Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby confusedfan343 » Tue Dec 18, 2018 4:43 pm

In NGE episode 12 we learn that Misato joined NERV to avenge her father, who was killed by Adam/the second impact. My question is how exactly she could have joined NERV specifically to avenge her father by eliminating the angels and Adam, when the true nature of the second impact, angels, and Adam was classified and the vast majority of the information was unknown to her. She couldn't have known who Adam truly was by name, just as the rest of the human population could not have known. How did she join Nerv to avenge her father and eliminate Adam if Adam himself was a secret not to her knowledge? even if she knew that Adam was responsible and an angel, NERV wasn't boasting that they would be specifically destroying angels to the public (Were they?). NERV/Gehirn would never have informed her about Adam in the first place. Honestly i would figure that even by witnessing the first impact and adam she would have known too much and been killed. I don't understand how catching a glimpse of adam, learning nothing about him, can correlate to her working to fight against him and his offspring. Is there any way she could have been educated on the subject of Adam, the angels, or the second impact?
It just makes no sense to me how someone who only had a glimpse of Adam, not knowing anything about him (i.e. name, the fact that he is an angel, the fact that it was specifically Adam that was behind the first impact etc.), could go and specifically pursue him through employment with NERV, which would not have distributed any information regarding Angels, adam, or the first impact to the public. Can anyone explain this if possible? Is there something i'm missing or is this just a plot hole?

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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby AuraTwilight » Wed Dec 19, 2018 7:13 am

I mean, she saw a giant being of light show up and destroy half the planet with a front row seat while she was attending a mission from NERV where they were fucking about with a giant alien for a few weeks. How could she not connect the dots?
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby Reichu » Fri Dec 21, 2018 9:36 am

Misato's explanation of her motives is probably retroactively informed by her current knowledge for the same of brevity. If the one glimpse of Adam is all she saw, and the Antarctic research team were able to keep Adam a secret on their own base (where Misato had been staying for an indeterminate amount of time), then all she would have had to work on, growing up, is the overwhelming feeling that she saw something weird back then. In order to get closer to the truth, her only real option was to join Gehirn (as Nerv didn't exist yet). Somewhere in the process of climbing the ranks, she would have learned about the "true cause" of Second Impact, and how Gehirn/Nerv is preparing for an eventual "retaliation" from the Angels. At this point, she would be able to blame Adam for her father's death, leading her to pursue the highest tactical position at Nerv in the hopes of eventually "getting revenge".
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby Saint Eva » Mon Dec 24, 2018 7:13 am

^ Speaking of Misato's "revenge", it is something I have been meaning to ask here. Did she really hated Angels and wanted to get revenge for her father's death? or was she just projecting and using the Angels as the way of finding closure with her father? I am beginning to believe its the latter.

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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby Reichu » Mon Dec 24, 2018 1:44 pm

View Original PostSaint Eva wrote:Did she really hated Angels and wanted to get revenge for her father's death? or was she just projecting and using the Angels as the way of finding closure with her father? I am beginning to believe its the latter.

She basically admits as much.

Episode 12 wrote:Misato:
But he sacrificed himself to save my life at the end.
Back during the Second Impact.
Then, I didn't know whether I hated him or loved him.
The only thing that was clear to me was I wanted to destroy the Angels
who caused the Second Impact.
So in order to do that, I joined Nerv.
In the end, maybe I just want to get revenge on my father,
so that I can free myself of him.


This is paralleled with Shinji in episode 20, during the sequence where he insists again and again that the Angels are the enemy, only for the images of Angels to yield to the true target of Shinji's anger: his father. Some interesting irony is introduced later on, when we learn that Gendo is fused with Adam, the mother of the Angels. The true enemy and the false enemy became one.

