesn't want to be a piece of. Doesn't want to be a coward in his father's eyes. And there's, of course, a familiar.

B (60:07)

I mean, it's a really unique note to strike because when she's first introduced, Shinji's father Gendo says, if you do not pilot the Evangelion, then this girl is going to have to. And they wheel her out on a stretcher covered in bandages and burns. There's a quake from the angel attack, and she falls onto the floor. But you're right, it's not love or affection or attraction that motivates him to stick around. It's something else. It's like his broken Freudian relationship with his father and his vague nuisance feelings of having to make himself as a man. But it is interesting that it's not posited as romance immediately. And that's only something that becomes suggested later.

A (60:58)

Yeah, yeah.

B (60:59)

He.

A (61:00)

He sees something even more pitiful than himself. So an experience. Yeah. Injured child. Girl child. And he goes, well, I'm not that big of a piece of shit. I. I guess I can try. And also, of course, there is Misato, who's pushing him, very purposefully pushing him into this job, who, you know, and. And she's like. She, in a way, is. Is like his mother for. For the first few episodes, because, like, a shitty mother. But, you know, she goes like this. This is what you have to do. Like, there's no two ways about it. Like, don't be a. Like, you have to do this. And he. He closes off from her, and he runs from her. He runs away and then comes back. You know, it's a very parental dynamic. Yeah.

B (62:00)

I mean, to introduce Misato, she is one of my favorite characters, and she's the cop out answer. If you ask someone who's best girl, you cannot answer with Misato. I'm just making a public service announcement here because I said girl, not woman. If I said, who's the best female in Evangelion, then you would be allowed to say Misato. But if I ask you who is the best girl, you are not allowed to answer her. But she is at first the, I think, major, and is then promoted to commander of the operations of the Evangelions. And she takes Shinji into her home. She has titanic breasts. And in my favorite detail about her character, she's a total horny slob. She's hung up on her college romance, Kaji. And she eats nothing but convenience store bento and drinks Ebisu beer, which is of course what I'm drinking tonight. I have one in my hand at this very moment. She gets wasted with her pet penguin. And she is such like a contrast to Rey when we meet her that she feels like quite comforting in that matronly way. But she is also only 29 during the course of the show. She's quite young and is thus just as much of a cigarette smoking dirty mess as everyone. But like, my ultimate favorite detail of the whole show is just like their domestic scenes in her apartment, like coated with beer cans. Because I'm like, been there.

A (63:41)

Yeah, it's a very comfy set of scenes. It's a safe place.

B (63:47)

But she's so popular. What do you think makes people love her?

A (63:51)

I have a very controversial opinion of her. I think she's a piece of shit.

B (63:56)

And that's because that girl got you.

A (63:59)

No, no, no, no. I think I would love it if she was just like that girl. But I think she is manipulative. I think she is purely egotistical. I don't think that she actually cares about any of the kids. I think that her sole motivation is so she can be with Kaji.

B (64:25)

I would agree with that.

A (64:26)

Obviously, the people make such a big deal about the final kiss. She only does it to get the boy into the robot so he can make everyone into the Soul Goop forever. She. She is a very manipulative person and she's a very cruel person. And in fact, you know, she talks about that constantly. She talks about how she is a up. This is her big motivation, as you said. Even though she's 29, she's managed to up a lot of things. She has severe daddy issues because she lost her father. And she is essentially a rather manipulative person. And we kind of fall for that with Shinji because he has nothing to grapple onto. You know, he has nowhere to live. In the manga, he actually lives with his aunt and uncle.

B (65:27)

Yes. And then in the anime, it's with his. His teacher.

A (65:32)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And he moves in with Misato.

B (65:39)

She. I mean, she makes it so that happens. And it. It does feel strange because it doesn't feel charitable or like an act of, like, goodness. It feels. But it's, like, not malicious either. It Is. I think you're right. Out of, like, her own narcissism.

A (65:57)

No, no, she. She's just stuck with them. She's just stuck with Shinji first and then Asuka, and she doesn't want to be stuck with them. She. She's their handler. Just because there's nobody else. Who. Who are they gonna give them, too, like, nobody. Right. And she. She gets annoyed with them. And then, of course, her manipulative side has moments where it fades, and her sense of, like, overwhelming duty to Nerve and to Gendo, who she doesn't like, I think fades and she starts feeling pity for the children because she's so disconnected with her own childhood and so blocked. She blocked it off completely. We've seen so many, like, shots of the cross and of the scar and all these things. And also, there's a very popular fan thing that Pen. Pen the penguin has a nuclear bomb inside of him.

B (67:10)

Oh, yeah. He's a little, like, jet pack backpack that he carries around with him.

A (67:15)

Yeah. So like, like, like plan B, so in case any of the kids go crazy or anything, like, yeah, he'll just nuke Tokyo. But that's not the.

B (67:34)

I'm really interested in, like, your reading of her, which is that she does everything for Kaji, and Kaji is a schoolmate of hers. He ends up being a spy many times over in the Grand Mystery of Evangelion. But, like, her romance with him is one of the most important parts of the show. Actually, my favorite thing about the manga is that it has a bunch of 90s, like, shoujo illustrations of them, like, naked in space, embracing each other, which is a super soap opera and gorgeous. But I think the reason that I have found more affinity with her in my late 20s is because I would happily throw away my life or romance in the way that she does and her will they, won't they pursuit of Kaji has felt extraordinarily, like, uncanny to me and scary. Because it's real.

