Tuesday update: Still working on it! Watch this spot.

As with last week, my planned video is delayed - but this time it should be up by the end of the day. I have done most of the preliminary work on my side-by-side comparison of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks and am working on assembling the pieces right now. When the video is available, I will update this post with a link and description. Sorry for the delay, and hope you enjoy it.

My video on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks, due on Monday, has still not been released. It will hopefully go up later today. Keep an eye on this post. Meanwhile, here is Wednesday's regularly scheduled entry.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

We begin with Shinji furious at his father for overpowering him in the Eva. It's a low moment for the young pilot, suggesting that even when he's in the cockpit of his giant puppet, he isn't truly pulling the strings. More surprise is in store...when another Angel attacks, and Shinji is gone (he's "quit" once again), the Eva refuses to active. Rei can't get it going, and neither can the dummy plug. But Cmdr. Ikari's response is extremely personal, and most likely accurate: "It's rejecting me." Only when Shinji returns does Eva-01 activate. The pilot's rage fuels an aggressive and effective plan to get the Angel outside and pound it into submission. The battery runs out, and the Eva itself takes over...rendering the "berserker" escape of episode 2 mild in comparison. Flesh emerges from the "binds" of the Eva suit, a new arm materializes where one was torn off, teeth jut out of the locked maw, and the Eva becomes not a robot but a savage animal, seizing its enemy, tearing it apart, and devouring its essence. It's an amazingly visceral moment for Neon Genesis Evangelion.

"It all begins here," Cmdr. Ikari tells us grimly at the episode's end, as the awakened Eva-01 roars into the night. Does it ever. If recent episodes of Evangelion have alternated between the psychological and the action-packed, "Introjection" fuses them as masterfully as the series has ever done. Geographically, the episode is fairly scattershot. Shinji is running all over the surface of Tokyo-3, from shelter to shelter, happening to run across Kaji watering his watermelons as the battle flares up in the background. Somehow he arrives inside the Geofront just in time to save his superiors (or "superiors" - never have they seemed more dependent on him) and promptly crashes through the wall inside his Eva, to attack the Angel as it stomps its way NERV headquarters. If the show is barely trying to convince us with its physicality, that's because it has its sights set on a more fundamental phenomenon. Shinji's flight from, and return to, his duty is about inner commitment rather than external struggles.

Of course, we've been here before. Many episodes ago, early in the series when Shinji seemed overwhelmed and intimidated by his responsibilities, he "retired" from piloting. In many ways, the stakes seemed lower that time. No battle brought him back into the fold and his decisions to go and stay were framed by the quiet, meditative storyline in which he retreated into the countryside and contemplated his own insignificance as a person (if not as an Eva pilot). By comparison, episode 19 is positively apocalyptic: Shinji's commitment is confirmed by the massive head of Eva-02 burning in a field, both dwarfing his figure and amplifying his importance. And yet somehow, as I noted at the time, Shinji's resistance seemed more final, more poignant in that earlier episode. Although we knew it must be otherwise, on an instinctive level it seemed like he really might leave it all behind. This time we know it's far too late for that, however adamently he asserts his disgust with his father.

On the other hand, or perhaps because of his vulnerability earlier in the show, Shinji seemed more sympathetic the last time he went AWOL. This time we are constantly reminded of his irresponsibility, encouraged to scold rather than applaud his escape. His fellow pilots suffer horribly in his stead. Asuka's Eva is dismembered and while she remains alive, she has never seemed more traumatized by the experience of battle (though there will be worse to come). Rei's fate is much harsher and more ambiguous as her kamikaze mission to destroy the Angel along with herself does not result in the Angel's destruction...but may very well result in her own. As with the previous entry, "Introjection" offers a battle whose impact is gauged not by the pyrotechnics but the all-too-evident human cost. That said, it does not skimp on the action.

Particularly in the final battle, Evangelion is at its absolute best, tapping into our emotional investment in these characters (Shinji's horrified reactions to Asuka's and Rei's defeats are a one-two punch in the gut) while wowing us with visceral animation and effects. The Angel mercilessly whips the Evas with its fluid yet sharp sheet-metal arms and when Eva-01 turns the tide of battle we are simultaneously inclined to whoop with joy and shudder in horror. Evangelion frequently strives for economy in its dramatic sequences, allowing a leisurely, static establishing shot to suffice for dialogue or character observation. This episode is no exception - note the scene with Misato and Shinji at the train station, frozen by fate as the frame slowly tracks across their immovable figures. To a certain extent, this preference is budgetary (though it also effective aesthetically), allowing for more movement and detail in the battle sequences. And we've never seen an Eva as fluid and kinetic as we do at the end of "Introjection." Just like the creature itself, the show seems to be ripping off its skin and exposing its true nature to inspire our awe, terror, and eager anticipation of what's to come.



me: So...this is one HELL of a battle sequence. What a great ending.

Bob: Oh yeah. Definitely a great climax point, and it really pays off on all the previous episodes holding back and having mostly symbolic battles.

me: The great thing about this is it's symbolic as hell AND it's a kickass visceral action sequence.

Bob: Yeah, and it does a great job of moving us through locations we're not used to seeing as battle locations. Not just on the show, but in the genre. Seeing the Evas plow their way through the NERV HQ, which is very closely modeled after the bridges on shows like Space Battleship Yamato.... there's a symbolic level to it akin to, say, if you had a lightsaber duel on the Star Destroyer bridge in a Star Wars movie (which... actually a Clone Wars episode does, I think). It takes away the safety and certainty you think is in this place, lets you know that all sense of caution is out the fucking window.
It's a visual expression of the trangressive feeling here. Every ounce of damage to the bridge and the location is a fuck you to the old man. It's a massive, progressive temper tantrum. Rock star level destruction, with a purpose.

me: If the last episode was about Cmdr. Ikari asserting himself over Shinji, this one is about the opposite. We've never seen the father seem so dependent on the son, or even so vulnerable. His flight from the deck just when the Angel is about to invade, the shot in which he's shrouded in blood as his son saves NERV, but especially his anxious yell when Rei charges the Angel. That's something totally new - only precedent I can think of is him smiling as he talks to her, which is pretty damn mild by comparison. 
I noticed that the episode isn't really to interested in the geographical/physical reality. Shinji makes it to his destination without any real concern for obstacles or terrain, a rarity for the show. It's all about his inner psychological conflict, not external challenges.
He even happens to stumble across Kaji!
It almost flows with a dream logic.

Bob: Well, the whole show does, very purposefully. But here, it's fitting that you mentioned Jung's collective unconscious last time, because when we see Toji on the Hell Train with Shinji and Rei, that's exactly what we have here. He's inside a dreamscape that is personally Shinji's. Spiritual connections are now definitely on the table in a real way.

me: Toji doesn't play too much of a part in this episode. We see him recovering (which I didn't remember for some reason), that scene with the Class Rep and it's almost like the show is saying, well we're gonna continue to keep them as central characters...and then like, nah fuck it, let's move on.

Bob: Well, it pays off on their story from the past few episodes. It lets them off the hook in terms of fulfulling their arc. And remember-- just like on LOST, when your arc is finished, it means that on story terms, you're expendable. So there's a slight tinge of danger to that. It subliminally raises the stakes on Shinji's battle to protect them, and everyone, later on. If the story's done with them, they might really be done for.

me: Speaking of "done for" Rei has a pretty cataclysmic scene in this episode.
As does Asuka, but at least we know she survives.

Bob: We can also assume Rei does, based on what I said before of course, but also given that Eva units seem pretty invulnerable to explosions like that.
Her attack really comes off as desperate and self-sacrificing.

me: Shinji's retreat feels far less sympathetic this time than in ep. 3 or 4, which is interesting.

Bob: To an extent I feel like his retreat is more justified this time. At least until the Angel attack. Shinji is much more proactive, less ashamed. Maybe it's denial (that bit mentioning Asuka's absense is telling, especially later on), but Shinji's resolve is much stronger this time. It's his decision to leave, not an order, effectively, like it was last time with Misato turning him away.

me: Yes, that's true. He seems more justified, he seems more confident and almost admirable in his decisiveness...and yet somehow it plays to me as he's REALLY made the wrong choice. Partly because an actual battle unfolds this time, of course. But also because after what we've seen for 19 episodes, we know that this is basically something he HAS to do, on some fundamental level. For better or worse.

Bob: True, but he's made a decision that really solidifies his character on stronger terms. It may not be the ideal place for things to end, but if his story ended with him telling his dad that he never wants to see him again-- well, that's a complete arc. He's no longer the kid crying over being abandoned.

me: Earlier, there seemed like some contradiction between his mild-mannered, overwhelmed non-pilot life and his responsibility as an Eva pilot. There was a certain fragility to his world. Now that seems to be gone somehow. We're moving into a new phase. As Gendo says "Now it begins."

Bob: This whole episode is really about him realizing his connection and obligations to everybody else. It's no longer about getting praise or approval from his father. It's about protecting his friends.

me: It clears the deck in a way.

Bob: That's really where I think that the position Asuka plays in the episode is interesting. She and Shinji never interact in the episode, but they both fuel the other's motivations, and remain on their minds. Asuka chatting with Rei while they're waiting in the hospital to hear about him (and notice how softer her voice is here, despite her harsh words, than usual). Shinji talking about how she wouldn't come to say goodbye...Then especially seeing Asuka obsessed to take out an Angel without Shinji's help, only to be defeated even worse than before, and then Shinji's sojourn in the shelter broken when Unit 2's head crashes in, this huge totem of his guilt for not staying to help fight alongside her (even the little flashback of her admonishment about taking shelter training, "We're Eva pilots! We don't need that!" underlines it on multiple levels).
It's witnessing the horrible effects on everybody by his absence that ultimately motivates him to join the fight again. It's basically "It's a Wonderful Life" with robots.

me: We've seen the Eva go rogue or "berserker" a few times now, but this is still such an iconic moment.
And as in the Sea of Dirac it really feels like Shinji is un or sub-consciously, as the controls of the Eva's freakout.

Bob: Especially because it's preceded by Shinji driving the Eva to berserker levels, all on his own. They really have to up the ante on the monstrosity, because for the first clear time, he's absolutely responsible for his actions in the Eva when it goes super-powered.
And here-- Shinji definitely prompts the berserker moment. The actual one. He keeps going "Move! Move!"
The physicality of the berserker moment here is realy incredible. I imagine they had to rotoscope a little to get the all-fours walking here right. It's such a wonderful perversion of the mech-conventions.

me: Yeah, so many striking visuals in the battle sequence. This is one episode where it feels like you can really see them saving on non-action animation to save up for the action.
The animalistic behavior of the Eva is incredible. Such an about-face - even when we've seen it act savagely before it's never been this fluid and primal.

Bob: Especially when we see characters go-- not quite off model, but animated in ways we aren't used to seeing them. Shinji especially, there's such a shock at seeing him in furious battle faces throughout.
Asuka, too-- her whole performance here really feels like an early draft of the EoE battle. I feel that perhaps you don't really have any big battle stuff in the TV finale is because they hit so many of the same beats right here. They bring them back for EoE, of course.
Maybe when it came time to have the finale of the show, there was a motivation to say "let's go experimental, and not just retread the previous battle". That of course changes when they do EoE itself (and maybe they knew they were gonna do that in full glory, and hence saved it till then).
I feel like what we see here is a hint of what you could've had if say... Lucas had decided to let ROTJ go THX crazy and do away with the second Death Star. Say, "Eh, I already did that in the first one. Let's have Luke go on an acid trip instead".

me: Yeah one of the things we've been discussing in our chats is the show's need to up the ante, how after a while the ever-apocalyptic "Angels are coming to destroy the world!" doesn't really ring the same bells. Lately the series has been doing a great job with this by focusing on character stakes, giving them more vulnerability and injury than they've had before, showing the steadfast commanders' horrified reactions to key us into the idea that THIS time it's worse.

Bob: Right. I mean, ultimately on a show like this what we really care about, if we're honest, is the characters' fates. Not whether or not the world will end-- we know our lives won't be affected by a cartoon battle-- but whether Shinji and Asuka and Rei and the rest will still be around after the world ends.

me: And what they may suffer in the process of saving it.

Bob: That pale coloring in the light back at the hospital is something I really find interesting that they keep returning to. They've had it since the second episode when Shinji wakes up, but every time we see more people added to it, it becomes this strange, kind of hazy realm of the unconscious. And unless we see more people added to it in the next few episodes, I think what links them all together is they're all the kids on the show. Shinji, Rei, Asuka, Toji, Hikari. They're the ones we see in this brightness.

me: We definitely seem to have moved beyond the painfully isolated world he inhabited in the early episodes. There's a different dynamic at play now.

Bob: Yeah. Again that's really the theme here-- before he was just fighting for himself. But once he saw how badly his actions could hurt others (Toji) he stepped out. And it's seeing what harm his inaction can cause others (Asuka) that forces him back in. Hence all of these people are the ones who are now in his "Unfamiliar Ceiling" world, even though he doesn't interact with any of them.
And that strengthens the connections, of course. The fact that we basically have to do the work ourselves. He's cut off from them directly, but in a sense he's never been closer. His actions have consequences that far outlast his own life at this point.

me: Seems like this is the first episode in a while with no school scenes.

Bob: Yeah. It's connected, of course, thanks to Hikari and Toji, and Shinji's conversation with Misato. I really like the compositions of them as he's leaving, by the way. Forcing them into the corners of the frame, pushing them out and putting them in this larger, daunting world around them. Very reminiscent of what I remember from Yoshishige Yoshida, but it feels more deliberate. With Anno (and Masayuki, the storyboarder and director of this episode), it feels far more profound.
I think this is the first episode where we hear the Thanatos music, when Shinji sees Asuka's Eva bloodied, and Rei runs the bomb to the Angel. Whenever a new musical theme emerges, that's a key moment.
It's the music that goes from that moment, up to Shinji yelling to his father. So it really strings the motivation of his decision to go back and fight. It has such a nice sad sweetness to it. And I think later on we'll hear the rest of it, the strangely poppy, upbeat part of it.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.


Since you mentioned, I would like to add some thoughts on the scene of "eating the Angel" in the subsequent episode and rather violent blood sputtering in ep.18. It had been a No-No to show scenes of graphic violence in Anime in general up to this point. Well, maybe some gruesome scenes here and there, especially the Samurai animes, but they were supposed to be for adults. NGE was never advertised as the one for adults. And it was before the time of Net, so I don't know how it really played out among kids. In any case, these scenes in NGE started the trend among the late-night anime. Today, we have a couple of extremely popular animes with cannibalism as their theme. "Attack of Titan" is one of them, and it directly evokes the scene of the Angel devouring in NGE.

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

My video on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks, which was supposed to appear on Monday, is finally up.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Stop Making Sense (1984/USA/dir. Jonathan Demme) appeared at #89 on my original list.

What it is• An empty wooden stage, a shadow falling across it, applause faintly emerging on the soundtrack...David Byrne (lead singer and songwriter of Talking Heads) suited up in that distinctly post-counterculture hip-to-be-square kind of way, with a mixture of modesty and bravado, informs the eager (as yet unseen) crowd, "Hi. I've got a tape I'd like to play you." He presses a button on a tape player which provides the only backing track as he stands solo in the theatrical lights (in front of an audience politely seated) and stabs his guitar with the focused ferocity of a psycho killer. And there it begans - nearly non-stop music for 88 minutes as Byrne is gradually joined by various bandmates, from bass player Tina Weymouth to the rest of the original members to some backup singers and supporting musicians. By the end, the crowd is on their feet, the atmosphere is electric, and Byrne is dripping sweat after running in circles around the stage, dancing with a lamp, bending backward almost 180 degrees, and clothing himself in a ridiculous baggy jacket making him look like a child swimming in daddy's business uniform. This concert film to end all concert films - directed by Demme, but conceived and orchestrated by Byrne himself - obviously structures itself around the escalation of activity and accumulation of personnel. However, it also features an increasingly focused and fantastical style. The film begins with pseudo-documentary approach, cutting frequently to depict the crew hustling in the wings while haphazard wires, unhidden ladders, and exposed cameras and lights emphasize the technical details. Two-thirds of the way in, immersive, stylized performances, against a black backdrop, alternate close-ups with very long takes (like the one which captures almost the entirety of "Once in a Lifetime"). Ultimately, Stop Making Sense provides perfect evidence that even non-narrative films can have a strong story arc.

Why I like it•
I've always admired Stop Making Sense's structural conceit and stylistic ingenuity, but those fell into the background on this viewing as I was simply swept up in the sheer energy of the film. Much of this is down to Byrne's performance of course, as he gyrates, shuffles, and stares down the lens, disappearing into his own private world of trancelike immersion. But the film is also expertly engineered: only in this viewing, my fourth or fifth, did I notice how Demme and Byrne orchestrate our closer involvement with what's happening through camera angle, set design, and cutting strategy. Drawing us closer in a fashion similar to Laurence Olivier's Henry V, Stop Making Sense initially goes to great lengths to remind us we're watching a self-consciously composed performance (the music emerges from a tape player, and even in the second number there's an offstage singer we never see) but by about halfway through, we've fallen under its spell. Like Henry V, Talking Heads and Demme eventually withdraw from close contact and leave us with images of the stage, the crew, the audience, and even the cameramen - but by now the performance seems less like an artificial, clever art show, and more like a genuinely rapturous rapport between artists and audience. Anyway, here I am analyzing the details again; I love the film simply because I fall under its spell: it just makes me smile. My favorite number is probably the daffy yet sincerely romantic "Naive Melody (This is Not the Place)" in which Byrne coos to and cradles an elegant lampshade with the panache of a postmodern Astaire.

How you can see it• Stop Making Sense is available on DVD from Netflix. A clip from the film is featured at 1:40 in "The Weird Eighties", Chapter 25 of my video series. I offered a full-length review of the film back in 2009, paired with a look at the Who documentary The Kids Are All Right. And one of my first reviews for this blog covered the Talking Heads music video compilation Storytelling Giant, which features some of the songs from Stop Making Sense.

What do you think?• What's your favorite concert films? Do you count concert films as musicals? What's the best musical number in Stop Making Sense? How do you relate to the structure, and what other films does it resemble? Are there noticeable similarities between Stop Making Sense and Demme's narrative works? What do you think of the late eighties Talking Heads film True Stories, if you've seen it? Does the chronology of Stop Making Sense (arriving after the Brian Eno-produced albums, during a shift toward poppier material) affect your response to the film, positively or negatively? To what extent is the film shaped by the emerging MTV aesthetic of the period? Do you see the film as capturing a stage performance or creating a purely filmic experience - or somewhere in between?

 Continuing the tradition of the last few videos, the kickoff my third YouTube series - "Cinepoems" (in this case images from various films matched with lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King) is delayed. However, it should be up later today and won't be delayed nearly as long as the last video was. Speaking of which, if you haven't yet watched my "Side by Side" video on Twin Peaks and Neon Genesis Evangelion, it premiered on Thursday and has received very positive feedback so far. Check it out! Also to hold you over until the next video is ready (at which point this post will be updated, so watch this space) on Friday I created a meme for Tumblr about the creators of Laura Palmer, which you might find interesting.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

In nearly every episode, Shinji has piloted the Eva to do battle with an Angel. At the end of the last battle, the Eva (miraculously achieving a 400% sync ratio with its pilot) devours the Angel and the S2 rocket which powers it. Shinji is literally taking the enemy into himself. Appropriately enough then, this episode sees a new battle in which Shinji fights the Eva - although every single word of that statement could be contested. Is he really fighting the Eva - or himself? Is he "fighting" a "battle" or is he in fact harmonizing with a greater being, or with another plane of consciousness? Shinji's physical form has disintegrated into the "soup of life" flowing within the Eva's flesh. He becomes quantum energy seeking and avoiding its own ego. How on earth can Neon Genesis Evangelion represent this metaphysical/psychological experience?!

Echoing the techniques of earlier episodes, Hideaki Anno mixes abstract images, out-of-context frames, and subliminal flashes of text and sound. We zip through lightning-fast montages compressing dozens of static images, and then pause to repeat movements (particularly the shots of nude Misatos, Asukas, and Reis leaning toward Shinji's point of view). There is a rhythm to the cascade of sensory data, but also abrupt reversals and frustrations of that rhythm. At times the experience is visceral, at others cerebral, sometimes visual, sometimes aural - frequently all of the above. As Shinji tosses and turns within the Eva's womb, he decides whether he wants to be re-birthed into the harsh realities but comforting pseudo-certainties of the of the physical world or disappear forever inside the sensuous but disorienting amniotic fluid of the godlike Eva - or rather the goddess-like Eva.

If the mystery of the Eva's identity and relationship to Shinji has been ambiguous until now, a clear dynamic is swimming into focus. The Eva communicates with Shinji through repeated images of the females in his life, at times blurring them together into an overwhelming maternal presence. The bare-breasted women leaning towards him don't seem to be offering coitus but rather breastfeeding, an impression confirmed by a lingering snapshot of an infant Shinji at his mother's breast. And Shinji finally escapes the Eva in a squishy, fleshy ejection: we don't see it (we hear it) but when Misato turns to look, the boy lies naked on the deck as the glowing cavity from which he emerged is sealed once again. Humorously, a radio program in Misato's car makes this association clear as a host blabs about his caller's Oedipus complex and explicitly name-drops the Freudian concept which gives this episode its subtitle.