Misato's weird semi-admission that she's killing Angels to rid herself of her father may similarly have more going on than it first appears. The donor for Adam's contact experiment is unknown, but what if it was Dr. Katsuragi? He was actually present on-site to perform the experiment (which is implied to use a live human test subject), and what's seen of his face is a match for Kaworu, being stereotypically "biseinen" (i.e., like a bishounen, just grown up). The show also pushes parallels between Misato and Shinji's dad situations starting from the very first episode. How fitting would it be, then, if both their fathers achieved a fusion with "the enemy"?

To bring this back to the original point: if Kaworu, the supposed "Last Angel", is a combination of Adam's soul and Dr. Katsuragi's physical attributes, then Misato frees herself of her father on a very real level by seeing the Angels' termination through to completion.
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby Saint Eva » Wed Dec 26, 2018 3:17 pm

The identity of Kaworu's donor have always fascinated me, more so when Misato took an unusual interest in investigating him. Wish there has been at least one interaction between the two.

It has to be Misato's father, he led that expedition, proving S2 theory was his life's work and I don't think he would have allowed some random researcher to take the risk and "honor" of contact experiment.

I noticed that unlike NGE, in Rebuilds, Misato witnesses her dad getting blown off by Impact blast wave. In 3.0, Kaworu saves Shinji by sacrificing himself and Shinji gets to see his head getting blown off. The DSS choker was equipped on Shinji on Misato's authority which Kaworu took off and accepted the risk of detonation, so it becomes even more fitting in Rebuilds where she's more involved in Kaworu's death. Ironically even after being on opposing sides, Shinji due to his foolishness in grabbing the spears, and Misato together are responsible for the death of the final angel, and if Kaworu is the clone of Dr. Katsuragi then Misato through Shinji again thematically frees herself of her father.

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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Fri Dec 28, 2018 2:18 pm

This may be slightly off topic, but has anybody else found Misato's strife with her father somewhat... lacking, compared to some of the other characters?

Shinji: Mother left him behind to become God, father abandoned him and remains cold and cruel (per Shinji's view)
Asuka: Mother went insane and killed herself all the while having seemingly forgotten who Asuka was, father schlepped off with Kyoko's doctor and then abandoned Asuka
Rei: Has no mother, her "father" just intends to use her as a tool to bring about the end of humanity, and is constantly denied control of her own life.
Ritsuko: Mother competed directly with her for Gendo's affections, father basically a nonpresence.
Misato: Father... worked a lot.

I may just be missing something but her entire strife with Dr. Katsuragi seems to be that he was rarely around. He wasn't abusive, he clearly valued her company enough to bring her on the expedition, and he sacrificed himself to save her. Maybe not the best dad in the world, but nowhere near enough for the level of antipathy she has towards him.

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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby Reichu » Fri Dec 28, 2018 5:07 pm

First of all, fathers who work so much they have no emotional presence as a husband or father, and who are so out of touch that they're stunned silent by their wife's eventual request for a divorce, were (and may well still be) a very real problem in Japan. Misato's broken family dynamics are based 100% in our own mundane reality. That's important. In such a wacky show, you need some completely regular problems here and there to ground things.

That said, the problem extended beyond merely the fact that Dr. Katsuragi was a workaholic. His motivations were important. His impact on the family, which he did nothing about, was important. Misato characterizes him as a childish man who ran away from his responsibilities; Dr. Katsuragi was characterized by people who knew him better as "sensitive". Put those two together, and it paints a fairly clear image of someone who worked too much not necessarily because he needed to, but because he was too much of a cowardly hedgehog to deal with the two most important people in his life. Misato's mother is described as someone who cried constantly in Dr. Katsuragi's absence (which suggests that she wasn't psychologically healthy, either...). Misato, as a very young child who instinctively felt like the whole situation was in some way her fault, made significant sacrifices so that her father would come back and her mom wouldn't be so sad. The emotional burden on her was exceptional.

