So that Ritsuko/Seele scene

[NemZ]

Which I mentioned [s]last week[/s] way back when, around twenty posts after I lost my temper and reprecipitated this shitstorm for reasons I can't really recall right now.

I said the same quite some time ago as well.

As far as the rape's actuality goes, It's something that has to be inferred for precisely the reasons Corporal Chaos mentions; because Anno had to find a way to sneak it past the censors. Unfortunately that also means there's no irrefutable proof, so if someone can't (or won't) see what's there then it just can't be helped.

[skikes]

Nerv did it. PS I'm back

Welcome back. I like this. Though I wouldn't put it all down to the betrayal of Nerv. Yes it's important but I think the relationship with Gendo is equally important. While yes, Nerv is her life, what was her reason for joining?

Why did Ritsuko join Nerv? She hated her mother. She hated that her mother was never there for her so then why would she follow in her footsteps? For Gendo.

In episode 21 we see Dr. Akagi with a Young Gendo. In the background we have a young Ritsuko, a school girl watching as her mother has Gendo hanging on her every word.


Cut to a few scenes later and we have Ritsuko on her first day at Nerv and then scene involving Dr. Akagi in the arms of Gendo.



And who do we have watching this little scene unfold...


Visibly saddened from just moments before, overjoyed at the prospect of working at Nerv.


Moments later we're shown conversation between Ritsuko and her mother:

Dr. Akagi - "They seemed so good together"
Ritsuko - "You can never tell with a man and a woman, because it's not logical"

Ritsuko joined Nerv to become closer to Gendo, emulating her mother. A whim. A school girls broken crush that hardened her. She bottled up her feelings and focused on the job at hand. Obviously it became too much for her in the end, when even with her mother out of the way she still would never have him. He belonged to Rei/Yui.

[Mr. Tines]

Anno had to find a way to sneak it past the censors.

And it's worth reminding everyone that in the OA version, we only just about see her bare shoulders in that scene.

[TheLobe]

So she may not have been raped literally, but she definatly was symbolically. Kinda like Asuaka's suicide.

[DoubleZeva]

I think I'm just about ready to give up arguing this point because the fantastical and 'shocking' will always win over depth and the profound no matter how many leaps in logic it requires.

At this point we are repeating ourselves. Esp in the "Rape isn't gentle" argument.
For the last time, You will get bruised in a rape, even if you cooperate. Even consensual sex leaves you a bit disheveled.


But like you said, some people WANT to believe this because they find rape more fascinating than a rational explanation. Any evidence to the contrary will be dismissed and explained away with contrived apologist logic.

Olcams Razor says she was not raped. But like UFOs and Jesus Toast, people go for the more exciting answer.

[NemZ]

But like you said, some people DON'T WANT to believe this because they find rape more problematic than an irrational explanation. Any evidence to the contrary will be dismissed and explained away with contrived apologist logic.

Fixed that for ya.

[DoubleZeva]

Fixed that for ya.

Please do not re-word people's arguments. That kind of thing is best saved for trolling 4chan, not polite debate.

My favorite manga (Shadow Star) involves a brutal rape ending in death of one of the main characters. I have no problem with rape. I just don't think it's a rational explanation here.

[honsou]

And we see Ritsuko naked, imprisoned, and under coercion by people who don't give a fuck for her life or dignity. What's your point?

We see her naked, yes that's true. We see her imprisoned but not under any restraints. Finally the under coercion by people who don't give a fuck for her life or dignity. Yes she is under coercion, yes they don't care about her dignity but I'd actually argue they care about her life in a rudimentary sense. What do I mean by this, well its simple. They let her go free to keep working on the project. If she was not important to the project, they would of either kept holding her or killed her like they did Kaji.

So she may not have been raped literally, but she definatly was symbolically. Kinda like Asuaka's suicide.

I will say this, if you want to say that it was in a symbolic sense, the rape and exploitation of her dignity, then it would be very hard for me to disprove that. But again lets look at a time line events to see if we can actually prove a physical rape occurred before her meeting with SEELE

The biggest issue we will have is there is actually no scene between these events, it goes directly from Gendo's face to Ritsuko standing naked in front of SEELE. Now as we saw with Mistato and Fuyutsuki, SEELE were the ones asking the questions not the goons. So for rape theory to work out you first have to believe one of two things, first that there was an interrogation by the goons before they brought her up to SEELE (something that did not happened with Mistato or Fuyutsuki) or they simply raped her to...soften her up for the main interrogation for SEELE. Since no one here seems to be arguing for the second lets look at the first.

Since we see nothing, not the capture, not a goon, not a forceful interrogation, we don't even see how she walked into the room with SEELE. So for what happened in-between those events we can only go off conjecture. What do we know about interrogation? First I would argue that all but the most primitive organizations go from less drastic to more drastic measures of getting information. Now lets also look at rape used in interrogations, as we have seen in this thread there have been examples but it has only been used in 2 kinds of cases. The sort of rapes to force a confession and the one time the guy in gitmo was threaten with raped when they had used every other possible means of interrogation. Firstly its not the first kind because they were trying to get useful information out of Ritsuko. Then we come to the second case, since we have no proof that they even questioned her before hand, in fact we have evidence that the first time she was asked questions was when she actually sees SEELE. This seems to go out the window as well.

