Anime Studies
Anime Studies
To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://doi
.org/10.16993/bbp or scan this QR code with your mobile device.
Stockholm Studies in Media Arts Japan
Editorial Board
Cecilia Björck, Associate Professor, Music Education & Popular
Music, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Irena Hayter, Associate Professor, Japanese Studies, University of
Leeds, United Kingdom
Minori Ishida, Professor, Film and Animation Studies, Niigata
University, Japan
Ylva Lindberg, Professor, School of Education and Communication,
Jönköping University, Sweden
Trond Lundemo, Professor, Film Studies, Stockholm University,
Sweden
Ewa Machotka (Interrim Chairperson), Associate Professor &
Docent, Japanese Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden
Laura Moretti, Associate Professor, Japanese Studies, Cambridge
University, United Kingdom
Sharalyn Orbaugh, Professor, Asian Studies, The University of British
Columbia, Canada
Lukas R.A. Wilde, PostDoc Research Associate, Japanese Studies &
Media Theory, Tübingen University, Germany
Introduction 1
Jaqueline Berndt
1 Not Just Immobile: Moving Drawings and Visual Synecdoches
in Neon Genesis Evangelion 19
José Andrés Santiago Iglesias
2 Play it Again, Hideaki: Using the Cel Bank in Neon Genesis
Evangelion 49
Ida Kirkegaard
3 Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion:
Using Pre-existing Music in Anime 85
Heike Hoffer
4 Voice Actresses Rising: The Multilayered Stardom of Megumi Ogata
in the 1990s 111
Minori Ishida
5 Objecthood at the End of the World: Anime’s Acting and
its Ecological Stakes in Neon Genesis Evangelion 135
Stevie Suan
6 Discussing ‘Genre’ in Anime through Neon Genesis Evangelion 181
Manuel Hernández-Pérez
7 The Making of an Epoch-Making Anime: Understanding the
Landmark Status of Neon Genesis Evangelion in Otaku Culture 215
Zoltan Kacsuk
8 Manga Production, Anime Consumption: The Neon Genesis
Evangelion Franchise and its Fandom 247
Olga Kopylova
9 Combinatory Play and Infinite Replay: Underdefined Causality
in the Neon Genesis Evangelion Anime Series and Games 297
Selen Çalık Bedir
10 Creating Happy Endings: Yaoi Fanworks as Audience Response
to Kaworu and Shinji’s Relationship 327
Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
Plot Summary of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Analysis of Character
Interrelations 353
Tatiana Lameiro-González
Figures
1.1 Off-screen argument between Asuka and Shinji at the beginning of
episode 24, consisting of four different shots. © khara, inc. 31
1.2 Asuka in episode 24, having lost her ability to pilot the Eva-02. As
she speaks, the sequence is barely animated by means of sectioning.
© khara, inc. 32
1.3 In episode 24, the still image depicting the Eva-01 holding Kaworu
lasts one minute and five seconds (1’05’’). © khara, inc. 34
1.4 The lift scene in episode 22. © khara, inc. 35
1.5 Six frames from Misato and Kaji’s sexual encounter in episode 20.
© khara, inc. 38
1.6 Twelve frames of Shinji’s face intertwined with other materials (from
scanned textures to images from previous episodes) in episode 26.
© khara, inc. 42
1.7 Scene from episode 26, as Shinji morphs into a sketched version of
himself. © khara, inc. 43
1.8 Shinji’s sketched body is suddenly grounded by a drawn line
(episode 26). © khara, inc. 44
1.9 Doodling drawings in episode 26. © khara, inc. 45
2.1 The cut of Misato Katsuragi drinking a beer appears for the first
time in episode 2. © khara, inc. 68
2.2 The cuts of the NERV technicians turning around are first seen in
episode 2. © khara, inc. 69
2.3 Shinji Ikari’s form morphs plasmatically in episode 25. © khara,
inc. 72
2.4 The same cut of animation is repurposed in different contexts and
with altered dialogue in episode 16. © khara, inc. 73
2.5 Four bank cuts are recycled multiple times with different voice
actors reading the same lines in episode 22. © khara, inc. 76
4.1 “Kongetsu no Best 10 Kyara” Animage (196). © Tokuma
Shoten. 121
4.2 Animage (186). © Tokuma Shoten. 123
4.3 Animage (211). © Tokuma Shoten. 127
5.1 Eva-01 going berserk in episode 19, presenting a savage autonomy
through embodied acting. © khara, inc. 143
5.2 Rei’s monologue about her selfhood in episode 14. Her characteris-
tic (lack of) expression shown on the top left. © khara, inc. 154
5.3 Shinji’s movement through abstract embodied acting (top left),
strange symbols (top right), moving through a fractal image of the
human (bottom left), and his subsequent subsendence into parts
(bottom right). © khara, inc. 159
5.4 Rei’s display of uncharacteristic figurative acting codes for her char-
acter in episode 26. © khara, inc. 161
5.5 Asuka’s adept piloting of her Eva-unit in End of EVA, displaying,
weighty movements through embodied acting. © khara, inc. 172
5.6 An adapted version of Morton’s logic square of explosive and implo-
sive holism, depicting the choice between individualisms that Shinji
must make in End of EVA: either choose between the first and second
positions’ merging of humanity or the third position’s individual
borders (Morton 2017: 107). License: CC BY 4.0. 176
Tables
8.1 List of the official EVA manga series in chronological order.
License: CC BY 4.0. 257
8.2 Comparison of storyworld components (after Ryan 2014) in the
EVA manga vs. the TV anime. License: CC BY 4.0. 259
8.3 Transmedial network of EVA narratives (partial) and its topology.
License: CC BY 4.0. 265
8.4 Correlation and combinations of thematically oriented sequences
in the EVA manga. License: CC BY 4.0. 270
8.5 Relationship between the storyworld elements of RETAKE and the
EVA anime. License: CC BY 4.0. 286
Characters
A Shinji Ikari. © khara, inc. 355
B Rei Ayanami. © khara, inc. 356
C Asuka Langley Sohryu. © khara, inc. 356
D Tōji Suzuhara. © khara, inc. 357
E Kaworu Nagisa. © khara, inc. 357
F Commander Gendō Ikari. © khara, inc. 358
G Major Misato Katsuragi. © khara, inc. 358
H Dr. Ritsuko Akagi. © khara, inc. 359
I Ryōji Kaji. © khara, inc. 360
J Kōzō Fuyutsuki. © khara, inc. 360
K Table of character’s interrelations. License: CC BY 4.0. 361
Introduction
Jaqueline Berndt
Media scholar Lukas Wilde distinguishes, albeit for manga, but also
applicable to anime, between three dimensions: semiotic-formal (i.e.,
artifact-oriented), material-technological (related to production, dist-
ribution and consumption in the narrow sense) and cultural-institu-
tional dimensions, all with their respective actors and practices (2018:
133). Approaches like these also help to avoid generalizations that lead
to simplified juxtapositions between anime and live-action movies, or
manga and literature, highlighting instead differentiation within given
media according to socio-cultural field and genre, for example.
As a matter of fact, not all animation made in Japan is subsumed
under the heading of anime, at least not in Japanese discourse and
among researchers like those who form the core of the Japan Society
for Animation Studies (JSAS; founded in 1999): critics and histori-
ans who have been working outside of academic institutions, clinical
psychologists and art-college professors of animation, as well as scho-
lars in Media Studies. Strictly speaking, anime articulates TV and cel,
or cel-look, animation in addition to ‘Japan.’ But, since the 1930s,
cel animation has been employed in different ways and formats,
with limited and full animation or TV series and movies for theat-
rical release being by far not the only ones. Pioneer Kenzō Masaoka
(1898–1988), for example, used cels to emulate silhouette animation
striving for smooth movement and illusion of depth, that is, creating
Introduction 5
References
Anno, H. (1997). Anno Hideaki parano Evangerion (ed. K. Takekuma).
Tokyo: Ohta shuppan.
_______. (2019). “EVA” no na o akuyō shita GAINAX to hōdō ni
tsuyoku ikidōru riyū. Diamond online, 30 December. Retrieved from:
https://diamond.jp/articles/-/224881
Azuma, H. (2009) [2001]. Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Introduction and trans-
lation by J. E. Abel & S. Kono).
Berndt, J. (2018). Anime in Academia: Representative Object, Media
Form, and Japanese Studies. Arts, 7(4), 56. Retrieved from: DOI: https:// 4 See Denison 2018; Anno 2019;
doi.org/10.3390/arts7040056 Denison 2020.
16 Anime Studies
these visual tropes end up playing a key role in the way the narrative
flows. However, in order to do so, it is important to address Marc
Steinberg’s concept of anime’s “dynamic immobility of the image”
(2012), as it allows the interconnection of anime and manga.
Stillness in EVA
Since his early works in the 1920s, Walt Disney pursued an animation
style defined by ‘realism,’ bespoke technical advancement and refi-
ned craftsmanship. During the Golden Age of animation (1934–41),
Disney pushed his cartoonists and engineers to reach even higher
levels of sophistication, ultimately achieving what is usually regarded
as the apex of cel animation, and setting the standards for any future
feature-length productions. Disney cartoonists’ pursuit of ‘realism’ is
not the opposite to stylized character designs or non-accurate bodily
proportions—which are quite usual in many of Disney’s cel-animated
feature-films—but rather movement: movement understood as the
fluidity, smoothness and lifelikeness of motion, allowing drawn cha-
racters to drift naturally on screen and acquire a certain sense of
weight and physicality. In order to accomplish this, animators used
a large number of frames (18 to 30 fps), as well as techniques like
rotoscoping, to accurately capture bodily movements. Smooth motion
thanks to a high frame rate is the defining trait of ‘full animation.’ It
goes without saying that full animation is not a style exclusive to
Disney. Many studios and directors have embraced it. Studio Ghibli’s
films—and most notably Hayao Miyazaki’s internationally acclaimed
works—as well as Toei Animation productions, among many oth-
ers, are examples of the fact that Japanese motion pictures are by no
means strangers to full animation.
In its early stages, anime relied almost entirely on limited anima-
tion techniques such as the extensive use of still images and a low
frame rate (8 to 12 fps), sometimes drawing just the keyframes while
omitting the inbetweens (i.e., the intermediate positions). Thus, the
Not Just Immobile 23
despite the fact that many episodes present many sequences com-
prised of long shots of still images. Steinberg highlights the idea
that anime presents “unique rhythms of movement and immobility”
(2012: 5). However, this notion is mostly focused on the still images
themselves, and how they can be utterly dynamic despite their immo-
bility (i.e., not being smoothly animated). In this regard, I would like
to expand on the idea of “unique rhythms of movement and immo-
bility,” focusing on the alternating ratio of frames per second in cont-
emporary anime.
Ratio Dynamism
In live-action cinema, a long static shot is often deemed as a classic yet
risky move, not too closely connected to current filmic language and
at times seen as too harsh, in visual terms, for the audience. It is well
apparent that in a long static shot, if no striking action is taking place,
a few seconds can trigger a sense of estrangement in the viewer, as if
time were stretching out and lasting longer than it should. Therefore,
a static shot of 5 or even 10 seconds has become quite unusual in
today’s mainstream cinema. But in any given static shot—be it of a
landscape or an empty room—there is always a certain degree of
movement, since the image is footage of a real scene: a blade of grass
that moves, a change of light in the room, or small objects that drift
in the background.
However, this is not the case in EVA or any other mainstream
anime. Nowadays, anime’s ‘limited animation’ no longer refers to
a low number of frames per second, but rather to a variable ratio.
Thus, it is not so much that anime is poor in movement, with an
average of four or eight frames per second, but rather that it featu-
res a still image, sustained for several seconds, and then links it to
an elaborate action scene, in which the animation is rendered with
18 or even 24 fps. Stillness is, indeed, one of anime’s most defining
traits, and these still images can appear very dynamic, but current
26 Anime Studies
What was originally born from necessity (as a means of saving time
and budget) has evolved into an aesthetically complex way of ani-
mating stories. Furthermore, ratio dynamism and stillness—or the
tensions between motion and stillness—have become two of ani-
me’s major traits, creating movement though different resources, but
also allowing for a deep emotional connection with the viewer. For
Steinberg, as well as for Lamarre, anime’s animation is not defined
by immobility, but rather by a different kind of dynamism of the
still image. EVA perfectly illustrates these tensions, as phenomenal
animation sequences coexist with other rather poorly rendered ones.
Yet, most importantly, EVA shows the aesthetic and narrative poten-
tial of the filmic resources in limited animation as only few anime
series can, raising the use of stillness and a variable fps ratio to new
stylistic heights.
Indeed, the formal frame of any visual image (painting, drawing, pho-
tograph, film or television frame) functions as a synecdoche in that it
suggests that what is being offered is a ‘slice-of-life’, and that the world
outside the frame is carrying on as in the same manner as the world
depicted within it. This is perhaps particularly so when the frame cuts
across some of the objects depicted within it rather than enclosing
them as wholly discrete entities. (2002: 133)
30 Anime Studies
her voice, but in a limited fashion, by means of repetition and sec- Figure 1.1. Off-screen argument
tioning. Instead of producing a realistic depiction of her mouth (via between Asuka and Shinji at the
beginning of episode 24, consisting
lip sync), the sequence is confined to three different instances in vari- of four different shots. © khara, inc.
ation—lips fully opened, fully closed and an intermediate stage—
allowing for minimum lip movement with a convincing impression
of vocalization (Fig.1.2).
32 Anime Studies
Figure 1.2. Asuka in episode 24, These are just a couple of humble examples of how synecdoche
having lost her ability to pilot the operates in EVA, often combined with ellipsis and other narrative tro-
Eva 02. As she speaks, the sequence
is barely animated by means of pes. Nevertheless, throughout the whole series, an array of synecdo-
sectioning. © khara, inc. ches frequently appears, many of which allow the tracing of a visual
connection from anime to other media.
EVA’s episode 24 includes a scene celebrated as one of the most
striking, iconic and powerful uses of a still image in anime, portray-
ing Shinji and Kaworu’s epic battle, which ends with the death of the
latter. As Kaworu reveals himself to be Tabris—the 17th and final
Angel—Shinji chases him on the Eva-01 to the Bottom of the Dogma
Terminal. At some point, Shinji grabs Kaworu’s fragile body—whose
Not Just Immobile 33
Figure 1.3. In episode 24, the still does not even involve a complete change of frame as the only ani-
image depicting the Eva-01 holding mated object is Asuka’s eye as it closes and opens again, by means of
Kaworu lasts one minute and five
seconds (1’05’’). © khara, inc. sectioning), as well as a twitch toward the end of the scene involving
a simple modulation of four frames. Ultimately, director Anno’s bet
on immobility proves successful, as the sequence recreates the social
awkwardness of being stuck in a lift with someone you simply don’t
want to share the room with.
Not Just Immobile 35
Moving Drawings
Connections between manga and anime are well known to academics
and enthusiasts alike. A large number of anime titles originate as
adaptations of manga series. Nonetheless, it isn’t unusual that a suc-
cessful anime series leads to the publication of a derived manga work.7
Such is the case of EVA. The original animated series paved the way
for several manga spin-offs, as well as fan-created stories in peer-pro-
duced publications (dōjinshi). The connections between manga and
anime pertaining to production, distribution and marketing aspects
are obvious. On a formal and aesthetic level, there are many simi-
larities that bind both media. The concept of database coined by
Hiroki Azuma (2001), widely applied to anime for the construction
of characters, can also easily be applied to the fictional imaginary of
7.
Addressed in depth in Olga manga. Likewise, manga isotypes and morphemes (Cohn 2013), along
Kopylova’s Chapter 8. with the super-deformed and chibi8 versions of characters, have been
8. A style of caricature where characters adopted by anime. However, beyond these obvious similarities regar-
are drawn in a comical and exaggerated ding conventionalized visual elements, there are abstract connections
way, usually depicted with small bodies,
short and chubby limbs and oversized between manga and anime concerning issues such as rhythm, page
heads. layout and montage, some of which become quite clear in EVA.
Not Just Immobile 37
Figure 1.5. Six frames from Misato is rendered almost entirely in still images of secondary informa-
and Kaji’s sexual encounter in tion combined with the ongoing off-camera dialogue, rather than
episode 20. © khara, inc.
the actual depiction of the characters. This peculiar interrelation of
shots is actually reminiscent of panel transitions in manga, such as
McCloud’s ‘aspect-to-aspect,’ and the pillow-shots in Japanese clas-
sic cinema. First coined by Burch (1979), who borrowed the term
from Japanese poetry, ‘pillow-shots’ refer to scenes composed of
apparently random shots, depicting aspects secondary to the main
action taking place. According to Burch, these shots “suspend the
diegetic flow [. . .] while they never contribute to the progress of the
narrative proper, they often refer to a character or a set, presenting
or re-presenting it out of a narrative context. Pillow shots (the term
is derived from Japanese poetry) most often achieve their uniqu-
ely de-centering effect by lingering unexpectedly on an inanimate
object” (1979: 160).
Not Just Immobile 39
Figure 1.6. Twelve frames of Shinji’s Fig.1.7), almost as if Anno had resorted to the intermediate materials,
face intertwined with other materials color drafts and storyboard images. From this point onwards, the
(from scanned textures to images
from previous episodes) in episode whole sequence is rendered with sketch-style images, quite stylized,
26. © khara, inc. as if drawn by pencil and poorly colored with rough strokes of mar-
kers. However, these hand-drawn images act as a representation of
Shinji’s introspective journey. The deeper he dives into his psyche,
the simpler the drawings become, reducing his body to a minimum
(a trembling silhouette on a blank sheet of paper). Ultimately, this
hand-drawn quality emphasizes the line in an almost meta-referential
way: At some point (00:11:57), Shinji’s outlined body is floating on a
white canvas (lit., “a world where you can do whatever you want”),
but suddenly he is given a “restriction” (sic), as explained by the
Not Just Immobile 43
voice-over that is leading the sequence, and a line is drawn under Figure 1.7. Scene from episode 26,
him—emphasized by the squeaky sound of a marker—a line that as Shinji morphs into a sketched
version of himself. © khara, inc.
becomes the horizon (Fig.1.8), creates a sense of gravity and roots
Shinji to the newly created ground.
For several decades, and until the generalization of contem-
porary CG animation techniques, animating anime has involved
multiple overlapping celluloid layers combined into a single image
or frame. Characters and objects are outlined, and together with
the limited tone-shading provide a sense of flatness and a drawn
quality. EVA’s episodes 25 and 26 push forward this drawn
quality to an almost artistic and experimental facet, unexpec-
ted in mainstream anime. However, sometimes this hand-drawn
finish is used for simple narrative purposes, to represent a flash-
back, or highlight an emotionally dramatic scene. Such is the case
with EVA.
The third sequence adds an additional layer to the deconstruction
process of the graphic image, abstracting the images—and therefore
Shinji’s psyche—to the very essence of animation. Paul Wells defined
44 Anime Studies
Figure 1.8. Shinji’s sketched body is animation as “the artificial creation of the illusion of movement in
suddenly grounded by a drawn line inanimate lines and forms” (1998: 10). As Shinji himself voices out,
(episode 26). © khara, inc.
“I feel like I am disappearing,” the image becomes a simple oscillating
black line on a blank canvas (00:13:18) and a random doodle made
up of lines with different thicknesses (Fig.1.9), without discernible
meaning, which dance to the rhythm of the undergoing dialogue that
dominates the scene. This naïf pattern keeps morphing into different
Not Just Immobile 45
child-like drawings and finally becomes, once again, a sketch of Shinji Figure 1.9. Doodling drawings in
himself as he begins to come to terms with his own dilemma. episode 26. © khara, inc.
Groundworks of EVA
In a way, these three sequences work as a journey not only to the psyche
of the protagonist, but also as an introduction to the groundworks
46 Anime Studies
consisting of a single frame, and the camera moving away from the
human characters to highlight background unanimated objects as
main descriptors of the ongoing action.11 Ultimately, anime appears
as something entirely different from other animation (neither Disney-
style, high-end productions, nor low-cost, limited cartoons): a specific
media form characterized by a series of narrative, aesthetic and filmic
devices of its own.
References
Azuma, H. (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Introduction and translation by
J. E. Abel and S. Kono)
Burch, N. (1979). To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in
Japanese Cinema. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Chandler, D. (2002). Semiotics: The Basics. New York: Routledge.
Cohn, N. (2007). Japanese Visual Language the Structure of Manga.
Visual Language Lab. Retrieved from: http://visuallanguagelab.com
/P/japanese_vl.pdf
_______. (2013). The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the
Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. London: Bloomsbury.
Gan, S. H. (2008). The Newly Developed Form of Ganime and its
Relation to Selective Animation for Adults in Japan. Animation
Studies, 3, 6–17.
Groensteen, T. (2007). The System of Comics. Jackson, MS: University
Press of Mississippi.
Grosoli, M. and Massuet, J.-B. (eds.) (2014). La capture de mouvement:
Ou le modelage de l’invisible. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
Horno López, A. (2014) El arte de la animación selectiva en las series de
anime contemporáneas. Con A de Animación. Valencia: Universidad 11. Yet another way to create dyna-
Politécnica de Valencia, vol. 4, 84–97. mism or, as Burch explains, “the tension
between the suspension of human pres-
Jakobson, R. & Halle, M. (1956). Fundamentals of language. The ence (of the diegesis) and its potential
Hague: Mouton. return” (1979: 161).
48 Anime Studies
The control room shakes dramatically. Makoto Hyūga looks over his
shoulder to relay the newest information to his superiors in a hurried
voice. Data flashes on multiple screens in rapid succession. Shigeru
Aoba turns around to yell that his systems can no longer monitor
the situation. Captain Misato Katsuragi tenses her brow. More data
flashes on a slanted screen, an all-caps LOST central to the image.
Maya Ibuki looks down into a monitor and reads that the pilot can
no longer be contacted. Misato’s eyes narrow with determination,
and the viewer may suspect that she is thinking about her last resort
plan to blow up the facility, herself, and everyone in the room if this
mission fails. In the background, a choir is belting out the climactic
stanza of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” It’s an intense sequence, rapidly
cut and suffused with dread. But it’s also rather familiar. Indeed, the
attentive viewer of Neon Genesis Evangelion might be experiencing a
certain feeling of déjà vu right now. Because every single bit of anima-
tion in this sequence from episode 24 is a bank cut.
In anime, the term ‘bank’ is typically used to refer to cuts of anima-
tion that, once created, are used again and again in different contexts
How to cite this book chapter:
(Association of Japanese Animations 2019: 50). ‘Cut’ in an anima- Kirkegaard, I. 2021. Play it Again,
tion context refers to a continuous segment of animation where the Hideaki: Using the Cel Bank in Neon
Genesis Evangelion. In: Santiago Iglesias,
‘camera’ does not switch its viewpoint, analogous to a shot in live-
J. A. and Soler Baena, A. (Eds.). Anime
action filmmaking (Cirugeda 2017). These cuts are determined and Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to
named in storyboards and generally handled by a single key anima- Neon Genesis Evangelion. Pp. 49–83
Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
tor. In other words, bank cuts are short sequences of animation that DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bbp.c.
are made for and then routinely reused in a production, drawn from License: CC-BY 4.0
50 Anime Studies
Anime’s Realism
In academia, it can be hard to justify paying close attention to the
texts of popular media culture, in particular when it comes to ele-
ments of these texts that are mostly the result of suboptimal circum-
stances. A phenomenon like bank cuts might appear to be simply an
accident to be ignored, an unfortunate effect of the fact that anime
production is, above all else, fast and cheap.1 Indeed, the cheapness of
anime in general can make it difficult to defend, characterized as it is
by hurried, underfunded productions relying heavily on various forms
of so-called limited animation.2 This positions anime as outside the
realm of what is often considered the pinnacle of animation within
both popular and academic discourse, Walt Disney and his studio.
