this doorway is the impenetrable Wall of Jericho

neon genesis evangelion (episode nine, "mind, matching, moment")

In this episode, Asuka makes what she considers her big official debut—I guess her actual first fight didn’t count for some reason—killing this week’s Angel with a single clean and decisive blow. That’s how it’s done, she boasts to Shinji, who admits he’s impressed. Then it turns out this week’s Angel is able to split into two Angels, and Asuka’s clean victory becomes a humiliating defeat. In order to defeat the Angel, Asuka and Shinji must master the most difficult technique of all… synchronized dance. And, uh, getting along.

Is “Mind, Matching, Moment,”¹ in which Shinji and Asuka have to work together to fight an angel by memorizing a dance routine, living together, and wearing matching outfits, Evangelion’s dumbest episode? No. (That’s the next episode.) But it is incredibly silly. It’s the closest Evangelion gets to being a screwball comedy, but given that Asuka actually references the grandmother of all screwballs, It Happened One Night, I don’t think that’s an accident.² (It is als…