Shinji's trip through the Eva is represented in two ways. Inside the Eva, we are thrust into his subjective experience of floating amidst different psychic spaces, falling through endless mental pictures displaying the iconography of his life in Tokyo-3 (and earlier memories as well). Outside the Eva, the NERV team - particularly Misato and Ritsuko - attempt to re-align Shinji's ego with his spirit by mechanically manipulating the Eva. Computer displays and flashing lights offer displaced echoes of the spiritual struggle inside. NERV, of course, is the father's world even if he is not present in the control room to rescue his son. The Eva belonged to this world for Shinji when he first arrived but he has frequently discovered that it is also a gateway to another world beyond NERV, perhaps even opposed to it: the mother's world, the place of introspection and interconnection vs. extroversion and isolation. His choice is becoming clearer.

Asuka is sidelined again, a fact she is painfully aware of. Rei appears only once in the outside world, to establish that she has survived the previous battle, but she is all over Shinji's dreamscape. Previous episodes have already established Rei as a motherly figure in Shinji's eyes, but Misato may be even more omnipresent in his vision. Most movingly, she is the one grieving in this cold metallic Cavalry, clutching the boy's limp, empty uniform as she weeps by the Eva's side. Into this pieta Shinji is reborn, and it's as if one mother has delivered him to another. But unlike the fleeting, enigmatic feminine images cascading through Shinji's perplexed consciousness, Misato has needs and confusions of her own. She ends the episode in Kaji's arms, telling him he reminds her of her father. Like Shinji, she is both running from and drawn toward the pain of her past - a past we will experience firsthand very soon.



Bob: The English title is "Weaving a Story" part two, but it's really more "Splitting the Breast" part two, stylistically. 

me: "Weaving a Story" part one had some experimental animation as well, doesn't it? 

Bob: A little. Mostly it was to cover the lack of animation in the episode. The Rei section was the most experimental part of the episode, but even there we get a recycled version of the activation test. The early part is really just reusing assets in a creative way. I do think that episode has the "inside the angel" music first, though. 

me: In this week's episode, we don't see quite as much of Rei as I remember, though she's certainly a big presence in his Eva experience. But the episode's motherly link seems to be more him & Misato. In a way it's like a war between two mothers - her and the Eva.

Bob: I dunno, Rei's a big part here. I remember the first time seeing this episode, the cut between the chaos of his mind to him and Rei on the escalator was very affecting. Those little moments we keep remembering, keep returning to in our lives. It kind of justifies allowing the animation to be recycled here. That and how striking the composition of the escalators are.
Rei is also the last in the "Do you want to become one...?" sequence. So she's big throughout here, especially when you get the further context. 

me: Yes, but not quite as much as I remembered (maybe because of the further context). It was the Misato aspect that surprised me. Plus, she's a big character outside of the Eva psychic sequences whereas Rei & Asuka have quick cameos basically.
And she gets to be Mary in the pieta with his pilot suit. 

Bob: Yeah. Though not to get sidetracked, the pilot suit constitutes a big continuity error. I was always struck by the fact that during Shinji's biggest missions, he wears his ordinary clothes. The first time in the Eva, the last episode we saw, then in EoE. His street clothes should be floating in the cockpit, not his plug suit.
But anyway. Asuka, yeah, only gets a little bit in the episode. What struck me, though, is that her personality is really dominant even in the psychic portion. Misato and Rei both have very generic voices-- there's no differentiation between how they speak, really. You can definitely understand them as the Eva using them as vessels to speak to Shinji. Asuka, however, is much more "herself", even if it is just his impression of her. 

me: Why do you think that is? 

Bob: Ha, it's mostly her quick dialogue. But even the way she says "Stupid Shinji" is more than the others get. She even has an extra little line, I think. "It's not an offer you get every day!"
Both Rei and Misato fit the motherly figure...
Anyway, Asuka is definitely not a maternal object. 

me: So why is she in there? 

Bob: Good question. I mean, she fits the sexual aspect of the scene, definitely.
Mostly it's because she's just in his head. And she's the most "herself" of the others, in his head. The Asuka in Shinji Ikari is more like the real Asuka than the ciphers that Misato and Rei are. 

me: So why is one of the figures shown to him in his head, while the others are Eva projections?
What's the pattern?
I'm going to be very Socratic in this discussion haha. And not just for rhetorical reasons... 

Bob: No, she's an Eva projection too, of course. Or she's a projection of his. Unless it's a sort of unconscious projection by herself, which I doubt for the most part. The door is open to it, thanks to the Toji scene, before. 

me: I really don't know what's going on much of the time inside that Eva.
There's got to be a Venn diagram there of what's him and what's the Eva, after all they are merged. 

Bob: It's really all about his ego collapsing, and him finding the will to come back out, to stay alive. What you really have is an individual instrumentality. 

me: Like a test case for the apocalypse.

Bob: They don't know it yet, but this episode shows the way back from losing yourself. this whole show was about Shinji losing the will to live, after experiencing pain again, and by losing the will to live, he really loses his whole identity. Getting it back is what this is all about.

me: You know, that adds a really interesting element to the pieta at the end. Because his rebirth from the Eva is basically a resurrection. So it's as if Misato gets to play the role of Mary the mother and Mary Magdalene.
Which is appropriate in many ways!

Bob: Maybe that's why Asuka is in there. She's the real Magdelene throughout the entire series. 
But Misato is a big player here, strangely in a way that's often disconnected from Shinji himself. As soon as Shinji is okay, she flies straight into Kaji's arms. There's no tearful reconciliation between them, like there was in the Splitting of the Breast episode. They're all separate. 

me: Yeah some very interesting stuff there. And it's a reminder that just as Shinji has mommy issues, she has daddy issues. 

Bob: Well, they ALL have daddy issues. 

me: That's for sure. 

Bob: One thing that's interesting here is you can see Anno begin to reveal the seams of the animation in this episode. You get some sketchy shots of Gendo, in particular, that look very much like pencil-test drawings. 

me: I was wondering at one point if there were images from the manga in there. 

Bob: No, those I think are from the production of the anime itself.
They definitely show the veneer of the show itself dropping, the directness with which Anno is talking to the audience. If it was from the manga, it would be a nice bit of cross-media self reflectiveness, but being that it's from the anime itself, and clearly one of the shots from earlier in the show, we can see the show as a way to reach out and communicate in the same way that Shinji is essentially having these dialogues with the Angels/Eva throughout. 

me: Yet they are still making sure the craziness is grounded by some sort of technological explanation/solution, albeit one rather crazy itself. It's interesting to see how the episode cuts between Shinji's psychedelic trip and all the computerized representations of what's going on as the crew tries to get him out. 

Bob: The Bridge Bunny stuff really works overtime to give us a psychological grounding for this, using Ego boundaries and stuff to explain what's going on with him in the cockpit. 

me: But in a very distanced way, whereas inside the Eva we get it first hand. Juxtaposition between the father's way and the mother's way it seems. Anno really seems to like those parental polarities as a metaphor.
The end of this episode was pretty controversial at the time, right?

Bob: I think it's what got the show moved to another time, or even got the budget cut dramatically. But notice here, it's all in what you hear. He really holds on that one shot a long time, and gets mileage out of it. There's a lot of long still shots in this episode.
One of the ones that really cuts deep is the bloodied, bandaged Eva's face (sans one eye, like Rei and Asuka eventually). 

me: Regarding Anno's constant subversion of fanservice there isn't just the ending but also how he shows Misato, Rei, and Asuka barechested, seemingly inviting Shinji to have sex - yet it isn't really about sex (or not just anyway). It's a) merging w/ the Eva and b) a more maternal gesture, esp as we see the shot in which hes breastfeeding.
Speaking of what comes from where (since most of it is based off Shinji's memories) what of the exchange between the parents: "If it's a boy we'll name him Shinji, if it's a girl, Rei." How does he "hear" this? 

Bob: That's one of the reasons why Asuka being there sticks out. Misato and Rei can be seen as varying degrees of maternal figures. Asuka, of course, is a pure sex/love interest. It's a way of showing how conflated those two sides of human psychology can be, especially in Freudian readings. It's also a way of being more honest and up front about the fanservice. It isn't just to communicate. And even if it is to communicate, there's more than just the trauma that would be running around in his head. 

me: Good point.
Can you explain the whole "S2 engine" thing? I don't really get what's that's all about. The angels all have S2 engines inside them? 

Bob:They do. That's how they keep going, and going, etc. They don't have the same 5 minute limation as the Evas. 

me: Well what is the engine exactly? I mean I assumed the angels are basically organic material. 

Bob: Well, so are the Evas, remember. 

me: Right but they have machinery on the exterior it seems. Whereas the Angels...have it on the interior?
So what IS the S2 engine? 

Bob: Well, remember, the last episode explained that the machinery on the exterior is really just a kind of leash to control the Evas. It's not armor, it's "binding". The only real machines are the ones there to connect the pilot to the Eva and control it to their will, not the will of the person who bonded to it before.
And the S2 engine, I guess, is just whatever drives the Angels on an independent basis without exterior power. It's their heart, essentially. What makes them self sufficient life forms, as was said in the first episode. 

me: So it is something organic then, even though it's called an "engine"? Or does the distinction matter, I wonder. 

Bob: I don't think it does, really. But yeah, it can be hard to tell what's actually something organic/mecha, and what's just defined by what SEELE/NEERV calls things. 

me: Well the montage inside the Eva was more overwhelming than I remembered. Like a data-assault basically. Interesting but not as absorbing as some of the other visionary stuff to me. I think I find the Splitting of the Breast sequence more effective on a visceral level.
At least this time. 

Bob: The Splitting of the Breast sequence is the first instance of it. This can afford to go a little further, because we've been primed for this sort of thing. It still goes a lot further on a textual level. Before all we had were visual impressions, and the occasional pure graphic of the lines to represent identity. This time we get a lot more textual overload, which of course becomes a little much with subtitles. 

me: Speaking of subtitles, the whole radio program becomes even more obvious when you're reading it rather than picking up on it as background noise! It's almost like a parody of on-the-nose haha. 
Did you catch it? 

Bob: Nope. 

me: Ok here goes...
"Sure, I understand, but I guess that's what's called the oral stage. It's something a psychologist came up with a long time ago. In other words, it's where you want to be with your mother forever. It refers to people who want to always be dependent on someone. There's someone like that among my acquaintences too, and you're a lot like him. So, well, as far as I can see from your letter, from your girlfriend's standpoint, being your lover, your mother, and what else, your kid sister? I think being all of these things for you is pretty rough. And you know, aren't you sort of taking advantage of her place as a lover, using it as your personal outlet for your libido? Okay, well, that might have been a little extreme. But a woman is very sensitive to whether someone loves her or not. So I think she's probably twigged onto that by now, that you're looking for a mother you can sleep with in her. And if she still hasn't brought up splitting up with you, she might be one of those nice girls that are pretty rare these days, you know?" 

Bob: I wonder if that's an actual radio program, or written for it. I do think that radio dramas have a bit of popularity in Japan (an England, oddly).
Rei is the latest to see the unfamiliar ceiling. I can't remember if Asuka ever gets a version of that scene. But so far it's been Shinji, Toji, and Rei.
What really hammers home is the fact that, aside from the SEELE and Bridge scenes, almost everything is people alone. Rei alone, Asuka alone, Shinji alone.
In fact-- all the kids are alone through this episode. Painfully so. 

me: And of course Shinji gets to see it again here. The irony being twofold: on the one hand, by now it's a pretty familiar ceiling (granted, I doubt they are all ending up in the same hospital room but you know what i mean); on the other hand, it's REALLY unfamiliar this time given "where" Shinji actually is. 

Bob: The adults have communities of various kinds. Misato and Ritsuko etc on the bridge. SEELE and Gendo, Fuyutski and Kaji. Kaji and Misato. We have all these different kinds of adult communal bonds. But there are no connections between the kids, and none between the kids and the adults. 

me: and if you want to add another level of irony, it's familiar because he is returning to the base self/womb inside the Eva. So it's familiar/unfamiliar/familiar... 

Bob: All the adults are part of the open, outside world. The kids, however, are all still trapped in the womb. Alone. The womb as a kind of ultimate isolation. 

me: Great point about the connections. And look how distrustful all those adult "communities" are. 

Bob: Also note, all of the big "still shots" we get here are between the adults, and their connections. 

me: Much like in Fourth CHILD.
Great stuff. 

Bob: The closest we get to kids connecting here, and I mean purely on a visual level, is when we see the flashback to Shinji and Rei ont he escalator, and in the elevator. Even when he's hallucinating the various girls offering themselves to him, he only sees them. Not him together with them. 

me: Wow, yeah, true. 

Bob: Do we even see Misato and Shinji in the same shot, when he's expelled from the Eva core?
She has the pieta moment over his plug suit, not him. 

me: Yes, but she is holding his empty suit, her back to us, and he is lying on the ground face-down i think, unconscious. 

Bob: No, but that's what I mean. Do we see her in the same shot as him, even on the edges? Or is it her looking, then cutting to him expelled? 

me: There's one shot I think where we see what I described.
So yes, and it's the last shot of Shinji in the episode. 

Bob: A bit like asking, do we ever see Al Pacino and De Niro on the same screen at the same time in Heat. Only very, very, VERY barely. 
Anyway. Next is your favorite episode right? 

me: Yes, was just going to say that. This one is very good, interesting, gives you a lot to think about but I was surprised that it didn't really suck me in the way I thought it would and/or remembered. But the next one is probably my favorite of the series. 

Bob: Ha, what drew me in here I think were the echoes of Splitting the Breast. That one really marries style to subject really beautifully. The two are more disparate this time, but they can be explored a little more deeply this time, standing on their own. 


It's also interesting to hear you discuss NGE in this phenomenon, as something that now caters to 30s/40s adults trying to relive their childhood or adolescence because this obviously dovetails with pop culture in the U.S. right now. Everything from Avengers to Star Wars to the many TV reboots echoes this phenomenon where the harshest critics and arbiters of whether these movies "do it right" are middle-aged fanboys who complain "George Lucas raped my childhood" and such when they don't like the results. However, it seems that a younger crowd is also being introduced to these stories even as a nostalgic sweet spot is being scratched for an older generation. Take Twin Peaks, which for auteurist and other reasons is very different from these other properties (indeed, SW fans celebrated Lucas getting canned whereas TP fans - admittedly a much, much smaller and more focused group - protested that they wouldn't watch the new series if David Lynch didn't direct it). It seems that a lot of fans are people in their early 20s who have discovered the show via streaming services (particularly Netflix) and have been largely responsible for its resurgence in popularity. Sorry, getting off-topic, but this whole idea of older works being rebooted and/or re-packaged for new generations, and the question of how that impacts them differently than the original audience, is interesting to me.

Lastly, on NGE, Bob might be able to attest to this better but I get the impression online at least that American fans are probably younger (though maybe hardcore fans are the ones who came across it 10+ years ago) since there was not really a core audience back in the 90s - I think Bob said that only a couple episodes aired on Cartoon Network or something, ever. It's also a really small, niche phenomenon given availability - the briefly affordable DVD collection is now out of print and costs hundreds of dollars to attain online - but that small following is very passionate. In the past few weeks I've been discovering a lot of coverage of the series in English (although admittedly sometimes by authors for whom English is not a first language, though I'm pretty sure they are not Japanese) especially on Tumblr. What I've noticed, and what Bob alluded to in his last email regarding Kawoshin, is that there is a definite skewing of this fanbase toward non-traditional gender/sexual identities; in other words, while I am wary of applying these somewhat unhelpful terms to art/entertainment, NGE seems to have struck a "progressive" chord in the West whereas it sounds like maybe it represents and/or is associated with a more "conservative" trend in Japan? Of course, some of the more thoughtful, analytically-minded U.S./European fans I've encountered seem to believe there is a more "casual" fandom out there that just accepts the show superficially (often cited is a misunderstanding of characters like Shinji/Asuka), to which they have set themselves up in opposition.


Sorry for the delay, but I actually asked around some people who are more well-versed with recent Anime developments and especially the trend in Eva.

It seems the release of the movie three years ago did not generate as much interest among younger generation. One of the art college lecturer complained in Twitter: "These younger students don't know the existence of Evangelion."'These students' he is referring to are not ordinary art school students, they are supposed to be in the visual media major. And I hear the similar stories all over the place. One of the reasons, a friend of mine told me, is because NGE has been rarely rerun not only on major TV network but even in satellite or cable networks. I don't think I saw it on TV for a decade. That is a big setback for any anime. Also, it is a classic like Gibli. Few young fans would be tempted to try the TV anime two decades ago, even if the older generation tell them it is a 'must'. Some even might feel compelled not to watch it, precisely because of it. It's old. (And it is old, if you look at the designs and styles).

Another reason he told me was there are too many new animes to watch. I agree. There are 59 new animes running since this April. 59. And there is another new 46 or so from June. And these young anime fans are trying to catch up as many as possible. So there is no time and no need to look back and dig out the old classics for them.

Then you might say, why? Are they any good? Are they any better than NGE? Well, it is a fad, it is a sign of times and it is whether it fits the mood of the times. I have to say, (as far as I can see) NGE doesn't fit the mood of today's Japan, especially young generation. It may be seen as the relic of the better times, more prosperous times, when you actually can think about yourself. From teenagers to collage graduates, many of them are struggling to get a job, not a particular job, but any kind of jobs. Some may find Shinji annoying, who is brooding over something they think as luxuries.

On the other hand, the audience of anime itself got bigger, expanded across generations. So, respectable anime like NGE always have a considerable population of following, many of which are skewed toward older age.

It is interesting to know that U.S. hardcore fans are much more active in generating fanzines and related materials about NGE.

I have questions. Did they air NGE over the air, or on cable in U.S.? How about movies? And The Q movie, did they release it theatrically in U.S. finally? What was the problem? Was it a copyright issue or simply a business matter?


Evangelion aired on Adult Swim, the late-night Cartoon Network programming thing, while I was in college. I think the first few episodes also aired during one week when The Big O's second season debuted, and they wanted to show a lot of giant-robot themed stuff (including Voltron, Gundam Wing, I don't know what else). Evangelion is an anime that poses problems for American broadcasting in normal hours, because of the occasional nudity, extreme violence and everything. It's not even the type that you can easily edit around (though I think they had to when they showed the first Rei episode). To give you an example of what often happened when Cartoon Network showed anime during daytime hours-- Tenchi Muyo would be broadcast, but when they showed the episode where they go to the onsen baths, they digitally added bikinis onto all of the girls, which kind of undercuts Tenchi's reactions to them (though it was interesting to find out that in the original versions, they don't actually show complete nudity anyway). Even things like language found themselves censored-- in the case of the Big O, for example, the Megadeus' opening message was changed from "Cast in the name of God" to "Cast in the name of Good".

Anyway, the fact that Evangelion acquired such a massive fanbase in its first generation based solely on VHS and the manga is really impressive. I knew of it from references online long before I actually watched it (if it had been on TV at the same time as Tenchi Muyo or DBZ I would've seen it long before that... sigh...). I don't know how much exposure the End of Evangelion film had in theaters, but it couldn't have been very much. Also worth noting, EoE has been out of print on DVD far longer than the series. To bring things back to Joel's Twin Peaks analogy, I'm reminded of the situation I was in when I first got into that series-- for the longest time, the first season only was on DVD, but not the pilot. I had to get a Taiwan release of it on DVD, and thankfully in the broadcast version, and the rest of the show on VHS.

At any rate-- the first two Rebuild movies have been shown on Adult Swim, along with a number of other anime features. But the series hasn't been on the air in a long, long time. And the Rebuild films, like Joel said, really only had very limited screenings. You would be lucky if they showed up in a proper art-house theater. For Eva 2.0, I had to see it in a theater in Manhattan that apparently only shows Bollywood movies besides the occasional anime. Eva 3.0 was lucky to have screenings in a couple of art-house-y places, but I don't think it played any more than half a dozen times in the state, all told. As far as I know about the hold up, I think it's because Anno didn't like the first American dub, and wanted it redone. Though frankly, I'm one of the fans who would much rather just watch it with subtitles, anyway. I wish to god the Japanese blu ray had English subtitles, considering we share a region.

It's interesting to hear the generational difference in how people accept the show. If anything, I think some American fans have gotten more into it because of the economic hardships, which are just as much a reality here (I've been unable to find any work since grad school). I think one reason why it's still got such a hold here is because there's already a bit of a curve in terms of how much work you have to do to see most anime-- now you can see things in a timelier fashion thanks to some streaming services, but even that requires more effort than just seeing what's on broadcast. And before that, the only way you could see a lot of current anime was to torrent them, so if you're already putting that much work into finding new stuff to watch, I guess you might as well watch the old stuff you have to work to find, too. Also, the fact that Sadamoto has been such a prolific designer gives the series something of a more timeless feel than a lot of other anime that can look really dated really quick (Tenchi is a good example).

