Here's another show you can enjoy in the true story FM family of entertainment podcasts. Hey Pete, ever wonder what Steven Spielberg's favorite film is? You know, Andy, I've heard he loves classics like Lawrence of Arabia, maybe in St. Louis. Imagine chatting with him about why those films resonate with him so much. That's exactly what we do on our podcast. Movies we like. We've had incredible guests like actress Dee Wallace, cinematographer Eric Mezerschmitt, director Steve Miner and former Disney animators Tom and Tony Bankroft. They share their favorite films and the impact they've had on their careers, offering fascinating insights into the craftsmanship and storytelling techniques that make these movies so special. If you're curious about the magic behind the scenes, subscribe to Movies We Like from True Story FM on your favorite podcast app. New episodes are released on the fourth Monday of each month with early access for our members. Join us on Movies We Like as we explore the movies we all like with the people who make them. And Steven, our people will call your people. Let's make this happen, Bubby. Subscribe today. What's up most excellent friends? It's Chrissy and Nathan from the most excellent 80s movies podcast. It's a podcast where a filmmaker and a comedian and their most excellent guests adventure their way through the 80s movies we think we love or might have missed with our grown up eyes to see how they hold up. Join us for a delightful discussion. Rolicking recaps. Ratings and deep cut recommendations. Plus members get some extra fun shit chat with the hosts after the show. Download the most excellent 80s movies podcast today at truestory.fm. Or find it wherever the finest podcast are stored. And do remember to keep the most excellent 80s movies podcast motto in mind. Be excellent to each other and... Party on dudes. [MUSIC] Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Superhero Ethics. Today myself Matthew Fox and my normal co-host, Ricky Hayashi, are going to be talking about the anime from the 1990s, Neon Genesis Evangelion, or Evangelion. This is, I would imagine that in our listenership right now, 20 to 30% of you are going, oh my God, this is one of the best sci-fi ever, one of the best anime ever. I love this show, I can't wait to hear you talk about it. And the other 60 to 70% of you going, what in the world are you talking about? You may have heard it, you may not have seen it. This is another one of these episodes where this is something Ricky knows really well. I haven't known it well, but Ricky's been talking about it for a while and a number of the different topics that it opens up. And so we're going to do what's probably going to be the first of a number of episodes on this topic of this show and all the ethical questions that it connects to both in terms of within the show itself and in the creation of the show. And if you've never seen the show, if you don't know what we're talking about, don't worry, I haven't seen most of the show. I've seen the first five episodes, I've seen a video about the lore of it. And so a lot of today is going to be about us taking me and all of you through kind of what the show is about, but also talking about like the questions that it raises. Because again, like the point of this podcast is not as much to say like, this character was right, that character was wrong. As much as to say like, what are the questions that this show or this movie or this book or whatever is raising for us? And how do we feel about those things? Because I'm only five episodes in and already I see deep connections to a number of the things we've talked about on the show, everything from cultural appropriation to Mecca ideas to the way sexuality is presented in shows to the idea of choice and do you get to choose whether or not you are the hero, which is a pretty recent episode to depression and loneliness and how those things manifest in wartime and trauma. They're just so much, I'm sure there's so much I'm still missing. So, Ricky, why don't you tell us a little about your feelings about this show and kind of what made you want it to be something we talked about? Yeah, thank you. First off, I guess I would say I am by no means an expert. This is not, this is actually like not something I grew up watching. Because it wasn't really available to me back then. You would have to go searching for it. I was aware of it because it was such a cultural phenomenon. I believe it came out in 1995, yeah, 95, 96 was when it was on TV in Japan. And it is so iconic within anime, within the Mecca subgenre that you cannot help, if you're a fan of those things, you cannot help but have seen the EVAs, the giant robots, the some of the character models are very iconic and copied across the industry. But I only watched it, started watching it, I think last year and finished it this year, because it's been available on Netflix, which is a huge boon for all of us to be able to watch it. And I will say this marks me as a dirty heretic to some I know, though not you. You can obviously watch it either your Japanese with subtitles. One of the things that Netflix did is they rerecorded a fairly good dub with with good actors. It is not exactly 100% translation. We'll definitely talk about that. But if you're like me and for ADHD reasons or other things like that, subtitles are hard. There is definitely a good dub version of it as well. Yeah, I've said this before probably on the show, but it bears repeating that I prefer subtitles because I can understand Japanese. Right. And I think that like, especially live action, like acting and live action is kind of different from voice acting, but it's all still acting. And I do think like you lose some stuff if you don't have the original actor like doing the things. But that said, I do not fault anyone for preferring the dub for whatever reason. You should watch things in the way that you can enjoy them best. So I am like fully not into the debate of like which is quote unquote better. Yeah, whatever is better for you is what you should do to enjoy a product. For sure. And even though like I don't understand Korean, like it's still the same. Like I still enjoy watching like Korean horror especially. A lot of the TV shows and movies in the original Korean with subs. Just because I feel like I'm getting more out of it. Even if I'm not understanding the words that they're saying. For sure. That they emote them I think is more is more is more genuine performance. Yeah, even though like I do enjoy some of the performances. Patrick Stewart in particular was on the dub of. Nauschka, the Valley of the Wind. