Settie wrote:It wasn't just unit 1, he was barred from piloting anything. We got Sakura saying so, Shinji scared of the choker before Kaworu takes it off and If those instances aren't enough, the movie even gives a nice visual storytelling to drive the point home. As Shiji is about to leave with the mark9, the way Misato holds the chokers controller is exactly how you would hold a gun to someone, i don't think this was coincidental. Misato metaphorically holding a gun to his head should he pilot again. The choker was no mere symbol of distrust, it was an active threat should he pilot anything.
Now this is likely my american perspective that guides my bias but, Misato is the captain of the Wunder, if not the leader of Willie. The buck stops with her and only her. Now could her subordinates go behind her back? sure and i wouldn't blame her for that, but when it came to the Shinji situation, she was responsible for it as she was physically present.
Hopefully not dredging this up again but i wanted to give my 2c on it. It's not entirely unprecedented that Anno would do something based on the fandom. I mean isn't that one of the primary reasons EoE came about, due to TV ending backlash. Also from a non-cynical "for the moneyz" perspective, NTE was Anno making eva more easily "digestible" (if that makes sense) for the masses due to the fandoms reactions to OG NGE. Hell if you really wanted to stretch it the whole english redubbing of 3.0 was potetially due to the western fandom reaction. So Anno taking the Eva fandom reaction into account it's not that farfetched.
Settie, at this point you're reading things into the text, not extracting information out of the text. No doubt, the filmmakers use a lot of aesthetic choices and unfortunate circumstances in Eva Q to make Shinji (and the viewer) feel uncomfortable. The design of the DSS Choker trigger (or detonator, or whatever it's called) does indeed look somewhat gun-like. But, if all of the Eva pilots are wearing DSS Chokers, this isn't a feature that's exclusive to Shinji, now it is?
Again, none of this makes Misato out to be a hypocrite. She's certainly (intentionally, I think) giving off a rather cold demeanor around Shinji (and the other Eva pilots as well), and doesn't seem too warm around anyone. Whatever happened during that 14-year time skip seems to have turned a lot of people into hard-asses. Misato, Ritsuko, Asuka, and even Maya seem to come off as a lot more jaded than they do in Eva Ha. And Sakura does call out Shinji within terms of not piloting an Eva unit. (Misato, again, says nothing on the matter.) If anything, I'd expect a scene in Eva Q where Sakura has to reconcile with Shinji about the mean comments she made in Eva Q, not Misato. (Misato's got a lot of things to properly catch Shinji up on, and she might apologize for not being able to do so in Eva Q, but it's not like she has to apologize about being singling him out or anything.) There is definitely a lot at stake in Eva Q, and Shinji, being an Impact Trigger (and possibly not even the Shinji they remembered from 14 years back?), is certainly one of those high-stakes circumstances.
Does any of this make Misato out to be a hypocrite?
No.
As for fan-pandering, I think much of the point being made on this thread is simply that Anno doesn't (or has limited means in which to) care about what American fans think. While I'm sure he's hopeful that people in the US enjoy his films, his main focus is on appealing to Japanese audiences, and he seems to be doing a good job with that. So if American weebs blow up about disliking certain aspects of Eva, and Japanese fans aren't already showing similar grievances about the same aspects of his movies, then Anno is less likely to care (or even know) about those complaints and just do whatever he wants in a way he thinks will thrill Japanese audiences. You'll note that all of the fan letters Anno displayed in EoE (which, no doubt, will probably be used as evidence of fan-pandering of some sort) were all written in Japanese, by Japanese fans. Anno really doesn't think too much about what I, a snobby small indie filmmaker in North Carolina, think about his Evangelion movies.