Oh dang, I am very, very interested to read your take on Revolutionary Girl Utena. I've watched it twice (only ever as an adult), and find it fascinating how much it floresces as it proceeds.
It opens with: "Mitfreude is the joy of sharing joy with friends.
Sometimes you have a friend who’s passionate about a topic—lizards, the Basque language, regency hairstyles—and you sit and ask, “What’s so cool about [topic]?” and a delightful hour later you’ve tasted the topic’s awesome history, examples, taken delight in your friend’s delight, and forever after when that topic comes up you smile, and get the context, and look forward to telling your friend about the cool thing you heard. And (most important!) your friend has not pressured you to get you to buy a pet lizard, learn Basque, or start wearing regency hair to work every day, they’ve just shared the fascinating energy of why find that thing so cool.
This essay is that conversation—sharing the niftiness without the pressure—for anime and manga and how they and Western SF fandom have shaped each other for the last seventy-five years."
re: 1, there's a little in the first post https://notebook.substack.com/p/i-thought-you-left-me-because-you The short answer though is that I have always wanted to write about it, but it was too niche to really sell an essay about. And, also, since I don't know Japanese, I was conscious that anything I wrote was going to be kind of limited.
As far as the second goes, I dunno if you really _need_ to get started. I like animation a lot, personally, and that's part of why I was into it. (I don't really actively follow anime much anymore.) I think the 1995 movie of Ghost in the Shell is a good example of what you can achieve through this medium (or, in a somewhat lighter vein, Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress). And everybody likes Studio Ghibli, so if you haven't watched My Neighbor Totoro or Princess Mononoke or Porco Rosso, they would also be good watches.
But if you just aren't that interested in animated movies, like I said, I don't think it's a huge loss not to be interested in them. There's lots of great art elsewhere.
I get the hostility toward “agency” because it’s been overplayed but it really is fundamental to this show. As you say, the children are *never* able to exercise agency without it being undermined, if they try to at all. Or rather, their only avenue for agency is piloting the Eva, which is to say, by both controlling another being but also making oneself a small dependent part of it. Gendo is the puppet master but it’s marionette strings all the way down
even what you could say is the most fundamental if nihilistic exercise of personal freedom (killing yourself) is not possible for at least one of them (Rei) and of course… Shinji will try it in the next episode but not successfully (talked too much). (You can also add to the list all of Asuka's doll-related problems.)
Ah really good points. I think it’s also a productive lens to read the endgame for the adult trio. All of them make choices that are structured by the question of what they can do that’s meaningful within Gendo’s scenario. Kaji, who has literally been an agent, puts his aside, Misato makes a terrible mistake, and Ritsuko… well that’s open to interpretation
something that comes up in this episode and the next episode is that it's actually very hard to die as an Eva pilot… you will _experience dying,_ but you won't actually die. I think the only way we see a pilot actually die for real is blowing themselves up. Anyway, I think Asuka experiences dying at least twice (next episode and EoE). They're rough on our girl.…
"At the same time, you wonder if certain kinds of resentment bleed into the way the Thirteenth Angel takes on each of the pilots—knocking Asuka out without even a protracted fight, torturing Rei, slowly strangling Shinji."
This stood out to me too; none of the other Angels feel quite as vindictive as this one. The behavior of the dummy systems we see in the main series and EoE feel comparable, which (partly) problematizes attributing the nastiness solely to the human element. But, who says Angels can't have latent resentment too?
(I also like this point because it's yet another breadcrumb toward my dream of a psychoanalytically consistent reading of Evangelion. 🙃)
Shinji also seems like the only one the Angel actually wants to kill—like it could certainly have kept going at Rei and Asuka, but it didn't, it just moved on. And Shinji kind of represents everything that is fucking up Toji's life.…
But yeah we just don't know much about Angels and the only one we (barely) get to know (Kaworu) is not, in my memory, especially helpful on the question of "how do Angels think and feel." (I understand Kaworu has an expanded role in Rebuild… but we'll get there when we get there I guess.) But from their perspective, I think they're just on a rescue mission to get Lilith out of the basement and they keep getting killed by machines that are weird simulacra of themselves… I would have some overt resentment toward humanity frankly.
I would love to read a psychoanalytical reading of Eva that was actually good lol—and not just like "the entry plug… is it not a phallus…"—but I'm definitely not the person to write it.
IMO the main problem with any attempt at a psychoanalytic reading of Evangelion is that the show has already mostly read itself. e.g. Shinji's relationship to the Eva is explicitly ("Klein Space", "Mother is the first Other", etc.) a literal direct modelling of Melanie Klein's account of psychosexual development. You can crack open any Klein primer and go through the show and see how it's really 1:1 in a way that is almost eerie (I genuinely cannot think of any other piece of media that has incorporated complex theoretical concepts in such textbook fashion), leaving absolutely no room for interpretation because the "subtext" just is the text.