A (68:33)

Yeah, it's very real.

B (68:35)

It's not a beautiful, cute anime romance. It's like two malfunctioning adults, like, slamming their genitals together. And when they fuck, they don't do it on screen, but they go to a love hotel, like, playing like, ugly 90s, like, city pop, with, like, cigarettes and beer and a lighter on the table, sticking things in each other's holes, like, audibly. It's like, one of the most incredible, like, depictions of sexuality I've ever seen. I'm just so enraptured by this woman's vagina.

A (69:14)

She is extremely sexual. She's extremely hot, as Dasha Nikrosova said. You know, she, she, she wants to be soaked up by her big tits or something like that. It's. She's attractive. She's. She's the only character of the show who you can legally be sexually attracted to.

B (69:38)

Hey, don't forget about Ritzco or any of the nerve stabs.

A (69:42)

Oh God, yeah, the nerve staff. Nobody.

B (69:47)

Yeah, you're right.

A (69:48)

And so I guess like triangle with Ritzco go to.

B (69:51)

I mean like you're invited to like kind of like put your sexual fantasies on her, but then you see her as like a drunk mess. Just like get. Take her shoes off and get carried away from the banquet. I don't know though, something about it.

A (70:07)

She murders him, doesn't he? Doesn't she?

B (70:09)

Well, I guess that's the question because Kaji dies in the last few episodes of the show and some people say it's her. I think that there's a statement from Anno saying it was meant to be anonymous who it is, and I've never really thought it was. But when she finds out that her lover is dead and she screams and weeps on listening to his voicemail and like she hits the table and things lightly like clank around on it, I was absolutely abhorred watching it this time.

A (70:45)

She is extremely difficult. She is an extremely difficult character, but very human, unlike every single other character. She's very relatable. Very relatable because she's a woman in love, right? She, that's it. She, she can either abandon herself and everything around her for her love or she can do her duty and, and she can fulfill the thing that she's there to do and that she's been preparing to do for her entire life, which is the Human Instrumentality Project. And it's, it's very painful to watch her because she's so. She, like she has this facade of, you know, happy, go lucky, drunk, la la. But she is extreme. She's just as vulnerable as Shinji. If anything, she's extremely broken inside and I just don't think. And, and she's selfish. She. She keeps saying that she's selfish and she keeps talking about that she's selfish. And the episode Hedgehog's Dilemma, I think is about her because she, she really doesn't let people in. And at the same time she's extremely lonely, alcoholic, broken, completely really depressed. Honestly, she, she keeps wallowing in this pool of self pity.

B (72:24)

But I mean, this is what made me like, because when I. Yeah, it's a trap.

A (72:28)

That's attractive, right?

B (72:29)

When I was a high schooler. And she's like, I'm so selfish. Like, what are you talking about? You're not. That doesn't make any sense. And then rewatching at this time, which is like, probably the third time in three years, but I was like, oh, my God, she is. She's just subjecting everyone to her emotional vaginal hellscape, right?

A (72:48)

Well, what can she do? She only loves one man. Really. It doesn't really matter. She. She doesn't even care about the affections that he shows other women.

B (73:00)

What do you think about the sort of valorization and immediate attraction to her that most people like to say instead of giving the correct answer of which girl they like?

A (73:12)

Well, first of all, you know, like, everyone wants to be taken care of, right? So when a crazy cool chick who drinks beer and drives a red sports car drives into your life. FLCL actually made fun of that because FLCL is kind of a parody of Evangelion and in many ways.

B (73:35)

Yeah. And it was also released by Gainax, and then the creator, like, went on to, like, direct a bunch of the Rebuild movies with Anno as well.

A (73:44)

Yeah, yeah. And, and, and they, they clown on that forever. Like, oh, my God, she's so cool. She. She flies on a guitar and she has a rock guitar and she has a Vespa, and she's so cool. She's an older lady who gives you a big kiss. And obviously everyone wants to have someone who takes care of them in a very mommy type of way. But what happens with Misato is later on, she develops into a very weak person. She as. As much as Shinji grows and, and grows in strength and develops into a very strong person, strong willed person. Misato and Asuka, in fact, grow weaker as the show goes on because they start very, in a very rambunctious way. They, they, they. They run the show, you know, and then they gradually break down, both of them, actually. But Oscar, far more so. She is flawed and interesting and selfish and. But, but, but at the same time, she's so relatable. She's, as I said, the most human human in the show.

B (75:07)

Because I guess for me, it's like, I'll just relate to any dramatic, glamorous woman in love.

A (75:13)

Dramatic, glamorous lady.

B (75:15)

She is the same as, like Blanche dubois to me.

A (75:19)

Oh, God, yeah.

B (75:21)

She's Scarlett o'. Hara. She's like, God, it's all of these women.

A (75:26)

Don't, don't don't bring Vivian Lee into this. I'm going to cry. I, I, I get emotional. I like, as a, as a straight man, the only woman I get truly emotion for is Vivian Lee.

B (75:38)

But like, imagine Vivian Lee playing Masato.

A (75:41)

Oh God, no. Oh my God, I'm gonna cry. That's such a beautif.

B (75:50)

And let me see forever more

A (75:56)

you are all.

B (76:23)

And let me sing forever more.

A (76:28)

You are all. And over all I was in.

B (76:41)

You, Sam.

A (77:33)

You were all I love for all

B (77:36)

I was in

A (77:41)

the end.