The overall trajectory of the Disney Studio in the 20th century was
characterized by a move toward increasing sophistication with regard
to embodied and character-specific movement. This new form of ani-
mation replaced the standardized and repetitive figurative movement
of early animation, escalated the use of advanced mechanical tools
1. In the interest of clarity, it is impor-
such as the multi-plane camera to create movement into depth and,
tant here to remember that the term
importantly, led to an ever-increasing adherence to a meticulous simu- ‘anime’ does not have one single defini-
lation of real-world physics (Crafton 2012). Driving this development tion. For the purposes of this chapter, I
follow the definition laid out in Berndt
was Walt Disney’s own desire to simulate the realism of live-action 2018.
film in animation, the end product of which has been called not 2. As for the latter, see Chapter 1 by
realism, but hyper-realism, the reproduction not of physical reality José Andrés Santiago Iglesias.
52 Anime Studies
EVA’s Realism
To discuss realism in the context of EVA means to lean on Ōtsuka’s
and Rowley’s conceptions of realism. This is, after all, a series where
impossible giants controlled by thoughts fight alien monsters over
underground bases built from the shell of the egg that originated all
life on earth. Rather, EVA’s baseline realism is very similar to the rea-
lism of Disney with its magical fairies, talking animals and wondrous
transformations that nonetheless move and behave in ways that are
so ‘realistic’ as to offend Eisenstein (Rowley 2005: 69). It is a rea-
3. The I-novel (shishōsetsu) is a Japanese lism that in Rowley’s terms occupies positions on several different
literary genre that developed during the
Meiji period (1868–1912) under the
spectrums of realism—quite visually realist, but not particularly
influence of Western naturalism. I-novels narratively realist, very character realist, but not very realist in terms of
emphasize interiority and autobiograph- motion, at least not most of the time (Rowley 2005: 70). Importantly,
ical themes and are typically written in
the first person. See, for example, Suzuki the series’ position on the spectrum of realism is mostly consistent,
(1996). creating a believable, reliable portrayal of a particular story world,
Play it Again, Hideaki 57
and embody types that were popular with fans at the time, such as
the tsundere4 Asuka and the cool, reserved Rei. It employs a monster-
of-the-week structure, meaning that a new enemy is introduced and
defeated in (almost) every episode and the military action is juxta-
posed with a relatable school dramedy set in the near future. EVA’s
world is a collage of popular tropes and conventions from previous
anime, manga and tokusatsu5 productions, assembled with a nerdy
fervor befitting the notoriously otaku-aligned director Hideaki Anno
and Studio GAINAX. All of this intertextuality and adherence to
convention establishes a strong manga-anime realism, an anime-style
hyperrealism that is internally consistent and resonant with those
familiar with the tropes it employs.
On the other hand, EVA is also a work that is commonly cited as
transgressive of the conventions of anime, both in general and when
it comes to the specific genre of robot anime. In particular, it is often
described as a work that overcomes the perceived inherent childish-
ness and immaturity of robot anime and uses the repetitive nature of
4. A moe character archetype originat-
ing in otaku subculture. Tsundere refers
the genre to subvert the expectations of the viewers, using formula
to a character, typically female, who ini- and conventionality to “lull the audience into complacency” before
tially appears harsh and cold (tsuntsun), undermining that complacency by breaking the formula (Bolton
but later acts warm and affectionate
(deredere), especially toward the male 2018: 224). EVA is often portrayed as being particularly ruthless in
protagonist. its critique of the otaku (hardcore fans) who formed the core of its
5. Special Effects Films, specifically used most dedicated audience and indeed most of its creators (Shamoon
to refer to Japanese live-action produc- 2015: 105).6 Hiroki Azuma (2009) famously claimed that otaku
tions that rely heavily on suitmation and
consumed media in a new, postmodern way where detached ‘data-
practical effects rather than stop-motion
or CGI animation. The term is associated base’ analysis and emotional empathy were simultaneously possible
primarily with fantasy, Science Fiction and due to the loss of the idea of a grand narrative behind the individual
superhero works. Examples of tokusatsu
are the Godzilla films, the Kamen Rider
works consumed.7 This approach to media also meant that otaku may
and Super Sentai TV series, and the Ultra be the people best able to truly accept manga-anime realism as a form
series. of realism, engaging fully with the conventions and codes of anime
6. See also Chapter 7 by Zoltan Kacsuk. as a valid referent for portrayals of character interiority. And while
7. See also Chapter 8 by Olga Kopylova. the characterizations of transgression tend to refer primarily to the
Play it Again, Hideaki 59
alterations is the only way the vast majority of the world’s population
can legally access EVA.
But even with knowledge of what cuts Netflix have and have not
made to EVA, can we actually define what the original version of the
series is? While one might assert that obviously, the version that was
broadcast on TV Tokyo in 1995–96 is the original and everything else
is an alteration, looking at EVA’s release history prior to the Netflix
release reveals that when it comes to EVA, the question of what ver-
sion is ‘original’ and ‘definitive’ is not entirely straightforward. The
recap film Death & Rebirth is particularly relevant to that discus-
sion, aside from being an interesting play with the conventions of TV
anime in and of itself. The term ‘recap’ or ‘compilation’ film refers
to theatrically released features created primarily or entirely from
pre-existing cuts of a particular TV anime, recut so that, ideally, the
film can function as an alternative, shorter version of the same story
(Sevakis 2016). Recap films are a long-standing convention in TV
anime production, and at least initially they served as a way to make
an anime series available beyond its initial television run, aside from
the obvious financial benefits of releasing a film without having to
produce much, or any, new animation. Early examples of recap films
include Heidi, Girl of the Alps (Nakao, 1979) and the very success-
ful Mobile Suit Gundam film trilogy (Tomino, 1981–82). Despite the
ubiquity of home video and streaming, recap films are still produced
to this day (prominent examples from recent years include the 2012
Madoka Magica and 2018 Made in Abyss features) and their ubiquity
seems to prove that they have come to occupy an established position
as a convention of anime production. Recap films often, if not always,
feature a few new cuts of animation alongside the recycled cuts from
the TV series, as well as alterations to the music and compositing of
the cuts, all serving to ‘fix’ perceived shortcomings of the TV version,
whether those were the result of a rushed production or simply unpo-
pular with fans. Rarer examples like Macross: Do You Remember
62 Anime Studies
for the domestic market were allowed 5,000 cels at best, going as
low as 1,200 for certain productions (Watanabe 2019). This made
cel-saving measures such as bank cuts particularly important for
anime production compared to other forms of animation.
The effect of these limitations can be observed in the landscape of
TV anime both old and new. Perhaps most striking is the ubiquitous
use of bank cuts in magical girl series aimed at young girls, such as
Sailor Moon (Satō, 1992). These series, almost to a fault, will include
at least one elaborate transformation sequence that is repeated in
every single episode, and often, in series featuring multiple heroines,
up to five banked transformation sequences will be played in succes-
sion, taking up a significant amount of the episode’s runtime. Sailor
Moon in particular also relies on banked special attacks, speeches
and even entire scenes repeated over and over again in its formulaic
episodes. An example of this are the monster creation scenes, run at
roughly the midpoint of every episode with only minor adjustments
and often humorous changes to the dialogue, which mark each episo-
de’s transition from a school comedy to a superhero story. A similar
if not as universal use of bank cuts is seen in anime aimed at young
boys, where robots and monsters have equally long and elaborate
transformation sequences, attacks and speeches. A recent example
of this can be seen in the children’s robot anime Shinkansen Henkei
Robo Shinkarion (Ikezoe, 2018), where CGI bank cuts are extensively
used to portray the robots launching and transforming. Indeed, bank
cuts have come to be particularly associated with the robot genre as
it has evolved through the years (Association of Japanese Animations
2019: 50).
It is interesting to note that this type of bank usage is often both
conspicuous and elaborate, with bank cuts being assigned to senior
key animators and paired with attention-grabbing theme songs and
catchphrases for the audience to repeat at the playground. These are
often gorgeous cuts, and their weekly repetition in already repetitive
Play it Again, Hideaki 65
the series, Osamu Tezuka called it his ‘bank system,’ a term still com-
monly in use today, referencing the star system of reoccurring cha-
racter designs he used in his manga (Clements 2013: 120). The bank
system was just one of the many forms of limited animation the series
relied on to meet its weekly schedule and keep somewhat within its
very limited budget. Being a robot series, Astro Boy was also parti-
cularly suited to limited animation and bank cuts. As Marc Steinberg
has pointed out, the main character’s jet-propelled flying was con-
venient in its lack of need for any movement beyond a dynamic still
image dragged across a background (Steinberg 2012b: 76). Flight as
a form of locomotion detached from physical surroundings and the
minimalist futurist backgrounds of Astro Boy’s world made it eas-
ier for the animators to insert the banked cuts into various episodes
than if Astro Boy had, for example, commuted on a bicycle or swung
through his city like Spider-Man. The strong connection between the
highly influential robot anime Astro Boy and bank cuts can be seen
as one plausible reason for the connection between genre and the
ubiquity of bank cuts, which becomes particularly noticeable in the
case of EVA.
Bank in EVA
As a TV anime, particularly one from the mid-1990s, EVA utilized
bank cuts as a matter of production necessity. Their frequency incre-
ases over the course of the series’ run until the final two episodes,
which famously are comprised of little but bank cuts. Structurally,
EVA’s form lends itself well to bank cuts, featuring as it does a small
number of recurring locations and characters, as well as adopting, on
the surface level, the repetitive monster-of-the-week structure typi-
cal to parts of the robot genre. One noticeable point about the use
of bank cuts in EVA is that they are unevenly placed, that is, some
types of sequences are much more likely to use bank cuts than others.
Play it Again, Hideaki 67
Figure 2.1. The cut of Misato number of shots over and over again, mostly sourced from episodes 2
Katsuragi drinking a beer appears (the first time a battle is shown in the series) and 14 (an episode set
for the first time in episode 2.
© khara, inc. entirely within this location). Particularly noticeable as bank cuts are a
group of shots showing the command technicians turning around
and talking (Fig.2.2), while other shots are subtler and only stand
out as repeated if the viewer pays closer attention. These shots are
Play it Again, Hideaki 69
reused again and again with only the dialogue replaced, creating Figure 2.2. The cuts of the NERV
a strong sense of continuity between the different Angel attacks, technicians turning around are first
seen in episode 2. © khara, inc.
no matter their precise form or severity. In fact, as the production
progresses, the volume of bank cuts used in these sequences grows
until the final battle sequence, which contains just two new cuts
taking place in the control room (24-c234 and 24-c262), out of
about 60 cuts (GAINAX 1997e). True to form, however, even in
this late and presumably resource-strapped episode, the action
taking place outside the control room is comprised almost enti-
rely of newly animated cuts. This kind of resource distribution
falls in line with the philosophy of Mushi Pro-style limited anima-
tion, ebbing and flowing between high and low energy rather than
spreading limited resources evenly over the running time (Steinberg
2012b: 34).
What types of sequences are comprised of bank cuts also deter-
mines which are not, and in EVA’s case those are the earlier mentio-
ned action sequences and the sequences of emotional, non-comedic
interaction between characters. While that might seem obvious
at first glance—what else would an ostensible robot action series
allocate its animation resources to if not the battle sequences—
this spread is by no means universal. As mentioned above, anime
such as Sailor Moon (Satō, 1992) and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
(Tomino, 1985) repeatedly rely on bank cuts in action scenes.
70 Anime Studies
when approaching the end of the world. That is to say, even as the
narrative heads into territory far away from the then typical themes
of robot anime, the control room sequences continue unabated, emp-
hasizing the tie between the unfamiliar ground the story is treading
and its genre roots. The use of bank cuts in this case ends up being a
reinforcement of this effect: as characters, stakes and environments
change drastically, the control room stays the same, literally, because
it is depicted through the same exact cuts of animation as it was back
in episode 2.
Figure 2.3. Shinji Ikari’s form (Fig.2.3). These sequences stretch the credibility of the series’ own
morphs plasmatically in episode 25. claim to biological realism to its breaking point by highlighting the
© khara, inc.
non-indexical nature of the characters and removing their physical
bodies, either by distortion or by simply taking them away and lea-
ving only the script.
A very similar, albeit less spectacular, effect is achieved even earlier
in the series through two distinct usages of bank cuts. The first of
these, by far the most frequent, is the way very conspicuous bank cuts
are reused with new dialogue in introspective sequences, crucially and
unlike the control room sequences discussed earlier, with no serious
attempt being made to hide the fact that these cuts are indeed bank
and do not combine into a realistic diegetic whole.
Two examples of this, sharing a very noticeable number of bank
cuts, can be seen in episodes 16 and 25. Here, a cut of Asuka wearing
a towel (#16-c11, GAINAX 1997d), originally used in one of the pre-
viously mentioned sequences in Misato’s kitchen, is repurposed and
twisted in introspective sequences as the dialogue associated with the
footage changes (Fig.2.4a). In the cut’s original context, a relatively
mundane sequence in Misato’s kitchen, Asuka is talking to Misato,
scolding her for being ‘too soft’ on Shinji, and for getting together
with her ex-boyfriend, Kaji, whom Asuka herself has been dating
previously, albeit unsuccessfully. This follows immediately after
a sequence of cuts where Asuka berates Shinji for apologizing too
Play it Again, Hideaki 73
much, and one where she simply complains about the temperature Figure 2.4. The same cut of
animation is repurposed in different
of the bath water. In the wider context of the series, this is a cut
contexts and with altered dialogue
that is about Asuka herself and her need to take out her own frustra- in episode 16. © khara, inc.
tions on other people, particularly in this part of the narrative, where
her confidence has been eroded after a series of setbacks. But as the
cut is recontextualized, its meaning shifts subtly from being about
Asuka to being about Shinji’s impression of her. When the same cut
reappears later in the same episode, Shinji has been swallowed by an
Angel during battle and is speaking with a disembodied voice (that
calls itself the Shinji that exists within his mind) about his guilt and
self-blame. Then, two blatantly unrelated bank cuts of Asuka—one
wearing a T-shirt, the other the above-mentioned #16-c11—appear,
overdubbed with new dialogue of Asuka blaming Shinji for his
self-deprecation. When the cut reappears in episode 25, it is in the
narrative context of Instrumentality, a process that removes all bar-
riers between people. Shinji is sitting alone in a black room, talking to
a vision of Asuka who appears in several different bank cuts that seem
to have been reassembled with no intention of creating a believable
74 Anime Studies
continuity between them, her outfit changing with every cut back to
Shinji. This time, Asuka scolds Shinji for his loneliness and depen-
dency on others, and it is worth noting that, unlike in the previous
example, the background from Misato’s apartment has now been
replaced with the same black nothingness in front of which Shinji is
depicted (Fig.2.4b).
Importantly, and unlike the control room bank sequences, these
examples all come from sequences where a character is conversing
not with another character, but with their own impression of that
other person, something that is explicitly spelled out in the series
(during the previously mentioned sequence in episode 16) as ‘the me
in your mind.’ Shinji, the viewpoint character in these examples, is
not talking to Asuka, but to a memory of his own impressions of
her. Here, the very conspicuous use of bank cuts works to emphasize
this effect. The reuse of the same section of animation makes it very
clear that the ‘Asuka’ appearing in the sequence is not supposed to be
read as an autonomous character or individual, but an assemblage of
impressions of that person. The use of new dialogue, however, also
distinguishes this use of bank cuts from the tried-and-true trick of
replaying cuts to signify a memory. While these cuts may seem like
memories, the dialogue is new and unique to this sequence, not a
replay of anything said earlier. Likewise, the selection of cuts to cre-
ate these dialogues with what is ostensibly a character through bank
cuts highlights that Asuka is not supposed to actually be there—her
outfit, and sometimes her location, as signified by the background,
changes with every cut, breaking the illusion of realism. In the
episode 25 sequence, all cuts of Asuka are bank (except for #25-c93
and #25-c105, which show her in the same frame as Shinji), while
every shot of Shinji except one (#25-c104, recycled from #2-c-321) is
newly drawn, strongly suggesting that the effect is intentional. There
is an uncanny, malleable quality to these repeated cuts that works
to show the treacherous quality of memories and impressions of
Play it Again, Hideaki 75
Figure 2.5. Four bank cuts are ends with a new cut of Asuka screaming “No! That’s not me!”, and
recycled multiple times with immediately starts over. This sequence of cuts is replayed five times.
different voice actors reading the
same lines in episode 22. © khara, Unlike in the previous example, the lines of dialogue are unaltered.
inc. However, in these five repetitions of the same few cuts, the role of
Asuka is played not by her usual voice actress Yūko Miyamura, but
by the five actresses who play the other main female characters in
Play it Again, Hideaki 77
screaming that they are, and as such, this use of bank cuts, instead
of being simply a cheap trick, serves to call into question Asuka’s
personal identity and depict what is happening narratively through
the form of the animation itself.
It would be easy to analyze this sequence, and indeed many sequ-
ences in the last quarter of EVA, as the animation revealing its own
trick, drawing our attention to the artificial nature of everything hap-
pening on screen and the fact that Asuka is, in fact, not a person, but
simply an assemblage of painted celluloid and film trickery, voiced
by an interchangeable actress. One could even point to the readings
of EVA that emphasize its challenge to the otaku audience and claim
that the point of this sequence is to show them that the world of
anime they are so invested in is nothing but an illusion. However,
I argue that the series is doing the very opposite. After all, otaku
are fully aware of the reassembled, constructed nature of the anime
they love, and no less able to feel strong emotions for its characters
regardless (Azuma 2009). This is not a sequence where the veil is
pulled back and whatever empathy the viewer might have felt for the
character is revealed as a misdirected, sad obsession with an unfeeling
construct of which the viewer is instructed to let go. Rather, through
the narrative and voice performance, the viewer is asked to further
empathize with Asuka as her reality is unraveled, and the visual
unraveling presented through the use of bank cuts enhances that
feeling as not only Asuka’s identity, but the viewer’s perception of the
indexical connection between her component parts, sound and vision,
is distorted. If we accept that anime conventions can be used as a
referent for realism, as Ōtsuka’s concept of manga-anime realism
postulates, the distortion of this realism here portrays not simply a
construction being torn down, but reality itself being destabilized.
The viewer is expected to accept manga-anime realism as realism
and react to the unraveling of this realism as one would react to the
real world coming undone; in other words, feeling what the cha-
racters are feeling in an empathetic, inward-facing way that would
Play it Again, Hideaki 79
Conclusion
For reasons that are mostly connected to the economic realities of
anime production, EVA is a series that relies heavily on labor-sa-
ving forms of limited animation typical to anime. These include the
focus of this chapter, bank cuts, that is, cuts of animation recycled
in various new contexts often paired with new dialogue. The series
uses these in both genre-typical ways and as a deliberate tool during
certain sequences in the latter half of the narrative where they are
employed as part of a collection of breaks from the reality the series
has been constructing.
While EVA’s stylized character designs and limited movement
may be seen as less realist than photorealist CGI imagery or the
embodied acting of a Disney film, the series adheres to all three of
Ōtsuka’s anime-typical realisms. Through the employment of sci-
entific, biological and manga-anime realism, EVA constructs an
internally consistent alternative reality that the otaku spectator is
prone to accept as real. In specific sequences in the second half of
the series, however, the use of bank cuts highlights the constructed
nature of this alternate world by breaking the rules of realism that
were used to construct it. In this way, EVA is able to depict the bre-
aking down of reality itself in a particularly visceral way that echoes
and emphasizes the events of the narrative—and of the outside,
social world.
80 Anime Studies
References
Association of Japanese Animation [Nihon dōga kyōkai] (ed.). (2019).
Animēshon yōgo jiten. Tokyo: Rittorsha.
Azuma, H. (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Introduction and translation by
J. E. Abel and S. Kono).
Berndt, J. (2013). Ghostly: ‘Asian Graphic Narratives,’ Nonnonba, and
Manga. In D. Stein and J.-N. Thon (eds.), From Comic Strips to
Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic
Narrative (pp. 363–384). Berlin: deGruyter.
_______. (2018). Anime in Academia: Representative Object, Media
Form, and Japanese Studies. Arts, 7(4), 56. Retrieved from: DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7040056
Bolton, C. (2018). Interpreting Anime. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Bukatman, S. (2014). Some Observations Pertaining to Cartoon Physics;
or, the Cartoon Cat in the Machine. In K. Beckman (ed.), Animating
Film Theory (pp. 301–316). Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Cirugeda, K. (2017, 11 January). SakuQ&A: Anime Industry and Produc
tion Questions #1. [web log]. Retrieved from: https://blog.sakugabooru
.com/2017/01/11/sakuqa-anime-industry-and-production-questions-1/
Clements, J. (2013). Anime: A History. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Crafton, D. (2012). Shadow of a Mouse. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Eisenstein, S. (1986). Eisenstein on Disney. Ed. Jay Leyda. Kolkata:
Seagull Books.
GAINAX. (1997a). Shin Seiki Evangerion ekonte shū 1. Tokyo: Fujimi
Shobō.
_______. (1997b). Shin Seiki Evangerion ekonte shū 2. Tokyo: Fujimi
Shobō.
_______. (1997c). Shin Seiki Evangerion ekonte shū 3. Tokyo: Fujimi
Shobō.
Play it Again, Hideaki 81
Heike Hoffer
Beethoven in Context
Since Beethoven’s death in 1827, most people in Europe and North
America have possessed a basic familiarity with the composer’s pri-
mary traits, having learned about him through school music classes,
youth orchestra programs, television shows or even feature-length
films (Yang 2014). Beethoven’s well-known portrait, painted by
Joseph Karl Stieler in 1820, captures his demeanor perfectly, depic-
ting a scowling man with unkempt hair wearing a dark suit coat, a
crisp white shirt and a red scarf, balancing a writing pen in his hand
Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion 87
poised over the manuscript score of his Missa Solemnis. This portrait
was Beethoven’s personal favorite of the many likenesses produced in
his lifetime, and he regularly had prints of it made to distribute to his
admirers. Most notable in Stieler’s portrayal is the composer’s wild
hair, which he refused to cover with the tightly curled wigs that were
part of formal attire in 18th-century Vienna. This rebellious spirit,
found both in his tumultuous life and in his adventurous music, was
one of the composer’s most admired traits and became the subject
of many apocryphal tales. His lack of a wife or children, his failed
romance with the mysterious Immortal Beloved and his struggles to
conceal his deafness all contributed to Beethoven’s image as a suffe-
ring artist, a mindset of self-sacrifice reinforced by his famous words
from the Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802, in which he wrote:
It is this fighting spirit that Daiku singers want to channel into their
own activities, drawing on Beethoven’s example to overcome hards-
hips in both the musical arena and in their personal lives.
In Japan, the “Ode to Joy” carries a strong aural reminder of the
festive end-of-year celebrations, but also evokes themes of personal
rejuvenation connected to the New Year and serves as an anthem to
hard work, dedication to self-betterment and achieving success by
relying on the mutual support of others who are also struggling in
their own way. Modern Japanese are definitely familiar with the for-
midable image of Beethoven and the Ninth Symphony present in the
Western historical context, but they also think of Beethoven in a more
personal, intimate way as a composer whose music they sang from
their school songbooks with their classmates and whose admirable
ability to surmount his individual hardships can provide inspiration
for overcoming the trials of daily life.
in film, methods that can also be applied to anime (1987: 13). First,
meaning is generated through purely musical codes, the vocabulary
and syntax of musical discourse. These include tonality, tempo, key,
meter, structure, form, orchestration and other elements. At the risk
of oversimplifying, is the music fast or slow, loud or soft, happy or
sad, elaborate or simple, and how do these elements interact with
what appears on the screen? These components can be observed and
analyzed directly from the printed score, but are most often acqui-
red through direct listening in the case of anime because the original
scores are not available in archives or commercially. Second, mea-
ning can come from recognizing cultural musical codes, which stem
from the viewer’s reactions to the music based on their own particu-
lar cultural conventions (Anderson 2016). Viewers understand what
types of music are appropriate or inappropriate for certain settings,
know which music represents high-class or low-class values, can iden-
tify music that represents other time periods or a stereotyped view
of another culture or social group and so on. Third, meaning comes
from cinematic musical codes that govern the interaction between
music and image based on the conventions of visual media. For
example, music is impacted by techniques of sound editing and image
editing, the necessity to prioritize the dialogue, the manner in which
the position of the sound source is understood spatially and many
other factors. These three forms of meaning-making work together
to influence the viewer’s interpretation of anime’s music, images
and narrative.