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it's just such a fun performance. Anyway, back to this. So you mentioned the name. Neon Genesis Evangelion is technically the correct name. I know it gets gets pronounced both ways. In the Japanese the way it's written, it's Evangelion. So I feel like that's just how it should be said. But you know, and for me like if you do if you are not familiar with this product and you are still interested in watching it. We are probably going to spoil things like talk about things that happen. And I already mentioned to you in the in the pre-show. It doesn't it doesn't matter as much like this is one of the least plot driven shows I have ever watched like that. I want to make the arguments like a broad argument that the plot doesn't matter because frankly, like some of it is just nonsense like people have like done deep dives into the lore and there is a lore and it is arguably consistent within itself, but it doesn't make any sense and there's not you can't be like, ah, like this is why this is happening. No, not really. And then on top of that, there are multiple endings to this. I don't know how familiar you are with that, but the original TV show was 26 episodes, which is what is available on Netflix, right, one quote unquote season. And there is an ending to that season. It's a very weird ending. And in fact, like it was not very popular in Japan, I would say, unfortunately, the creator Hideo Kiyano and his animation studio Gainax received a lot of hate mail death threats. I've seen pictures of spray painted graffiti like on their studio entrance. So they received a lot of hate for the original ending of the anime run on TV. And I believe a year later released a movie that was like a retelling of the ending of the last two episodes, I believe in a very different way. And so if you're into lore and like a history of a show, like the internal history, like which one is the real ending, right, is a question among fandom. And now they have released, I believe it's a series of three movies recently. And those also retell the ending in a way, or retell the whole series in some sense. Yeah, it's called rebuild. The rebuild of Evangelion is the recent movies, like 1.0 through 3.0. Yeah. There's three movies and it's one argument I've heard is that it's like that this universe is multiversal and that it's repeating all the matrix, okay? And then all of these are real, like they happen, but then it's like the third iteration or the tenth iteration or whatever, you know, like in the matrix, the architect guys like you're the sixth chosen one or whatever the heck in that scene. I don't know if that's copium on the part of fans. I don't think that the creators have anything they want to say that they intended. They just want to keep making stuff with this product with these characters because they find them interesting. And that's the thing, like when I said plot doesn't matter. This is all about characters, yeah, about about the central characters of the show. So like you started, like what do you understand so far of I guess the world and then the characters and we can build off of that? Sure. Well, let me start by just kind of like bookmarking a few things and I think we'll talk about in more detail a little later point. Yeah. One is, and I think this is an important thing to understand and it's also, try to kind of explain this because I'm going to kind of like a joke about it, but there's a lot to understand here. The next time that I hear someone, as you, as I mentioned, you sent me a long video about the lore of the show and it goes very deep. And then at the end, it's like, oh, by the way, very little, this matters. And almost none of this is in the original series and it's all in like video games and later movies and oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it is interesting to know all that if you're a lot of fiend like I am, but knowing what the lore is, and especially as you said that the writers have kind of said that a lot of lore, they were just like, well, this seems fun. Let's do this. The next time I hear a white person say, particularly a white Christian or, or, so again, the next time I hear a white person, particularly if they're Jewish or Christian, say, oh, why does it matter that like they named the evil person Shiva or like drew on like Buddhist or, you know, Islamic or, you know, some other kind of like iconography for the show, it doesn't matter. It's just a show. I want them to watch this lower video because it is one of the greatest examples of seeing of a shoe being on the other foot. And I do think there's going to market difference to be clear because of the power that Christianity and the Jewish stories that are part of Christianity has. But this is like wildly just taking like, oh, you know, what crosses look cool. And they mean something to a lot of people. That's how crosses everywhere. This is the main story begins with the idea of two alien beings named Adam and Lilith coming to Earth and if those who don't know, according to Jewish, not in the Bible itself, but in in Russia teachings and other things like that, Lilith is often prescribed to be the original wife of Adam who wasn't obedient and so therefore Eve was created. There's so much to go into there and I won't, I won't, I'm not going to do all that here. There's also a reference to the spear that was used to pierce the side of Jesus when he's on the cross. The cross imagery is all over the place, angels. And I didn't feel offended or bothered by it as a Christian in any way. I think like, you know, when you were trying to figure it out, right? Yeah. Oh, they named them this. What does this mean? And then whenever the interview being like, oh, this is exactly what happened so often. This is not someone who really studied this and like got with a rasic rabbi to like, they were just like, oh, this sounds cool. Let's throw it in, which again, I think, you know, Christianity could use some punching up at it. And I do think it's different when you do that with cultures that are more often misrepresented, but there was an uncomfortness for me there. And like, oh, like, I've always intellectually understood why this is so bothersome to people of other religions and cultures. I've never experienced it quite the same way. Okay. And that was just to me. So that was kind of my first real thought about all of it. Yeah. As you said, I just want to, I just want to, real quick, like, you mentioned the Adam and the Lilith and then the prior, the antagonist on the show, or these monsters, right? And they call them angels in the translation. Yeah. Exactly. And