What perhaps is a reading, however, is that I find it interesting how this mirrors this show's utter disregard for subtext regarding very basic plot points (for example Shinji just outright stating that he gets into the Eva because he wants the approval of his father, even though that is patently obvious to the viewer) on a much higher level of abstraction. This might be bit far-fetched, but I do see a kind of resonance with Elfriede Jelinek's fiction here (e.g. "The Piano Teacher" explicitly psychoanalyzing itself in the text), insofar as both employ their complete and utter disdain for subtext almost as a weapon against the viewer/reader, like "oh, you're so smart, you just figured out X? Well, yes of course, we literally just said that, you fucking dumbass".
to your second point something I've been noticing in this rewatch is that you get dialogue that in other shows would be reveals of big plot points… except the characters are putting the pieces together wrong. The Angel in the basement is not Adam, but Kaji and Misato don't know that.…
I'm always kind of interested when narrative art lets characters be wrong, not just deceived or ignorant or unaware etc. I feel like it doesn't actually happen that often (though I could be wrong about that)—usually a narrative has a shared world of facts and people find those facts and are brought into harmony eventually in terms of "the facts about the world we are living in." It's like that Thomas Hardy novel where somebody writes a letter explaining a situation to another person and slides it under their door but it goes under a rug, so the letter is never received. (I don't think I have actually read the Hardy novel where this happens so I may have the details wrong.) It introduces a kind of chaotic contingency to things.
Anyway I guess what I'm saying is part of the fun is that often they do just say that but then every once in a while somebody does just say it and it's actually not true. It's just wrong.
I love The Piano Teacher but had never thought of connecting it to Eva… going to have to think about it.
Good point with respect to some of the false information — I guess what reminds me of Jelinek in Eva is that they're both so strongly veering towards literalism and an eradication of subtext, while also paradoxically somehow being so infinitely compelling and interpretable in so many ways, perhaps it is that kind of chaotic contingency. And I really can't think of much other ficfion that does that.
I know you haven't gotten to the Rebuilds yet, but it's such an immediately apparat contrast, since they have the same tendency towards overexplanation, but they do it in a way that is just infantile and insulting, like you're watching a Marvel movie or some kind of gooner bait isekai harem anime where the overexplanation feels like babying its audience, rather than an act of deliberate obfuscation or hostility.
Oh dang, I am very, very interested to read your take on Revolutionary Girl Utena. I've watched it twice (only ever as an adult), and find it fascinating how much it floresces as it proceeds.
I have almost no knowledge of anime or manga—I can recognize it when I see it, but that’s about it. That said, I’m curious about two things:
1. Did you write an initial post explaining why you decided to analyze this show and why you chose it specifically? I might have missed it.
2. For someone as unfamiliar with this genre as I am, how would you recommend getting started?
re: 2) may I recommend this essay?
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/a-mitfreude-of-anime-and-mangas-relationship-with-anglophone-science-fiction-or-this-essay-will-not-try-to-get-you-into-anime-and-manga/
It opens with: "Mitfreude is the joy of sharing joy with friends.
Sometimes you have a friend who’s passionate about a topic—lizards, the Basque language, regency hairstyles—and you sit and ask, “What’s so cool about [topic]?” and a delightful hour later you’ve tasted the topic’s awesome history, examples, taken delight in your friend’s delight, and forever after when that topic comes up you smile, and get the context, and look forward to telling your friend about the cool thing you heard. And (most important!) your friend has not pressured you to get you to buy a pet lizard, learn Basque, or start wearing regency hair to work every day, they’ve just shared the fascinating energy of why find that thing so cool.
This essay is that conversation—sharing the niftiness without the pressure—for anime and manga and how they and Western SF fandom have shaped each other for the last seventy-five years."
re: 1, there's a little in the first post https://notebook.substack.com/p/i-thought-you-left-me-because-you The short answer though is that I have always wanted to write about it, but it was too niche to really sell an essay about. And, also, since I don't know Japanese, I was conscious that anything I wrote was going to be kind of limited.
As far as the second goes, I dunno if you really _need_ to get started. I like animation a lot, personally, and that's part of why I was into it. (I don't really actively follow anime much anymore.) I think the 1995 movie of Ghost in the Shell is a good example of what you can achieve through this medium (or, in a somewhat lighter vein, Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress). And everybody likes Studio Ghibli, so if you haven't watched My Neighbor Totoro or Princess Mononoke or Porco Rosso, they would also be good watches.
But if you just aren't that interested in animated movies, like I said, I don't think it's a huge loss not to be interested in them. There's lots of great art elsewhere.
I get the hostility toward “agency” because it’s been overplayed but it really is fundamental to this show. As you say, the children are *never* able to exercise agency without it being undermined, if they try to at all. Or rather, their only avenue for agency is piloting the Eva, which is to say, by both controlling another being but also making oneself a small dependent part of it. Gendo is the puppet master but it’s marionette strings all the way down
even what you could say is the most fundamental if nihilistic exercise of personal freedom (killing yourself) is not possible for at least one of them (Rei) and of course… Shinji will try it in the next episode but not successfully (talked too much). (You can also add to the list all of Asuka's doll-related problems.)