When pre-existing music appears in anime, it almost always exists
alongside the images as an equal, not as a subordinate in the man-
ner of the original score. This comment is not meant to belittle the
role of the original score in the experience of watching anime, but to
convey that original scores are often treated as a secondary form of
expression working in the background to support the images, what
Gorbman refers to as the “bath of affect” that “lessens the awareness
of the frame; it relaxes the censor, drawing the spectator further into
Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion 93
There are many reasons an anime director might choose to use pre-
existing music in an anime. To give a few examples: if the piece is in
the public domain in Japan, then it might be inexpensive or even free
to use; the music can evoke ideas of culture or class that give a sense of
authenticity to the anime world; the music can give an impression of a
character’s personality; or perhaps the director feels that pre-existing
music is less risky because it is a fixed entity that he or she can con-
trol rather than depending on the whims of a composer who may not
‘get’ the director’s artistic vision. A director also chooses pre-existing
music based on the way the piece conveys meaning when removed
from its original musical context and is given a new context in the
anime. For example, in the concert setting, the “Ode to Joy” move-
ment of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is understood in the context
of the musical material that came before it as the culmination of the
three preceding movements. But when the “Ode to Joy” is excerpted
from the symphony and placed into an anime, it now stands alone
and works as a discrete entity. Again, turning to Claudia Gorbman:
What all these set-pieces have in common is not any one function of
music, or its narrative status as diegetic or nondiegetic, or its historical
provenance or form. Rather, once heard they are all choices that seem
ineluctable, at once wittily detached and emotionally appropriate and
poignant. Welding themselves to visual rhythms onscreen, they become
the music of the specific movie scene rather than the piece one may
have known before. (2006: 4)
of the anime, adding to their overall image of the piece itself. The
director takes on a substantial responsibility when using these works
because the piece will be changed forever in the mind of the viewer
through these new associations. For example, the 15th episode of
EVA includes a scene where the main character Shinji Ikari plays the
cello, performing the opening of the “Prelude” movement from J. S.
Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G major, BWV 1007. Some Japanese viewers
reported that they had been unfamiliar with the First Cello Suite and
had heard it for the first time in that particular scene, inspiring them
to find out more about Bach’s music based on their positive impres-
sions of the piece. For those viewers, Bach’s First Cello Suite became
indelibly linked to EVA as its primary context and the piece’s role in
music history was secondary, whereas the interpretation would be the
opposite for a musician who was already familiar with the First Cello
Suite and its existing 300-year history.
The various levels of knowledge brought by the viewer to the expe-
rience of hearing a piece of pre-existing music in an anime creates
an artistic risk a director must face, since there is no guarantee that
the viewer’s interpretation will be the same from person to person
given the wide range of historical and cultural associations available.
Technically, it is not necessary for the viewer to recognize the piece
at all, since they can still enjoy the music under the assumption that
it is part of the original score, but this situation is clearly not what
the director desires. Most risky for the director’s artistic vision are
personal associations. Perhaps this particular piece of pre-existing
music played when the viewer walked down the aisle on their wed-
ding day or was on the radio when their boyfriend broke up with
them, coloring their viewpoint in a way the director could not have
imagined or controlled. Conversely, the viewer recognizes that a film
is not made by chance, but through intentional acts, meaning that
they are also guessing about the director’s intent (Godsall 2019:
70–82). Foregrounding the music by using a pre-existing piece signals
to the viewer that the director is trying to communicate a meaningful
96 Anime Studies
relationship between the music and images, but the message itself may
seem ambiguous unless the director has provided an interpretation
publicly, which they rarely do.
Including pre-existing music in an anime can be a blessing and a
curse given the many factors influencing the viewer’s interpretation.
This inherent unpredictability makes EVA director Hideaki Anno’s
use of the “Ode to Joy” especially notable because he was able to
assume that Japanese viewers would possess a fairly similar set of his-
torical, cultural and personal associations for this particular piece, an
uncommon situation when interacting with a wide range of audience
members possessing many different life experiences. By using such
ubiquitously understood music, Anno could be reasonably confident
that viewers would recognize the artistic message he was trying to
convey, taking advantage of a clear line of musical communication
that is rare in anime or any type of visual media.
Scene Analyses
As mentioned previously, the musical underscore for the 24th episode
of EVA is made up entirely of portions of the fourth movement from
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Long segments of the episode contain
no music at all, drawing attention to three specific scenes where the
“Ode to Joy” is heard, and the episode contains none of Sagisu’s ori-
ginal score, temporarily abandoning the music to which the viewer
has become accustomed and highlighting the “Ode to Joy” as a key
component of interpreting the visual and narrative events. The “Ode
to Joy” theme is used to represent the character Kaworu Nagisa, who
makes his first appearance in this episode, and to signal his great
importance to the story. It is extremely uncommon for a major cha-
racter to be introduced at the very end of an anime series, but the uto-
pian vision of the “Ode to Joy” combined with Japan’s seasonal ideas
of personal renewal and the collaborative tradition of the Daiku,
communicate to the viewer that Kaworu will have substantial impact
Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion 97
has been shown using his black headphones to listen to music on his
SDAT cassette player frequently throughout the series, making him
easy to recognize here. The close-up image of his ear and headphone
emphasizes the act of listening, encouraging the viewer to take notice
of the music. In earlier episodes, Shinji’s choice of listening material
has been barely audible to the viewer, consisting of peppy, upbeat
Japanese pop songs engineered to sound thin and dull as if his headp-
hones were the sound source and the viewer is hearing the music from
the outside. Since Shinji’s preference for popular music has been esta-
blished in numerous scenes, this moment in the 24th episode comes
as a surprise because the sound coming from his headphones is not
pop music, but a recording of an orchestra performing the fourth
movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The sound is only audible
for about one and a half seconds, just long enough for the violins to
play a mere seven notes of the “Ode to Joy” theme, but the excerpt
is perfectly cut to include a portion of the theme that the viewer can
recognize immediately even in the incredibly short time frame. Shinji
opting to replace his usual Japanese pop tunes with the “Ode to Joy”
is significant because it is a clear sign of Kaworu’s developing influ-
ence over him. It is the first time in the anime that Shinji has taken an
active interest in getting to know another person and he has sought
out a cassette recording of the Ninth Symphony as a way of lear-
ning more about Kaworu, showing that Shinji is not as closed off
to the possibility of human relationships as he may claim. Following
the ideas of collaborative Daiku singing and seasonal rebirth, this
scene contains the second musical suggestion that these two boys
might be able to sustain and encourage each other as friends.
Kaworu emerges from behind a set of formidable-looking steel
doors and enters the long, grey corridor where Shinji is waiting. Shinji
was listening to “Ode to Joy” with his head down, as if concentrating
carefully on the music, but now he looks up and removes the head-
phones from his ears, blushing as Kaworu greets him. The camera
momentarily adopts Shinji’s point of view, again giving the impression
Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion 101
chorus in the final battle to save humanity. The events of the battle are
not specifically timed to match the music, nor has the music endured
any substantial cuts or adjustments to fit the images, but there are
certain points where the two elements are carefully synchronized to
great narrative effect.
The full orchestra sounds the “Ode to Joy” theme as Kaworu
lowers his mental protective shield and allows the humans’ defensive
sensors to identify him as an enemy, triggering an extended series of
quick cuts showing the flurry of intense activity in the NERV military
headquarters as the humans rush to protect themselves. This musical
statement is harmonically stable, a somewhat strange match for the
chaotic images, but the tension of the scene aligns with the music
as the piece begins to modulate to other keys, creating a sense of
harmonic instability. The moment when Kaworu passes through an
important defensive checkpoint has been timed to correspond with a
highly dissonant chord that represents artistic chaos, displaying the
true horror of his seemingly effortless progress through the suppo-
sedly impenetrable military structure.
Thus far, the underscore has only included instruments, but Shinji’s
arrival on the scene in his Eva robot is accompanied by the singers,
marking Shinji as the spokesman for humanity. The solo baritone,
singing alone, sounds his declamatory lines “O Freunde, nicht diese
Töne! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freudenvol-
lere” (Oh friends, not these tones! Rather let us sing more cheerful
and more joyful ones), as we see Kaworu descending through the
NERV military headquarters and witness Shinji, alone inside his Eva
robot, screaming angrily at Kaworu, “You betrayed me and hurt my
feelings . . . just like my father did!” Both the solo baritone and Shinji
are attempting to cope with the musical and emotional uncertainty
they are experiencing, but the baritone will be able to rely on the
help of the orchestra, chorus and other soloists, while Shinji has no
one to aid him during his struggle and is forced to endure his internal
turmoil alone.
Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion 103
The baritone sings the lyrical “Ode to Joy” theme and its famous
text “Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium . . .” (Joy,
beautiful divine spark, Daughter of Elysium . . .) as Shinji and Kaworu
come face to face and engage in combat, recalling moments from ear-
lier in the episode when this melody was a symbol of their developing
friendship. Various scenes unfold during which the humans plan to
self-destruct the NERV military headquarters and Kaworu rhapsodi-
zes about fate, all taking place as the “Ode to Joy” theme continues to
develop in the orchestra and chorus with a text about brotherhood and
utopian ideals. There is another convergence of music and image as
Kaworu unlocks the final defense system to open “Heaven’s Door” and
enters the underground chamber where he can destroy humanity. The
timing of this event coincides with the chorus and orchestra as they
rise to a fever pitch for a huge fortissimo arrival on a massive fermata
with the text “vor Gott!” (before God!), a fitting prelude to Kaworu’s
encounter with the Angel Lilith in the underground chamber, a god-
like creature that will determine humanity’s final judgement.
Beethoven’s score has remained intact so far, but now a large cut
skips over the stylized Turkish march to a choral statement of the “Ode
to Joy” found later in the movement accompanied by regal triplet
figures in the strings. This triumphant music accompanies the pro-
gression of the next scene as Shinji intensifies his attacks and Kaworu
questions the Angel Lilith about the future of humanity. The musical
arrival at Beethoven’s ponderous Andante maestoso section—scored
for men’s voices, trombones and low strings—corresponds with Shinji
using his Eva robot to smash his way into the underground chamber,
after which he approaches Kaworu menacingly and grabs him with
the robot’s massive armored hand. Trombones were an uncommon
instrument for use in the symphony in Beethoven’s era, but they were
a mainstay of the opera world as the harbingers of the underworld
and the presence of death, a role Beethoven calls on here. The text con-
cerns “Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt” (This kiss for the whole world),
the idea that a loving God will provide salvation to all mankind,
104 Anime Studies
but the sound of the trombones serves as a reminder that a cold death
awaits anyone who does not receive this blessing. The trombones and
their ominous underworld sounds pervade this entire scene, during
which Kaworu rejects his destiny and begs Shinji to kill him to save
humanity, making Kaworu’s death an event that is foretold in the
orchestra long before it takes place on screen.
Finally, this extended battle scene reaches one of the most excep-
tional moments in anime history, a still shot lasting an entire minute
in duration that pauses the images at the most climactic point in the
action. We see a single shot of Shinji’s Eva robot clutching the tiny
body of Kaworu in its hand as the Andante maestoso section conti-
nues to play, forcing the viewer to focus their full attention on what
they are hearing and engage with this musical commentary on the
events of the narrative. This particular moment in the Andante maes-
toso contains a textual assurance of the existence of a kind, forgiving
God, with choral passages that are hymn-like and reflective sung in
stately dotted rhythms over insistent, shimmering figures in the strings
in their upper register, reminiscent of the glimmering canopy of stars
mentioned in Schiller’s poem. It is a spellbinding moment in the symp-
hony, with rich harmonies and brilliant orchestration that comprises
some of Beethoven’s most beautiful music. But this passage is not
the most famous music from the Ninth Symphony and is likely not a
section that most viewers recognize, so why is it used to underscore
this pivotal scene?
Imagine how this scene might be interpreted if it was instead under-
scored by the bombastic finale section from the end of the movement,
where Beethoven pounds away enthusiastically on the tonic chord for
an unmistakably jubilant finish. By the final measures of the symp-
hony, everything has reached its logical conclusion musically: all the
themes have been developed properly, dissonances are revolved, har-
monies are stabilized and returned to the tonic key and everything is
predictably orderly. This well-ordered closing material makes a won-
derfully satisfying end to the musical journey of the Ninth Symphony,
Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion 105
but highlighting such tidied-up music during the still shot would
shift the focus away from the psychology of the main character to
the abstract idea of ‘winning,’ retreating into the anime genre’s well-
worn story of an insecure boy who pilots his giant robot to victory
with the help of some cute girls and crazy classmates. These types of
conventional anime tropes are what the EVA series has actively tried
to subvert, meaning that such an ending would go against the overall
thrust of the series and render the controversial 25th and 26th episo-
des, during which Shinji finds forgiveness and accepts the love and
support of his friends and family, completely unnecessary.
Instead, the viewer is presented with Beethoven’s deeply introspec-
tive, religious-sounding music to foster a meditation on the profound
events that have taken place in the series. The focus is on the internal:
loss, acceptance, grief, forgiveness and all of the other complex emo-
tions EVA has explored. The viewer is asked to consider what is tragic
and personally life-changing for Shinji and the other characters, who
have endured very real struggles in their lives, much like Beethoven
did. We share the full depth of Shinji’s last private, intimate moment
with his first true friend and realize how hard-earned mankind’s sal-
vation from the Angels really is in terms of the personal costs to the
survivors. Beethoven’s Andante maestoso is a glorious requiem to
the living and dead that offers the viewer the opportunity to cont-
emplate the many emotions generated in this series by means of the
powerful musical underscore, an experience that is far more meaning-
ful to the human spirit than reveling in a clichéd act of winning.
Conclusion
Kaworu’s connection to the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony clearly has a substantial impact on the scope and inter-
pretation of EVA. Of course, the profound music of the Andante
maestoso that accompanies the culminating still-shot scene also
serves as a requiem for Kaworu, honoring his choice to sacrifice
106 Anime Studies
References
Anderson, L. (2016). Beyond Figures of the Audience: Towards a Cultural
Understanding of the Film Music Audience. Music, Sound, and the
Moving Image, 10(1), 25–51.
Brasor, P. (2010, 24 December). Japan Makes Beethoven’s Ninth No. 1
for the Holidays. The Japan Times Online. Retrieved from: https://www
.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2010/12/24/music/japan-makes-beethovens
-ninth-no-1-for-the-holidays/
Brown, R. S. (1994). Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Candaele, K. (Producer and Director). (2013). Following the Ninth:
In the Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony [Motion Picture].
Venice, CA: Battle Hymns Productions, LLC.
_______ & Mitchell, G. (2012). Journeys with Beethoven: Following the
Ninth, and Beyond. New York: Sinclair Books.
Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony and Neon Genesis Evangelion 109
The viewer also considered reasons for the difference between the two
versions of Shinji:
Undoubtedly, An is an equally talented and skillful voice actress.
So, I believe that the Japanese and the Korean versions differed not
merely due to technical matters. Rather, An’s performance of inno-
cence may have been influenced by the understanding of anime in
South Korean society, which was different from that in Japan. South
Korean society was not familiar with the concept of a young-adult
audience taking anime seriously and thinking deeply about characters
5. Regarding the information on and stories.7
Mongillo and Lucindo, see https://www.
huffpost.com/entry/shes-changing-the To understand her comments more precisely, it is useful to consider
-game-ca_b_8193014 and https://tvtropes
how the opening song of EVA was modified in the localization pro-
.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/Neon
GenesisEvangelion. cess. Although the 1996 Korean version adopted the Japanese song,
6. Personal interview with the author Zankoku na tenshi no tēze (A Cruel Angel’s Thesis), the lyrics and the
on 25 November 2018. visuals were changed completely. The Japanese version starts with the
7. Ibid. line “Zankoku na tenshi no yō ni, shōnen yo, shinwa ni nare,” which
Voice Actresses Rising 117
translates into English as “Young boy, like a cruel angel’s thesis, live
up to be a legend” (A.D. Vision, 1997), or “Like a cruel angel, become
a legend, young boy” (Netflix, 2019). However, in Korean, “cruel”
was replaced by “brave,” and words that manifest a clear dichotomy
between good and evil, such as “justice” and “hero,” were added,
words that can be traced back to the opening songs of classic robot
anime series of the 1960s and the 1970s: Tetsujin 28-gō (Iron Man
No. 28, or Gigantor, 1963), Majingā Zetto (Mazinger Z, 1972) and
Gettā Robo (Getter Robo, 1974). And it is precisely this connotation
that reveals the Korean distributor’s marketing strategy, namely, to
categorize EVA as a title aimed at children. The re-edited visuals of
the opening reinforce that orientation: Shots from the Japanese ope-
ning and from some of the episodes were conjoined and female nudes
removed (which in the Japanese version appear only as a silhouette,
but with an emphasized outline of the bust).
In contrast to South Korea, anime audiences in 1990s Japan
included a considerable number of young adults. The coming of age
of anime as a young-adult media was epitomized by Uchū senkan
Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato). In March 1975, the TV series
which had started the previous year was cancelled due to low audi-
ence ratings, but dedicated viewers in their late teens to early 20s
achieved a re-broadcast by sending letters to the production com-
pany and TV stations. And when an animated feature film of Space
Battleship Yamato was produced in 1977, it became a huge box office
hit. Thus, Space Battleship Yamato made visible young adult audien-
ces’ serious and strong interest in anime.8 From then on, they became
a constant factor for anime productions to reckon with, and they led
to intricate narratives with detailed settings and psychologically sub-
stantiated characters. This was the context in which EVA and, with it,
Shinji emerged. I now proceed to analyze in detail how voice actors
8. On the campaigns by the young adult
accommodated young adult viewers’ expectations, and how they refi- audience, see Nakatani (1982), as well
ned their craft. as Nakatani and Kushino (1982).
118 Anime Studies
female viewers. In a fan voting for characters by Animage, the anime Figure 4.1. “Kongetsu no Best 10
version of Kurama was rated one of the most popular characters in Kyara” Animage (#196). © Tokuma
Shoten.
the 1990s (Fig.4.1).10
This led to Ogata acquiring star status. Certainly, having Ogata
play the role of Kurama followed a convention of anime casting
10. According to the monthly character
that began with Astro Boy. But, at the same time, Ogata subverted ranking in Animage, Kurama remained
the convention by giving rise to a way of voicing boy characters in the top 20 throughout the 1990s.
122 Anime Studies
The fans’ reception of Ogata as Kurama did not depend on a simple Figure 4.2. Animage (#186).
realism that lays emphasis on matching actors and characters in terms © Tokuma Shoten.
of sex and age.
Sociologist Sonoko Azuma’s analysis of the relationship between
Takarazuka performers and their fans can be helpful in understanding
Ogata’s reception by female viewers. In the Takarazuka context,
fans support male impersonators (otokoyaku) and enjoy their
performance of male roles knowingly. Azuma points out that four
124 Anime Studies
layers construct the figure of a Takarasienne for the fans: her role-
name existence, her stage-name existence, her nickname existence
and her real-name existence:
the gap between the two, but utilized it to construct her star image as
an effect of interweaving the four layers.
In March 1994, Ogata released her first CD with songs and narra-
tion, entitled Half Moon. The CD includes a boy-meets-girl story in
which Ogata plays both roles. She had already become adept in play-
ing both girl and boy roles, for example, in Yū Yū Hakusho, where
she also voiced several minor girl characters. In October 1994, Ogata
revealed that she wanted to express the two sides of her mind: mascu-
line and feminine (Animage 1994: 64). Her portrait on the CD cover
was likely to help fans understand. In her paratextual relation to her
audience, she did not hide being female; rather, she deliberately fore-
grounded it. Apparently, for her, the image of the Takarasienne pro-
ved useful as a performative model.
readerships establishing a strong and deep connection” (Yoshida Figure 4.3. Animage (#211).
2017: 12). Anime magazines were particularly specific since they © Tokuma Shoten.
addressed a youth subculture, and precisely the limitedness of their
subject incited readers’ active participation. It was this participa-
tion by female magazine readers that helped construct Ogata’s star
persona in correspondence with the characters she voiced. Her
fans realized that she and her characters were different. However,
as implied by the critical keyword Takarasienne in Ogata’s first
128 Anime Studies
and Rei, and he repeatedly asks Asuka to help him. However, she is in
a coma and cannot respond. Driven by anxiety, he grabs her shoulder.
The sheet turns over, and her naked breasts are revealed. This is fol-
lowed by shots of the electric light on the ceiling, the monitor screen
showing the cardiac rate, a droplet pouch, and the locked door knob,
and it is accompanied by the sound of repeated shallow and brief
breaths. When the breaths stop, there is a sharp groaning sound, and
Shinji’s palm is covered with white cum. This act of masturbation is
one of the most critical scenes in voice acting history because of the
challenge it posed to an actress voicing boys. Ogata controlled her
breath skillfully and conveyed the physical immediacy of adolescent
Shinji. One Japanese female viewer commented:
Conclusion
Ogata’s performance in EVA was groundbreaking, but there were
more factors involved than just talent. First, anime had matured as a
young-adult media with an increasing interest in voice actors. Second,
this interest was boosted by newly launched anime magazines, where
the voice actors’ bodies became visible in photos. Third, voice actors
responded proactively to fans’ demands, expectations and engage-
ment, gaining star personae that went beyond characters of their own
performance and construction. In an environment where these factors
met, Ogata articulated the discrepancy between her characters and
herself to the audience, and she embodied it as her star persona with
the support of her fans. Consequently, she was able to endow a tan-
gible, even sexual, presence to the anime characters. As such, she sub-
verted long-standing conventions of voice acting in anime to create a
new form. Her performance and multilayered stardom based on the
interaction with her fans deserves to be counted as one of the acoustic
achievements of EVA in the 1990s.
Twenty-five years have passed since Ogata gained fame and popu-
larity. Today, the popularity of voice actresses is utilized differently in
idol-themed anime, works that narrate the life and dreams of idol pro-
tagonists and generate profits by means of live shows that display voice
actors’ visual similarity with their young and beautiful characters.14
Under these conditions that require visual coincidence between the
voice actresses and the characters, EVA assumes a new critical meaning,
because Ogata’s stardom went in the opposite direction, that is, beyond
visual similarity. Her innovation still calls for exploring the unexhau-
sted possibilities of voice acting and anime expression, which can be
14. The huge commercial success of Love
Live! (since 2010) demonstrates that found in the deliberate discrepancy between the visual and the acoustic.
live shows by voice actresses in the role
of characters is beneficial for the anime
References
industry. The market for live entertain-
ment including concerts by voice actors Animage. (1993a). On Air. Animage, 178, 119.
has purportedly expanded 2.5 times from
2013 to 2017 (Association of Japanese _______. (1993b). Aoyama nichōme monogatari: Ogata-san wa seiyūkai
Animation 2018: 4). no Takarasienne? Animage, 186, 138–139.
Voice Actresses Rising 131
Performing Selfhood
Neon Genesis Evangelion (EVA) appears to have an obsession with
selfhood. Such a concentrated focus on selfhood is made explicit, for
example, in the TV series’ enigmatic, but optimistic, final episodes
25 and 26. This emphasis is also evident in how the anime’s narra-
tive directly connects the protagonist’s examination of his selfhood,
something that would initially appear intimate and localized, to the
results of global destruction. While the direct linkage between perso-
nal introspection and large-scale catastrophe is taken up throughout
the TV series, it is perhaps the clearest in the ending of the feature
film The End of Evangelion (below, EoE). Much darker in tone, it
lacks the positivity of the TV series ending. Despite their overlap with
regard to depicting an introspection of selfhood, on closer inspection,
these two endings present differing concepts of selfhood and relations
to the world.
