I’ve always loved Neon Genesis Evangelion’s inventive and gleefully melodramatic episode titles, and none more so than the iconic “Unfamiliar Ceiling/THE BEAST.” Like so many of Eva’s narrative devices, the concept of an unfamiliar ceiling has become an anime trope unto itself, but here in its original incarnation, that title card feels like the essence of Eva in miniature. The first half’s title embodies Evangelion’s careful capturing of specific and alienating lived moments; the second half is the roar of violence lurking just beneath those moments’ surface. Eva doesn’t do pre-OP cold opens – it introduces its new drama directly, and its punctuation for that drama comes in the form of thunderous title drops. So much of Evangelion’s dramatic strength is a result of its utter confidence in its own tone, and these striking white-on-black mini-poems contribute greatly to that sense of solemnity and impact.

But before we can actually get to that title drop, we’ve got a fight to win. Evangelion’s second episode opens with a beautiful portrait of our two titans, the symmetry of that shot creating a natural match cut jump to the Evangelion itself. But while the framing of this battle might be beautiful, its actual mechanics are clumsy and terrifying. Ritsuko’s directions to Shinji direct our focus as well, as she tells him to “just concentrate on walking right now.” As in the first episode, by paring the concept of piloting a giant robot down to its barest, most mechanical fundamentals, Evangelion is able to seize on an inherent terror in what this genre asks of us.

As Shinji takes one vast, shuddering step forward, the terrifying absurdity of this situation is emphasized in full. How can we really compel such mammoth machines to move? How could we possibly learn to control them? What would it feel like, in an immediate sense, to know your shaking hands are directing thousands of tons of weaponry, and when you make a mistake, all those tons come crashing down with you inside them? As glass shatters and the Eva tumbles to the ground, Evangelion succeeds in making Shinji’s piloting experience as immediate and unvarnished as possible, stripping away the escapist fantasy of “express your true power through the robot!” and leaving us with a little boy steering a plodding, impossibly large, incredibly dangerous machine.

The overarching tone of this segment isn’t uplifting, or even just exciting – it’s horrifying. The city is as imposing as it is beautiful, holding its secrets in deep blues accented by ominous red lights. The monster Shinji is facing is an impossible demon, a creature whose inhuman menace seems like some cruel symbol of Shinji’s personal isolation. The bridge team scream advice at Shinji, but he can’t possibly learn how to control this creature, and so they essentially just serve as the panicked voices in his head. As the creature raises Unit 01 up and that relentless pounding begins, any excitement at the prospect of this battle is battered away, ending on Misato’s voice waking Shinji from a living nightmare.

After that, our focus splits to follow three separate parties through that unfinished fight’s aftermath – Shinji himself, Misato and Ritsuko, and Gendo Ikari. Gendo’s story is the simplest of the three, as his sequence mostly just introduces SEELE, the mysterious pan-global organization that’s apparently funding NERV. Though Evangelion is often described as a narratively loose production, it’s worth noting that basically all the key parties and motives have either been directly articulated or alluded to by this point, right at the beginning of the second episode. Evangelion’s actual nitty-gritty worldbuilding is given an intentionally vague skew, but the dramatic fundamentals are sturdy from start to finish. Evangelion was never intended to reward “but how does it all work” questions, but that’s not the same thing as being carelessly written.

As for Misato and Ritsuko, their conversations carry us through the ground-floor response to the battle, as technicians and construction workers rush to move debris and rebuild what’s left of Tokyo-3. Just like in the first episode, Misato and Ritsuko’s acceptance of the normalcy of this situation is infectious; hearing lines like “at least our PR people are thrilled. Now they finally have something do do” makes NERV seem as mundane as any other government organization. Their idle words contrast vividly against the actual substance of their activities, as shots of the Evangelion machinery incorporated into the overall city architecture emphasize the truly overwhelming scale of this conflict. We see laundry hanging in the foreground overshadowed by weapon racks ten stories tall, and a rack feeding bullets half as big as Misato’s car. Gendo’s compatriots may have already told us NERV’s budget could bankrupt a country, but that’s much easier to understand when you’re staring at a rifle big enough to literally blot out the sun.

While both Gendo and Misato’s material focuses on the tangible consequences of 01’s fight, Shinji’s segments are a simultaneously beautiful and oppressive tone piece. Shinji’s “I don’t recognize this ceiling” swiftly becomes an emotionally felt understatement, as his sense of displacement in this place is made viscerally clear through this sequence’s oversized sets, disorienting angles, perpetually saturated lighting, and too-close compositions. Shinji’s feelings are utterly parsable without words, and the show is wise enough to avoid any moments of him actively interacting with his doctors. Instead, Shinji is framed as silent and alone, trapped in a limbo of waking up to overwhelming sunlight with no memories of the night before.

As Shinji’s isolation is broken by Misato’s arrival, we quickly learn that “unfamiliar ceiling” isn’t just a reference to that terror of waking alone. In another of this show’s most iconic scenes, the relationship between Shinji and Gendo is illustrated through their profoundly awkward meeting at an elevator. Staring down at his son, Gendo doesn’t say anything, nor move to allow Shinji to enter. And staring up at his dad, Shinji is unable to break the silence either, and eventually breaks his gaze. Gendo is no more familiar to Shinji than that hospital bed, and no more likely to provide him a real home. After more alienating, cavernous shots emphasizing the loneliness of actually living at NERV, Misato eventually decides she’s had enough – Shinji’s living with her, they’re housemates now, that’s final.

