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Speaker 3: Subscribe today, Hello, and welcome to this week's episode.
Speaker 4: Of Superhero Ethics. Today, myself, Matthew Fox, and my normal
Speaker 4: co host Riki Hayashi are gonna be talking about the
Speaker 4: anime from the nineteen nineties Neon Genesis Evangelian or Evangelian.
Speaker 4: This is I would imagine that in our listenership right now,
Speaker 4: twenty to thirty percent of you are going, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: this is one of the best sci fi ever, one
Speaker 4: of the best anime ever. I love this show. I
Speaker 4: can't wait to hear you talk about it. Another sixty
Speaker 4: to seventy percent of you going, what in the world
Speaker 4: are you talking about? You may have heard it, you
Speaker 4: know I have seen it. This is another one of
Speaker 4: these episodes where this is something Reky knows really well.
Speaker 4: I haven't known it well, but Riki has been talking
Speaker 4: about it for a while and a number of the
Speaker 4: different topics that it opens up, and so we're gonna
Speaker 4: do what's probably gonna be the first of an number
Speaker 4: of episodes on this topic of this show and all
Speaker 4: the ethical questions that it connects to, both in terms
Speaker 4: of within the show itself and in the creation of
Speaker 4: the show. And if you've never seen the show, if
Speaker 4: you don't know what we're talking about. Don't worry, I
Speaker 4: haven't seen most of the show. I've seen the first
Speaker 4: five episodes. I've seen a video about the lore of it,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of today is going to be
Speaker 4: about us taking me and all of you through kind
Speaker 4: of what the show is about, but also talking about
Speaker 4: like the questions that it raises, because again, like the
Speaker 4: point of this podcast is not as much to say
Speaker 4: like this character was right, that character was wrong, as
Speaker 4: much as to say, like, what are the questions that
Speaker 4: this show or this movie, or this book or whatever
Speaker 4: is raising for us, and how do we feel about
Speaker 4: those things? Because I'm only five episodes in and already I
Speaker 4: see deep connections to a number of the things we've
Speaker 4: talked about on this show, everything from cultural appropriation to
Speaker 4: mecca ideas, to the way sexuality is presented in shows,
Speaker 4: to the idea of choice and do you get to
Speaker 4: choose whether or not you are the hero which is
Speaker 4: a pretty recent episode, to depression and loneliness and how
Speaker 4: those things manifest in wartime and trauma. There's just so much.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's so much I'm still missing. So Riki,
Speaker 4: why don't you tell us a little bit about your
Speaker 4: your feelings about this show and kind of what what
Speaker 4: made you want it to be something we talked about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you. First off, I guess I would say
Speaker 5: I am by no means an experts. This is not
Speaker 5: This is actually like not something I grew up watching
Speaker 5: because it was it wasn't really available to me back then,
Speaker 5: you know, you would have to go searching for it.
Speaker 5: I was aware of it because it was such a
Speaker 5: cultural phenomenon. I believe it came out in nineteen ninety five. Yeah,
Speaker 5: ninety six was when it was on TV in Japan.
Speaker 5: And it is so iconic within anime, within the mecca
Speaker 5: subgenre that you cannot help if you if you're a
Speaker 5: fan of those things, you cannot help but have seen
Speaker 5: the EVAs, the Giant Robots, some of the character models
Speaker 5: are very iconic and copied, you know, across the industry.
Speaker 5: But I only watched it, started watching anythink last year
Speaker 5: and finished it this year because it's been available on Netflix,
Speaker 5: which is a huge boon for all of us to
Speaker 5: be able to watch it.
Speaker 4: And I will say this marks me as a dirty
Speaker 4: heretic to some I know, though not you. You can
Speaker 4: obviously watch it EI the original Japanese with subtitles. One
Speaker 4: of the things that Netflix did Netflix did is they
Speaker 4: re recorded a fairly good dub with with good actors.
Speaker 4: It is not exactly translation. We'll definitely talk about that,
Speaker 4: but for if you're like me and for ADHD reasons
Speaker 4: or other things like that, subtitles are hard, there is
Speaker 4: definitely a good dub version of it as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I I've said this before, probably on the show,
Speaker 5: but it bears repeating that I prefer subtitles because I
Speaker 5: can understand Japanese, right, And I think that, like, especially
Speaker 5: live action, like acting in live action is kind of
Speaker 5: different from voice acting, but it's all still acting. And
Speaker 5: I do think like you lose some stuff if you
Speaker 5: don't have the original actor like doing the things. But
Speaker 5: that said, like, I do not fault anyone for preferring
Speaker 5: the dub for whatever reason. You should watch things in
Speaker 5: the way that you can enjoy them best. So I
Speaker 5: am like fully not into the debate of like which
Speaker 5: is quote unquote better. Yeah, whatever, whatever is better for
Speaker 5: you is what you should do to enjoy a product.
Speaker 5: And like, even though like I don't understand Korean, like
Speaker 5: it's it's still the same. Like I still enjoy watching
Speaker 5: like Korean horror, especially a lot of the a lot
Speaker 5: of the TV shows and movies in the original Korean
Speaker 5: with subs, just because I feel like I'm getting more
Speaker 5: out of it, even if I'm not understanding the words
Speaker 5: that they're saying, for sure that they emote them. I
Speaker 5: think is more is more, it's more genuine performance, even
Speaker 5: though like I do enjoy some of the performances. Patrick
Speaker 5: Stewart in particular, was on the dub of Naushka The
Speaker 5: Valley of the Wind.
Speaker 4: Oh interesting, it's just such a fun performance.
Speaker 5: Anyway, back to this, so you you mentioned the name
Speaker 5: Neon Genesis. Evangelian is technically the correct name. I know
Speaker 5: it gets gets pronounced both ways in the Japanese the
Speaker 5: way it's written, it's Evangelian, so that I feel like
Speaker 5: that's just how it should be said. But you know,
Speaker 5: and for me, like if you do, if you are
Speaker 5: not familiar with this product and you are still interested
Speaker 5: in watching it, we are probably going to spoil things,
Speaker 5: like talk about things that happen, and I already mentioned
Speaker 5: to you in the pre show. It doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 5: matter as much like this is one of the least
Speaker 5: plot driven shows I have ever watched like that. I
Speaker 5: want to make the argument, like a broad argument, that
Speaker 5: the plot doesn't matter because frankly, like some of it
Speaker 5: is just nonsense, Like people have like done deep dives
Speaker 5: into the lore, and there is a lore and it
Speaker 5: is arguably consistent within itself, but it doesn't make any
Speaker 5: sense and there's not you. You can't be like, ah,
Speaker 5: like this is why this is happening. No, not really.