How to cite this book chapter:
Often, discussions on EVA’s approach to selfhood focus on the
Suan, S. 2021. Objecthood at the End
human subject. Frequently explored through an explicitly psychoana- of the World: Anime’s Acting and its
lytical framework, there is a general tendency to provide readings Ecological Stakes in Neon Genesis
Evangelion. In: Santiago Iglesias, J. A.
of the protagonist Shinji’s (among other characters’) psychological and Soler Baena, A. (Eds.). Anime
journey. Indeed, EVA features overtly Oedipal themes (Shinji’s rela- Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to
tionship with his father, and his mother’s clone, Rei) and an abun- Neon Genesis Evangelion. Pp. 135–180
Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
dance of visual imagery that reflects ‘the act of seeing’ (an emphasis DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bbp.f.
on globular and eyeball imagery), which readily lends itself to such License: CC-BY 4.0
136 Anime Studies
interpretations (cf. Endō 1997; Kotani 1997). To cite one such reading
by Tōru Endō, the general thrust of the narrative into the psyche—
both into the mysterious architecture of the headquarters of NERV
(the organization building the Eva units), and Shinji’s mind—readily
invites the consideration of larger, philosophical questions that deal
with pressing issues of selfhood (1997: 83). This movement inwards
becomes central to EVA’s association with the hikikomori phenome-
non, where people shut themselves off from the world by never leaving
their homes. One standard reading is to see the ‘pulling into oneself’
as indicative of hikikomori and otaku practices, and the EVA endings as
directly attacking these by viciously exposing their psychology.1 So
great is this approach toward psychoanalytically analyzing EVA
that Tsunehiro Uno critiques it, regarding the “pulling into oneself/
psychological” (hikikomori/shinrishugi) tendency in readings of EVA
as emblematic of a general mode of intellectual thought at the time
(Uno 2008: 69–71).
However, many such readings tend to elide a focus on anime’s per-
formance as a media-form. In particular, it is important to consider
that in animation there may be different ways of performing self-
hood. It is not simply that someone (or something) exists and acts
as their selves naturally, but how they act (or not) can be regarded
as the attestation of their selfhood (or denial of it), all expressed
through their movement. That is to say, the performance of move-
ment in animation constitutes the moving object as an actor. Indeed,
this capacity of animation, according to Ursula Heise, enables anima-
tion to depict a world where human subjects and non-human objects
are all seen as active agents with agency and selfhood, allowing us
to “inquire into their ‘objecthood’” (2014: 303). Although Heise
1. Takashi Murakami features EVA
prominently in his essay in the cata- notes that anthropocentric views of selfhood can be mapped onto
logue for his Little Boy exhibit (2005). the active object, animation still allows an exploration of alternative
It should be noted that hikikomori and
otaku may overlap, but they are also dis- modes of existence through the direct visualization of objects moving
tinct from each other. as actors.
Objecthood at the End of the World 137
acting that are called into focus in the TV series ending, as if exami-
ning the very idea of performing selfhood through figurative acting
in anime’s media-form. This effectively visualizes anime’s tendency to
embrace a type of selfhood that might be called ‘objecthood,’ a tenta-
tive term for a mode of existence that builds on Heise’s view of active
objects and Timothy Morton’s conception of ‘objects.’2 Objecthood
can be considered as a type of selfhood (or rather, a mode of exis-
tence enacted as a type of selfhood) that is non-human (but does not
exclude humans), whereby one is constituted as an object made up of
other objects and in relation to other objects—in this case, a character
constituted by figurative acting codes from other characters.
It should be noted that there may be other ways of performing
selfhood than figurative and embodied acting, but both are promi-
nently featured in EVA. Moreover, though these modes of performing
selfhood are usually enacted in their extremes; they are not found
in complete isolation, but rather in a tense relationship with each
other—one always implicated in the other, even if just barely: embo-
died performance usually employs movements that are individualized,
but must retain something recognizable (and thus repeated/repeata-
ble) for the gesture to be legible (e.g., a smile, tears); otherwise it is
so ‘individual’ it is overly abstract, isolated and unintelligible. Not all
figurative codes are performed exactly the same, making them speci-
fic to their instance of enactment. This mutual implication is evident
in EVA, where we do not find a strict division of types of selfhood,
but a general retention of their mutual implication, keeping taut the
tensions of these modes of performance in/of animation for humans
and non-humans.
Throughout the EVA series, modernity’s assumptions are turned
on their head, as objects of human creation, the Eva units, boldly display
their agency: they exhibit performances of embodied acting, appea-
ring with the same autonomy as human individuals. At the same time, 2. This also includes reference to the
humans are broken into fragments, their psyche examined in parts as ideas of Bruno Latour.
140 Anime Studies
they delve into their interiors to find only more parts of other characters,
interrogating the constitutive codes of figurative acting. These two
modes of acting are mutually implicated throughout the EVA series,
favoring one extreme or the other in different sequences as the anime
probes their respective tendencies toward each type of selfhood (indi-
vidualism and objecthood), even though one tendency is never com-
pletely subsumed by the other.
As if a culmination of exploring the extreme ends of these tendencies
in the performance of selfhood, the TV series and film endings can
be read as inverse images of each other. The former lands on the exa-
mination and embrace of objecthood via the operations of figura-
tive acting, whereas the latter depicts the dynamics of the extreme
tendency of embodied acting, focusing on human individualism, and
directly tying such a selfhood to the ecological catastrophe of the end
of the world. Leaning heavily toward the tendencies of the extreme of
figurative acting, the TV series ending presents a sense of selfhood
that resembles the operations of a more ecological mode of existence
close to Morton’s conception of objects. For Morton, this is needed
to counteract the modern, human-focused autonomous individualism
which carries with it disastrous ecological consequences: maintaining
a strict sense of inside ‘human me’ and outside ‘environment’ (com-
posed of non-human objects), the human individual subject is seen
as in control of non-active objects; consequently, pollution or global
warming do not actually affect humans, as they are simply external
objects that cannot act.
Instead, Morton sees humans and non-humans both as active
objects, each consisting of “a potentially infinite regress of other
entities” (2017: 105). Here, inside and outside are thoroughly blur-
red, because ‘I’ am both inside the ‘environment’ and the ‘environ-
ment’ is inside ‘me.’ This means that the pollution is not ‘out there,’
it is in the air I breathe in my lungs; it is me, in some sense, just as
the biosphere is what I depend on to exist. In such a configuration,
Objecthood at the End of the World 141
Angel like a carnivorous mammal in a humanoid figure. Much of the Figure 5.1. Eva-01 going berserk
savagery of the Eva unit is articulated through the bestial movements in episode 19, presenting a savage
autonomy through embodied
performed, making it a prime example of embodied acting. acting. © khara, inc.
In this mode of performance in/of animation, “animators perform
movement to perform emotion,” effectively giving the impression that
the animated bodies are expressing themselves through their speci-
144 Anime Studies
fic gestures and actions (Crafton 2013: 44). Embodied acting is thus
‘introverted,’ and tends toward the constitution of modern individu-
als that appear to provide a sense of depth in their enactment of emo-
tional movement (2013: 36). Such a performance is partly afforded
by full animation, which, according to Thomas Lamarre, employs
“closed compositing,” hiding the gap between the layers of the cellu-
loid images, a tendency toward the movement-into-depth of cinema-
tism and, in character animation, a heightened sense of sentiment in
character acting (2009: 200). Historically, it is through Disney’s inno-
vations in the 1930s that embodied acting is developed, whereby the
‘fullness’ of the animated movement is used to give the impression
that it is an individualized actor whose inner emotions and drives
command the movement that is expressed externally.
This is heavily indebted to Konstantin Stanislavski’s acting method,
where an actor internalizes a character and expresses their personality
not just in words, but in the manner in which they execute actions
and gestures. Disney in fact had his animators take acting lessons and
observe human actors trained in this mode of acting (Crafton 2013:
37–41). What occurs in embodied performance is a manner of con-
trolling the body to operate through the insertion of individualism by
creating interiority. The emphasis on control is similar for both human
and animated actors. Embodied performance gives the impression of
naturalness, a sense of internal motivation that appears to organically
originate from inside the character expressed in its movement, and
consequently hides how trained and constructed the production of
that movement is (by actor or animator). This applies even if that
character is controlled by someone else, even if the movement will
emphasize that their ‘original self’ is somehow under another’s con-
trol due to the discrepancy between the ‘original’ and ‘controlled’
movements of the character.
All in all, the effect of embodied acting is one of a character with
a sense of emotional depth, that is, emoting from the interior, but
expressed externally in the movement. The point to stress is that
Objecthood at the End of the World 145
by other objects. At the same time, one object is specific, while still
retaining the necessity of all the other objects that constitute it. In
Morton’s model, even if a person were to dig down deep, they might
find something that is not themselves, not theirs, and even non-human,
because they are entirely comprised of objects, all the way up and
down—a self that is constituted of object-parts, making them quite
distinct from the sharp inside/outside boundaries of the anthropo-
centric individual. Figurative acting executes this in a somewhat literal
way: the external object-parts of the figurative codes (or in Azuma’s
terminology, moe-elements) are on the characters; they are ‘shared’ by
many characters, making each character somehow part of the others,
but also distinct. For instance, each character has a particular ‘perso-
nality’ because of their codified gestures and expressions, which are
cited from other characters who enacted them in prior instances.
An example of objecthood can be found in the human-looking cha-
racter of Rei Ayanami, often treated in the narrative as an object in
the modern sense: without agency and to be acted upon—scientifically
produced by humans, even replaceable, as she is one of a series of clo-
nes of Shinji’s mother.5 In this sense, she is an emblem of objecthood
and figurative acting: a copy, somehow not human, and built through
the repetition of codes to constitute a reserved personality. In terms
of selfhood, she would then have the most overtly complex problem:
how does she differentiate herself from the other clones of her? Rei
even addresses this issue in a monologue on her existence in episode
14 (12:01–14:07), where she first mentions multiple random objects
(mountains, skies, flowers, people, Eva units, blood, etc.), then ques-
tions what humanity is, and eventually states that she is an object
(“kono buttai wa jibun”—“this object is me”)6 (Fig.5.2).
Toward the end of this sequence, when Rei is supposedly delving 5. For the most extensive feminist read-
into herself, she says that she feels someone else is there, and then ing of EVA, see Kotani (1997).
names a number of the other characters accompanied by their ima- 6. All translations from the ADV release
ges. This can be read as a very literal examination of how figurative of the EVA DVDs.
154 Anime Studies
Figure 5.2. Rei’s monologue about acting works, as there are always elements of other characters in/on
her selfhood in episode 14. Her the character. In a way, her declaration that she is “a vessel for a soul”
characteristic (lack of) expression
shown on the top left. © khara, inc. is somewhat accurate: her body contains (or rather, has on its surface)
the codes of others. Interestingly, Rei’s reliance on relations and lin-
kages is directly expressed, as when she is asked in episode 6 why she
pilots the Eva unit, and she responds by saying “kizuna,” or “bonds.”
The word kizuna contains elements of emotional ties, of relationship
Objecthood at the End of the World 155
of oneself that are also not parts, that subscendently wiggle around all
by themselves, one might go crazy. (2017: 160)
Indeed, the fear of the self completely disaggregating into parts lies
at the edge of figurative acting, and the brink of madness is always
threatening to seep through in these scenes, as it does throughout the
series and films.
Ultimately, the torrent of imagery and Shinji’s dialogue seem to
move to the side of figurative acting, toward objecthood. But in a
strange way, this recognition and acceptance of an object-oriented sel-
fhood occurs through engagement with embodied acting and the indi-
vidual’s insistence on depth, only to realize that the depth returns us
to the surface: Shinji’s insistence on his individuality is accompanied
by the crude image of a human that seems to be endlessly repeated as
it zooms in on itself, like a fractal, before Shinji morphs into the parts
of his face, followed by the other characters refuting his claims regar-
ding individualism (Fig.5.3). It is as if, in an effort to reconcile the
tensions between surface and depth, figurative and embodied, there
was a brief attempt to think of a different kind of depth, a fractal
type of depth that seems to constantly rise up into itself even as we
descend downwards.
It is important to note the dialogue at this moment, spoken by
different female characters: “By recognizing the differences between
yourself and others, you shape who you are. The very first other
person is your mother. Your mother is a person separate from you.”
Significantly, this segment raises the point of a person’s relationship to
their mother, a topic often ignored by (sexist) conceptions of individu-
alism because it radically undermines the strict inside/outside and self/
other divisions presupposed by individualism (see Morton 2017: 2).
Instead, one person is born from another person, literally originating
from inside another, dependent on the (female) other, yet somehow
distinct. This is reflected in the next lines, where Shinji states, “Right,
I’m me. But it’s also certain that the other people shape my mind
Objecthood at the End of the World 159
(kokoro) as well.” What finally results from these exchanges is a sense Figure 5.3. Shinji’s movement
of figurative acting which affords an organization of a selfhood that through abstract embodied acting
(top left), strange symbols (top
is constituted by its connection to others, but one which does not right), moving through a fractal
deny itself its particularity: Shinji is a character who is distinct from image of the human (bottom left)
and his subsequent subsendence into
the others, even as those others are also part of what constitutes him.
parts (bottom right). © khara, inc.
After this sequence, Asuka exclaims that Shinji finally understands,
and the scene suddenly switches back to fully colored animated imagery,
160 Anime Studies
Rei as a character produced by such codes is emphasized here in the Figure 5.4. Rei’s display of
‘alternative everyday’ by the fact that her general design is the same uncharacteristic figurative acting
codes for her character in episode
(although, significantly her costume is different, with an added vest 26. © khara, inc.
on her uniform), but she performs certain figurative codes that are,
for lack of a better phrase, uncharacteristic of her previous character:
specifically the running with bread in her mouth (a common code
for lateness and sloppiness), arched-eyes and cheery smile during her
162 Anime Studies
introduction to the class and an explosively angry face when she accu-
ses Shinji at the end of the sequence. These produce a different charac-
ter by their combination, emphasizing that the design can remain the
same, but the specific aggregation of codes marks a shift. As such, a
starkly different particularity is created for the ‘alternative everyday’
version of Rei’s character, highlighting one of the ambiguities at the
heart of figurative acting: Is the character producing the expressions,
or are the codes producing the character? Furthermore, why should
this version not be considered as another addition to Rei’s cumulative
combination of codes?
While the change is sudden, rapid switches to different emotio-
nal registers are featured constantly in anime (even in EVA, as in
Misato switching from joyful to scolding in episode 1). Yet, in the
case of Rei, there is no narrative justification, where different emotio-
nal codes are slowly accumulated to prepare for a shift in character.
Moreover, the change is not just one or two different expressions, but
appears comprehensive, a complete transformation in character type,
jarring in comparison to the earlier version of Rei (who exhibited
her normal register just moments before in the episode), as if it were
an all-too-abrupt violation of her perceived totality as an individual
character. In consideration of this, Rei’s stark change can be seen as
approaching a limit of particularity, and exposing a continued reli-
ance on the framework of individualized characters, even in anime.
The performance of Rei, then, might not be so much a betrayal or
violation, but rather an example of the potential for both particula-
rity and radical change, even in a mode of performance that relies
on repetition; at the same time, it displays the limits of a self that is
constituted by figurative acting, which cannot completely subsume
any individualizing tendencies.
After these scenes with Rei, Shinji reflects on the events and says,
“This is also a possible world. One possibility that’s in me. The me
right now is not exactly who I am. All sorts of me’s are possible.” This
Objecthood at the End of the World 163
Figure 5.5. Asuka’s adept piloting clashing as they wield heavy objects. Each action evinces the weight
of her Eva-unit in End of EVA, of the swings, of their blowbacks, a sloppiness to the grappling that
displaying weighty movements
through embodied acting. © khara, results in broken and severed limbs; a viciously efficient dance of exe-
inc. cutions as Asuka struggles against the other Eva units while she runs
out the clock on her Eva unit’s on-board energy. But unlike the scene
in episode 19 where Eva-01 goes berserk, here her unit stops when
it runs out of energy, and the embodied performance evinces Asuka’s
deftness in operating (controlling) the non-human Eva-02 unit (albeit
only after she accepts its idiosyncrasies as an object with some con-
nection to her mother—another instance of the human haunting the
non-human Eva unit).
The above-described embodied performance is one of the stand-out
scenes of the film, and a preview of the focus on human individualism
Objecthood at the End of the World 173
that defines the filmic ending. As distinct from the TV ending, instead
of the helpful guidance of others in Shinji’s mind, in EoE when we
delve into the depths of Shinji’s interior to find others, the poten-
tial horror (from the perspective of individualism) of figurative acting
in the idea of other things inside of an individual is exposed, and in
the process, moves toward the tendencies of individualism. This is
succinctly displayed in the sequences of Asuka and Shinji in Misato’s
apartment, images which are part of Shinji’s psyche visualized. In con-
trast to the lighter domestic scenes of the TV series ending, Asuka
is aggressive, berating Shinji. Such hostility elicits a violent response
from Shinji, who chokes Asuka, and spirals into his expression of
feelings of complete isolation. Images of the other characters flash
across the screen at dizzying speeds, accompanied by a torrent of
many random, sometimes abstract, images. In addition, many of the
scenes of lush, complex animation feature grotesque, confusing ima-
gery, such as the mutating Eva units. The attempt to produce indi-
vidualism despite anime’s reliance on codified expressions seems to
slip into the extreme separation of individualism on the one hand, or
resort to codes that no one will understand on the other. This illegi-
bility in some senses applies to the entire film itself, which features so
much surreal imagery that it is almost impossible to decipher through
traditional techniques.
In some ways, this does resemble the strategies and imagery of the
TV ending, but in EoE a different spatial organization arises: the divi-
sion between internal and external. This inside/outside separation is
not present in the TV series ending, where the diegesis stays reso-
lutely inside of Shinji to have him subscend into various parts and
then get reconstituted, in the process disclosing and emphasizing the
interrelated operations of figurative acting. In contrast, in the sequ-
ences of EoE where we delve into Shinji’s psyche, the separation
between internal mental state and external world operates closer to
the spatial dynamics of embodied acting’s individualism: the interior
is the source of actions that have effects on the external world.
174 Anime Studies
latter option (fusion and dissolution of the self) becomes literal for
Shinji in ‘the sea of LCL’ where all barriers between people are erased,
and the former (isolation) can be seen in the reinstatement of boun-
daries between people. Moreover, Thouny’s description draws atten-
tion to how, despite the apparent visualization of a fully merged and
dissolved self, the choice with which Shinji is faced can be read as still
operating within the bounds of modern, individualistic selfhood—
that is, Shinji must actually choose between two different types of
individualism: an individualism of isolation or an individualism of a
singular (but merged) whole.
Such a choice between individualisms also recalls Morton’s concep-
tions of contrasting ideas of holism and their relationships to indivi-
duals. What was discussed above as objecthood would correlate with
what Morton calls “implosive holism” (the whole subscends into its
parts; the whole is less than the sum of its parts). But this is only one
version of holism. According to Morton, individualisms can be con-
ceived as different types of “explosive holism,” whereby the whole is
seen as greater and/or more real than the sum of its parts. Morton fur-
ther explains that there are variances to explosive holism, describing
them in three positions: (1) “the whole is more real than the parts”;
(2) “the whole is greater than the parts”; and (3) “the whole is less
real than the parts.”
For Morton, the first and second explosive holisms can easily slip
into each other and indeed, this is evident in the result of the Human
Instrumental Project in EoE (the completely dissolved selves in the ‘sea
of LCL’): the first position—the whole is more real than its parts (the final
configuration of humanity)—easily extends into the second position—
the whole is greater than its parts (it is most important that all huma-
nity merge into this final configuration). The third position (the whole
is less real than the parts) Morton connects to neoliberalism, its valori-
zation of the individual at the expense of the whole: “There is no such
thing as society [only individuals],” as Margaret Thatcher, proponent
176 Anime Studies
End of EVA:
Humans merged
INDIVIDUALISMS
Shinji’s choice
End of EVA:
Individual’s borders
Objecthood
Figure 5.6. An adapted version of of neoliberalism, famously said (2017: 107). This is the direction that
Morton’s logic square of explosive Shinji moves toward in the EoE, choosing to maintain individuality,
and implosive holism, depicting
the choice between individualisms to prop up borders around people (the third position), instead of dis-
that Shinji must make in End of solving one another into a soupy mass of humanity’s merging (the
EVA: either choose between the
slippage between the first and second positions) (Fig.5.6).
first and second positions’ merging
of humanity or the third position’s Thus, in EoE, there are only the varying options of explosive holism
individual borders (Morton 2017: from which Shinji must choose. Gone is the subscendence into various
107). License: CC BY 4.0.
parts. Instead, there is an attempt at working through individualism,
specifically at keeping up the borders between people. For Morton,
these explosive holisms are dangerous and ecologically destructive.
Objecthood at the End of the World 177
They allow for either the replacement of some cog in a larger machine
(“let that species die, another will take its place”), because the whole
(the ecosystem) is greater or more real than the parts (positions 1 and
2); or it draws lines around things in advance (the human individual
and its inside/outside borders) and actively operates on the non-hu-
man outside that border, ignoring the larger effects because the whole
is less real (position 3). These are ecologically devastating concepts
and, indeed, the former (positions 1 and 2: the whole is greater than
and/or more real than its parts) in EVA (SEELE) end up with com-
plete evisceration of the Earth. Even Shinji’s choice to seemingly end
or ‘reverse’ the end of the world by choosing individualism still leaves
us on a dead Earth. In this way, EoE literally enforces the spatial
dimensions of embodied acting, the inside/outside divide, the repro-
duction of borders, and ties this to the fate of all humanity and plane-
tary destruction in general.
In this sense, then, the film reveals the shortcomings of modern,
anthropocentric individualism, exposing its inability to address ecolo-
gical devastation by making an overt connection to the conception of
a strictly discrete self, individual decision and external global destruc-
tion, while simultaneously displaying the ineffectiveness of such
agential assumptions of individualistic selfhood to enact macro scale
change. For instance, the moments when Shinji chooses to reinstate
the barriers between people are presented with a somewhat positive
inflection; it seems Shinji has saved his individual selfhood and huma-
nity by extension, but this is only to unveil the twist: Shinji floats to
the surface of an already dead world, where humanity has caused the
end of life on a planetary scale. The film thus takes the logic of
the autonomous individual, fully responsible for his (or her) actions
on the world to its logical extreme and yet undermines it completely:
on the one hand, it is a personal decision that leads to a massive,
global disruption (“just one person can change the world”); on the
other, Shinji’s decisions do little to change the actual outcome as he
is alone with only Asuka at the end of the world. While we may feel
178 Anime Studies
References
Azuma, H. (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Introduction and translation by
J. E. Abel and S. Kono).
Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay
in Phenomenonology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40,
519–531.
_______. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.”
London: Routledge.
_______. (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New
York: Routledge.
Objecthood at the End of the World 179
in Central and South America some years later, only for cable and
satellite thematic channels (Canal 22 Mexico, 2007; Animax for
Latin America, 2008).
At the end of the 2010s, the initial EVA series had apparently
achieved the status of a cult product. Internet streaming services
made possible its access to a much wider and, arguably, global audi-
ence. The worldwide release of EVA on Netflix (2019) has intro-
duced this series to new international audiences for the first time.
Netflix’s global broadcasting has also highlighted the historical
significance of this series in national markets already familiar with
the franchise. The response of these markets, influenced by nostal-
gia, has not always been positive though. There have been many
examples of controversy, including complaints about how new tran-
slations of the script and subtitles hide key plot elements, such as
the homoerotic subtext of the story.1 Besides, the redubbing of the
series in several countries, casting different actors, has been read
as pure ‘betrayal’ by fan audiences. Also, limitations of copyrights
have contributed to this disappointment and resulted in a modified
version of the ending without the different covers of the well-known
1954 song Fly Me to the Moon. While it is not always easy to iden-
tify the voices behind social media, primarily fan audiences seem to
be suspicious about the new Netflix version, due to their long-term
emotional investment.
