Don't Be

"Don't Be"
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode
Rei Ayanami (bottom) and Asuka Langley Soryu (right) in the lift scene.
Episode no.Episode 22
Directed byAkira Takamura (on-air version)
Kazuya Tsurumaki (director's cut)
Written byHideaki Anno, Hiroshi Yamaguchi
Original air dateFebruary 28, 1996 (1996-02-28)
Running time22 minutes (on-air version)
28 minutes (director's cut)
Episode chronology
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"Don't Be"[a] is the twenty-second episode of the Japanese anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion, created by Gainax. Hideaki Anno and Hiroshi Yamaguchi wrote the episode, which animator Akira Takamura directed. The series' protagonist is Shinji Ikari, a teenage boy whose father Gendo recruited him to the special military organization Nerv to pilot a gigantic, bio-mechanical mecha named Evangelion into combat with beings called Angels. During the episode, Asuka Langley Soryu, pilot of the Evangelion Unit-02, comes into conflict with Shinji and Rei Ayanami, her fellow pilot, due to defeats suffered in previous battles. An Angel called Arael appears in space, and Asuka tries to intercept him with her Eva-02 to avoid being dismissed from her role as a pilot. Arael, however, launches a mental attack on Asuka, revealing her repressed past, marked by the suicide of her mother, Kyoko.

The original scenario originally proposed by Gainax for "Don't Be" involved an aerial battle between the Evangelion and Arael; due to production restrictions, the scenario was later shelved during the making of the series. "Don't Be" explores Asuka's psyche and contains several references to psychology and psychoanalysis, especially the concepts of reaction formation, psychological regression, repression, and masculine protest. The installment also exploits experimental directorial techniques for Asuka's introspective exploration, notably using George Frideric Handel's Hallelujah chorus. Critics have compared the use of this classical music piece to the direction of Stanley Kubrick and Kihachi Okamoto's Blue Christmas.

"Don't Be" was first broadcast on February 28, 1996, and drew a 7.9% audience share on Japanese television. The episode received a positive reception from critics, who particularly praised Asuka's exploration and psychological development, although some critics were critical of the use of the Hallelujah chorus and a long freeze-frame scene in which Asuka and Rei remain silent in a lift.

Plot

The episode opens with a scene that occurred the night before the events of "Asuka Strikes!". Asuka Langley Soryu, pilot of the mecha Evangelion Unit-02, and Ryoji Kaji, a member of the special agency Nerv and Asuka's legal guardian, discuss before their imminent arrival in Japan. Asuka attempts to seduce Kaji by showing her breasts and saying she is an adult, but Kaji rejects Asuka's advances. Asuka then remembers the funeral of her mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, who died after a contact experiment with an Evangelion unit, in which she refused to cry. During the flashback, Kyoko speaks to a doll believing her to be Asuka, and her father meanwhile cheats on Kyoko with a nurse. Asuka overhears a conversation between her father and the nurse, her future stepmother, in which they describe humans as God's dolls.

Sometime later, Asuka practices at the Nerv base, achieving surprisingly low results with her Evangelion. Misato Katsuragi, Asuka's new guardian, argues that this may be due to the girl's menarche, but Ritsuko Akagi, a doctor in Nerv's science department, argues instead that the cause is rooted in Asuka's deep psychology. After the drill, Asuka attempts to call Kaji, without response, and sees Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami, her fellow pilots, arguing, feeling jealousy. In the evening, Asuka has dinner with Misato and Shinji, but all three remain silent without speaking to each other. During dinner, Asuka receives an international call from her stepmother, and at the end of the call and after a bath she feels disgusted by using the same space as Shinji and Misato. Misato and Ritsuko discuss Asuka, who feels strong animosity and a sense of inferiority toward Shinji. Asuka and Rei, meanwhile, are left alone in the elevator; Rei suggests that Asuka open her heart to Eva-02, and Asuka, furious, insults her by calling her a doll and slaps her.