Ah really good points. I think it’s also a productive lens to read the endgame for the adult trio. All of them make choices that are structured by the question of what they can do that’s meaningful within Gendo’s scenario. Kaji, who has literally been an agent, puts his aside, Misato makes a terrible mistake, and Ritsuko… well that’s open to interpretation
forgot how brutal that Asuka scene is from end of eva.... ahhhh
something that comes up in this episode and the next episode is that it's actually very hard to die as an Eva pilot… you will _experience dying,_ but you won't actually die. I think the only way we see a pilot actually die for real is blowing themselves up. Anyway, I think Asuka experiences dying at least twice (next episode and EoE). They're rough on our girl.…
"At the same time, you wonder if certain kinds of resentment bleed into the way the Thirteenth Angel takes on each of the pilots—knocking Asuka out without even a protracted fight, torturing Rei, slowly strangling Shinji."
This stood out to me too; none of the other Angels feel quite as vindictive as this one. The behavior of the dummy systems we see in the main series and EoE feel comparable, which (partly) problematizes attributing the nastiness solely to the human element. But, who says Angels can't have latent resentment too?
(I also like this point because it's yet another breadcrumb toward my dream of a psychoanalytically consistent reading of Evangelion. 🙃)
Shinji also seems like the only one the Angel actually wants to kill—like it could certainly have kept going at Rei and Asuka, but it didn't, it just moved on. And Shinji kind of represents everything that is fucking up Toji's life.…
But yeah we just don't know much about Angels and the only one we (barely) get to know (Kaworu) is not, in my memory, especially helpful on the question of "how do Angels think and feel." (I understand Kaworu has an expanded role in Rebuild… but we'll get there when we get there I guess.) But from their perspective, I think they're just on a rescue mission to get Lilith out of the basement and they keep getting killed by machines that are weird simulacra of themselves… I would have some overt resentment toward humanity frankly.
I would love to read a psychoanalytical reading of Eva that was actually good lol—and not just like "the entry plug… is it not a phallus…"—but I'm definitely not the person to write it.
IMO the main problem with any attempt at a psychoanalytic reading of Evangelion is that the show has already mostly read itself. e.g. Shinji's relationship to the Eva is explicitly ("Klein Space", "Mother is the first Other", etc.) a literal direct modelling of Melanie Klein's account of psychosexual development. You can crack open any Klein primer and go through the show and see how it's really 1:1 in a way that is almost eerie (I genuinely cannot think of any other piece of media that has incorporated complex theoretical concepts in such textbook fashion), leaving absolutely no room for interpretation because the "subtext" just is the text.
What perhaps is a reading, however, is that I find it interesting how this mirrors this show's utter disregard for subtext regarding very basic plot points (for example Shinji just outright stating that he gets into the Eva because he wants the approval of his father, even though that is patently obvious to the viewer) on a much higher level of abstraction. This might be bit far-fetched, but I do see a kind of resonance with Elfriede Jelinek's fiction here (e.g. "The Piano Teacher" explicitly psychoanalyzing itself in the text), insofar as both employ their complete and utter disdain for subtext almost as a weapon against the viewer/reader, like "oh, you're so smart, you just figured out X? Well, yes of course, we literally just said that, you fucking dumbass".
to your second point something I've been noticing in this rewatch is that you get dialogue that in other shows would be reveals of big plot points… except the characters are putting the pieces together wrong. The Angel in the basement is not Adam, but Kaji and Misato don't know that.…
I'm always kind of interested when narrative art lets characters be wrong, not just deceived or ignorant or unaware etc. I feel like it doesn't actually happen that often (though I could be wrong about that)—usually a narrative has a shared world of facts and people find those facts and are brought into harmony eventually in terms of "the facts about the world we are living in." It's like that Thomas Hardy novel where somebody writes a letter explaining a situation to another person and slides it under their door but it goes under a rug, so the letter is never received. (I don't think I have actually read the Hardy novel where this happens so I may have the details wrong.) It introduces a kind of chaotic contingency to things.
Anyway I guess what I'm saying is part of the fun is that often they do just say that but then every once in a while somebody does just say it and it's actually not true. It's just wrong.
I love The Piano Teacher but had never thought of connecting it to Eva… going to have to think about it.
Good point with respect to some of the false information — I guess what reminds me of Jelinek in Eva is that they're both so strongly veering towards literalism and an eradication of subtext, while also paradoxically somehow being so infinitely compelling and interpretable in so many ways, perhaps it is that kind of chaotic contingency. And I really can't think of much other ficfion that does that.
I know you haven't gotten to the Rebuilds yet, but it's such an immediately apparat contrast, since they have the same tendency towards overexplanation, but they do it in a way that is just infantile and insulting, like you're watching a Marvel movie or some kind of gooner bait isekai harem anime where the overexplanation feels like babying its audience, rather than an act of deliberate obfuscation or hostility.