[EVA] The EoE Situation

[RJN]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl Gustav Horn" <once at ix.netcom.com>
To: "RJN" <rjn at beeb.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 6:58 PM
Subject: Re: [EVA] The EoE Situation


: >
: > @Ritsuko's death was hardly romantic. She tried to kill everyone
: > including herself, & was rightfully shot by Gendou as the owner of
a
: > maddened dog might shoot his pet (which act reinforces my belief
he
: > killed Kaji, dispose of liabilities who have outlived their
: > usefulness).
:
:
: If Ritsuko is a dog, I don't think her owner had taken the best care
: of her over the years, if you get my drift. I meant romantic
: partially in the sense of love, but also in the sense of staging. It
: could have been the final falling out between two old friends in a
: Hong Kong gangster movie.#

@Ritsuko, more naive than her mother, I believe thought Gendou loved
her more than lip service.  Gendou was friendly towards her, though
not as close as to Fuyutuski.  Reality started biting when Gendou
chose Ritsuko to be interrogated by SEELE, & then Ritsuko brooded
etc...

Now if Misato had survived the elevator long enough, had gone to find
Rei...seen the stand-off & shot *her* old friend Ritsuko before Gendou
did, THAT would have been grand high drama staging, & the EoE
equivalent of their verbal head-butting in 25.  Would Gendou then have
shot Misato to clear the area? In assumed or actual self-defence? That
would be an intriguing & Tomino-like staging (thinking of Ideon, MSG
or ZG)  Perhaps Sadamoto..as Mistao's movie exit is great voice acting
but would be less dramatic, & less poignant to the more stoical Manga
Shinji.
:
: As an alternative way those scenes could have been done, it's quite
: possible to imagine Misato failing to save Shinji from the JSSDF
: (were we ever informed before that she was some kind of elite
: commando? The only thing she'd ever done with that gun is point it
at
: people's backs), and being shot down in the middle of her charge, or
: the soldiers stumbling upon Ritsuko in the hallway and
machinegunning
: her like the other staff.

We don't know much about Misato's training.  But you can assume that a
combat & firearms savvy leader would be chosen as DoFO for NERV, not a
staff officer, but field commander for its para-military infantry.  In
Der Mond, Sadamoto has some pictures of Misato in combat camouflauge
uniform with a machine gun. And every Japanese schoolgirl knows enough
martial arts to launch a successful attack at undesireable males ;)
Combine that with Misato's bottled-up anger & you have a tigress!
:
: But  taking a step back, you can see that main characters get to die
main
: character deaths, whereas nameless characters die without last words
: or gestures of defiance. But everyone (as Gainax said in their first
: great film) is a main character to themselves. In real life, death
: often doesn't seem to care how important a person you are in the way
: it strikes you down.

To die well/notably is as important as to live well? Lt Worf would
agree :)
Memories of a person are more important than their remains...
:
: So as shocking were the elements of realism (and surrealism) in EoE,
: it could have been more shocking still if that same realism had been
: applied to Ritsuko and Misato. I'm not saying Anno was wrong not to
: do the scene that way, but to say that the way he made the film as a
: whole makes you aware of those choices. It's still one of the
: greatest anime films ever, as bold a statement of its own as
anything
: Miyazaki or Oshii have made.
:
: --C.

Do you think, if Misato & Ritsuko had both survived to the "Tumbling
Down" LCL stage, their deaths would have been more ignominious &
predictable?  Misato would have met "Kaji",  Ritsuko - her mother
probably.  Poor Hyuga would only have seen Rei, & Maya might have
rushed to Aoba. Kind of Mai-Hime, with jelly, & no happy ending?  :P

Misato's death in EoE almost seems unappreciated, but Shinji clinging
to her cross & its appearance on the beach, makes me think her memory
& message were not really forgotten after all (IIRC Misato was given
the cross by her father just before being placed in the 2I escape
capsule, so Shinji is like the 2nd generation down from Gendou & the
Doctor, thereby inheriting their legacy..)

Ritsuko's death in EoE, was remarkable for her seeing Rei-Lilith *&
realising what she saw* at the second of death.  Sort of a final
goodbye gift.
RJN
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