The fifteenth in a series of mankind's enemies called Angels, Arael, appears in geostationary satellite orbit. Asuka, fearing to lose her Eva-02 and refusing to be assigned to cover Rei's Eva-00 tries to intercept the enemy with a Positron Rifle. Before Asuka can attack, however, Arael via a beam of light erodes the girl's psyche. Asuka thinks back to her past, in which she rejected a stuffed monkey given to her by her stepmother and her real mother suggested that she commit suicide along with her. Meanwhile, Rei attempts with her own Positron Rifle to shoot down Arael still in orbit, failing. Gendo Ikari, supreme commander of Nerv, orders the use of a weapon called the Spear of Longinus. Misato and Nerv's deputy commander Kozo Fuyutsuki try to talk Gendo out of it, but the commander refuses to stop. The Eva-00 extracts the spear from a white giant held in the deepest level of Nerv headquarters, launches the Spear into orbit, and defeats Arael. Shinji tries to console Asuka, but Asuka shouts at him saying that she hates everyone and would rather be dead.

Production

Genesis and staff

In 1993, Neon Genesis Evangelion studio Gainax released a presentation document for the series called New Century Evangelion (tentative name) Proposal (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (仮) 企画書, Shinseiki Evangelion (kari) kikakusho), containing a presentation of the series in the pipeline and the planned episodes,[1][2] which was then published in 1994.[3] In Gainax's original plans, the twenty-second episode was to be entitled "The Cat and the Transfer Student". It was supposed to feature a new boy arriving at Nerv constantly accompanied by a cat and a confrontation between Shinji and an apparently anthropomorphic Angel.[4] The original scenario changed, and the basic idea for the twenty-second episode flowed into the character of Kaworu Nagisa, then introduced in "The Beginning and the End, or "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"".[5][6] The twenty-first episode was to be titled "At least, human" in the Proposal instead. In Gainax's original plan, however, it would not have been Asuka who suffered a mental attack, but Shinji.[4] There was also to be an underwater battle near a sunken ship, and the past of Yui, Shinji's mother, was to be explored.[7][8] Asuka's stepmother in Germany was also mentioned in the scenario, an element retained until the definite version later aired. In the Proposal, Gainax also published an early sketch of the Angel Arael, with a slightly different design than the final one. He was supposed to fight in the earth's atmosphere, and not in open space, using high-frequency swords placed on the tips of his twelve luminescent wings as his main weapon. Since the Evangelions are primarily designed for terrestrial combat Arael was supposed to put them in a very difficult battle. The aerial confrontation against Arael was planned for the nineteenth episode, an idea later abandoned and never presented in the final version.[9]

Hideaki Anno, the director and main scriptwriter of the series, wrote the script for the episode[10] hand-in-hand with Hiroshi Yamaguchi,[11][12] and Kazuya Tsurumaki handled the storyboard.[13][14] Tsurumaki also handled the character design, while Yoh Yoshinari worked as the chief animator of the mecha.[15][16] Akira Takamura acted as director, Mau Hanabatake as chief animator.[17][18]

Development

At first, Hideaki Anno introduced Asuka in the eighth and ninth episode in an attempt to lighten the tone of the series after the first six heavy, moody installments. He did not really have in mind what to do with the character and went by trial and error; for him, Asuka took on a certain appearance by giving her a few catchphrases, such as "Are you stupid?" or "Chance!",[19] without having in mind the whole negative parable of the character later shown in "Don't Be".[20] According to Hiroki Azuma, a Japanese cultural critic who had the opportunity to personally interview the director, the change was the result of a precise decision made by Anno only during the airing of the series. For Azuma, during the first broadcast of Neon Genesis Evangelion on TV Tokyo Anno noticed the inner closure of animation fans, known in Japanese as otaku. He therefore decided to change course, showing, after a first half of the series that was linear and seemingly headed towards a happy ending, a second half that was much darker, violent, and introspective. Asuka's character also reflected this change; initially introduced as a comic character, she suffered heavy physical and psychological wounds in the last half of the series.[21][22] As noted by Azuma, normally in an anime comic characters like Asuka should not get hurt, so with this change of direction Anno broke with the classic pattern of mecha anime.[23] Anno himself claimed in an interview that he wanted to go against the pleasure principle of viewers, who watch Evangelion and television to see an enjoyable Asuka.[24] The narrative also gets faster and faster in this part of the series; as noted by writer Dennis Redmond, Anno "accelerates the series towards its revolutionary conclusion", as is evident in "Don't Be".[25]

