Evangelion University Dissertation

[TB3]

Attached below is something other fans might find interesting, my final dissertation for a three-year English Literature course I took from 2005-2008. We were given free reign to draw on anything for our source material, and I chose to draw on Manga and Anime, and Eva ended up featuring heavily.

It's worth noting however, that when I wrote this I knew nothing of the Classified Information files (heck, at the time I was still convinced Unit-0's soul was that of Agaki Senior) and consequently get some of my extrapolations wrong, particularly when the subject of Kyoko and the 'indivisibility of souls' (facepalm) come into the narrative - this extends to some other franchises that I draw upon, such as Hellsing, which was months away from finishing when I was completing my studies, and had yet to reveal the nature of elements of its plot and characters, leaving me in the position of making predictions or suppositions that later proved false.

Please also understand that this was written under time constraints and with a pre-established word-count limit of about 10,000 words. If I could have I would have gone on for much longer.

As such, I've left any original typos or errors in unchanged, and only reformatted the text for posting here, plus deleting names and references to visual aids not included here.

Hope you enjoy.

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[center]IDENTITY AND IDENTITY-LOSS IN Japanese MANGA AND ANIME

A dissertation submitted to the Department of English and Creative Writing in fulfilment of the unit ENG 301

10,850 words
[/center]

INTRODUCTION

'Like a wind from Hell, the atomic cloud roared up six miles into the sky over Hiroshima…and in the city, time stopped.'

The above quotation comes from Barefoot Gen, a two-thousand page work by Japanese artist Keiji Nakazawa, who as a six-year-old survived the atomic attack on Hiroshima but lost his father, mother and brother. Nakazawa began documenting these experiences through the comic/graphic-novel medium of ‘manga’ in 1973. Barefoot Gen began serialisation that year in the boy’s magazine Shonen Jump, and eventually ran to ten volumes. So famous is the strip that it has also been adapted as both a live-action drama and a pair of animated films or ‘anime’.

Barefoot Gen’s uncompromising account of the horrors of Hiroshima underline the fundamental difference that until recently existed between Western and Japanese perceptions of animation. In the west, it is pigeonholed as a genre, and rarely seen beyond the confines of children’s television and the family-orientated offerings of Disney. In Japan however, animation is not a genre, but a medium, and thus anime and manga cover a wide range of age-groups, themes and subject materials, from children’s after-school entertainment to full-length feature films, often using the animation to convey visuals that would be difficult or near impossible in live-action cinema. As Susan Napier points out in Anime; from Akira to Princess Mononoke, the effectiveness of Barefoot Gen’s visuals “could only have been rendered effectively in animation (because of its spectacular quality and the necessary distance that the animated image provides)…most memorable is the image of the little girl with whom Gen had been playing, as she turns instantaneously from a “realistic” cartoon character into a damned soul from Buddhist mythology, a “walking ghost,” hair on fire, eyes popping out, and fingers melting into hideously extended tendrils” .

Napier also throws light on the vast amount of celluloid animation produced in Japan – studios release upwards of fifty new anime TV series yearly, and half of all films aired in Japanese cinemas are animated. Though much of what is released is shallow pop-culture entertainment, quickly produced and quickly forgotten, among these are gems – anime and manga that provoke thought, provide insight and thrill the imagination.

One of the recurring themes in modern Japanese media is the question of change – shifts in self-identity. One of the most iconic anime of all time, Akira, set in a post WW3 vision of Tokyo, follows a teenage street-biker gang as two of their members become caught up in a series of quasi-supernatural events. As such, Akira embodies change in a variety of guises, such as the macabre, the apocalyptic, and the horror of adolescence. These have since become common set-pieces in anime and manga alike, studying the self-perceptions of characters and their changing self identities against the backdrops of war, fantasy or growing up, periods and environments of extreme change.

The paradigm shifts inherent to such storylines are often hard-fought and bloody, reflecting Japan’s own history. For example the era of the Shogunate, also known as the Edo Period, came at the end of years of civil war as samurai clans fought to either protect or depose the Imperial family, climaxing in 160,000 soldiers clashing at the battle of Sekigahara Crossroads in 1600. The Edo Period itself ended with a sudden shift in Japanese cultural identity when the US Navy’s Admiral Matthew Perry forcibly opened up Japan to foreign trade through gunboat diplomacy. Perry’s fleet of warships, some driven by the new and frightening power of steam entered into Yokosuka harbour in 1853 - “the massive firepower projecting from the opened gunports together with Perry’s readiness to employ it” quickly forced the government’s hand, a move that deeply troubled the Japanese people as recorded in this poem;

The steam-powered ships
break the halcyon slumber
of the Pacific;
a mere four boats are enough
to make us lose sleep at night

The same can be said for the post-war American occupation of Japan, heralded by the two atomic attacks that ended WW2. Just like how in Barefoot Gen “the viewer sees the architecture of authority – Hiroshima Castle and the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall – dissolving into an incandescent nightmare of fragmenting ruins” (Napier, p.169), the Japanese people were forced to watch as well meaning but culturally ham-fisted Americans dismantled the former political architecture, stripped the emperor of his divinity, and established a democratic electoral system. Though the resulting prosperity made Japan a world power, such change brought about an effective national-identity-crisis. As David Pollack writes in his work Reading Against Culture; Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel, “over the past half-century and more, the question of what it means to be Japanese has taken the form of a persistent discourse known as nihonjinron, or “theories of Japaneseness,” involving explanations of national character expressed in social-scientific, quasi-scientific, and pseudoscientific terms.” In the face of such debate, and against a background of extreme social change, the issue of identity came once again into question, and the fear seemed to be that Japan would loose hold of what it meant to be Japanese, both in terms of the individual, and as a nation. A good word to describe this fear would be mukokuseki, or ‘stateless’.

Anime is itself, mukokuseki. It has crossed national borders to become a popular sub-culture in the west, and the questions of identity it raises, and the underlying fear of identity-loss are universal. However, in exploring these ideas, it draws not only on Japanese mythology and storytelling, but also western religions, fables and narratives, filtering them through a unique Japanese perspective. In the following pages I aim to explore these issues of identity in anime, and see what can be learnt.