B (78:07)

So now that we have revealed the secret truth of Misato that everyone has always needed to hear, let's talk about who has been one of the most foundational characters in my entire life, which is Asuka Langley Sordyu. So, oh my God, I don't even know where to begin with my infatuation with this character. But I suppose for me, I was really fascinated by a charismatic, beautiful young girl who is outwardly so intensely convinced of their ambitions and is inwardly a shattered, horny little monster that no one loves or will look at. And she is half German, half Japanese. In the manga, she is a test tube baby, which is funny. She's like a gay guy baby. And then in the anime, that's not the case, but her mother kills herself after researching the Evangelions and coming into contact with them, losing her mind. And she resolves to become the best Evangelion pilot of all time. She speaks German and Japanese fluently, and she graduates college at the age of 14. And secretly, all she wants is to be looked at as a sex object. But what do you make of Asuka?

A (79:45)

Best girl don't care, Correct?

B (79:48)

Yes, that is the right answer.

A (79:51)

Sorry. People don't like her, right? Because she's a brat. And she's a brat immediately. She's an asshole to everyone she meets. She's unpleasant. She's extremely unpleasant. She acts high and mighty. She puts everyone down. She despises Shinji immediately and calls him every name under the sun. But the reason why I like her so much is because this is. Despite all of her trauma and everything, she is literally the only person who is in direct contact with her emotions, her emotional state. She is completely open. Yes, she has weird sexual desires and. But at least she has a libido. Almost like, with the exception of Misato, these people don't have libidos.

B (80:48)

Well, I think Ritzco does too, and,

A (80:50)

and Gendo, but a little bit, you know. But it's, it's only like, barely hinted at, you know? Like, you know, it's it's there in the margins. They're alone. Both Ritsuko and Gendo are like. Are like so alone. But Asuka is the only font of actual libidinal living energy, which is something that I like. I like when people are vital. I like when people are full of. Of. Of. Of life and energy. And even if it's aggressive energy and abrasive, as I said, she is quite abrasive. But she. Unironically, she produces the most interesting interactions between all these characters because she's such an outsider, which is also part of her personality to. To the country. She's like an import into Japan. And, and she comes in and she sort of turns this entire organization upside down because her fluctuations of being on top of everything and being so defeated by everything are also very relatable. It's. It's. It's. It's a living human being. And you can immediately sort of sense that in the way she tries going after Kaji, in the way she puts Shinji down in a way that she completely doesn't gel with Rey in any sort of way and thinks that she's this cold fish who should just step aside and never interact with her ever again. And in the end, none of these people are as big as pushovers as she thinks they are. She actually encounters every one of them with full force and then is sort of blown back by them. First, she's completely refuted by Kaji, who's only playing with her. I guess she has. He has no sexual interest in her because she's a child.

B (83:16)

His rejection of her is so fucking brutal, it made me cry.

A (83:20)

Yeah, yeah, it is. It is. It's horrible. Oh, God. We. We.

B (83:27)

We.

A (83:28)

We're yet to talk about another child. We have another child ahead of us. Holy. So anyway, then she is sort of. Then Shinji sort of cools off towards her and. And he. He kind of thinks she's just an asshole who. Who is just gonna be an asshole forever and kind of grudgingly bears her. And with Rey, she just faces a complete brick wall. Like, Rey doesn't even entertain her in any sort of way. So in every. On every turn, where she's usually used to getting her own way, she's actually being refuted very strongly. And that sort of gradually breaks her down, which is also, you know, great because at first you don't like her, but then you start feeling really sorry for her because her downfall is so catastrophic. Oh, it's. It's. Yeah.

B (84:30)

One of the worst things that you can ever imagine. When I was watching episode 22, the Director's Cut, and it has this angel probing her mind and, oh, yeah, bringing up all of her trauma around her dead mother to the surface. There's a line where she just screams, please look at me. And it just absolutely rattled me so much re watching it, like, earlier today that I was like, in tears looking at it because it is, like you said, it is so catastrophic and upsetting to see the only character with like, a strong decided will just get, like, gradually scraped away. And in terms of her relationship with Shinji, it's quite interesting too, because, like, Rei is of course, like the tundra of unknowable femininity, and Misato is like the broken mother figure. But then we have Asuka, who frequently presents her sexuality to him. They have these moments, like, lying next to each other in bed where it seems like they are on the brink of doing something. She is acknowledged by everyone to be attractive, but he is, like, overwhelmed by this libidinal force that you've mentioned. And I really just love watching Shinji's reactions to, like, every, like, female archetype possible because the specific breed of anxiety he feels towards all of them is precisely how you see, like, men reacting to women and like, the only men in this show who like, get pussy without problem. It's like, literally just Kaji, right? And it's like, what I feel like most people would, like, relate and like, the broken system of masculinity we have now to, like, Shinji confronting the sexual wills of Asuka or any of these other characters.

