Misato's comment to herself after seeing Shinji naked?

[MisatoCrush]

The first night Shinji moves into Misato's home, she sees him naked after Shinji meets Pen Pen.

Misato says to herself, "Maybe I'm being overly flamboyant...he might be able to see right through me."

What did Misato mean by that? Is this a foreshadow of her troubled backstory and inability to have close relationships?

Is she faking happiness and confidence but inside she's a wreck?[/u]

[Gorbatschow]

http://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_Analysis:Sexuality_In_Misato_and_Shinji%27s_Relationship
http://wiki.evageeks.org/Misato_Katsuragi#Profile

These article may help you.

I would say too, that she was hiding her "true self" behind a "mask" of happiness.
Also, If you rewatch Evangelion with the idea of Misato being sexually interested in Shinji (first article) at the back of your mind, you'll probably find it really obvious, that Misato is not only one of the most complex characters, but also has a twisted relationship towards men in general and caused by that, is probably interested in Shinji.

[Shinoyami65]

^Yeah, as mentioned in the pages Gorbatschow linked, Misato has at least a lingering interest in Shinji, which has been subtly introduced literally from the first scenes of the anime. Later this interest evolves (or devolves, depending on your point of view) to Misato offering her body to Shinji after Rei's 'death', and finally to the big kiss in EoE.

And most (if not all) of the characters in Eva are hiding their true self behind some sort of mask. Misato seems happy and lighthearted but she's covering up a much more twisted persona that only appears rarely.

[Stratomeister]

It could come across differently, depending on if you're speaking about the original series, the rebuild movies, and whether it is the sub or the dub.

In the original series subbed, Misato says, "I wonder is I've been little a bit TOO cheery? Maybe I'm the one who's transparent."

In the sub of Evangelion: 1.0 the line is very similar, "Maybe I'm being overly flamboyant... he might be able to see right through me."

Conversely, in the dub of the original series, Misato comments, "*sigh* I guess I should be nicer but, he's probably already made up his mind about me."

While in the Dubbed version of Evangelion: 1.0 she says, "Maybe I was acting just a little TOO cheery, *sigh* but it was all I could do to keep a straight face."

While all of the comments could be interpreted as alluding to Misato's own inability to build and maintain meaningful relationships with others, the difference between the dub and the sub, and even the variance between the dub of NGE and 1.0 could lead viewers to believe otherwise. Of course, the comment could just be related to Misato trying to maintain her composure while Shinji stood in front of her complete nude, but when can anything said in Evangelion be taken so literally?

In the end, it's up to the viewer to make what they will of it. Evangelion will mean different things to different people, and this scene is no exception.

[Guy Nacks]

He might be able to see right through me.

Yeah, right through your clothes, you mean. Right, Misato?

[Kendrix]

Is she faking happiness and confidence but inside she's a wreck?[/u]

That's probably overstating/flanderizing it by a huge margin, but goes into the right direction.

She's essentially acting all cheery to get him to feel invited and get him to open up, coreographed this entire thing with a display of the city, a welcome party, "Just make yourself at home~~" but he's staying mostly reserved and awkward - in any case, not exactly cheered up.

So she's essentially saying, "From the looks of it, he'll notice that I'm just putting on this show for his sake before I find out anything about him". Or maybe "put on a show" is too strong, but she probably wouldn't be jumping and leaning over the table like that if he wasn't there. She's doing it for his sake, and fearing that he may have noticed.

Essentially, it didn't turn out the way she wanted it to.


Then there is the whole communication related philosophy/humans-arent-telepathinc angle.

What we see with Misato and Shinji in the early prologue arc is... she took him in because of general ethics consideration and possibly because he reminded her of her younger self, with all the daddy issues and all alone (as she was after SI killed her parents) and she's torn between being a friend/big sister figure who he can talk to, a parent (who needs to be strict at times) and a superior officer who needs an available pilot and has strong personal reasons to want the angels exterminated.

You see her in the bathtub feeling guilty about convincing him to be/deploying him as a pilot/"tool" in the first place.