a lot of it's about like the nature of free will. There's a lot of Christian stories. Again, most of these are non-biblical, but where there's, and honestly, it's one of the few parts of Christian theology that's supernatural gets fairly accurate. I can wait, no, take that back. As another example, there's a lot of stories within Christianity, again, non-biblical for the most part, but about this idea that angels are perfectly obedient to God and that humans are not and that there's a real question of which one God loves more, you know, the, the kind of the rebellious child who God is proud of versus the purely obedient one. And that comes up in a lot of pop media, everything from like supernatural to movie Lucifer. There's a movie in the, from the 90s where they all perch and where all black the angels do, and I can't remember the name of it, but the, the point is, yeah, there's a lot of like that iconography in this movie that is, is fascinating, but if you go too deep on, you're going to get very frustrated with and I'm kind of glad that no one on the Christian right has found this yet because it would be one more source of like massive protest and stuff like that. Oh, like, well, I'm sure they have people are aware of it, but yeah, um, I'm trying to think there, I remember there was a movie called Legion with Paul Bettany. Is that what you're thinking? Like that, that one, like he is an angel and then God has decided to purge humanity and he defies God and like fights against other angels. That might be in a diner movie. So I'll check. But anyway, but to get back to Jan Genesis, I just, I just had to say that such a thing that came, came so forward to me. No, I, I think like, this is a very prominent example of cultural appropriation, right? Right. Of, of cherry picking names and lore from Christianity, with, in my opinion, like not really a depth of understanding or respect to the, the original. Like, I wouldn't say that it's like intentionally disrespectful, but I don't think it is done in a way to be like this. This is our understanding of Christianity and how we want to interpret it. I think they just like took the names from, yeah, I mean, I, I use this kind of a throw off example, but like think about Western stories where like the bad person is named Shiva or some other Hindi God, you know, or something like that. Um, uh, you know, because again, like I said, it's like, it's not that it's, let's Mike fun of this. It's just, Hey, this is in the, in the overculture, I think another thing that I really recognize about the show. Again, I think you're right. The plot doesn't matter. It, you know, think about your basic superhero movie. Um, we are at the point now where there's a well established trope of how a super, super hero movie goes. And some of them are interesting because they break the trope, but a lot of them are interesting because they say what if it's a different kind of superhero, but in the same trope and it'll be, they get powers. They're reluctant to use the powers. They're convinced to use the powers. They start using the powers, they become really powerful and, and good at it. They meet a challenge that actually is the first one who can stop them maybe and they have doubts and then something helps them to, you know, reassert themselves. And then they defeat the enemy often by conquering their own inner demon in some way, their ego or their inability to connect to others or their fear of goldfish or, you know, whatever the hell it is. And in the same way, three minutes into the show, I was like, okay. So this young boy is going to wind up being very reluctant to be the mecca pilot, but he's going to be the mecca pilot and it's going to be very difficult for him to be the mecca pilot. And at some point he's going to want to stop being the mecca pilot, but then when he sees this other girl who he thinks is kind of pretty, trying to be the mecca pilot and hurting her, he's going to decide he has to be the mecca pilot again. And there's going to be a shadowy human conspiracy that's running all of this that has like their own agenda of what's going to happen to humanity, even though they seem to be helping humanity. And at some point our scooby gang of ragtag teenage heroes are going to figure all this out and try to stop it. And I know that the ending gets a lot more complicated than that, but very quickly, I was like, I don't think there's going to be many hot points that surprise me. Like you said, I didn't really care because I found the characters so fascinating because I thought it was such a good job of showing trauma and how trauma affects people, especially young people. And also of exploring that question that we talked about just a few episodes of, to what extent do you get to decide I don't want to fulfill my destiny? I don't want to be the person who has to risk it all in order to save everybody else because it is very much a show where everyone in the show is, is, you know, guilting him or straight up bullying him or rejecting him if he won't, telling him he's got to be the one to get himself into this Mecca and go and save the day. Yeah, so let's let's set the stage a little the main the main character is Xingji Akari. He's the young boy who is the pilot of the EVA 01, and so the the mecha's on the show are called Evangelion shorthand as Evo's. Here are the question for you. Some characters refer to him as Xinja, some as Akari and Xinji Akari, right, well, and I know that like I'm asking this because I know that I know in a Western sense what it means when someone refers to someone as their first name versus by their last name. And I kind of I but I don't know in a Japanese sense what is what is being conveyed when someone uses the first part of his name or the last part of his name? I would say in general someone who calls him Xingji is closer to him, like it's a it's a friendlier way to call someone. And then yeah, because his last name Akari, like they might you might say ikari san, which I don't think they do. I think pretty much everyone calls him ikari kun, the suffix basically for like a kid like a young kid, a young boy. And then his father is in this as well, right, like if you met him, yep, so his father is a character gendo ikari and they might refer to him as gendo or ikari san, again san is like the more adult respectful suffix to the last name. So I think most of the adults probably call him ikari kun and then the other megapilots or his classmates at school call him my column Xingji. So he you've met him, you've met Ray Yanami, the other pilot so far. And she she's a girl and Ray in particular is very iconic within the