Discourses on EVA have extensively highlighted its uniqueness
when comparing the series to other anime series from the same period.
One of the factors behind this is the complexity of its plot and certain
lack of closure, due to its open ending (or even ‘endings’ if we take
into consideration other paratexts). Social media is full of reviews
1. See Chapter 10 by Jessica Bauwens-
and deconstructions of the series, performed by fans.2 While these
Sugimoto. discourses may involve different communities, EVA’s uniqueness
2. See Chapter 8 by Olga Kopylova on is usually constructed through comparison with other examples,
types of fan readings. that is, similarity among a group of texts, which share a common
Discussing ‘Genre’ in Anime through Neon Genesis Evangelion 183
alienation, and how they often lead us to seek refuge and withdraw
into inner landscapes of the imagination. But this pillar of culture all
starts with a few nerds in one small room, and Anno, a brilliant pro-
digy among them. (Stewart-Ahn 2019: para. 5)
Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give
his/her own answer. In other words, we’re offering viewers to think by
themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We
will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many
Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the ‘all-about EVA’
manuals, but there is no such thing. Don‘t expect to get answers from
someone. Don’t expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find
our own answers. (Anno 1996a: 20)
With the inevitable dividing of the trait that marks membership, the
boundary of the set comes to form, by invagination, an internal pocket
larger than the whole; and the outcome of this division, and this aboun-
ding remains as singular as it is limitless. (Derrida & Ronnel 1980: 59)
cultural criticism and academia link the EVA TV series to the tra-
dition of mecha anime, while EVA authors, including Anno, usu-
ally refer to the influence of other genres, for example, Speculative
Fiction. Defining the textual properties of a genre would be the first
step, while identifying the interrelation of EVA with other generic
forms is also necessary.
Interestingly, the Eva units do not faithfully reference the mecha genre,
but rather divert from this tradition. They seem to have their very
own emotions.5 They are living beings, creatures cloned from relatives
of the protagonists themselves, a narrative turn that justifies the inti-
mate bond which, at the subconscious level, seems to exist between
pilots and Eva units. In fact, regarding the tradition of SF literature,
Eva units would be cyborgs or modified humans instead of robots.
Ikuto Yamashita was the mecha designer for EVA and responsible
also for the visual development of previous GAINAX works such as
Gunbuster (Aim for the Top!, 1988) and Nadia: The Secret of Blue
Water (Fushigi no umi no Nadia, 1990). Yamashita’s design has been
described as more organic and curvier than the typical linear forms
and metallic textures used in traditional mecha anime (Cavallaro
2009: 66). As remembered by Yasuhiro Takeda, GAINAX’s General
Manager of Animation Production (1984–2016), Yamashita’s organic
designs challenged the mecha genre conventions since the early stages 5. See Chapters 2 and 5 by Ida Kirkegaard
of the project’s development: and Stevie Suan, respectively.
194 Anime Studies
Mecha designs in EVA work at a semantic level, but also ignite syn-
tactic readings that ultimately connect with meanings usually related
to other narratives. Anno highlights the influence of Nagai’s work,
particularly his manga Devilman (1972), as inspiration for the Eva
units. We should remember that, regarding the main storyline, the Eva
units are clones of the first Angel, Adam. Their designs are, therefore,
an alternative version of what humanity (also Adam’s children) could
be. This is acknowledged by Anno himself:
There is a monster in Japan called the oni, which has two horns stick-
ing out of its head, and the overall image of the EVA is based on
that. I wanted also to have an image that beneath the image of that
robot monster is a human. It’s not really a robot, but a giant human,
so it’s different from other robot mecha such as those in Gundam.
(Animerica 1996: para. 3).
On the other hand, it is a known fact that the EVA creators were
avid consumers of SF products. Anno is a big tokusatsu (special-
effects cinema) and SF consumer. In 1983, still a student, he and other
members of Daicon Film, the seeds of the future GAINAX, created a
fan film by the name Return of Ultraman. In recent years, it has been
common to find Anno participating in specialized forums, such as con-
ventions, special screenings or live talks (Chapman 2017: para. 3). In
his role as an expert, he has even directed the Media Bunka report
focused on the history of the tokusatsu genre (Anno & Higuchi 2013).
There are semantic and syntactic relationships between tokusatsu,
its monster imaginary and the mecha tradition that can be directly
observed in EVA. After all, one of the first mecha series, Mazinger
Z (1972), follows the formulaic journey of fighting a monster
every week. This connection is also reflected in the idiosyncratic
Discussing ‘Genre’ in Anime through Neon Genesis Evangelion 195
Up until that time, there had never been an anime about gigantic
robots battling these mysterious monsters invading the planet, while
at the same time focusing on what was going on in the minds of the
main characters. (Watanabe & Otsuki 2006: para. 12)
the case with SF stories, which many audiences associate with a set of
particular iconographic elements (spaceships, aliens, etc.), narrative
formulas (time travels, man-made creatures, etc.) or the creation of
idiosyncratic images that work as focal points of their narratives (dis-
tant uninhabited planets, monumental star ships, lonely laboratories).
However, after the recognition of semantic and syntactic elements of
a genre, there is yet another level of decoding for the audience: the
recognition of intertextual relationships among products in terms of
family resemblance, a process that structural narratology denomina-
ted architextuality (Genette 1992: 83).
SF forms a group of texts with a long tradition in Literary and
Media Studies and, yet, it is still often subjected to the controversy
concerning its definition as a genre. SF involves the creation of fictional
worlds that are perceived as plausible. Some authors have discussed
the potential semantic mechanism that identifies these parallel worlds
in contrast with other fictional stories. SF narratives, for example,
introduce a bridge to avoid ‘cognitive estrangement’ in the reader’s
mind, a so-called novum that is accepted implicitly by the audience
(Suvin 1972: 373). The novum usually takes the form of technological
innovation, but, in the logic of SF, this innovation creates a chain of
technological, cultural and, ultimately, social consequences that shape
the new world and characters’ psychology. The novum is exclusive to
SF, while the fantasy genre lacks this element and, even more impor-
tantly, dispenses with the construction of a chain of consequences. In
contrast with SF, speculative genres such as fantasy or horror may
also create coherent worlds, but their narratives are not intended to
explain those rules. SF is based on the dialectics of these ‘estrange-
ments’ and the appeal to the reader’s ‘cognition’ (Suvin 1979: 7).
Referring to SF as a ‘genre’ is rather conservative, as distinct from
regarding this corpus of texts as a tradition. SF responds more to the
idea of a set of genres, or a genre colony, a term originally coined to
describe the interaction between different genres that are serving the
same communicative goal (Bhatia 1999: 29). There is a SF colony,
Discussing ‘Genre’ in Anime through Neon Genesis Evangelion 197
With this statement, Ueno doesn’t deny other visual styles within
anime, such as exaggeration, but emphasizes hyperreality and thereby
198 Anime Studies
This event places the story in a catastrophic scenario: the arctic poles
have melted, the temperature of the planet is increasing and the inter-
national relations among the economic powers have changed. Second,
this catastrophe determines the narrative as it is followed by creatures
called Angels. The rest of the story features efforts of the humans to
stop world destruction, but they fail.
EVA’s distribution overseas tried to create stronger links to
SF through the translation. In the second episode, the ‘Human
Complementation Project’ is translated as ‘Human Instrumentality
Project.’ This incorporated a reference to the work of Cordwainer
Smith (1993), an American SF writer and author of Instrumentality of
Mankind, a collection of short stories originally published in 1979. In
Smith’s fictional universe, this term is referring to his story-world, but
it is also the name of the organization which controls different species
derived from human beings across the galaxy. As such, his narrative
shares some of the post-humanist subtext of the EVA anime, but it is
difficult to find more similarities.
EVA constantly refers to Christian mythology, particularly the so-called
eschatology or tales about ‘last things.’ However, such religious and
spiritual aspects arise from its relationship with different traditions
within SF rather than an explicit reference to the Christian tradition.
Apparently, in Japan, the franchise has elicited some interest in cultural
artifacts related to Christianity (Thomas 2012: 71); however, this seems
to have resulted more from the story setting and its inherent exoticism
for non-Christian audiences. Kazuya Tsurumaki, assistant director of
the series, distanced himself from any Christian reading of EVA:
There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want
our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because
Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would
be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians.
There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the
visual symbols of Christianity look cool. (Tsurumaki interviewed by
Thomas 2001: para. 23)
Discussing ‘Genre’ in Anime through Neon Genesis Evangelion 201
national market. EVA found its public among adolescents and fans
of SF, but since then it has been presented as the flagship of anime
culture. At that moment, the market was still dominated by OVAs,
or limited series and movies distributed in domestic video formats,
before the companies began to work with longer series. Even after the
international success of products such as EVA, the anime production
committees were promoting their products adopting a low-risk app-
roach. These strategies were intended to build an image that would
eventually help the successful sale of the rest of the product cohort.
Anime historian Jonathan Clements points out how festival adverti-
sing tended to homogenize manga and anime audiences:
References
Altman, R. (1999). Film/genre. London: BFI Publishing.
Animerica (1996). Hideaki Anno’s Roundtable Discussion. Excerpts from
a Roundtable Disccussion with Hideaki Anno at the Anime Expo ’96
Convention, Animerica, 4(9), 27. Retrieved from: http://web.archive.org
/web/20021208123622/http://masterwork.animemedia.com/Evange
lion/anno.html
Anno, H. (1996a). About Neon Genesis Evangelion. Newtype, November,
20–23. Retrieved from: https://www.gwern.net/otaku (translated by
Miyako Graham/Protoculture Addicts)
_______. (1996b). Interview with Hideaki Anno. Newtype, June. Retrieved
from: https://www.gwern.net/docs/eva/1996-newtype-anno-interview
(translated by Gwern Branwen)
_______ & Higuchi, S. (2013). Nihon tokusatsu no kako, genzai, soshite
mirai o fukan shite. Commissioned by Japan’s Agency for Cultural
Affairs Manga, Animation, Games, and Media Art Information Bureau.
Tokyo: Mori Building Co., Ltd. Retrieved from: https://mediag.bunka
.go.jp/projects/project/images/tokusatsu-2013.pdf
Azuma, H. (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press. (Introduction and translation by J. E.
Abel and S. Kono)
_______. (2016). Anime or Something Like it: Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Intercommunication, 18. Retrieved from: https://www.ntticc.or.jp
/pub/ic_mag/ic018/intercity/higashi_E.html
Bhatia, V. K. (1999). Integrating Products, Processes, Purposes and
Participants in Professional Writing. In C. N. Candlin and K. Hyland
(eds.), Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices (pp. 21–39). London:
Routledge.
Bolton, C. & Csicsery-Ronay Jr, I. (2007). Robot Ghosts and Wired
Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
210 Anime Studies
1995 was a year of shocks for Japan. The Great Hanshin earth-
quake destroyed and damaged large portions of Kobe and its sur-
roundings in January, resulting in the largest-scale destruction by
an earthquake in Japan since the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923.
Next, the Aum Shinrikyō sect committed an unprecedented act of
terrorism, an orchestrated sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway
system in March. The general mood engendered by these events
was further exacerbated by the growing sense of realization that the
boom of the bubble economy that had burst at the end of the 1980s
was not returning, and the economic stagnation that followed in
its wake was the new norm (Maejima 2010; Uno 2008). The une-
asiness felt at the time contributed to pop psychology and words
like ‘trauma’ and ‘adult children’ becoming prevalent in popular
discourse, leading to an increased interest in the inner-self and
self-reflection (Maejima 2010: 32).
It was with this general social backdrop that Neon Genesis
How to cite this book chapter:
Evangelion (EVA) started airing in the fall of 1995. After a low-key
Kacsuk, Z. 2021. The Making of an
reception with a small core audience on its initial broadcast, the series Epoch-Making Anime: Understanding
grew exponentially into what is commonly referred to as a social phe- the Landmark Status of Neon Genesis
Evangelion in Otaku Culture. In:
nomenon (or EVA shock) during its first re-airing in 1997 and then Santiago Iglesias, J. A. and Soler Baena, A.
leading into the theatrical release of both Neon Genesis Evangelion: (Eds.). Anime Studies: Media-Specific
Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion in the same year. This Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Pp. 215–246 Stockholm: Stockholm
phenomenal popularity seems to indicate that EVA did indeed manage University Press. DOI: https://doi.org
to capture the zeitgeist in a unique way (cf. Uno 2008), and resonated /10.16993/bbp.h. License: CC-BY 4.0
216 Anime Studies
1. The closest translation of otaku would with an audience beyond its original target audience of otaku.1 This
be geek in English. For a discussion of the
widespread success led to a re-evaluation of the then denigrated figure
meaning of the term, see the next section.
In Japanese, otaku is written in various of the otaku, and the sheer commercial force of the otaku market
forms (hiragana, katakana and Latin could no longer be ignored (Lamarre 2009: 153), as also evidenced by
script) to connote different positions
regarding its implied meanings. For my
the rapid transformation of Tokyo’s Akihabara, with an unpreceden-
present analysis, these nuances are sec- ted concentration of shops catering to otaku interests, which opened
ondary and I therefore quote all instances up in the neighborhood within the span of a couple of years after the
of otaku in this single, simple form. For
a discussion of the connotations of the EVA boom (Morikawa 2003).2 The anime industry was also changed
various forms in Japanese, see, for exam- by the series’ and the subsequent movies’ impact, leading to what is
ple, Galbraith, Kam & Kamm (2015) or commonly understood to be the third anime boom, “facilitating the
Yoshimoto (2009).
creation of the new time-slot and category of ‘late-night anime’” and
“propagating the production committee model of anime production
2. Although Morikawa does not directly due to its successes” (Suan 2018: 204).
attribute the transformation of Akihabara
It is easy to assume that the above-outlined economic impact of the
from electric town—with a large con-
centration of shops dealing in electronic series and its influence on anime production and distribution practices
devices—to otaku town to the success of is responsible for how it has come to be considered an epoch-making
EVA, he does list a number of pieces of evi-
anime. Although these facets of its impact are undeniably a part of
dence that seem to suggest a strong link,
and he offers a detailed interview excerpt the equation, I would like to suggest that there is a more fundamental
as an illustration of this being the actual level on which EVA has proven to be epoch-making, and it is this
case for at least one of the pioneering shops
to make the move (2003: 56–62). Before, deeper level that is in part responsible for the perceived naturalization
EVA figurine shops were mostly located in of the economic and business arguments. The reason I refer to the
Tokyo neighborhoods where young people economic and business arguments as less fundamental is because
would gather, such as Kichijōji or Shibuya.
But the capital injection provided by the the significance of these types of changes can be reinterpreted accor-
sudden increase in demand—engendered ding to the relative symbolic weight carried by the works under dis-
by the EVA boom—for custom hobby
cussion, as we will see in the case of anime booms below. Few are
model kits led to said shop relocating to
Akihabara, purely based on the notion the cases like that of Astro Boy, where a given work is undeniably the
that most of their clientele would go there source of the economic and business effects associated with it. Thus,
for electronics supplies anyway. The suc-
examining the arguments and positions in relation to this more fun-
cess enjoyed by the first pioneers quickly
led to an exodus of small and larger retail- damental level will be the focus of the present chapter.
ers all relocating to or opening branches From a perspective informed by the sociology of art, great works of
in Akihabara. This account of Akihabara’s
transformation from Morikawa’s book is art—or in our case epoch-making ones—are created neither by a genius
also available in English (2012 [2003]). author nor by a team, but rather, as Becker (1982), Bourdieu (1996
The Making of an Epoch-Making Anime 217
[1992]) and Williams (1980 [1961]) all point out with differing voca-
bularies, they are the products of much larger systems of production
and dissemination, of popular and critical reception, of consecrating
institutions, of scholarly and archival work, and of latter works that
consciously or unknowingly engage with them. The way in which
great works are selected and consecrated operates along very similar
logics in the subfields of cultural production further away from the
already legitimized arts—to use Bourdieu’s vocabulary—as Beaty and
Woo (2016) demonstrate in relation to comic books.
It is in this vein that I turn to the Japanese critical discourse to
make sense of how EVA has come to be constructed as an epoch-
making great work of anime there. Although this is not the only arena
in which such construction takes place, it is definitely an important
one. By critical discourse, I refer to a particular domain of mostly
written intellectual exchange in Japanese, which comprises a range
of publications that are not necessarily rigorously academic: Indeed,
they are often written with a more general audience in mind, but they
are nevertheless invested in moving forward the discussion around
their topics of interest as opposed to a simple popularization of works
or concepts. This discursive space borders on and overlaps with the
domain of academic research in one direction, on art/literary/cultural
criticism in another, and finally on popular science and public intel-
lectual discourse along a third angle. Its contributors thus come
from various backgrounds ranging from the humanities (e.g., Hiroki
Azuma), psychology (e.g., Tamaki Saitō) and social sciences (e.g.,
Kaichirō Morikawa), to critics writing on popular media (e.g., Gō Itō,3
Satoshi Maejima, Tsunehiro Uno, Taimatsu Yoshimoto), journalists,
editors and even creators themselves (e.g., Eiji Ōtsuka, Toshio Okada).
Despite its breadth and variety in positions, the discourse neverth-
eless provides a semi-coherent space, which is not only evidenced by
the way these authors build on one another’s ideas, but also in the
way they are regularly featured in conversation with or alongside one 3. See especially Itō 2005.
218 Anime Studies
The term otaku was supposedly first used by SF fans from Keiō
University Tokyo, some of whom went on to create the TV anime
Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982–83), which featured the
term in dialogue. It was then appropriated by a wider strata of fans
and taken up as a derogatory term within the fandom itself (Okada
1996: 8–9). This phase of the term’s history is followed by its end-
lessly retold appearance in the magazine Manga Burikko in the pro-
vocative four-part series Otaku no kenkyū (Otaku research) written
by Akio Nakamori (with the last piece authored by Sonta Eji) and
starting in 1983 (for discussions of the series see, e.g., Ōtsuka 2004;
Yamanaka 2015; Yoshimoto 2009). Precisely because Manga Burikko
was a niche medium (cf. Thornton 1996 [1995]) of the culture itself,
this exposure had an effect within the concerned fandoms, that is,
an internal debate about the ethics of using the term to denigrate
others. Yamanaka points out how the debate surrounding the article
series led people to re-adopt the term otaku in self-mocking fashion
(2015: 46–47), which is often the first step toward the reclamation
of an identity. The next stage in the evolution of the term was the
infamous Tsutomu Miyazaki serial murder case, which brought
about both mainstream exposure of otaku and a moral panic (Ito
2012: xxi; see also Kamm 2015). The negative image was further
reinforced by the March 1995 Sarin gas attack committed by mem-
bers of Aum Shinrikyō in the Tokyo subway system, and the discus-
sions that followed regarding whether Aum Shinrikyō had been an
otaku sect.7 Finally, after a series of events, such as the publication
of Okada’s Otakugaku nyūmon (Introduction to Otakuology, 1996)
and his public appearances and lecture series on otaku culture at the
University of Tokyo, the generational mainstream success of EVA,
and then almost a decade later the society-wide popularity of the
media franchise Densha Otoko (Train Man), the term otaku came 7. Both Morikawa (2003) and Uno
(2018) discuss the obvious anime influ-
to be rehabilitated to mean people deeply engaged in very specific ences on Aum Shinrikyō’s propaganda
non-mainstream interests (see Kikuchi 2015; Ito 2012). and teachings.
222 Anime Studies
Otaku Generations
The idea of otaku generations was introduced by Okada (1996: 37–39,
48–49). In his formulation, each generation has their point of entry
or “home position” (a term borrowed from computer terminology) in
otaku culture. For first-generation otaku, born in the decade 1955–64,
these were special effects series, most notably Ultraman and Kamen
Rider. Anime was the most important entry point for second-generation
otaku, born between 1965 and 1974, especially Space Battleship Yamato
and Gundam. The third generation of otaku—born in the Shōwa 50s
(1975–84)—have models, Gunpla (Gundam plastic model kits by
Bandai), and video games as their distinguishing generational imprints.
And, finally, for the then still children, born from 1985 onwards, this
“home position” is/will be video games. Okada is quick to point out that
230 Anime Studies
The first generation centers on those who were born around 1960 and
saw Space Battleship Yamato . . . and Mobile Suit Gundam . . . during
their teen years. The second generation is made up of those who were
born around 1970 and, during their teens, enjoyed the diversified
and matured otaku culture produced by the preceding generation.
The third generation consists of those who were born around 1980
and were junior high school students at the time of the Neon Genesis
Evangelion boom. (Azuma 2009 [2001]: 6–7)
Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Alan
Moore’s Watchmen (1986) are the first instances of a kind of literature
I am going to identify as the revisionary superhero narrative: a super-
hero text that, in Harold Bloom’s words, is a “strong misreading” of
its poetic tradition, a comic book whose “meaning” is found in its rela-
tionship with another comic book. Although strong work existed in
comics before this point—in the works of Will Eisner and Jack Kirby,
for example—it is with these titles that, to quote critic Perry Meisel,
referring to the blues tradition after swing, “a tradition now [exists]
sufficiently dense with precedent to cause the kinds of self-conscious-
ness and anxiety with which we [as students of literature] are familiar.”
(Klock 2002: 25)
The Making of an Epoch-Making Anime 235
theater of war (Maejima 2010: 82). Nowhere is this connection made 23. “The giant kaijū monsters, heroes,
and machines that rose to popularity
more explicit than in the revelation that the Eva units themselves are with mid-1960s tokusatsu shows formed
created from Angels. Thus, the historical development of a whole line- the ‘soil’ from which robot anime would
age of interrelated (sub)genres is captured in the allegory of the kaijū bloom so vibrantly in the 1970s. Robot
anime did not develop in a vacuum as
body hidden under the surface of the Real Robot exterior. What’s an independent, isolated creation of the
more, the gradual unveiling of the connection between the Eva units animation industry” (Hikawa 2013: 12).
236 Anime Studies
and the Angels corresponds to the way in which the two halves of
EVA, as described by Maejima, are actually linked by the move from
the visible exterior trappings to the underlying themes and veins of
influence of otaku culture.
Considering that EVA was produced by GAINAX, we can see how
it reiterates the deep engagement with otaku culture on a meta-level
24. See Uno (2018) for the significance
that had been the hallmark of this group of creators from the very
of the occult in otaku culture; also
Yoshimoto (2009). beginning. EVA is a grand synthesis of the many components of otaku
25. The DAICON III opening ani- culture from kaijū to robot anime, SF and the occult24 in the vein of
mation from 1981 was a huge hit, and the DAICON III and IV opening animations, and at the same time,
thanks to the business sense of Okada, it is a critical commentary on otaku culture itself, not unlike the self-
its direct video sales to fans greatly con-
tributed to raising the financial resources reflexivity found in the 1991 part-anime, part-mockumentary
for the future ventures of the group that Otaku no video, which relates the heroic tale of two otaku creating
would eventually become GAINAX in
the ultimate otaku business empire (a commentary on GENERAL
1984. Following DAICON III, they
created various live-action short films, PRODUCTS25 and potentially also GAINAX), interspersed with live
parodies of special effects series like mock footage of interviews with various types of otaku.