Chapter One: PHYSICAL IDENTITY

“This is Evangelion – a man made in man’s own image”
- Doctor Ritsuko Akagi, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Episode 1

Towards the climax of Akira, protagonist Tetsuo undergoes a macabre transformation. Having developed telekinetic powers, Tetsuo goes on a rampage through Tokyo until he is confronted by military forces that fire an orbital laser at him, only succeeding in destroying one of his arms. An attempt to regrow the arm with his psychic abilities immediately goes wrong, as first the replacement arm and then his body begin to mutate horrifically. The increasingly terrified Tetsuo is unable to control the hideous transformations which climax with him transcending to a higher plane of existence. Many have taken this to be a metaphor for adolescence, where the body of a child gradually becomes that of an adult and the identity must adapt to the new circumstances, and suggest Tetsuo’s final line of “I am Tetsuo” supports this. Although he has changed immensely he is still the same being, just like how an adult is still the same person they were as a child, despite vast physical differences.

This concept of transformation, or in the Japanese 'henshin', has long been a staple of anime storylines, though unlike Tetsuo the majority of transformations are controlled and undestructive. A good example would be the ‘magical girl’ genre, best demonstrated in the popular anime Sailor Moon, where otherwise normal teenage girls learn they are reincarnated warrior-princesses and gain the ability to transform into super-heroines. Here, and throughout the magical-girl genre, while the transformed character is stronger, faster, does not age and is embodied with supernatural abilities, their psyches and physical appearances remain unchanged. In essence, the characters have changed costumes and put on make-up (indeed in Sailor Moon the characters shout “Make-Up!” when they wish to transform). While they revel in the abilities gained through their transformation, they do not suffer any reservations or doubts regarding their physical identity.

A far different analysis of a person undergoing a superhuman transformation occurs in the popular manga 'Hellsing', a continuation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula set in present-day Britain, which since beginning serialisation in 1997 has been adapted into two separate animes. The Hellsing Organisation, headed by the descendants of Stoker’s vampire-hunter Abraham Van Helsing, are a paramilitary force charged by Her Majesty with the defence of Britain from all supernatural threats. Against such threats Hellsing is able to fight fire with fire, as they possess an enslaved vampire, Dracula himself, now using the name Alucard (a reverse-spelling of ‘Dracula’).

Alucard’s first mission in the narrative is to eliminate a vampire posing as a minister, who has slaughtered the residents of Cheddar in Somerset, and reanimated their bodies as zombie-like servants or ‘ghouls’. The sole survivor is a young policewoman named Seras, who is fatally injured and subsequently reborn by Alucard as a newly-fledged vampire.
Seras’ new vampiric body comes with the traditional advantages of the transforming ‘magical girl’ – she’s immortal, telepathically endowed, can dodge bullets and bench-press objects the size and weight of a car. Unlike the traditional transforming heroine however, Seras is at odds with this. Not only do these new powers disturb her, but she fears she is becoming something other than herself, something inhuman. In addition her body also comes with powerful predatory instincts that Seras is unfamiliar with and which threaten to overwhelm her.

In essence, like Tetsuo, Seras’s crisis can be seen as the conflict of identity teenagers go through as they reach puberty – the sensation of their body changing against their will and the increasing awareness of one’s own sexuality. Though Seras as a young woman has already undergone puberty, the metaphor is carried fully in the first volume of Hellsing. As a policewoman in Cheddar she is dressed in a loose fitting police uniform that hides her figure and gives her a somewhat prepubescent appearance (an effect enhanced in the first anime adaptation, which saw her wearing a heavy flak-vest that completely removed any sexuality). After her transformation however she is supplied with a tight-fitting military uniform which enhances her figure and sexualises her to the point of fetishism (un-coincidentally, Seras is regarded among many anime fans as a sex symbol).

In addition, many of Seras’s new vampiric instincts are of a very physical nature. The defining image of her in all three incarnations of the Hellsing franchise show her with blood-red, lustful eyes, both tempted and trying to resist the allure of a bloody object (either a knife or her own blood-stained fingers). Opening her mouth and revealing her fang-like canines, she extends her tongue to lick the red fluid. The erotic undertones serve to underline the metaphor – Seras, like all teenagers, is having to come to terms with her developing body and the new sensations that come with it.

Another parallel with adolescence is this focus on blood, as a natural part of growing up for any girl is beginning their menstrual cycle and monthly period bleedings, and like many teenagers Seras initially fights against her new circumstances. She refuses to drink blood, progressively becomes weaker as her body effectively starves. It is only when she is directly ordered to drink some blood that she does so, and again the sequence has extremely erotic undertones. Hellsing’s leader Integra Hellsing intentionally cuts her finger open on a knife and orders Seras to lick it better (on the pretence that vampire saliva has healing properties). Eyes lidded, panting and flushed in the face, Seras licks the blood, and seems the better for it. From this point on Seras progressively begins to develop and explore her abilities, single-handedly saving a contingent of human mercenaries from a company of vampirised Waffen SS veterans. It’s only however when she drinks blood of her own accord that her development comes to it’s climax; not only do her supernatural powers escalate dramatically, but she becomes confident, self-assured and unafraid of her nature, exemplified by her calm words in Chapter 56 to a Catholic vampire hunter, Alexander Anderson that “now I dread nothing.” In effect, she has accepted and come to terms with her new body and nature.

Importantly, her fears of her identity being subsumed by her predatory instincts have not come to pass, demonstrated when she merely grins cockily at Anderson after he condemns her. In effect, in accepting what she is, she has remained who she is – her subsequent behaviour demonstrates this; although now fearsomely powerful, she retains the same personality she had before her transformation, only with the benefits that come of maturity. Much like a teenager who has passed the rite-of-passage that is adolescence, she has found the balance between innocence and experience.

Finding the balance between two extremes – for example between that of man and machine, is another recurring theme of anime, particularly in the sub-genre of science-fiction known as mecha. The essential premise of any mecha series is that of human beings piloting giant humanoid robots for whatever specific reason, most often in defence of humanity against an aggressor of extra terrestrial origin. These robots are essentially suits of armour, technological extensions of the human body, or as Napier describes them, “pseudo-bodies”.

The anime 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' (often abbreviated to simply Evangelion) is considered one of the best examples of the mecha genre. 15 years after a catastrophe that killed a sixth of humanity, a small group of adolescents are conscripted into a paramilitary wing of the UN called NERV, which has developed the weapons necessary to combat a series of extra terrestrial threats known ambiguously as ‘angels’. The weapons for these young pilots are bio mechanical giants known as Evangelions or EVAs, grown from embryos and augmented with body armour and inbuilt armaments.