fan and just like anime, she is like the prototype kind of like, I guess nowadays we would call them manic pixie dream girls, right, she's got the colored hair to what is it like her hair is blue. And she is mysterious, yeah, like we don't know everything about her. She's very quiet, but also a very good pilot. So she's got like all these qualities that it's set up in the beginning is like, oh, like you would expect that she is going to be his love interest on the show. Yeah, and when we meet her, she's also very badly injured from the last time she was a pilot and that's part of why he, you know, he's being pushed into it. I found the introduction of her character, especially with the two other young women in his life very interesting and I want to kind of ask more about that because so he is supposed to be a young teenager, he's 14 and I think Ray is also a similar age. Yeah, they're their classmates, right, like all of this, because it's an anime, all of this takes place, like partly in this futuristic like military battle station, oh, yeah, there's also a school in this time to be some drama over who asks who to the Japanese equivalent of prom, like that's the kind of vibe I'm getting from it. But the first two women he meets are older, I think they're supposed to be like also teenage or like very young adult, and they're portrayed like, kind of best phrases, that their, their attractiveness and their sexuality is very forward in terms of their characters. Like we see a lot of like the bent over shots and things like that. We see a lot of like the other boys all being obsessed with how hot those two are. And the two older women kind of joking about like which one of them is going to try and date Senji. Yeah, I think like it doesn't feel inappropriate because that's why I think they are also in high school with him, but it's like a, you know, 17 year old, 14 year old kind of a thing. But it's very interesting to me that like, on the one hand, you have him being bullied by these two very attractive older women, which I'm sure caused a lot of people at young ages to have a lot of feelings that they're still figuring out 20 years later, and nothing wrong with that, but, but the idea that he has these like two women who are being very kind of sexually aggressive towards him, not as the hitting on way, but in like, he's constantly like walking into rooms and seeing all their underwear and blushing a lot and feeling uncomfortable, contrasted with this shy, demure, but incredibly skilled manic pexy dream girl, who seems like he has his actual interest. Yeah. Okay. Sure, let's see, we're referring to the first one I would say is Misato Katsunagi, right? She is, I guess I would call her the handler for the evil pilots. I'm not sure how old she's supposed to. She's definitely supposed to be older than them. I would guess like early twenties, but like old teenager is a possibility. Well, I saw her as like a senior in the high school, but I could be wrong on that. So getting into the lore, there was an event that happened, I believe 15 years ago, and she was a young girl. So she might be like 20 to 25, I guess is probably the age range. I have a place for it. Okay. Is that the depiction of her in the flashback is definitely not no, no younger than, yeah, like six, four or five, yeah, six, that's makes it okay, yeah, you're right about that. And then who's the other one, your friend? Is it Ritzko? I think like the scientist, yeah, the blonde woman, and she's the one who's constantly because I'm so smoky, is that correct? Misato. Misato. Misato, like the first thing she does is get him to move in with her and talk about how they're going to party and hang out and have so much fun, and at which point the scientist starts teasing her about like, how is things with your boyfriend and stuff like that. Yeah. And Misato's character again is like, this is 1995, like anime as a genre is 20 years old, like mecha anime is like 20 years old-ish, but still like Ray and Misato, like these characters have become archetypes of the genre because they're so iconic. And yeah, she is this, the older like caretaker, but very flirty. I mean, I'm just going to say she's an alcoholic, right? She drinks every night to the point of often passing out or just like being sloppy drunk. And so like, I don't, I think some aspects of this have not aged well or like are now things that we would not want to see in our media, like are inappropriate, right? Like her being drunk all the time around a young boy who she's living with and supposedly like caretaker of and is kind of flirting/teasing aggressively, like in a sexual way. I was watching. I was like, yeah, like this is, this is what it was like in 90s anime and I don't think we would do that anymore. Right. I mean, although maybe they do and that's a problem. Well, and I just want to say like, I think, I think there's something where the cultural view has shifted and it certainly was not just Japanese anime, like yeah, I was watching music videos like hot for teacher in the 80s and 90s, which are all about like 13-year-old boys getting hit on by adult strippers. We're also their teacher. I mean, yeah, like I grew, I watched Dawson's Creek where there's a storyline where a high school teacher ends up having a sexual relationship with one of our students. Right. Yeah. And it is definitely like a unfortunate fantasy that gets portrayed. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You can point me on that though, but I just did find it very interesting, the contrast of like, as you said, the manic-pixie dream girl, who's his age and who is even shyer than he is versus the woman who is like very aggressive in her, I mean, everything and her drinking and her sexuality and all of it. It was just a very interesting contrast and, but I will say though that while like I roll my eyes at how much the camera focuses on some of the shot, you know, the anime camera as such as it is, it gets worse. But all of them are, I think it'd be easy to think that I'm just dismissing it. I'm more raising it because I think it's an interesting cultural issue of how these things become icons, but they're both very well-developed characters. Yes. She doesn't drink because wouldn't it be funny if the character is drunk all the time? No. She drinks because as you said, she was horribly traumatized as a girl. Yes. Like in some ways- she's got an impossible job, right, to send these kids into life or death situations. Like, this is her coping mechanism and it is played for laughs a lot like her drinking, but the moments when she has like moments of self-reflection, you absolutely feel