Ultraman and Go Rangers, under the
name DAICON FILM. In 1982, Okada
Even though on the surface the ending offered in the feature film
and Yasuhiro Takeda formed the com- End of Evangelion might seem to be moving away from the break-
pany GENERAL PRODUCTS to deal in down of animation and the complete focus on Shinji’s inner life in the
custom hobby model kits, T-shirts and
other fan-made merchandise. This was series’ finale, the turn toward interiority is not loosened; it becomes
seen by many as an attempt to make even more brutal, in Maejima’s view, with Asuka’s rejection of Shinji
money off the back of the SF fan culture as disgusting (2010: 45–47).26 Instead of an “extremely otaku-oriented
and led to a certain level of backlash
within the fandom (Yoshimoto 2009: anime,” it becomes “otaku literature,” and the story of otaku maturing
155). while fighting using a giant robot is replaced with the figure of an
26. See Uno’s citing of Shūichirō otaku masturbating to a bishōjo (2010: 46–47).27
Sarashina’s summary that sekaikei is basi- Both sides of this last point are closely connected to Ōtsuka’s reading
cally the version of EVA where Asuka
does not reject Shinji (2018: 274). of the significance of EVA in “Otaku” no seishinshi: 1980nendairon
(A Mental History of “Otaku”: About the 1980s) (2004). As already
27. I have not touched on the question
of otaku sexuality, which is an import mentioned in the introduction, Ōtsuka was one of the vocal critics of
branch of the discussion around the term the series following its original run. Less than 10 years later, he expli-
otaku. For more on the topic, see Saitō
(2011 [2000]), Ōtsuka (2004), Morikawa citly re-evaluates his stance and aligns his reading of the work to the
(2003) and Galbraith (2015). landmark status it occupies within the Japanese critical discourse. His
The Making of an Epoch-Making Anime 237
but tools (Tetsujin 28-gō is remote-controlled) or vehicles (2018: 140). 30. I am following Suan (2018: 233)
with this translation, meant to convey
All are created by a father figure, and after Astro Boy they are all devi- the sense of being determined to make a
ces of fulfilling the dream of young boys to become men (2018: 199). choice and take action.
240 Anime Studies
of EVA. What if the story of otaku culture were told through a diffe-
rent perspective? One in which EVA is no more significant than, for
example, Gunbuster (1988–89), the hit OVA series from GAINAX
that foreshadowed certain elements of EVA. The level of detail with
which Uno examines the different Gundam series stands in sharp
contrast to the usual lack of attention afforded to Gundam in the
publications considered so far. In fact, Uno’s discussion of Gundam
and the role of the creator/director behind the series, Yoshiyuki
Tomino, as a pioneer of various themes for which EVA is celebra-
ted, provide all the necessary ingredients for a well-formed alterna-
tive narrative of otaku culture. This narrative would see a lineage of
otaku culture running from Osamu Tezuka in a more tightly coupled
fashion31 via his animation studio Mushi Production leading to the
establishment of Sunrise Studio by former members of Mushi Pro
in 1972. The emergence of Gunpla would figure as pivotal in the
development of custom hobby model sales and the otaku market in
general. Finally, in this version, the meaning of otaku culture would
probably be more closely aligned with Okada’s understanding of
otaku as mania (first and second generation otaku), and moe-cente-
red otaku culture might be regarded as a new formation altogether,
similar to how otaku culture initially branched off from SF fan-
dom. This potential for different versions of the narrative32 evinces
31. See also Yoshimoto (2009).
just how central EVA has been within the critical discourse around
32. Another possible axis of re-imagin-
otaku culture.
ing this narrative would revolve around
Studio Nue and the Macross series (I am
grateful to Luca Bruno for pointing this
Conclusion out) and highlight the centrality of idol
culture to otaku culture; which is sur-
EVA’s position as an epoch-making anime is often taken for granted, prisingly very much in line with Uno’s
as are the apparently objective arguments in relation to its economic assessment of the development of otaku
culture following the 2011 Tōhoku
impacts, but I hope to have demonstrated that there are layers upon earthquake and tsunami, where idol cul-
layers of deeper connections between EVA’s position as a landmark ture moved to the fore in his view. He
work and the way in which otaku culture is addressed in the Japanese even points out the uncanny parallels to
Macross in AKB48’s visits to the disaster
critical discourse. struck areas (2018: 301–302).
242 Anime Studies
First, EVA has left its imprint on a number of concepts and terms
that are mobilized whenever its significance is at stake, namely anime
booms, otaku generations and sekaikei. The series seems to occupy
a set position in the enumeration of anime booms as spearheading
the third boom. Otaku generations are often conceptualized in a way
that one of the generations is defined by the EVA shock of the second
half of the 1990s. And sekaikei is a testament to the power of EVA,
providing a jumping-off point for both the proliferation and the inter-
pretation of a whole group of related works.
Second, the weight of the consensus around EVA’s position forces
even previously dissenting voices to incorporate its landmark status
into their interpretations. For Ōtsuka, EVA has come to symbolize the
ultimate engagement with Astro Boy’s dilemma, and thus the culmina-
tion point of postwar Japanese manga and anime history. On the other
hand, Uno, while also espousing EVA as the “final accounts” of the
robot anime genre, actually provides the blueprint for an alternative
retelling of the history of otaku culture, one that would revolve
around Gundam, which again accentuates the force of the
consensus around the centrality of EVA in otaku culture.
Third, the position enjoyed by EVA can be further substantiated by
considering EVA as a saturation point where otaku culture becomes
self-reflexive and, as Maejima writes, turns into “otaku literature.”
The impact of EVA on the anime industry and otaku culture mirrors the
intervention effected by Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and
Watchmen in American superhero comics, as described by Klock.
Furthermore, I also want to draw attention to the fact that, in the
present chapter, I perpetuated the very same operations I have been
analyzing. While highlighting the way in which EVA’s landmark posi-
tion has been established in the Japanese critical discourse and has
become seemingly inseparable from the manner in which otaku cul-
ture is understood, I too have added another layer of arguments that
work toward further cementing and naturalizing its position as an
epoch-making anime.
The Making of an Epoch-Making Anime 243
References
Aida, M. (2015). The Construction of Discourses on Otaku: The History
of Subcultures from 1983 to 2005 (translation by Thiam Huat Kam).
In P. W. Galbraith, T. H. Kam and B.-O. Kamm (eds.), Debating
Otaku in Contemporary Japan: Historical Perspectives and New
Horizons (pp. 105–128). London: Bloomsbury.
Azuma, H. (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press. (Introduction and translation by
J. E. Abel and S. Kono)
Beaty, B. & Woo, B. (2016). The Greatest Comic Book of All Time:
Symbolic Capital and the Field of American Comic Books. New York:
Palgrave.
244 Anime Studies
such as Lucas’ Star Wars, just as often fail to establish direct corres-
pondence between the entirety of officially released titles and a single
cohesive fictional world (Thon 2015: 37‒39; Wolf 2012: 270‒271).
As testified by fan paratexts, even the Gundam franchise has genera-
ted several alternate universes over the years (Falldog 2020). It seems,
then, that even relatively cohesive franchises can be better understood
through a conceptual triad offered by Narratology and Media Studies
scholar Jan-Noël Thon. To quote Thon at length:
play, the work count and authorial presence. For instance, Azuma can
insist that Gundam sustains a single cohesive storyworld because the
franchise is dominated by animated TV series. For almost half a cen-
tury, TV anime, together with manga, has remained the key medium
of the otaku market, only recently joined by video games, light novels
and live-action movies (Iida 2012; Joo, Denison & Furukawa 2013).
The sheer number of the series and Tomino’s direct involvement in
their production solidified the supreme position of a corresponding
storyworld in the Gundam franchise.
The EVA franchise also unfolds around the TV anime, which esta-
blishes essential settings, introduces all key characters and, together
with its direct sequel EoE, tells the complete story. Despite this ini-
tial similarity, duly noted by Azuma (2009: 36), the storyworld of
this core work is clearly not expanded through a serialization in the
same medium. What about transmedial development? Fan-generated
paratexts often provide valuable insights into franchise topography.
The notion of ‘canon’3 widely used by Western fans has been instru-
mental in describing relevance of work-specific storyworlds and their
interrelationships (Fanlore 2020). While canonical status of franchise
constituents is always in flux, it is only possible to debate canonicity
of a work if its storyworld “could, at least in principle, be comprehen-
ded as a noncontradictory expansion of a previously represented sto-
ryworld” (Thon 2015: 37). It follows that if the TV anime forms the
basis of the EVA canon, then any work included in the canon would
be automatically assigned to the same storyworld, unless otherwise
stated. “Shin-seiki’s Tiers of Canonicity” published at the major fan
site The NGE Fan-Geeks Project suggest the following outline of
3. Canon is a set of established truths canonical and semi-canonical works:
shared by a particular fan community.
It is comprised of facts culled from offi-
cial texts and paratexts, but may also 1. The anime itself and its scripts and storyboards. The Director’s
include statements by official producers
and indubitable conclusions based on
Cuts are the final or official version and take precedence over
officially released information. the On Air version in the event of any theoretical contradiction.
Manga Production, Anime Consumption 255
It goes without saying that fans outside of the NGE Fan-Geek com-
munity might have other views on how the EVA canon works. Still,
this particular paratext seems to support Azuma’s conclusion that
there is no overarching ‘grand narrative’ behind the EVA franchise.
On the other hand, “Tiers of Canonicity” most likely evaluate the
entirety of EVA works vis-à-vis anime and anime alone, and there-
fore it is conceivable that a ‘grand narrative’ on a smaller scale might
still exist on the periphery of this transmedial network. After all, it is
not unusual for large-scale transmedial franchises to “establish two
clearly distinct storyworlds via a high-profile modifying adaptation
while still aiming at a further expansion of each of these storyworlds”
(Thon 2015: 35). In the otaku market, such expansion is usually car-
ried out via manga, video games or light novels. While official EVA
producers have generally disregarded purely textual format, the fran-
chise boasts a wide range of narrative-based games, which both adapt
and expand on the anime. The preferred structure of the EVA games,
however, undermines their world-building capacity: most of them
involve multiple possible scenarios, as well as random events, genera-
ting countless incompatible storyworlds.4 A game like Neon Genesis
Evangelion 2 is acknowledged as a source of valuable canonical infor-
mation (Shin-seiki 2020), rather than a self-standing alternative to the 4. See Chapter 9 by Selen Çalık Bedir.
256 Anime Studies
Middle School Students), a set of four-panel gag comic strips (Petit Eva:
Evangelion@School) and four titles that cover genres from drama to
erotica to urban fantasy (The Shinji Ikari Raising Project, The Shinji
Ikari Detective Diary,5 Angelic Days and Campus Apocalypse). With
that said, the proliferation of genres by itself (with the exception of
parody) should not preclude the existence of a single storyworld
behind a range of works. Therefore, this section offers a comparative
analysis of storyworld elements as delineated by Ryan (2014: 34‒37)
in order to define relations between the seven manga titles and the
core EVA works (i.e., the TV anime and EoE) in a systematic fashion
(see Table 8.2).
To start with physical and mental events that constitute the fabula
of each narrative and organize its storyworld, all of the manga titles do
away with the elaborate apocalyptic tale of the anime series and focus
instead on school comedy, gags and romantic relationships (the only
exception being Campus Apocalypse, which brings together superna-
tural battles, Armageddon and a sinister conspiracy, but still opts for
an entirely new ‘urban fantasy’ setting). The topography, natural laws
and props of the respective storyworlds change accordingly.
The easiest to trace are transformations of the Angels and Evas, the
5. The manga The Shinji Ikari Detective iconic entities of the EVA universe. In most cases, the Angels maintain
Diary (abbr. SI Detective Diary) has their anime design—one of the few recurring motifs across distinct
nothing to do with the game Detective
Evangelion (Broccoli 2007). A two-
manga titles—but their nature diverges greatly. In SI Raising Project,
chapter manga adaptation of the game the Angels are no more than manifestations of computer viruses in
by Seijūrō Mizu was serialized in virtual reality, although from time to time taking familiar shapes. In
Monthly Shōnen Ace (2006–07), but
never published in book format, which Campus Apocalypse, the Angels are specter-like beings originating
limits its availability. from the Life-Tree of Yggdrasil. As they can survive in the outer world
only by possessing people, most of them take the form of beautiful
men and women (and an occasional cat). In Angelic Days, the nature,
origin or goal of the Angels remain unexplained (while battles serve
Table 8.2. Comparison of storyworld
mostly to intensify romantic relationships), but their design is again
components (after Ryan 2014) in
the EVA manga vs. the TV anime. borrowed from the core works. In Piko Piko, Angels seem to be the
License: CC BY 4.0. product of collective nostalgia: supernatural creatures who strive to
Manga Production, Anime Consumption 259
I I I I I I I
O O O R O R O
L R L R R R O
R R R R R R R
O R R R O R R
L R R R R R O
R O R R R R R
reverse the flow of time. SI Detective Diary does not feature Angels
at all, and the Evas are radically transformed, presented as humanoid
servants magically summoned from jewellery (an earring, a bracelet,
etc.). The only Eva that visually evokes its prototype is Asuka’s Dos
(Span. two). In Campus Apocalypse, Eva is a person’s will manifest
in the form of a weapon (Asuka’s Eva is a whip, Rei’s the Spear of
Longinus, etc.). In SI Raising Project, there are no Evas altogether,
only entry plugs used to access the virtual reality. Piko Piko and
Angelic Days both utilize standard mecha-like Evas, but Piko Piko
regularly alters their appearance and function comically. If central
entities like Angels and Evas are usually incorporated into the manga
storyworlds (albeit in a different form), the localities and props are
often erased completely. For instance, GeoFront appears only in
Angelic Days, while Campus Apocalypse and Piko Piko feature the
NERV Academy and National Middle School of Defence NERV as
their primary stage. In SI Raising Project, the organization itself is
called Artificial Evolution Lab and resides in an ordinary building.
In fact, Tokyo-3 transforms into a regular city in all titles where it
is mentioned.
Social norms and values get increasingly modified the closer the
principal mode approaches parody. At the same time, they are ine-
vitably entwined with characterization. The most obvious example
is Piko Piko, which, in essence, presents a five-volume chronicle of
nonsensical, often hilarious abuse that a couple of reasonable, but dis-
gruntled teenagers (Asuka and Shinji) suffer at the hands of irrespon-
sible and infantile adults (including Misato, Ritsuko, Gendō Ikari and
Kaji). Far from protecting the Earth, the primary goal of adults in
the Piko Piko series is to have as much fun as possible at the expense
of their students. The concerns of the children across the titles are
also far from stable: Frantic self-searching, traumas and quest for
self-acceptance are confined to NGE, while other manga series fore-
ground romantic vicissitudes (SI Raising Project, Angelic Days) or
Manga Production, Anime Consumption 261
obvious: The game may offer the player half a dozen storylines leading
to romance with six different characters (as is the set-up in SI Raising
Project). Manga adaptations of games have to choose between the
bigger story and the individual romance, and thereby they face the risk
of alienating a number of their potential readers. In addition, the first
game defies a straightforward adaptation, since it introduces several
‘parallel worlds’ and at one point even addresses its own structure
(see Yokohama 2006: 57–58). A manga adaptation of such a multith-
read, multilevel narrative could actually try to recreate the metaleptic6
game on its own terms. And yet, both adaptations chose simplifica-
tion as their primary strategy. Osamu Takahashi, the artist and writer
in charge of SI Raising Project, selected the happiest of the game’s
parallel worlds, the so-called “Campus Ark,” limited the range of the
protagonist’s recurring love interests to three without finalizing any
of the potential love stories, and added a moderate amount of heavily
altered battles to what otherwise reads as a semi-erotic school comedy.
Fumino Hayashi in Angelic Days, on the other hand, chose to develop
only the romantic Shinji-Asuka plotline and supplement the adapted
material with two volumes of original content. In summary, SI Raising
Project and Angelic Days heavily edit their source works, from set-
tings to plotlines to characterization, until it becomes impossible to
see them as extensions of the game storyworlds. To reiterate, the same
applies to their relations with the core works of the EVA franchise.
6. Metalepsis happens whenever “the Despite their lineage as adaptations ‘once removed,’ both SI Raising
author enters or addresses the fictional
Project and Angelic Days may pass as stand-alone texts. In contradis-
world he or she created, and when
characters leave their fictional world or tinction, parodical works like Piko Piko and Petit Eva: Evangelion@
address their author and their readers” School cannot be consumed outside of the EVA franchise. They require
(Kukkonen 2011: 1). Furthermore, the
familiarity with the TV anime, NGE or Rebuild of Evangelion: unless
metalepsis is likely to occur whenever
“characters become readers and authors the reader recognizes lore-related facts, patterns of character beha-
within their own fictional world and vior, trademark phrases, etc., the humour of these parodies falls flat.
produce a secondary fictional world”
(ibid.: 8), as happens with Shinji in SI SI Detective Diary can be described in similar terms: its plot and cha-
Raising Project. racters are so underdeveloped that it is impossible to process the story
Manga Production, Anime Consumption 263
STORYWORLDS TABLE
GAME SECTOR
NGE Angelic
Days
SI Raising
Project)
MANGA
SECTOR
Rebuild of
Piko Piko SI Detective Campus Petit Eva
Evangelion
Diary Apocalypse
(tetralogy)
The same set of thematic threads can be traced across the six
manga titles, with the addition of a fifth type, namely, ‘relations-
hips’ (see Table 8.4). In the TV anime and NGE, relationships are
part of SOR, but the latter category far exceeds problems in the
relationship-building or romance prevalent in the EVA manga. SOR is
tied to existential crisis, as vividly expressed by Shinji’s frantic screa-
ming in EoE: “Don’t leave me alone! Don’t abandon me! Please don’t
kill me!” SOR becomes quite literally a question of life and death not
only for the protagonist, but also for the entire humanity. In contrast,
most of the manga titles, with the exception of Campus Apocalypse
and, to a lesser extent, Angelic Days, assume a lighter attitude.
Furthermore, there is an obvious division between the manga
works in terms of leading themes: Prevailing in NGE is SOR, clo-
sely followed by mystery. Mystery is also the key theme in Campus
Apocalypse, which fits many new terms, concepts, actors and events
into its four volumes. Angelic Days, SI Detective Diary and SI Raising
Project downplay the fighting and foreground relationships. But SI
Raising Project’s real emphasis lies on everyday life (although this
is difficult to evaluate, because at times it is not easy to distinguish
between meaningful interpersonal interactions and gratuitous fan
service, that is, details and scenes irrelevant to the story or character
development and added with the sole objective of pleasing fans).9
Piko Piko also allots most of its space to everyday life, but eschews
relationships altogether.
To summarize, the thematic threads of the core narrative are not
shared equally by all manga series. Moreover, the key thread related to
SOR is adopted only in a couple of titles. Relationships and everyday
life, on the other hand, stand out as the most pervasive themes. Yet,
9. For the extended explication of the
regardless of setting, genre and story, every manga series arrives at the term ‘fan service,’ see Lexicon (n.d.).
same combination: Shinji and the other children realize the impor-
Table 8.4. Correlation and combi-
tance of Others, reconfirm their friendships and romantic ties, and
nations of thematically oriented
decide to move forward (‘fight’) in their everyday life. Such repetitive- sequences in the EVA manga. License:
ness stands in stark contrast to the anime sector of the EVA franchise. CC BY 4.0.
272 Anime Studies
serve as effective entry points into the franchise. But they can be easily
understood by readers familiar with the core works. Incidentally, the
NGE is the only manga series that provides new information or new
angles on the EVA canon. It is also the only valid entry point into
the franchise, which allows the reader to immediately master the
information needed for efficient consumption of other EVA works.
The rest of the manga titles offer the pleasures of play and variation
instead. All of them rearrange relationships between characters, pri-
oritizing different vectors of friendship and romance; or to use fan
slang, each promotes its own set of established and potential pairings.
Film scholar Jason Mittell describes such an approach to franchise
development as the What If? extension:
None of [such] extensions reward viewers with trailheads into deeper
narrative experiences, flesh out the fictional universe, or relay any
seemingly vital story events. Instead, they allow us to spend more time
with characters whom we have grown close to over the course of the
television serial. (2015: 313)
Mittell also points out that this extension mode has clear precedents
“in the realm of fan production and consumption practices” (ibid.:
325). Indeed, almost all aspects of the EVA manga line-up discus-
sed so far bring to mind the often-criticized follies of fan fiction:
incomplete storyworlds that utilize elements of the EVA universe,
but do not expand it in meaningful ways; inconsistent characteriza-
tion; focus on romance, eroticism and comedy to the detriment of
plot coherence, etc. If generative principles and organizational logic
of a franchise reveal themselves through its narrative-based parts,
then the manga sector of the EVA franchise corresponds perfectly,
and ironically, to Azuma’s claim that the anime studios GAINAX and
Khara have been developing EVA and its franchise as “an aggregate
of information without a [grand] narrative,” where no fundamental
difference between official and fan creativity, ‘original’ and derivative
works exists (2009: 37–38). While this may appear convincing in view
of the above, Azuma’s line of argument requires closer inspection.
274 Anime Studies
What can be said about both [religious and fan activities] is that the
narratives in question have potentially contributed in some significant
way to the formation of communal identity, a set of shared ideas about
ultimate meaning and values, and a set of practices that reinforce or
express these. (2012: 782)
the fans continue to elaborate on the loop theory and scour the pro-
motional videos for clues and hints concerning the possible outcome
of the new movie series. Forensic fandom lives on.
R/I
I: ALMOST IDENTICAL
O: OVERLAPPING TO SOME EXTENT
RE-TAKE
L: LOOSE SEMBLANCE
R: RADICAL DEPARTURE
Table 8.5. Relationship between the storyworld elements of RETAKE and the EVA anime. License: CC BY 4.0.
Manga Production, Anime Consumption 287
economy of fandom” (Fiske 1992: 42; Jenkins 2006b: 125), and the
“dual interpretive stance” that combines “a sense of proximity and
possession . . . with a sense of ironic distance” (Jenkins 1992: 65–67).
It is this common ground that allows a franchise, indeed, a single
work, official or fan-produced, to support and encourage multiple
responses, affects and interpretations.
The EVA anime was, in fact, a text designed from the start to sup-
port and encourage several modes of engagement, and the EVA fran-
chise inherited the approach. As stated before, the official EVA manga
works follow the principles of affective database consumption, while
new animated features call forth the forensic, or even encyclopedic,
impulse. To enjoy EVA as a transmedial franchise, the consumer does
needs not only “multimodal literacy” (Delwiche 2017: 1055–1063),
but also the ability to switch between different modes of engage-
ment. This last point is important not only when considering EVA
specifically or fandom in general—it has rather important implica-
tions for Anime Studies, in particular for their new, media-oriented
strand concerned with how highly segmented, serialized, transme-
dially engaged and open-ended anime texts “work within local and
global media environments” (Berndt 2018: 7), which include various
discrete and overlapping (rather than homogenized) consumer groups
and their tastes and practices. That is not to say that more conser-
vative research informed by Literary and Film Theory, as well as
Cultural Studies, cannot benefit from paying more attention to the
aforementioned media environments. As demonstrated by numerous
inquiries into franchises and their discrete constituents, the juxtaposi-
tion between texts designed for interpretation, or ‘reading,’ and texts
meant to instigate affective responses, material consumption or fan
exchange (Berndt 2019: 472) is rather moot. Reading a TV anime,
however, would mean taking into account its intended audience and
anticipated responses, its transmedial links and potential vectors of
expansion—in other words, the modes of engagement the text most
readily lends itself to. From this point of view, too, it seems unreasonable
Manga Production, Anime Consumption 291
References
Abbott, H. P. (2005). Closure. In D. Herman, M. Jahn and M.-L. Ryan
(eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (pp. 65–66). New
York: Routledge.
Angelini, S. & Booy, M. (2010). Members Only: Cult TV from Margins
to Mainstream. In S. Abbott (ed.), The Cult TV Book (pp. 19–27).
London: I.B. Tauris.
Azuma, H. (2007). Gēmuteki riarizmu no tanjō: Dōbutsuka suru posu-
tomodan 2. Tokyo: Kodansha.
_______. (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press. (Introduction and translation by
J. E. Abel and S. Kono)
Azuma, S. (2010). Mōsō no kyōdōtai: “Yaoi” komyuniti ni okeru ren’ai
kōdo no kinō. Shisō chizu, 5, 249–274.
Berndt, J. (2018). Anime in Academia: Representative Object, Media Form,
and Japanese Studies. Arts, 7(4), 56. Retrieved from: DOI: https://doi
.org/10.3390/arts7040056
_______. (2019). Interpreting Anime by Christopher Bolton (review).
The Journal of Japanese Studies, 45(2), 471–475.