To operate an EVA the pilot candidate must mentally synchronise with it – this in effect fuses the mind of the pilot and the body of the EVA into a single being. This removes the lag time inherent in any weapons system but it has a severe downside – any damage suffered to the EVA is felt as pain by the pilot, blurring the lines between the human and the machine. Indeed, when pilot Shinji Ikari’s EVA is pierced by a particle-beam weapon, the mental trauma is enough to trigger a heart attack. This destabilising imagery of the teenage pilots suffering immense pain despite having no injuries repeats throughout the series; particularly disturbing is when pilot Asuka Langley Soryu’s EVA Unit-02 is dismembered and decapitated in a fight, leaving her screaming horrifically as she suffers the sensation of gruesome, violent death without actually dying. These scenes serve as a horrific demonstration of the clash and mesh of identities, as the EVAs are sentient machines, and the merging of identities is a consensual choice made by both the pilot and construct. In the back the anime’s tie-in manga, artist Yoshiyuki Sadamoto explains the process thusly;

“On the floor of the midbrain is the ventral tegmental system, that neurobiologists called Region A10…certain emotions are processed here; such as the thoughts of two lovers – or of a parent and child. And it is the synchronisation of the threads and bundles of A10 that splice pilot and EVA together, to become one entity, to fight. In other words, the power of love drives this weapon of mass destruction.”

This explanation is integral to understanding the EVAs – the sole reason why teenagers such as Asuka and Shinji are able to synchronise with these “weapons of mass destruction” is because unbeknownst to the pilots, the EVAs contain the consciousnesses of their mothers, which opens an intriguing new line of enquiry;

In the world of Evangelion, metaphysics are a developed school of science, and the soul has been scientifically proven to exist. Due to a separate pair of accidents, the souls of Shinji and Asuka’s mothers have been grafted to their respective EVA’s. In the case of Yui, Shinji’s mother, she was at the time attempting to pilot Unit-01 and was absorbed into the machine, body, mind, and soul. The soul of Kyoko, Asuka’s mother was likewise absorbed into EVA Unit-02 during a failed experiment, but her physical body was left behind and continued to move and talk. Without the driving life force of Kyoko’s soul however it gradually went insane and eventually hung itself. This is an interested concept in that it demonstrates in the world of Evangelion a Cartesian duality – that of a physical ‘brain’ and an intangible ‘mind’ – without the intangible aspect, the physical body is little more than a puppet.

The same is demonstrated in the case of the third EVA pilot, Rei Ayanami. Rei is such an integral part of the plans laid down in NERV’s manifesto that steps are taken against any harm befalling her; namely spare clone bodies stored below NERV. Though these bodies are alive and seemingly conscious (they move, laugh and scream in pain), they are described as soulless, like the body that Kyoko left behind. Should Rei be seriously injured or even killed (as has happened twice to date in the series), her soul can be transferred to a new body. Underlining this Cartesian concept is the curious observation that memories and knowledge (which common sense tells us are simply data encoded biologically in the brain) are also transferred with Rei’s soul. Likewise, the motherly affection displayed by the EVAs for their ‘children’ (Unit-01’s first ever action in the series is to move autonomously to protect Shinji from a falling gantry with its hand) demonstrate that like Rei, the identities of the mothers continue despite the destruction of the physical container.

An episode of the anime Big O examines a similar concept. Like Evangelion, Big O is a mecha series, set in a metropolis called Paradigm City. Surrounded on all sides by endless desert, Paradigm is apparently the sole remaining human city in a world where forty years ago, a mysterious event wiped everyone’s memories of all events prior to that day. In Paradigm, pre-event technologies and fragments of history turn up on an infrequent basis, and in one episode, a rogue scientist named Eugene rediscovers the secrets of bio engineering and sets out to profit from this by genetically breeding pets to sell at a profit (animals are rare in Paradigm and thus coveted and expensive). However, to create a creature Eugene needs a pre-existing organism to reverse-engineer into an animal. To this end he kidnaps people and mutates them into superficially genuine animals like Tabby Cats and Golden Retrievers. Due however to a flaw in the process these animals shortly afterwards mutate into grotesque chimeras that either go on insane rampages or kill themselves. The episode explains that this is because the original human soul (and the word soul is used definitively) remains unaltered despite the mutation of the body. Unable to cope with what has been done to them, the once-human chimeras commit suicide, a good example of what Kelly Hurley terms “body horror”, the human body “defamiliarized, rendered other” through “representations of quasi-human figures” and “impossible embodiment of multiple, incompatible forms”. 3

One of the classic science-fiction concepts in keeping with “body horror” is that of the cyborg, part man and part machine. Such a character exists in Big O, Alan Gabriel. A double-agent for a shadow organisation known as the Union, Alan is a dandy dressed psychopath who delights in the harm and killing of others. Allied to whoever allows him to wreak the most havoc, Alan’s appearance is distinctly unsettling; his eyes are always hidden behind a bandanna tied around his head, his face is excessively made-up with white paint and heavy use of lipstick, and his outfit consists of an tight-fitting zoot-suit and oversized hat. The cumulative effect renders him as disturbingly androgynous, neither male nor female as well as neither man nor machine. Alan’s choice to “quit being a total human” also renders him disturbing; his cybernetic limbs not only move with unnatural precision and speed, but can function as weapons or grapnels and allow him to hardwire himself into machinery. Freed from the constraints of the human form, Alan’s mad rampages and perverse delight in violence suggest a detachment from humanity – in giving up his human body, he has become a true monster, or as he likes to call himself “the boogieman!”

This blurring of the line between body and mind is a theme that reoccurs in Big O. As said, it is a mecha series, and in the world of Paradigm, giant robots known as Megadeii (singular; Megadeus) clash on a day-to-day basis, and the most powerful are referred to as the “Big-Class”. One of these, Big O, serves as a guardian of Paradigm City, controlled by its chosen pilot (known as a “Dominus”), lead character Roger Smith. By profession Roger is a Negotiator, someone who can be hired to conduct negotiations between two other parties, for example between kidnappers and the family of the kidnappee. Roger frequently encounters danger in these missions, and so like James Bond he’s equipped with a number of gadgets to protect him. It’s worth noting however that Roger does not perceive Big O as such a gadget, but as an entity in its own right. Indeed a flashback by Roger to how he first came into contact with the Big reflects this as he specifically uses the phrase “team up”, suggesting an equality between man and machine, and likewise a demonstration that Roger considers his physical identity distinct from Big O, despite comments by other characters describing the Megadeus as “that big alter-ego of yours”.

In all these examples it is demonstrated that physical form and personal identity are not synonymous – just as Roger considers himself distinct from Big O, so too is Seras’s identity distinct from the natural urges that come from her body and which never succeed in fully overwhelming her identity. Metaphorically we could describe this as a reflection of Japanese tradition and culture – though the form of the country may change and new sub-cultures may arise, the original identity continues. Though the physical body may contribute towards identity, it is not the be all and end all.