A (86:41)

It's always been her. Like, I feel like there is no reality where he ends up with a clone of his mom or his proxy mom who wants him to turn everyone into lube. Like, it's always been only really Oscar because Oscar engages with him. Even if she does, even if she is an to him constantly, she engages with him on a human level. And I think that's the most important part. She calls him an idiot. She calls him a coward. She calls him useless. But she. This is her love language. This is how she actually expresses care. Because if you look back at her classroom scenes, she doesn't even engage with any of the other boys who are immediately infatuated with her. Like, Like. Like she's, you know, Mana from heaven. She only engages with Shinji because not. Not just because she has to live with him, but because he frustrates her to the point where she wants to help him. Actually, she. She actually. She actually wants him to be better. And this is A very common dysfunction in a relationship between people where they think they can fix their own dysfunction. They think they can fix their own self by helping other people and by seeking out broken cases and lost cases so they can rescue them and thus redeem their own soul. This is a classic, classic situation. So Asuka, despite all her bravado, is in fact helping him. She is, in fact trying to help him. And the way they dealt with her. I think Hideaki Anno also said that if there is one character that he identifies with, it's Asuka. Because the way they dealt with her is horrendous. She attempts suicide. She goes catatonic. She fails at her last mission and gets brutalized and cannibalized and. And all sorts of things. And her mind is. I think even in the Netflix version, they. They. She screams, don't rape my mind.

B (89:28)

Which is like, you don't violate me. I've been made dirty.

A (89:32)

Yeah, yeah, she. She is completely disassembled. And the reason why, in the end, Shinji sort of. Well, in the manga, he basically meets her, but in the anime, he stays with her. She doesn't. He doesn't stay with the big porcelain ray floating in the ocean of goop. He stays with Asuka. Because Asuka is, strangely enough, the only person who truly cared. This is. This is what I truly feel like. She, even if she was an to him throughout, she was the only person who cared about him. I. I don't think his father cared about him. I don't really think Masato cares about him. I think Rey is. Well, Rey is a kind of a simulacrum of his mom, but his mom's dead at that point. And Asuka, I think, is actually the only person who truly loves Shinji in. In this anime. Truly.

B (90:38)

I. I think you're right. And it's really rewarding to me to, like, see that put into this show because I know myself as well. Like, like, sometimes when people are close to me, like, I'll, like, be. Especially when they're, like, the most close to me possible. I'll be exceedingly, like, vicious towards them in the way that, like, she is. Which is, like, you kind of think that you're putting on, like, an affectation of, like, like, bemused irony or aggression, and then it just is, like, unwieldy and awful to be around. But there is something, like, sincere in all of that, and it just breaks my heart watching her attempt to overcome herself in order to connect with other people, and it's just failing so spectacularly. Her fate at like the end of the original run of the show is one of the most just terrible things to witness in. In anything ever. I can't get over it. When I was watching it today, and she is surrounded by these anonymous gloves, sobs suffocating her, and she's screaming out as she can't do the one thing she's good at. Oh, just begging for any man to see her. I was like, oh my God, so beautiful.

A (92:10)

But the human. The human condition, right? Well, it's. It's brutal. It's a brutal ending for sure. Let's talk about. I mean, let's talk about. I've got.

B (92:24)

I don't want to die forever on Asuka. Although I could permanently. But I want to talk about Risko really briefly. She is the scientist who is responsible for picking up her mother's research in constructing the Evangelions. She has bleach, blonde hair, and a mole. Her lover Kaji says any woman who has a mole in the. Sorry. Her lover, Gendo. Her lover is Gendo. But Kaji says any woman that has a mole in the run of her tears is destined towards sadness. Very true. She has an infatuation with Shinji's father, Gendel, just as her mother did. And she is very cold and precise. She's focused on her work. And as I've gotten older, the woman I've actually turned out to be closest with is neither Misato nor Asuka. But I feel like Ritsuko every day, which is wielding guns in the name of deep acts of romance and feeling completely isolated from how others feel about you, and then being uselessly thrown out by a man despite the fact you've given your entire existence over to them. I love Ritsuko.

A (93:50)

I love Ritzko, too. And when I was watching this show for the first couple of times, because I think I watched it four times all through, I identified with her a lot. She is a very solid, interesting person. I think she views herself in a very heroic way. I think she is kind of a. Kind of like, she has a dignity about her. And she's also like the mom friend of Misato because they're like quote, unquote, best friends. And they also. I think I. I forget. Do they know each other from like.

B (94:37)

Yeah, they went to college together with Kaji as well.

A (94:40)

Yeah. All three of them. Yeah. And she is a constantly frustrated character who gave up everything for her work and for basically a subservient tie, even though she's like the lead scientist at nerv, sort of a Subservient to the will of her boss position. I don't know. She's just great. She's just.

B (95:13)

She has a kitty mug. She has a little mug with kittens on it.

A (95:19)

I love. I love, love, love the crush that Maya Ibuki has on her because.

B (95:27)

So cute. Lesbian.

A (95:29)

Maya Ibuki Lesbian workplace romance. It's very cute. Very cute.

B (95:34)

Ritsuko. Ritsuko. Ritsuko. It's so good. Because the thing that I love the most about these characters is like the endless amount of detail imbued in them. Because the smallest little thing of Ritsuko's little kitten mug. Maya Ibuki being like the low key protagonist of the show to me.

A (95:55)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. She's like the.

B (95:58)

She's like the anxious like computer engineer and operator for Nerve. And one of my favorite details of the show is her constantly vomiting into a handkerchief when the situation gets too stressful and her clacking away at a keyboard with the lights flashing in her eyes. Like all of these like. Or Kaji's watermelon garden. It's like all of these like tiny little character touches. I'm like, I am so obsessed. I. I don't know what it is about it, but I just like live with all of these like tiny little details of them haunting me. Asuka playing video games in her in the class representative's house. The fact that Shinji used to play the violin and gave up.