Now as for the people who said a rape could happen by gun point and that's why, she was perfectly healthy when she saw SEELE. Now in a home invasion style rape, or a serial rapist sort of thing, yes this occurs. But a rape in an interrogation means it had to be extremely violent. Think about it, they put a gun to her head to make her talk. There are very few things worse the threatening death but rape would probably be one of them. What i am supposed to believe is that from here they said "talk or we'll rape you" she refused to talk but still followed all their instructions. Which seems...well quite frankly unbelievable.

So you might ask, what do I think happened? Well since there is very little information out there, I would guess something like this. Ritsuko is taken to SEELE, and forced to strip before speaking to them. The main reason I say this is when she speaks to SEELE, she looks more offended and annoyed to be in this situation then anything else. Scene happens and what i think is more likely is that SEELE kept telling her stuff about Gendo to poison her against him, which led her to do what she did. And to be honest even this line of thinking takes a ton of assumptions here, rape theory takes inventing an entire episodes worth of material all from a naked women and some words that probably do not actually translate into rape in the context they were said.

Edit: Oh yeah Nemz, one of my favorite manga of all time is Berserk, they rape people to say hello in that one. So its not a "denial" thing.

[NemZ]

Please do not re-word people's arguments. That kind of thing is best saved for trolling 4chan, not polite debate.

Your dismissive statement works just as well both ways, which was my point... it's an impasse. Or perhaps I should have politely compared your views to Jesus toast and ufos as well?

[thewayneiac]

The biggest issue we will have is there is actually no scene between these events, it goes directly from Gendo's face to Ritsuko standing naked in front of SEELE. Now as we saw with Mistato and Fuyutsuki, SEELE were the ones asking the questions not the goons. So for rape theory to work out you first have to believe one of two things, first that there was an interrogation by the goons before they brought her up to SEELE (something that did not happened with Mistato or Fuyutsuki) or they simply raped her to...soften her up for the main interrogation for SEELE. Since no one here seems to be arguing for the second lets look at the first.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that most of the proponents of this theory believe the second.

Misato is completely irrelevent here. She was not in Seele custody like Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko; she met them in the same holograph room at Nerv HQ where Gendo and Fuyutsuki meet them regularly.

[honsou]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that most of the proponents of this theory believe the second.

Okay lets look at the second. That they softened her up for questioning by raping her. This method of interrogation defies all logic, any organization that was able to essentially take control of the world would know such a technique would not work. Lets go though how this would go down shall we?

SEELE goons capture her, bring her to a room (I'm assuming its near SEELE's room), and without Ritsuko knowing exactly what is happening brutally rape her. Once they are done with the act they bring her naked in front of SEELE to finally start answering questions. First if she was raped, no way in hell she would act the way she acted. Ritsuko seemed annoyed at this whole situation, she did not seem like a women who was just raped, thrown into a room, and forced to answer questions. Next softening someone up in this way would be counterproductive. SEELE needs to get important, useful and most importantly 100% accurate information. Rape tends to make victims become introverted or hostile, especially when they see no reason in the rape. In this case, there is no way out of the rape, there is no "talking to get out of it", here it is simply rape for the sake of rape. This theory i find even less likely because such senseless rape would HAVE to be mentioned, in some form of another.

[thewayneiac]

Okay lets look at the second. That they softened her up for questioning by raping her. This method of interrogation defies all logic, any organization that was able to essentially take control of the world would know such a technique would not work.

I don't recall if anyone else has mentioned this but, whether or not this would work in real life is irrelevent. There's been way too much "this isn't how it works" in this thread. All that's important is what the evidence says happened, and that evidence heavily implies rape. Whether or not this is a reliable interrogation technique in real life is besde the point and an invalid argument.

Besides, look at it this way: why would Seele think it would work to basically say to Ritsuko, "Nyah, nyah, Gendo let us strip you!"? Wouldn't they do something to her that they were certain would turn her against Gendo if she thought he had allowed it? There's no way they would think that a peepshow would do the trick.

[esselfortium]

I don't recall if anyone else has mentioned this but, whether or not this would work in real life is irrelevent. There's been way too much "this isn't how it works" in this thread. All that's important is what the evidence says happened, and that evidence heavily implies rape. Whether or not this is a reliable interrogation technique in real life is besde the point and an invalid argument.

"Heavily implies"? It only even remotely implies that if you're already assuming that rape would be a logical and believable path for them to take to achieve their desired ends, which honsou has done more than enough to demonstrate it isn't. It might be time to rethink the conclusion instead of trying to continually rearrange and reinterpret the evidence to fit it. This theological approach that's been taken in finding more and more unlikely ways to "explain away" the ever-increasing number of holes in the theory is doing far more harm than good to the ability to understand NGE.

Besides, look at it this way: why would Seele think it would work to basically say to Ritsuko, "Nyah, nyah, Gendo let us strip you!"? Wouldn't they do something to her that they were certain would turn her against Gendo if she thought he had allowed it? There's no way they would think that a peepshow would do the trick.