Daimon, H. (1997). Nifuti sābu dokyumento/saibāsupēsujō no EVA. In
T. Igarashi (ed.), Evangerion kairaku gensoku (pp. 194–200). Tokyo:
Daisan Shokan.
Delwiche, A. (2017). Still Searching for the Unicorn: Transmedia
Storytelling and the Audience Question. In B. W. L. Derhy Kurtz
292 Anime Studies
relationship with the original story via cutscenes (video clips) inter-
spersed between fights. However, these cutscenes are not necessarily
presented in temporal or causal connections with the fights either.
After dealing the last punch in the ring, a character can appear in a
completely different setting engaged in a completely different action.
These examples reveal clearly that narrative coherence is not among
the primary objectives for such games.
These observations by Roth can also be applied to Neon Genesis:
Battle Orchestra. Battle Orchestra is a fighting game that comes with
a rumble mode enabling up to four different Evas (the mecha control-
led by the main characters of the series) or Angels to attack each other
without necessarily abiding by the ‘facts’ set straight by the series.
But among the rest of the EVA games there is a significant number
of narrative-oriented and character-driven titles. The prime examples of
these would be Visual Novels (such as Girlfriend of Steel 1 and 2)
and Raising simulations (Ayanami with Asuka Raising Project, Shinji
Ikari Raising Project, etc.) that centralize the engagement with the cha-
racters from the series and excite EVA fans, especially with the oppor-
tunity to form a direct connection with exactly who these characters
appear to be in the series. Azuma defines visual novels as “multistory,
multiending novels . . . that can be ‘read’ on the computer screen with
images and sounds” (2009: 75). Raising simulations, on the other
hand, put players in a more active position which requires observing
a high number of interrelated variables and overseeing characters’
growth by carefully balancing their use of limited resources (i.e., time
that can be spent on certain actions). To generalize, the common goal
of these more character-centered EVA games becomes traversing the
game and observing the characters in different contexts as a result of
players’ well or poorly made decisions. While control skills are largely
swapped with instances of clicking, the physical performance of the
players is replaced with their capacity of perseverance for the love of
discovery. However, interestingly, despite the fact that this is precisely
the structure that inspires Azuma to develop his theory of narrative
Combinatory Play and Infinite Replay 305
Conditions:
Sensitivity is above 200
Fatigue is higher than morality
Comments:
Have you ever wondered what Rei [Ayanami] would be like with
Asuka’s personality? Well, get this state and you can find out!
You’ll know when you’ve gotten this when Rei poses, her head held
high and a confident smirk on her face. She’ll occasionally diso-
bey poor San’i and go off and do her own thing (despite the sche-
dule) but she’s still kind at heart. I believe there’s an event where
she runs away from home and comes back when San’i is angsting
while it’s raining heavily, but I’m not too sure how to trigger it.
(GrunGast82 2004)
As these quotes attest, first of all, both Aarseth and Frasca seem to
consider the game players’ freedom to explore in-game possibilities
and the control they have over (characters’) actions as the promi-
nent features of ludic engagement. However, as discussed earlier, the
consumption of gamelike narratives gives a considerably more active
role to the audience. The consumption model presented by Azuma
goes beyond an individual’s comprehension of ‘descriptions of traits
and sequences of events’; it allows and encourages the audience to go
through several reiterations of the same story and to modify it if desired.
Therefore, in the comparison between games and gamelike narratives,
Combinatory Play and Infinite Replay 309
In this Scenario, Shinji must try to get along with every other cha-
racter (except PenPen), so he can feel more comfortable with his life
in Neo Tokyo-3. Shinji must raise his relationship values with eve-
ryone at +700, and everyone must feel for him the same high rela-
tionship values. This is quite tough to achieve, especially without
the help of any special item like “Unbreakable Heart.”
Once you reach +700 values with someone who also feels +700
values for Shinji, a scene will activate in which Shinji and the cha-
racter share an intimate (and usually fun) event that develops their
friendship. These events will only appear when you enter at the
required place for each character:
8. The following quote employs infor-
Misato’s apartment (before 4 p.m.): Misato, Asuka and Kaji. mal use of English. Grammar mistakes
School (studying time): Hikari, Kensuke and Gendou. are left unedited on purpose.
310 Anime Studies
The order of the battles is random (except the first against Sachiel),
and they can get quite tough depending on your ability, stats, and
the help that you get from other Pilots. I recommend you to do a lot
of training with other Pilots. Not only it will raise your Synchro, but
also will enhance your relationship.
You will know that the EVA Series are about to attack when the
DefCon has all turned red but still no Angel attacks. Once you
enter NERV, you will watch many scenes. Misato (or your favourite
NERV Personnel person) will come to rescue you, and then your
Self Defense will be important to survive. (If you happen to die here,
reload your game: it’s a random event, actually, although the higher
Self Defense, the higher probabilities that both you and the Misato
will survive.) After this, the battle against the EVA Series will begin.
Defeat them to watch the ending.
Note that if any character dies for any reason during this Scenario,
you will not be able to get the best ending. (Pler 2008)
This lengthy excerpt proves very helpful for demonstrating how the
game system generates a multiplicity of EVA stories based on gamers’
non-trivial effort, as well as elucidating the causal connections that
the game relies upon. First of all, both NGE2s make it possible to
test out the consequences of a wide variety of actions. In this parti-
cular scenario found in the NGE2 for PSP, as Shinji needs to raise his
relationship values, the player may decide to have him engage in a
conversation, or smile at or even kiss other characters at a given time.
This freedom of action is way more emphasized if we consider that
the scenario above is only one of the 18 scenarios found in the game.
However, as in any other game, only certain actions are possible in
this version of NGE2 and only some of these actions are desirable,
granted that the aim is opening alternative routes for plot development
Combinatory Play and Infinite Replay 311
within the same game to picture different paths for plot development,
these games tend to go back to the same iconic EVA battles one after
another to retrace or reimagine the relationships between a selection
of the same characters in separate works.
While it is always an option to use the same mechanics or modeling in
serializing games, which is not only cost-effective, but also preferable for
establishing a particular style, these games keep changing both elements
and explode the possibilities of interaction with the same series across
time and different genres. The EVA games do not rely on downloadable
content (DLC) to prolong consumer engagement either. Through DLCs,
new objects or environments can be introduced in installments without
changing the mechanics or the rule system of a game. However, instead
of capitalizing on this strategy, the EVA games seem to connect over a
specific set of narrative elements as the games keep increasing in num-
ber. (Bandai-Namco’s Tales of Zestria JRPG series has an Evangelion
DLC pack that comes with a costume set though.)
Even when the gameplay centralizes gamers’ non-trivial efforts
or the aspect of randomization, connecting with the anime series by
featuring the same characters and events creates the expectancy as to
what the gamer will do in order to see another version of the same
story. To the extent that this concern gets pronounced, the experience
with the whole franchise appears narrative-oriented and emerges
as a rewriting process. Moreover, the endless reiteration puts story-
generating games such as the NGE2s in a specifically paradoxical
position. Although they enable hours of replay in themselves, this
quality seems limited in comparison to the inexhaustible potential of
rewriting the same story forever.
The EVA games, in sequence, build an obsessive connection with
the anime series by featuring its main characters and events over and
over. In this respect, the EVA franchise treats games like narratives,
as if they needed serialization to introduce alternative ways for plot
development. EVA games like the NGE2s flaunt the medium-specific
capacity to simulate the outcomes of possible actions, but this capacity
Combinatory Play and Infinite Replay 319
series. Some of these games present the opportunity to play out the
exact same scenario as the anime series. Some allow players to carry
out new actions with the original set of characters. A final group
of games introduce entirely new characters to mingle with the rest.
Nevertheless, all of these games present clear connections with the
anime series, specifically by featuring a number of the original set
of characters along with certain recurring events. Even games like
Detective Evangelion, which introduce striking divergences from the
anime series in terms of plot, include not only the characters, but also
their traumatic battle with the Angels. Furthermore, in some instan-
ces, this strong linkage between the games and the series goes beyond
genre-specific concerns as well. In the Rhythm game, 3nd Impact, on
top of the cutscenes being a narrative reward, at times the music is
exchanged for the characters’ dialogue lines from the anime series.
The sense of rhythm is thus severed from music, and control skills are
employed to open up the same story once again.
The EVA games are most rewarding to fans of the anime series,
as they allow for detailed comparisons. But more interestingly, as
they take up the same elements obsessively and tend to reimagine
a selection of the same happenings with the same characters, each
of these games seems like an installment of a never-ending rewriting
process. As a result, despite the fact that games are alternative produ-
cing systems in themselves, each new game seems to be an alternative
to the previously released games as well as those that will probably
follow. Instead of going exclusively in a medium-specific direction,
the cumulation of the EVA games seems to gain a gamelike quality,
supporting a specific consumer engagement.
Games certainly do not need to offer narrative experiences. Even
when they feature characters whose stories are told across different
media, they can centralize gamers’ control skills and minimize nar-
rative information. Their priority falls on incorporating the gamers’
will and simulating the consequences of the actions they choose to
Combinatory Play and Infinite Replay 323
References
Primary sources
3rd Impact: Grasshopper Manufacture. 2011. Evangelion Shin Gekijōban—
Saundo Inpakuto. PlayStation Portable. Japanese version.
Ayanami with Asuka Raising Project: Broccoli and Gainax. 2002.
Shinseiki Evangelion: Ayanami Ikusei Keikaku with Asuka Hokan
Keikaku. PlayStation 2. Japanese version.
Detective Evangelion: Broccoli. 2007. Meitantei Evangelion. PlayStation
2. Japanese version.
NGE2: Bandai. 2004. Shinseiki Evangelion 2. PlayStation 2. Japanese
version.
NGE 2 for PSP: Bandai. 2006. Shinseiki Evangelion 2: Tsukurareshi
Sekai—Another Cases. PlayStation Portable. Japanese version.
Secondary sources
Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature.
Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Combinatory Play and Infinite Replay 325
like an open book and without hesitation discloses his insights into
all of Shinji’s insecurities, which embarrasses and confuses Shinji.
Kaworu’s lack of conventional physical boundaries only furthers
Shinji’s bewilderment, indicated by his blushing in many of his inte-
ractions with Kaworu.
When fans write Kawoshin, many interpret Shinji as more feminine
relative to Kaworu, as is customary in yaoi as well as BL stories, where one
character is usually coded as more masculine and called the seme (lit.
attacker, top), while his paramour is the uke (lit. receiver, bottom). In
Seibo Evangelion (Holy Mother Evangelion), an entire volume analy-
zing EVA and one of the earliest to do so, author and feminist SF critic
Mari Kotani, also considered an expert on fandom, yaoi, feminism
and the techno-gothic, discussed Kaworu as a queer (or hentai, i.e.,
‘perverse’) character with both male and female characteristics, and
remarks that Kaworu is a character purposefully made for “a special
subset of fans from all over the country” (my translation, 1997: 90).
She clarifies that she is talking about yaoi fans, of which there are
now many more not just all over the country, but all over the world,
and goes on to give a brief history of the yaoi genre (ibid.: 91) and
how it relates to feminist critique, citing her 1994 book Joseijō muish-
iki (technogynosis): Josei SF ron josetsu (Unconscious Femininity,
Technogynosis: An Introduction to Women’s SF). For this book, she
won the 15th Nihon SF Taishō (Japan SF Grand Prize), and she was
one of the first critics to discuss yaoi from a feminist perspective.
Kaworu himself describes Adam as the mother of all Angels, which,
as the first and last of his kind, makes him his own mother. What fur-
ther feminizes Kaworu is that he is non-human, a dangerous creature
akin to a monster, a “female who can wreck the infinite” (Kristeva
1982: 157), and therefore abject. In one of the most confusing scenes
in the series, Kaworu calls the crucified Lilith, mother of all humans,
Adam, causing more gender blurring.
Some fans new to Kawoshin yaoi do wonder why Shinji is
always drawn as an uke, and one fan on a scanlation site offers this
332 Anime Studies
between July 2012 and October 2014. Other long Kawoshin stories
by different authors all have under 10 reviews, which shows a lack
of engagement by the Kawoshin fans on the site with the stories, as
well as the fan authors and their readers, and this limits insights to be
gained from examining them. Laryna6’s oldest story, Book of Revels,
is an impressive 226,304 words long, divided into 46 chapters (93
reviews); the next, This Alien Shore, 132,118 words (52 reviews) is
somewhat less popular with readers, and the newest, Babylon, 89,048
words (119 reviews) is not set in the EVA universe, but uses all the
same characters. The stories’ interpretation of the Kawoshin rela-
tionship, the reader reviews and the author’s response to them form
the basis for my analysis.
The first thing the author does in Book of Revels is to tell readers
the story is a slashfic. The term slash (see above) is still used for writ-
ten fanworks featuring romance between male characters, while
some fans use slash and yaoi interchangeably or will stick to yaoi for
fanwork based on Japanese productions and slash for others.
The author Laryna6 engages with comments on the story by wri-
ting short author’s notes at the start or end of each chapter. She is
well-versed in obscure EVA details from all versions. She sets her
story in an alternative universe where Kaworu is initially called by
his Angel name Tabris. He takes control of SEELE and turns it into
an organization that defends the Lilim, which takes caring about
Shinji to another level. When Shinji and Kaworu first sleep together,
their physical union is described as a merging rather than intercourse,
and until the very last chapter, merging is how they make love, dis-
tinguishing the author’s interpretation significantly from the other
works examined for this chapter. There is a comical note about the
way the author sees Kawoshin in chapter 24, and her use of the word
uke here means she is aware of yaoi, making the designation of her
story as slash intentional:
There’s a joke about “What happens when you put two ukes in a boat?
They fix the boat.” Or in this case work together to fix the planet.
Creating Happy Endings 339
The comments on the story are universally praising. The author’s next
story, This Alien Shore, takes inspiration from the various EVA manga
series; it is a complicated, nuanced story where Kaworu comes over as
needier than Shinji, and many readers comment that the story was so
good it made them cry. The last story, Babylon, is set in an alternative
universe in Victorian times, where Gendō and almost the entire cast
of EVA participate in Satanic rites. Kaworu, again called Tabris, is
a demon that keeps Shinji, who has cat ears, as a sex slave. In spite
of the outlandish setting that does have some similarities with
the dōjinshi examined in the next section (cat ears are a common trope
and characteristic of uke characters), the story has a serious tone.
The author explains controversial aspects of the story, like Shinji’s age
(chapter 4), as follows:
Note that in this time period in England, it was legal for a boy to
marry . . . at fourteen, which is why Tabris set that as the minimum age
at which someone could sell their soul . . .
sort by popularity, but for the purpose of this study, I will only dis-
cuss those that are public, similar to Noppe (2013), and visible to all
non-paying users.
The oldest Kawoshin fanworks were uploaded in 2007, soon after
the site went live, while the newest is from 11 July 2019 at the time of
this writing. Users who are signed in can like and bookmark artist sub-
missions, and get updates on serialized stories, manga as well as novels.
The level of skill of the artists in the illustration and manga categories
varies, but most artists take great care to present their works as pro-
fessionally as possible, with clean lines, often adding color and visual
effects. Some are mere sketches, and many show both Kaworu and
Shinji in romantic and sometimes sexual settings. A common theme is
redrawing scenes from the first TV series in a way that focuses on the
Kawoshin pairing, like replacing Rei with Kaworu in the famous scene
where Shinji and Rei merge into each other, an alternative way of inter-
course also described in one of the popular stories on fanfiction.net.
There are numerous stories in the illustration and manga as well
as the novel categories that resurrect Kaworu or put the characters in
alternative settings without Eva units or Angels, for example, turning
them into normal high-school students. This is a common way for
fans to rewrite favorite characters from SF, fantasy or action stories
in which the characters’ lives are in peril. Mundane settings are a
manifestation of fans’ desire for beloved characters to be safe and
happy. There are numerous fan artists who focus exclusively on the
Kawoshin pairing and who have gained thousands of likes on their
works and a following of hundreds of users.
In some illustrations, Shinji is wearing women’s apparel (sun dres-
ses, ball gowns, bikinis, lingerie, bloomers, maid costumes and cat
ears) or is depicted as a girl with short hair. A small minority of stories
features him as being pregnant with Kaworu’s child. This does not
come as a surprise in a fandom context, and the same is true for the
manga dōjin works on the scanlation site discussed below.
Creating Happy Endings 341
unknown) in three languages. The site has a page with the origi-
nal Japanese raws (not translated, this page has seven comments in
English by fans who enjoyed the pictorial content of the scans without
fully understanding the story) and the English (14 comments in
English) and Korean scanlations (12 comments in Korean). Bath sto-
ries form a small but fairly popular subgenre among Kawoshin stories
on both the scanlation site and Pixiv, which is to be expected as
Kaworu and Shinji get closer in the first TV anime series while having
a bath together in a communal bath house, or sentō, complete with a
picture of Mount Fuji on the wall. This is a scene in which Shinji tells
Kaworu he has to go to bed, to which Kaworu immediately responds,
“With me?” Shinji reacts flustered, and they do not end up in the
same bed, but many fans like to imagine they did and create their
own stories accordingly. On the scanned cover of Fooling around in
the Bath, Shinji is featured alone in contrast to the vast majority of
Kawoshin dōjinshi that have a cover with both characters. Shinji is
covered in foam and has a yellow rubber duck bath toy between his
legs. From the first page, Kaworu and Shinji are not in a sentō, but
the average Japanese bathtub in an apartment, with Shinji sitting in
front of Kaworu, leaning into his chest. They engage in frottage and
anal sex, with graphic depictions of both, and there is no mention of
any of the life-and-death situations or philosophical issues otherwise
so prevalent in EVA.
In the comments, readers interpret Shinji being the receptive part-
ner during anal sex as getting “filled with love,” and contrast the ori-
ginal story, expressing their delight that nobody dies. On the cover
of another dōjinshi entitled Bath Lovey-Dovey Time, rated R-18,
Kaworu and Shinji are both featured, with a rubber duck, and in
the same position as they are in Fooling around in the Bath. This
scanlation is only available in English, with 15 comments; it was also
uploaded to the site in 2017, but originally published in 2014 (date
printed on the back cover). In contrast to the first where there is only
the bath scene, this one features other young EVA characters, albeit
344 Anime Studies
Discussion
This chapter is an attempt to analyze the many ways in which
Kawoshin fans rewrite the characters, and the way in which readers
of these fanworks react to them. The amount of engagement within
EVA fan communities concerning these fanworks can tell us much
about to what extent and in what ways fans are invested in the source
text, the characters within the source narrative and the characters
themselves, taken out of their narrative setting even if not completely
divorced from it. Unsurprisingly, most fans prefer fanworks in which
both Shinji and Kaworu are alive, as well as works in which they are
relatively healthy and happy. Many works have a light-hearted tone
and can be categorized as ‘slice of life’ stories, where the terrifying
occurrences of the original work are glossed over or omitted.
During my analysis, I found that I could not easily apply the
exact same method to all three websites equally and had to adapt
parameters accordingly. Like Nele Noppe, who examined the web-
sites DeviantART and Pixiv for her work on transcultural fannish
interactions, I found Pixiv the least accessible. As Noppe points out,
getting reliable data from Pixiv as a researcher is a challenging ende-
avor (2013: 150), and among the three sites I looked at I found it the
Creating Happy Endings 347
least useful to draw any kind of conclusion about tropes and trends
in the way fans create and consume Kawoshin stories. There is no
option to filter fanworks by popularity. Many stories have little to
no comments and see very few reader interactions, posing a problem
because these interactions form the brunt of my useable, collected
data. Noppe noticed the same, while also pointing out that the com-
ments on Pixiv don’t necessarily say anything about the popularity of
a work. While Pixiv is unfortunately resistant to effective data gathe-
ring and thus challenging when undertaking fandom research, the site
does feel welcoming to fan creators and their audiences. The site also
features its own fandom dictionary, with a treasure trove of details on
popular characters and pairings, and has more features that make it
attractive for the average user.
Another method considered but abandoned was going through all
the catalogues of the annual Comic Market since the airing of EVA.
Yukari Fujimoto employed this method when looking at NARUTO
yaoi fandom (2013: 173, 181–187). The Comic Market is held twice
a year in Tokyo, and it is the largest dōjinshi direct sales event in
the world. Its catalogue would yield clues to how many fan clubs,
or ‘circles,’ have sold Kawoshin dōjinshi, but it would be incomplete
and inconclusive given that certain circles are cryptic about the kinds
of works they will sell, and not all dōjinshi are sold at the Comic
Market. Morever, it would yield only quantitative data and virtually
nothing qualitative, little about the content of the stories and nothing
about buyers’/readers’ reactions and interaction with the fan artist/
author and each other.
Given the limited scope of the websites researched, as well as the
difficulties when trying to gather data on Pixiv and to a lesser extent
on fanfiction.net, further research is required. A follow-up study of
the most prevalent tropes that is statistically valid can be conducted
within a generous time frame at the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial
Library in Tokyo, with access to all the Kawoshin dōjinshi in their
348 Anime Studies
collection. But such a follow-up study can only illuminate how fan
artists and authors redraw and rewrite the pairing, and it would not
include reactions from fans to these stories and thus be qualitatively
different from this chapter.
Fan creators often use their stories as attempts to create a happy
ending for Kawoshin, and popular dōjinshi show that, barring excep-
tions, Kaworu, as the more dominant character in the pairing, is also
the more nurturing, guiding and supporting, meeting the emotional
needs of Shinji, who at age 14 still needs his parents, but who has a
cold father in Gendō and a mother who is long dead.
It is possible to interpret Kaworu’s feelings for Shinji, including
his eventual self-sacrifice, as motherly. And yet, this does not form
any obstacle for writing Kawoshin in a romantic and sexual way,
not realistically, but as idealized romance. The tenderness and
care with which Kaworu approaches Shinji, bolstering his lack-
ing self-esteem, and the two then falling in love, especially within
a narrative created by mostly female artists for a mostly female
audience, is in line with what Radway discussed first in 1983: that
female romance readers look for nurturing qualities in the fantasy
object of the male hero, qualities that are very much like those of
a mother, but packaged as a good looking man, which fits yaoi as
a subgenre of romance fiction for a mainly female audience. Shinji
is usually the uke in fan narratives, and as the main character, easy
for fans to identify with or project onto. Shiori Shimomura’s yaoi
survey showed that more than three times as many readers identify
with the uke than with the seme (2006: 164), and the Hanamura
Henshūbu guidebook on how to write successful BL stories recom-
mends making the point-of-view character the uke (2004: 104).
However, as mentioned above when discussing works on fanfiction.
net, readers there don’t require the yaoi conventions of seme and
uke to enjoy Kawoshin stories. Kaworu can be nurturing as a lover
without necessarily being dominant.
Creating Happy Endings 349
On the scanlation site, where the fans cannot directly interact with
the author and don’t know the identity of the site’s contributors of
pirated content, fans engage with one another and have conversations
in the comments, most of them full of praise for the Kawoshin work
on the same page. These conversations are what Patrick Galbraith
(2015) called “moe chat.” He conducted fieldwork between 2006 and
2007 in Japan, with Japanese fans, and the moe talk on which he
focuses is fans discussing yaoi face to face, which he distinguished
from moe chat, that is, online talk on websites (2015: 157–158). Moe
means to burn (with passion), which in the case of yaoi fans, signifies
affective behavior toward an imagined male/male couple (ibid.: 156).
