Teeaboo Reacts- Neon Genesis Evangelion (EVA) Episode 21 – Tortured Past

12 Comments

1. Heinrich Agrippa
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:31 am

   Hey Teeaboo, I was one of those criticizing-your-excessive/obsessive-note-taking guys. I hope I didn’t come off as too abrasive. I actually like your videos quite a bit and think your personality is extremely well suited to watching and analyzing this series. That’s why I want you to experience it to its fullest. You also seem to know a thing or two about visual composition and direction, which is part of the reason I was concerned you were so focused on taking notes that it would draw your attention away from what was actually on the screen. As I mentioned before, and you can probably tell now from this episode, the proportion of significant dialogue ramps up to the point where if you tried to write down every single line that seemed important you’d end up doing nearly a full transcription of the entire script. That and I was kind of salty about you missing the "if it’s a boy we’ll name it Shinji, if it’s a girl, Rei" line, because it was such a bombshell with crazy implications that only get crazier with the context of this episode, and I was anticipating you discussing what you thought it meant.

   Anyway, I think you’re doing a great job and are much more insightful that most people who do the whole reaction video thing. Did you miss anything this episode? Yeah, a bit, but the thing is I didn’t catch every single thing the the first time I watched this either; pretty much no one does. After watching NGE several times and reading a bunch of discussions and supplementary crap, it’s easy to forget just how much shit this show throws at the viewer – important shots or lines of dialogue that last less than a second and are never directly brought up again, obscure visual references to earlier episodes, cryptic zero-context lore-drops full of arcane terms and concepts that have never been explained, etc. It’s actually pretty contrary to most anime, wherein both the dialogue and visuals will make absolutely sure you are aware of anything important by over-explaining, having several different characters re-iterate the same thing in sequence, and having constant "reminder flashbacks" every time some earlier thing is relevant in a later episode. With Eva however, there’s no inattentive-viewer hand-holding. It’s like "no, there are certain things you have about 0.5 seconds to take in, and if you looked away or were distracted, unless you re-watch the episode, you missed it forever. And if you did catch it and spent to much time thinking about it, then you’ll miss the next important detail that’s also only available for a split second."

2. Lain
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:45 am

   Things will only get worse up until the final episode… and then it will get worse even after that

3. JBuddis
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:52 am

   Definitely one of my favourite Eva episodes, even with the barrage of information thrown at almost every second. The DC additions also nicely help flesh out and expand on some stuff. Only thing I’ve never particularly liked was the weird ambiguity of who killed Kaji by intimating that Misato possibly killed him. Seeing how she still has feelings for him and also how she – as an outsider to Gendo, Fujutsuki and Ritsuko – wants to uncover what she isn’t being told about NERV and SEELE, killing Kaji would be extremely counter-productive for her and makes no sense seeing his readiness to share. It seems like it’s just adding ambiguity for the sake of ambiguity that is ultimately rather unnecessary.

   Great reaction series. Love how you delve deeper into the content; makes for much more interesting listening over just making occasional – often shallow – comments while watching a given show. Keep it up!

4. San Tourism
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:52 am

   i hope you will watch Rebuild of Evangelion

5. Craig Neely
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:53 am

   * Megumi Hayashibara voices Pen Pen too — it must be significant! 🙂 … actually wait, it’s a genetically engineered penguin. Come to think of it, it may actually be significant.
   * I think they refer to Eva-01 as a "god" in a polytheistic Japanese sense, not in an all-powerful singular god sense.
   * The scene from 11:30 to 11:48 (show timestamps, not YouTube) is important to understand, particularly the subterranean scan they took of Antarctica. Also the conversation when Fuyutsuki first sees the geofront at 13:35 to 14:05. This is one of those "form your own conclusions" type of exposition.
   * Akagi likely jumped and fell on the Magi which were below the deck they were standing on. I hadn’t noticed before, but Rei’s face and voice morph into Yui’s as Akagi loses her mind.
   * I agree with the other comments that Misato wouldn’t have much motivation to kill Kaji — he’d chosen Nerv over Seele at that point as the lesser evil and she clearly loved him.