the pressure on her and her, the depths of her despair over the situation she's in and that she's forced to put these kids in. Especially because I think at this point, Graham, only a couple episodes in, she's probably my favorite character in part because although she joins in the bullying and pushing him to be part of this mecca program, she's also the only one who shows concern for him and care for him. And like early on, she doesn't want, they're kind of like, "Oh, you just showed up. By the way, there's an angel that's attacking. You've got to jump in this mecca and go fight it five minutes after you said hello. There's no training montage until like a couple episodes later." And but then once the others make the argument of the whole city is going to be destroyed unless we kill this angel, she joins in that. And to give people an extent of just how far this goes, as Reiki mentioned, the boy's father is part of this program. He's kind of leading up this whole program. He's leading up NERV, which is this super secret government funded, even the government doesn't really know what it's doing, kind of like science tech organization, shadowy organization, which again, if you feel like that's a cliche, you've seen this organization a hundred times. And even the father says, like the father and spoken to the boy in three years, the father clearly says, "I brought you here to be a mecca pilot. If you are not going to be a mecca pilot, I have no use for you." Like there is no sense of like, "Oh, by the way, you're my son and I just want to see you and be with you and help raise you," there's none of that. And I think that's part of where her concern for him really comes from. Yeah, Gendo, his father, Gendo is a disgusting character. I don't think there's any way around that. The way he acts towards Shinji, it's not as a father. The only time he acts as a father, I'd say, is to manipulate Shinji through their familial bond. And otherwise, all he cares about is his project. Right. So the situation with Rey, too, I believe at this point, you don't know their full backstory, but you understand that Rey is very important to Gendo, perhaps even beyond just being a pilot. Right. Like there's more of a sense of affection Gendo has for Rey than for his own son Shinji. And I'm not going to spoil this point, but there is definitely a reason and a secret behind it. Right. Yeah. I've read a bit in the plot summaries of what that is, but I agree that we don't need to spoil that because we're not going to talk about the show a lot. I want to give people a chance to go watch it because I think it is very enjoyable so far and very thought-provoking. So the other thing that we learned about the father is that, as I said, he's a member of that secret. He's the leader of NERV, and we sort of see these meetings of this very shadowy secret council that is sort of, and they talk about the human fine, is it called the human finality project? So yeah, let's talk, so NERV is the organization that Gendo runs that's underground where the evils are. They are, they report to, it's, it could be called seal, or I've also heard it pronounced zeal in like a German pronunciation. And they are, they are like the world council in Avengers, like, there are no people in seal that we see, right? Like it's a bunch of, I don't even like the, like the things from 2001, they're just like tablets floating in space that the voices come out of type of thing. So it's like the secretive council, and have they mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls yet? Those have not been mentioned yet, but I do know that- That is, that is the thing, again, has nothing to do with like what we, the actual Dead Sea Scrolls, other than like a name, and I guess they're like an old thing that you can read. And that's, that's what they are basing all of this on, is that there are like prophecies on the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so what you got, what you got to, it is called the translation is called the human instrumentality project. The instrumentality is what they are trying to work towards. Right. And the interesting thing about this is the Japanese, it is called the jindu hokan kekaku. And the instrumentality part, like the human and project, like those are simple translations. The instrumentality part, hokan, I feel like the original English translation on this kind of dropped the ball because hokan has much more of a meaning of like protection or something like that. Like instrumentality is such a weird word to plug into this. And I, and in one sense, I guess it makes it a little mysterious. But the Japanese, the original Japanese makes it clear that this is like for the protection of humanity. Hmm, okay, that makes sense, should mention also that the obviously, it sounds like it is pronounced differently in Japanese. The name of the organization, the zeal, is a German word. It's a German word for soul, which I know also plays a lot into the sort of cosmology and theology of this whole, the whole what's going on here. And I think this is a appropriate time to also talk about that, well, actually, let me go a little further than that. So again, I don't want to spoil too many things because I want to give people a chance to watch it. The next episode we're probably going to go full spoilers, what the involvement of the father in that kind of shadowy council that's doing this, I think also really lends itself to the not only is he completely ruthless in the protect humanity just with by killing the angels, but he also has some like other things of like, there's this larger project that's not just about this. I think this is also a good time to mention something we hadn't mentioned. It seems very vital to the show. This is not set in an earth like ours today. It is very much a post-apocalyptic dystopian kind of world where we're slowly learning more and more about what happened, but there was a great event that people are being taught that it was a meteor that hit the Antarctica and melted the entire polar ice caps. And so like there's been, you know, huge flooding and that kind of thing and the wiping out of a lot of cities that there's been massive wars back and forth and including some nuclear attacks back and forth. And one of the things that happens in the first episode that I wanted to talk to you about, and again, not asking you to be the expert or speak for all Japanese people by any means, but you have more insight in it certainly than I do, in the first episode, the military, like they don't want to work with nerve. They're convinced that they can defeat the angels by themselves. And when