WiC Watches: Neon Genesis Evangelion

Episode 13: “Angel Infiltration”

We’re exactly halfway through Neon Genesis: Evangelion, and the show is still taking its time filling out its cast. The subject this week is Ritsuko Akagi, the chief scientist at NERV. We learn about her relationship with her mother, her dedication to her job, and how well she performs under pressure (hint: very well).

But like other episodes that dive deep into the characters — the one right before this, for example, which took a closer look at Misato — “Angel Infiltration” doesn’t ignore excitement and tempo. As always, the latest Angel is a creative delight — perhaps knowing how hard it’s becoming to top themselves visually, this time it takes the form of a collection of microscopic beings that work in concert to form a biological computer that successfully penetrates NERV headquarters and starts hacking the three-pronged Magi computer system that runs the place.

This is closer that any Angel has come to destroying NERV so far, and the episode does a great job of raising the stakes, both because the threat is so new and different and because the Evas are taken out of the equation — Shinji, Rei and Asuka are trapped in a nudity gag for the duration of the episode and Unit 01 launched the surface on Gendo’s orders (interesting). But even if the Evas weren’t indisposed, they couldn’t fight this a computer virus Angel anyway, which means it’s up to the other members of the team to stop the threat.

Taking the kids out of the picture shows us that the series doesn’t need them to be effective. It can be hard to make a computer hack visually interesting, but “Angel Infiltration” find clever ways to tell us what’s happening and why it’s important. It was as gripping as any neon bomb monster from above — maybe moreso, considering how very nearly the whole thing ended in catastrophe. This show is really good about finding convincing ways for the heroes to escape destruction by the skin of their teeth.

It also does a good job of convincing me of the hard science fiction aspects. I’m not going to claim to understand how Ritsuko wrote a program that somehow took advantage of the Angel’s ability to learn and adapt and somehow…made it self-destruct? But I’m sure she did, and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if she would pull it off. And learning that her mother programmed her own personality into the Magi system adds an interesting new wrinkle to the mythology, as well as being a cool, science-friendly way to come at the idea of identity, something we’ve already seen the kids struggle with. Why should the adults be immune?