A comparison between the on-air and the director's cut versions

In the scene in which Asuka and Rei find themselves in a lift together, Gainax made use of a long freeze frame lasting almost a minute,[26] during which there is hardly any movement apart from the occasional blink on Asuka's part.[27] According to academic José Andrés Santiago Iglesias, "the sequence recreates the social awkwardness of being stuck in a lift with someone you simply don't want to share the room with".[28] As noted by Iglesias, the tension between the two characters is created through "synecdoche", without explicit images; at the end of the scene, for example, Asuka slaps Rei, but the viewer never actually sees Asuka slap her companion, only the initial image of a slap and the sound. This expedient avoids drawing a scene with elaborate movements.[29] In the following scenes Asuka waits for the Angel Arael with her Eva-02 in the rain. As noted by writer Virginie Nebbia, in the same sequence Asuka is then surrounded by a divine light without drops; this expedient according to Nebbia could be inspired by the directorial style of Akio Jissoji, director of tokusatsu series Ultraman.[30]

During Asuka's subsequent mental attack, Gainax inserted distorted kanji[31] and handwritten German terms in quick succession, such as wahnsinnig, wie argerlich,[32] unsauber,[33] der verlust,[34] doppelselbstmord begehen,[35] peinlichen,[36] groll,[37] stiefmutter[38] and erhangate.[39] In an interview, Michael House, the only American member of Gainax and the company's official translator at the time, stated that he had inserted German terms using his basic knowledge of the language acquired in high school and a Japanese-German dictionary.[40] The terms also include nein[41] and tod, which according to the magazine Evangelion Chronicle indicate things lurking in Asuka's heart,[42] and menarche, a woman's first menstrual cycle.[43] According to writer Sellés De Lucas, these inscriptions in rapid succession challenge the viewer's attention span, and constitute a legacy of cinéma vérité, "which have been often considered one of Anno's inspirations for his fractured narrative".[44] It is hinted in the episode that Asuka is unable to pilot the Eva-02 as she used to because of her first menstrual experience.[45] Anno initially planned to include many more scenes about Asuka's first menstrual cycle; not feeling, as a man, capable of exploring such a purely female subject, however, he eventually condensed everything into a single scene.[46]

In the Eva-02 ejection scene, the sparkle caused by rubbing against the rails used to launch the mecha to the surface is visible. In response to possible criticism from the viewer that the Eva's Linear Rail System should not cause such vibrations, staff tried to give an extra touch of reality.[47] For the scene in which the Eva-00 launches the Spear of Longinus, on the other hand, the authors forced the realism of the action depicted, unrealistically depicting an Eva-00 launching an object into orbit, prioritizing the spectacularity of the sequence.[48] Furthermore, during the first airing of the series, Gainax suffered from time constraints due to a tight schedule, so the second half of the series suffered a significant drop in animation quality as the deadline approached. Therefore, after the end of the airing, Gainax improved the animation and produced new scenes for the last episodes with improved quality to clarify some mysteries and underexplored plot points.[49] It also presented unreleased sequences in the feature film Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth (1997).[50][51] These new animations later found their way into the home edition of the series,[52] starting with the first Laserdisc release in 1998.[53] Of "Don't Be", as of the other retouched episodes, the studio distributed two versions: the one from the first airing, called the on-air version, and the extended version, called the director's cut,[54] or home video version. In the extended version of the twenty-second episode, the staff added the opening scene of Kaji and Asuka arguing on an aircraft carrier before meeting Misato and the others in "Asuka Strikes!", the sequences in which Asuka sees Shinji and Rei on a station platform, the one in which Asuka screams in the bathroom,[55] the one in which Eva-00 extracts the Spear from Angel Lilith and grows legs,[56] and greatly extended Asuka's inner monologue during Arael's mental attack.[57][58] Tsurumaki handled the storyboards for the director's cut version, acting as animation director with Takeshi Honda and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.[17]

Voice acting and music

Yuko Miyamura at the 2017 Saboten Con.
Asuka's voice actress, Yūko Miyamura

As the closing theme song Gainax used a version of "Fly Me to the Moon" performed by singer Aya called Bossa Techno,[59] while in the director's cut version it was replaced by another version in bossa techno sauce but instrumental.[60][61] In addition to Shiro Sagisu's original score, the staff also utilized George Frideric Handel's Messiah, specifically the Hallelujah chorus in the scene where Asuka is mentally attacked by Asuka. It tells the story of Jesus Christ in three moments, and according to an official booklet on the series soundtrack its use gives the idea that God was judging Asuka's sins.[62] According to Virginie Nebbia, its use is relevant to the religious-spiritual theme of the series, which is full of references to Christianity, and suggests an analogy to a divine message too powerful for humans to learn that crushes Auka. Nebbia also noted how the same piece was used in Kihachi Okamoto's Blue Christmas.[63] Writer Dennis Redmond, on the other hand, compared the scene's fusion of classical music and violence to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.[64]