6. Dobrozz
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:55 am

   Here to point out a few things, as my usual

   – In episode 20, when Ritsuko comes out with the plan to rescue Shinji, she says that it was based on data from about 10 years before, when something very similar happened. Yui’s experiment was in 2004
   – I pointed out before how in a few frames in episode 14 while Eva 00 goes berserk and punches the observation post of the test chamber you can see Ritsuko with brown hair intead of blonde, she later says that the eva was trying to kill her. We now know that that was the hair color of Ritsuko’s mother and what she did to Rei in the past, looks to me like Eva 00 mistaken Ritsuko for her mother and attempted to avenge child Rei
   – You mentioned it already, but yes, apparently child Rei had a very different personality from present day Rei
   – It is almost superfluous to mention that Shinji once said that Rei looked very motherly to him, this episode makes it very clear that something is going on there, but a straight up clone would be identical to the original, she has at least very unusual eye and hair color instead

7. Craig Neely
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:57 am

   I’m trying to figure out your intro for listening practice. I’m a beginner Japanese student studying for N5. Sounds like: この番組はグランのスポンサーの提供でお華麗します。 So (literally): (この) This (ばんぐみ) program (は topic), the large sponsor’s (ていきょう) donations (で "by action") are (します) making it (お honorific かれい) magnificent. Or: This program is made magnificent by the donation of its large sponsors. Is that right?

8. bandiras2
   January 14, 2020 @ 12:59 am

   And then things got worse.
   Kaji was killed by a nameless SEELE gun. And things will be worse.

9. n n
   January 14, 2020 @ 1:02 am

   according to Anno it’s canon that he’s killed offscreen by some random NERV goon, they just gave her her gun back in that one scene as a matter of procedure. it might have been deliberately ambiguous though.

10. alexej24
    January 14, 2020 @ 1:11 am

    Yui vanishing under "irregular circumstances" is what ritsuko reffered to when she said something like that happened before and that they failed to retrieve the human back then – the evas absorbtion of shinji.

11. Iseno Alpha
    January 14, 2020 @ 1:25 am

    After it zooms out after she kills Rei you can hear a thud. I think it’s pretty obvious that she realizes what she did and then jumps off the balcony and kills herself. I also don’t think Misato kills Kaji. I don’t think she would have done it even if ordered to do so. Kaji saying "the truth is with you" is I’m pretty sure saying he gave her the info he was collecting. Possibly related to the pill he puts on the nightstand in the last episode (or before that?). When Misato is given her gun back the guy tells her the problem (Kaji) has been taken care of, so I think he’s dead already at that point. He was just killed by a nameless and faceless mook after he was found out.

12. だいもんじ
    January 14, 2020 @ 1:27 am

    この番組は「H.I.P.」（ヒップ）で、いい番組です。

    and very nice spatial analysis as always

    39:37 – are those actually the agents’ eyes seen through the sunglasses? hmm… or simply reflections of the light band encircling the dark room? ? hmm… ? heh, it somehow starts to look goofy; eyes so peery, so suspicious…very inquisitive…

    "baasan" (granny, without the respectful "o-" prefix) or "baaba" is considerably rude when addressed to someone who is not quite old yet, and especially towards someone who looks (and actually is) fairly young; even "obasan" (aunt) could be quite offensive too; compare to "obaasama/obasama" (respectful) or "obaachan/obachan" (endearing) used for actual grandmothers/aunts; "old hag" does sound a bit exaggerated, but on the other hand it carries over the speaker’s attitude fairly well (Gendou’s original phrasing, mimicked by Rei) ;

    and yes, Kaji does mean the "truth" as how he perceives it himself (i.e. 僕の中の真実 – boku no naka no shinjitsu); the original lines were slightly roundabout: he initially mentions wanting to get closer to the truth, and simply adds the modifier "boku no naka no" at the end (very common in informal/spoken grammar); also "X no naka no Y" is somewhat idiomatic as it refers to how Y (specific object(s) / abstract concept) is perceived within X’s mind (as opposed to a thing being physically inside)- which is probably why "within myself" was the resulting translation compromise.

    as for Fuyutsuki glancing at 58:10, ?hmm… wonder who (or what ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)) the focus of the glances are… ?????HmMmMmMm?!?…