Speaker 5: And then on top of that, there are a multiple
Speaker 5: endings to this. I don't know how familiar are with that,
Speaker 5: but the original TV show was twenty six episodes, which
Speaker 5: is what is available on Netflix right one quote unquote season,
Speaker 5: and there is an ending to that season. It's a
Speaker 5: very weird ending, and in fact, it was not very
Speaker 5: popular in Japan, I would say unfortunately. The creator Hideakiano
Speaker 5: and his animation studio Gain Acts received a lot of
Speaker 5: hate mail, death threads. I've seen pictures of spray painted
Speaker 5: graffiti like on their studio entrance. So they received a
Speaker 5: lot of hate for the original ending of the anime
Speaker 5: run on TV, and I believe a year later released
Speaker 5: a movie that was like a retelling of the ending
Speaker 5: of the last two episodes. I believe in a very
Speaker 5: different way. And so if you're into lore and like
Speaker 5: a history of a show, like the internal history, like
Speaker 5: which which one is the real ending? Right is a
Speaker 5: question among fandom. And now they have released I believe
Speaker 5: it's a series of three movies recently, and those also
Speaker 5: retell the ending in a way, or retell the whole
Speaker 5: series in some sense. The yeah, it's called rebuild. The
Speaker 5: Rebuild of Evangelion is the recent movies like one point
Speaker 5: zero through three point zero. Yeah, so there's three movies
Speaker 5: and it's one. One argument I've heard is that it's
Speaker 5: like that that this universe is multiversal and that it's
Speaker 5: repeating all the Matrix, okay, and that all of these
Speaker 5: are real like they happen. But then it's like the
Speaker 5: you know, the third iteration or the tenth iteration or whatever,
Speaker 5: you know, like in the Matrix, the architect guys like
Speaker 5: you're the sixth chosen one or whatever the heck in
Speaker 5: that scene. I don't know if that's cope, that's kopium
Speaker 5: on the on the part of fans. I don't think
Speaker 5: that the creators have any anything they want to say
Speaker 5: that they intended. They just want to keep making stuff
Speaker 5: with this product. It's with these characters because they find
Speaker 5: them interesting. And that's that's the thing. Like when I
Speaker 5: said plot doesn't matter, this is all about characters. Yeah,
Speaker 5: about about the central characters of this show. So like
Speaker 5: you started, like, what what do you understand so far
Speaker 5: of I guess the world and then the characters, and
Speaker 5: we can we can build off of that.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, let me start by just kind of like
Speaker 4: bookmarking a few things, and I think we'll talk about
Speaker 4: any more detail at a later point. Yeah, And one
Speaker 4: is and I think this is an important thing to understand,
Speaker 4: and it's also try to kind of explain this because
Speaker 4: I'm kind of like a Joe about it. But I
Speaker 4: don't think there's a lot to understand here. The next
Speaker 4: time that I hear someone as you, as I mentioned,
Speaker 4: you sent me a long video about the lore of
Speaker 4: the show and it goes very deep and then at
Speaker 4: the end it's like, oh, by the way, very little
Speaker 4: of this matters and almost none of this is in
Speaker 4: the original series and it's all in like video games
Speaker 4: and later movies and oh yeah like that. But it
Speaker 4: is interesting to know all that if you're a lord
Speaker 4: fiend like I am. But knowing what the law is,
Speaker 4: and especially as you said that, because the writers have
Speaker 4: kind of said that a lot of lor they were
Speaker 4: just like, well, this seems fun. Let's do this. The
Speaker 4: next time I hear a white person, say, particularly a
Speaker 4: white Christian, or the next time I hear a white person,
Speaker 4: particularly if they're Jewish or Christian, say, oh, why does
Speaker 4: it matter that like they named the evil person Shiva
Speaker 4: or like drew On like Buddhist or you know, Islamic
Speaker 4: or you know some other kind of like iconography for
Speaker 4: the show. It doesn't matter, or it's just a show.
Speaker 4: I want them to watch this Lord video because it
Speaker 4: is one of the greatest examples of seeing of a
Speaker 4: shoe being on the other foot. And I do think
Speaker 4: there's in a market difference, to be clear, because of
Speaker 4: the power that Christianity and the Jewish stories that are
Speaker 4: part of Christianity has. But this is like wildly just
Speaker 4: taking like, oh, you know what, crosses look cool and
Speaker 4: they mean something to a lot of people. Let's have
Speaker 4: crosses everywhere. The main story begins with the idea of
Speaker 4: two alien beings named Adam and Lilith coming to Earth,
Speaker 4: and for those who don't know, according to Jewish not
Speaker 4: in the Bible itself, but in Russia teachings and other
Speaker 4: things like that, Lilith has often prescribed to be the
Speaker 4: original wife of Adam, who wasn't obedient and so therefore
Speaker 4: Eve was creating. And there's so much to go into there,
Speaker 4: and I won't.
Speaker 5: I won't.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to do all that here. There's also
Speaker 4: a reference to the spear that was used to pierce
Speaker 4: the side of Jesus he's on the cross. The cross
Speaker 4: imagery is all over the place, angels, and I didn't
Speaker 4: feel offended or bothered by it as a Christian in
Speaker 4: any way. I think, like, you know, you.
Speaker 5: Were trying to figure it out, right, Yeah, this what
Speaker 5: does this mean? And then when the.
Speaker 4: Interview being like, oh, this is exactly what happened so
Speaker 4: often this is not someone who really studied this and
Speaker 4: like got with a mi Raushic rabbi to like understand,
Speaker 4: they were just like, oh, this sounds cool, let's throw
Speaker 4: it in, which again I think, you know, Christianity could
Speaker 4: use some punching up at it, and I do think
Speaker 4: it's different when you do that with cultures that are
Speaker 4: more often misrepresented. But there was an uncomfortness for me
Speaker 4: there and like about Oh, like I've always intellectually understood
Speaker 4: why this is so bothersome to people of other religions
Speaker 4: and cultures. I've never experienced it quite in the same way, Okay,
Speaker 4: And and that was just to me, So that was
Speaker 4: kind of my first real thought about all of it.
Speaker 5: This second though, as you said, again, I just want
Speaker 5: to real quick, Like you mentioned the Adam and the
Speaker 5: Lilith and then the Prime the antagonists on the show
Speaker 5: are these monsters, right, and they call them angels in
Speaker 5: the in the translation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, And and a lot of it's about like
Speaker 4: the nature of free will. There's a lot of Christian stories. Again,
Speaker 4: most of these are non biblical, but where there uh
Speaker 4: And honestly, it's one of the few parts of Christian
Speaker 4: theology that supernatural gets fairly accurate. Uh No, take that back.
Speaker 4: And as another example, there's a lot of stories within Christianity,
Speaker 4: again non biblical for the most part, but about this
Speaker 4: idea that angels are perfectly obedient to God and that
Speaker 4: humans are not, and that there's a real question of
Speaker 4: which one God loves more. Uh, you know, the kind
Speaker 4: of the rebellious child who God is proud of versus
Speaker 4: the purely obedient one. And that comes up in a
Speaker 4: lot of pop media, everything from like Supernatural to movie Lucifer.
Speaker 4: There's a movie in the from the nineties where they
Speaker 4: all perch and we're all black the angels do and
Speaker 4: I can't remember the name of it, but the point is, Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of like that iconography in this movie
Speaker 4: that is fascinating. But if you go too deep on,
Speaker 4: you're gonna get very frustrated with And I'm kind of
Speaker 4: glad that no one of the Christian right has found
Speaker 4: this yet because it would be one more source of
Speaker 4: like massive protests and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: Oh well, I'm sure they have people are aware of it,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I'm trying to think there. I remember there
Speaker 5: was a movie called Legion. Mm hmm with Paul Bettany.
