Neon Genesis Evangelion’s thirteenth episode opens on a shot of the NERV offices in disarray, as we pan across a desk stacked with loose papers, scattered electronic apparatus, and a worryingly placed coffee cup. The pan concludes by settling on the source of this disorder: Ritsuko Akagi, NERV’s chief technology officer, currently in the midst of a maintenance check on NERV’s Magi supercomputers. Ritsuko praises her assistant Maya for her efficient system checks, but when she notices an error, she takes over and demonstrates a typing speed and mastery of engineering far exceeding her star-struck assistant. The two central axis of this episode are thus immediately set: NERV’s physical layout and electronic mechanisms, and the brilliant technical chief who rules over these machines.
Though this is the first time NERV’s technological apparatus serve as the centerpoint of its actual drama, the show has been building our investment in this place since its very first episode. NERV central control doesn’t just look “impressive” or “imposing” – it looks functional, lived-in, and a bit messy, like a place where people actual work. Incidental moments throughout the series so far have naturally illustrated the distinct, divergent personalities and passions of the bridge crew – Maya’s hero-worship of Ritsuko and passionate belief in their mission, Aoba’s rock star pretensions, Hyuga’s deference to Misato. But efficient, effective characterization of the bridge’s human occupants isn’t the only way we’ve come to know and care for this place – the greater part of NERV control’s tactile, familiar presence is conveyed through all the intricate visual details of this workspace and its many distinct interfaces.
Evangelion is rightly renowned for the detail, diversity, and dramatic power of its monitor readouts and technical jargon. Each episode is suffused with monitors that flash out ominous warnings or scroll through panicked, angry graphs, monitors which could just as well be saying “Danger! Danger!,” but which through their specificity and evocative designs convey genuine authority and a clear sense of rising tension. The clinical ferocity of those monitors is tempered by the human touch of the messy floor space itself, loose personal items emphasizing the living nature of this environment, while hanging wires and discarded electronics imply a workplace in perpetual transition. Though it can become a clean instrument of combat in the midst of battle, NERV’s usual condition emphasizes how it is mostly a familiar office, and perhaps even a home.
It’s certainly home to Ritsuko, who is established in this episode’s first moments as the clear master of this domain. That interaction with Maya serves to reacquaint us with their close working relationship, while also naturally illustrating Ritsuko’s “combat strength” in a field that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to dramatic visual drama. It’d be difficult to translate the actual genius of a gifted programmer into television drama, so Eva instead uses a trick similar to the tonal effect of its flashing monitors – by speeding up the scrolling of the text Maya is checking, the show naturally implies that Ritsuko’s speed of programming and calculation are many times faster than that of her humbled assistant.
Ritsuko seems in high spirits as she lets Misato drink her cold coffee, but alone after the maintenance check, her facade slips. “As usual, Mother’s in good shape, but… is getting older the only thing I’m going to do?” Ritsuko has always been a likable character, with a fondness for deadpan wit and a great rapport with Misato, but she’s also held her emotional cards close to the vest. Here for the first time, we get a glimpse of her own worries, which are soon contextualized by the reveal that her mother actually designed and built the Magi. Like Misato, Ritsuko is living in the shadow of a renowned yet distant parent, and uncertain how to define herself in that parent’s absence. Her fear of aging without purpose reflects both that anxiety and her own ambition, a fear of never creating anything truly hers, and simply tending to her mother’s legacy until she’s gone.
As Ritsuko’s feelings slowly come into sharper focus, an emerging threat is conveyed through technical errors echoing from her pilot test all the way to central control. Fuyutsuki’s hushed discussions with Hyuga and Aoba regarding some corrupted metal raise tension while embodying the naturalism of Eva’s bridge environment, ending on Fuyutsuki’s almost apologetic “take care of it by tomorrow. Otherwise we’ll never hear the end of it from Ikari.” While another science fiction drama might frame Fuyutsuki’s decision in terms of the possible danger or the significance of their mission, Eva lands on “fix it before the boss starts to bother me about it,” a choice that simultaneously humanizes him and emphasizes the mundane nature of this workplace environment.
Unfortunately, both Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko’s lack of concern over these unusual readings ends up costing them dearly. Like half-witnessed rustling in the bushes outside your home, these signs of assault soon erupt into tonal violence, as a pan across that corroded wall smash cuts to a bright red ALERT. Chatter flies across the bridge and test chambers, but it’s not just tonal noise – it clearly conveys the rapid pace of the corruption, and Ritsuko’s desperate attempts to halt its spread, along with the clear fail case of the corruption actually reaching the Evas themselves. Meanwhile, that incessant one-note piano melody keeps clanging in the distance, as if to emphasize that even as they work to address this crisis, it is steadily escalating out of their hands.
The crisis evolves in waves, each of them demonstrating the tonal power and dramatic coherency of NERV’s crisis apparatus. NERV personnel crouch around their monitors as if this were a scene from Aliens, their panicked commands doing nothing to halt the clear advance of those red dots, red bars, red corruption across their dwindling failsafes. A sudden stillness as the attacker considers, and then a scream punctuating the silence, Rei crying out as her simulation body is invaded. It’s a horror movie moment that makes it clear what genre this episode is embracing. Though Evangelion has always been about “humans versus angels,” that fight has generally been framed in terms of iconic, almost honorable battles between giant robots and giant monsters. Here, the subtitle “Angel Invasion” denotes this episode as a classic home invasion narrative; this control center that has come to represent safety and security is now unfamiliar, stained by an invader’s presence.