Chapter 2: SOCIAL IDENTITY

“My name is Roger Smith. I perform a much-need job here in the City of Anmesia”
- Roger Smith, Big O, Episode 1

In the first anime adaptation of the Hellsing manga, there is a character called Helena. Transformed into a vampire as a child, Helena has the form of a prepubescent girl, but is actually a fully grown woman in all but appearance, seemingly inspired by child vampire Claudia from the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire 1. Helena points out that as immortals, vampires can live eternally, and as such are true individuals “free from land, country, religion, all the petty forms of human bondage”. In comparison with the vampiric lifespan, all other things from humans to civilisations are but flashes in the pan, seas of change in which Helena, Seras and their kind are fixed points, isolated and singular.

This lack of social identity, being cut off from the “petty forms of human bondage” that make up society is explored in Episode 14 of Big O, ‘Roger the Wanderer’. Roger, seemingly thrown into Paradigm City’s pre-event past struggles to come to terms in a world where he has no place. His home is a bank, no-one knows him and even his personal seat in his bar-of-choice has been occupied by a stranger. Quickly Roger begins to question his own identity and memories as he has no way to prove that anything he remembers of himself is true, a process spurred on by his discovery of a Big O comic strip in a newspaper that reflects the incidents that he remembers from his own life. Roger begins to fear that he’s just a homeless man who hallucinates that he is a character from a newspaper-comic. Gradually he sinks into depression as he aimlessly wanders through the city.

This dependence on social constructs is reflected to greater and lesser degrees in both Evangelion and Hellsing. In Evangelion for example, the only social contact Shinji has with his estranged father Gendo (incidentally the Commander of NERV) is a yearly visit to his mother’s grave. However the meeting has no physical basis and is purely symbolic as Yui was absorbed into Unit-01, thus her ‘grave’ is just a marker standing over an empty patch of ground. Though both are aware of this, Gendo and Shinji make an annual trip to leave flowers or say a few words, demonstrated the constructed value the marker reading ‘Yui Ikari, 1977-2004’ has for both of them as a common touchstone.

In Hellsing, Alucard’s personal nemesis is a vampire hunter named Alexander Anderson, a Paladin of the Catholic Church assigned to a secretive sect of the Vatican known as the Iscariot Organisation, like Hellsing a dedicated counter-paranormal taskforce. A zealot to the core, Anderson is a man who sees his only worth as an instrument of the Vatican and God, much like the ‘divine sinner’ Judas Iscariot, who in betraying Christ was doing God’s work in order to bring about the Crucifixion. To this end Anderson devotes himself to godly works in all walks of his life. When not on duty he runs a catholic orphanage, and as a vampire-hunter he is single minded in his crusade against unlife, which serves as a controlled outlet for his internal demons. Without God as his anchor/mediator, Anderson would be a monster, something he himself believes to the extent that he regrets he was born into the world as a man, as he says while he readies to stab himself with a Nail of the Crucifixion, and thus become a true instrument of God;

“I need be just a bayonet. A bayonet named Divine Punishment. I wish I’d been born a storm, or a menace, or a single explosive. No heart, no tears, just as a terrible gale [would be] good. If with a pierce of this I can become that, then so be it.”

It is the same bonds to intangible social concepts that bring Gendo and Shinji together at an empty grave, and which give Anderson a means to channel his murderous skills to any form of good, and which also save Roger from his increasingly desperate fears as he walks the streets of an unfamiliar city. Reaching the lows of his fatalist depression, he begins to relive his own memories as a play enacted on stage, specifically the day he met Big O for the first time. He himself appears both as the sole audience member and as the actor onstage. This represents a new chain of thought to Roger, that he is just playing a part, with no identity of his own beyond the role of Roger Smith, Negotiator of Paradigm City. Everything that made up the life he knew are simply props and sets, anyone could fill the role if they read the lines and followed the stage directions. As Roger gets more and more agitated the world around him becomes increasingly surreal, until both he and the audience come to realise that all the events of the episode are in truth a hallucinatory representation of an identity crisis Roger had in the midst of a fight against a trio of Megadeii. Unable to cope with this much stress, Roger retreated (or as he puts it “ran away”) into this mental world. It is at this point that Roger has his final vision, where he is confronted by his android companion Dorothy;

DOROTHY: Roger Smith

Roger and Dorothy face each other from opposite ends of a street. Roger is dressed in the tattered suit of a homeless man he has worn throughout the episode, and Dorothy is dressed in an elaborate gown that once belonged to a dead girl she was built as a facsimile of.

ROGER: And you are R Dorothy Wayneright. You called me Roger Smith just now didn’t you Dorothy? And is it, appropriate that I play Roger Smith?

Roger clenches his fist. In shop windows lining the street the reflections of both he and Dorothy are dressed in the smart black ensembles worn in their roles of Negotiator and Companion.

DOROTHY: You said ‘to play’ but that’s ridiculous. You’re not an actor, Roger Smith.

ROGER: Yes that’s right. As long as you go on calling me that name, I’ll be Roger Smith.

He pulls off the tattered overcoat to reveal underneath the slick suit his reflection was wearing. Briefly the image returns to the theatre where Roger imagined his life as a play. All the seats are now filled with the other characters of the show, ally and antagonist alike. All their faces are hidden in shadow as they watch. Roger lifts his watch to his mouth to call for Big O.

ROGER: Big O! Showtime!

The giant Megadeus looms into view over the city blocks, and Roger returns to the battle he was fighting before his hallucinations began.

In the end, Roger is saved by the realisation that regardless of his own doubts, “the fear inside of me”, to the people around him he is Roger Smith. It is from this that he gains the strength to not only continue playing the role assigned him, but to embrace it, to “be Roger Smith”, and although he continues to have questions of doubt throughout the series, he remains confident that he is who he believes himself to be, taking the affirmation of his friends and enemies alike that he is Roger Smith.