Because you're again ignoring a huge amount of the depth of Ritsuko's character arc, and incorrectly assuming that all of it must lie within the small subset of NGE that you've opened for examination, completely losing the context of it.

Ritsuko's jealousy of Rei in relation to her attachment to Gendo has been building slowly in subtle moments since at least episode 6, and that he allows her to be sent off to the known enemy for interrogation in Rei's stead is the culmination of that. You're stripping out a vast amount of character and story depth, attempting to explain the conclusion of Ritsuko's character arc while completely overlooking the importance of the path that has led up to that conclusion.

If you leave out episodes 1 through 22 in your consideration, it might seem reasonable that what we are shown wasn't enough to break Ritsuko in and of itself, but it goes without saying that interpretations of scenes should always be looked at in the full context of the story, especially where NGE is concerned. Defenses of the rape analysis rely on isolating parts from the conclusion of Ritsuko's story and treating it as though this conclusion comprised her entire character arc.

The rape analysis attempts to substitute actual story and character depth for an immediate-gratification answer. In the arguments that have been made here clinging to the purported depth of the interrogation scene, the plot has been rewritten in such a way that it actually nullifies much of the depth of the surrounding story.

[honsou]

I don't recall if anyone else has mentioned this but, whether or not this would work in real life is irrelevent. There's been way too much "this isn't how it works" in this thread. All that's important is what the evidence says happened, and that evidence heavily implies rape. Whether or not this is a reliable interrogation technique in real life is besde the point and an invalid argument.

Here we disagree, the evidence does not imply rape. Hell it doesn't even imply that she was roughed up. All we see is a stripped Ritsuko. Given her disposition during that time we see her, it doesn't even seem anything happened to her beyond mild annoyance. She isn't especially angry, sad or even numb, she just seems annoyed at this whole situation. This is not the reaction of a rape victim. Now after she finds out Gendo send her instead of Rei she does have a strong reaction, but i think this comes from the notion that Gendo sent her in harms way not that she was raped. Why do i say this? Well its simple, rape is one of the most traumatic events a human being can under go, especially when its a state ordered rape. In these sorts of cases the person is usually traumatized for the rest of their lives, many times in a way that is irreversible. While focusing on the one you love during this situation could help lighten these effects, it wouldn't cause a person to just totally be able to shut the entire experience out of their head and be generally fine. So while i do think "whether this would work in real life" is actually a fair question when it comes to an anime like Eva, what could be even more important is "whether this reaction is within logical parameters for said event" and I'd have to say, no this is not a logical reaction, given that and other information I've given in this thread, the rape didn't happen.

[skikes]

Besides, look at it this way: why would Seele think it would work to basically say to Ritsuko, "Nyah, nyah, Gendo let us strip you!"? Wouldn't they do something to her that they were certain would turn her against Gendo if she thought he had allowed it?

That isn't all they tell her that is just the part we are shown. If you watch the scene with Seele discussing having someone to use against Gendo they say that this person must be informed of the whole truth. They tell her more than what we are shown. The reason we aren't shown it is because it would spoil the plot and lets use focus the Rei/Ritsuko/Gendo subplot.

[thewayneiac]

That isn't all they tell her that is just the part we are shown. If you watch the scene with Seele discussing having someone to use against Gendo they say that this person must be informed of the whole truth. They tell her more than what we are shown. The reason we aren't shown it is because it would spoil the plot and lets use focus the Rei/Ritsuko/Gendo subplot.

You are bizarrely missreading that conversation! They are saying they need to question someone who already knows the truth so they can learn the truth as well. In no way are they saying that they need to make their subject aware of the truth. You have just made the most counterintuitive interpretation in this entire debate.

[skikes]

You are bizarrely missreading that conversation! They are saying they need to question someone who already knows the truth so they can learn the truth as well. In no way are they saying that they need to make their subject aware of the truth. You have just made the most counterintuitive interpretation in this entire debate.

Oh really? Sorry, my mistake. I was skimming the episode last night and must have misunderstood.

[TheLobe]

What i am supposed to believe is that from here they said "talk or we'll rape you" she refused to talk but still followed all their instructions. Which seems...well quite frankly unbelievable.

normally i'd agree with that. but for her overall submissive attitude afterwards. she keeps going on about how she could take any embarassment. and how she doesn't care about her body.

[chee]

Ritsuko raped Seele. She just got naked in both preparation and a means of getting them off guard. EoE is just their power fantasy while they all retreat into their minds as a means of dealing with their trauma: the story actually ends at 24.

[esselfortium]

I said the same quite some time ago as well.

As far as the rape's actuality goes, It's something that has to be inferred for precisely the reasons Corporal Chaos mentions; because Anno had to find a way to sneak it past the censors. Unfortunately that also means there's no irrefutable proof, so if someone can't (or won't) see what's there then it just can't be helped.

...wait, what?

Unfortunately that also means there's no irrefutable proof

so if someone can't (or won't) see what's there then it just can't be helped.

there's no irrefutable proof

see what's there

I think there might be a small flaw in your reasoning here.