George Frideric Handel's Hallelujah chorus

Yūko Miyamura, who plays Asuka, empathized greatly with her character, and chose among other things the design of the puppet visible in the introspective sequences of "Don't Be". In fact, Miyamura chose to paint it as a small monkey,[65] an animal also visible in some of her autographs.[66] She was left to decide on the script of the telephone dialogue scene between Asuka and her stepmother; for the occasion, the voice actress began a conversation course in German so as to improve her pronunciation.[67]

In the extended version of the monologue from the director's cut edition, her mother asks Asuka who she is, and Asuka repeats five times the same sentences she expressed in the previous episodes;[68] the five Asukas are voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi, Megumi Hayashibara, Miki Nagasawa, Yuriko Yamaguchi, and Junko Iwao, the original interpreters of Misato, Rei, Maya Ibuki, Ritsuko, and Hikari Horaki.[69] As noted by academic Ida Kirkegaard, Shinji's voice actress Megumi Ogata is noticeably absent among these alternate Asukas, suggesting that it is the characters, not the actresses, who are taking over Asuka's identity in this sequence. For Kirkegaard, the sequence also has "a sense of wrongness" and unease that reinforces the narrative events.[70] The replacement of Asuka's voice with that of another actress highlights the artificiality of her identity as a character, and serves to call into question Asuka's personal identity.[71] For Kirkegaard, the scene could be misinterpreted as an attempt to demonstrate to otaku the fictional nature of the characters and the world of Neon Genesis Evangelion; according to the writer, however, "the viewer is asked to further empathize with Asuka as her reality is unraveled".[72]

Cultural references

In the scene in which Evangelion units are under repair, scientific terms such as apoptosis,[73] mitosis,[74] necrosis,[75] receptor,[76] and morphogenesis are mentioned. Yahata Shoten's Evangelion Glossary (エヴァンゲリオン用語事典, Evangerion Yougo Jiten) book linked the latter term to the real morphogenetic fields and Rupert Sheldrake's concept of morphic fields, according to which there are energy fields located in and around systems that organise the system itself and have a collective memory.[77] During Arael's take, positrons are also mentioned[78][79] in reference to Eva-00's Positron Sniper Rifle[80][81] and the concept of visible spectrum.[82][83] In the same scene, Gendo utters the phrase "The hands of the clock cannot turn back", a reference to an earlier work by Gainax and Hideaki Anno, Gunbuster.[84] Anno also used the Hallelujah chorus in the same series.[85] Eva-00 then extracts the Spear of Longinus from Lilith; its name is a reference to the Christian relic of the same name.[86][87] The official filmbooks of the series noted how the shape of the spear resembles DNA.[88] According to scholar Fabio Bartoli, Lilith is also depicted in the guise of the Golem.[89] During the Eva-00's descent into the deepest level of Nerv headquartes, the Nerv mentions a section of structures named Malebolge; their name is a reference to the eponymous circles of Hell presented in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.[90][91] When Eva-00 sends the Lance into orbit, the concept of escape velocity is also mentioned.[92][93]

In the opening scene of the director's cut version of "Don't Be" a drink called Isoroku is framed, a tribute to Isoroku Yamamoto.[94] During the episode, Shinji wears a shirt with the inscription XTC, in homage to the British band of the same name.[95][96] Virginie Nebbia compared Arael to Perolynga, an antagonist from Ultraman,[97] and Kyoko to Kushana's mother from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, who also speaks to a doll believing it to be her daughter.[98] Arael's mental attack, on the other hand, according to Nebbia would resemble Solaris, the animated ocean protagonist of Stanisław Lem's novel of the same name.[99] In the course of the episode, it is revealed that the cause of Kyoko's madness is a psychological collapse that occurred as a result of mental contamination;[100] Yahata Shoten's Evangelion Glossary has linked this term to mental contagion, a real-life expression that indicates the passing of one patient's symptoms to another by suggestion.[101]