Likewise, it is the realisation that someone not only recognises her existence but also values her that saves Evangelion’s Asuka after her ability to pilot her EVA Unit 02 fades and drives her into a series of panic attacks. Like Roger’s fears about his identity, Asuka fears that her only worth in life is in her function as an EVA pilot; when her pseudo-body is taken away from her and another pilot assigned, she sinks into a depression that borders on the suicidal, being found comatose in a bathtub after what seems to be a failed attempt to take her own life. She remains in this coma both through the end of the series and into the film that concluded the narrative, End of Evangelion. In the film NERV comes under an attack by the Japanese Strategic Self-Defence Force (JSSDF). To safeguard the still unresponsive Asuka she’s placed in EVA Unit 02 which is then hidden in a lake. After tracing the machine, the JDSSF attempt to destroy it via depth charges, the concussions of which wake Asuka but drive her into another panicked state. Fearing the end she goes into a foetal position in the cockpit, mumbling the words “I don’t wanna die” repeatedly as the camera slowly zooms in on her. Another voice begins to make itself heard, speaking words of comfort which Asuka is oblivious to. This is of course the voice of her mother contained within the EVA, but Asuka does not her. Another character previously pointed out that the childhood trauma of loosing her mother closed up Asuka’s heart to anyone else, which not only caused the loss of her prodigious piloting ability (as piloting EVA requires the machine and pilot to emotionally bond), but also prevents her from hearing Kyoko’s voice in her time of need. However as the sequence ends Asuka finally snaps and screams pleadingly for help, “I DON’T WANNA DIE!”

In asking for help, something which she has previously rejected throughout the series, the walls around Asuka’s heart are brought down and she realises the loving mother she thought she’d lost has been with her ever since she began piloting EVA. Elated, uplifted and empowered by this love, Asuka’s skills come back and she proceeds to lift the warship above out of the lake before throwing the vessel at the amassed military power brought to bear against NERV, before going on to swat ballistic missiles from the sky. In regaining her self-worth and self-identity, she has become virtually invincible. Much like Seras, this seems to be a right of passage to maturity, in that childhood traumas and fears are overcome, allowing new enlightenment, as Asuka shows in her joyous cries of “now I understand” how she and Kyoko were always together

In the cases of Asuka and Roger their bonds with others have been demonstrated as strengths, as means of affirming and realising self-identity. This is reflective of Takeo Doi’s “concept of amae, or healthy emotional dependence” as quoted by Pollack, the idea of kanjinshugi (in English ‘interpersonalism’). What though of a person who has no such bonds? The character of Integra from Hellsing is a good example. Having already lost her mother, Integra was forced to take up the reins of the Hellsing Organisation at an early age when her father named her heir on his deathbed. As such Integra has had to shape her identity to match the expectations placed on her to upload an organisation “built on blood and honour” without any form of parental or familial support. The results are striking, as Integra seems to reject the softness of her femininity and takes on extremely masculine traits and mannerisms. She dresses solely in unflattering business suits and military uniforms, chain smokes cigars, is a formidable combatant and demands that others address her by the title “Sir Hellsing” as opposed to the traditional honorific of a feminine title “Lady Hellsing”. These are all means of strengthening the identity she has built for herself as leader of the organisation, best demonstrated in a flashback where after her father’s death and an attempt on her life by her power-mad uncle she is belittled by a condescending Royal Navy Admiral. Snapping out that she is the family head and that she killed her uncle to maintain that position she intimidates the Admiral into effective submission, then smiles charmingly. This flash of femininity, along with other hints of sexuality used by Integra to manipulate others neatly counterpoint and empathise the masculine tendencies she displays.

Quid pro quo, one of the antagonists of Big O, Schwarzwald, demonstrates a character who has cut all social ties in order to reinvent his identity. Formerly Michael Seebach, a journalist and family man who bridled at the censorship of his articles by the state-owned newspaper Paradigm Press, he became obsessed with a quest to discover the truth of Paradigm City’s past. To this end Seebach cut all ties to his life, job and family to the extent of becoming a new person, the psychopathic Schwarzwald. Frighteningly disfigured from a fire, wrapped crudely in bandages, Schwarzwald is so distanced from his previous life that when confronted by Roger (who has been hired by Paradigm Press to deliver Seebach’s severance pay) he gleefully yells “That man [Seebach] is dead!” The change of name has particular relevance because in Japanese society, names have extreme value. Historically, family names could only be granted by the emperor and reflected social status in the imperial court (i.e. the name Otomo means ‘great consort’), and all names both personal and familial have literal meaning. For example, the surname Ikari means ‘Anchor’. Schwarzwald’s new name is german for ‘Black Forest’, seemingly indicative of the terror he now embodies.

Schwarzwald also gives us another role into social constructs. In one episode he invites Roger to an elaborate masquerade party he has organised. The other guests are wealthy and powerful figures rendered anonymous by the masks they are wearing. Each person is imbibing vast amounts of food and drink and their behaviour quickly degenerates into the realms of the lewd, perverse and obscene. Freed from social expectations and constraints by the anonymity offered by the masks the guests all seem to act on baser desires. Schwarzwald suggests to Roger that this is hardwired human nature, and his words ring true when we consider the cyborg character Alan Gabrielle. Disengaged from humanity by his cybernetic enhancements, Alan acts solely out of a primal desire to cause pain and devastation, and it seems no small point that like the guests, his identity is rendered ambiguous by his make-up and mask. Schwarzwald goes on to express his belief that society’s laws, morals and social structures are a constructed reality that serve to repress and contain the true nature of the individual.

It is not only in Big O that we see such social orders under attack. In all three of the animes under scrutiny we see massive damaged inflicted on the locations of the story, the cities which stand as representatives of society. In the second episode of Evangelion we are given a utopia-like view of the city of Tokyo-3, glittering and proud against a sunset. But over the course of the series Tokyo-3 takes greater and greater collateral damage from the conflict between the EVAs and the Angels. In all cases however the city rebuilds and recovers as best it can, until in the final arc it receives so much damage that even the ruins are razed to the ground. A single huge explosion wipes out all the skyscrapers and only a water-filled crater is left, surrounded on all sides by desolate mountains. The effect rendered is of all social stability being destroyed, emphasized by the fact that with their homes gone, the few friends Shinji has are forced to move away, leaving him isolated from any form of kinship. Likewise Paradigm City takes massive amounts of damage in the final battle between Big O and the Big-Class Megadeus Big Fau. However, time is then symbolically reset. The city is restored to how it was at the opening of the series, imperfect and flawed, but intact and once again the last human colony. Life goes on.

In Hellsing we see equally symbolical imagery. The villains, a battalion of former Nazi soldiers-turned-vampires named “Millenium” launch an attack against the United Kingdom, and as the citizens of London watch in awe gigantic zeppelin transports hover over the houses of Parliament before firing rounds of missiles into the streets below. As mass panic breaks out the leader of Millenium, a man known only as “the Major”, delivers a speech on how they will force the British people to remember the power of the Third Reich;

"Let us rouse those slumbering ones who drove us into the realm of forgetfulness. Let us seize them by their hair, drag them down, open their eyes, and make them remember. We shall make them remember the taste of terror. We shall make them remember the sound of our war-boots." (Hirano, Volume 4, Chapter 27)

Millenium’s vampire battalion descend past the BT Telephone Tower, an icon of modern London. The image styles the conflict very much as one of past versus present, Millennium rising up from history to strike at modern London; reinforced by a speech by the Major where he gleefully lists how each and every London landmark is to be destroyed. Methodically and systematically, the identity of London is erased as the vampires butcher and slaughter in the streets. Even then however people resist, and the final blow against London is one struck by its own inhabitants in an act of defiance, quarantining the city by means of a nuclear strike.