It’s frankly hard to convey how well this episode illustrates the evolving relationship between Shinji and Misato, letting the natural tonal cues of each specific moment make their followup feel almost inevitable. Misato’s decision to take care of Shinji’s living situation is a great example – we don’t actually see her make the offer, we just see Shinji express the saddest possible “I’m fine living alone,” Misato gives him a look, and then we’re arguing with Ritsuko about logistics. Shinji’s overall mixed feelings are expressed with a similarly light touch; we don’t see him actively regretting the damage he dealt to the city, we just get the subtle flagging of his expression as the locals gossip. That reveal implies its own natural consequence in turn, as Misato sees Shinji’s expression, and resolves to give him a present.

Driving to a hilltop overlooking the city, the two stare out over the vast metal plane of Tokyo-3. Shinji remarks that “it’s just such a lonely city,” and is clearly referring to more than the view – but then lights start to glow, shutters begin to open, and the city blooms in the twilight. Much like the first episode’s launch sequence, this sequence of Tokyo-3 rising turns Evangelion’s reverence for mechanical movement, a perennial giant robot obsession, into an emotional payoff all of its own. We rarely get emotional payoffs like that these days, outside of rare outliers like Captain Earth or even Revue Starlight’s stage entrances, but Eva belongs to an older lineage of shows, Hideaki Anno himself being first inspired by titles like Space Battleship Yamato. Even though its own priorities and influence would ultimately help supplant anime’s reverence for mechanical movement, Evangelion and its creators still possess total faith in the beauty of the machine.

As for its thematic and personal significance, beyond simply giving Shinji something worth fighting for, this sequence also neatly raises technological progress as a natural embodiment of the human spirit. When Misato earlier remarked that “I love air conditioning. It represents man’s triumph over nature,” it seemed like an idle joke – but Eva, or at least NERV specifically, genuinely believe in that spirit. Our technology is our bastion against the faceless terrors, and Tokyo-3 is our technology incarnate. As long as we can invent, we can hope to batten back that heartless darkness.

Arriving at Misato’s apartment, Shinji’s confrontation with his father is replayed once again, with Misato’s apartment threshold now serving as the impassible gateway. Shinji passes the threshold this time, and even offers a halting “I’m home,” but finding a home is a little harder than being invited into a house. Dashes of levity can’t hide the fact that Shinji and Misato have a profoundly awkward dynamic, one made even more so by Misato’s bizarre attempts at hospitality. While Misato clamors at Shinji to make himself at home, the camera emphasizes how Shinji can’t get over her very adult, very female, and basically half-naked appearance. And for her part, Misato seems to encourage Shinji’s discomfort, alternating between treating him like some kind of pet and saying “you’re a boy, aren’t you? Act like a man!” This is deliberate characterization, but we don’t really know it yet; Misato has only learned how to perform emotional intimacy in very specific contexts, particularly when it comes to men, and being a nurturing mother is not one of her specialties.

In the end, for all Misato’s efforts at hospitality, Shinji finds himself staring up at one more unfamiliar ceiling. This place isn’t his home; shots of the room’s disarray and Shinji’s physical entrapment emphasize his discomfort, as he seems to bury himself away in the space between two repeating cassette tracks. And then, like ominous footsteps down the hall, his memories return. Flashes of wild imagery contrast against Shinji still in bed, the heavy thudding of the angel’s strikes growing closer by the second. Using the angel’s attack to represent Shinji’s sudden recall, Evangelion naturally tethers the experience of being overwhelmed by intrusive thoughts to literal violence, as if that angel were slamming its fist into Shinji’s own head.

Episode two’s finale is the payoff to its overall horror movie framing, and the long-awaited reveal of what actually happened in that fight. As the bridge crew scream that they can’t free the pilot, our understanding of the fight overhead is recontextualized. The angel is a monster, yes, but it’s not the only monster – with its “mask” suddenly dividing into two rows of savage, uneven teeth, we realize the Evangelion is just as monstrous as its foe. Having seeded the terrifying nature of the Evas through Gendo and Ritsuko’s earlier conversation in a highly suspicious venue, built up the horror film tone of Eva’s fights through the introductory sequence, and baited our interest all through this resolutely tight-lipped episode’s running time, Evangelion now reveals the awful truth: Shinji didn’t win that fight. The savage creature he’s trapped in won it for him.

Unit 01’s victory is as terrifying as it is dazzling, and serves as a striking counterpoint to Evangelion’s previously mechanical action scenes. Unit 01 doesn’t move like a machine – bucking and roaring and bounding across the city, it moves like a feral animal, like some kind of great and ferocious panther. Clouds of dust and shuddering buildings imply the massive scale of the fight as Unit 01 moves with seeming effortlessness, attacking this angel so brutally and so efficiently that it feels like we ourselves are being struck, something the camera emphasizes through aligning our perspective with the angel. Evangelion’s signature cross-shaped explosions light up the sky, thematically meaningless, but as crucial as the bridge crew banter in establishing Eva’s otherworldly, mythic tone. And with the angel broken behind it, 01 strides from the ashes looking like hell incarnate, a fire at its back and a harsh glow in its eye.

Episode two’s punchline isn’t Misato’s comforting “you did a good job today.” In the face of what we just witnessed, that feels more like emotional manipulation, an instruction to keep fighting or lose this provisional sanctuary. Episode two’s true end is that horrible moment of realization, as Shinji’s battle fugue fades and the Eva’s helmet falls. Catching his reflection in a tower’s glass, he sees metal give way to flesh, and flesh morph into a piercing gaze. Of all shows, I suppose it’s appropriate that Evangelion’s first act ends with its hero literally staring into the void, and the void unblinkingly staring back.

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