Several psychological terms appear during Arael's attack, such as primary identification, dependency,[94] manifestation,[102] shadow,[103] suppression, masculine protest,[104] and attachment behavior.[105][106] In Asuka's inner monologue, the English title of the episode, "Don't Be", among others, is visible. According to the official filmbooks of the series, these are words that no Western parent would say to their children.[107] The Yahata Shoten Glossary noted how the concept of attachment, in particular, was studied by psychologist John Bowlby. Asuka rejects the doll given to her by her stepmother, she gets rid of her childish behavior and tries to become an adult; her attachment behavior consists of trying to gain the approval of others. Furthermore, as in the concept of imprinting studied by Konrad Lorenz, Rei rarely shows emotions towards anyone other than Gendo, her main attachment figure.[108] As noted by the Evangelion Chronicle encyclopedia, Asuka performs reaction formation, another term present in the monologue, a defence mechanism consisting of replacing a feeling with its opposite; as a child who wants her mother's love and cries, Asuka later represses this desire by displaying an adult attitude.[109][110] Her memories related to her past and her mother are repressed and removed from her consciousness during this phase.[111] Asuka also manifests a masculine protest, an aggressive and stereotypically masculine form of attitude found in some women who are tired of the traditional feminine social role, showing competition towards their male peers.[112][113]

Themes and anaylsis

"Don’t Be" focuses on the psyche of Asuka Langley Soryu, sketching her deep psychology and revealing her traumatic past.[114][115] Comic Book Resources described the episode as an "animated nightmare" and "one of Evangelion's most disturbing installments".[116] According to writer Virginie Nebbia, Asuka, like the other protagonists of the series, hides her inner self for fear of being hurt, as in Arthur Schopenhauer's porcupine's dilemma.[117] At the beginning of the episode, Asuka is in a state of severe psychological crisis after the defeat she suffered against Zeruel in "Introjection", feeling herself surpassed by Shinji.[118] As noted by Evangelion Chronicle, an official magazine about the series, in the scene where Shinji, Misato and Asuka are having dinner after a long time there is a very heavy atmosphere due to the silence and soft music in the background. Misato pretends to drink during dinner, never showing his mouth. This detail is due to a precise directorial choice by the series staff, who wanted to emphasise Misato's lack of courage in talking to Asuka about the death of Kaji, his guardian who died in the previous episode.[119] In the lift scene, on the other hand, Rei tells Asuka that without opening their souls, the Evangelions do not move,[120] a dialogue that according to Evangelion Chronicle condenses the theme of the entire episode.[121]

According to academic Antony Chun-man Tam, in "Don't Be" it is revealed that Asuka "only wants to catch her psychopathic mother's attention".[122] The episode's narrative does not clarify the details of Kyoko's past, but it becomes clear how she put herself forward for an experiment to contact an Evangelion unit and how her soul, or at least part of it, remained in Eva, leaving her mentally unstable.[123] Kyoko's insane behavior and subsequent suicide led Mariana Ortega of Mechademia magazine to describe her as a "vampiric" mother, just like Ritsuko's mother Naoko, who committed suicide in the previous episode.[124] Writer Gilles Poitras compared the suicide of Kyoko, who before killing herself proposes to Asuka that they kill themselves together, to the shinjū, a ritual of double suicide in Japanese culture.[125] In the sequence in which Asuka is alone in the bathroom and presses her belly because of her first menstrual period she uses the expression "Kimochi warui" (気持ち悪い), which can be translated as "How disgusting", or "I feel sick". According to the website Anime Nation, with this phrase she shows a refusal to share her existence with Misato and Shinji, and Asuka later uses the same expression at the end of the movie The End of Evangelion (1997), where she seems disgusted by the existence of another human being, Shinji.[126]