A (96:45)

It's a fully. It's a fully developed world. Right? It's. It's not like with the other animes where. Oh well, what's this character's thing? We don't know. He's just a classmate. No, you know exactly who that guy is. You know exactly what's his deal, you know exactly what's his motivation. You know who he likes, you know what he does, and you know what happens to him after. Like, they all have arcs. They all have character development. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. Even the Nerve show like that.

B (97:17)

The nerve co worker who isn't the long haired one. The long haired one plays the guitar but gave up. But the other one, whose name I

A (97:26)

cannot remember right now, Makoto. Makoto Hyuga

B (97:32)

Makoto is like crushing on Misato and constantly saying the wrong things to her. It's like we can't keep poking the Evangelion because we don't know what it is and don't know how it'll react. Just like you, Misato. And she doesn't even look at him. He's like, oh, she doesn't really care.

A (97:50)

Yeah.

B (97:51)

And then in the Human Instrumentality Project, his vision is her. It's Misato. Loved that. Another detail I love is Asuka. In the manga, the man who comes to her in her Human Instrumentality vision is Kaji. Incredible. Yeah, but like, it's just. There isn't anything like this that is just so human and full of like old school heart. It like feels very early 20th century because it's like so cozy and plush. All of these small details about these people.

A (98:26)

For sure. For sure. I love you. You were talking about all these warm scenes. One of my favorite comes to mind is when Shinji's unit wakes up and begins screaming. And they're all sort of huddled together because they were evacuating. And they, they look at this horrible thing going berserk. And it's just so cute that they like, there's. They're staff members at a, at a military facility. You know, they. They only have like basic training and nothing good happens to any of them, but you know, they take care of one another and they have interpersonal relationships and they have a sort of a. A sort of a warmth and familiarity with one another.

B (99:21)

And Ibuki, Maya has a little computer that she takes outside.

A (99:25)

It's like, yeah, that's the attention. Endless. I. I can talk about this for 20 hours. You, you understand?

B (99:33)

Even outside of like the humanity of it. The other thing that just constantly intrigues me is that all of the science fiction mumbo jumbo jargon is consistent. And if you do the research and like go through avageeks.org or just like watch a show over and over again, you like, build a vocabulary of like how the evangelions work, all of their processes. And it's like so rewarding and beautiful that like this concept exists. And I was thinking a lot about like the sci fi element of this because the idea of Evangelion is like, it's the new gospel. The, the original title of it in Japanese is like Shinseki. It's like New Century Evangelion. And it's like trying to kind of like piece a religious and philosophical viewpoint for where humankind as a species is going through these like minute Freudian interactions. But in employing this like science fiction, like deep jargon of invented nonsense, it like creates this strangely tangible, plausible canon of how humans could exist that you can like apply to your daily human interactions. Like this idea of the ancient prehistorical, like pre ancestral race that bestowed Adam and Lilith on Earth, and we are all defined by these AT fields that divide us from one another. It's just, like, so profound and, like, rich with detail. It's so easy to apply it to, like, your whole being, don't you think?

A (101:29)

Yeah. I mean, the science fiction really serves as a metaphor. You know, mostly it's a metaphor, the angel thing, you know, all. You know, this is the progenitor race, right? They're coming to reclaim Earth. They're coming to take it all back. And we human beings are parasites. We shouldn't be on this Earth. You know, they're the owners of this Earth. We shouldn't be here. They're coming here, and they're more than that. They're evolving. Not only are they coming here, but they were actually here all along. They were in volcanoes and on the bottom of the ocean and everywhere. You know, they're just taking what's theirs, and we're here kind of meddling with that. And this is the overarching idea of the human spirit, the undefeatable human spirit, that eventually the Angels are defeated. Even though the. What the Angels come to is through their many evolutions, because every iteration is, like, better, right? They come to a human being. So the final angel is a human being, and that's where it converges. And that's the ultimate defeat of the Angels. Because Kaworu doesn't put up a massive fight. He doesn't fucking have a punch out with Shinji. He just says, okay, you've won. Like, literally, you are the perfect thing to exist on this planet and kill me. Like, that's it.

B (103:08)

Yeah. I was going to say we should definitely talk about Nagisa Kawasu.

A (103:13)

Should we?

B (103:14)

I mean, we definitely should. Because he appears in the anime in, like, the third to last episode, it's not revealed that he is the angel, and he is the first character that gives unadulterated pure love to Shinji. And this has been quite controversial in the last few years because, like, the Netflix adaptation translated his words, which in Japanese could mean like, or love. Japanese is an intentionally vague language, so don't worry about it. Shinji is blushing. Obviously, it means, like, romantic love in this sense. Don't fret about the translation. But this, like, strange alien comes here, is a total, like, broken cog in human society, talks strangely, doesn't act right, and loves Shinji. And then Shinji has to kill him with his bare hands. I think he must be the most fascinating anime creation of all time.

A (104:26)

Oh, God. You know, I used to have his. What's his Angel? Angel name? Hello? Or something like that, which is, I

B (104:35)

think, which is the Jewish youth group. His engine name is Tabris.

A (104:42)

Tabris, yep. Right, of course.

B (104:44)

Yes, I remember that one.