Galbraith observed fans shrieking and clapping and expressing their
excitement in other ways during moe talk (ibid.: 159). In my study,
something similar was apparent in the comments section of the tech-
nically illegal scanlation site, where fans expressed their affection not
just in text conversation like on the more regulated fanfiction.net, but
with images or animated gifs of fiery flames and nosebleeds, the latter
being a manga and anime convention signifying acute arousal. Below
are some examples of comments that function as moe chat, expres-
sing readers’ love for the pairing and the way in which fan artists
and authors rewrite and redraw their relationship, but often also the
original work:
oh god I feel like crying, I did not come here for the feels man, all I
wanted was some good fornication ;A; (Usagina, 2014)
Son of a bitch, how could you. The first Kaworu/Shinji I’ve read in how
many years and this depressing shit of a doujinshi made all the depres-
sing shitty feelings that come with reading/watching the depressing
shit of a masterpiece that is Evangelion come rushing back like a
motherfucker. Fuck my life. Ugh, brilliant. (minisoysquares, 2015)
350 Anime Studies
References
Bauwens-Sugimoto, J. (2014). Manga Studies #3: On BL Manga Research
in Japanese. comicsforum.org, n.p. Retrieved from: https://comicsforum
.org/2014/07/29/manga-studies-3-on-bl-manga-research-in-japanese-by
-jessica-bauwens-sugimoto/
_______ & N. Renka. (2013). Fanboys and Naruto Epics: Exploring
New Ground in Fanfiction Studies. In J. Berndt and B. Kümmerling-
Meibauer (eds.), Manga’s Cultural Crossroads (pp. 192–208).
New York: Routledge.
Fermin, T. (2013). Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love in the Philippines:
Conflict, Resistance and Imaginations through and beyond Japan.
EJCJS, n.p. Retrieved from: http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs
/vol13/iss3/fermin.html
Fujimoto, Y. (2013). Women in NARUTO, Women Reading NARUTO.
In J. Berndt and B. Kümmerling-Meibauer (eds.), Manga’s Cultural
Crossroads (pp. 172–191). New York: Routledge.
GAINAX. (2008). All about Nagisa Kaworu a Child of The
EVANGELION. Tokyo: Kadokawa.
Galbraith, P. W. (2011). Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive
Intimacy among “Rotten Girls” in Contemporary Japan. Signs, 37(1),
211–232.
_______. (2015). Moe Talk, Affective Communication among Female
Fans of Yaoi in Japan. In M. McLelland et al. (eds.), Boys Love
Manga and beyond, History, Culture, and Community in Japan
(pp. 153–168). Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi.
Hanamura henshūbu (2004). Bōizu rabu shōsetsu—moe no tsutaekata.
Tokyo: Hakusensha.
Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis: An
Approach to Researching Online Behavior. In S. A. Barab, R. Kling
and J. H. Gray (eds.), Designing for Virtual Communities in the
Service of Learning (pp. 338–376). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers. New York: Routledge.
352 Anime Studies
Summary
First broadcasted in 1995, Neon Genesis Evangelion is set 20 years in
the future from its release (2015). The events of the series take place
in a post-apocalyptic world caused by the Second Impact, a global
cataclysm responsible for the annihilation of almost half the human
population. The Second impact took place in September 2000 as a
result of a ‘Contact Experiment’ during the Katsuragi expedition to
the South Pole—led by Misato Katsuragi’s father—to research and
experiment with Adam, also known as the First Angel.
Angels are enigmatic entities, descendants of Adam, one of the
two Seeds of Life that collide on Earth. While they are said to have
a genome that is 99.89 percent identical to that of humans, their
appearances do not seem to follow any pattern, and there is no sha-
red shape or physical traits among them: An Angel’s size can range
widely, ranging from microscopic beings to gigantic creatures. To
kill an Angel, the core (usually a red sphere) must be destroyed. In
Neon Genesis Evangelion, 15 different angels are depicted as Adam’s
How to cite this book chapter:
progeny (Sachiel, Shamshel, Ramiel, Gaghiel, Israfel, Sandalphon,
Lameiro-González, T. 2021. Plot
Matariel, Sahaquiel, Ireul, Leliel, Bardiel, Zeruel, Arael, Armisael and Summary of Neon Genesis Evangelion
the human-shaped vessel Tabris, also known as Kaworu Nagisa). The and Analysis of Character Interrelations.
In: Santiago Iglesias, J. A. and Soler
second Seed of Life and Adam’s counterpart, Lilith, is sometimes Baena, A. (Eds.). Anime Studies: Media-
considered as the second Angel, and it is the progenitor of the human Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis
race (also known as Lilin). Although the Angels’ origin is unknown, Evangelion. Pp. 353–363 Stockholm:
Stockholm University Press. DOI:
their eventual arrival was predicted in the Dead Sea Manuscripts pos- https://doi.org/10.16993/bbp.l. License:
sessed by SEELE, a secret worldwide society shrouded in mystery. CC-BY 4.0
354 Anime Studies
Main Characters
Eva unit pilots
Shinji Ikari
Shinji Ikari is a 14-year-old boy, Evangelion Unit-01 pilot, and protago-
nist of the series. Also known as the Third Child, Shinji was chosen by
NERV to drive the Eva-01 and fight against the Angels, consequently
reuniting with his father—Commander Gendō Ikari—after having been © khara, inc.
356 Anime Studies
Rei Ayanami
Rei is a 14-year-old girl and is known as the First Child. Chosen by
Gendō Ikari to pilot Eva-00, at the beginning of the series her back-
© khara, inc.
ground is mostly unknown, with no information about her origins,
childhood or family. Rei is a distant and unaccessible person, intro-
verted, quiet and enigmatic; sometimes unable to express her own
feelings or understand other people’s emotions. Throughout the
series, Rei feels pushed to question her own existence and to define
her identity. As a fellow pilot of the Eva units, Rei quickly catches
Shinji’s attention, ultimately establishing a relationship of empathy
and mutual affection.
Tōji Suzuhara
Tōji is one of Shinji’s classmates. Despite their initial disagreements,
they end up becoming good friends, learning to respect each other. As
the story unfolds, Tōji is revealed to be the Fourth Child, chosen to drive
Eva-03. However, his unit ends up being possessed by an Angel on the © khara, inc.
test run, and he is gravely injured after his Eva is torn apart by unit-01.
Despite his overall joyful disposition, Tōji has a protective temperament,
revealed early on, when he attacks Shinji, blaming him for his younger
sister’s critical injuries from one of the Angel attacks. Tōji is generally
presented as a strong-tempered boy with a spirited character, rough
around the edges, but a kind, honest and loyal friend.
Kaworu Nagisa
Kaworu is a 15-year-old boy, first presented in episode 24, and
designated as the Fifth Child by SEELE, in order to replace Asuka.
Kaworu immediately shows an open and honest personality, quickly
gaining Shinji’s trust and admiration, who ultimately finds in him the
ideal companion. However, as events unfold, Kaworu is revealed to © khara, inc.
358 Anime Studies
NERV staff
Commander Gendō Ikari
Also known as Gendō Rokubungi, Gendō Ikari (48 years old)
is NERV’s supreme commander and director of Project E. In his
youth, he married Yui Ikari, taking on her family name, and fathered
Shinji. However, after Yui’s death, he entirely devoted himself to his
research, abandoning Shinji and erasing any paternal feelings. Gendō
is mostly driven by his personal ambition and remarkable qualities as
a scientist. Moreover, he stands out as a cold, calculating and almost
inhuman person, placing the young pilots in danger’s way without
remorse. As NERV’s Commander, he poses as someone obsessive,
severe and quite authoritarian.
His life’s goal initially appears to be to avoid the Third Impact—
© khara, inc.
and thus the end of human life—by destroying the Angels. However,
it is later revealed that his true aim is the completion of the Human
Instrumentality Project, following the directives of the secret society
SEELE, but under his own scenario, presumably to reunite with Yui.
Gendō Ikari and Kōzō Fuyutsuki—knows the real nature of the Eva
units and the Human Instrumentality Project.
Ryōji Kaji
Kaji is a triple agent working as a NERV observer, SEELE’s operative
and a spy for the Japanese government. Former boyfriend of Misato
in college, they resume their romantic relationship upon his arrival
to Japan. Among other tasks, he is responsible for delivering Adam’s
embryo, recovered from Antarctica, to Gendō Ikari.
Kaji is a mysterious character, ultimately driven by his perso-
nal quest for truth. He is an independent, calm and seductive man.
Moreover, he often acts as a fatherly character toward Shinji, showing
him a friendly side. Kaji’s righteous and honorable nature is repea-
tedly proven before he meets his end.
© khara, inc.
Kōzō Fuyutsuki
Dr. Fuyutsuki (58 years old) is a scientific advisor, NERV’s Vice-
Commander and Gendō Ikari’s most trusted associate. He is a former
Kyoto University professor, and there he met Yui Ikari, who made an
impression on him as a promising young scientist. After the Second
Impact, he joined the official research expedition led by the United
Nations to the South Pole, in an attempt to find out the truth hidden
behind the catastrophe and SEELE’s secret purpose. Dr. Fuyutsuki
is invested in supporting the Human Instrumentality Project, but he
shows a calm and hard-working nature under Gendō’s command.
© khara, inc.
Plot Summary 361
CHARACTERS INTERRELATIONS
UNITED NATIONS
SEELE
NERV
Gendo MARRIAGE Yui
Ikari Ikari
49
Kozo
Fuyutsuki SAME UNIVERSITY?
50-60?
BEFORE SECOND IMPACT
Kaworu
Nagisa
(Tabris)
Anime
Neon Genesis Evangelion (in this volume abbreviated to EVA) is
an anime featuring 26 episodes, first broadcasted between October
1995 and March 1996. Created by Studio GAINAX and directed by
Hideaki Anno, the production also involved Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s
work on character design, and Yoh Yoshinari and Hiroyuki Imaishi
on the design and animation departments.
Death & Rebirth is the first movie of the franchise, premiering
in Japan in March 1997, and summarizing the main events that took
place in the first 24 episodes of the series. A second film entitled The
End of Evangelion debuted in July 1997, showing the events taking
place in the real world during Shinji’s introspective journey in episo-
des 25 and 26 of the original series. Finally, Revival of Evangelion
merges both films into a single one. It was first shown in March 1998.
Including some short additional scenes, it is a remastered edition
improving sound and video quality.
Years later, a new tetralogy called Rebuild of Evangelion was
announced, produced by Studio Khara in partnership with GAINAX.
The international titles of the four movies are Evangelion: 1.0 You Are
(Not) Alone (2007), Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009),
Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012) and Evangelion: 3.0+1.0
Thrice Upon a Time (2021). Presenting alternative events from those
of the initial Neon Genesis Evangelion series and films, the Rebuild of
Evangelion tetralogy is usually considered a reboot of the original
series rather than a remake.
Manga
Closely following most of the events and characters presented in the
original anime series, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s manga adaptation Neon
Genesis Evangelion (NGE) was published by Kadokawa Shoten in
Shōnen Ace magazine (from December 1994 to 2008) and Young
Ace magazine (from July 2009 and June 2013), with some breaks in
between, and eventually collected into 14 volumes.
Plot Summary 363
233, 243, 248, 249, 263, 264, 71, 77, 78, 79, 85, 86, 95, 96,
265, 266, 268, 274, 277, 278, 97, 105, 107, 111, 112, 114,
281, 282, 283, 287, 288, 289, 115, 116, 117, 130, 135, 136,
290, 291, 299, 300, 302, 325 138, 139, 140, 141, 145, 146,
Decompression 21, 28 147, 153, 155, 156, 162, 163,
164, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177,
Denison, Rayna 9, 15, 16, 17, 114,
179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185,
131, 190, 210, 254, 293 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193,
Derrida, Jacques 186, 187, 210 194, 195, 198, 199, 200, 201,
Devilman; Debiruman 194, 212 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 215,
Disney 20, 22, 23, 47, 51, 52, 53, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 227,
54, 56, 79, 80, 113, 144, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234,
145, 211 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240,
241, 242, 243, 245, 247, 248,
Doane, Mary Ann 112, 131 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254,
Dōjinshi 36, 285, 287, 288, 328, 255, 256, 257, 258, 261, 262,
335, 336, 337, 339, 341, 342, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269,
343, 344, 345, 347, 348 271, 272, 273, 274, 276, 277,
Doraemon 18, 112 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284,
Dragon Ball; Doragon Bōru 113, 285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291,
120, 181 292, 294, 297, 298, 299, 301,
302, 304, 306, 307, 309, 310,
Drawing 2, 7, 8, 11, 19, 21, 22, 312, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320,
26, 27, 28, 29, 36, 39, 40, 41, 321, 322, 323, 324, 327, 328,
42, 45, 46, 48, 52, 54, 65, 329, 330, 331, 333, 334, 337,
71, 81, 118, 224, 256, 285, 338, 339, 343, 345, 346, 347,
297, 340 350, 362
Dubbing 116, 182 Eva [units] 19, 32, 33, 34, 99, 102,
Dyer, Richard 118, 131, 184, 210 103, 104, 115, 136, 139, 142,
Dynamic immobility of the image 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150,
22, 24, 41, 164 153, 154, 156, 171, 172, 173,
193, 194, 198, 235, 239, 260,
E 330, 340, 345, 354, 355, 356,
Ecchi 205 357, 358, 360
Eisenstein, Sergei 53, 56, 80 Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not)
EVA 1, 2, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Alone; Evangerion Shin
19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, Gekijōban: Jo 27, 59, 82, 362
29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not)
45, 46, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, Advance; Evangerion Shin
58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 70, Gekijōban: Ha 59, 82, 362
Index 375
Godzilla; Gojira 58, 195, 212, 304, 309, 310, 311, 312, 316,
223, 225 327, 328, 330, 331, 332, 333,
Groensteen, Thierry 33, 47 334, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341,
342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 348,
H 349, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358,
359, 360, 361, 362, 363
Hayashibara, Megumi 77
Ikeda, Kenshō 132
Heidi, Girl of The Alps; Arupusu
no Shōjo Haiji 61, 82 Implosive holism 175, 176
Heinlein, Robert Anson 192 Inbetweens; dōga 7, 22
Heise, Ursula 136, 139, 145, 179 Interpretive and anticipatory play
298, 315
Hikawa, Ryūsuke 111, 131, 193,
211, 235, 244
J
Human Instrumentality Project
174, 176, 200, 237, 269, 277, Jakobson, Roman 21, 30, 47
354, 355, 358, 359, 360 Jenkins, Henry 192, 211, 250,
Hyperrealism 11, 54, 56, 58 251, 275, 280, 281, 289, 290,
292, 293, 327, 351
I Josei 188, 331, 352
Iconic solidarity 33
K
Iconography 186, 195, 198, 199,
204, 208, 211 Kaiju 186, 195, 223, 224, 225,
Ikari, Gendō; Gendō Ikari 23, 37, 232, 233, 235, 236
115, 155, 174, 178, 260, 264, Kamishibai 24, 191
267, 339, 348, 354, 355, 356, Katsuragi, Misato; Misato
358, 359, 360, 361 Katsuragi 23, 27, 37, 38, 40,
Ikari, Shinji; Shinji Ikari 19, 23, 49, 50, 67, 68, 72, 74, 77, 85,
27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 41, 42, 128, 155, 162, 173, 260, 264,
43, 44, 45, 55, 67, 72, 73, 74, 269, 309, 310, 353, 358, 359,
75, 77, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 360, 361
101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, Kawamura, Toshiaki 113, 132
107, 112, 114, 115, 116, 117,
Kawoshin 328, 329, 330, 331,
128, 129, 135, 136, 141, 142,
332, 334, 335, 336, 337,
146, 147, 150, 153, 155, 157,
338, 339, 340, 341, 342,
159, 160, 162, 163, 170, 173,
343, 344, 345, 346, 347,
174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 195,
348, 349, 350
201, 236, 237, 238, 239, 258,
260, 261, 262, 264, 267, 269, Key animator 50, 64, 142, 171
271, 272, 278, 285, 287, 288, Kinoshita, Kikuko 113, 132
Index 377
Movement 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 16, 20, 85, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 102, 104,
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 114,
29, 31, 33, 36, 40, 41, 44, 46, 115, 117, 125, 128, 136, 147,
48, 51, 52, 54, 66, 77, 79, 86, 153, 162, 169, 170, 178, 183,
87, 89, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 186, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193,
103, 104, 136, 137, 138, 139, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199,
142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 200, 201, 202, 204, 206, 207,
148, 149, 150, 151, 159, 169, 208, 209, 213, 227, 228, 232,
170, 171, 172, 174, 202, 212, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 241,
282, 298, 312 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 252,
Mushi Pro; Mushi Production 65, 253, 255, 256, 258, 261, 262,
69, 83, 241 263, 264, 266, 267, 268, 269,
Music 5, 11, 16, 60, 61, 85, 86, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 278,
87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 280, 282, 283, 291, 292, 294,
95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 295, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301,
102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 302, 303, 304, 307, 308, 309,
108, 109, 166, 246, 317, 322 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316,
317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322,
Musumeyaku 124 323, 325, 326, 329, 334, 336,
N 346, 348, 350, 354
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water; Narrative play; narrative replay
Fushigi no Umi no Nadia 298, 312, 313, 314, 315
193, 333 Narratology 196, 250, 252, 253,
Nagai, Gō 191, 194, 212 294, 303, 368, 369
Nagisa, Kaworu; Kaworu Nagisa Neon Genesis Evangelion:
19, 32, 33, 34, 96, 97, 98, 99, Death & Rebirth; Shin Seiki
100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, Evangerion Gekijōban: Shi To
106, 107, 115, 263, 268, 269, Shinsei 59, 61, 62, 63, 75, 83,
287, 310, 327, 328, 329, 330, 215, 252, 362
331, 332, 333, 334, 337, 338, Neon Genesis Evangelion; Shin
339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, Seiki Evangerion 1, 19, 49, 50,
345, 346, 348, 349, 351, 353, 82, 83, 85, 111, 135, 181, 209,
357, 358, 361 211, 212, 213, 215, 230, 247,
Napier, Susan 3, 17, 190, 195, 297, 327, 352, 353, 354, 362
197, 198, 199, 201, 212 NERV 23, 67, 69, 99, 102, 103,
Narrative 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 106, 136, 146, 199, 260, 310,
19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 354, 355, 359, 360, 361
38, 43, 47, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, Netflix 50, 60, 61, 62, 63, 82, 116,
65, 71, 73, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 117, 182, 204, 205, 332, 339
Index 379
Religion 200, 213, 275, 293 198, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204,
Remake 195, 226, 362 205, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213,
221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226,
Remediation 195
232, 233, 236, 241, 280, 327,
Rhythm 20, 24, 25, 26, 36, 44, 46, 331, 334, 340, 350
70, 94, 104, 317, 322
Second Impact 141, 199, 277,
Robot; robots 7, 11, 12, 13, 18, 353, 354, 359, 360, 361
19, 54, 57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 66,
Sectioning 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34
69, 70, 71, 99, 102, 103, 104,
105, 112, 115, 117, 128, 131, SEELE 67, 146, 177, 178, 263,
142, 150, 151, 155, 181, 185, 264, 338, 353, 354, 355, 357,
189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 358, 360, 361
197, 200, 203, 209, 211, 218, Seinen 188, 189
227, 229, 233, 235, 236, 237, Selective animation 26, 47
239, 240, 242, 244, 248, Shimizu, Mari 112, 118, 132
299, 354
Shinkansen Henkei Robo
Rotoscoping 22 Shinkarion 64, 83
Rotten girls; fujoshi 283, 292, Shirow, Masamune 192
327, 328, 334, 350, 351
Shōjo 82, 131, 188, 205,
Ryan, Marie-Laure 190, 213, 250,
253, 258, 264, 276, 287, 291, Shōnen 13, 116, 188, 189, 190,
294, 303, 325 191, 192, 204, 205
Ryōji, Kaji; Kaji Ryōji 30, 37, Shot-reverse-shot 23, 26
38, 72, 75, 260, 309, 359, Sōryū, Asuka Langley; Asuka 19,
360, 361 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 58,
72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78,
85, 115, 128, 129, 148, 151,
S
155, 159, 171, 172, 173, 177,
Sadamoto, Yoshiyuki 185, 189, 201, 236, 238, 260, 262, 263,
252, 256, 288, 333, 344, 352, 267, 269, 285, 287, 288, 304,
362 305, 306, 309, 316, 324, 325,
Sailor Moon; Bishōjo Senshi Sērā 330, 344, 356, 357, 358, 361,
Mūn 64, 65, 69, 82, 125, 126, 362, 363
133, 333 Soulful body 148
Sakuga 28, 50, 81, 180 Soundtrack 12, 33, 39, 247,
Sano, Akiko 3, 5, 8, 17 288, 317
Science Fiction; SF 2, 13, 19, 57, Space Battleship Yamato; Uchū
58, 67, 185, 189, 190, 191, Senkan Yamato 2, 117, 118,
192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 119, 223, 227, 228, 229, 230
Index 381
Speculative Fiction 188 Synecdoche 10, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30,
Stanislavski, Konstantin 144 32, 36, 37, 39, 41, 46, 48
Star Trek 327
T
Steinberg, Marc 8, 17, 22, 23,
24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 41, 48, Tabris 32, 338, 339, 353, 358, 361
52, 54, 55, 56, 66, 69, 81, Takarazuka Revue 122, 124,
164, 179, 246, 248, 275, 128, 131
294, 295 Takeuchi, Naoko 125, 133
Stillness 11, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, Tanaka, Mayumi 113
26, 27, 29, 33, 40, 41, 46, Tetsujin 28-Gō 117, 239
52, 367
Tezuka, Osamu 5, 8, 54, 55, 65,
Stop-motion 58, 195 66, 81, 83, 192, 237, 241, 244,
Storyboard 7, 41, 42, 49, 50, 62, 246, 292
63, 67, 254 The End of Evangelion; Shin Seiki
Storytelling 3, 17, 62, 93, 190, Evangerion Gekijōban: Ea/
213, 249, 251, 263, 291, 292, Magokoro Wo, Kimi Ni 83,
293, 294, 303, 312 115, 128, 135, 215, 265,
Storyworld 249, 250, 252, 253, 355, 362
254, 255, 256, 258, 260, 261, Toei Animation 22, 82
262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 272, Tokusatsu 58, 186, 193, 194, 195,
273, 278, 284, 285, 286, 287, 209, 210, 235
292, 294, 295, 300, 301, 303, Transmedia 2, 6, 10, 14, 16, 24,
313, 315 186, 195, 197, 208, 250, 251,
Streaming; streaming platform 12, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 261,
27, 60, 61, 182, 204, 207 263, 264, 266, 275, 280, 287,
Studio Ghibli 9, 17, 22, 119, 213 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295
Studio Khara 82, 83, 185, 212, Tsugata, Nobuyuki 111, 133, 227,
273, 362 228, 246
Super Dimension Fortress Tsundere 58
Macross: Do You Remember Tsurumaki, Kazuya 200, 214
Love?; Chōjikū Yōsai
Turn A Gundam; Tān Ē
Makurosu: Ai Oboete Imasu ka
Gandamu 113
61, 82, 221, 226
TV series 1, 2, 4, 5, 20, 27, 58, 59,
Suzuhara, Tōji; Tōji Suzuhara
61, 62, 63, 65, 113, 117, 128,
357, 361
135, 139, 140, 141, 145, 155,
Suzuki, Toshio 119 156, 157, 163, 170, 171, 173,
Suzumiya, Haruhi 155, 278, 279 174, 188, 192, 197, 203, 247,
382 Anime Studies
TV series (continued) W
252, 254, 256, 272, 284, 287, Wells, Paul 43, 48
288, 327, 340, 344, 355
World-building 251, 255, 285, 294
TV Tokyo 59, 61
Y
U
Yaoi 283, 291, 294, 327, 328,
Ultraman; Urutoraman 57, 193, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334,
194, 225, 229, 236 338, 339, 342, 344, 347, 348,
Upton, Brian 298, 312, 315, 326 349, 350, 351, 367
Your Name; Kimi no Na wa 18, 151
V
Yu Yu Hakusho; Yū Yū Hakusho
Voice actor 12, 116, 131 119, 125, 131
Voice actress 76, 112, 116, 118,
119, 120, 122, 128, 129 Z
Voice Animage 119 Zahlten, Alexander 10, 18