Speaker 5: Is that what your thing?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: That? That one like he is an angel and then
Speaker 5: God has decided to purge humanity and he defies God
Speaker 5: and like fights against other angels.
Speaker 4: That might be it so off the check, but anyway,
Speaker 4: but to get back to Dean Genesis, I I just
Speaker 4: had to say that it was such a thing. It
Speaker 4: came so forward to me.
Speaker 5: No, I I think, like this is a very prominent
Speaker 5: example of cultural appropriation right, right of cherry picking names
Speaker 5: and lore from Christianity with in my opinion, like i'm
Speaker 5: not really a depth of understanding mh or respect to
Speaker 5: the original. Like I wouldn't say that it's like intentionally disrespectful,
Speaker 5: but I don't think it is done in a way
Speaker 5: to be like this, this is our understanding of Christianity
Speaker 5: and how we want to interrivet it. I think they
Speaker 5: just like took the names.
Speaker 4: From Yeah, I mean I usually just kind of throw
Speaker 4: off example, but like think about Western stories where like
Speaker 4: the bad person is named Shiva or some other Hindi god,
Speaker 4: you know, or something like that. You know, because again,
Speaker 4: like I said, it's like it's not that it's let's
Speaker 4: make fun of this, it's just, hey, this is in
Speaker 4: the in the overculture. M hmm. I think another thing
Speaker 4: that I really recognize about the shit. Oh and here's again,
Speaker 4: I think you're right, the plot doesn't matter, you know,
Speaker 4: think about your basic superhero movie. We're at the point
Speaker 4: now where there's a well established trope of how a
Speaker 4: superhero movie goes, and some of them are interesting because
Speaker 4: they break the trope, but a lot of them are interesting,
Speaker 4: They say, what if it's a different kind of superhero,
Speaker 4: but in the same trope, it'll be they get powers,
Speaker 4: they're reluctant to use the powers, they're convinced to use
Speaker 4: the powers. They start using the powers, they become really
Speaker 4: powerful and good at it. They meet a challenge that
Speaker 4: actually is the first one who can stop them maybe,
Speaker 4: and they have doubts, and then something helps them to
Speaker 4: you know, reassert themselves, and then they defeat the enemy,
Speaker 4: often by conquering their own inner demon in some way,
Speaker 4: their ego or their inability to connect to others, or
Speaker 4: their fear of goldfish, or you know, whatever the hell
Speaker 4: it is, in the same way. Three minutes into this show,
Speaker 4: I was like, Okay, so this young boy is gonna
Speaker 4: wind up being very reluctant to be the mecha pilot.
Speaker 4: But he's going to be the Meca pilot, and it's
Speaker 4: going to be very difficult for him to be the
Speaker 4: mecha pilot, and at some point he's going to want
Speaker 4: to stop being the mecha pilot. But then when he
Speaker 4: sees this other girl who he thinks is kind of
Speaker 4: pretty try to be an mecha pilot and it hurting her,
Speaker 4: he's going to decide he has to be the mecha
Speaker 4: pilot again. And there's gonna be a shadowy human conspiracy
Speaker 4: that's running all of this, that has like their own
Speaker 4: agenda of what's going to happen to humanity, even though
Speaker 4: they seem to be helping humanity, And at some point
Speaker 4: our Scooby gang of ragtag teenage heroes are going to
Speaker 4: figure all this out and try to stop it. And
Speaker 4: I know that the ending gets a lot more complicated
Speaker 4: than that, but very quickly I was like, I don't
Speaker 4: think there's gonna be many hot points that surprise me,
Speaker 4: But like you said, I didn't really care because I
Speaker 4: found the characters so fascinating because I thought it was
Speaker 4: such a good job of showing trauma and how trauma
Speaker 4: affects people, especially young people, and also of exploring that
Speaker 4: question that we talked about just a few episodes of
Speaker 4: to what extra do you get to decide? I don't
Speaker 4: want to fulfill my destiny. I don't want to be
Speaker 4: the person who has to risk it all in order
Speaker 4: to save everybody else, because it is very much a
Speaker 4: show where everyone in the in the show is is,
Speaker 4: you know, guilting him or straight up bullying him or
Speaker 4: rejecting him if he won't telling him he's got to
Speaker 4: be the one to get himself into this mecca and
Speaker 4: and go and save the day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so let's let's set the stage a little. The
Speaker 5: main the main character is Shinji i Kari. He's the
Speaker 5: young boy who is the pilot of the VA zero
Speaker 5: one and and so the the meccas in the show
Speaker 5: are called Evangelian short shorthand as EVAs.
Speaker 4: Here are a question for you. Some characters refer to
Speaker 4: him as Shinja, some as Akari.
Speaker 5: And name Shinji I Kai.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, and I know so well. I'm asking this
Speaker 4: because I know that I know. I know in a
Speaker 4: Western sense what it means when someone refers to someone
Speaker 4: as their first name versus by their last name. And
Speaker 4: I kind of but I don't know in a Japanese sense,
Speaker 4: what is what is being conveyed when someone uses the
Speaker 4: first part of his name or the last part of
Speaker 4: his name.
Speaker 5: I would say, in general, someone who calls him Shinji
Speaker 5: is closer to him mm hmm, like it's a it's
Speaker 5: a friendlier way to call someone. And then yeah, because
Speaker 5: his last name Ikari, like they might you might say
Speaker 5: Ikayi son, which I don't think they do. I think
Speaker 5: pretty much everyone calls him ikari kun. The suffix basically
Speaker 5: for like a kid, like a young kid, young boy. So,
Speaker 5: and then his father is in this as well, right
Speaker 5: like if you met him yep, So his father is
Speaker 5: a character gendo ikari and they might refer to whoms
Speaker 5: gendo or ikaii son. Again, son is like the more adult,
Speaker 5: respectful suffix to the last name. So I think most
Speaker 5: of the adults probably call him ikari kun. And then
Speaker 5: the other megapilots or his classmates at school call him,
Speaker 5: might call him shinji. Yeah, so he you've met him.
Speaker 5: You've met uh ray Im the other pilot so far.
Speaker 5: And she she's a girl, and ray in particular is
Speaker 5: very iconic within the fantom, and just like anime, she
Speaker 5: is like the prototype kind of like I guess nowadays
Speaker 5: we'll call them manic pixie dream girls. Right. She's got
Speaker 5: the colored hair, it's what she's her hair. And she
Speaker 5: is mysterious, yeah, like we don't know everything about her.
Speaker 5: She's very quiet but also a very good pilot. So
Speaker 5: she's got like all these qualities that it's set up
Speaker 5: in the beginning as like, oh, like you would expect
Speaker 5: that she is going to be his love interest on
Speaker 5: this show.