On the subject of all those new shows coming out... yeah, there does seem to be a glut, just from the amount of stuff I see on Crunchyroll and Hulu. I don't know how you feel, MI, but there seems to be something of a niche-audience bottleneck going on, with a lot of shows that are catering to increasingly specified things, a lot of which are almost impossible to grasp for foreign audiences unless they're already steeped in anime and Japanese culture. For example, I'm amazed to see that we've gone beyond merely having high school as a genre (fairly universal) to high school sports (ibid) to high school clubs, and moreover clubs that sometimes I don't think there are any common points with elsewhere. I mean, are maid-outfit hosting-clubs really a thing in schools, or is that just a playful exageration on something Americans might not understand? I'm half surprised I haven't seen any high school debate club series (though if there are, I might not want to know that, because come to think of it, I'd like to do that myself). Anyway, it really increases the niche-ification of anime over here. The only way to understand a lot of the newer stuff is if you already treat it like a fetish, almost.

I'm also curious on what you think of the way creative voices seem to be changing, at least from my perspective. NGE was very much a writer/director driven show on Anno's part, though a lot of anime tend to be based on mangas and therefore are somewhat under the original creator's purview (like the clashes Takahashi had with Oshii on Urusei Yatsura). Now, it seems writers have more and more sway. Gen Urobuchi is pretty well known among anime fans in America, for instance-- largely for Madoka, but he's got his hands on a lot of projects. I've been enjoying the second season of Psycho Pass, for instance, but it does feel different without him.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Place de la Republique (1974/France/dir. Louis Malle) appeared at #88 on my original list.

What it is• We open with an old man wandering slowly through a public area in Paris, the Place de la Republique where all the "action" of the film will take place. As the camera and microphone follow closely behind, his expression registers no recognition - finally, director Louis Malle asks if he knew they were filming him. Nonchalantly, only vaguely bemused, he shrugs and shakes his head...then goes on about his business. It's a perfect little opening for two reasons: because the rest of the documentary will continue this easygoing, playful sense of engagement with it subjects, but also because this sets up an ironic counterpoint to the rest of Republique. For the next ninety minutes, all of the everday, real-life passerbys Louis Malle follows or chats up will be hyper-aware of the camera and microphone, often becoming quite conscious performers. We meet old pensioners, young shopgirls, worn-out immigrants, middle-aged philanderers, and a chic wig saleswoman who defly turns the tables on director Malle. "I know who you are," she slyly remarks, before wishing him a happy 40th birthday.

Why I like it•
I just love sinking into this world, people-watching with most of the boring bits cut out, while other boring bits are lingered over until they too become mesmerizing. One pedestrian asks Malle if the film will be a documentary, and he seems uncertain how to define it. The most analogous form may be home movies. We have the same sense of subjects engaging with the camera in a real-life context, not telling any pre-planned story but not exactly going about their daily routine either. The DVD case notes that Malle chose a working-class area of town and that the converstions and editing emphasize the romantic, social, and above all economic struggles of the participants. World War II is also a constant theme, only thirty years in the past so that many of these ordinary people experienced extreme situations in their youth - one mild-mannered old gent casually recalls the Jewish yellow star he had to wear outdoors. Nonetheless, the film does not use this context to box everyone into strict categories. Instead the people seem both universal and unique. Despite my generalized descriptions above these are individuals rather than types; some even join in with the filmmaking themselves. Malle lets them do most of the talking, often barely prodding them on - his favorite subjects seem to be the eccentric, extremely loquacious folks who naturally gather a curious crowd around them. The final epigraph quotes writer Raymond Queneau (who penned Zazie dans le metro, the basis of one of Malle's most beloved films). "'Why,' he said, 'should one not tolerate this life, when so little suffices to deprive one of it?" A stoic sentiment perhaps but also gracefully affirmative, like this film.

How you can see it• The Documentaries of Louis Malle Eclipse DVD set includes this on the same disc as Vive le Tour (1962) and Human, trop humaine (1973). It is available on Netflix. For a fun, quick sample jump to 6:25 for the close of "Welcome to the Arthouse" (chapter 23 in my video clip series).

What do you think?• Would the low-key delight of Place de la Republique be possible in today's world? Have the ubiquity of cell phone cameras reduced the novelty of a film crew on the streets? Are pedestrians now more hostile to being filmed? Has the proliferation of media (or other factors) made them more or less amenable to this particular type of social interaction, or any type of social interaction with a stranger? Does the film strike you more as a period piece or something timeless? How do you feel about Louis Malle's documentary work vs. American cinema verite efforts? Do you see a strong link between Malle's documentary work and his fiction features?

This past weekend, my "7 Facts About Fire Walk With Me" video was shared on Indiewire's Press Play, with a great little write-up from Max Winter. Check it out! (There's also some discussion on Facebook, via Indiewire and also Twin Peaks Worldwide.) Indiewire will also be sharing another of my 2014 videos soon, so stay tuned.

This video's side-by-side approach (especially its split stereo soundtrack) is influenced by Kevin B. Lee's study of Hoop Dreams and it is consistent with the work I've recently done on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks as well as a video coming soon (I won't say the subject but here's a clue: I'm hoping to have it ready before October 21, 2015 at 4:29pm). Here is the description published on Fandor Keyframe:

In 1979, Louis Malle visited Glencoe, Minnesota, for PBS, recording interviews with various townspeople. Six years later, he returned to film short follow-ups, checking up on the progress and/or decline of the town and its populace. The two trips were combined in the documentary God’s Country (1986), with the later interviews appearing as a short epilogue at the end of the movie. “6 Years in America” uses split-screen to directly juxtapose these two sections  of the film, allowing us to observe two eras simultaneously and reflect on what the passage of time has wrought.

The video, as well as some additional images, follow the jump:

Unfortunately, yesterday Catherine Coulson (the Log Lady of Twin Peaks and one of David Lynch's oldest friends) passed away. The news was shocking for Peaks fans who have also treasured this iconic character, whose brief appearances seemed to provide the soul of the show, as well as the extremely friendly and gracious host who always made herself available for interviews and discussions. Coulson was also a groundbreaking camera assistant in the 1970s (after getting her start in that department on Eraserhead), and according to one of her interviews she was one of if not the first female camera assistant to break into the all-male union. She will be greatly missed, and her legacy will be immense.

Last night, I spoke to Cameron Cloutier of the Obnoxious & Anonymous podcast - we had been planning a discussion (our fourth) for a while although it was unfortunate that this sad event provided the premise. Nonetheless, we embraced the opportunity to talk about Coulson (who appeared on Obnoxious & Anonymous herself last year), including her character's importance to the show and the true meaning of the Log Lady introductions. After that, we ventured into conversation about news from the set of the new Twin Peaks being shot in Washington - there may be some "spoilers," depending on your definition but we offer a clear warning beforehand if you just want to listen to the first part.

Usually I adhere to a strict Monday-Wednesday-Friday morning schedule, with entries of different series appearing at their usual times. But this event required an exception to the rule.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

This entry covers the Director's Cut version of Episode 21.

Origin story, flashback, even prequel - call it what you will. After twenty episodes of allusive hints toward the shared history of the characters, dropping cryptic clues about various motives (both personal and organizational), and constantly reminding us that the past which haunts the present cannot be recovered...Neon Genesis Evangelion recovers the past. And it's surprisingly effective; in fact, this is probably my favorite episode of the series up to this point. Above all, I'm a sucker for backstories - especially when we get to visit them firsthand. Motion pictures, be they cinema or television, live action or animation, even narrative or experimental, root their approach in observing moments unfold in physical reality. Just as in everyday life, movies and TV episodes give us a sense that time moves forward as a general rule. But of course memory works differently onscreen. As I wrote about Fire Walk With Me, the film which rewinds Twin Peaks to before the TV show began: "Movies have a unique and potent ability to break one of the surest laws of our existence. Time can be shattered, history unearthed, the past rediscovered."

Episode 21 is structured more like The Godfather Part II than Fire Walk With Me, leaping between past and present. The flashbacks are framed by human drama rather than Angel attack: it has now been two full episodes since the last battle, although the story is actually growing more intense without angels on the horizon. Kaji's intrigue finally comes to a head when he helps to kidnap - and then personally frees - Vice Cmmdr. Fuyutsuki for Seele. That ominous consortium, by the way, is no longer represented by cartoonish villains gathered around a table, but Kubrickian monoliths hovering in a Stonehenge-like circle around their prisoner. We learn more about their shady past -  probably predicting the Second Impact, lying to the public and concealing the first Angel, and supporting a more cheerful but hardly less sinister Cmmdr. Ikari before he was either commander or "Ikari."

Indeed, Gendo took his wife's name upon marriage, but does he truly respect her? We see that even when Shinji was a boy, his father left the upbringing mostly to the lovely Yui, a brilliant scientist as well as a devoted mother. Does Gendo even love Yui? It is suggested that he used her for Seele's purposes and yet after the enigmatic "accident" that takes her out of his life, we see him transform into the cold Cmmdr. Ikari in his grief. We also get our strongest hints that perhaps Rei has something to do with Yui. Ritsuku's mother, Ikari's jealous lover, seems to kill the little girl before taking her own life so Rei can't be merely mortal, can she? The episode explains much (it's an elaborate info-dump, albeit an very elegant and exciting one). But it also opens up new questions. Most notably, what exactly happened to Yui Ikari in 2004? Did she die? Simply vanish? What does her disappearance have to do with the monotonous blue-haired girl, whose cruel baiting of Ikari's mistress makes her seem less naive or innocent than she ever has before?

"He was aware that he was still a child." is a perfect title even though Shinji barely appears in the episode. We glimpse him as a toddler by a lake with his mother (we don't see his face but we see him grasping at her breasts - a reminder of his visions in the previous episode), observing her on the day she will mysteriously disappear, and then finally at the end of the episode when he witnesses Misato's breakdown. She bursts into tears after listening to Kaji's final answering machine message (funny how Anno zips way ahead of the actual 2015 in some technological touches, but falls way behind in others). Shinji can't hear the message and even if he could he wouldn't understand its significance. More than ever, the strange, hidden world of the adults baffles and embarrasses him, reminding him of how little he comprehends. "He was aware..." pays very little attention to Shinji's generation, reducing him to a cameo, using Rei to reveal the older folks' foibles, and for the first time ignoring Asuka entirely (the preview tells us she will play a leading role in the next episode however).

Instead the episode focuses much attention on the older generations, ranging from the still youngish but authoritative Cmmdr. Ikari (and his late wife, who would be roughly the same age) to the very middle-aged Fuyutsuki, who emerges as the closest this episode has to a protagonist, at least in the early sections. We see their lives unfold in the normalcy of the twentieth century, a year before the Second Impact changed everything. But we also devote much attention to the in-between generation, Misato, Ritsuko, and Kaji, witnessing their college years and observing their own confusion among their elders. Misato is described as ephasic in her teen years, following the death of her father, and exuberantly outgoing when Ritsuko meets her several years later. We catch far more of the nuance in Ritsuko's relationship to her mother, eavesdropping on their correspondence, and realizing that Ritsuko knows about her mother's affair with Ikari. And Kaji's burning desire to know the elders' secrets, cloaked in cavalier diffidence, comes to its fateful head.

A year ago, I posted a visual tribute to this episode amidst some other posts focused on coming-of-age. I wrote the following as an introduction, and now it can double as a conclusion:

There are several layers to the long strange trip: Episode 21 features numerous flashbacks but when the show originally aired in 1996, these memories actually belonged to the future (the show's "present" takes place in a post-apocalyptic 2015, and the flashbacks begin in 1999). For me the timeline is even more interesting: had I watched the show when it aired, I would have been roughly the same age as the youngest characters but in terms of actual chronology I am the same age as the slightly older generation (who are around thirty in the 2015 scenes and went to college in the mid-00s). As is often the case, the sci-fi elements of the show provide an intense, amplified backdrop for the drama but the humiliations, heartbreaks, and losses are all too human. The trip down memory lane is not always a pleasant one.

me: We learn a lot in this episode, but it also opens so many questions.

Bob: Yeah. The best kind of answer episode.

me: I was just going to say that!

Bob: It helps that we start off right with one of the show's most iconic appropriations-- the Seele monoliths.

me: Why are they monoliths now?
Or I guess, why AREN'T they the human figures we met before?

Bob: The key, I think, is the "SOUND ONLY" label on them. Suddenly they care about anonymity for some reason. Even the voices are conspicuously masked (they sound like some of the "god animal" voices from Princess Mononoke, to me).

me: Aha, good point. Especially since the episode unmasks their past.

Bob: I mean obviously it's an homage to 2001, which feels thematically right in an episode that lays out a lot of the mythology and ties it discretely to classic science fiction. But I think there's more to that, too. It's basicaly Anno interpreting the monolith from 2001, saying there's a kind of anonymity at work there. Kubrick's monolith is the hand of aliens trying to keep their faces, and agenda, from being seen.

me: Maybe you can explain the whole Seele-NERV-Fuyutsuki-Ikari-Kaji nexus to me. I'm a bit lost there.

Bob: I'll admit, the nexus of the plot is a little confusing. Lots of fans have even been confused as to who shoots Kaji. I even thought the Director's Cut added stuff to make that clearer (I guess it doesn't).
I guess in the end, though, it seems that Kaji is ultimately working for Ikari, which is why he frees Fuyutski from Seele. The distrust that some in NERV have had in Kaji works against him here.

me: But he kidnaps/gives Fuyutsuki to Seele too, right? Anyway, why do they want him as their prisoner? Isn't he already working indirectly for them anyway?

Bob: I don't think he does give him to Seele. NERV assumes he did it, probably on behalf of the Japanese government.
And Seele, at this point, has been covertly working against NERV vor a while now.

me: Hm. Maybe we'll have to get into this further in future episodes!
Who does shoot Kaji, though?
I can't quite remember. My thought was maybe Ritsuko?
As I was watching, it occurred to me that maybe it was Misato but...

Bob: I think the implication is pretty clear here-- it's Misato.

me: Oh woah ok maybe it was then.

Bob: Hey, Chekov's gun.

me: Yeah, I got that impression this time but not others. Definitely adds an extra oomph to her last scene.

Bob: Kaji probably expected to be killed. By whom, who knows. Apparently Anno said it was a third party, somebody working for NERV or Seele. So officially, he doesn't know. But that also kind of strikes me as classic evasiveness. Maybe the implication that it was her upset people too much.
Ultimately the fact that his killing is unresolved makes him a victim of his own tradecraft. He's killed not by any one assassin. He's killed by the job.
One thing that's interesting in the treatment of his death-- though we'll get more of it in the next episode I think-- no reaction from Asuka.
No presence of Asuka at all in this episode. Which surprised me, because I thought we got some of her mother's backstory here, before.

me: Is this the only episode where one of the 4 central characters (if I guess we define that as Misato-Shinji-Asuka-Rei) isn't present? I mean, after she is introduced anyway.

Bob: Which is why it's so isolating, this episode-- Shinji and Misato are the only characters we see the whole time. And they're both children mostly. Misato is a shell shocked survivor who goes from being comatose to a bipolar party girl, and Shinji is just a baby, and then later... a stunted young man, suffering from a trauma he can't even properly understand.
Fuyutski's story really does a good job to flesh out the human dimension of what life is like after the Third Impact.

me: And what life was like before, too. I just love how much this episode spans.
Yet it doesn't feel like an info-dump to me. It feels like a lot of fascinating glimpses into different times and places, each fully realized, however fleetingly.

Bob: Right, because most of the info is dumped in drama, not as information.
We learn so much about the condition of the world from how Fuyutski goes from a college profesor and experimental project guy to an unlicensed town doctor living on a boat.
Even the NERV stuff is mostly given to us in the emotional story of Gendo and Yui, Ritsuko and her mom (they go to great lengths to capitalize on the backstory alluded to in Lilliputian Hitcher).

me: It's fascinating to see the layers of the generations on top of one another too. Like Gendo/Yui's relationship to Fuyutsuki, then Ritsuko's relationship to her mom (and Misato's and Kaji's to these shady organizations run by older folks in the "know"), then Shinji's relationship to Misato - and Rei's to Ritsuko's mom...and so forth.

Bob: And all the layers of attraction. Ritsuko's mom and Gendo (and how he's using her). Fuyutski and Yui. Even Gendo's marriage to Yui has a sinister tone to it, now, given her connection to Seele.

me: Glad you brought that up. The Gendo-Yui thing - Fuyutsuki seems to think Gendo was using her. Yet in this episode, as in previous ones, we do get the sense that Gendo genuinely loved her. Not so much through his interactions with her - in fact, if I'm not mistaken we don't really get to see them interact do we?

Bob: That is Fuyutski's assumption. Given that we see him in police custody, it almost feels like the more likely scenario is that when Gendo married Yui, he was taken into her plans, adopted her purpose. And then when he lost her, he winds up perverting them in an attempt to bring her back.

me: Well that was something I couldn't quite get. It sounded like Fuyutsuki was saying that Gendo already worked for Seele and Yui worked for another organization that Seele wanted to infiltrate. But it was the opposite? She already worked for Seele and he wanted to be a part of them?

Bob: It sounds like Seele was backing Yui's research.
I think it really is more like Gendo "marries into" the Seele business.
Or rather, he marries into Yui's plans. And then without her... etc.

me: Well, he does take her name.
From the annals of Yahoo! Answers: "There are two traditional systems in modern Japan. Most commonly, the wife takes the husband's family name. More unusually, the husband may alternatively take the wife's family name (Nyokei system). The later typically happens when the wife has no brothers and the wife's family still wants to pass down the family name."

Bob: It's curious, what Yui's plans might've been before Gendo took over, before she died. It doesn't even seem like Seele was the one that really came up with Instrumentality. We clearly see here that Gendo manipulated them into it.
They also flat out say there that this plan is intended to raise a god, or make man into god. There is never, not once, any notion of "these terrible things called angels are going to attack us and we have to prepare."

me: Well in the beginning Seele says they don't want to make a god.
"Creating a new god is not on our agenda."

Bob: Seele want to "evolve" humanity into something completely new and different. Gendo, apparently, wants to use it completely for himself.

me: The Rei-Naoko scene is fantastically fucked-up.

Bob: Especially because the word that apparently means "hag" sounds a lot like the Japanese word for "mother".

me: And of course it hearkens to the episode where Rei's Eva go berserker and Ritsuko suspects it was striking at her.

Bob: Right. And-- another strangling.

me: It definitely casts Rei in a darker, less naive light. Not naive exactly but the sort of "reserved, unaware" state she seems to usually be in.
Any thoughts on the animation in this episode?

Bob: [In the director's cut] I was really impressed by the limitations of the information. It works really well to give you a bit of information, but not overload you. The video-feed thing really works well, even if it's a gimmick.

me: What are the technical challenges of animating characters to look like younger versions of themselves? I was struck by how they did such a good job with that.

Bob: The biggest character thing in the animation, I felt, was just how huge Gendo's eyes look when he's younger here. Primarily because he hasn't yet reached the point where he's constantly putting distance between himself and others with glasses, and he's still got some kind of youthful innocence, with Yui. When she's gone, he goes all squinty.
It's such a revelation to see him as this combative Young Turk, this rebellious, take-on-the-world guy who's getting arrested, wooing a powerful young woman. There's a very romantic character to him that we only get hints of. And then when she's gone, it's gone.

me: Even Misato they manage to make look a bit younger. It's all done very subtly, and then aging them over time too. Am I correct in assuming this was one of the more expensive episodes, even though there isn't really any action?

Bob: Maybe this is one of the reasons why the monoliths were introduced. They require less animation.

me: There is also a lot of cutting it seems. Not so many long, sustained shots as in previous episodes. This one really moves along. Impressive how it can be both fast-paced and immersive. I think that's why it's one of my favorites: just feels like it contains worlds.
You mentioned a little while back that this isn't really one of your favorites (I think you said it was too much of a downer). What was your take on it this time?

Bob: I like it, but over time I've come to really love the "let's fight an angel!" episodes. NGE is a good show when it's deep like this, but it's easy to forget that it can also be just plain a lot of fun, too.

me: Would you say you've come to prefer the episodic to the serialized when it comes to NGE?
I mean, it's all serialized but that middle section is more episodic in feel than the bookend stretches of the series.

Bob: It's a bit like why I like The Phantom Menace over Empire Strikes Back. I like the parts of Star Wars that are more concerned with the fun, rather than all the dark gloomy stuff. "Yeah, yeah, there's an evil empire that's gonna happen and there's all sorts of bad people that are going to torture the people you love. But hey, let's go watch pod-racing and sword fights!"
To an extent, the episodic really impresses me here. It's amazing to see each of those episodes as a kind of mini-movie, complete in and of itself, even as it adds more to the overall story.

me: It's funny, I always love the dark stuff. But that's a bit why I like Star Wars (you know which one I mean by that title). It feels like the most graceful in a way because it's not trying to be heavy-handed or somber, it's embracing the swashbuckler aspect and just taking it to the hilt. I feel NGE on the other hand really hits its stride the crazier/darker it gets.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.


The role of Kaji has been a topic of debate among Japanese fans as well. He is a sort of a playboy while acting as a double-, triple-agent. This kind of a lone wolf with almost laughable antics of womanizing can be seen in some male characters in '70s and '80s anime. Probably one of the most notable examples may be Lupin the Third. In case of Lupin the Third, the trait was exaggerated to the point of comedy, with amusing results. Most notably, Lupin has his own code of ethics, which he never explicitly declares but he acts accordingly. The 'philosophy', you might call it, is evident through his actions and is observed even if he loses his game.