Also, insert jokes(???) here about how Misato desperately wants to bone her dad, but the fact that he went and got himself killed means that she will be sexually frustrated forever, and this is a very natural thing to feel angry about.

he clearly valued her company enough to bring her on the expedition

Him bringing her on the expedition is a rather strange detail. From what I understand, Japan gives mothers custody by default, and shared custody doesn't exist. Now, it's possible Dr. Katsuragi was able to game the system by virtue of having Seele backers, but let's suppose for all intents and purposes that he didn't. Remember who Mama Katsuragi was -- a woman so broken and dependent that her main character trait is that she cried all the time. Suspiciously, the most chronologically recent piece of information about her is when she decided to divorce her husband. Nothing is said about what happens to her following this event.

Misato seems to have been very loyal to her mother, so this complete silence is rather strange. Read between the lines a little, though, and maybe it's not. What's the logical fate for a depressed, emotionally dependent woman who, after unknown years of suffering, finally divorces the man she loves? Suicide. Why would Misato never mention this? Given her loyalty to the woman, Mama Katsuragi finally freeing them from Dr. Katsuragi only to turn around and kill herself would pretty much be the ultimate betrayal. It would tell Misato loud and clear that dying for the man who was never there is more important than living for the daughter who always was. Plus, it would condemn Misato to being in her father's custody. Since her father happens to be at the ass-end of the world doing research by the time this tragedy happens, Misato gets sent there against her will.

Mama Katsuragi killing herself, incidentally, gives (A) Misato a rather powerful unstated reason to hate her dad (it's ultimately his fault it happened, after all...), and (B) provides Dr. Katsuragi a pretty clear motivation for wanting to contact Adam (if you follow my meaning :devil: ).
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Fri Dec 28, 2018 6:30 pm

My issue with calling Dr. Katsuragi a coward is that the only person to espouse this opinion of him is Misato herself, which is slightly unreliable given the way human memory tends to fixate on certain details, and stuff like confirmation bias.

I definitely hadn't thought about that as far as Mrs. Katsuragi though. That's a very chilling prospect. Though using that as a motive to interface with God kind of assumes he knew that would happen, when the implication of SEELE sabotaging the expedition seems to rule that out.

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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Fri Dec 28, 2018 9:18 pm

^Dr. Katsuragi sounds a lot like Gendo. Gendo's not the sort of person you'd characterize as a coward but he buried himself in his work after Yui died and pushed Shinji away because he was afraid of him and of causing the boy even more pain. Misato starts to become like that herself after Kaji dies. Just look at the way she becomes distant with Shinji and Asuka because she's obsessed with her search for the truth, or the way she sits at her laptop looking irritated while Asuka crumbles in her bathroom.
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby Reichu » Fri Dec 28, 2018 10:16 pm

View Original PostACGT-Samael wrote:My issue with calling Dr. Katsuragi a coward is that the only person to espouse this opinion of him is Misato herself, which is slightly unreliable given the way human memory tends to fixate on certain details, and stuff like confirmation bias.

We don't need to reply completely on her opinion, though, because she gives us one that she doesn't agree with. "People said he was sensitive". Put that together with Misato's account and you get something resembling the truth. I wouldn't fixate too much on the word "coward" at the expense of the rest.

Though using that as a motive to interface with God kind of assumes he knew that would happen, when the implication of SEELE sabotaging the expedition seems to rule that out.

I'm not sure I follow. How do Seele's secret intentions prevent someone like Dr. Katsuragi from having his own motivations?

If the question is "how would he even know how to pull that stuff off in the first place", his team was studying Adam in such depth that they could anticipate her Doors of Guf opening (and already knew to call the phenomenon by that name). These were researchers who definitely knew way too much.
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Sat Dec 29, 2018 12:30 am

View Original PostReichu wrote:We don't need to reply completely on her opinion, though, because she gives us one that she doesn't agree with. "People said he was sensitive". Put that together with Misato's account and you get something resembling the truth. I wouldn't fixate too much on the word "coward" at the expense of the rest.