all of their normal weapons don't work, they go to what they call the N1 mine, and they never say the word nuclear, but I think it is the, you know, there's a mushroom cloud, there's a bright light, it is very clear to me at least that it's supposed to be a nuclear bomb. Yeah. Just speaking for yourself, like, you know, and I've heard you talk about the effect of having been the victim of a nuclear bombing in Japan and how much that shapes the Gojira movies and things like that, what was the effect of seeing a nuclear bomb exploded by the Japanese on Japanese soil so early in this show? Because that felt to me like it was a very specific, like, we are crossing this cultural line to show you just how dystopian we are. Yeah, I mean, at this point, 1995, we've already had a Kira, and I can't remember the history of that, but there were nuclear, subsequent nuclear detonations in Japan in the Tokyo in that one, because they're Neo-Tokyo. So I don't know, that's something I don't know about, like, in Japanese media, there's probably definitely an era of this post-apocalyptic future. And I think it's just same with a lot of Western media that to reach that point of where you want this dystopian future, it probably has to be nukes. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so you mentioned the what they call an asteroid or meteor, I guess, they call it the second impact on the show, and that implies there was a first impact, and there's going to be a third impact, that is supposedly what they are trying to prevent is the third impact. And again, this is where I say, like, the plot doesn't matter, I guess. I guess they know about it from the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that's just, like, very day-sex mocking, like, we know about the third impact thing from the Dead Sea Scrolls, don't worry about it. There's nothing, like, kind of beyond that. Like the thing with the angels, there's no, we never really find out, like, who or why, other than, like, it's happening, the Dead Sea Scrolls told us that there would be, I believe, 15 angel attacks. So that leads to an interesting tension and countdown on the show, because every time an angel attacks, like, you are told what number it is. Right. The audience is told, and it leads to the sense of, like, okay, like, now we're at, you know, this number, we're getting closer, we're getting closer. And then, like, stuff happens and it's not clear, like, why or who did it? So it's, going back to your original question about this, I'm not, I don't have, like, a strong sense of, like, the nuclear explosion at the beginning. I think it feels like, at this point in anime, it is kind of, like, tropey in a sense. It's like, let's show that even a nuclear bomb won't work. Yeah. Exactly. Like, that no human control. Yeah. Right. And so only the Evangelians can stop the angels. And that's because, like, the Evangelian technology is based off of, you know, basically angel technology or angel DNA or whatever it is. And that's, like, something that happens a lot in anime is we see it in Robotech/Macross where alien technology is, like, the thing of that boosts humanity, like, past where it is, into, like, a new, more futuristic, especially, you know, in all these things, like military technology. Yeah. I mean, if you watch the First Independence Day and then the Second Independence Day, that's very much a theme of it. It's a theme of, you know, everything from Ender's Game to, to all sorts of stuff like this. Even what I think is the way a lot of Americans were first were they introduced to the Mecha concept, if they didn't grow up watching some of these cartoons, the Pacific Rim movies. You know, there's very much a sense of, like, they have developed in part because of what they've learned from not really the technology, but the remains of these alien beings. Yeah. Reverse engineering. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. So what, okay, so what, at this point, question, do you have, like, big questions about? So one of the questions I have is that it seems like there's only this very special group of people who can pilot the Evas, the Evangelians. Yes. And I know by the lore, kind of what the explanation is that we're given much later in the show, I think we were given, like, a very brief one sentence, like, it has to be a child because, like, the younger mind can better meld with it, but I don't quite understand why it has to be this one, these, one of these two particular people at net, none of the others, including some of the young adults, none of them could become macapilots. Yeah. It's definitely set up in a way where each, each unit, like the evil, like 0102, like, they have to be piloted by their pilot, right? And they do, at some point, they do try to get them to cross pilot because, like, one's damaged or something, and it doesn't work, because there is, like, a psychic connection between the pilot and the Eva. I can't remember what term they use on the show, but there's definitely, like, you have to be on this correct wavelength or something like that. I don't know. You get a little spoilery about it, like, you know, again, I just want to get a sense of, like, if there's something we were missing early on, and I, but so is the implication, then, that this machine was built with a thought that eventually they'd go grab Sanji and make him piloted. Like, was that always the plan for this machine? Yes. Okay. Or at least that's where the, I don't know if it was the plan, but that's just what happens right? Because of the way they are built, right? And that's, I guess, what I will say about that is that this show presents, like, we're calling them meccas, but they are very different from the way mecca have been presented in pretty much all, all of anime, like this may be the first one. To this point, stuff like Gundam, I mentioned Macross, there's stuff like pat labor in the same era, they're all just straight robots, right, like, they're machines that were built in factories, and you pilot them like you would pilot a fighter jet or a tank, and you fight with them. And that's it. And here in Evangelion, they are bio-mechanical and they're, they're beings, like the Evas are alive, and they seem to have a personality of their own. Yeah. I mean, there's a very early scene in which, as part of the attack in that first episode, without a pilot in it, Eva Oh one, yeah, save Sanji from like falling apart. Yeah. Sanji loses consciousness. Yeah. And yet even before that, before he's gotten in, like, its hand reaches out and stops breathing him on the head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that, that