Then, what is the code of ethics which Kaji follows? Ken-ichi Yamakawa, in his book, Eva, classified Kaji as 'an outsider who doesn't think much of the rules of the system', and parallels him to Grandis in Anno's Nadia. I am not convinced of this description. We see that he is on to something, but information is only fragmentary and incoherent. We are not allowed to see his intent, but we know he is trying to do something. A lot of his actions were through Seele's orders, but we sense he might have his own agenda. But that's about all. His eventual demise later in the series seems to explain some, but can we trust that kind of reading? He was an agent after all, he knows a lot more than most of the characters do and we viewers do. At least, he didn't reveal what he was until the end.

The only episode, which may suggest Kaji's 'philosophy' is about his watermelon garden. His comments to Shinji sound ominous, more so than it may actually be. Through that episode, we realize Kaji is the only person who is intelligent enough to hide his true self from the bureaucratic class system of NERV and Seele. He plays his role given by the megalomaniac tale of the system. This may be a reflection about the status of an intelligentsia in hyper bureaucratic capitalism in general. The system knows he is intelligent, clever and, most importantly, disillusioned enough to do their dirty jobs, - like playing both sides, being brutal and charming at the same time. And Kaji knows the system knows it. He is trapped in this endless circle of cruel joke. The system differentiates these kind of people from unintelligent, stupid and fanatical assholes.

I always find the parallel between the world of NGE and Nazi Germany. The systems of NERV and Seele resemble the bureaucratic nature of Nazi regime. Yamakawa's book pointed out that the character of Keel Lorenz was conceived after Konrad Lorenz, a famed zoologist. Konrad Lorenz was a Nazi party member during WWII, who researched the domestication of animals in the socio-political context of Nazi-occupied regions, namely, domestication of people in occupied territories. Yamakawa pointed out that the fascist nature of NERV and Seele is present, though Gendo Ikari does not have a charisma of Adolf Hilter. He also pointed out that the elites at NERV are so relaxed and immersed in the day-to-day business at NERV (you can call it domestication), they seem desensitized, which is pretty alarming. I agree. In many fascist countries, brutal realities of oppression becomes norm as days go by, and people become so desensitized by these repeated events. If you look at escapist movies of Nazi regime, you would never know there was a horrible massacre taking place. People were shielded from the realities, while only elites of elites knew what was really happening. In that sense, to me, Kaji somewhat resembles Albert Spear, who was a central figure in the regime, but intelligent enough to avoid fanatical brutalities as much as possible. It never exonerated him from being the part of the regime, though. So why does an intelligentsia behave as he does? Stupidity wins in the end.
Who killed Kaji?

According to Anno's own explanation; Someone. Not with a name or a face. Not Misato.

It is general consensus among fans that Seele ordered the murder. Well, it is fairly evident that Kaji was an unwilling double agent. To Seele's eyes, he was simply incompetent. Though we don't really know why he acted as he did (we can guess), but he was so fed up with both Seele and NERV, but he had no choice but follow the order. Seele probably perceived Kaji's action regarding to Fuyutsuki's kidnapping as an act of disobedience, even double-cross (well it is), so it is natural to assume Seele eliminated its agent.

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Platform (2000/China/dir. Jia Zhangke) appeared at #87 on my original list.

What it is • When the film begins in 1979, the characters are all part of a traveling performance group. They dress similarly in baggy tunics and shapeless slacks, and their songs are all revolutionary odes to the wonders of the recently-deceased Chairman Mao. Their hometown of Fenyang is shown in wintry isolation, a rural hamlet in the middle of nowhere characterized by barren streets and homes with few modern amenities. Parents, police, and the elder troop leader scold these restless young performers when they step out of line and portraits of Lenin and Stalin adorn the walls of theaters whose most risque offerings are thirty-year-old Indian entertainments. When the film ends in 1990, the characters have split off from one another: some finally settle down after years on the road, others disappear from the town and/or narrative without explanation. The performance group, last we see of it anyway, has turned into a mixture of rock guitarists and go-go dancers. Fenyang is under constant construction and televisions play soap operas while tape players boom pop songs from every household; when we visit a movie theater near the end of the film, it's showing animated sex. The older generation is absent either literally (one character's father opens a shop and sleeps there with a mistress, never returning home) or figuratively. We experience these incremental changes as circumstantial details, just as the characters would: background color to a love affair, diversion during a long tedious drive through the desert, decoration to a scene of domestic dissolution. There isn't exactly a "story" here. Instead the film unfolds like life, with long takes (there is almost no cutting within scenes and the camera tends to stand still) capturing individual incidents, sometimes years apart, which coalesce to form an overpowering whole. Personal and cultural history intertwine into a palpable experience that can only be felt, rather than than explained.

Why I like it •
I'm an absolute sucker for any movie that depicts transformation. Conveying this phenomenon is one of cinema's greatest achievements, along with its ability to hone in on a specific moment and let it linger. Platform captures both these qualities; no wonder it immediately appealed to me when I saw it a few years ago. That viewing followed closely after two of Jia's subsequent films, Still Life and The World, both of which impressed me with their ability to mix conceptual ambition, stylistic invention, and documentary observation. Either of those films, especially The World, could have ended up on this list. Why did I chose Platform? In some ways this is the purest, simplest, most grounded of Jia's films (I would later catch up with 24 City and Unknown Pleasures as well). But it's also the most epic, spanning a decade and focusing on a truly colossal subject: China's opening to the West. Above all, I love Platform's ability to capture that quiet feeling of wonder, ennui, and excitement knotted together until you can't exactly distinguish one emotion from another. This film depicts the past with an unblinking documentary lens, creating a sense of nostalgia for the present. These are memories captured at the moment they were born, as fleeting as they are eternal.

How you can see it • Unfortunately, it looks like Platform is no longer available on Netflix (it's in the dreaded "saved" category). Hopefully they bring it back! The film is available on Region 1 DVD, and I included a clip from it at 2:35 in "The Millennial Mood" (a chapter of my "32 Days of Cinema" video series). I also offered a full-length review of the film when I first watched it for "Best of the 21st Century?" in 2010.

What do you think? • What other films capture the changes of an era in similarly subtle fashion? How does Jia compare to other Chinese filmmakers of his generation, as well as to earlier generations? Do you find the characters sympathetic/interesting, or see them simply as stand-ins for Jia to depict the passage of time? Do you find some of the events hard to follow? Does the film's elliptical nature work for you, in evoking the way change "sneaks up on us"? Although the film is very specific in its time and place, do its observations and incidents feel universal? If you are familiar with Chinese life during the 1980s, does the film accurately represent the feeling of that time to you? Which sequences or moments in the film do you find most evocative, touching, or absorbing?

Another Monday, another delayed video! This time I am about halfway through the project, which will hopefully be completed by tonight or tomorrow - but I don't want to make promises; in the past I've usually fallen short of second deadlines as well as the first ones.

Symphony of the Devils will feature a montage of the memorably demonic imagery from two different eras of horror: Benjamin Christensen's Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) and Clive Barker's Hellraiser (1986). Each is paired with a different guitar part in the instrumental stretch of the Rolling Stone's 1969 live version of "Sympathy for the Devil" from Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out.

So watch this spot, and happy (early) Halloween. It should be up by then at least. ;)

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

You've heard the term "mindfuck"? Perhaps it was coined specifically for Asuka Langley Sorhyu. Not only does she experience a monstrous psychic invasion in this episode, she also characterizes it in explicitly sexual terms. "Don't come inside me!" she screams, and in the Director's Cut version of episode 22 she opens the episode, in flashback, by propositioning Kaji and yelling angrily, "I'm an adult! So look at me!" He won't, but the Angel will - orbiting in outer space it captures her Eva in a cascade of blinding light, accompanied by "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's "Messiah." We may be reminded of a particular antecedent in religious art: Benini's Ecstacy of Saint Teresa , with its highly sexualized image of the gasping saint being pierced by heaven's arrow, wielded by an angel who seems to be mounting her. Or rather, we may be reminded afterwards - at the moment the immediate impression is too viscerally overwhelming to take in much more. Because if Asuka is being mindfucked, so are we.

As we race into the final, insane stretch of Neon Genesis Evangelion everything is coalescing magnificently - and on this show "everything" covers quite a lot of ground. "Don't Be." is loaded with plot twists, organizational intrigue, mystical allusions, intense battle action, psychological characterizations, interpersonal drama, avant-garde imagery, rapid-fire montage, and ingenious use of static imagery. Let's start with that last point, crystallized in one of the most memorable images in all of Evangelion: Asuka and Rei's interminable elevator ride. Neither character speaks or moves for nearly a full minute, their perfectly placed positions with the frame emphasizing negative space in both senses of the phrase. Earlier, Anno turns Asuka's back to Shinji to craft a perfect image of intriguing unknowability. As she speaks to her stepmother on the phone, flipping her hair side to side, her face turned away, chatting amiably in German (but what to Shinji's ears might as well be gibberish), he wonders who she really is.

That moment is ironic for a couple reasons. First of all, Asuka isn't revealing her true self to her mother while ignoring Shinji - the reverse is essentially true. The bubbly teen girl she presents over the phone is a facade, while the angry, insecure, temperamental rival that Shinji experiences is much closer to the true Asuka beneath the self-assured surface. Indeed, in this very sequence she admits the truth about her familial relationship before exploding in rage at Shinji ("WHY THE HELL AM I TELLING ALL OF THIS TO YOU?!"), a one-two punch of self-exposure. More importantly, though, the scene is ironic because it's perhaps the only moment in the entire episode when we actually enter Shinji's consciousness and see Asuka from the outside. There are some other scenes where we're attuned to Misato's mind but for the most part we ride this meltdown all the way to the end while strapped into Asuka's pilot boots.

The spunky redhead who dominated Evangelion's middle stretch has been fading away lately (she didn't even show up in the previous episode) but she dominates Episode 22 in a way no character other than Shinji ever has. Surely, the ever-competitive Asuka would appreciate that fact - indeed take a shot every time someone, usually her, mentions "losing to Shinji" in the previous battle and you won't make it to the end. And the comparison is apt because she goes through something only Shinji has experienced so far: a mental, rather than physical, battle with an Angel. Sadly, she loses where he succeeded (in "Weaving a Story Part II: oral stage"), most likely because she sees it as a battle. Not just between her and the Angel, but between her and (take your pick) Shinji, Rei, her dead mother, her own Eva, and perhaps most importantly, herself.

We learn why, through a series of flashbacks and psychotic visions. Asuka's mother lost her mind in a vague "contact experiment" which sounds more than a little like Asuka's own traumatic experience at the end of the episode. The sexual associations of Asuka's identity crisis and personal sorrow become clearer too as we listen to her father explain her mother's condition to a doctor: explanation shades subtly into flirtation (accompanied by dismissal of Asuka as a mere "doll" rather than a person) and then into noisy love-making offscreen as Asuka stares at her mother in the hospital room. Worst of all, her mother plays with a doll whom she addresses as Asuka. Later it is implied that when she killed herself, she begged her daughter to join her. The tormented little girl finally agreed, even to be rebuffed in death: the mother hangs the doll instead and ignores the flesh-and-blood child whom she no longer considers her daughter.

And Asuka herself determines to become both more a person, and more a doll. On the one hand, she asserts her adulthood and independence consistently, boasting that she doesn't need anyone else and referring to both Rei and her own Eva as "puppets" (as if to say she is not). On the other hand, Asuka avoids all the messier aspects of her own humanity, both physical and mental. She is having her period, as Misato reveals, and we even glimpse her shouting angrily at her own reflection "Why do I have to go through this? I don't even want to have kids!" She also tells herself, by her mother's grave, that she will never cry again. The episode constantly reminds us of her physical and especially her psychological vulnerability.

The final attack is heartbreaking and spellbinding at the same time, depicting Asuka's breakdown in a breathtaking tour de force laying waste to the comparatively gentle approach of the Eva/Angel toward Shinji. At every turn, Asuka is confronted by her fragmented personality, a painful collage of humiliation and disorientation. Meanwhile, in a cityscape devastated by its own wild gunfire, Eva-02 trembles and twists in the light (a stunning sign of how far the show has traveled from traditional mecha action), a stuttering Saul not yet ready for his Damascus conversion. Rei warned Asuka earlier in the episode, "The Eva will not respond unless you open your heart." But Asuka's heart has been torn to shreds by childhood trauma and the panicked conviction that her worth relies on the impression she makes on other people, an impression of aggressive strength to conceal the devastation within.

In its gloriously metaphysical denouement, the battle takes a turn toward Grail lore as Rei removes the Lance of Longinus from Adam in the bowels of NERV's headquarters (revealing to Misato that contact with an Angel did not cause the Second Impact), and hurls it skyward where it pierces the Angel above earth's atmosphere and then launches itself into orbit. In the legends of the Grail, the Fisher King was struck by the Lance of Longinus (which originally pierced Christ on the cross). He remains wounded until a sensitive soul could cure his wound with compassion and curiosity. Onscreen we see Adam regenerate with the removal of the Lance, while the Angel's AT Field is destroyed by its piercing. But the one most relevant to the Lance's destructive powers (and the implicit restorative power of a Grail) is Asuka herself. And at episode's end the only one who seems to care about her is Shinji. If she could see him as a friend rather than a rival perhaps the healing could begin.

Instead, the waste land stretches before her and it seems no one can hear or understand her cry - least of all herself.



me: What an episode! On this viewing, it's my favorite so far.
So many things, so many very DIFFERENT things that this episode just nails.

Bob: It's both the beginning of the next, and last stage of the series, and a recapitulation of so much that's come before. Especially, it feels like a climax point of the previous "angel connecting to eva pilot" episodes we had in Splitting of the Breast and Oral Stage.

me: Isn't the next episode an "angel connecting to eva pilot" one too, though? The preview made it sound like that.

Bob: I can't recall exactly. But this is definitely the type of episode that previous ones prepared us for. They build on what the Sea of Dirac and Shinji melted into the cockpit give us before. And that Asuka mentions the second one really makes this a part two of that.

me: Shinji's experiences set us up for the perfect contrast, yin/yang. He survives, even triumphs, in those experiences because he is more attuned to the Eva's (and Angel's?) soul. Asuka completely neglects it, and implicity, her own.
Which is also an interesting reversal of gender expectations even on the show itself (think Shinji's mother vs. father). Because usually the female/anima is depicted as more in tune with the spiritual realm, while the male/animus is turned outward, aggressively fighting for dominance and clinging for the ego. Which is so very much Asuka's role here.
For me, this episode confirms that she is the most interesting character in the series.

Bob: The thing she's neglecting is her own soul, really. As much as I hear people talk about this as the "mind rape" episode, it really feels more like an inevitable emotional breakdown. All of the feelings and thoughts she's been bottling up and denying the whole series come exploding out when the light hits her, and it's something that is directly connected to what Rei says to her. She can't open up her heart to the Eva, because she can't open up to herself, be honest about what she wants in life.

me: I'm a bit uncomfortable with the "mind-rape" term too because what's happening here seems to be more complex than that. Rape, mental or otherwise, is obviously a complete victimization of someone, with all the responsibility on the perpetrator. What's happening here is more like beaming back her own insecurities and blind spots back at her, forcing her to confront herself the same way Shinji was forced to confront himself. It's an assault but also somewhat self-imposed.

Bob: Right. The fact that she refers to it, elliptically, in those terms is more telling on her part of the way she's internalized sex as both a method of independence and emotional closure. She was affected by how her father moved so quickly to another woman, and wound up projecting all of that onto Kaji, who we see here in the intro was really only ever a means to an end for her. He's just the vehicle for what she views as the only way she has to an independent adult life, without painful emotional connections.

me: Rei's comment in the elevator (about Asuka's need to open her heart) really emphasizes this.
That shot of Rei & Asuka in the elevator is one of the images I remember most strongly for the show. It's compelling, visually arresting...and hilarious. About 30 seconds in, I found myself laughing out loud. And then Rei speaks and it gets serious again. It's such an iconic moment.

Bob: It also shows Anno's talent for composition (well, and Tsurumaki too, he storyboarded this one).

me: And later, the Eva writhing in the light. Such a startling, unexpected image. This is a show about giant robots battling (maybe?) intergalactic monsters and we are watching one of the Eva's "dance" in agony to Handel's Messiah, intercut with the intensely subjective, avant-garde, almost Godardian interplay of words and images as Asuka's psychological freakout escalates. The episodes have been pretty experimental recently but I feel like this is the perfect melding of visual experimentation, direct engagement with the characters' emotional experiences, and the show's own increasingly mystical, metaphysical (and yet very psychoanalytical) lore.

Bob: The compositions throughout, like you said, are also really impressive, especially given how off-model they are with he character images we're supposed to expect.

me: What moments did you notice that in, and how did you feel that worked effectively?

Bob: Well, partly I think it's because we spend so much time looking at young Asuka, and even when we see her in her teen self she's drawn to resemble that little girl more. We see her face dead on, her nose reduced to tiny, tiny nostrils and not much else, her expression incredibly downcast from what we've come to expect from her extroverted personality.
It's reminiscent of how we saw Shinji when he was doing those early Eva tests, simply pulling the trigger.

me: Speaking of handling different elements economically but effectively, another good example is Asuka in the hospital.
All we see is her and the shot of her mother. Offscreen, the father delivers exposition about what happened, that soon doubles as exposition of Asuka's insecurities and then also reveals her father's character (as we hear him flirting, then having sex, with the doctor or nurse), and seeding her own anxious sexuality and the puppet theme.Again, so much going on, handled with very simple visuals and sound.

Bob: Do we hear them having sex? I didn't pick that up. It would definitely explain some of her warped sense of what sex means.
I just was under the impression they were flirting. Maybe aggressively. There's so much dialogue there, and it's all wrapped up in this huge bombshell drop of her backstory, her mother's suicide.
Which is a huge needledrop, by the way, from Miyazaki's Nausicaa manga.

me: Yeah, they're definitely having sex. Not sure if it's literally supposed to be in a room right near where Asuka is standing but it's certainly implied she's aware of it.

Bob: One thing that I was struck by when watching this episode again is how disconnected it felt from a lot of what came before. It's definitely a case of episodic character study. Maybe it's because the past couple of episodes have all been very isolated in lots of ways-- a flashback episode, Shinji melted in the cockpit, Shinji about to leave again-- but Asuka really feels isolated from everybody here. You get the sense that she's desperately alone that wasn't quite the case in a lot of the other episodes.

me: In a sense the previous episodes - so disconnected from this one in plot - DO effectively prepare us for this, for that very reason. It's been so long since we spent much time with Asuka (indeed, she's totally absent from the previous one, right?) that when we essentially enter into her consciousness this time we're all the more aware of how desperately alone she is.
And that's also highlighted in pretty grim fashion but Cmdr. Ikari's totally indifferent reaction to her suffering, as well as Misato's somewhat callous disregard. To everyone else she really is just a pawn and it makes her meltdown all the more tragic.

Bob: We'll get to it at some point, I'm sure, but the only ones who really care are Rei, and tragically, Shinji. The one time he seems anxious, even eager to pilot the Eva and help her, is the one time he's not allowed out.

me: Even Rei's concern is more distanced, less personal and more cerebral. It really seems like Shinji is the only one who has genuine human compassion for her. Which brings us to the Arthurian/Grail links with the whole Lance of Longinus thing (something I mentioned in my write-up). Asuka is really the Fisher King here, the wounded soul who can only be rescued by the generosity of another. But unlike the Fisher King, who is simply waiting for help, she has to reciprocate. And she's too wounded to do so.
In a certain sense she is responsible for her breakdown because she's unable to open herself, admit to her own vulnerability and insecurity, face her shadow - be it the disintegrating doll she won't look at or the hordes of cloaked Asukas shoving past her. But in another very real sense she isn't - or at least the challenges are higher and the odds more dire for herself than anyone else - because she was so traumatized in her childhood that her emotional shutdown is a complete and near-unavoidable survival tactic.

Bob: Right. The Angel isn't the thing that's doing this to her. It's her whole emotional past, everything that's come before. Her mother, her father, the ties they have to the Eva program, etc. 

me: And of course the Angel and her past and all of that seems more deeply related than ever. The idea that the Angels are essentially a portal for humanity to confront itself, its own psyche, is really emphasized here.
I realized something this time that had escaped me before (or at least I had forgotten). Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems that what happened is Asuka's mother invited Asuka to commit suicide alongside her, Asuka resisted and then agreed, and then realized her mother wasn't talking to her at all but to the doll, and didn't even realize who Asuka was. Pretty brutal when you think about it: first the realization that her mother is going to kill herself, then agreeing to die herself, then on top of all that being told that she is not human and "replaced" by the hanging doll.

