"his heart," don't you mean

neon genesis evangelion (episode two, "the beast")

Note: I had a lot of trouble with my internet when drafting this so while I am 98% sure that Substack is sending out the right draft here, there is a 2% chance something is going to go weird. Thankfully, Substack does not have a berserker mode.

“The Beast” takes its sweet time before it finally lets you know what happened in the battle between Shinji and the Angel that closed out “Angel Attack.”¹ The ultimate outcome of Shinji’s fight with the Angel is not at issue—it’s plain Shinji lives and the Angel dies—but how he got there, after a very unpromising first few steps, it keeps under wraps for as long as possible.

Instead, it tells a lot about the aftermath. We know lies are being fed to the press and that SEELE, the people Gendo apparently answers to,² aren’t happy about the damages and the amount of money required to fix things; we overhear a frightened conv…