That's fair, though I'd still take her word with a grain of salt given her dubious mental state. It'd be great if we knew more about him from some other sources.

View Original PostReichu wrote:I'm not sure I follow. How do Seele's secret intentions prevent someone like Dr. Katsuragi from having his own motivations?

If the question is "how would he even know how to pull that stuff off in the first place", his team was studying Adam in such depth that they could anticipate her Doors of Guf opening (and already knew to call the phenomenon by that name). These were researchers who definitely knew way too much.


The question was more "I wonder exactly how he expected that interaction to work out in the first place." And he somehow came to the conclusion he could use Adam to resurrect his dead wife? Even though Adam had her own Door of Guf district from that of Lilith? Guess he missed the mark a little.

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Postby Reichu » Sat Dec 29, 2018 6:02 am

I think you're being more than a little picky here. All of Eva's characters are emotionally compromised, so if I'm following your logic then we should throw out anything that's said that might be tainted in any way by an emotional bias.

Misato isn't going to provide Dr. Katsuragi's side of the story, but the way she sees him is just as true as the way he saw himself. NGE is quite clear on this point. BlueBasilisk's post also touches upon how Misato's account is treated as true for the purposes of the story (Dad parallels with Gendo; and Misato, like Ritsuko, becoming like the parent she hates).

......

Angel and Lilin souls are intrinsically the same, so why wouldn't they be cross-compatible between Seeds? The Doors of Guf aren't a one-way street, either -- by the very nature of the Chamber's functioning, they need to allow souls to both enter and leave.

For whatever it's worth, Eva2 reveals that Adam's Children were collected into Lilith's Chamber along with the rest of humanity. It's not much of a leap for Adam to be capable of collecting Lilin souls.

The resemblances between 2I and 3I are explicitly pointed out in EoE, as well. Adam was emanating an AATF and disembodied souls can be seen flying from the explosion's epicenter in DEATH. This may not mean anything other than AATFs being just a handy way to scrub a planet clean, but, had Adam lived, our species' souls would have been in a state perfect for harvesting. (Based on EoE, this would include the recently deceased up to some unspecified point.)
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby ACGT-Samael » Sat Dec 29, 2018 8:18 am

I'm not advocating throwing out anybody's account wholesale, just saying they probably don't have a complete picture of the person they're talking about so their view isn't necessarily the absolute truth. Since you brought it up yeah, a lot of characters' views on other people probably have some gaps. In at least one case (Gendo) we know for a fact that their child was missing a piece of the puzzle critical to understanding their motives. Misato could just as easily be missing information.

I wasn't previously aware Eva2 mentioned Adam's Children being collected by Lilith so I stand corrected there. Still, I highly doubt Adam would have been willing to capitulate with one of the progeny of Lilith, when the latter had "stolen" the planet from her. If anything she'd probably have been very angry with a Lilim (no idea on the singular form since -I'm and -in indicate plural) making such a demand of her.

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Sat Dec 29, 2018 8:55 am

^Right, but the series points out that that's the case in Instrumentality. There's the you that exists in the minds of others because of how they perceive you and the you that exists in your own mind as your self image. They're both valid interpretations but they're each just part of the whole picture. Like in the case of Gendo. Shinji's read on him as an aloof, uncaring bastard isn't inaccurate because that's how Gendo presents himself and how he has shaped Shinji's perception of him through their interactions. That wasn't Gendo's own internal motivation but he also never attempted to let Shinji know that. He doesn't speak of it at all until Yui's about to claim him so it doesn't factor into the Gendo in Shinji's mind. There will always be a gap between intention and perception without clear and open communication because you can't listen to another person's inner narrative.

It's the same with Dr. Katsuragi and Misato. They could only read what they were willing to share with each other.