As she later laments in ep 4, she thought he basically needs someone to be a little nice to him and "just give him a hug" (figuratively), but it turns out that his issues are way deeper and he doesn't open up to her right away/she doesn't figure him out immediately.
She keeps talking to Ritsuko throughout the show about how, "There are still things about him that she doesn't understand", which as this show tries to tell us is just a symptom of the human condition - To a degree, Misato is just having excess self-doubts. They do exchange significant bits of quite functional/useful talk in eps 12 and 15, but things got complicated when Kaji died.

In a way, Shinji was faces with a repeat of what happened with his biological parents: One disapeard of the face of the planet, the other's just helpless with grief to the point of being unable to care for him and sinks themselves into their work, and Shinji somehow ends up convincing himself that it's all his fault.

The dreaded "That crazy bitch was pedo all along, and also, she was screwing everyone, it's like talking to her" interpretation

If you wrote EVA, it would have even less subtility, nuance and real life-relatability than the worse parts Sadamoto's manga.

Meta-Analysis, people, this is one of the shows where the characters do NOt just tell you what to think of them and what they sproud after their first long flashback isn't to be taken at face value.
I hatehatehatehate when the complex, wonderful, brilliant revelevant point about internalized cathegorism and social shaming made in EoTv is twisted into completely unrelatable messes by people who take everything literally and have tomatos on their eyes in all scenes that don't look like infodump, or worse, apply the same "That is a slut!" logic this wonderful work is supposed to combat.

It must have required some serious empathy and research for a studio full of men to create this; The least you could do is appreciate it.


This is supposed to be a likeable character, probably the Director's favorite, not a goddamn rapist, and nothing she ever did suggests that.

Was there something like a latent attraction? It was obvious by ep 20, and we have official statements (more reliable than this random DVD commentary - who even wrote it? Even the horrendous thing itself has a conjuctive, and is full from head to toe with other unsubstantiated speculation. ) on the matter.
But that was after they lived together for a while.

That is not the same of even THINKING about acting about it (nuance, subtility, people), and nothing about taking someone's hand and implying an intention to comfort the kid could possibly suggest such a thing.


Similarly, acting playfully flirty to feign confidence (which she also does towards Touji and Kensuke, mind you. Was she intending to rape them, too? It's not particularly directed, she just radiates it into the room. Half of the time, she's just teasing Shinji because he tends to get all frantic right away. ) and making serious advances are very different things;
as she puts it in ep 25, she's simply acting the way the thinks she needs to act to be accepted.

[Guy Nacks]

I always thought of it as Misato acknowledging that she's putting on a show for him to get him to come out of his shell and/or hide her own insecurities and in that instance she's realizing she might be overdoing it.

[UrsusArctos]

Of course she's putting on a show. After the Big Irony Bomb explodes, Misato tries calling Pen-Pen, and the realizes that she's the one who's lonely, not Shinji. Sexual pleasure and gregariousness was how she got out of her loneliness and trauma (her behavior with Kaji in college and her extreme talkativeness in those days being a case in point).

Although these guys do have a point. If Misato was a man and Shinji a girl, the reaction would be very different.

[Stratomeister]

If Misato was a man and Shinji a girl, the reaction would be very different.

I have a feeling if that had happened, it way have put me off Eva for quite a while... And hopefully it would have aired at a different original time slot.

[Dream]

Although these guys do have a point. If Misato was a man and Shinji a girl, the reaction would be very different.

lol...

[Veoren]

To Kendriks:

I agree with you.. And I don't think she could be sexual with Shinji because in the TV show AND EoE she is terrified/disgusted of Shinji watching her, she didn't want him to see this side of her. Ok wait maybe in EoE she doesn't ccare too much and gets over it quickly, but still..

[Tribblepoo]

And most (if not all) of the characters in Eva are hiding their true self behind some sort of mask. Misato seems happy and lighthearted but she's covering up a much more twisted persona that only appears rarely.

I guess it really shows that after first watching the show (on the dub) that Misato came off to me as one of the most twisted characters in the show. The woman was a hair away from completely twisting herself into psychosis.

After watching the series subbed, with more accurate translations, I began to get ill at just how fucked Misato is. To me, she surpasses even Gendo as a fucked up character.