Bob: Right. That's something that I think is taken almost note for note from Nausicaa, by the way. The backstory of a mother's suicide, and the doll.
Which is a layered thing, because Anno was an animator on the Nausicaa movie, and at one point was going to direct a sequel which would've had this very backstory in it.

me: Also, love the bit where Rei removes the Lance and Adam regenerates. Everything seems so interrelated in this episode: the Angels, the Evas, Adam, the NERV-SEELE drama, the personal struggles of the characters, like different faces of the same jewel. We can really tell we're building toward a grand climax/showdown where it all kind of explodes into the soup of Instrumentality.
And her mother apparently lost her mind in similar fashion to Asuka: the vaguely-described "contact experiment." Which suggests that either Asuka fears the same fate as her mother, and has shut herself down, or else that like her mother she is predisposed to fail in such an experiment...or both.That's the essence of tragedy I suppose. Consciousness combined with helplessness. Asuka makes bad choices and resists helpful overtures but it isn't so simple as to say "If only she did this/that" because in a very real sense she CAN'T. This is who she is.

Bob: I think her mother lost her mind more in a situation like what happened to Shinji's mother.

me: Yes, which is another interesting contrast between the two pilots (or in this case, the two families). Yui's contact experiment results in, it's implied, her merging with the Eva, entering into something bigger than herself. Asuka's mother, on the other hand, falls back into herself, regressing to - as her husband puts it - an almost dolllike state (and literally seeing her child as a doll). As with the parents, so with their children. Shinji merges with the Eva in his own contact experience. Asuka is violated and plunged into even deeper isolation.

Bob: I'm also really struck by just how deep we go into Asuka's mind here. There's a long stretch where we go into her visions, which are much more detailed and less isolated than Shinji's in the train. That whole portion of her on the street in the crowd, the Face of Another scene, is something that's really impressive on that level. Shinji only creates a room in his head. She creates a whole city, one that's very much like the rainy city she's trying to escape.

me: Here's a question, since you're more familiar with anime than I: is it at all common to have menstruation mentioned as a plot point? At least in an action anime? It seems like one of those everyday things that nonetheless doesn't turn up in American entertainment all that much (unless it's a very female-focused rom-com or like maybe a jokey "she's having her period" thing or something in a sitcom.) But not like here, where it's made into an important part of the characterization.

Bob: It's not something I've run across a whole lot, to be honest. In most things that are aimed at girls, I wouldn't imagine you'd have a lot of time or detail devoted to that. Even though anime has a reputation for being more adult, there's definitely a space for innocence in a lot of it. So Asuka's period being a plot point, or at least a character point, is something that stands out. It helps make her more of a real character.

Murderous Ink: Some anime, frequently young-adult comedy, contain many reference to menstruation. Usually, the situation is like this: some girl is having a hysteric episode on something, then a mischievous boy ask her "is today 'that' day?" Since this routine had become so commonplace, it sounds somewhat outdated today (just like PMS gag in U.S. sitcom back in '90s). Another point maybe that it is not as uncommon as in U.S. that menstruation is referred, sometimes explicitly expressed, in Japanese mainstream TV, like in drama (target for adults). It was tradition in Japanese household (but not anymore) that when a girl experiences her first menstruation, her family celebrates it by cooking a special meal that night. These customs are sometimes used as a narrative device for a girl's life. And the other reference to this "becoming a woman" punctuates her sexuality in Japanese TV and movies.

Bob: It's also the type of biological detail that fits perfectly in the scientific and psychological avenues of the NERV people.

me: And it really emphasizes that despite the show implicitly being aimed at adolescent boys, in a milieu we'd expect the female characters to be mostly fanservice/fetish objects, Anno is interested in exploring the women and girls as well. This episode is pretty emphatically told from Asuka's point of view, the only exception being Shinji's moment where he watches her on the phone with her stepmom. Which is ironic for several reasons.

Bob: The Shinji moment is something I wanted to get into, as well. The way he's describing how she becomes a different person when she's speaking a language he doesn't understand, it's something that sounds very apt as a metaphor for the experiences people with autism go through, something that Evangelion has been talked about in terms of. His difficulty understanding her emotional turmoil, the faces she wears, is something that becomes all the more poignant at this moment, when he actually does try to reach out.

me: Plus she's putting on more of a disguise for the stepmother, not for him. The Asuka she shows him is much closer to the reality of her subjective experience. But he doesn't totally realize that.He's losing the reality for the myth.

Bob: I mean it's more like he's realizing the different kinds of faces everybody wears. She tells him soon enough that it isn't her real mom, anyway.He's seeing a skill that he doesn't have, and for a moment he's experiencing real isolation. Emotionally.
And yeah, maybe he doesn't quite understand that what he sees as her social skills are really a kind of crutch. But he's so deeply restrained he can't see it. 

me: And yet earlier when she's sitting there stewing, and even snapping at him he's seemingly oblivious. Or indifferent.

Bob: Or intimidated.That moment at the end of the episode, where she's sitting behind the containment lines, and he's trying to talk to her, that to me is a crucial image in what the series has been doing. Boundaries have been such a big symbol hroughout the series-- the closing of elevator doors, the threshholds of entries, the sliding door in Misato's apartment. The AT field is the biggest example of this, and to have new one added here as Asuka pushes him away again is a key addition.

me: Next to Asuka, I think the character whose mind we experience most in this episode is Misato. In some ways she's been our throughline in the back half of this series. No matter who else is in the pilot's seat (literally and figuratively in the episode) she's there to offer a kind of overarching perspective.

Bob: Well, she's there to move the story ahead with the Evas, which seems like a pure piece of background table setting at the moment. Not a lot of thematic connection I can make off hand. Although the bit about the idea of connection being what causes the Second/Third Impact (or doesn't) is a neat thing.I still find Shinji's experience really interesting, even though he's in the background. He and Rei are particularly prominent in her mind, in ways that Asuka isn't even remotely close to being able to accept. With Rei, we can at least understand why she hates the idea of somebody so selfless, so entirely without any kind of self preservation instinct or ego, because she fears what'll happen to herself without that.
I think the main thing is that she hates Rei for being so self negating, and maybe that's a component of the motherhood thing. The period does come quickly on her saying she doesn't even want kids. Motherhood is a corrupt proposition for her.Any kind of dependency is something she can't stand, and I think that's what's at the root of her hatred of Shinji in this episode, and how paradoxical it is. "He couldn't even hold me" is a perfect expression of how much she hates the idea of being emotionally dependent on somebody, as well as how much she craves it. Her infatuation with Kaji is a warped attempt to become independent, singular. Her obsessive love/hate with Shinji, and to a lesser extent her hatred of Rei, are all based on her fear...
...of becoming too reliant on him/them. They're expressed in a language of rivalry, competition, dominance, but what it really means is "if I accept that you're the better Eva pilot, it means I can't be self reliant. I have to depend on you for the protection of my life, even if it's only on a cooperative basis. Even if it's mutual."
And right from the start of this episode, we can see that this fear is rooted in how her primary connection and dependence were sliced apart when she needed it most.

me: Any final thoughts?

Bob: I think this is the first time we have classical music in the series. Really hammers in the religious overtones of the Angel this time.

me: It's such a weirdly brilliant needle drop.

Bob: Yeah. Completely on the nose, but it helps paint the scene in such a psychologically powerful register. It would be so easy to layer in dramatic, urgent music that underlines the danger. But this is all screaming the joy of God, it's almost perverse given what's happening.

me: Yeah it makes the scene both horrifying and elating at the same time.

Bob: And perfectly fitting the religious labels for everything. What else but horrifying and elating would meeting an angel be like?

me: Really reminded me of this:

Bob: Well, that statue's always been read as being about sexual ecstasy. That's clearly not what's going on here.

me: But the point is its not sexual orgasm vs. religious experience, secular/psychological/physical vs. religious/metaphysical/spiritual. It's an = rather than a vs.And I think that's what NGE is doing in general with a lot of its themes and motifs at this point. Drawing them closer together so that they are really reinforcing one another.

Bob: Who was it who wrestled with an Angel? Jacob?

me: Yes, Jacob. He also saw the angels climbing a ladder to heaven for what it's worth.

Bob: Well again, I really try to resist the all too easy sexual reading of what's happening to her. To me it's really just opening up the pandora's box of emotions she's been bottling up, showing what was inside her the whole time and trying to deny. Each of these angel communals is really more of a mirror moment (apropos, the reflecting puddle Shinji stands beside when he's blocked from her by the tape).

me: Yes, but sexuality is a part of that. I think the problem is too often people make it like one thing is at the end of a hall of metaphors. But the most interesting allegories don't work that way. They are about multiple things at once, each of value & they mutually reinforce one another. So when we talk about Asuka experiencing a confrontation with her psyche vs. an outside Angel they are less different alternative readings than different aspects of the same phenomenon. In my opinion anyway...
But yes, agreed completely about the angels as mirrors.
It's interesting to observe how early on in NGE, the metaphors or the allegorical layer work in tandem with conventional genre readings. They're there, if you want to dig for them and they are also sometimes explicated in dialogue and such. But by the end of the series they are really becoming an integral, intertwined part of the show's texture. It's no longer like, on one level it works as an action-adventure mecha story, on another it's about human psychology and spiritual concepts.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Miraculous Virgin (1967/Czechoslovakia/dir. Stefan Uher) appeared at #86 on my original list.

What it is • We are in a wartorn European city. The war is not named, and I don't think the city is either, although the film was shot in Bratislava (emphasis on the "Slovakia" in Czechoslovakia, thank you very much). Out of nowhere, a beautiful, mysterious woman named Annabella (Jolanta Umecka) appears. Is she a flesh-and-blood refugee needing to be hidden from the nationalist authorities who will deport her? Is she a metaphorical muse, inspiring the artists who flutter frustratingly around her like moths to the flame? Or is she the moth and they the flame, their desperate desire a threat to her own identity and security? The film unfolds through a series of fluid, graceful poetic gestures - surrealism expressed not just through the imagery and the subtle, evocative soundscape but also the way this imagery is revealed and explored. If other films of the Czechoslovakian New Wave express surrealism through screenplay or editing, Miraculous Virgin utilizes camera movement to pleasurably disorient our senses.

Why I like it •
This film is just a beautiful visual experience from beginning to end. Its themes are also compelling because it plants a foot in both psychological realism and mythological surrealism, creating a character who functions both as a figment of imagination and an independent subject. I wish I could write in more detail about the movie but sadly it is unavailable to me at present. This is almost certainly the most obscure title on my "favorites" list (its only rival being La Vieja Memoria at #100). I was only able to see it originally when a brief online acquaintance offered a password to an ultra-insulated website where I could access the movie. A secret "open sesame" to enter this cave of treasures and when I left, the opening closed behind me, leaving me to wonder if I'd dreamed the whole thing up. How appropriate to the wistful, fleeting, dreamlike nature of the film itself.

How you can see it • Apparently it is available as a DVD from this and this service, neither of which I can at all vouch for, or quite figure out. Otherwise...good luck! To learn more about the movie, you can read the review I wrote after my first and only viewing. And you can watch a clip on YouTube - the only place any footage of the movie whatosever is readily available. Hat tip to the mysterious LEAVES who pointed me in this direction in the first place, back when I was planning to cover several Czechoslovakian films for a short series.

What do you think? • Have you managed to see this? How so? What other Slovakian films have you seen, and you do you notice any sharp distinctions from Czech filmmakers, even though they were part of the same country at the time? Do you believe Annabella's significance is purely metaphorical? Does she exist as a human character for you as well? Do you assume the film takes place during World War II, or in a more imaginary setting? Did you observe any particular patterns or visual motifs (one commentator has noticed the repetition of "filling and emptying" imagery)? There is one scene where Annabella visits a character's bedroom that had to me a distinctively timeless feel to it - almost like it could have taken place with American teenagers in the present or recent past - did it have that feel to you as well? Are there any older films that have similar moments, that almost startle you with a similar sense of present-tense immediacy?

I am re-watching Twin Peaks out of chronological order, from my least favorite episode to my favorite episode, probably to be concluded with Fire Walk With Me. Partly this is just a fun, different way for me to watch a show that I’ve viewed a total of 5 times (with some individual episodes being watched at least twice that amount). The series obviously has its ups and downs, but this way it will only get better as I go along. I already have the overall plot pretty firmly in my head, so I don’t need to worry about continuity.

I will be writing down brief reactions - a capsule paragraph or so for each - over the next month (I hope to watch 1-2 episodes a day so I can finish in October; had I planned better, I could have done an episode a day starting on October 1 and ended with Fire Walk With Me on Halloween…oh well). Eventually, when Showtime re-airs the series I hope to do an extensive non-spoiler episode guide (as well as an accompanying spoiler post for each episode) compiling everything I’ve written and/or gathered on the show so far, plus some new observations.

I’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about Twin Peaks as a whole, seeing how each piece adds up to something bigger. This is one way for me to look at them from a new perspective.






Summary: Leo awakens from his coma, Coop tells Truman about his past, Evelyn reveals that she framed James, the mayor is reconciled with his dead brother’s widow, Doc tells Andy & Dick the truth about Little Nicky, and Leo stumbles across the cabin of Windom Earle.

So to start with, my least favorite episode...

It was down to this or the Diane Keaton-directed follow-up. Eventually I went with 21 because I always felt it was more boring than the flamboyant Keaton episode, and depending on my mood that's a worse offense. Starting with episode 21 turned out to be a wise move. I haven't watched any Twin Peaks episodes for nearly 4 months (since I got back into the show in March 2014, that's some kind of record). It was such a pleasure to be back in that world of hooting owls, hot coffee, and woodsy decor that I was mostly able to gloss over the tired writing and direction of the episode. Even with subpar material, it’s fun to hang out with the cast: Ed and Norma reconnecting in the cozy diner, Pete as perplexed by forgotten frankfurters as his resurrected brother-in-law, and Coop and Truman lovably luxuriating in the pleasure of one another's company, their relaxed camaraderie in as fine a form as it's ever been. I missed these characters, and time passed in their presence does not feel wasted. I've always been amazed by fans who don't like Fire Walk With Me yet are apologetic about season two, but watching the episode in isolation after a long break I think I can better understand their mentality. Even at its lamest, the show always feels at least nominally "Twin Peaks-y," and there is something comforting about its collection of characters, moods, and motifs. I was even able to notice enjoyable things about plots I don't care for: Hideout Wallie's, despite being the central nexus of season two's most useless storyline (James & Evelyn) is actually a pretty cool locale, and while Ben's Confederate flag-waving war games are pretty pointless the Civil War drumrolls on the soundtrack seem to fit the rustic Twin Peaks mood (probably helped by that roaring fireplace behind Ben). On the other hand, the Lana Milford and Little Nicky denouements are as cringeworthy as ever - sending the widow into the room with her (armed!) wannabe murderer is easily the most thoughtless thing Coop has ever done. Meanwhile, it's nice to see a spooky entrance for Windom Earle; by placing him in an old cabin in the woods, the show finds a way to make this out-of-towner seem vaguely at home in Twin Peaks. Sadly, it's mostly downhill from here. Mostly though, especially in the first half of the episode, I was focused on the ambiance rather than the action and honestly that is probably the best way to get through this episode. I enjoyed episode 21 more this time than I ever have before, though that's not a very high bar to set. One other thing: since I wasn't coming off 20 previous episodes mostly focused around her death, it was pretty jarring to see Laura Palmer pop up under the end credits. Along with the Log Lady intros (which I won't be including in this rewatch, largely because I watched them all on their own after Catherine Coulson passed away), those credits always remind me of the bigger picture, however far the show has strayed from its place of birth.



Summary: Donna and James confront Evelyn (who kills Malcolm), Ben awakens from his Civil War delusion, Albert tells Cooper about Windom’s crime spree, Catherine and Eckhard barter over Josie, Windom leaves Caroline’s death mask for Cooper.

Different directors emphasize different qualities of Twin Peaks. If the previous episode's Uli Edel was taken with the familiar iconography of Twin Peaks - owls, coffee, wood, donuts, etc. - then Diane Keaton seems determined to replicate David Lynch's peculiar visual techniques. Bizarre behavior, odd camera angles, and distracting objects are her stock in trade, but it all feels too artificial, the actors posed like mannequins in lifeless dioramas. Aside from acting, Keaton's background was in photography, and a number of these shots, if frozen, "would like nice on your wall" to borrow Mrs. Tremond's phrase. What they lack is that dynamic "anything can happen" quality that Lynch's work evokes. This was a close contender for my least favorite episode: sometimes Keaton's choices just alienate me even further from the poor subplots, while other times 22 has been a relief from the dull, very TV-ish preceding episodes (hey, at least there's something to look at here). I think my biggest problem is that the staging often obstructs the performances: when Truman and Norma squeeze their profiles into the kitchen's small window I found myself laughing out loud at the awkwardness rather than appreciating what the sheriff had to tell her about Hank. On the other hand, Albert fares really well here, with both Miguel Ferrer and Michael Ontkean ( :cry: ) selling the previously hostile duo's newfound bromance. And Jack Nance's bewildered delivery of the Hungarian dry cleaning anecdote overcomes the irritation of that swinging door. Since I actually watched the previous episode last night (a practice I'll mostly be avoiding on this rewatch), I wasn't really able to see 22 outside of its normal context. So I'm left with the same hang-ups as usual: aside from the visual conceits that don't work for me Windom is quickly reduced to a cackling cartoon, Catherine's and Eckhard's mechanations feel unnecessarily convoluted, and Ben's Civil War drama remains a bizarrely anachronistic dramatic choice (on another note, something sure pulled a fast paint job on his office, didn't they? And all gone by the following day!). At least the Evelyn story is over, although that's little consolation to me as I still have ep. 18 - 20 to go! Why they stretched that plotline out over 5 episodes when Denise only got 3 I'll never know.

That's it for the worst of the worst, as far as I'm concerned. The remaining weak episodes all have at least a few things to recommend in them beyond just featuring beloved characters and partaking of the Twin Peaks vibe: at least a full scene or two worth waiting for. Much as I like the image of Caroline's death mask, I can't really say that about this episode.




Summary: Annie is crowned Miss Twin Peaks and kidnapped by Windom Earle

I initially thought this would be higher on my list, but whenever I tried to move it up I kept thinking "But I enjoy these other episodes more." On its surface, episode 28 should not be so close to the bottom. After all, it contains some truly classic moments like Windom's creepy chalk-white face, as well as fun minor bits like Lucy's solo dance or Shelly & Donna goofing off in the back of the chorus line. And this is an "IMPORTANT!!" episode, setting the place for the entire series' climax - originally aired as part 1 of a 2-hour Twin Peaks finale. There are so many episodes in the middle of the show that go nowhere, so shouldn't I give this penultimate chapter credit for at least attempting to deliver the goods? Yet I've come to realize that I prefer my weak Twin Peaks to be light and inconsequential rather than trying too hard but failing. Once I began re-watching 28, I was immediately relieved that I stuck with my gut by placing it this low. This is an episode I would rather get out of the way early before moving in to more enjoyable fare. Above all, much of it just drags. There are some quick character touches along the way that result in chuckles, but few scenes truly sustain energy and interest all the way through. On a meta-level many of the writerly conceits are thought-provoking: Annie bringing up Laura (and Shelly saying "I think we'll need more than a day" to heal from her death), the contestants "wrapped in plastic" raincoats, the real Log Lady being humiliated by Pinkle & then replaced by Windom Earle in Log Lady drag. But these touches also direct our attention to just how far the show has fallen; bonus points for self-awareness only go so far. If Fire Walk With Me was partly an act of rage for Lynch, and I think it was, 28 seems to epitomize everything he was raging against. There's just a general lackluster feel onscreen (the Miss Twin Peaks contest is particularly lifeless). Even the late-season mythology, which I usually find absorbing, descends into vague astrological goobledygook. And it's often painful to watch the characters behave so illogically. Why don't Cooper and Truman just stop the pageant before a winner is announced? Why can't Andy find Cooper in small and not very crowded Road House? This is an episode that may be "better" than a lot of the really cheesy, pointless mid-season fluff but subjectively this might be my least favorite of the series, almost more so than the grim twins of 21 & 22 with which I launched this rewatch. Given the meta stuff and the fact that is this is apparently the last-ever piece of non-Lynch-directed Twin Peaks that we will ever see, 28 is much more interesting to think about than it is to watch. The same could be said about the next entry on this list, although I'll probably find more to highlight there. Yeesh.




Summary: Cooper comforts Sarah Palmer, the town attends Leland’s wake, Cooper is suspended from the FBI, Nadine returns to high school, Cooper tells Audrey about Caroline, Jean announces a new plan to frame Cooper, Norma finds out her mother was the food critic, and Maj. Briggs disappears into a bright light in the woods.