Social identity, the invisible threads and bonds that join individuals together into a group mean different things to different peoples, or as Schwarzwald says, “for diverse reasons have diverse names.” If we look contextually however we can see recurrent themes. The strength of a family unit is praised; Roger and Asuka are supported by those who they care for and who care for them. This is a traditional Japanese value, though the concept of the traditional nuclear family is also subverted in these examples. The family units in all three animes are not bonded by blood, but by interpersonal bonds that are deeper than friendship.

We can however perceive deep bonds between characters and their mothers, best shown in Evangelion but also in Big O where Roger is seen to mutter the word “mom” during a nightmare. This is reflective of Pollack’s observation in Reading Against Culture that throughout their rearing, Japanese children receive the majority of emotional and physical support from their mothers, to the extent that “a Japanese child is typically allowed to sleep with its mother for several years, sometimes to the extent of supplanting the father in the bedroom.” (Pollack, p.44) Western influences are apparent as well – Pollack goes on to suggest that the opposite of this, the Oedipus or father complex is very much a European concept, yet it can be seen in all three of the animes in question. For example, the character of Integra Hellsing is effectively driven by the responsibility placed on her by her father and seeks to live up to his expectations. The fact that a portrait of him is hung prominently in her study, forever watching her, reflects how prominent her father figures in her motivations. In Evangelion one of the more complex secondary plots revolves around Shinji’s relationship with his father Gendo. Despite the resentment Shinji feels towards him for abandoning him with relatives years ago, his sole motivation as an EVA pilot is to impress Gendo and earn his admiration. One of Shinji’s happier moments in the narrative is an example of this; Gendo telephones him after a battle simply to say “well done”, contrasting with a number of other scenes where Shinji attempts to contact him but is quickly disregarded and hung up on. Equally the chief antagonist of Big O, Alex Rosewater, is so obsessed with surpassing his father’s achievements that other characters refer to him as “Oedipus”. These examples both reflect and contradict suggestions that in post-war Japan, the role of the father in family units has been marginalised; in defence of this theory is the simple observations that all of the father figures in these animes are absent either by death or choice. Against it however is the fact that even if the father figure is not present, he still has a massive effect on the psyches of the characters.

Also visible is the war-like clash between separate powers/orders resulting in the eradication of the status-quo. Just as in Barefoot Gen where we see “the architecture of authority crumble”, so too do we see it in the destruction wrought on Paradigm City, in the annihilation of Tokyo-3 and in the Major’s speech on how each London icon must burn. And in the face of this adversity we see resistance to enforced change, and the prevalence of the entrenched social and cultural identity. Much like how Japan rebuilt and prospered after WW2, so do the survivors of Big O, Hellsing and Evangelion pick up the pieces and carry on. As with the physical identity, though the buildings and infrastructure that represent society may be destroyed and twisted, the intangible aspect, the bonds between people that form the basis of any social order cannot be stolen away, only given away.




Chapter 3: SELF-IDENTITY

“Blood is the coin of the soul”
- Warrant Officer Schrodinger, Hellsing, Volume 7

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the precursor to the Hellsing narrative, there is a curious character called Renfield. An asylum inmate under the telepathic influence of Dracula, he feeds on a diet of flies, insects and birds, which he cites as being full of “life, strong life, and [gives] life to him.” The doctor in charge, Seward, is fascinated by this and dubs Renfield as a “zoophagous [or ‘life-eating’] maniac” (Stoker, p.90) , for Renfield believes he can prolong his own existence through consuming other life. A later incident when Renfield slashes Seward’s wrist and drinks his spilt blood while chanting “the blood is the life” (Stoker, p.171) demonstrates that Renfield believes blood to be the medium in which raw life force is carried.

This is also the case of the vampires in Hellsing – the blood they drink is their source of life force (when Seras attempts to eat conventional food it triggers a massive and painful gag reflex). Like Renfield they are zoophagii, life-eaters. And just like Renfield the blood consumed is a transfer medium for the very stuff of life itself, the soul – as is stated in Hellsing, “blood is the coin of the soul” 2 and in draining a victim dry a vampire in Hellsing also consumes the soul, gaining the strengths, skills, knowledge, memories and very essence of the victim. It is this which makes the vampire Alucard so powerful and impossible to kill. He has consumed sufficient millions of lives that within him there is effectively a reservoir of raw life-force, which allows him to come back from any injury no matter how severe, including direct bullet-shots to the head. He is also able to release these captive souls as a personal army, as occurs in the climactic battle in London. Out of him come pouring reanimated soldiers and civilians from a multitude of historical eras which he dispatches into combat. Interestingly, although the souls are enslaved to Alucard’s will, they retain their individual forms and identities, suggesting that although Alucard can imprison and control these captive lives, he cannot reshape them beyond exacting obedience.

This image of Alucard, with his army of captive souls swarming around him, bears similarity to another scene involving Dracula’s Renfield; Doctor Seward engages in a mind-game with the patient and points out that in taking in the lives of other creatures, Renfield must also take in their souls. Renfield becomes very distressed at this concept, bewailing that he doesn’t want thousands of souls haunting him forever, only their lifeforce in order to prolong his own. In light of this it becomes possible to envision Alucard, in his greedy consumption of the lives of others, as having adulterated his own self-identity the of the millions of souls contained within him, demonstrated through Alucard’s distance with his own past, memories of which only come in fits and starts, and his inability to understand humans, despite having once been one.

A counter example is that of Seras, Alucard’s protégé and heir apparent. Like him she is a zoophagous and must drink blood to live, but unlike her master she does not go so far as to drink a person dry and thus steal their essence. Indeed she is shown to resist this in her first one-on-one fight with another vampire, a Millenium commander named Zorin Blitz. In the fight Seras yells out “I’m not about to drink one bit, one drop, one micro-litre of your blood!” (Hirano, Vol. 7 Chapter 55) In light of this, preserving her own self identity and not watering it down with the souls of others seems more important to Seras than gaining the power, strength and abilities that draining Zorin would present.