For Dennis Redmond, "Don't Be" is permeated by doll symbolism, as in a theological discussion between Asuka's father and stepmother in which they describe men as God's dolls, in the case of Ritsuko's cat-shaped figurines, or in the lift scene between Asuka and Rei in which Rei says she is not a doll.[64] Japanese writer Taro Igarashi, on the other hand, has noted how Neon Genesis Evangelion constantly repeats the theme of copies and cloning; in "Don't Be", for example, Eva-02 replaces Kyoko, who replaces her daughter with a doll, only to be replaced in the role of mother by Asuka's stepmother. Misato can also be considered a substitute mother figure for Asuka and Shinji; Ritsuko in the same episode in fact points out how they wanted to "play" by pretending to be a family, failing.[127] Misato replies by saying that she does not intend to accept such a joke from someone like Ritsuko who deceives her loneliness with cats, and then apologises and says she cannot afford such a response. According to the Japanese writer Hiroshi Daimon, Misato's response is an example of how Neon Genesis Evangelion characters show traits that can be associated with borderline personality disorder; although Misato taken on her own cannot be defined as strictly borderline, the world of Evangelion itself takes on the colours of borderline disorder.[128]

Arael and Asuka in fetal position. Evangelion Chronicle magazine linked Asuka's pose to a phenomenon of psychological regression

According to Dennis Redmond, another theme of "Don't Be" is feminism.[129] Asuka in the episode rebels against the sexism of society and being treated like a doll, and saving Asuka is her rival, Rei, who while saving her grits her teeth, "exhibiting the first moment of genuine rage we have ever seen".[130] For Redmond, the moment constitutes a "savage denunciation of the unutterably vile sexism permeating so many anime series".[130] During Arael's attack, graphics called psychographs are framed, showing the psychological state of the pilot.[131] As noted by Japanese critic Akio Nagatomi, faces are visible in Asuka's psychographs[85]. According to Fabio Bartoli, the attack scene, in which Asuka begs Arael not to penetrate her, has physical as well as psychological connotations.[132] At the end of her mental rape, Asuka describes herself as contaminated, and curls up in a fetal pose, as if in a phenomenon of psychological regression. In the final scene of the episode, Shinji tries to console her, and Asuka is shown surrounded by a ribbon that says "Keep out", reflecting the girl's psychological state. According to Evangelion Chronicle, the presence of the ribbon also reflects Shinji's cowardice, who proves incapable of crossing that line.[133]

According to Virginie Nebbia, Arael's attack shows how Angels are increasingly curious about human beings and their feelings, although it is not clear whether they act out of pure instinct or premeditatedly. Arael's psychological contact technique is then carried on by the next two Angels, Armisael and Tabris.[134] In the episode it is also learned how the Spear of Longinus is an essential element for Seele to realise the Human Instrumentality Project, a plan to artificially evolve humanity and unite it into a single divine being. For Redmond, the loss of a monopoly on the Spear constitutes "Seele's ultimate nightmare scenario".[135] Seele is furious with Gendo after he uses the Spear against Arael, and it becomes clear how Gendo has his own version of Instrumentality in mind.[136] When Rei descends with the Eva-00 use towards a giant locked up in the deepest section of Nerv, believed to be the first Angel Adam, Misato protests that doing so may set off the Third Impact, but the order cannot be overruled and Misato is left feeling that everything she has learned is false.[137] After the loss of the Spear, Seele changes its plans and in The End of Evangelion uses the Eva-01 instead to realise Instrumentality.[138] Fabio Bartoli also linked the scene in which the Spear heads towards the Moon to "Fly Me to the Moon", the series' closing theme song.[139]

Reception

"Don't Be" was first broadcast on February 28, 1996, and drew a 7.9% audience share on Japanese television.[140] In July 2020, Comic Book Resources reported an 8.5/10 rating for the installment on IMDb, making it eighth among the highest-rated Evangelion episodes.[141] Merchandise based on the episode, including a line of official tee-shirts,[142][143] has been released.[144][145]

Digitally Obsessed's Joel Cunningham gave "Don't Be" a positive review, describing as an "example of the unconventional goals of the series".[146] Film School Rejects' Max Covill also gave a positive review, writing: "Emotions weigh heavy during this episode, as it acts as the series’ closure for Asuka, one of the series' best characters".[147] Akio Nagatomi of The Anime Café described as a "decent" episode and praised the use of high-speed cuts during Asuka's mindrape, but criticized Anno's of the Hallellujah chorus, Rei and Asuka elevator scene and Miyamura's performance.[85] Kenneth Lee of Anime News Network similarly criticized the lift scene and described Anno's use of Hallellujah chorus as "one of the worst choices of music ever": "Not only is this sacrilegious, but even from an atheist's point-of-view, this would seem completely incongruous and out of place".[148] Academic José Andrés Santiago Iglesias, on the other hand, described the lift scene as one of the "examples of masterful uses of stillness" in the series.[149] Comic Book Resources' Ajay Aravind listed it as one of the scenes that changed Japanese animation, since it's "fascinating, because it starkly contrasts the dramatic beauty of the show's animation".[150]

