[EVA] A passage I saw in an EVA book

[Patrick Yip]

     It is PY at TOKYO again. The second strike :-)
     
     Of the EVA books I bought recently, there is one named "Evangelion
     as the Immaculate Virgin", which strives to comment on the female
     aspects in the EVA anime. There is one passage which, surprisingly,
     was written in English. It didn't list out who the author is, 
     presumably it would be the author of all the other Japanese text. 
     The content shows that the author is quite an intellectual and
     learned person. I would reproduce the whole text here as some food
     for thought to everybody. And I ask for the forgiveness of the
     original author (whoever he/she is) of this act of unconsented 
     reproduction. 
     
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     Hideaki Anno and Gainax's animation "Neon Genesis: Evangelion" was 
     broadcast every Wednesday over Tokyo's Channel 12 for 26 weeks, from 
     October 4, 1995 through March 7, 1996. Once it got started, this film 
     attracted a number of fans with its detailed characterization and 
     mysterious storytelling, easily excelling in popularity the 70s 
     Japanimation classics like "the Space Battleship Yamato" and "Mobile 
     Suit Gundam". Now Evangelion has become one of the most conspicuous 
     Japanese social phenomena.
     
     Why did it get so popular?
     
     Of course, the execution of the work largely relies upon the director 
     Anno's creative approach to narratology. Basically all he died is 
     repeat and displace and remix certain patterns of human relationship 
     and plot structure, winding up with an undulating effect. Note that in 
     this text repetition does not take place linearly. The patterns of 
     human relationship and plot structure transform themselves through 
     different viewpoints and interpretations, orchestrating the integrated 
     circuit of contradictions, leading the audience to envision a 
     magnificiently phantasmagoric world. Cunningly juxtaposing infomaniac 
     details and interpretative blanks, Anno succeeds in accelerating the 
     narratological drive, making his animation mostly comparable with 
     hypertext.
     
     The story centers around the way the giant cyborg tribe called 
     "Evangelion" fights with the alien tribe nicknamed "Shito" (Angel), 
     which literally means "Apostle". Evangelion is promoted by NERV, the 
     special service agency of the United Nations. It is notable that with 
     Mr.Gendo Ikari as the supreme commander, NERV represents a virtual 
     patriarchial family, as is the case with Japanese corporations. Mian 
     characters include fourteen year old boys and girls, who are all 
     trained to pilot Evangelion pilots. Among them Shinji Ikari, the only 
     son of the patriarch Gendo Ikari, plays the most important role. The 
     story of Evangelion foregrounds how the patriarchal NERV outwits the 
     tribe of Angels as the absolute Other. This work is not necessarily 
     didactic, however.
     
     The theme of Evangelion is the identity quest of a young man of the 
     1990s. Who am I on Earth? The author carefully caricatures our own 
     contemporary life, in which the post-80s advancement of 
     high-technology and the dismemberment of family structure still come 
     short of the deconstruction of traditional ideology. This identity 
     crisis detailed in the work finds the boundary between self and the 
     other at stake. In this context, Evangelion follows the western 
     discursive tradition, demonstrating how the advancement of technology 
     unveils contradictions within the structure of conventional ideology.
     
     To ask "Who am I?" in the western fashion is to inquire "Who is the 
     Other?" In the first half of the story, it is the tribe of Angel as 
     the absolute Other that storms the virtual family of NERV. In the 
     latter half of the story, however, Angels come to transfigure 
     themselves into the Others within, obfuscating the difference between 
     Men and Angel. Here, the post-structuralist psychoanalytical theory 
     will enable us to redefine Angel as the representation of "abjection", 
     in Julia Kristeva's terms, and the erotics of the fight between Man 
     and the Angel as the explosion of the radically feminine, that is, 
     what Alice Jardine calls "gynesis".
     
     The idea of fighting with the Other produces the ultimate terror 
     within the hero Ikari Shinji. Let me recall Barbara Creed's radical 
     rereading of Jardine's "gynesis" into David Cronenberg's film 
     "Videodrome", in which the most violent rape narrative coincides with 
     the extraordinary feminization of men. By feminizing the enemy, the 
     hero Shinji himself gets feminized quite paradoxically.
     