A (104:47)

Oh, God. Anyway, I. I used to have a little figurine of him as. As Lucifer. Like a little. Oh, God. It was a. It was a gender swap. Kawaru girl with big boobies and. And eight wings. Like, you know, Luciferian. Luciferian outfit. And he is, like, the reason why he likes Shinji isn't because he. He wants to sleep with Shinji. Although a lot of people think that it's. It's a gay plot line that's been specifically put into there to sort of give the impression of a young boy being confused about his sexuality, which is valid, you know, of course. But I think he as an alien and as a creation of some form of God, strangely, I guess because someone is sending all these angels there won't get into too many. Much metaphysics. But he, I think, feels a closeness to him because he relates to him like. You know what I mean? Like, it's. It's. They're the same after all of these giant fish and fucking giant squids and fucking flying skeletons with little legs and. And giant eyes that fall down and the giant cubes that reflect the reality. After all of that, he finally can relate to Shinji because he's like him. He's. He's exactly like him. Kaworu is actually biologically no different than Shinji because they scanned him and they, like, he. He slid in completely unnoticed as an angel. Like, he's biologically a human being, but he is. He has angel DNA, I guess, and he likes him with a sort of brotherly, I think, love, which is also a romantic love. And it's very, very hard to explain because we're going to go into like, religious feelings I think here, because this is a being from a completely different dimension, right? This is a supernatural being. And he relates to Shinji so closely because I think. I think he came to so close to perfection by being human. Kaworu. But also, obviously, it's maybe just kind of a boy liking another boy. That's. That's also maybe it's just the most

B (107:43)

brilliant invention of all time, because you're right, it literally is a God bestowing love upon a human being. And the most recent translation really puts a lot of emphasis on that. They translate koi, which is in Japanese for like, romantic love. They translate it as grace.

A (108:06)

This is like, really.

B (108:07)

This is. I don't know why. This is, like, approved by Studio Kara who Ano Hideaki, the creator, now directs and they, they, they. They commissioned this new translation and improve, approved all of this stuff. I am neither here nor there about it, but they really do lean into this idea of, like, him being an other of some sort. But yeah, that. That's what it really means to feel loved by someone honestly and without any comment or adjustment. It is like God touching you. It's like.

A (108:51)

Yeah, it's, it's. It's like a truly platonic type of love. It's. It's almost like a love of a soul towards another soul. Yeah.

B (109:00)

Excuse me. The sexual suggestion is there. He, like, stands up, like, nude in front of him inside. The shots of them, like, sleeping in different beds that are, like, adjusted to look like they're sleeping in the same bed. And the manga is crazy because Kalu is just a rape alien the whole time.

A (109:17)

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

B (109:19)

Yeah. He, like. There's actual panels of them making out and everything. It's unbelievable.

A (109:26)

But it's also, you have to notice that this is the only other boy his age that gets close to him. I mean, there's.

B (109:36)

There's Toi and Ken.

A (109:39)

Yeah. But they're like, they're like. I think they're a little older and I think they're a little more like buddy. Buddy. And Kawaru really gets under his skin, but he is so difficult to talk about because he is the most unscrutable, difficult character in the show because he's so, like, layered. He's, he's. He's literally a personification of an alien divine who comes to Earth to mirror the main character and give him unconditional love, which is very different from human love and, and sort of elevate him through that. But also makes me want to ask

B (110:34)

you too, because so many people get really hung up about the Christian iconography of the show. And yeah, I'm of two minds about it. I believe that this show is very deeply religious, I think, out of any faith. I think it pulls off Buddhism the most. And I think that the Christianity is a lot of, like, decoration. However, like, some of that decoration and like, the pulling from the lore and the use of, like, the things of, like, the Tree of Life and all of these, like, Old Hebrew, like, Old Testament language that they use for the iconography of the angels. It does contribute a lot to, like, the theme as well. And so this idea of Kaoru as, like, God's love, I think is really accurate and interesting. And I was kind of wondering what your, like, religious relationship with this was.

A (111:39)

Well, I, I think really it does lean very heavily towards Buddhism and towards Judaism, because immediately in the opening, you see the Kabbalic tree of Sephirah. You see all of these elements, Kabalic namings, the names of the angels of. Are of course, Kabbalic. And then they have all these mystical, mystical meanings. The angel of sound and music and, you know, these are all Judaic beings. Right. Also, the ending is very close to the. The idea of sort of afterlife in Judaism, because Judaism doesn't have an afterlife. No, there is no afterlife. It's. It's paradise here on earth. It's. It's going to be here on earth in a physical way. It's going to be here. It's not going to be anywhere else in a mystical paradise. It's going to be here and we're all going to be together united. So instrumentality.

B (112:55)

And

A (112:59)

the idea of. In Judaism, of bringing this about. So accept this accelerationist idea that through our actions we bring the Messiah closer to us. You know, maybe. Maybe that's what Kawaru represents. Is. Is. Is very real. But to me, that's all really, truly garnish. It's. It's kind of. I agree, like, yeah, it. It almost doesn't matter if it was Buddhist iconography. It's. It's more attractive to a Western audience because they can sort of kind of

B (113:38)

relate to a Judea, like iconic to a Japanese audience as well, because they don't know it. And it looks weird.

A (113:48)

Yeah, it looks exotic.

B (113:50)

And I also want to say this because I have gotten beef about this from. I'm going to name them by name, Mage and Vil. These people have given me grief about this before for saying that Evangelion is not directly a Christian piece of work. They're like, they have made fun of me for this, but I'm just going to say it. I'm correct. The, like, reason that this has crosses in it and decided it's because it looks cool. It's because it looks cool. And it's because Ultraman, the most famous Tokusatsu series, is one of Anno Hideaki's favorite things. And the creator of that was Catholic and he loved to crucify Ultraman in it. And it's just Anno doing that again. So eat that.

