WiC Watches: Neon Genesis Evangelion
By Dan Selcke
Episode 7: “A Human Work”
This is the first episode of Evangelion I’ve watched so far that didn’t seem like Part 1 of a two-part episode. There’s the least here to work with so far, but we still get a couple of key developments, namely:
- Shinji is actually comfortable with his living situation. We see that with the repeated shots of him downing breakfast in Misato’s apartment, while she gets the day started with a beer. By extension, he’s comfortable with Misato, slob though she is. Shinji started the series disconnected from pretty much everyone. This is a big step forward for him.
- The mythology is expanding. Gendo meets with a shady someone to discuss the production of more Evas, as many as eight. Now that the show has introduced most of the principal players, it’s time to grow the world.
- Speaking of that, Dr. Ritsuko Akagi tells Shinji the true nature of the Second Impact: it is not, as reported, a meteor impact in Antarctica but rather the awakening of the Angels. We don’t know everything yet, but that’ll surely be important to the story going forward.
- Nerv doesn’t want anyone else honing in on the Angel killing game, and purposefully undermines the debut of a rival organization’s new giant robot: Jet Alone. Are politics about to play a bigger role in the story?
Beyond that, Misato continues to be my favorite character, once again thinking on her feet to solve a crisis — in this case stopping the out-of-control Jet Alone before it can self-destruct and hurt anyone — under immense pressure and at risk to her own life…even if the team at Nerv planned for Jet Alone to go berserk from the start and didn’t tell her. Is she too good for this place? Will she investigate them further?