This episode was the one that cemented me as firmly in Shinji’s corner, ready to defend him against The Haters… who used to be legion but I’m so out of touch with anime fandom now that for all I know they all love Shinji these days. Maybe everybody hates Rei now. Who knows. In any case, episode two ended with Misato’s reassurance that people would thank him for defending the city against the Angel. The truth is more complicated. Yes, Shinji defeated the Angel. But he also made a big mess in the process and in that mess, people got hurt.
So when Shinji shows up in school as a mysterious “transfer student,” his classmates, or at least those whose families haven’t already left, have their suspicions. One of them texts him to ask if he’s the pilot, and after some hesitation, he says—yes. Most of the kids in Shinji’s class think it’s cool… but one of them, Toji, had a sister who was injured during the fight, so he and his very geeky friend Kensuke find Shinji after school. Toji punches him in the face, twice—once for injuring his sister and the second time for being kind of annoying.
Toji isn’t a bully or even a particularly aggressive guy—he’s just blunt and feels that honor dictates that if his little sister is collateral damage in your fight against some unknown enemy, then he has to punch you in the face. (Not “gets” to—has to.)1 However, an Angel chooses this moment to show up and now Shinji has to go pilot the robot again. To say he’s not really in the mood would be an understatement.
Very much in the mood, though: Kensuke, who wants to sneak out of the shelter he and Toji are staying in to record whatever the hell is going on up there. He persuades Toji and they go off to see what’s happening—which is really stupid, though maybe not as stupid as it looks when you remember normal civilians do not see the Angels or the fights and so they don’t really understand what’s waiting for them outside. (Still stupid.) And what’s waiting for them is… this cutie.
You might be wondering if I’m going to call every Angel cute but good news: the next one isn’t cute at all because it’s a giant shiny octahedron. Shamshel, on the other hand, has those big ol’ fake googly eyes. Look at him. You just want to feed him some lettuce out of your hand. Or whatever it is that Angels eat.
Shinji, who has spent the time between the last Angel attack and now training to shoot things with rifles, blasts the Angel instantly, but since the training didn’t go very far beyond “aim and shoot,” Samshel easily hides in the dust kicked up by Shinji’s actions and then strikes. It turns out has two tentacles that can slice through anything and burn to the touch, and Samshel basically picks Unit 01 up and throws it into a nearby mountain. Which is, naturally, where Toji and Kensuke are.
Shinji moves to protect them and they end up in the cockpit, where they discover that:
It really sucks to pilot this thing.
Shinji is crazy.
With less than a minute remaining before the Evangelion runs out of power, he’s ordered to retreat. But at this point Shinji has gone back to his mantra of mustn’t run away so instead of doing as he’s told, he charges Samshel and manages to kill the Angel despite Unit 01 getting stabbed through the stomach. He wins the fight, but, having disobeyed a direct command, he’s in trouble.… For now, though, Toji and Kensuke, shaken up by everything they’ve experienced, look at their weeping classmate and Toji begins to feel a little bad about punching him in the face.
Though not enough to say he’s sorry… at least not yet.
“The Silent Phone” has two big themes, both highlighted for us by Ritsuko.
The first is the limits of dutifulness. Ritsuko remarks drily that Shinji just does what he’s told because it makes life easier for him. She isn’t wrong, but it becomes clear that this kind of resignation will make him a poor combatant because Shinji isn’t really thinking about what he’s doing or even why he’s doing it. He just shoots. And it also—paradoxically—makes him very hard to predict and control, because once “the plan” doesn’t work out he panics and becomes unresponsive to external commands.
The second is the parable Ritsuko tells Misato when Misato worries that Shinji isn’t making any friends—the “hedgehog’s dilemma.”2 Hedgehogs want to get close to each other for warmth, but if they get too close they’ll poke each other, so they have to figure out how close they can get without hurting each other. So Shinji isn’t making friends at school, in Ritsuko’s understanding, because he’s wary of them.3 Misato comments that trial and error is how you learn to get close to people without hurting each other—that’s growing up.4
Both of these themes get further developed in the next episode (which is actually called “The Hedgehog’s Dilemma”) though not exactly brought to a close, since the push–pull of human relationships is one of Evangelion’s big themes. But one of the things I enjoy about this episode is the way it explores them both by broadcasting HOW CAN WE GET CLOSE TO EACH OTHER WITHOUT HURTING EACH OTHER right in your face and through smaller, delicate touches.