Speaker 4: And yeah, and when we meet her, she's also very
Speaker 4: badly injured from the last time she was a pilot,
Speaker 4: and that's part of why he you know, he's being
Speaker 4: pushed into it. I found the instruction of her character,
Speaker 4: especially with the two other young women in his life,
Speaker 4: very interesting, and I want to kind of ask more
Speaker 4: about that because so he is supposed to be a
Speaker 4: young teenager. He's fourteen, and I think Ray is also
Speaker 4: a similar age.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're classmates, right, like all of this because it's
Speaker 5: an anime. All of this takes place like partly in
Speaker 5: this futuristic like military battle station. Oh yeah, there's also
Speaker 5: a school in this time. See, they expect there.
Speaker 4: To be some drama over who asks who to the
Speaker 4: Japanese equivalent of prom Like, that's the kind of vibe
Speaker 4: I'm getting from it. But the first two women he
Speaker 4: meets are older. I think they're supposed to be like
Speaker 4: also teenage or like very young adults, and they're portrayed
Speaker 4: like kind of best phrases. Their attractiveness and their sexuality
Speaker 4: is very forward in terms of their characters, like we
Speaker 4: see a lot of like the bent over shots and
Speaker 4: things like that. We see a lot of like the
Speaker 4: other boys all being obsessed with how hot those two are,
Speaker 4: and the two older women kind of joking about, like
Speaker 4: which one of them is going to try and date Seniyeah.
Speaker 4: I feel like it doesn't feel inappropriate because that's why
Speaker 4: do I think they are also in high school with him.
Speaker 4: But it's like a you know, seventeen year old, fourteen
Speaker 4: year old kind of thing. But it's very interesting to
Speaker 4: me that, like, on the one hand, you have him
Speaker 4: being bullied by these two very attractive older women, which
Speaker 4: I'm sure caused a lot of people at young ages
Speaker 4: to have a lot of feelings still figuring out twenty
Speaker 4: years later, and nothing wrong with that, but the idea
Speaker 4: that he has these like two women who are being
Speaker 4: very kind of sexually aggressive towards him, not necessarily in
Speaker 4: a hitting on way, but in like he's constantly like
Speaker 4: walking into rooms and seeing all their underwear and blushing
Speaker 4: a lot and feeling uncomfortable. Contrasted with this shy, demure,
Speaker 4: but incredibly skilled mannic pexy dream girl who seems like
Speaker 4: he has his actual interest.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so you're let's see what you're referring to.
Speaker 5: The first one I would say is Misato Katsunaibi, right,
Speaker 5: she is. I guess I would call her the handler
Speaker 5: for the evil pilots. I'm not sure how old she's
Speaker 5: supposed to be. She's definitely supposed to be older than them.
Speaker 5: I would guess like early twenties, but like, okay, old
Speaker 5: teenager is a possibility.
Speaker 4: Well, I saw her as like a senior in the
Speaker 4: high school, but I could be wrong on that.
Speaker 5: So getting into the lore, there was a no event
Speaker 5: that happened I believe fifteen years ago, and she was
Speaker 5: a young girl, so she might be like twenty to
Speaker 5: twenty five. I guess it's probably the age range I
Speaker 5: have a place her at. Okay, is that the depiction
Speaker 5: of her in the flashback is definitely not no, No,
Speaker 5: younger than yeah, like six four or five?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Six? That's making okay, yeah, you're right at that.
Speaker 5: And then who's the other one? Your friend?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 5: Ditsko like the scientist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the blonde woman, and she's the one who's constantly
Speaker 4: because I'm Masoki, is that correct?
Speaker 5: Misato?
Speaker 4: Misato Misato, Like the first thing she does is get
Speaker 4: him to move in with her and talk about how
Speaker 4: they're going to party and hang out and have so
Speaker 4: much fun, and at which point the scientist starts teasing
Speaker 4: her about like the house things with your boyfriend and
Speaker 4: stuff like that.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and Masato's character again is like, this is
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety five, like anime as a genre is twenty
Speaker 5: years old, like mecha anime is like twenty years oldish
Speaker 5: but still like Ray and Misato, like these characters have
Speaker 5: become archetypes of the genre because they're so iconic. And yeah,
Speaker 5: she is this the older like caretaker but very flirty.
Speaker 5: She I mean, I'm just gonna say she's an alcoholic, right,
Speaker 5: like she she drinks every night to the point of
Speaker 5: often passing out or just like being sloppy drunk and
Speaker 5: so like, I don't I think some aspects of this
Speaker 5: have not aged well or like are are now things
Speaker 5: that we would not want to see in our media,
Speaker 5: like are inappropriate? Right, like her being drunk all the
Speaker 5: time around a young boy who she's living with and
Speaker 5: supposedly the caretaker of and is kind of flirting slash
Speaker 5: teasing aggressively like in a sexual way. Like I was watching,
Speaker 5: I was like, yeah, like this is this is what
Speaker 5: it was like in nineties anime, and I don't think
Speaker 5: we would do that anymore, right, I mean, and like,
Speaker 5: although maybe they do, and that's a problem.
Speaker 4: Well, and I just want to say, like, I think,
Speaker 4: I think there's something with the culture of you who shifted,
Speaker 4: and it certainly was not just Japanese anime. Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I was watching music videos like Hot for Teacher in
Speaker 4: the eighties and nineties, which all about like thirty old
Speaker 4: get on by adults strippers. We're also their teachers.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, I grew. I watched Dawson's Creek where
Speaker 5: there's a storyline where a high school teacher ends up
Speaker 5: having a sexual relationship with one of her students. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and it is definitely like a unfortunate fantasy that gets portrayed, hmm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just even moeing me on that though, But
Speaker 4: I just did find it very interesting the the contrast
Speaker 4: of like, as you said, the manic pixie dream girl
Speaker 4: who's his age and who is even shyer than he is,
Speaker 4: versus the woman who is like very aggressive in her
Speaker 4: in her I mean everything, in her drinking and her
Speaker 4: sexuality and all of it. And it's just a very
Speaker 4: interesting contrast. And but I will say though that while
Speaker 4: like I roll my eyes at how much the camera
Speaker 4: focuses on some of the shots, you know, the anime
Speaker 4: camera such as it is, it gets worse, I'm sure
Speaker 4: it does, but all of them are. I think it'd
Speaker 4: be easy to think that I'm just dismissing it. I'm
Speaker 4: more raising it because I think it's an interesting cultural
Speaker 4: issue of how these things become icons. But they're both
Speaker 4: very well developed characters. Like, yes, she doesn't drink, because
Speaker 4: wouldn't it be funny if the character is drunk all
Speaker 4: the time. She drinks because, as you said, she was
Speaker 4: horribly traumatized as a girl, Like in some ways, she's.
Speaker 5: Got an impossible job, right to send to send these
Speaker 5: kids into life or death situations, like this is her
Speaker 5: coping mechanism, and it is it is played for laughs
Speaker 5: a lot, like her drinking, But the moments when she
Speaker 5: has like some moments of self reflection, you absolutely feel
Speaker 5: the pressure on her and her the depths of her
Speaker 5: despair over the situation she's in and that she's forced
Speaker 5: to put these kids.
Speaker 4: In, especially because I think I think at this point,
Speaker 4: Grant of only a couple episodes in she's probably my
Speaker 4: favorite character in part because although she joins in the
Speaker 4: like bullying and pushing him to be part of this
Speaker 4: Mecca program, she's also the only one who shows concern
Speaker 4: for him and care for and like early on she
Speaker 4: doesn't want They're kind of like, oh, you just showed
Speaker 4: up by the way, there's an angel that's attacking You've
Speaker 4: got to jump in this mecca and go fight it.