Based on what we see of Adam through Kaworu, s/he doesn't seem to bear any kind of ill will against the Lilin or Lilith. Rather, s/he finds them and their culture fascinating but is a fatalist who believes it's impossible for humans and Angels to co-exist and that one of them must inevitably be wiped out. Maybe I'm misreading it but even the Second Impact seems to be the result of the experiments being done on Adam and the "accident" that caused it to explode more than Adam's own personal vendetta. At least in Eva 2, it's Lilith who comes off as petty and vindictive. :lol:
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Re: Misato's backstory and the second impact

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Postby Reichu » Sat Dec 29, 2018 11:40 am

View Original PostBlueBasilisk wrote:^Right, but the series points out that that's the case in Instrumentality.

Aren't you forgetting something? :devil:

Episode 16 wrote:Shinji B (OFF):
I am you. People have another self within themselves.
The self is always composed of two people.

Shinji A (OFF):
Two people?

Shinji B (OFF):
The self which is actually seen, and the self observing that.
There are many entities called Shinji Ikari.
The other Shinji Ikari that exists in your mind.
The Shinji Ikari in Misato Katsuragi's mind,
the Shinji in Asuka Sohryu,
the Shinji in Rei Ayanami,
and the Shinji in Gendo Ikari.
All are different Shinji Ikaris, but each of them is a true Shinji Ikari.
You are afraid of those Shinji Ikaris in other people's minds.

HIP was referencing an idea that was already established, and note what they do with it:

Episode 25 wrote:Shinji:
This is the me that exists in your mind, Asuka.

Asuka:
Which means, it's also the me that exists in your mind, right?

In HIP, the two parts of the self become one.

Maybe I'm misreading it but even the Second Impact seems to be the result of the experiments being done on Adam and the "accident" that caused it to explode more than Adam's own personal vendetta.

Adam waking up is strongly implied to be the result of the Contact Experiment itself, yes. Looking at other Impacts in the series, both actual and hypothetical, for a more complete picture of Impact mechanics, Adam was most likely awakened specifically by psychic contact with a Lilin. If the first Lilin that Adam "met" wanted her to do the Death and Rebirth thing, and "triggered" her into an Impact as a result, that could explain her actions in a way consistent with Kaworu's generous personality. That is to say, Adam wouldn't have been doing it for herself to spite us; she would have been doing it because one of us asked her to, and the benefits to her unfulfilled mission were just a bonus.

@ACGT-Samael: Oh, then we agree. Misato's account absolutely is incomplete. Filling in the blanks and providing a nuanced version of events is actually a big part of that fanfic I'm struggling with.
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Postby ACGT-Samael » Sat Dec 29, 2018 2:03 pm

The two selves deal really reminds me of the old Vetic (I think) myth that the Gods tore humanity in two because they feared their power. Perhaps human psyches are so divided as something of a power limiter?

And yeah, context clues are incredibly difficult to engineer but they really are crucial for understanding why people do what they do. Though given the way everyone embodies traits of their parents I wouldn't be surprised if said parents come from bad upbringings.

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Postby BlueBasilisk » Sat Dec 29, 2018 3:39 pm

View Original PostReichu wrote:Aren't you forgetting something? :devil:

...actually, I did. -o-; I forgot that the subject came up that early. But yeah, that's what I was talking about.

View Original PostReichu wrote:Adam waking up is strongly implied to be the result of the Contact Experiment itself, yes. Looking at other Impacts in the series, both actual and hypothetical, for a more complete picture of Impact mechanics, Adam was most likely awakened specifically by psychic contact with a Lilin. If the first Lilin that Adam "met" wanted her to do the Death and Rebirth thing, and "triggered" her into an Impact as a result, that could explain her actions in a way consistent with Kaworu's generous personality. That is to say, Adam wouldn't have been doing it for herself to spite us; she would have been doing it because one of us asked her to, and the benefits to her unfulfilled mission were just a bonus.

Interesting how the wishing thing carried over between continuities. Gendo says that same thing about Second Impact in 2.0. There were people who wished for that.
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