This concept of gaining power at the expense of one’s self occurs not only in Hellsing but also in Big O. All three of the Big-Class Megadei, Big O, Big Duo and Big Fau have the capacity to physically bond with their pilots in order to become more effective war machines. The first documented incident of this is Big Duo, formerly piloted by Schwarzwald. After his death, Big Duo is recovered by the government, rebuilt and then piloted by Alan Gabrielle, the sociopath cyborg. Alan is hardwired into Big Duo via his cybernetic implants and begins to revel in his new body while trouncing Big O and Roger in a fist-fight.

Roger however then makes a cynical point, observing how Alan is not Big Duo’s true Dominus and how in hardwiring himself into the Megadeus he has given it control over him. Roger then decapitates Big Duo, removing both the CPU and the modifications made to allow Alan to control it. Breaking off from the fight Big Duo begins to act autonomously and takes off into the sky, carrying out what appears to be a routine set-up by Schwarzwald before his death. Inside the cockpit Alan is smothered by wires which pin him down and attach themselves to him before he is confronted by a vision of the dead Schwartzwald mocking him from outside the cockpit. This seems just as impossible as Big Duo functioning without a CPU. However both make sense if we consider the sequence of events – Roger removes the modified CPU from the Megadeus, which then wires Alan further into itself, after which Alan starts hallucinating. The horrific answer is that Alan’s mind is being used as a back-up CPU by the Megadeus (as Roger puts it “a device to activate it”) so that it can carry out the final mission laid down by its true Dominus. In effect Big Duo has assimilated Alan just as Alucard might assimilate a person. However, like Seras, Big Duo seems determined not to contaminate itself with an unwanted presence. Once Alan’s usefulness is expired he is ejected from the cockpit in a tangle of wires, the Megadeus seemingly repulsing this warped identity that sought to bond with it.

The Evangelions can be equally selective of their pilots – in Episode 18 of the anime Shinji’s Unit 01 is made to act against his wishes by the use of an autopilot called a Dummy-Plug, which uses digitally recorded mental data to mislead the EVA into thinking it is being directed by the human pilot. After Shinji leaves NERV however all attempts to use either the Dummy-Plug or an alternate pilot result in failure; the EVA rejecting both pilot and autopilot alike in a sequence that brings to mind the phrase “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”. In a similar manner, the Bigs will only operate for their chosen Dominii, hence why Big Duo had to be effectively lobotomised to accept Alan. In the final fight between Big O and Big Fau however, both Megadeii offer to their pilots the chance to bond voluntarily. Big Fau moves first. During the fight its pilot, Alex Rosewater, focused on throwing Big O into the sea, exposes himself to several howitzers. Made vulnerable, Big Fau forcibly bonds with Alex in order to give them an edge. Like what happened with Alan, wires pull loose from a panel and penetrate into Alex’s spine. Now a single being, Big Fau/Alex repel the howitzers and then pause momentarily while Alex tries to come to terms with what just happened.
Seemingly drunk with the proffered power Alex declares to the machine that he knows what it wants and that he’ll give it “all that I am”. In saying this, Alex metaphorically offers himself to Big Fau, an image strengthened by a shot of Alex entangled by wires in the cockpit, with a cruciform-shaped memory circuit dominating the bulkhead behind him. Unable to win the fight alone, Alex seemingly sacrifices his self-identity on the altar of Big Fau.

This bears similarities to another Alex, Alexander Anderson of Hellsing who gives up his humanity in order to become an instrument of God; as said before stabbing himself through the heart with a nail taken from the One True Cross, thus imbuing himself with divine power. Alucard, previously euphoric in the excitement of the fight angrily yells that Anderson has made the same mistake as he once did in “giving up”. This is a reference to Alucard’s oft-repeated statement that resignation/giving up in the face of defeat is what kills people, and that only those who refuse to give up no matter what deserve to gain the power of the immortals. An example of such a person would be Seras, who as a human fought to the bitter end in Cheddar when confronted with a legion of vampires and ghouls. Against this are those who Alucard sees as having given up on themselves in order to cheat their way to power, such as an aged Hellsing operative named Walter (one of Alucard’s few friends) who switches sides in order to gain immortality. Alucard sneeringly derides this new Walter, stating that his aged and wrinkled body was a million times more beautiful than his rejuvenated vampiric form. Integra displays the same contempt when she confronts a Millenium taskforce single-handedly, denouncing them as men who in rejecting what made them human have also rejected their identities.

Interestingly, Alucard sees himself as one of these “fools”. In a fragmented flashback the audience is shown his human life as Vlad III Dracul, prince of Walachia. Deeply Christian, Vlad is shown as never for an instance questioning God’s will. Even when sodomised by a Turk as a child he steadfastly clenches a crucifix and praises the Lord. The memories then skip forward to Vlad as a grown man leading a crusade, urging his troops to worship God through the shed blood of their enemies. The crusade fails however and an embittered Vlad is lead to a guillotine. As the blade comes down on his neck he stretches forward and licks the blood of the guillotine’s last victim and his crucifix is shown to shatter, a symbolic representation of his renunciation of God. This is very similar to Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of Dracula, further demonstrated by a marked similarity between Vlad’s appearance and that of the actor who portrayed Dracula in the film, Gary Oldman.

In renouncing God, Vlad becomes Alucard, but in rejecting the beliefs that formed the core of his identity, Vlad is depicted as having sacrificed his identity for power, rendering him as much a fool as Alex Rosewater.

A curious inclusion in this scene is a single image of the Major about to be executed by a Soviet soldier, which is intercut with an image of Vlad on the guillotine block. This little scene demonstrates the similarities between the two men, summed up by Alucard when he describes both himself and the Major as “incorrigible warmongers” (Hirano, Volume 4, Chapter 19). Despite this there is a crucial difference between the two in that the Major, unlike Alucard, rejects the offer to become a vampire. In his own flashback we see him fighting at Brandenburg Gate during the April 1945 fall of Berlin. Having been severely beaten and shot multiple times in the chest the Major is left to bleed to death, when he is offered the gift of vampirism. Blood trickles from spent ammunition and flows towards him – he need only drink it to gain immortality. For a moment he considers the offer, acknowledging the awesome power it presents, then yells that “my heart, my soul and my life…belong to me!” (Hirano, Vol. 10, Chapter 83) Slamming his fist on the ground he collapses and the blood disappears as a triage medical unit appears to rescue him. Like Seras the Major appears very possessive of his own self-identity.
Roger Smith is another example of this in that when he, like Alex Rosewater is offered the chance to bond with Big O he gently rejects it, saying that he doesn’t choose to sacrifice is identity and he doesn’t believe Big O wants to sacrifice it’s. However Roger goes on to say that merging would be pointless because “I’ve always been with you”.