This was a very hard episode to place. On the one hand, this is where everything begins to irreversibly head south. The show's most compelling and troubling bits of drama are cavalierly swept under the rug, the human tragedy and supernatural flourishes of the previous episode are barely followed up on, and many of the worst comic subplots are initiated. The entire wake scene is an absolute train wreck, just a disaster start to finish, goosed by the chaotic score, which can't decide if it's wants to be sad or funny. And what’s with the cheerful demeanor of the townspeople attending a serial killer's memorial? On this very thread, it's been suggested that the actors may not have even known whose wake they were supposed to be attending, which is entirely plausible when you recall that the killer's identity was still a public secret at the time of production. This only hammers home how rushed the writers were in prematurely wrapping up the mystery that had provided its premise. Incidentally, Sarah Palmer's last scripted line on the show - before being dropped from the cast completely (until Lynch improvised her return in the finale) - is "I need to remember all of this..." Right before they cut away from Laura's tragedy one last time to reveal the mayor and his brother fighting at the buffet table! You can't make this stuff up. When I first watched the series 7 years ago, that moment with the two brothers made my heart sink. Suddenly and helplessly, I could see exactly where this show was going. Apparently director Tina Rathborne felt the same, admitting later that the scene represented an unfortunate turning point for the series and that this episode stood in stark contrast to her previous Twin Peaks venture, Laura's funeral. Indeed, Rathborne seems as confused as the viewer by this material. Similarly to her first episode, she indulges a lot of bizarre character traits (in particular, Hank and Ernie’s aggressive wrestling at One-Eyed Jack's is a wtf? moment). But this time, unmoored in the town's sense of grief and eccentricity, few of these gestures land. She also uses a LOT more musical cues than in episode 3, one of the quietest in the score-heavy series. The wake is not the only scene to descends into a cacophony of distracting cues, adding to the sense that we are trapped on a carousel gone out of control. With all that in mind, it's quite logical for the episode to place so low. On the other hand, this is a really watchable hour of television! Sometimes it's so bad it's good - the moment when Nadine throws the jock 20 feet in the air is worthy of a grade-Z kids' show, even more surreal when you realize that we are only 35 minutes of screentime away from Leland's death. In other scenes, the pathos and humor actually connect; watching it without the distraction of the previous stretch of episodes I was able to enjoy many character moments more than I ever had before. In light of today's unfortunate Twin Peaks news, Cooper's fond goodbye to the sheriff's station crew, especially Truman (with whom he swoons over a Green Butt Skunk fishing tackle) is enough to give the most jaded viewers a lump in their throat. I was also surprisingly on board with the conclusion to the lame M.T. Wentz storyline, silently cheering Norma as she tells off her mother after a lifetime of belittlement. Catherine's appearance at the sheriff's station is also weirdly compelling and layered, a clear lie given unexpected poignance by Rathborne’s musical choice and the realization that her talk of a guardian angel prefigures Fire Walk With Me. And while the episode’s and arguably the mid-season’s most thought-provoking dialogue was unfortunately cut out (it linked fear and love as opposites, and implied that Leland's self-hatred played some role in his possession), the campfire scene with Cooper and Maj. Briggs remains an intriguing teaser for the mysteries and mythology to come. It's amazing to realize, given how much fans conflate all the mythology in their heads, that there are no Lodges on the show until this conversation. All in all, this is a strangely essential episode to understanding Twin Peaks as a whole, but that doesn't mean it deserves to be ranked highly. If I was judging it purely on meta-fascination, it would be in my top 10. Judging it for what it did for the show's narrative, it deserves to be dead last. Instead I'll place it here, fourth from the bottom (although in the future I'd probably rank it slightly higher for those enjoyable character moments). And I'll paraphrase Seinfeld: "It's a loathsome, offensive brute...yet I can't look away."

P.S. Make sure to check out Michael Warren's brilliant takedown of the wake scene. His image captions are as hilarious as they are heartbreaking.




Summary: Cooper learns of Jean’s drug deals at Dead Dog Farm, the mayor’s brother dies during intercourse, Dick suspects Little Nicky is the devil, Nadine joins the wrestling team, and Maj. Briggs returns during a stormy night.

Here's an odd one. This is the "sitcom" episode of Twin Peaks, and it's a toss-up which scene best embodies the winking cheesiness that the show has descended into. Is it Nadine dropping Mike in wrestling practice (a scene whose long awkward gaps would be perfectly timed with a canned laugh track, as the Twin Peaks Rewatch podcast pointed out)? Or is it the appearance of a character who answers James' simple questions with long, ridiculous soliloquies that are simultaneously non sequiturs and info-dumps (speaking of podcasts, the folks at the Twin Peaks Podcast - no relation - helpfully & hilariously dubbed this guy "Exposition Malcolm")? Maybe it's the newly widowed Lana Milford regaling Hawk with her brace-kissing escapades (before he - Hawk, of all people! - succumbs to a goofy pratfall), or Dick Tremayne and Little Nicky in matching jean jackets and ascots fixing a tire, or Andy's infamous thought balloon (if Twin Peaks is initially presented to us as a precious, unique little Gizmo wrapped up under the Christmas tree, then this subplot is the Gremlin that grew from its back to spawn its own foul litter). My vote, however, would go to a bizarrely written, and even more bizarrely directed sequence near the end of the episode. After a bout spontaneous Shakespearean sonnets, Lucy wanders through a deserted sheriff’s station to discover Andy, Dick, Truman, and Doc mooning over Lana. Flute music plays liltingly on the soundtrack and she tells them a story about her clown cousin’s striptease. How the hell did we reach this point and what law of TV physics allows this to exist in the same universe as Maddy's murder? During early rewatches of Twin Peaks, I considered this episode the absolute nadir. That's fair, yet I'm ranking it above several others for a few reasons. For one, the sheer ridiculousness keeps it from ever truly getting boring; also, there are several scenes I quite like on their own merits. One is Audrey's intervention for Coop, which would feel at home in the first season; another is a spooky, quintessentially second-season moment in the Briggs household (we rarely get to see them interact as a family, and it's always good to get more Betty). That scene is capped by a gorgeous shot of rolling thunderclouds that ends the episode on an appearling note. For the most part, however, this feels like the ruined city of a grand civilization, taken over by barbarian hordes who have no clue what to do with its amenities. The characters, locations, and even musical cues are the same (check out the extremely inappropriate uses of Laura's, the Little Man's, and especially Harold's themes) but something at its core is wildly different. Oddly enough, the episode was directed by Caleb Deschanel and co-written by Harley Peyton, the duo responsible for one of my favorite episodes of the first season. Go figure! Whether or not Lana Milford is cursed, the show itself seemed to be hexed at this time; nonetheless, episode 19 is guilty pleasure for many of the same reasons it is an abomination. I've bumped it up a few spots in my rankings - blame the Little Nicky thought balloon hovering over my head right now.




Summary: Norma leaves Hank, Jack arrives in town, James leaves town, Ben launches a crusade to “save Ghostwood,” Windom lures Shelly, Audrey, and Donna to the Road House, Josie kills Eckhardt before dying mysteriously, Bob and the Little Man appear to Cooper, and Josie’s face appears in a drawer pull.

This is the first episode on the list that I can’t comfortably describe as “bad.” For one thing, there are none of the cringeworthy cheese-factor moments that occur throughout the mid-season (including the next episode, which I otherwise consider an improvement). Episode 23 generally feels classier than its immediate predecessors, due in part to the return of Lesli Linka Glatter, the show’s most accomplished and prolific director aside from David Lynch himself. Back on even keel, Twin Peaks re-harnasses its dissipated energy in order to conclude the long-simmering story of Josie Packard and plant the seeds for some new plotlines (Annie, good Ben, JJW, and Windom’s first overt attempt to interfere with the townspeople). We even glimpse the long-forgotten Bob once again! Not to mention the Little Man; it’s easy to forget (given the multiple flashbacks, references, and upcoming reappearances) but this was the first time Michael J. Anderson had shot anything for Twin Peaks since the alternate ending to the pilot in 1989 before ABC had even commissioned a series. Between Bob, the Little Man, and Josie’s memorable appearance in a drawer pull it also feels like maybe a whisper of David Lynch is finally in the air again (Lynch’s direct intervention in a show he had mostly been removing himself from). I always found it interesting (maybe it’s just arbitrary?) that every collection of Twin Peaks’ second season has included episode 23 on the disc with 24/25/26, rather than 19/20/21/22, as if a new chapter has begun. For many viewers this is the comeback episode where Twin Peaks starts to get good again. And yet while planning this list, I struggled to rank 23 even as high as it is; at one point I even started viewing it before changing my mind and elevating it a few spaces. Here’s a good example of how watching an episode out of context can benefit that episode. Following closely on the heels of the deadly 21 & 22, 23 always felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back. By this point in a given rewatch, I am sick of the Josie plot and the episode’s deliberately ponderous pacing usually just frustrates me. The first time I saw this episode, having no idea where it was heading or how long it would stay good or bad, the reappearance of Bob and the Little Man didn’t feel like a comeback, it felt like Twin Peaks jumping the shark. Bob wasn’t scary and the Little Man looked foolish dancing on a bed and what the fuck was with that terrible CGI knob?? At least up, I initially felt, the mid-season slump had avoided soiling the show’s Lynchian iconography but now that too had been dragged through the muck. Tonight, however, I enjoyed the episode more than I ever have before; I’d even be inclined to rank it at least two spots higher. For the first time ever Josie’s dilemma felt mildly engaging to me, not just in theory but in execution. For once it played less as the result of confused writers and a confused actress unsure of Josie’s own intentions and thought process (which was part of the problem, let’s be honest - Joan Chen wanted out, and the staff never had a clear read on her part), and more like what David Lynch intended Josie to be from the beginning: a character who has both been victimized and victimized others, and is supposed to be unsure of what she wants. Unlike those other quintessentially Lynchian inventions Laura and Cooper, the filmmaker was unable to rescue Josie from the show’s betrayals. So he stuck her soul in a drawer pull for safekeeping. The character whose enigmatic expression opened and very nearly closed the series (since ABC almost canceled Twin Peaks in February 1991) may very well return to our screens in 2017. “Josie, I see your face…”




Summary: Maj. Briggs talks about his experience in the woods, Norma and Ed get back together, Nadine beats up Hank, the lawmen stake out Dead Dog Farm, Cooper is taken hostage, Denise and Truman get a gun to Cooper and he kills Jean, Windom leaves a dead body in the sheriff’s station

I can say with confidence that episode 23 is better than 20. But - going into this rewatch, anyway (I may feel differently afterwards) - I decided that 20 deserved to be near the top of mid-season two as far as subjective favorite. Now, that's obviously a relative statement. In many ways this is a pretty crummy episode and by about 2/3 of the way in, I was getting restless. Evelyn popping champagne with James before making out with Malcolm (there is a LOT of the Marsh clan in this episode), Ernie's weird antsiness (which never comes off as funny as it's supposed to), Andy's and Dick's "undercover" investigation into Little Nicky's orphanage (stupidly charming to me on recent rewatches but just lame this time)...all quintessential midseason muck. Whatever doubts I had about its placement, 20 floated up near the best of the worst on the strength of two sequences: the trippy opening with Maj. Briggs and the climactic standoff at Dead Dog Farm. I've become rather fond of Dead Dog Farm over time. The decrepit decor and even the name feel quintessentially Lynchian, and I like its dystopian vibe plunked down in the midst of the bucolic small town. I've also noticed similarities between it and the room above the convenience store in Fire Walk With Me, but we'll save that discussion for another time. As the blonde mounty himself observes, Jean's monologue doesn’t really make much sense (it's about on par with Josie shooting Cooper "because you came here"). But there is a wrongheaded intuitive logic to Jean’s superstitious blame-Cooper paranoia; it’s the sort of emotionally-driven rationale that people generally come up with when they are looking for a convenient scapegoat. Coop himself seems slightly swayed by the force of Jean's presentation; this is key season two/fallen Cooper material here, paving the way to the series climax. Similarly, that bravura opening (a bit cheesy but fun in its video-game graphics) lays nice groundwork for the Twin Peaks mythology. I'd argue that, along with Hawk's speech in episode 18, this is the motherlode of mythology for the mid-season. And it's presented in a much more visually compelling way than its entirely verbal predecessor. That fiery tattoo symbol spinning through space; the major seated on his jungle throne (love the distorted growls on the soundtrack, which can be heard subtly at the episode’s end too); the giant owl flashing across the screen; the artfully stated "skies above and earth below" pivoting from UFOs back to season 1's "darkness in the woods”; Briggs' perplexing delivery of "Is this for the soul? My soul?" as he taps the wooden table (a gesture that makes sense only in light of Josie’s fate); and finally the water dripping from the ceiling sprinkler, linking Leland's death to whatever is haunting Maj. Briggs and threatening Cooper. Much of this is down to Todd Holland's flamboyant direction - the young director certainly had a way with flashy cold opens (he also conceived that traveling shot through the ceiling hole in episode 11). But we also have to tip our hat to Harley Peyton, who receives the episode's sole writing credit. This is the last time in Twin Peaks history, including the upcoming run, that any of the show's four core talents (Lynch, Frost, Peyton, and Bob Engels) would pen an entire episode alone.




Summary: Denise the DEA agent arrives to investigate Cooper, Hawk tells Cooper about the Black Lodge, James meets Evelyn, Dick introduces Little Nicky, Hank tells Ben he’s out of One-Eyed Jack’s, the mayor’s brother marries Lana, Catherine forces Josie to be her maid, and Andrew is revealed to be alive.

This episode has frequently been ranked at the bottom of the entire series. It introduces the dreadful Evelyn and Little Nicky storylines, sets aside a good chunk of time for the who-cares Milford wedding, launches the final, tedious stretch of Josie's storyline, and makes it clear that the last episode wasn't an aberration: Twin Peaks is dead-set on becoming a slightly more twisted Andy Griffith knockoff for the 90s, Northern Exposure with a more ridiculous bent as it emphasizes postmodern pratfalls of a lovable, kooky small-town community. Well, sure - and 18 is definitely a part of my least favorite patch of episodes in the series. But I think it's a lot better than most of the others. Yes, Evelyn and Nicky make their debuts but their scenes become much worse in the next couple episodes. The Milford wedding provides a platform for numerous entertaining little character moments. Josie's bedside confession to Truman may be one of the character's best moments, allowing us to see her vulnerable side even as we remain aware of a complex dark side she is unwilling to reveal to her naive lover. And if the show is going to wander into wacky small-town shenanigans for a while, at least it will do so under the guidance of one of the richest, warmest, and most well-played guest appearances in the entire Twin Peaks: David Duchovney as Agent Denise Bryson. There are three passages in this episode that ensure its place at the very top of the mid-season, and one of them is Denise's debut. Given the times and the show's general tenor at this juncture, Denise could have easily come off as a one-note gag, dated and cringeworthy today. Instead, thanks particularly to the acting and directing, she is one of the more nuanced, believable characters, gracefully walking the tightrope between cheap humor and preachiness without falling into either trap. Another of the three excellent passages comes right before Denise's entrance, as Hawk lays out the show's core mythology. This might initially seem like a throwaway monologue and ok, it's a bit hamfisted, especially the conceit that this grabbag of European esoterica (primarily culled from Theosophy) has anything to do with Pacific Northwest Native American lore. But listen closely, especially to the bit about the dweller on the threshold, and you have an essential key to understanding what happens in the finale and feature film. And of course this is the first-ever mention of the Black Lodge; all in all, one of the more essential info-dumps of the entire series. Amazing to think this scene is tucked away here, in a mostly forgotten episode, overshadowed by the material surrounding it and entrusted to a secondary character. Finally, the third crucial passage is Ben's nostalgic reverie in his office, watching an old film documenting the groundbreaking ceremony for the Great Northern. The acoustic Twin Peaks theme and the blue-tinted monochromatic home movies add to the scene’s charm, capturing the old, yearning flavor of the series in a way most mid-season episodes do not. But the moment also carries thematic heft. Until now, Ben has simply been a loathsome if occasionally charismatic cad; this gesture offers a glimpse into the more vulnerable side of his character, paving the way for his eventual, bungled attempts to become a do-gooder. Additionally, there are a surprising number of other solid scenes scattered throughout the episode: Cooper's whimsical credo about playing off the board (delivered to a baffled FBI supervisor); our first sneering Windom tape, mocking Cooper's "hobglobins" and promising the audience an intimidating villainous mastermind (if only); and Betty Briggs' visit to the sheriff station offers intriguing glimpses into Major Briggs' mysteries while probably allowing Charlotte Stewart more lines than in all of her other scenes combined. All too rare, but as Ben Horne once said (in happier if more malevolent times), "Always...a pleasure!"




Summary: Harry grieves Josie, the Log Lady and Maj. Briggs show Cooper their tattoos, Windom visits Donna in disguise, Cooper meets Annie, Ben holds a “Stop Ghostwood” fashion show, and Dick gets bitten by a pine weasel.

Is this the "comeback" episode? Is it a turning point in the series, and a turning point even in this achronological rewatch? Does it lead away from the meandering trivialities of the mid-season and towards the more exciting, engaged Twin Peaks of the final stretch (and, in our case, eventually the more dynamic first half of the show)? Sort of. I've always characterized 24 as a breath of fresh air, as "springtime in Twin Peaks," now that the least compelling subplots are out of the way and some momentum is starting to build in the Windom Earle and mythology storylines. But truthfully this is more like a breather between two big episodes, even if it isn’t sandwiched between them on this rewatch. There is no single moment that stands out above the rest (I do like the Log Lady and Maj. Briggs reuniting to debrief Cooper about the mysteries of the woods, but the scene’s charms are brief and slight). Instead, the whole episode has a kind of relaxed ambiance about it, thanks mostly to James Foley's graceful, uncluttered, energetic direction: lots of long takes and subtle camera movements to grease the treads, moving us into position for the show's final arc. There is some junk too: the fashion show drags even before the notorious "pine weasel riot" (leading many viewers to rank this episode far lower than I do), and even after all these viewings the John Justice Wheeler-Audrey Horne romance still does absolutely nothing for me. On the other hand, call me crazy but I find Cooper's awkward courtship of Annie charming and - despite its transparently artificial last-minute set-up - kinda believable. I like their first meeting here and the buoyant mood is well-prepared by Shelly’s hilariously send-up of the Miss Twin Peaks charade (if only the writers had listened to her). I am usually just as fascinated by Windom Earle's deceptively low-key housecall on Donna, but for whatever reason (the too-jovial music perhaps) it left me cold tonight. Such are the perils of resting your reports on subjective whims. To flip that script, I usually laugh off Truman's grief-stricken non sequiturs ("that's the good thing about the law it DOESN'T BREATHE YOU CAN'T KILL IT!!!") but tonight I watched his morose temper tantrum with a lump in my throat. Partly due to the sad news of Michael Ontkean's recent depature from the new series and partly because I’ve been more taken with Josie’s story on this rewatch. The yelling still feels a bit goofy but Ontkean's croaking delivery of his follow-up lines (“She came to me!”) hit the spot, as does Truman's bewhiskered, whiskey-soaked hugout with best buddy Cooper. He has lost his lover, but he's still got his soulmate.




Summary: Windom kills a young rocker and places him in a giant pawn, Gordon kisses Shelly in front of Bobby, tryouts for the Miss Twin Peaks pageant being, Annie tells Cooper about her past, and Dick, Andy, Lucy, and Lana “enjoy” a wine-tasting event.

Finally, ten entries in, we reach an episode on which either Mark Frost or David Lynch are actually credited - both of them, for good measure! Of course, these aren't their heaviest contributions. David Lynch checks in for one last (memorable) appearance as Gordon Cole, smooching Shelly before he says goodbye. Aside from his brief, unenthusiastic vocal appearance in ep. 18 (which was very phoned-in...see what I did there?), this is the first time Lynch has appeared either on- or offscreen during this rewatch. Frost, meanwhile, co-wrote the teleplay with Harley Peyton, his only writing credit between the resolution of Laura's mystery and the final episode. The timing is odd, since this 26 mostly feels like filler between the full-swing reboot of ep. 25 & the intensified climactic myth-building of ep. 27. Still, Frost's touch can be felt in the various storylines begin drawing together. Cooper even addresses this subject directly, calling the disparate but merging threads "different verses in the same song." That sense of an intertwined community is something that has been missing for the entirety of season two, even the best episodes, and it's a welcome return (even if it emerges more in the previous episode than this one). Several of the long-isolated characters are crossing paths. We watch Donna hang out with Shelly & Bobby (joined by Nadine & Mike, whom Bobby hasn’t palled around with in a while...for reasons Mike gleefully explains here). The white-haired trio of the Doc, the Mayor, and Pete lend their bemused, skeptical ears to Ben's pitch for Miss Twin Peaks. And Coop and Jack ruminate about love over whiskey and milk, in one of the only JJW scenes that actually works for me (mostly because MacLachlan carries it: I love his matter-of-fact response to Jack's lame "Hindus, amirite?" attempt at wit). There's not much more to say about 26. Aside from two or three highlights, it mostly just chugs along harmlessly. Avoiding the pitfalls of the lower-ranked episodes, it also avoids their occasional heights. We only plunge into deep ridiculousness when a pontificating, smock-clad Windom Earle fires an arrow into Airheads dropout/giant chess piece-bound Ted Raimi (a/k/a Heavy Metal Dude a/k/a Rusty Tomaski as in The Ballad of Rusty Tomaski). But this is so completely, unapologetically cheesy that I kind of go with it. At least it serves a plot function, although "Next time it will be somebody you know" sure feel like a boy-who-cried-wolf cop-out on Windom's part. Exactly one-third of the way through the rewatch, we are mostly done with the show's mediocre batch. From now on we have a lot to look forward to.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

This entry covers the Director's Cut version of Episode 23.