Speaker 4: Five minutes after you said hello, there's no there's no
Speaker 4: training montage until like a couple episodes later. And but
Speaker 4: then once the others make the argument of the whole
Speaker 4: city is gonna be destroyed unless we kill this angel,
Speaker 4: she joins in that, and to give people an extent
Speaker 4: of just how far this goes, as Riki mentioned, the
Speaker 4: boy's father is part this program. He's kind of leading
Speaker 4: up this whole program. He's leading up Nerve, which is
Speaker 4: this like super secret you know, government funded, even the
Speaker 4: government doesn't really know what's doing, kind of like science
Speaker 4: y tech organization, shadowy organization. Which again, if you feel
Speaker 4: like that's a cliche, you've seen this organization one hundred times.
Speaker 4: But even the father says, I like he father had
Speaker 4: spoken to the boy in three years. The father clearly says,
Speaker 4: I brought you here to be a mecha pilot. If
Speaker 4: you are not going to be a Meca pilot, I
Speaker 4: have no use for you. Like there's no sense of like, oh,
Speaker 4: by the way, you're my son and I just want
Speaker 4: to see you and be with you and help raise you.
Speaker 4: There's none of that, And I think that's part of
Speaker 4: where her concern for him, where they comes from.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Gendo, his father, Gendo is a disgusting character. I
Speaker 5: don't think there's any way around that. Like his the
Speaker 5: way he acts towards Shinji, it's just it's not as
Speaker 5: a father. Like the only time he acts as a father,
Speaker 5: i'd say, is to manipulate Shinji through their their familial bond,
Speaker 5: and otherwise all he cares about is his project. Right,
Speaker 5: and the situation with Ray too, I believe at this point,
Speaker 5: like you don't know their full backstory, but you understand
Speaker 5: that Ray is very important to Gendo, perhaps even beyond
Speaker 5: just being a pilot, right, Like there's there's more of
Speaker 5: a sense of affection Gendo has for Ray than for
Speaker 5: his own son Shinji. And I'm not gonna spoil this point,
Speaker 5: but there is definitely a reason and a secret behind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm I've read a bit in the plot summaries
Speaker 4: of what that is, but we go we don't need
Speaker 4: to spoil that because we're not gonna talk on the
Speaker 4: show a lot. I want to give people a chance
Speaker 4: to go watch it because I think it is very
Speaker 4: enjoyable so far and very thought provoking. The other thing
Speaker 4: that we learned about the father is that, as I said,
Speaker 4: he's he's a member of that secret He's the leader
Speaker 4: of Nerve, and we sort of see these meetings of
Speaker 4: this like very shadowy secret council that is sort of
Speaker 4: and they talk about the human fin is it called
Speaker 4: the Human Finality Project.
Speaker 5: So yeah, let's talk. So Nerve is the organization that
Speaker 5: he run, Gendo runs that's underground where the EVAs are.
Speaker 5: They are they report to. It's it could be called
Speaker 5: Seal where I've also heard it pronounced zeal in like
Speaker 5: a German pronunciation, and they are they are like the
Speaker 5: World Council in Avengers, Like there there are no people
Speaker 5: in Seal that we see, right, Like it's a bunch
Speaker 5: of I don't even like the like the things from
Speaker 5: two thousand and one they're just like tablets floating in
Speaker 5: space that the voices come out of type of thing.
Speaker 5: So it's like the secretive Council. And have they mentioned
Speaker 5: the Dead Sea Scrolls yet?
Speaker 4: Those have not been mentioned yet, But I do know
Speaker 4: that that.
Speaker 5: That that is the thing again has nothing to do
Speaker 5: with like what we the actual Dead Sea scrolls other
Speaker 5: than like a name, and I guess they're like an
Speaker 5: old thing that you can read. And that's that's what
Speaker 5: they are basing all of this on, is that there
Speaker 5: are like prophecies on the Dead Sea scrolls, and so
Speaker 5: what you got, what you got to it is called
Speaker 5: the translation is called the human Instrumentality project what they
Speaker 5: are trying to work towards, right, And the interesting thing
Speaker 5: about this is the Japanese it is called the Jingu
Speaker 5: hokan keikoku, and uh, the instrumentality part, like the human
Speaker 5: and project like those are simple translations. The instrumentality part hokan.
Speaker 5: I feel like the original English translation of this kind
Speaker 5: of dropped the ball because hokan has much more of
Speaker 5: a like meaning of like detection or something like that.
Speaker 5: Like instrumentality is such a weird word to plug into this,
Speaker 5: And in one sense, I guess it makes it a
Speaker 5: little mysterious. But the Japanese, the original Japanese, makes it
Speaker 5: clear that this is like for the protection of humanity.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm, okay, that makes sense. I should mention also
Speaker 4: that the uh, obviously it sounds like it is pronounced
Speaker 4: differently in Japanese. The name of the organization though, Zeo,
Speaker 4: is a German word. It's a German word for soul,
Speaker 4: which I also plays a lot into the sort of
Speaker 4: cosmology and theology of this whole, the whole what's going
Speaker 4: on here, and I think this is appropriate time and
Speaker 4: also talk about that well, actually let go a little
Speaker 4: further than that. And so again I don't want to
Speaker 4: spoil too many things because I want to give people
Speaker 4: a chance to watch it. The next episode, we're ably
Speaker 4: gonna go full spoilers. But the involvement of the Father
Speaker 4: in that kind of shadowy council that's doing this, I
Speaker 4: think also really lends itself to the Not only is
Speaker 4: he completely ruthless in the protect humanity just by killing
Speaker 4: the angels, but he also has some like other things
Speaker 4: of like there's this larger project that's not just about this.
Speaker 4: I think this is also a good time to mention
Speaker 4: something we hadn't mentioned. It seems very vital to the show.
Speaker 4: This is not set in an earth like hours today.
Speaker 4: It is very much a post apocalyptic dystopian kind of
Speaker 4: a world where we're slowly learning more and more about
Speaker 4: what happened. But there was a great event that people
Speaker 4: are being taught that it was a meteor that hit
Speaker 4: the Antarctica and melted the entire polar in polar ice caps,
Speaker 4: and so like there's been you know, huge flooding and
Speaker 4: that kind of thing, and the wiping out of a
Speaker 4: lot of cities. That there's been massive wars back and
Speaker 4: forth and including some nuclear attacks back and forth. And
Speaker 4: one of the things that happens in the first episode
Speaker 4: that I wanted to talk to you about, and again
Speaker 4: not asking to be the expert or speak for all
Speaker 4: Japanese people by any means, but you have more insight
Speaker 4: in it, certainly than I do. In the first episode,
Speaker 4: the military like they don't want to work with Nerve.
Speaker 4: They're convinced that they can defeat the Angels by themselves,
Speaker 4: and when all of their normal weapons don't work, they
Speaker 4: go to what they call the N one mine, and
Speaker 4: they never say the word nuclear but I think it
Speaker 4: is the you know, the there's a mushroom cloud, there's
Speaker 4: a bright light. It's very clear to me, at least
Speaker 4: this is supposed to be a nuclear bomb.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what did.