This seems much like two close companions, and brings to mind the already described A10 nerve-synchronisation system from Evangelion. Returning to that example, it’s worth noting that when Unit-01 rejects the Dummy Plug autopilot, Gendo demands of it what it wants – in response the EVA projects image upon image of Shinji on the screens of the NERV control room, very much the mother calling for the child, the lover for the partner. Against the disturbing images of Alex and Big Fau or Alan and Big Duo fused together into a single being, this consensual bonding of two identities which retain their individuality is shown as positive and powerful, as when Asuka discovers her mother’s presence in Unit 02.

Another example is that of Hellsing’s Seras and her human lover Pip, head of a band of mercenaries hired to bolster Hellsing’s troop-count. Pip, having sacrificed himself to save Seras lies dying in her arms and offers her his blood so that “together” they can turn the course of the battle. Like with the EVAs this is very much a consensual offer reflective of the romance between Pip and Seras. Acquiescing, Seras drinks him dry and it is with Pip’s blood that her full vampiric abilities come to the fore. This is also the fight where Seras demonstrates a fierce determination to not drink anything from Zorin Blitz so as to avoid merging their identities – Pip however is within Seras as a separate identity that she has welcomed in, very much like two people taking marriage vows to effectively become one person. Just as how in Dracula the transformation of a person to a vampire is described as a “baptism of blood” (Stoker, p. 383), this may then be seen as a ‘marriage of blood’. Subsequently, everything Seras does she describes as herself and Pip doing together, and he has been shown to manifest beside her in a time of need or lend her advice and experience during battle.

This concept of togetherness without sacrificing individuality is also referenced in Evangelion in one of the show’s key concepts, an energy field referred to as the Absolute Terror Field, or AT Field. First introduced as a force field that renders the Angels impervious to attack by anything other than an EVA, the relevance of the AT Field grows substantially through the narrative, eventually being described as an “Ego-Boundary” possessed by all sentient beings. Metaphorically it is the invisible boundaries that divide individuals and the physically it is the force binding the molecular components of the body together. Again if we look at this through a Japanese context we can see a similarity in Buddhist scripture;

Buddhism regards the self as mere illusion, a temporary and fugacious aggregation of symptoms glued together by sticky attachments and fuelled by volatile desires, something ideally to be attenuated, ultimately to be extinguished altogether.

We could then regard the AT-Field as the Buddhist model of the self, a collection of emotions and bonds that collect around a spirit or soul and which effectively prevent it from reaching a state of Nirvana. However it could also be argued that it is this self which defines the individual nature, and by ungluing it, by deleting the AT Field, the individual would be lost and only the power-source that is the soul would remain.

In the End of Evangelion this is exactly what happens. The finale depicts humanity merging together into a single collective consciousness after a vast Anti-AT-Field blankets the Earth and negates those of individuals. The second a person’s AT Field is extinguished, the body reverts to primordial soup and the freed soul, represented by a glowing red speck, is seen to fly away to join the collective consciousness which could be seen as allegory for Nirvana. It is a place without any perceptive or emotive boundaries between individual consciousnesses, allowing them to merge together into a single collective entity. It is not absolute however, as both Shinji and Asuka are shown to return from this state of non-self to a physical existence, something it is stated is possible for any of the other souls if they are able to retain/regain their sense of self, and thus reignite the AT-Field that shapes, defines and isolates their essence within a body.

And it is a reversal of this principle that ultimately kills Alucard in Hellsing. In the narrative climax he summons to himself all the spilt blood in London, strengthening himself with millions of fresh souls. This however is exactly what the Major has planned, so that he may poison the meal. Atop a high building his envoy, a walking-talking quantum phenomenon called Schrödinger cheerfully throws himself into the rivers of blood flowing into Alucard, triggering a negative reaction. Alucard begins fluctuating rapidly between his various incarnations before closing his eyes and vanishing. The Major explains that Schrödinger was “the self-observing Schrödinger’s Cat” (Hirano, Vol. 10, Chapter 89) i.e. as long as he recognised his own identity he continued to exist. When this trait is absorbed by Alucard however, the vampire is unable to recognise himself among all the souls he has adulterated himself with and thus enters a Quantum state of non-being. Ultimately then Alucard is killed because the self identities of the souls within him cannot be destroyed, just as how the collective-conciousness of Evangelion cannot protect against individuals re-emerging from its collective self if they possess the will to recognise their own existence. Likewise this reflects the value of willpower in Hellsing – it is implied that Alucard might have survived if he had possessed the will to continue, but instead he bids his master farewell and then closes his eyes, allowing himself to fade away. Once again it seems he’s given up on himself, indicative of Alucard’s belief that he lacks the willpower that allows other characters to continue in the face of adversity, the will to believe that their self-identities are sacrosanct.




CONCLUSION

“People are not ruled by their memories!”
- Roger Smith, Big O, Episode 14

There is a scene in Evangelion’s Episode 17 where we see one of the Dummy-Plug autopilots being produced. Pilot Rei Ayanami is suspended in a tube while a vast brain-like construct records her mental algorithms and then writes them to the autopilot disc-drives. Observing are NERV’s chief scientist Ritsuko Akagi and Commander Gendo Ikari. Ritsuko points out that the dummy plug is a poor man’s imitation of a pilot, as it is just a representation of physical and biological data and that “the soul cannot be digitised”. Gendo simply replies that “it’s good enough”.

Gendo is shown to be right - in the instances where dummy plugs are used, the EVAs successfully carry out their missions, but the results are horrific. The machines become insane, merciless and savage, because they are receiving their direction from an incomplete representation of the pilot.

This brings us back to Evangelion’s Cartesian principles; that to the self-identity there are always two components – the tangible and intangible, and that without the intangible soul, what is left behind is a puppet with cut strings. This is also demonstrated in the numerous Rei clones stored in NERV’s basement, which despite having physical life signs and demonstrable brain activity are described as not being alive or sentient, just “spare parts”. Likewise with A

[driftking18594]

Someone give this guy an "OMEDETOU!!!" already...

[Rj123541]

Someone give this guy an "OMEDETOU!!!" already...

I would, but I didn't read it yet... Why don't you?

[driftking18594]

Alright then.

[Lurkis]

I began reading for Evangelion, I stayed for the awesome. Fantastic job, currently emailing this to other Eva fans.

[SEELE-01]

I would, but I didn't read it yet...

I dunno if I would... Dunno what its that...

[chaosakita]

I want to see some forum veterans' take on this. Last time someone posted a paper, they ripped it apart.

[pikadourei]

The conclusion seems to end prematurely.
Great read though, I like that Sadamoto quote on EVAs powered on love :P