The final stretch of Neon Genesis Evangelion presents a cascade of revelations. No longer are we leaping from episode to episode, battle to battle, against the backdrop of slowly unfolding mysteries and suggestions. The feeling is that we are building toward a climax, as characters die physically (Kaji), spiritually (Asuka) or both (Rei). Although in Rei's case is it "both"...or "neither"? The preview at the end of the last episode informed us (in a disarmingly cheerful delivery) that Rei was going to sacrifice herself to save Shinji, and indeed this is what we appears to happen in the battle with the sixteenth Angel. Just as the previous Angels infiltrated the minds of Shinji and Asuka (in the first case ambiguously, in the second case with a clearly destructive purpose), so the latest Angel literally crawls inside Rei's skin on the way to her mind.

This time, however, the Angel doesn't seem as interested in destroying Rei as it does in using her to attack and infiltrate Shinji: when its tentacle touches him, creepy, crawly little Reis bubble up on his hand like an army of ants infiltrating a host and then metastasizing beneath the surface. At this point the Angel's outstretched tendril even shapes itself into Rei's naked form, a giant being of light embracing Shinji's Evas on the field of battle. Even Rei recognizes the ambiguity of this gesture, asking "Is this what my heart wants? To join with Shinji?" As in all of its most potent moments, Evangelion recognizes an uncertainty in Angel action: do these threatening outsiders seek destruction (as the characters all seem to assume) or are they offering a gift to their human "enemies"? Before they can find out, Rei destroys herself and the Angel, apparently ending both her character's role in the story and the episode's dramatic arc...but the episode is not over yet.

"Rei III" begins with the characters separated from one another, isolated into pockets of loneliness and depression. Misato listens to Kaji's answering machine messages over and over again, surrounded by beer cans as empty as she feels. Ritsuko, on the phone with her grandmother, learns that a pet cat has died and confesses she has not visited her mother's grave in three years. Asuka, withdrawn and incommunicative, sullenly absorbed in mindless videogames as Hikari looks on helplessly, cries herself to sleep. Hikari attempts to comfort her by offering, "You did your best." She doesn't realize that this is precisely what Asuka doesn't want to here: that it is her best which simply isn't good enough.

This impression of Asuka's inferiority is reinforced on several occasions in the upcoming battle. First Cmdr. Ikari ruthlessly launches Eva-02 as a decoy (his indifference to the German pilot has never been more crystal-clear). When the Angel focuses its attention on Rei and refuses to be distracted, Asuka cannot even defend Rei in the battle, her sync rate having dropped to zero. Finally Shinji is sent back into battle to save Rei, with Asuka herself sadly observing that she was not considered important enough for Shinji to save last time. Her Eva sinks back into the ground in a humiliating final gesture of solitary impotence.

The episode continues in this vein, as Shinji recoils from Misato's touch, Misato realizes that even Pen-Pen the penguin can't comfort her, and Ritsuko is stripped and subjected to a harsh, sneering interrogation by SEELE. The characters seem vulnerable, detached, degraded. But then then this isolation starts to crack. First, and most shockingly, Rei is "discovered." Shinji greets her in the hospital but she does not seem to understand or even remember what has happened. Is she suffering from amnesia? Regarding Gendo's glasses in her room, she simultaneously experiences dissociation and deja vu. Earlier, we see Cmdr. Ikari and Futuysuki staring at the tube that held a naked Rei several episodes ago, and the vice-commander sighs, "The result of my despair has become the engine of your hope." Who, or what, is Rei?

The final scene depicts characters finally come together rather than splitting apart, even if their union of three characters is hostile: Misato is holding a gun to Ritsuko's back as Shinji mutely tags along through an Eva graveyard in the bowels of NERV. A fourth character - or characters - reveals her face when Ritsuko leads them into that chamber we glimpsed earlier, with the central tube. Now, through the surrounding glass we witness an acquarium of Ayanamis, we learn the ghoulish truth. The Rei whom we have just been reunited with is not the same Rei who died in battle. We are confronted by dozens of Rei clones floating in the ether, grinning and giggling until Ritsuko hits a button, causing their limbs to detach and disintegrate. Misato is shocked, Ritsuko breaks down, and Shinji merely gapes in horror. Don't worry, we are told, these clones are empty shells - Rei is soulless.

But as we learned early in "Rei III" the Rei who shed tears inside her Eva before destroying herself does have a soul. And so does the Rei who cries over those familiar yet foreign glasses. We are learning new truths and discovering new mysteries and as the familiar concepts dissolve before our eyes, we aren't sure what will replace them.


me: So, to start with, "Rei III"...who was Rei I?
The little girl that Ritsuko's mom strangled?

Bob: Right.

me: So ever since then we've had Rei II?

Bob: Some of the things we see in this episode make me wonder if there are others.
The fact that Rei comes back with the same bandage we see early in the series... What does that mean?
Does that mean that the Rei we saw in the first episode was a brand new Rei? Does each Rei come with a fresh eye wound? Is that why there are so many bandages in her apartment?

me: Yes, I wondered the same thing about the bandage.
As we mentioned in the episode where Rei I (?) is strangled, the clones must age alongside the one who is in use. Because each time she is replaced, the clones keep aging at the same rate.

Bob: Right. It's a confusing system.
But we also see that the clones are connected to the dummy plug system.

me: They are the dummy plugs, aren't they?

Bob: Well, not physically. Mentally I guess. Shinji was in a dummy plug during the Toji battle.

me: Hm, that's confusing haha. The dummy plugs and Rei are made from the same material?

Bob: (Well, the dummy plug's AI components must be from Rei clones)
We get this time what might be the most abstracted Angel of them all. Well, next to the Sea of Dirac, anyway.
The Angel's form, or its beginning form at least, is a giant glowing halo. There's something really beautiful and disturbing about that as its starting form. You can imagine the NERV personnel going "what the hell is the NEXT one going to look like?"
It's not for nothing that the most abstract Angel results in some of the most shocking physical tolls, the most legitimate examples of body horror and transformation we've seen so far.
This is one of the reasons why I've never taken the "Asuka mind rape" thing too literally the way some people do, because here you have an actual, literal physical violation. You even have that huge flashing "penetration" graphic at NERV. But the sight of the Angel invading Rei's body underneath her plug suit (something we saw before in the Toji scene I think) is something that's taken to perverse extremes here, at least in the Director's Cut.

me: We also have the ambiguity of the Angel's attempt. When it emanates from Rei and starts "attacking" Shinji, something even Rei wants to stop, her interpretation of its action is to the effect of "my heart wants to connect with Shinji."

Bob: Right. It's also sort of a physicalization of what happened to Asuka. It takes what's inside her, and gives it physical form, rather than just force it to the forefront of her mind.
But really, I wonder if the Giant Naked Rei is a whole can of worms that exceeds even that.
Given the position it has later.

me: Yes.
At this point it's going beyond an individual's personal psychology it seems. Not as much time is spent in this episode with Rei's inner experience of the Angel's assault. Instead the emphasis is on how this transforms physical reality.

Bob: Well, sort of. We spend as much time as I guess you can in Rei's inner psyche without spoiling what she is. Besides, we see enough to see that she's an empty vessel who's aware that she's an empty vessel. We get that primarily through the tour with Ritsuko of her foundational areas, you could say. And the brief glimpse we get into her mind with the Angel (which is probably the most predictive thing for EoE, along with GNR).

me: Rei, the introvert, is ultimately an extrovert and vice-versa with Asuka.
Rei's importance is largely in relation to other people - be they individuals like Shinji or, eventually, the whole world. In that sense it's a surprising reversal of the idea you were talking about earlier in the series. That Rei emphasizes Shinji's withdrawn, introspective qualities while Asuka pushes him outward to engage with the world.
But it's also true that Asuka is associated with the social world, which is ultimately superficial (basically a scab covering up the pain beneath), whereas Rei's significance is more spiritual, exposing Shinji (& ultimately everyone) to the stronger, threatening but maybe necessary forces outside the limits of conventional society.
She's a bit like the Angels in that regard.
Speaking of Asuka - this episode really doubles down on how marginalized and broken she has become.
And how, sadly, she means nothing to these people.

Bob: And we get to see more of the damaged social instincts that Asuka has underneath, and how little they're helping her as time goes on. She knows how to navigate the world of people, but without being true to herself beyond those social ambitions, she's ultimately unable to function, even with Hikari. The most devastating blows are all about failed connections here-- she can't pilot the Eva anymore because she can't synchronize with it...
...and she's delivered perhaps a fatal psychic blow when she sees NERV send Shinji to go rescue Rei, while for her they did nothing. And of course the fact that we saw Shinji so eager to go help Asuka in the previous episode makes it even more painful for us-- does she know how much Shinji wanted to save her?
I think the positions they have while sitting in their cockpits in the two episodes are similar. He's bent up curled in a ball or something out of impotence, and so is she here.

me: Gendo's comment about using her as a decoy. So ruthless. Her realization that they see Rei as worth saving, but not her.

Bob: Well, the sad thing about them all is that Gendo sees them ALL as disposable commodities. Even Shinji is only necessary up to the point of Instrumentality.

me: What did you make of Misato's gesture to Shinji in his bedroom, and his reaction?
It would seem pretty innocuous I think except for the context of End of Evangelion.

Bob: It's also definitely picked up a lot as fodder for the Shinji-as-gay theory.
I think Misato's gesture is more telling, and more disturbing. Shinji, frankly, is having more of a natural reaction to the death of a beloved comrade and friend. The ambiguity of Misato's intentions and her thoughts are, to put it mildly, very dark.
After all, why think those things if there isn't at least the possibility of reading that as her "making a move" on him, something that she joked about way back early in the show?
Lots of fans like to read the show purely as Anno deconstructing the basic elements of anime shows (and therefore any media storytelling really, at their deepest cores)-- Asuka as the reality of a fiery tempered tsundere, Rei as the truth of a selfless tragic heroine. Shinji here is put into the emotional reality of a young boy who's romanticized and sexualized in any given harem comedy-- it's all laughs when hot older women are flirting and coming on to you...
...but in reality, somebody like him, straight as an arrow or not, is probably going to flinch at it.
(And we keep getting shots of that gun)

me: Now this is also the episode where we really get under Ritsuko's skin for the 1st time. If I'm not mistaken. Where she truly loses her composure and we see how vulnerable she is too.

Bob: To an extent I think we get under her skin in the Liliputian Hitcher episode. But yeah, she gets a breakdown here. The lighting in those scenes, and in much of the episode, are really interesting. Very harsh, playing off deep contrasts. Between that and the newly sharpened character drawings (something I think is really deepened by Anno and Tsurumaki working together on the storyboards) this episode really feels like an early indicator of what EoE's styles will be.
A lot of the character models here have a sharper look to them in the face. Both more angular, but off from what we've seen of the Sadamoto designs before. Pointier, perhaps. It resembles what we see in EoE, which is more realistic in a lot of ways.
The contrast and brightness is also a big thing. Look throughout the Ritsuko portions (and elsewhere maybe?) and you'll see this haloing effect of the characters in the darkness. That's a visual scene that appears in EoE a bit, too. Maybe it's just the darkness, but I think there's more to it.

me: Ritsuko becomes the latest in a long line of breakdowns. We are really thrust by this point into the notion that this world is totally beyond the control/comprehension of our characters. Only Gendo Ikari seems to have a sense of mission/understanding. The character who initially seemed like an outlier in his humorless intensity now seems to have the best grasp of what is really going on and where it is all headed.

Bob: It's woven into the story there. She gets to keep her cool, but she's engaged in a behavior that's almost psychotic in how it defines her relation to her mother.

me: It's becoming increasingly clear that the separation from the mother is a defining trait for close to everyone in NGE (even the characters for whom it isn't a significant development don't have mothers - see Misato, Gendo). And specifically the pilots.
I've heard it suggested that both Shinji and Asuka are chosen as pilots because their mothers have somehow been embedded with the Evas. Although in Asuka's case, something of her mother obviously remains - physically, if not quite mentally.

Bob: Mothers are the linchpin of a lot of this. Have we talked about how that theme feeds into the NGE as deconstruction of mecha genre theme?

me: When Ritsuko destroys the Rei clones at the end of the episode, does that mean only Rei III remains? Or can they easily be replenished and it's more a symbolic/representative gesture: "hey, here's what all these bodies really are": soulless flesh.
I forget: does she imply that Rei is completely soulless even when she's out in the world? Or that she is imbued with soul every time she is rotated out to replace the previous one?

Bob: No, she's imbued with the same soul over and over again. Which is why she seems to remember things each time (but not all things).

me: Ok, that makes sense.
It seems like in a lot of fan commentary, the emphasis is on Yui being in Eva-01. But not so much on her being in Rei. That Rei is more Lilith, given Yui's physical form whereas Yui's soul is stuck in the Eva. Maybe?

Bob: Yeah. Rei does have trace amounts of Lillith. And has some connection to Kaworu, given End of Evangelion, which I've never quite understood (and maybe has been overlooked by current fans and the creators?).
But the maternal thing has been in the series all along. "Does it feel like being back in mommy's womb, stupid Shinji?"

me: It really struck me how the "battle" sequence in this episode resembles a pregnancy. Rei's Eva's is bloated in its torso, essentially giving birth to the Rei-Angel that approaches Shinji.

Bob: That struck me too. Did you compare the Director's Cut to the original cut? The DC is Cronenbergian to the body horror here, the "Angel Tower."
Watching the GNR fused with the Angel, it made me think of both the umbilical cord, but also astral projection, where people are encouraged to imagine the link between their astral consciousness and their bodies as a silver cord.

me: I love that about the show. It manages to be both physical and metaphysical simultaneously.
And also psychological.
We got off-topic before you could expand on the "character drawing" idea.

Bob: I think we get a pretty clear, flat out explanation of what SEELE intends with the Mass Produced Evas-- they mention the destruction of Tokyo 3

me: Yes, although we don't really see yet WHY they want this...
Also, are they making Ritsuko a double agent at this point?
And if so, why did Gendo think he could trust her to send her in & speak to them?

Bob: I really have no idea what's going on in that scene. What's going on literally, I mean. There's so many layers of weirdness there. The nudity, the monoliths, everything. It's just a big slice of "wha-what?" that probably gets taken for granted by most anime fans, but to anybody who watches a broader slice of cinema it is absolutely eyebugging.
As I said before with the Misato thing, I think the nudity is intended so they can read her completely, perhaps similar to the way the Angels read the pilots. Or maybe it really is just a bald faced sexual offering in some sense. That's what it feels like subtextually, at any rate. Gendo needs to symbolically whore her out to keep them off his scent, or at least keep them at bay.
One more thing for her to feel soiled and used over.

Murderous Ink: Well, this is another one of the topics many still discusses, but here is my take. Seele knew something is going on with Rei (and Gendo), but there was very few things they could do. They wanted either Rei (if she is 'available') or Gendo to explain the explosion, but Gendo sent Ritsuko instead. Only thing Seele could do was to humiliate Risutko 'sexually (not in physical terms)' by making her naked (which indicates, in actuality, Seele really has little power over NERV, or more specifically Gendo). ... well, other than that, there is little explanation as to why that scene is like that.

me: Who is Shinji with in the scene before they go to see the Eva graveyard? Misato? Or Ritsuko? It seems like the natural assumption is he would have arrived with Misato since he lives with her (although why does she want him to tag along on a possibly very dangerous mission as she holds a gun on their colleague)?
But the way it is cut makes it look like Ritsuko was already planning to show this stuff to Shinji before Misato burst in with her gun.

Bob: I would assume Misato? She also goes out of her way to show him Lillith in Eva 1.0.

me: I thought Ritsuko was planning to show Shinji anyway. She does seem oddly insistent - and pleased - that he will see everything too. What's that all about? Revenge on the father?

Bob: I suppose. That and it seems like the plans are too far gone to be prevented at this point.
Do you think there's a possibility that Rei might've been found alive in her plug, but killed or something? The plug is found more or less intact, and Ritsuko seems pretty suspect and secretive in the way they find it.

me: That's a thought but I dunno, seems like too much of a stretch.
Like it requires too much reading into what they show us when there's already so much shown more up-front.

Bob: It is. But it seems conspicuously suspicious.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.


That is one of the oddities that people discuss even today. It looks like a rough drawing of Tokyo-3, explaining the catastrophe in the episode 23. It was in the original TV broadcast. The whole city caved in (it doesn't say why), prompting the water of Ashino-Lake to pour into the cave. Forests in the vicinity was burned down and some melted down buildings near the water. That's what it basically says. Now, some people believe this rough drawing was the indication of how horribly the production was delayed and went chaotic. It was said to be true that the production was complete mess at this point. But others claim that this was done as an offbeat act with artistic merit, completely orchestrated by Anno. In any event, it was effective, since this preview was one of many enigma that NGE still carries today.

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Schindler's List (1993/USA/dir. Steven Spielberg) appeared at #85 on my original list.

What it is • Oskar Schindler arrives on the screen with an aura of glamor, charisma, and mystery, as superficially charming as he is morally bankrupt. All around him the Jews of Krakow - rich and poor, old and young, cynical and idealistic - are stripped of their property, huddled together in ghettos, herded into work camps, and executed on the whims of their German occupiers. Schindler's concern is to get his enamelware business going, taking advantage of the war (and the possibility of Jewish slave labor) to make a fortune which he can then spend on lavish parties and the best in consumer goods. It would be easy to set Schindler up as an instinctively despicable figure, but instead Spielberg and star Liam Neeson encourage us to enjoy his company, to see the world simultaneously through his eyes and through a wider lens which perceives the suffering he is oblivious to. This is a risky gambit (it would have been easier to focus the film through his eyes entirely OR to make a docudrama about the horrors of the Holocaust) but one that ultimately pays off as these two distant worlds come crashing together, and the awakened Oskar discovers the humanity of those around him, and of himself.

Why I like it •
First of all, the movie is both extremely moving, and exceedingly well-directed, a fact recognized even by its detractors (indeed, these qualities are often placed at the center of their critique - is the emotion exploitative, the art too artificial?). It would be hard to imagine a film more effective, and unsettling, in its mixture of entertainment and art, storytelling and historical recreation. As noted above, Schindler's List is essentially two tightly-interwoven films: an individually-oriented narrative of personal redemption and a broader, more anonymous and collective study of Jewish life (and death) in Krakow of the early 1940s. The first is told through a tight, fluid narrative structure, the epitome of Hollywood screencraft, while the second is demonstrated via standalone setpieces which depict an escalating sense of horror. I've generally been more critical of the second approach than the first but on this viewing, I found the power of the sequences amplified by the film's focus. Another aspect which doesn't get discussed enough is Ralph Fiennes' terrifying and hypnotic performance as camp commandant Amon Geoth - usually described as a straight-up monster but depicted in a much more nuanced (and thus troubling) way onscreen, in a fashion that illuminates the flawed Schindler's heroism. As in no other film he's ever made, Schindler's List joins Spielberg's acknowledged facility for manipulation to his underappreciated gift for discovery.

How you can see it • Schindler's List is available on DVD from Netflix and from these streaming services. I have written a longer review, discussing it alongside Spileberg's later film Munich.

What do you think? • Does Spielberg bite off more than he can chew by approaching Schindler's List in epic fashion? Should he have focused on either telling a broader story or simplifying his approach to this one? Is this the film in which Spielberg became a more "adult" filmmaker or do you locate that transition earlier or later (or not at all)? Are there other films, or artworks, you feel do a better job with this subject matter or is it unfair to compare them? Does the film trivialize its subject matter, as J. Hoberman and allegedly Stanley Kubrick claimed, by focusing on a story of success amidst massive tragedy? Is Schindler's climactic breakdown a storytelling flaw or a powerful sequence? How do you feel about his characterization in the final act? How does this film grow out of Spielberg's earlier blockbusters...or does it arise from a different sensibility altogether?

Two days from now, it will be October 21, 2015, the day that Marty McFly arrived "in the future." (Yeah I know, you've been seeing that internet meme for years - but this time it's true, I swear!) To honor that date, I've created a video tribute which will be going up on Fandor this week. As soon as it is available I will post the link here. While you're waiting, check out two new videos I've shared on YouTube. One is (finally) the "Symphony of the Devils" montage promised two weeks ago. The other is 5 from Fandor, promoting my work for that site by showing the YouTube audience what I've been up to since May.

Note: The Back to the Future video I announced on Monday is now up, just in time for today (the "future" day that Marty McFly traveled to in Back to the Future Part II). Happy Back to the Future Day! Now back to another sci-fi story taking place an alternate version of 2015...

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

This entry covers the Director's Cut version of Episode 24.

In many ways the last (semi-)conventional episode of the series, "The Beginning and the End..." wastes no time reminding us how far the characters have fallen into doubt, despair, or destruction. Following an explicit flashback to her childhood trauma, Asuka is discovered lying near-comatose in a tub, naked and exposed to the sky in a derelict apartment building whose roof has been torn off (no "unfamiliar ceiling" this time). Rei, or rather Rei III, floats through the fog of her life/lives wondering who she is and for what purpose she has been sent. These are familiar human questions all the more confusing when you are a cloned person containing the soul of...a goddess? Possible answers flash before our eyes with dizzying speed and it is difficult to grasp any of them. Anyway, even Rei is more alone than she's ever been because her "spares" were just destroyed by Ritsuko. And Ritsuko's isolation is made physically explicit as Gendo Ikari visits her in a cold, metallic space where she he has been locked away as punishment for her betrayal. She reveals that she has been sleeping with the commander and joins the rank of broken souls that seem to clutter his dedicated path (Cmdr. Ikari refers to Eva-01 as "Yui" - his "dead" wife - further hinting at what that path may entail).