is like the mystery behind them and the connection with the pilots, right? Because it's a living being, even though they, they never talk, like, they have a personality, they have some, some kind of internal motivation, then they can only be piloted by their specific children. Right. And, and again, you think about like, one thing to think about when I think about like Robotech or, you know, those kinds of things are all the way up to the hangers of Pacific him, they might carry weapons, but also they have like all these missiles and guns that are built into them. And as far as we see, this one has like a big spike on its head. It looks more like a kaiju in that regard, but then yeah, mostly it holds a gun or holds a knife. And I think the visual design of it, it's interesting because yeah, it looks much more sleek. It doesn't look boxy. The only thing that throws me is that the color scheme of it is so aggressively like 90s bowling alley carpet. Um, it's just like purple and green that is just so garish that it like, it's hard to watch for me. And I'm sure I'll get used to it. I'm sure that was very much like the cool color scheme at the time. But I just need to know if it's cool. I think it's meant to intentionally evoke a sense of, uh, biology of monstrousness. Oh, cause it, no, cause for me again, it feels neon. It feels like, okay, 90s, you know, look how, like the, the kind of like, you think of like the neon lights in, in 1990s, like inner video game centers and stuff like that. That's what it gets to me. That's fair enough. I mean, it, it, the origin could just feel like it looked cool, right, but, but there's definitely no sense like an other mecha anime, like of them being painted. Yeah. And you do not get the sense that this is like, that they were painted this way. This is just like, cause they're a lie, like they were born this way. I don't know. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I'm sure we're, I know we're going to get a lot more into the origin of them and how it ties into the origin of the angels and that there's a lot of lore coming and where I, this might be a bonus episode, it might be a regular episode, depending on fan feedback. I'm definitely going to do a full episode just on, let me dive deep into the meaning of all the, um, the angels, well, all of the different, um, Judeo-Christian, uh, they say again, the, the iconography of all of the Jewish, um, iconography and of the Christian iconography. Some would take on the Jewish iconography. That's a very complicated subject and, and the meaning of it and how it appears here because I do think it's interesting, uh, well, to the three other theology geeks who are in our listeners, but yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. My, 'cause so far as, as you said, it's not really the plot that matters, there's a fight every couple of episodes, but it really seems to you about how are each of these different people dealing with trauma and how, and, and the isolation and loneliness that can lead to and then how are they either helping or hurting each other as, you know, sort of different people's traumas bump into each other. And I've talked before about how, you know, I have a lot of trauma in my past and a lot of like mental issues related to that. I think it's very easy to just be like, oh, all people with PTSD are like this or all people who have childhood trauma are like this or something like that. And the fact that you have everyone is reacting to the same event, but in very different ways, even if you just look at the two women who are kind of most in his life right now, um, like it, it's just fascinating to see. And I'm really interested to see how this plays out, especially because it's all against this background of human choice and, and what is the importance of human agency and, and or is that not? Because again, I don't want to go into much spoilers, but like what we're going to learn is that a lot of the like attempt to protect human to protect humans or to instrument to instrumentalize humans is about removing their agency and that kind of that becomes a major part of the whole story. Yeah, what, what I love about this, like the imagery is all iconic. Yeah. Right? The, the Evas, like I mentioned the pilots, the, the, they became archetypes for the genre, but the story itself or, or like the characters, it's just absolutely fascinating because these characters, there's not like a hero's journey in the traditional sense. It is, it is just about how these human beings react to and are affected by the, the traumatic experiences they go through. And it's so, it's so real. Yeah. Like one of them, one of the memes for the show, like one of the images that gets reused a lot is Shinji sitting in a chair with his head in his hands, just probably crying or just like in, in total shock. And that's, if you don't feel that as you go through this show, like maybe you're not paying attention and you're just watching it as like fun robots, which is fine. But I, I had several episodes, like I couldn't binge this. I had several episodes where I finished it. I turned off the TV and, and basically like did a Shinji pose and just like put my head in my hands and just like thought about it and like what just happened, like what am I feeling like thinking about what the characters are feeling as like what, what the heck like I was devastated watching it on behalf of the characters. And that is a unique feeling that, that we should treasure like in media, like to be able to watch something and feel something that deep. It's great. Yeah. And there's dangerous to like, like there, there are definitely going to be points where if you can't keep watching it, like don't. Yeah. No, I think that's, there were, there was an episode I planned to binge quite a lot of it last night yesterday, about it, the episodes are half an hour. So it's like all told about like 12 or 13 hours. And I had to stop because there was one episode that just hit really hard. And it was really something I related to quite a lot. And the other thing I think that really is striking me and again, I want to see how this develops. But as you said, like a lot of these shows, and again, this isn't just an anime, think about like Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, like any of those other shows, you know, Vampire Diary is where it's like one half super, either fantasy or tech powers that are allowing you to save the world and one half like, will you study for your math test? They've done this very interesting thing of showing that like the kids in his life have much more compassion because early