Japanese writer Shoko Fukuya reported that the extended inner monologue of Asuka in Death and Rebirth caused negative reaction from some viewers due to the loop scene of Asuka repeating the same lines.[151] Furthermore, Comic Book Resources' Andrew Tefft took a negative view of Asuka's behavior for slapping Rei during the lift scene.[152] GameRant mentioned Arael's attack and Asuka's mindrape among the Evangelion most disturbing events.[153] Screen Rant similarly described it as "one of the most traumatic" battles in the series.[154] Comic Book Resources ranked among the best fights and most disturbing moments in the show.[155][156] According to Fangoria: "It's a harrowing example of pure psychological terror".[157] Anime News Network's James Beckett similarly lauded it, saying: "When Asuka's mind and soul were invaded by Arael in Episode 22, 'Don't Be', I learned the ways that you could use form and technique to not just tell a story, but to break it, and in so doing allow your audience to connect with your characters on an even deeper level".[158] Looper described Asuka's character development as one "of the strongest on the show".[159] IGN critic Ramsey Isler also praised Asuka's characterization and past, ranking her as the thirteenth greatest anime character of all time and saying: "She's a tragic character, and a complete train wreck, but that is what makes her so compelling because we just can't help but watch this beautiful disaster unfold."[160]

A parody of the lift scene between Asuka and Rei is presented in Sword Art Online.[161] In 2015, Japanese actress Natsuki Kato dressed as Misato Katsuragi during an official announcement by the Hakuto team of a space mission to send a miniature replica of Longinus' spear to the Moon, taking inspiration from the scene in which Eva-00 lanches it in "Don't Be".[162][163] According to Anime News Network's James Beckett, a scene from the fifth episode of Blue Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati Saga, in which Izumo Kamiki's dreamlike confrontation with her mother is framed could be inspired by Asuka's inner monologue in "Don't Be", particularly for a shot of young Izumo running towards the camera against a red backdrop that closes the episode.[164]

References

  1. ^ Japanese: せめて、人間らしく, Hepburn: Semete, ningen rashiku, lit. 'Staying Human'

Citations

  1. ^ Evangelion Chronicle (in Japanese). Vol. 1. Sony Magazines. p. 26.
  2. ^ Nebbia (2023), Chap 2: La Proposition
  3. ^ Nebbia (2023), Chap. 1: Lancament du Project Eva
  4. ^ a b Evangelion Chronicle (in Japanese). Vol. 19. Sony Magazines. pp. 25–26.
  5. ^ Nebbia (2023), Chap 1: Tenir bon jusqu'à la fin
  6. ^ "庵野秀明 - Part I". 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン残酷な天使のように (in Japanese). Magazine Magazine. 1997. ISBN 4-906011-25-X.
  7. ^ Gainax (1998). Neon Genesis Evangelion Newtype 100% Collection (in Japanese). Kadokawa Shoten. p. 88. ISBN 4-04-852700-2.
  8. ^ Neon Genesis Evangelion Theatralical VHS Box Booklet (in Japanese). King Amusement Creative. 1997.
  9. ^ Evangelion Chronicle (in Japanese). Vol. 23. Sony Magazines. pp. 9–10.
  10. ^ 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン 原画集 Groundwork of Evangelion (PDF) (in Japanese). Vol. 3. Ground Works. 2020. p. 314. Retrieved 4 November 2024.
  11. ^ Evangelion Chronicle (in Japanese). Vol. 27. Sony Magazines. p. 26.
  12. ^ Neon Genesis Evangelion: Platinum Edition Booklet. Vol. 6. ADV.
  13. ^ Evangelion Chronicle (in Japanese). Vol. 48. Sony Magazines. p. 11.
  14. ^ Gainax (1998). Neon Genesis Evangelion Newtype 100% Collection (in Japanese). Kadokawa Shoten. p. 178. ISBN 4-04-852700-2.
  15. ^ Poggio 2008, p. 80.
  16. ^ Porori 2010, p. 70.
  17. ^ a b "Staff". Neon Genesis Evangelion Blue Ray Ultimate Edition Encyclopedia. 2021.
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