A cascading series of revelations and desperate countermeasures continue to emphasize the severity of this crisis, even in the absence of a physical antagonist to fight. The base idea that an Angel could be something other than a massive monster, and even something as subtle as an evolving bacteria, serves as a severe shock to our understanding (and thus mental control) of the situation. That loss of control is further facilitated through Gendo’s almost panicked command to lie to the committee, as well as his decision to launch the Evas without pilots inside. This intangible opponent thus makes us in the audience feel genuinely powerless, as we see both the masters and tools of NERV’s defense respectively shaken and discarded, yet another hallmark of the classic home invasion.
Ritsuko’s team sets to work analyzing the enemy’s nature to develop countermeasures, as the episode continues to frame a largely intangible conflict in terms of clear, coherent tactics and dramatic hurdles. The discovery that the bacteria avoids areas with heavy ozone leads to the team attempting to drown it with oxygen, before the creature evolves a tolerance for oxygen and counterattacks by beginning an invasion of their computer systems. A slow pan in on Gendo is played against increasingly panicked chatter by the bridge team, as their voices become a sort of music of dramatic escalation, similar to the effect of NERV’s flashing monitors.
The overall effect conveys the sense of an electronic attack with far more energy and dramatic coherency than the vast majority of fiction, as a conflict that could easily be lost in technical jargon is translated into a clear progression of violations. The hacker makes contact with the computer system, them begins to override those systems, then starts to invade the central intelligence unit, then uses the data found therein to attack the Magi, then uses its own corrupted Magi to invade the others. Each step feels like a coherent escalation, and all the while, the bridge crews’ repeated exclamations of “what speed!” set ‘hacking speed’ as the battlefield of engagement, which just so happens to be the talent this episode opened by assigning to Ritsuko. Cuts and chatter become increasingly rapid as the hack advances, rising to a fever pitch that is only silenced when Ritsuko raises a temporary blockade, and begins to plan her counterattack.
Ritsuko’s blockade line reorients this episode’s drama, shifting us from the largely tonal drama of the Angel’s invasion to the emotionally grounded drama of Ritsuko’s counterattack. This shift is even indicated in the dialogue itself, as Ritsuko’s professional assessment that “this situation is a result of my carelessness” is countered by Misato’s emotionally grounded “you’re always like this. Taking responsibility on your own shoulders, and refusing to let others help.” Just as episode twelve demonstrated how Misato’s relationship with the pilots is a messy combination of the personal and professional, this conversation reflects how her relationship with Ritsuko is a similar mess of personal and professional bonds. Which is, of course, one of Evangelion’s more general points; that as much as we’d like to frame the universe in terms of clear conflicts that exist apart from our emotions, ultimately, everything we experience and struggle with is an extension of personal identity.
That goes for NERV headquarters, as well. After Ritsuko vows to mount a counterattack while saving the Magi computers, she unlocks the core of uncorrupted Magi Casper, and sets to work in the heart of her mother’s legacy. The tightly coiled tubes and hanging wires of Casper’s interior come across more like guts and organs than electronic devices, and as Ritsuko explains, there’s a reason for that. All three of the Magi were built using a “Personality Transplant OS” that actively transposed her mother’s personality into the machines themselves, through biological machines clearly reminiscent of human brains. The Magi might thus serve as a clean metaphor for humans themselves, and Ritsuko in particular – a sleek, professional affect coating a sprawling mass of contradictory instincts, with all our technical proficiencies ultimately subservient to that core sense of self.
Along with revealing a great deal about Ritsuko’s character, her unhappy relationship with her mother, and her fond bond with Misato, this sequence serves as a quiet technical triumph in its own right. The base design of Caster’s interior feels like a dramatic encapsulation of NERV’s visual appeal, with the scattered notes and loose devices of the upper bridge echoed by the scribbled post-its and coiling wires of the Magi themselves. And while Ritsuko’s offhand comments speak to her childhood and college life, her physical presence and sense of self are conveyed visually through some phenomenal character acting, as she awkwardly contorts herself to work around the cables and pipes of her mother’s legacy. Ritsuko is thus revealed on a visual, emotional, and thematic level, with her proud technical brilliance, personal insecurities, and kinship with the rest of Eva’s cast all clear to see.
Ritsuko’s gambit goes according to plan, and the angel is caught in a self-destructing loop without any need for the Evas’ involvement at all. And even that early beat of Ritsuko letting Misato drink cold coffee is paid back, as Misato’s fond “you kept your promise again” is accompanied by a much-appreciated new mug. As NERV headquarters returns to its comfortable neutral, Ritsuko reflects on how the three Magi computers represent her mother’s three selves, with her identity as a scientist, mother, and woman all struggling for dominance. The messiness of the NERV offices, the messiness of the Magi’s programming, and the messiness of the human heart – in a world like this, it’s no wonder that Ritsuko seeks mastery of the things she can control, and excellence as the director of all things technical and certain. Then again, perhaps her passion for the technical is one more sign of her humanity – the only way to stay in contact with her mother, lost to time, but maintained through the humming calculations of her beloved machines.
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