on, he's getting bullied from two directions. He's getting like all the adults are yelling at him and telling him he needs to like get in the Mecca and save everybody and it's his duty. And if they don't do it, they don't want anything to do with him. And then there's a kind of classic high school bully situation he's dealing with, you know, because he's the new kid. But the bully actually has a reason. The bully's sister was almost killed in the attack that the Eva eventually destroyed the angel but like broke a lot of stuff on the way to do so. And so the bully's like blaming on him doesn't really make much sense. But if you think about it again, how people deal with trauma, people blame the wrong people all the time. And so he does start out bullying, Shenji, and it's adding to just his problems. But then very quickly, they wind up in a situation where they wind up like seeing what he's going through both from outside and then literally from inside the cockpit with him and more one than the other. But they both start to have a lot of empathy for him in a way that we haven't seen for most of the adults. And again, I think the like children, young people, good adults, bad is kind of a trope in a lot of these things. But here it just feels so much more developed. And it really felt like the having both of these groups so mean to him and one of them shifting and the other not feels very intentional in a way I really like. Yeah. The character you're talking about is Torji Suzuhara. We'll say he starts off bullying Shenji, but they become friends. And the way that that develops and where Suzuhara's story ends up for, I don't even, not even like a top five character on the show, like probably in the top ten barely. That is amazing to me that you could take such a minor character and develop them so fully and give them, I don't know if I want to use the word satisfying. But a good character arc in such a, again, like such a short runtime. Like you said, these were 30 minute episodes on TV. So with commercials, you know, like 25 or something, 26 episodes of that. Yeah. Like barely, barely over 10 hours of television, the things they do are just phenomenal. And I'm blown away by it. I know like we've had our talks about Star Wars TV shows and Marvel and like what are they doing with their runtime? And this show just like does everything in its runtime and still has like a cool Mecha battle, but it's how they tell the story within the battles, right? The battles themselves are also part of the story, not because the angel, each angel is different and it requires them to figure out how to defeat it. And often that reveals something about the characters themselves and how they win that fight or sometimes fail to win and it takes like some other pilot coming in to help them or whatever. Like it's the way that they psychologically use the battles is probably one of the one of the top three things about this. Yeah. So we're going to start wrapping up, so I just want to say one last thing and then make a couple of announcements that are important for listeners. The one last thing, we're always going to give you a number more episodes on this because it raises so many interesting questions. Oh my God. Like I didn't even talk about half the stuff because I was like, wow, that's a little bit spoilery. Oh, yeah. But just that whole, we literally only a month ago did an episode about should people get to say no when Destiny calls. That was kind of exactly what so much this episode's about. I also will say if music is important to you, the opening song of the credits goes real hard. Oh, yeah. I'd never skip it. And in the very kind of classic anime way that for you, this may be different because you're going to understand the lyrics. For me, this song, like some of the other anime opening music, there's a very sort of discordant aspect to it because the song sounds really poppy. It's very like happy and poppy and like, you know, let's all gather together and hold hands and care bear stare and we're going to win this fight. And then as you're reading the lyrics, it's like a cruel angel has decided that you have to face death and all like it's very dark. I believe the translation for the title of the song, it's cruel angel's thesis, right? Yeah. And it is every part as much of the story as anything else like that's again, like they pack everything in like the song itself, the flashes during the opening credits are also like telling telling part of the story to you. And just like every piece of real estate that they use is not wasted. Yeah. Very much agreed. Very much agreed. Um, last thing I would just, so we're obviously going to do a number of more episodes on this. We're also going to bonus content from members, uh, specifically on we're going to talk a little bit more about what Mecca is, just the whole like Mecca genre and stuff like that. Cause one that I have very limited experience of Ricky talks I'm about and I want to go a little deeper into, but I want to, and I'll give you the normal membership pitch in a moment, $5, $5, $5 a year, you can find it all on the website. But I do also want to let people know, um, uh, and actually Ricky, I realize I had not told you either this podcast is going to go into a hiatus during September. Uh, we're going to take a couple of weeks off in part because I'm traveling a lot in part because we want to spend a little bit more time kind of planning some things out. Um, being able to do more of the research that we've been talking about doing, wanting to have a little bit more of a plan about how we are advertising and how we are letting other people know about these podcasts and helping get more people into the conversation. I want to be a lot more intentional about feedback. Uh, we're doing it sometimes, but it keeps, I'm not getting to it as fast as I want to. And as often as I want to, I want to improve that. So you'll still get episodes during September that are going to be, um, older episodes, rebroadcast and things like that. Uh, so you can hear all those kinds of things, but, uh, it won't be new episodes for a couple of weeks, but don't worry. New episodes will be coming soon starting in October. So just want to let people know that. And again, you can become a member and you can send us feedback. We love feedback. We want to hear it. We want to discuss it. Uh, all that you can find on the website, the ethical painter.com or in the show notes. So please think about becoming a member for our members. Thank you so much. I'll see you in a second. And on behalf of myself and Ricky, we have spoken. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]