Speaker 4: Just speaking for yourself, like, you know, and I've heard
Speaker 4: you talk about the the you know, the the effect
Speaker 4: of having been the victim of a nuclear bombing in
Speaker 4: Japan and how much that shapes the Gojira movies and
Speaker 4: things like that. What was the effect of seeing a
Speaker 4: nuclear bomb exploded by the Japanese on Japanese soil so
Speaker 4: early in this show, because that felt me like it
Speaker 4: was a very specific like we are crossing this cultural
Speaker 4: line to show you just how dystopian we are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean at this point nineteen ninety five, we've
Speaker 5: we've already had Akira, and I can't remember the history
Speaker 5: of that, but there there were nuclear subsequent nuclear detonations
Speaker 5: in Japan Tokyo in that one, because they're neo Tokyo,
Speaker 5: so I don't know. I that's something I don't know about,
Speaker 5: like it they're in Japanese media. There's probably definitely a
Speaker 5: an era of this post apocalyptic future, and I think
Speaker 5: it's just same with a lot of Western media that
Speaker 5: to reach that point of where you want this dystopian future,
Speaker 5: it probably has to be nukes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you were you mentioned the the asteroid, the
Speaker 5: what they called an asteroid or meteor. I guess they
Speaker 5: call it the second impact on the show, and that
Speaker 5: implies there was a first impact and there's going to
Speaker 5: be a third impact, like that's that is supposedly what
Speaker 5: they are trying to prevent is the third impact. And
Speaker 5: again this is where I where I say, like the
Speaker 5: plot doesn't matter. I guess I guess they know about
Speaker 5: it from the Dead Sea Scrolls. But that's just like
Speaker 5: verydausex maggiare like, oh we know about this third impact
Speaker 5: thing from the Dead Sea Squirrels. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 5: There's nothing like kind of beyond that. Like the thing
Speaker 5: with the angels, there's no we never really find out
Speaker 5: like who or why other than like it's happening. The
Speaker 5: Dead Sea Scrolls told us that there would be really
Speaker 5: fifteen angel attacks, so that that that leads to an
Speaker 5: interesting tension and countdown on the show because every time
Speaker 5: in angel attacks, like you are told what number it is, right,
Speaker 5: the audience is told and it leads to the sense
Speaker 5: of like, okay, like now we're at you know, this number,
Speaker 5: We're getting closer, We're getting closer, and then like stuff
Speaker 5: happens and it's not clear like why or who did it?
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5: So it's going back to your original question about this.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm not I don't have like a strong sense
Speaker 5: of like the nuclear explosion at the beginning. I think
Speaker 5: it feels like at this point in anime, it is
Speaker 5: kind of like tropy, okay of sense.
Speaker 4: It's like that, let's show that even a nuclear bomb
Speaker 4: won't work. Yeah, exactly, that no human control, yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, and so only the Evangelians can stop the angels.
Speaker 5: And and that's because like the Evangelian technical ology is
Speaker 5: based off of you know, basically angel technology or angel
Speaker 5: DNA or whatever whatever it is. And that and that's
Speaker 5: like something that that happens a lot in anime. Is
Speaker 5: we see it in Robotech slash Macross where alien technology
Speaker 5: is like the thing that boosts humanity, like past where
Speaker 5: it is into like a new more futuristic especially in
Speaker 5: all these things like military technology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, if you watch the first Independence Day
Speaker 4: and then the second Independence Day, that's very much the
Speaker 4: theme of it. That's a theme of you know, everything
Speaker 4: from enders game, uh to to all sorts of stuff
Speaker 4: like this. Even what I think is the way a
Speaker 4: lot of Americans were first really introduced to the Mecca concept,
Speaker 4: if they didn't grow up watching some of these cartoons,
Speaker 4: the specific rim movies. You know, there's very much a
Speaker 4: sense of like they have developed in part because of
Speaker 4: what they've learned from not only the technology but the
Speaker 4: remains of these alien being.
Speaker 5: Yeah, reverse engineering.
Speaker 4: Yep, exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: So what okay? So what at this point? Question do
Speaker 5: you have like big questions about.
Speaker 4: So One of the questions I have is that it
Speaker 4: seems like there's only this very special group of people
Speaker 4: who can pilot the EVAs the Evangelians.
Speaker 5: Yes, and.
Speaker 4: I know by the lore kind of what the explanation
Speaker 4: is that we're given much later in the show. I
Speaker 4: think we are given like a very brief one sentence
Speaker 4: like it has to be a child because like the
Speaker 4: younger mind can better meld with it. But I don't
Speaker 4: quite understand why it has to be this one these
Speaker 4: one of these two particular people, and none of the others,
Speaker 4: including some of the young adults, none of them could
Speaker 4: become MECA pilots.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's definitely set up in a way where
Speaker 5: each each unit, like the EVA like zero one, zero two,
Speaker 5: like they have to be piloted by their pilot, right
Speaker 5: then they do.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 5: At some point they do try to get them to
Speaker 5: cross pilot because like ones damaged or something, and it
Speaker 5: doesn't work because there is like a a psychic connection
Speaker 5: between the pilot and the EVA, like I can't remember
Speaker 5: what term they use on the show, but there's there's
Speaker 5: definitely like a you have to be on this this
Speaker 5: correct wavelength or something, right, But I don't know. Do
Speaker 5: you want me to get a little spoilery about it,
Speaker 5: like you no.
Speaker 4: Again, I just want to get a sense, like if
Speaker 4: there's something we were missing early on and I but
Speaker 4: it's the implication then that this machine was built with
Speaker 4: the thought that eventually they'd go grab Senji and make
Speaker 4: him pilot it, Like was that always the plan for
Speaker 4: this machine? Yes, okay, or.
Speaker 5: At least that's where they I don't know if it
Speaker 5: was the plan, but that's just what happens, right because
Speaker 5: of the way they are built, right, And that's I
Speaker 5: guess what I will say about that is that this
Speaker 5: show presents like we're calling them mecchas, but they are
Speaker 5: very different from the way Mecca have been presented in
Speaker 5: pretty much all all of anime, Like this may be
Speaker 5: the first one to this point. Stuff like gun Dam
Speaker 5: I mentioned mat Cross, there's stuff like pat Labor in
Speaker 5: the same era. They're all just straight robots, right Like
Speaker 5: they're machines that were built in factories and you pilot
Speaker 5: them like you would pilot a fighter JED or a tank,
Speaker 5: and you fight with them and that's it. Year in
Speaker 5: Evangelian they are biomechanical and they're they're beings like EVAs
Speaker 5: are alive, and they seem to have a personality of
Speaker 5: their own.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean there's a very early scene in which,
Speaker 4: as part of the attack in that first episode without
Speaker 4: a pilot in it, Eva a one save Senji from like.
