“I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!!!”
Shinji’s speaking for a lot of us when he shrieks that to Kaworu, or whatever his name is. I give credit to whoever dubbed this for finding the CREEPIEST voice actor to play him. Ooooo… even if he wasn’t so aggressive in coming on to Shinji (this kid’s a panther) that high-pitched monotone of his was just unnerving. And I don’t think my imagination can even comprehend the amount of yaoi fan-art that’s probably arisen out of this specific episode.
I was taken out of the experience a little, once again, by the music choice, here. “Ode to Joy” has probably even more familiarity to Western ears than “Messiah.” Gaff will disagree with me, I know, but I kind of wished they’d used an original score, or maybe even just lesser-known segments on the piece.
So Ritsuko’s been hooking up with Commander Gendo, huh? I definitely didn’t call that one. Guess that makes him something of a stealth player? You look at this frumpy authoritarian stiff and have no idea how much game the man can spin. Seriously, Kage’s presented as the ladies’ man, but it’s Gendo who’s really getting all the action. I wonder if Ritsuko knows about his affair with her mother. If she did, would she be skeeved out? Then again, seeing as how messed up everybody in the show is, she might even find that exciting. Gross…
I suppose this adds a little more depth to her statement about not wanting children earlier. Maybe she viewed the clone Rei’s as her kids? Maybe not. She seemed pretty gung-ho about destroying them.
There’s only two more episodes left to wrap this all up. I’m starting to remember what my friend, a psych-major who was an enormous fan of the show, told me a couple years ago about the ending. How it doesn’t actually wrap up the plot, per see - - it just “resolves the characters”, then lets you infer what happened. Then again, there’s such a labyrinth of re-dos and director’s cut ahead of me after this collection I have, I suppose I’ll be getting an ending in installments.
By the way, I’m sorry but, knowing what I know, I had to laugh at that exceptionally-long take of Shinji’s Eva holding the creep angel child. It was literally one animation cel held on screen for what had to have been more than a full minute. Yeah, that’s got a lot to do with Shinji’s Hamlet-esque “dramatic delay”, but I’m sure it had a lot more to do with the budget cutbacks. It was almost like Gainax literally ran out of all their money at the exact point.
Actually, speaking of which… at what point did the director of this suffer a nervous breakdown?I'm curious.
-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Studios and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. Pre-order the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover now on Amazon.com.