A (114:33)

He's been doing that in almost all of his work.

B (114:36)

He does it in fucking cutie, honey.

A (114:39)

Yeah. And Nadia, he has crosses. He has crosses every where. He loves that. It looks cool. Yeah, it's not a religious work. It. I'm just gonna be real with you guys. You, you want it to be a religious work because you want to put a mystical meaning onto the narrative and you are in your complete right to do so. To me, it's not a serious religious work. It's a much more powerful work of character development and romantic development and personality development.

B (115:15)

I guess I would say it's a romantic work and, or, sorry, it's a religious work in the way that it instructs you how to live and it gives you a faith structure. But like that structure of faith is, is entirely like based off your operations on Earth. So I guess that is by default not religious.

A (115:35)

But I, I mean it, it also is, I would say it's a little bit critical of religion, if anything, because, dude, these people are fighting angels, right, who are coming to bring the apocalypse because if they reach Lilith, then the entirety of Earth stops existing, right? So it's, it's, it's, it's full purge. So they're actively fighting God, okay, Or whatever the. Is sending these angels. They're actively fighting against the will of God because the will of God is for them to stop existing. And that's what he made with the first impact with Adam coming down. And that should have been it. I think it's a sort of, you know, if you want to talk about religion, I think it's almost a Luciferian sort of work because they're actively using their human will to refute the fate of the universe. That's, that's literally what they're doing. They're saying, my own will is for it to be so. And you know, you could view it like that if you want, but for me, the human aspect of it, the relationship and interpersonal aspect of it and the development of the characters is so much more powerful when you just look at everything else as visual garnish, really.

B (117:12)

You don't have to go searching through Ava for symbolist meaning. It's unnecessary because the entire point of the show is communicated in watching these characters in conflict. And some of the things that I have noticed that people hold aversion to with it is that the early half of this series has like an anime feel to it. If you say that, then you just get over it. If you can watch squid game season 33 or like any of like the usual garbage thrown your way, then you can watch compelling, well directed avant garde fights that are like, basically like old school, like Hong Kong, like action movies in terms of their visual intensity and complexity. I mean, they're just satisfying to watch. So get over that. I totally lost my Train of thought. I don't remember what I was saying. I just. There's like, oh, I got it. People just get so obsessed over, like, the details of it. But it's really just like the immediate pleasure of the cinematography, the score, and watching characters in conflict. And then if you want to go into the depths of Mecca fights and all of the religious lore or whatever, then there's that for you too. But at the end of the day, it's just all about these characters speaking with one another. That's it.

A (118:47)

Yeah, I. I would say to anyone who hasn't watched Evangelion, first of all, go into it with an open mind and just view it as a purely technical achievement of its time because the battle scenes are incredibly well created and put together. The more romantic interpersonal scenes are also great animation. It's. It's. It's one of those rare anime TV shows where the quality of animation due to them having crunch times throughout during the production and nearly murdering themselves through exhaustion is. Is very high throughout. And just look at it as a purely art. An art object. First try to, like, get a sense of who you like in terms of the plot and personality, and then you can sort of, when you finish it, you can sort of sit back and analyze it a little bit, and you can pick whatever you want from it, and you can pick whatever ending you choose to interpret from it. And if you have have seen Evangelion before, but a long time ago, I would recommend you pick an episode. Don't watch the whole thing. It's really, you know, a big commitment, but if you can do that. But I would pick an episode that you remember. So, for example, for me, it's the music one, right? Like together as one. Something. I don't remember what's called when Oscar

B (120:31)

and Shinji are learning how to.

A (120:33)

Yeah, when they're syncing up. Yeah. And just watch that. It's like a half an hour thing. Right. And then pick and choose whatever parts you want because these parts, I guarantee you will. Will stay with you for a very long time. And it's. It's a thing that stays with you, which is why it's everywhere in Japan and everywhere in the world and people are doing remake number 1400. It. It just stays with you and people want to come back to it. So. Yeah, that. That's. That's my review of Evangelion. I love it and I will always love it. And I think it. I think it's the greatest anime series of all time. And I don't think there is really a point in making anything in terms of anime after that. But, you know, people are trying and that's still good.

B (121:33)

Well, I mean, just when you were talking about, like, the impact of, like, the things that you recall from it, like, the violence of this show is so unbelievable in the way that it depicts pain. And when I was talking about Higurashi last week, what I remember about that is, like, all of the really tiny details of its characters, like getting their knuckles cracked or, like their fingernails ripped off, etc. And I said that, like, whenever, like Western media, like, cuts people's limbs off, it's, like, satisfying and ejaculatory. But Evangelion does, like, cut limbs off and dismembers people, rips off heads, etc. But they have this really fascinating device where the pilots of these Evangelions feel everything that happens to the machine, even if it doesn't happen to them. And it makes. With the very arresting cinematography for some of those painful stuff you've ever seen.

A (122:39)

Yeah, for sure.

B (122:42)

And then the rest of it is just like these very slow shots of people examining different ceilings and the very, like, precise nature of, like, the, like, layout of their room. So you just. You get all of this. It's amazing.

A (123:01)

Yeah, it gets you into a very intimate space where you feel a lot of things physically, not just emotionally. It's amazing. Like, you know.