Speaker 5: Consciousness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean even before that, before he's gotten in,
Speaker 4: like it's hand reaches out hitting them on the head.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, And that's and that that is like
Speaker 5: the mystery behind them and the connection with the pilots,
Speaker 5: right like why because it's a living being even though
Speaker 5: they never talk like they have a personality they have
Speaker 5: some some kind of internal motivation, then they can only
Speaker 5: be piloted by their specific children.
Speaker 4: Right and yeah, and again I think about like one
Speaker 4: things I think about when I think about like robotech
Speaker 4: or you know, those kind of things are all the
Speaker 4: way up to the aggres of Pacific rim. They might
Speaker 4: carry weapons, but also they have like all these missiles
Speaker 4: and guns that are built into them. And as far
Speaker 4: as we see this one has like a big spike
Speaker 4: on its head. It looks more like a kaiju in
Speaker 4: that regard. But then yeah, mostly it holds a gun
Speaker 4: or holds a knife, And I think the visual design
Speaker 4: of it it's interesting because yeah, it looks much more sleek,
Speaker 4: it doesn't look boxy. The only thing that throws me
Speaker 4: is that the color scheme of it is so aggressively
Speaker 4: like nineties bowling alley carpet. It's just like purple and
Speaker 4: green that it's just so garish that it hit like
Speaker 4: it's hard to watch for me. And I'm sure I'll
Speaker 4: get used to it, and I'm sure that was very
Speaker 4: much like the cool color scheme at the time, but
Speaker 4: I just may even.
Speaker 5: Know if it's cool. I think it's meant to intentionally
Speaker 5: evoke a sense of of biology of monstrousness.
Speaker 4: Oh, because for me again, it feels neon. It feels like, okay,
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties, you know, look how like the kind of
Speaker 4: like you think of like the neon lights and in
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties like entertain video game centers and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: That's what it gets, fair enough, I mean it, the
Speaker 5: origin could just feel like it looked cool, right, But
Speaker 5: there's definitely no sense like an other mecha anime like
Speaker 5: of them being painted like yeah, you do not get
Speaker 5: the sense that this is like that they were painted
Speaker 5: this way. This is just like because they're alive, like
Speaker 5: they were quote born this way. I don't know, m h.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I'm sure I know we're gonna get a
Speaker 4: lot more into the origin of them and how it
Speaker 4: ties into the origin of the angels, and there's a
Speaker 4: lot of lore coming, and we're i this might be
Speaker 4: a bonus episode, it might be a regular episode, depending
Speaker 4: on fan feedback. I'm definitely gonna do a full episode
Speaker 4: just on. Let me dive deep into the meaning of
Speaker 4: all the the well, all of the different Judeo Christian
Speaker 4: uh you said again, the the iconography of all of
Speaker 4: the Jewish iconography and of the Christian iconography someone which
Speaker 4: takes on the Jewish iconography. That's a very complicated subject
Speaker 4: and the meaning of it and how it appears here,
Speaker 4: because I do think it's interesting, uh well to the
Speaker 4: three of the theology geeks who are in our listeners.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Speaker 4: And I because so far as as you said, it's
Speaker 4: not really the plot that matters. There's a fight every
Speaker 4: couple of episodes, but it really seems to you about
Speaker 4: how are each of these different people dealing with trauma
Speaker 4: and how and and the isolation and loneliness that can
Speaker 4: lead to and then how are they either helping or
Speaker 4: hurting each other as you know, sort of different people's
Speaker 4: traumas bump into each other. And I've talked before about how,
Speaker 4: you know, I have a lot of trauma in my
Speaker 4: past and a lot of like mental issues related to that.
Speaker 4: I think it's very easy to just be like, oh,
Speaker 4: all people with PTSD are like this, or all people
Speaker 4: at childhood trauma are like this, or something like that,
Speaker 4: and the fact that you have everyone is reacting to
Speaker 4: this same event but in very different ways. Even if
Speaker 4: you just look at the two women who are kind
Speaker 4: of most in his life right now. Like, it's just
Speaker 4: fascinating to see and I'm really interested to see how
Speaker 4: this plays out, especially because it's all against this background
Speaker 4: of human choice and what is the importance of human
Speaker 4: agency and or is that not? Because again I don't
Speaker 4: want to go into too much spoilers, but like what
Speaker 4: we're going to learn is that a lot of the
Speaker 4: like attempt to protect human to protect humans or to
Speaker 4: instrumentalize humans is about removing their agency and that kind
Speaker 4: of that becomes a major part of the whole story.
Speaker 5: Yeah. What I love about this, Like the imagery is
Speaker 5: all iconic. Yeah, right, the EVAs, Like I mentioned the pilots,
Speaker 5: they became archetypes for the genre. But the story itself
Speaker 5: or like the characters, it's just absolutely fascinating because these
Speaker 5: characters there's not like a hero's journey in the traditional
Speaker 5: sense it is. It is just about how these human
Speaker 5: beings react to and are affected by the traumatic experiences
Speaker 5: they go through. And it's so it's so real. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Like one of them, one of the memes for the show,
Speaker 5: like one of the images that gets reused a lot
Speaker 5: is shingy sitting in a chair with his head in
Speaker 5: his hands, just probably crying or just like in total shock.
Speaker 5: And that's if you don't feel that it is you
Speaker 5: go through this show like maybe you're not paying attention
Speaker 5: and you're just watching it as like fun robots, which
Speaker 5: is fine, But I I had several episodes like I
Speaker 5: couldn't binge this. I had several episodes where I finished it,
Speaker 5: I turned off the TV and basically like did a
Speaker 5: shingy pos and just like put my head in my
Speaker 5: hands and just like thought about it and like what
Speaker 5: just happened? Like what am I feeling? Like thinking about
Speaker 5: what the characters are feeling as like what what the heck?
Speaker 5: Like I was devastated watching it on behalf of the characters.
Speaker 5: And that is such a unique feeling that that we
Speaker 5: should treasure like in media, like to be able to
Speaker 5: watch something and feel something that deep, it's great. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm much dangerous too, like like there are definitely going
Speaker 5: to be points where if you can't keep watching it,
Speaker 5: like don't Yeah, no, I think.