     What happens in the nineteenth and the twenty-first story is 
     especially remarkable. Once it becaomes exhausted n fatal crisis, the 
     Test Type of Evangelsion that Shinji has pilotted abruptly strikes 
     back at the Angel, with the organic structure hidden under the 
     armature reanimated. Moreover, suddenly on its hands and knees, the 
     Test Type approaches and devours the enemy gluttonously, transgressing 
     all the conventions of post-medivalistic chivalry. This disgusting 
     scene is followed by a much more astounding revelation. As soon as the 
     Test Type gets out of control and performs cannibalism, Shinji the 
     pilot disappears from the cockpit, melting into the very cyborgian 
     matrix of Evangelion, with all the memories of the war deleted. At 
     this critical moment, we can look through his innerspace only to find 
     the mirror stage figure of the baby Shinji floating on amniotic fluid 
     safely and happily. It is very ironical that the more phallocentric he 
     wants to become, the more feminized the hero gets. Winning the fight, 
     the hero is also incorporated into the cyborg feminist matrix of 
     Evangelion. Yes, as is clearly known from its anorexic body, 
     Evangelion turns out to be a feminist cyborg, into which Yui Ikari, 
     the mother of Shinji, had already been melted. Then, what we once 
     conceived as the Otherness of Angel, just like a fatal virus, is 
     structurally transferred to the selfness of Man, and further to the 
     identity of Evangelion==Shinji. This is why I cannot resist the 
     temptation to reinterpret Evangelion's cannibalism as another perfect 
     signifier of "abjection" and "gynesis". The dramatic leak of the 
     feminine jeopardizes and even melts the outline of the male body 
     politics.
     
     Desperately searching for the identity of Angel of the Other, the 
     virtual family of NERV is entrapped within gender panic. The identity 
     crisis of Shinji and Evangelion forces NERV itself to witness its 
     homosocial and lesbian relationships among the members. The denoument 
     of the animation, thus, convinces us that partriarchy in Japan has 
     long been one of the costumes we have perennially put on. Repressing 
     differences within, our country has naturalized and established 
     patriarchy as a cult of meta-masquerade. The near future Japan 
     described in Evangelion represents a type of a post-apocalyptic nation 
     well-recontructed in the wake of the Second Impact. Let me reconsider 
     the Second Impact as the perfect metaphor for high-tech revolution, 
     which helped overturn the good old western Christian family structure. 
     As the result of that, the author of the film decides to criticize 
     Christian Orthodoxy and exaggerate Gnostic meta-narratology. 
     Certainly, none of his purposes is made clear in the narrative. 
     Nevertheless, the supreme commander Gendo Ikari seems to attain the 
     status of the Gnostic Supremem Being, by grafting the femininity of 
     his wife Yui Ikari into the cyborg structure of Evangelion. To put it 
     another way, while a number of critics have analyzed the metafictional 
     aspect of the work, I would like to rediscover this metafictionism as 
     the Gnostic effect of the director Anno's own struggle with Christian 
     Orthodoxy.
     
     The concluding sequence of the narrative clarifies the truth of the 
     statue of Adam on the cross exhibited in the basement lounge "Central 
     Dogma" of NERV. Evangelion was born a clone of what is called "Adam". 
     But, this "Adam" proves to have been Lilith, the first wife of Adam. 
     This revelation constitutes the most intriguing climax of Evangelion. 
     For this radical reinterpretation of Lilith coincides with what 
     contemporary Angel-American writers want to do by creating a variety 
     of female saviours in the coming cyber-Millenium. With the rise of 
     high-tech revolution in the 80s, Margaret Atwood reinterpreted the 
     Virgin Mary as a surrogate mother, whereas Octavia Butler refigured 
     Lilith as a colored woman whose body is colonized by Alien 
     biotechnology. From this prespective, Evangelion seems to skillfully 
     reconstruct the figure of Eve, who was born a near-clone of Adam in 
     the Old Testament, not simply as a typle of immaculate inception, but 
     also as the impeccable signifier of Japanese simulationism in the late 
     1990s. It is in this context that Evangelion deserves the evangelical 
     name of the self-reflexive Japanimation.
     
     May 20, 1997
     
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