[EVA] "Breaking Binaries: Transgressing Sexualities in Japanese Animation" (Gibbs 2012)

[Gwern Branwen]

"Breaking Binaries: Transgressing Sexualities in Japanese Animation"
http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/6746/thesis.pdf?sequence=3
2012 (PhD thesis)

by Christy Gibbs; Twitter: http://twitter.com/crsg_tweets *

The relevant part of the thesis is "Chapter Three: The Beast That
Shouted 'Love' At the Heart of the  World – Sex and Dysfunction in
_Evangelion_".

Relevant quotes:

> Anime in Japan is not and has often never intended to be photorealistic, and is thus a representation of something deeper than simply everything it depicts. In some cases, this is a physical representation – a hair colour that does not state anything explicitly, but which says something implicit about a character’s persona. An audience who knows little, or nothing, of anime codes and conventions unconsciously understands that Ayanami’s icy blue hair in _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ signifies her outward coldness and social withdrawal, as well as her distinct physical ‘otherness.’ In other cases, it is something non-physical – a piece of background music that evokes a specific feeling such as tension or sadness, as in some of the compositions in _Le Portrait de Petit Cossette_ and _Angel Beats!_ respectively.

> However, male anime characters are not the only ones to sometimes be oversexualised. Although there is less to be confused about in terms of appearance for teenage and older female characters, who are usually drawn with obvious enough breasts that there is at least no misunderstandings in terms of gender, their behaviour may not be so clear-cut. Wakaba is constantly declaring her undying love for her best friend Utena in _Revolutionary Girl Utena_, while Utena comes to the conclusion that she loves Anthy, albeit only, as she herself points out, in a ‘pure’ sense.45 _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ depicts two characters, Misato and Asuka, bathing nude together while intermittently squealing things like, ‘Don’t touch that part... no, don’t touch there, it’s ticklish!’46 It is not particularly uncommon for female characters of all ages to sleep in the same bed, often with one character’s arm around the body of the other’s. Neither is it uncommon for female anime characters to platonically, or even suggestively, touch one another, either at home or in a public setting.

> Section Two of the thesis is about the boundaries between mind and body. Chapter Three, focusing on _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ (1995) as the primary text, is the element of mind, although, as is explored through Freudian theory (by which director Anno Hideaki was most certainly influenced), what affects the mind cannot help but affect the body – particularly because in the case of Evangelion, the robots that are being piloted are physically manipulated by each pilot’s physiological state. ...Although there have been several anime that are concerned with psychological issues among its characters, _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ is one of the only titles to so closely connect psychology and sexuality. In doing so, it has pushed the boundaries of anime and sexuality to a point that has earned it a particular infamy, especially with regard to psychological dysfunction. In ‘The Beast That Shouted 'Love' At the Heart of the World: Sex and Dysfunction in Evangelion’, I examine how the title has achieved its reputation, and what impact that the mindset of the main characters has on their physical behaviour and the world around them.

Chapter three starts on page 87. Gibbs cites the EGF wiki for one
part, which is good. I won't pass opinion on any of her claims about
Freudianism; this list already knows my opinion about the shallowness
of the "so pervasive" theories or allusions. Some of the bad is her
out of universe material:

> Following the success of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990), Anno fell into a four-year depression, reportedly due to a lack of creative control with the series.4 [4: 'Hideaki Anno – Anime Vice’ (http://www.animevice.com/hideaki-anno/20-14737/), accessed 06 March 2010.]

Anime Vice of course cites nothing further to justify this claim.
Offhand, I'd say _The Notenki Memoirs_ gives pretty compelling
evidence that lack of creative control wasn't the problem so much as
the failed production, chaos, outsourcing, and financial burdens. In a
thesis, one expects better sourcing...

Much worse, however, is that Gibbs repeats uncritically the old rumor
about psychotherapy!

> Much of the series is based upon Anno’s own experiences while undergoing psychotherapy, particularly in relation to psychoanalytic theory, and a general sense of the exploration of psychoanalysis pervades the title as a whole.6 [‘Nighteye – Blog Archive – Neon Genesis Evangelion’ (http://blog.juno3.com/2006/05/06/neon-genesis-evangelion/), accessed 07 March 2010.]

This is even worse sourcing than Anime Vice. A random blogger? He
doesn't provide even a whisper of evidence for the psychotherapy claim
- which he can't do, because in all the years I've been tracking down
information, I have never seen anyone provide real evidence for this
claim or so much as a primary source. It's a pity that Gibbs is
spreading this misinformation even further.

She cites bloggers further - "‘Background – Evangelion Eclipse’
(http://afufu.net/freewill/2008/03/background/), accessed 06 March
2010." is cited twice. That link is dead, incidentally, as is the
_Mainichi Times_ link she gives (I remember the MT article very well
since that was very frustrating for me; I never expected the link to
go dead and so made no archive copy, and it was months before anyone
could post a full copy on EGF.)

The afufu.net link is doubly frustrating because it turns out, when
you dig it out of the Internet Archive, to be an uncredited copy of
the Wikipedia article on NGE, and in particular, the parts I wrote
about the relation to _Aoki Uru_ and on the early development (fruits
of digging into materials like _The Notenki Memoirs_ and the
Evangelion Proposal)! A later citation to
'http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Rei_Ayanami' is questionable
for the same reason.

But continuing on. Her schematic mapping of Asuka/Shinji/Rei to
Id/Ego/Superego makes only partial sense to me, personally - Rei
simply doesn't fit in the Freudian framework that way. She's
associated, in dialogue, personal motivation, and the music with
instead Thanatos, the death drive.

(One nifty part is that Gibbs picked up on how _Kimochi warui_ was
used both in the earlier bathroom scene and _EoE_; she quotes it only
in English, though, which makes me wonder: is she making the extremely
dangerous and sloppy assumption that just because it was translated as
"how disgusting" in both scenes it must be the same underlying
Japanese? I don't think so: as a teacher in Japan, presumably she has
some Japanese skills.)

The discussion of Kaworu seems crippled by unfamiliarity with the
_June_ drafts of episode 24. It's hard to argue that

> Whether or not Kaworu has any concept of human sexuality is uncertain, and the possible homosexual undertones of his interaction with Shinji have been a persistent topic of debate among the series audience since its original release. 60 However, it seems likely that, due to the nature of the series, homosexuality does not become an issue here simply because any form of sexuality displayed by the main characters almost automatically becomes an inherently dysfunctional form of love – whereas Shinji’s relationship with Kaworu, as instinctive and non-threatening to Shinji as it is, may be seen to border on the spiritual.

When the drafts were far less uncertain or 'possible', and the
editorial suppression likely due to concerns about stirring further
controversy.

Overall, the chapter is fairly reasonable for an academic work,
hitting the major plot points one would expect for each character; its
sins are mostly those of very bad out-of-universe facts & sourcing,
and an overvaluation of how much a theoretical perspective brings.

* I was actually unsure whether I had found the right Christy Gibbs
with that Twitter account - an anime thesis by a woman *and* an
English teacher working in rural Japan *and* a JET teacher doing a
thesis on the side *and* an anime blogger *and* a blond blue-eyed
model? I assumed someone's wires had gotten crossed or people were
being conflated or pictures were being plagiarized or something, but
after more googling and perusal of image sets, no, that's apparently
that case!

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net/otaku