B (123:13)

Well, I just wanted to ask before, because I know that we're. I can feel rewinding up here, but, you know, at the end of the series, there is in the anime, it's like, left a little bit ambiguous what's going on, but we have this Human Instrumentality project going on in the background. And it ends in these two episodes of Shinji working through all of his feelings about the world, about his relationships, and ultimately resolving through these avant garde scenes of his character sketches being reduced to flip books and outlines. He comes to the final thought that he wants to live. Because even in having to potentially suffer from contact with other people and knowing that having different wills from other people, that there will be hardship, that he wants to experience that because there's always the chance for joy, beauty, ecstasy and love. I was wondering if any of the stuff from those last two episodes, like, really, like, stuck with you in your, like, 25 years since you first encountered it.

A (124:31)

Oh, God. Well, it goes really conceptual and deconstructs itself at the end there. And that's. Oh, that's actually where a lot of people kind of throw their hands up and go.

B (124:42)

They check out. I don't know this is anymore, I

A (124:45)

don't know what's going on. This is too high art. And I never, I was never really annoyed by the fact that they did that. Like literally two episodes of Deconstruction Shinji's mind and ruminations on adulthood and being a person who has to choose to live and not just end it all. I was never really like that bothered by it. It gets a little heavy handed maybe sometimes because when you hear them go like, who I am, who am I? Who am I? Am I? Am I this or am I that? Who am I that's speaking this? Who's Shinji? You know, it's like, okay, I get it. But when you're watching it as a teenager, it's the deepest thing you've ever seen.

B (125:48)

I mean, even for me now, it still is. And it plays like this like, tribal remix of like the main themes of it, where it's like primordial bongos to like make you feel like you've like completely been like, reduced to the primordial soup or whatever. I mean, I'm still just as fucked up by it as I was there the first time, but I think people are just so offended by the format that they just like, give up and are like, oh, I don't know what this is. Guess I'll just watch End of Evangelion now. I'll just go watch the movie where everything will be answered. But revisiting the series, I was like, this is a perfect conclusion and is like such an exciting, like, climax and like coming honestly of like all of the teasing that they do of the psychedelic stuff that happens when, you know, Shinji or Asuka makes contact with the Angels, for sure.

A (126:42)

And also, you have to remember this is mid-90s. People were very experimental with their movies and with their TV shows and people were going bananas over high art, high concept tv, like, you know, Xos and all, like, it goes like these shows went lofty, lofty. You want to, you want to talk Twin Peaks? Like, people could not for the life of them figure the out what happened. So lynch had to basically film an entire movie explaining what happened. And it was a time of complete, almost complete freedom. You know, even in Japan, where creative freedom is scarce, especially in anime, almost complete freedom for, for someone like Hide Aki. So the fact that they went a little experimental, like, dude, you can watch like Tamala or any cat soup or, you know, that's high art. That's very high conceptual, highbrow, artsy, fartsy sometimes art. And the fact that it goes into art. At the very end is like, well, where else could have. Could it have gotten like, oh, and everyone lived happily ever after? No, it goes into a deconstructionist mode where it deconstructs the viewer, deconstructs the character, deconstructs the media, the anime series, because it starts showing you fucking sketches and footage of people walking the Japanese streets and stuff and trains and. And. And it goes, okay, so we're out. We are, in fact, out of the format. We are out of the story. We're on the other side. Right? Not a lot of shows or movies do that. Because it's very brave, completely breaking the fourth wall and going, you know, this is the real world now. Okay, what are you gonna do with it? But it's. I felt it was kind of freeing rather than heavy handed, honestly.

B (129:04)

No, I mean, I did too. And I think that anyone approaching this outside of the 1990s, where there just seemed to be like a lot more like liberty about what you can or can't do with a medium. Like, nowadays, there is just such an expectation that there has to be clean, concise answers to all of the problems solved here. But, like, one of my, like, favorite joys of my life has just been watching this for, you know, like 15 years now and just finding out more things on my own every time I watch. And the ending, that just addresses all of the thematic concerns of the question, all the thematic questions and concerns of the characters and gives them a strange, striking resolution that calls attention to the fact that you're observing media and then just ends with it. Congratulations. I think it's like the most beautiful thing in the world, honestly. I think everything should end this way.

A (130:09)

For sure. For sure. And it's a beautiful show and it's very human, very kind, actually. Even though it's full of people getting their limbs ripped off and it's. It's full of love. It really is full of love. And it teaches you to always be full of love. It actually teaches you to the. The end of the story is you realizing that love is always painful and love means getting hurt, but you can't live without it. And that's why you should never close yourself off to it. I think that's my interpretation of it. I don't know.

B (130:55)

Love is destructive. Well, on that note, thank you very much, Sasha, for joining me tonight to reintroduce Evangelion to everyone. I'm excited to talk more about it the rest of this month. Next week, we'll talk about End of Ava and after that, we'll talk about the rebuilds. But it's just very surreal to revisit this on the show after five years. And it feels very bizarre. It feels like the end of. It feels like the last two episodes of the show, honestly, where it's just like sketch work and friends regathering to clap and applaud. Just thinking about, like, who I was when I started this. I, like, re. Listened to some early episodes and like, my voice was so much higher and squeakier and it was like, so much like more polite. What a different world. I don't know. Time moves on and love is horrible and destroys everything and stabs you, chops your limbs off. But it's all that there is to live for, huh?

A (132:02)

I guess so. Thank you so much for bringing me on. I had so much fun and it was great for me to revisit it. Also. I think it's good to have these little returns every few years. Good for your mind.

B (132:17)

Yeah. I can't wait to see you again soon. On that note,

A (132:35)

Sam,