For instance: Shinji’s decision to tell his classmates he’s the pilot, even though he maybe shouldn’t, leads him to feel overwhelmed by their attention. And after Toji punches Shinji the second time, along comes his classmate and fellow pilot Rei. Shinji, upon seeing her, instantly wipes off his face. He clearly wants to look tough in front of her and maybe receive a you okay he can manfully shrug off while secretly appreciating her concern. Rei, however, doesn’t even seem to register what happened (or care if she does). She just tells him it’s time to go back to NERV. Then she leaves.
Rei is not an emotionless robot girl, even if she comes off that way—but for the purposes of this episode, she represents a far more extreme version of the emotional isolation Shinji seems to think he wants. She’s all business. She does what she’s told to an unsettling and even inhuman degree. If she has thoughts or preferences or even ideas of her own, she doesn’t express them. She’s so unreadable you might be tempted to think she has no inner life at all. (Though again, she does and we’ll get there.)
One thing that’s sort of interesting about Shinji’s two fights in the first four episodes is that they are solo—soon Rei will be back in commission, and then after that a third pilot, Asuka, will join them. That means Shinji will end up adapting a social role in reaction to both Rei’s coldness and Asuka’s aggression. Here, though, it’s just him; he doesn’t have anybody to play against, and he founders. He pulls it together once Toji and Kensuke pop up because now he has a social context.
This is another way I find the episode subtly attentive to its thematic concerns. Shinji doesn’t really want to be alone. The more disconnected he is, the less he exists.
Next episode: Shinji runs away.
Offhand observations & etc.
Ritsuko and Misato’s complementary vices are on display both here and in their conversations—Misato might have a fridge full of beer, but check that ashtray.…
In the next episode, Kensuke will mention that his mother is dead, and in fact… (almost) nobody seems to have living parents in this show? I was talking about the show with reader
and realized that Evangelion is basically about parentless children and childless adults.5The biggest exception is, of course, Shinji, but he might be worse off for having a living parent. Toji also has a living father and grandfather who work “in the labs” (which I assume means NERV? but maybe not). So maybe it’s mostly mothers.
Kensuke is such a hilarious and instantly recognizable type of kid… obsessed with military hardware while also clearly dreaming of being some sort of maverick, anti-establishment journalist. Kensuke, you would have loved Obama-era Vice.6
There’s something very funny about choosing to explain the Second Impact by having a teacher drone on while nobody pays attention. Like it’s not even one of those scenes where somebody explains the themes of Hamlet to the class (Ritsuko’s speech about the hedgehog’s dilemma performs that function). It is just background noise to the classroom drama. Yeah yeah half the human population died we know whatever.
Once again we get a look at Unit 01 under the armor. This time we get to see… a giant human hand, complete with fingernails.
This, Shinji’s second battle, also goes hilariously wrong. But he kind of sort of wins it the same way—he goes berserk. Except he’s the one going berserk this time.
He’s probably Evangelion’s least insane character aside from like… Pen-Pen. And maybe Kaji.
In addition to being the name of the next episode, the “hedgehog’s dilemma” ends up being important for laying the groundwork for what (for instance) an “AT Field” actually is.
Incidentally, while Evangelion did not invent the hedgehog’s dilemma, this is not a problem actual hedgehogs have.
Since Misato really seems like she’s never met a personal or professional boundary that she didn’t blast straight through… this line is pretty funny coming from her.
With somebody like Misato sort of being both at once
In the part of End of Evangelion where everybody is approached by the thing they most love I like to think Kensuke gets approached by like… a really cool helicopter.
What’s the deal with this Ritsuko dame. Can’t get a bead on her. Don’t trust her.
Also I wonder if Ritsuko misreads Shinji when she says he just does what he’s told. A possible way to understand his new dedication to training is as an answer to the question from last week, how much does he remember if Unit 01 going berserk? Maybe he’s suddenly trying so much harder because he does remember and absolutely doesn’t want to let it happen again