Speaker 4: That's there were There was an episode I planned to
Speaker 4: binge quite a lot of it last night yesterday. About
Speaker 4: the episodes are half an hour. So it's like all told,
Speaker 4: but like twelve or thirteen hours. And I had to
Speaker 4: stop because there was one episode that just hit really
Speaker 4: hard and it was really something I related to quite
Speaker 4: a lot. And the other thing I think that really
Speaker 4: is striking me. And again I want to see how
Speaker 4: this develops. But as you said, like a lot of
Speaker 4: these shows, and again this isn't just an anime. Think
Speaker 4: about like Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, like any of
Speaker 4: the other shows, you know, Vampire Diaries, where it's like
Speaker 4: one half super either fantasy or tech powers that are
Speaker 4: allowing you to save the world, and one half like
Speaker 4: will you study for your math test. They've done this
Speaker 4: very interesting thing of showing that like the kids in
Speaker 4: his life have much more compassion, because early on he's
Speaker 4: getting bullied from two directions. He's getting like all the
Speaker 4: adults are yelling at him and telling him he needs
Speaker 4: to like get in the Mecca and save everybody and
Speaker 4: it's his duty and if they don't do it, they
Speaker 4: don't want anything to do with him. And then there's
Speaker 4: a kind of classic high school bully situation he's dealing with,
Speaker 4: you know, because he is the new kid, but the
Speaker 4: bully actually has a reason. The bully's sister was almost
Speaker 4: killed in the attack that the Eva eventually destroyed the angel,
Speaker 4: but like broke a lot of stuff on the way
Speaker 4: to do so, and so the bullies like blaming on
Speaker 4: him doesn't really make much sense. But if you think
Speaker 4: about again how people deal with trauma, people blame the
Speaker 4: wrong people all the time. And so he does start
Speaker 4: out bullying Shenji, and it's adding to just his his problems,
Speaker 4: but then very quickly they wind up in a situation
Speaker 4: where they wind up like seeing what he's going through,
Speaker 4: both from outside and then literally from inside the cop
Speaker 4: the cockpit with him and more one than the other,
Speaker 4: but they both start to have a lot of empathy
Speaker 4: for him in a way that we haven't seen from
Speaker 4: most of the adults. And again I think the like children,
Speaker 4: young people, good, adults bad. He is kind of a
Speaker 4: trope and a lot of these things, but here it
Speaker 4: just feels so much more developed, And it really felt
Speaker 4: like the having both of these groups so mean to
Speaker 4: him and one of them shifting and the other knot
Speaker 4: feels very intentional in a way.
Speaker 5: I really like, Yeah, the character you're talking about is
Speaker 5: Toji Suzuhara. We'll say he starts off bullying Shinji, but
Speaker 5: they become friends, and the way that that develops and
Speaker 5: and where Susuhara's story ends up for I don't even
Speaker 5: not not even like a top five character on the show,
Speaker 5: like probably in the top ten barely. That is amazing
Speaker 5: to me that you could take such a minor character
Speaker 5: and develop them so fully and give them I don't
Speaker 5: know if I want to use it words satisfying, but
Speaker 5: a good character arc. Yeah, in such a again, like
Speaker 5: such a short runtime, like you said that these are
Speaker 5: these were thirty minute episodes on TV, so with commercials,
Speaker 5: you know, like twenty five or something, twenty six episodes
Speaker 5: of that. Yeah, like barely barely over ten hours of television.
Speaker 5: The things they do are just phenomenal, and I'm blown
Speaker 5: away by it. I know, like we've had our talks
Speaker 5: about Star Wars TV shows in Marvel and like what
Speaker 5: are they doing with their runtime? And this show just
Speaker 5: like does everything in its runtime and I and still
Speaker 5: has like a cool mecha battle. But it's how they
Speaker 5: tell the story within the battles, right, The battles themselves
Speaker 5: are also part of the story, not because the angels.
Speaker 5: Each angel is different and it requires them to figure
Speaker 5: out how to defeat it, and often that reveals something
Speaker 5: about the characters themselves and how they they win that
Speaker 5: fight or sometimes fail to win, and it takes like
Speaker 5: some other pilot coming in to help them or whatever,
Speaker 5: like it's the way that they psychologically use the battles
Speaker 5: is probably I don't know, one of the one of
Speaker 5: the top three things about this. Yeah, this anime.
Speaker 4: We're gonna start wrapping up, so I just want to
Speaker 4: say one last thing and then make a couple of
Speaker 4: announcements that are important for listeners. The one last thing.
Speaker 4: We're else you gonna do a number of more episodes
Speaker 4: on this because it raises so many interesting questions.
Speaker 5: Like I didn't even talk about half the stuff because
Speaker 5: I was like, well, that's a little bit spoilery.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, but just that whole We literally only a
Speaker 4: month ago did an episode about should people get to
Speaker 4: say no when destiny calls? And that was kind of
Speaker 4: exactly what so much of this epis. I also will say,
Speaker 4: if if music is important to you, the first song
Speaker 4: goes the opening song of the credits goes real hard.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'd never skip.
Speaker 4: It, and in the very kind of classic anime way
Speaker 4: that for you, this may be different because you can
Speaker 4: understand the lyrics. For me, this song, like some of
Speaker 4: the other anime opening music, there's a very sort of
Speaker 4: discordant aspect to it because the song sounds really it's
Speaker 4: very like happy and poppy and like, you know, let's
Speaker 4: all gather together and hold hands and care bear stare
Speaker 4: and we're gonna win this fight. And then as you're
Speaker 4: reading the lyrics, it's like a cruel angel has decided
Speaker 4: that you have to face death and all. Like it's
Speaker 4: very dark.
Speaker 5: I believe the translation for the title of the song
Speaker 5: is cruel Angel's thesis, right, Yeah, And it is every
Speaker 5: part as much of the story as anything else. Like
Speaker 5: that's again like they pack everything in like the song itself.
Speaker 5: The flashes during the opening credits are also like telling
Speaker 5: part of the story to you. And just like every
Speaker 5: piece of real estate that they use is is not wasted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, fair much agreed, much agreed, last thing I would.
Speaker 4: Just so, we're obviously gonna do a number of more
Speaker 4: episodes on this. We're also gonna bonus content for members,
Speaker 4: uh specifically on We're gonna talk a little bit more
Speaker 4: about what Mecca is, just the whole like Mecca genre
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, because one that I have very
Speaker 4: limited experience of Rieki you've talked some about and I
Speaker 4: want to go a little bit deeper into But I
Speaker 4: want to and I'll give you the normal membership pitch
Speaker 4: in a moment, five dollars, want dollars a year. You
Speaker 4: can find it all on the website. But I do
Speaker 4: also wanted to let people know and actually, Wreeky, I
Speaker 4: realized I had not told you either. This podcast is
Speaker 4: going to go into a hiatus during September. We're gonna
Speaker 4: take a couple of weeks off, in part because I'm
Speaker 4: traveling a lot, in part because we want to spend
Speaker 4: a little bit more time kind of planning some things out,
Speaker 4: being able to do more of the research that we've
Speaker 4: been talking about doing, wanting to have a little bit
Speaker 4: more of a plan about how we are advertising and
Speaker 4: how we are letting other people know about these podcasts
Speaker 4: and helping get more people into the conversation. I want
Speaker 4: to be a lot more intentional about feedback. We're doing
Speaker 4: it sometimes, but it keeps saying I'm not getting to
Speaker 4: it as fast as I want to. And as often
Speaker 4: as I want to, I want to improve that. So
Speaker 4: you'll still get episodes during September. They're gonna be older episodes,
Speaker 4: rebroadcasts and things like that, so you can hear all
Speaker 4: those kinds of things, but there won't be new episodes
Speaker 4: for a couple of weeks. But don't worry. New episodes
Speaker 4: will be coming soon and starting in October. So just
Speaker 4: want to let people know that. And again, you can
Speaker 4: become a member and you can send us feedback. We
Speaker 4: love feedback, we want to hear it, we want to
Speaker 4: discuss it. All that you can find on the website,
Speaker 4: the Ethical Panel dot com or in the show notes,
Speaker 4: So please think it out becoming a member for our members,
Speaker 4: thank you so much. We'll have morephoene A second and
Speaker 4: on behalf of myself and Rinki. We have spoken