Against the backdrop of this miserable ensemble, Shinji stands on the shore, his confidence at as low an ebb as the tide before him. Wistfully, he realizes that he has lost all those halting and difficult triumphs of the previous episodes - his heroic rescues of Rei and Asuka, his refreshingly ordinary companionship with Toji and Kensuke, his slow carving of a home in the strange world, his growing pride as he piloted the Eva and earned his father's reserved praise. He cannot face Rei, feels that Asuka is lost, and is more alienated from his father than ever. As he gazes across a wasteland, all that remains of the empty but inhabited cityscape we experienced in the first episode, he observes that his schoolmates' homes have been destroyed and they have all fled elsewhere. And then, in this deep gloom...a light flickers.

Shinji's friendship with Kaworu is depicted as both spiritually elevated and suggestively homoerotic. He blushes like a schoolgirl when the handsome stranger recognizes him, and Kaworu later teases (?) the bashful Shinji by coyly questioning if they will go to bed "together" (in this scene, they are both naked in a bath, and Kaworu takes Shinji's hand, possibly the most intimate Shinji has been with anyone aside from Asuka's awkward kiss). From what I understand, there's a whole cottage industry of Kaworu-Shinji shipping fanart. But the physical component of their relationship is but one manifestation of a deep and immediate bond (it's amazing how briefly this distinctive and important character appears on the show). When Kaworu appears, seemingly out of nowhere, he is dressed just like Shinji; the same slacks and loose shirt, even though school is no longer in session and this uniform would not be necessary. He seems a bit like a doppelganger, Shinji's ideal projection of his higher self from which he has always felt alienated.

Kaworu's iconic aura is heightened by the speed and mystery with which he enters NERV's secret world. No one can glean anything from his past except that his birthdate confirms him as the long-awaited Fifth Child. His sync rate is extraordinary, he greets the otherworldly Rei as a peer ("I'm like you"), and when Misato spies on him he stares back up at her. Kaworu plows through the story like a bulldozer, bewildering the already-shaken NERV staffers, disconcerting the suspicious commander and vice commander, and communing freely with the monoliths of SEELE (who speak of themselves as if they - and Kaworu - are not human). We don't usually meet people this quickly; in the past whenever an entity has entered the episode with speed and drama it has usually been an enemy rather than a friend (think of all the lightning-fast transitions where battle music kicks in and some official proclaims frantically, "We've detected another AT field!"). And so it is here. The Fifth Child...is also the seventeenth, and final, Angel.

And so Shinji, who finally let down his hedgehog's defenses by allowing Kaworu's charisma to envelop him, faces the ultimate opponent. Just as he easily shoved his way into the storyline of this episode, Kaworu and the hijacked Eva-02 unit crash through the barriers between the Eva tank and Terminal Dogma. In a battle as physical as it is psychological, Shinji wrestles with Asuka's abandoned mecha while demanding answers from the still sanguine boy floating down the tunnel by his side. Only when he has finally reached the bloated, masked, and crucified being known as Adam does Kaworu seem surprised, even dismayed. "So it's Lillith after all," he mutters, suggesting that "Adam"'s mask conceals someone else's identity. When Shinji crashes through the wall, finally defeating the Angel-fied Eva and gripping the fragile floating boy in his fist, Kaworu recovers his composure. "Life and death are the same to me," he offers matter-of-factly, still wearing the same comfortable smile. To Shinji they are not, but he knows what he must do. In one of the show's best examples of a delayed effect, Shinji holds the last Angel for an extended moment that feels like eternity and then we cut to black as we hear the crushing of his bones - or whatever structure sustained his alien life.

The episode, which begins with many solo figures - some separated by short but impenetrable distances (Ritsuko and Ikari), some cripplingly alone (Asuka) - ends with two pairs. Cmmdr. Ikari and Rei, in matching slickers, stare solemnly at the Eva as it is cleaned. Both are single-minded but the object of their determination remains oblique, invested as it seems to be in Shinji's Eva. Together, they appear almost inhuman in their cold companionship. But then we cut to another pair. With Rei revealed, Asuka decommisioned, Toji and Kensuke exiled, and Kaworu destroyed, Shinji is left with the only person who has been there for him since the very first episode: Misato. They are the all-too-human, confused but tenacious, suffering but stoic counterpoints to Cmmdr. Ikari and Rei, and they cut a poignant pair against the poisoned sea. Misato sounds ruthless when she voices the survivor's creed to Shinji - Kaworu deserved to die because he didn't have the will to live, and only the strong can continue (a creed that implicitly casts Asuka aside as well). Ruthless, yes, but redeemed by the palpable pain she and her young ward feel. She stands and he sits on this shore, hedgehogs to the bitter end - whatever it may bring.

 

Bob: When I first watched the episode, and I'm talking years and years ago... I figured from moment one that Kaworu was going to turn out evil or something, because he seems to play exactly into the anime/j-rpg trope of the bishonen villain. I remember specifically looking at him and thinking of Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7.
I'm not quite as studied on this as I used to be. But you look at a lot of anime and games, especially rpgs, you'll find a lot of similarly styled, perfect looking male characters who can form a friendship with the hero, all while plotting their doom or being destined to turn against them.
So when Kaworu shows up perched on an angel statue, humming Beethoven and looking like an albino Peter Pan, I figured, "yup, this guy's gonna turn out to be an angel or something".

me: And he does, but it feels much more ambiguous than "evil trickster" to me.

Bob: It definitely is. I suppose that went over my head when I first watched it, a decade or more ago. But yeah, now that you mention it, he also feels like he has a little bit in common with the modern Marvel conception of Loki, the evil trickster. But less demonstrably evil. Hell, in the latest movie, they really do a great job of actually developing his character. Here, he's basically a self-aware plot device, which is one reason I never really took him seriously as a character in the past.

me: He's serious as a character inasmuch as he is seriously important for Shinji's character. I see him as kind of an idealized doppelganger projection, in a way, at least the form he takes.

Bob: Exactly, yes! That's the big thought I had watching this. I couldn't believe that when I watched this the first time, I didn't think of Tyler Durden.

me: He has the deep-welled confidence and charisma that Shinji lacks. The "falling in love" bit is in many ways Shinji finally have an idealized male to look up to.
One who resembles something he could conceivably be/aspire towards.
Kaji is the closest we've had before, though he's too roguish and too much older for Shinji to really emulate.
Kaworu the perfect gateway into Instrumentality for Shinji it seems.

Bob: Granted, the NGE creators (not Anno so much as later manga creators, maybe Sadamoto) play up the idea of "falling in love" because there's a big segment of the fandom for whom that is naked fanservice just as much as those horrifying body pillows are for Asuka and Rei fans.
But here, I couldn't help but see Kaworu more as some kind of older sibling for Shinji. They definitely play up the link between him and Rei.

me: I really like the pairing off in the end. Gendo with Rei, Shinji with Misato. Kind of back where we began in a way.
This rewatch has solidified for me how much I like Misato as a character, how important she is for the story and Shinji and also just on her own, filling a void that no other character really fills.
Yes, I know what you mean about the older sibling. At the same time, there's a strong homoerotic...not even subtext, really, explicit. The holding hands, "do you want to go to bed together", Shinji's constant bluffing. All of which is important because even if the primary significance of their brief but intense relationship is spiritual, this is really the closest Shinji has allowed anyone to get to him physically (aside from Asuka's super-awkward kiss).

Bob: Right. And still, Shinji always reacts in incredibly awkward ways here. He's constantly being weirded out by Kaworu, but in a way that isn't threatening enough for him to move away.
The crucial difference, I think, is that Kaworu himself doesn't move away, no matter how weird it gets. Shinji always seems to want to keep reaching out again and again to Rei and Asuka, but they're the ones who either don't respond to him or push him back. The difference with Kaworu is that he basically accepts anything Shinji does or says, right up to the point where he lets himself be killed.

me: Great, great points. Kaworu is like the only character who doesn't suffer from the hedgehog's dilemma. Except for Kaji maybe, but Kaji was fairly threatening in his assertion.

Bob: I remember leading up to this episode that the last depiction of Kaworu I'd seen, in 3.0, really reminded me of Hwi Noree, a character from one of the Dune books. It turns out she's been genetically designed explicitly to appeal to a grotesque, hideous monster god-emperor, and she's similarly selfless to the point of immolation.
And that really underlines what I think is the attraction of Kaworu to Kawoshin fans, and what part of his purpose is on the show. He doesn't represent a sexual or romantic pairing for Shinji, and thinking of him on those terms is as wrong-headed as it is to think of Asuka or Rei purely as sexual objects. Instead, he represents an embodiment of selfless, unconditional love, complete unconditional approval.
It's the type of connection that Shinji has been looking for ever since he lost it with his Mother, and always wanted but never found in his father. And it's something he's been thwarted with time and again with all the other characters in the show, who give him degrees of connection, but also come with their own personal barriers. Kaworu, aside from the AT field, has none.

me: At the point where he was floating alongside the battle and talking to Shinji it seemed almost like his physical presence was just a signpost of sorts. Although destroying that physical presence obviously had a real impact on his power. Dunno...Kaworu is a ball of confusion in this episode, that's for sure.

Bob: Yeah. That's what makes him both frustrating and exciting. He's a stick of dynamite to the continuity. He doesn't develop slowly over the course of the show. He's just suddenly there one episode, and already at the climax point.

me: I actually just found out this week that AT stands for "absolute terror"! Somehow I never really questioned what it meant before now. So that introduces a really interesting aspect to my mind. The AT fields are, in a way, manifestations of the hedgehog's dilemma.
A surprising reveal (especially since it was really there all along  [in the opening credits sequence], hidden in plain sight). Sort of like garmonbozia being pain and sorrow.

Bob: What's so interesting is that we get this profound realization about the AT field from somebody who, by all intents and purposes, would seem to have none at all. He's an angel, but he's also so completely selfless and giving. Which is a big reason why I've never thought of him as the grand love object, because no matter what he says, he still is basically trying to destroy the world. He still has that damn field. He's an emblem of unconditional love, in the sense that he gives it...
...but he also represents the question of it. His love is conditional, but he comes with a huge condition of his own. "Be my friend forever, Shinji! But I'm gonna kill everyone. 'Kay?"
The AT field essentially is what allows people to have separate identities from everybody else.
This is why I look at the figure of Kaworu, even if you take him at face value for what he says, and see him as a representation of the destructive qualities of constantly seeking unconditional love and approval. The unwillingness of being able to accept negative feedback from the people you care about, and want to care about you.
Kaworu represents a frankly psychopathic kind of affection, in that sense. In 3.0 there's a moment where Shinji says something like "You can do anything, Kaworu!""That's because the only thing I think about is you!". Take that line of thinking to its logical extreme, and you basically have Fatal Attraction.
And by the way, we're meant to take that line literally. As in, Kaworu has spent his entire life thinking about somebody he doesn't meet until the third movie. He's designed to be the perfect friend of Shinji. He's basically like David in AI. His love is real, but he is not. That's ultimately what makes him a semi-tragic figure here, and even somewhat heroic in 3.0. All of the other characters so far-- everyone from Toji and Suzahara to Asuka and Misato-- represent the type of human love and social interactions you should expect from the world. You should expect to make connections with people who will for the most part like you, even love you, but are capable of being mad or cold with you. If you ask for somebody who loves you all the time, no matter what, you're basically asking for a monster.

me: So what are Angels exactly? They are not humans but they too have AT fields?
The AT thing is still throwing me for a loop, at least when it comes to Kaworu. I don't see the fear in him/why he would have an AT Field.
I could see the other angels being afraid, at least once they are attacked (we've talked about how, at least in the early battles, the humans always seem to strike first). But Kaworu seems to embody the idea of the Angel as something above petty human fears, anxieties - as a step toward enlightenment/instrumentality whether for better or (for the reasons you describe) worse, fear wouldn't seem to be a part of that.

Bob: I think we shouldn't think about the idea of "fear" in too literal terms. It simply boils down to "do you want to be a separate entity, or do you want everything to be one and the same".
If you want everything to be separate, then you have an AT field. But even so, everybody seems to be trying to destroy them by provoking another Impact. The humans want to create their own new world on their terms. The angels are essentially puppets to that, but obviously they have a will of their own in their continued attempts to connect to the minds of human beings. Those are them trying to reach beyond their AT fields.

me: But "Absolute Terror" is pretty explicit. It isn't "Absolute Territory" (maybe it should have been!).

Bob: I wonder if there's a commonality in the root.

me: Also, even in the sense of separate entity, it seems like Kaworu is leading away from that idea so again, why the AT Field? And earlier Angels too, like the mind-fucking ones, seem to be all about merging, pushing toward Instrumentality. So if the AT Field is all about keeping up defenses/divisions and the Angels are all about merging/penetrating/joining why do Angels have AT Fields?

Bob: Again, I think it's simply that every separate being has them, whether they like it or not. If you don't have an AT field, you don't have a soul.
The AT field is, as Kaworu says, the boundary of the soul.

me: So maybe...the Angels are "attacking" to get rid of their AT Fields?
Hm, I kind of like that idea.
But not sure if it works yet.
The Angels are a level of being that still has the AT Fields, but wants to lose it...type of thing.
Although then of course the Angels seem to be quite intent on using their AT Fields as defenses.
But maybe they aren't and it's just totally automatic? Or they know that until they reach Adam or Lillith or whatever they need the AT Fields and only when they get there can they afford to lose it.
It's sort of coming together!

Bob: I think in Kaworu we have as close as we can have to a summation of the Angels' motivations. He's so completely selfless to the point of self destruction, and I think a lot of what he talks about with SEELE is about eliminating the pain of humanity. He and perhaps the Angels as a whole see human existence as something that is inherently flawed and painful, and therefore the only logical answer is to eliminate all individuality, and therefore all pain.
It's not for nothing that we start the episode on Asuka's suicide attempt. This is really what the Angels are all about, and perhaps SEELE as well-- extinction level suicide.

me: Asuka's situation gives Misato's comments at the end a very hard, brittle snap.
Because in a way she is voicing the polar opposite of the Angel's philosophy, the other extreme.
The idea of sequestering the pain within, guarding it. It's interesting that early in the show she tries to draw Shinji out of his shell because she is ultimately revealed as having perhaps the greatest hedgehog's dilemma of all of them.

Bob: The way that she essentially has more sympathy for Pen Pen than Kaworu, and maybe Asuka, demosntrates that too. She really is frugal in her feelings.

me: It's interesting to consider Misato's role in the story. She's such an important character and her relationship to Shinji defines them both so well. But she doesn't have as clear-cut a purpose in Shinji's world as others like Asuka or Rei or Gendo or even Kaji and Kaworu do.
Like each of those have a pretty sharp and identifiable relationship to Shinji. But Misato's is the most ambiguous. I really like her for that.
In some ways she feels...the most "real"? I dunno exactly. There's something very affecting and poignant and tragic about her character.

Bob: Well, she's the only real adult among them. Even Gendo is defined by how he's trying to evade that role.

me: She feels the most multilayered, multidimensional - yeah exactly.
This episode has some really, really striking visuals. I had more of a sense of movement within the frame than I have in some other episodes.

Bob: I was really struck by how detailed some of the visuals are here, particularly of the light on Kaworu. Much more than the usual sharp, but kind of spare imagery we get in the past. There's a lot more detail here than before. It made me wonder if any of this was shot on 35 instead of 16.
Like, take another look at the scene where he speaks with SEELE. It feels like it's higher resolution for some reason.

me: There definitely seems to be more detail/texture than usual.
It has many compositions which could fit the whole static-shot approach of some of the more experimental and/or cost-saving episodes but instead they have movement within them, either of the characters or the frame itself (or both). Lots of wind rustling Kaworu's shirt sleeves I think.

Bob: Oh, it also has I think the most egregious example of "static shot" approach. It's like a fucking minute Anno holds on Unit 1 holding Kaworu before popping his head off.

me: Yes, although the music plays. Gives it a different feel than, say, Asuka-Rei in the elevator or those long cicada/train station shots in the past. Of course it's also a much more dramatic moment than those.

Bob: Well, it's also because those moments aren't held as long.

me: Well the elevator one is 57 seconds I think. I counted it!

Bob: Ha, I think the humor aspect there helps you not think about it as much.

me: No sound or music though. But yeah, it less about "intense" than "awkward."

Bob: Also the imbalance of the composition helps. Here, it's such a straightforward shot, holding it so long is a giant tease/torture.

me: I found it weirdly calming in a way though, almost meditative. Because of the music I guess but also the climactic power of the moment.
And then pop - I actually started in my seat w/ the cut to black and sound effect. Even though they prepare you for it with the music starting to fade down or something (can't remember what the effect is exactly). You know it's coming, but it's still so jarring.

Bob: To bring things back around a bit, the fact that Kaworu both represents an embodiment of pseudo-destructive selflessness, unconditional approval and also a doppelganger for Shinji makes him an incredibly complex figure for what he really ultimately means. He's a figure of learning to love yourself, but also winds up mixed in death. It's no wonder this makes Shinji shut down-- that and as we see, the continued lack of contact with everyone else, especially Asuka.

Visit Bob Clark's website NeoWestchester, featuring his webcomic as well as a new animated video related to Star Wars.


Well, Kaoru had been the center of female fandom for a long time, I think. Today, not anymore. But he is definitely one of the most influential in characterization of beautiful male characters designed for female fans. Here it is called BL (Boy's Love). To illustrate how big this BL thing is today, you just look at this big (I mean, big) market for Touken-Ranbu. It is web-based game started this January. This May, during golden week here, they had this big fandom event for the game in Tokyo. 4000 groups registered as 'participant', meaning they each prepared their own fan comic book. Now there were those who drew the fan books, probably more than 4000, possibly close to 10000. And there were those who were buying them. The event was far bigger than Naruto, One-piece and others combined. People talked about possible melt-down, because of sheer number of female fans lining up in the Big Site Tokyo. There was a crisis among small number of male Touken-Ranbu fans, because all male restrooms were converted to female ones. In any case, female fandom is now probably as big as male fandom with big pillows. And Kaoru is the one of those characters which started this trend.

Murderous Ink writes about classic film, pop culture, and society on Vermillion and One Nights.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Raging Bull (1980/USA/dir. Martin Scorsese) appeared at #84 on my original list.

What it is • Jake La Motta slowly punches his way to the top in the 1940s, and quickly falls to the bottom in the 1950s. Most of the film chronicles his boxing career and troubled marriage as a young man, with the infamously overweight De Niro only clocking in for the final half-hour - but all the seeds for his downfall are planted during that long period of hunger, aggression, and paranoia. During the eight long years between the opening fight and his championship bout in 1949, the Bronx Bull's life is frequently a mess. He is abusive to his first and second wife (whom he seduces when she is still a minor), frequently frustrated by missed opportunities and his own missteps, and resistant to the criminal milieu around him, which demands he must take a fall before he's allowed to get his shot. But there's a prize to keep his eyes on and somehow that holds everything in place and gives him a purpose. Only after he is crowned middleweight champion of the world does everything begin to crumble. Raging Bull is often described as a tale of redemption, but that's a stretch given what we actually see onscreen and how it's structured. Jake's attempts at reconciliation are pathetic at best (the same old "let's be pals now" routine he gave his first wife at the beginning of the movie), his self-awarness still seems incredibly dim, and the world around him seems pretty unblinkingly unforgiving - at least in the two or three post-downfall scenes we get. Better to call this a tale of survival ("You never got me down, Ray"), of a man who is still standing after fifteen gruelling rounds with his most brutal opponent: himself.

Why I like it •
The fight scenes are as hypnotic as they are brutalizing. The dialogue effectively mixes hilarity and terror. But the very first time I watched Raging Bull, much of the movie left me cold. This was around the time I first saw Taxi Driver, which struck a raw nerve, but Raging Bull seemed as restrained as Taxi Driver was passionate, as harshly distancing as the earlier film was deeply subjective. Although many shots are from Jake's point of view, the character's crude worldview is potentially alienating and at least on paper there's something flat and coarse about his story. Yet here is the film on my list after all. It didn't take long to get there - as a teenager I loved this movie not long after my difficult first viewing. This is one of those rare favorites that I admired before I enjoyed; objective appreciation was my gateway into personal investment. Knowing the film would not be an immersive fever dream like Taxi Driver, I returned to absorb its more Apollonian appeal (along with the occasionally, aggressively Dionysian violence): Scorsese's bravura techniques in the fight sequences, unblinking gaze during character interactions, and occasionally operatic flourishes. My favorite such flourishes are the "Intermezzo"-scored title sequence, with Jake shadowboxing in slow motion - one of the most beautiful shots in the history of cinema - and the midway montage that manages to evoke an entire era, both personal and historical, by mixing color 8mm home movies of everyday events and black-and-white still shots from the ring. Although largely sustained by a fierce, focused intensity, Raging Bull achieves moments of such grace and grandeur that it suggests an entire world on the periphery of the protagonists' blinkered vision, and perhaps Jake's greatest tragedy is that he can't allow himself to experience this too.

How you can see it • Raging Bull is on DVD from Netflix. It is also available through these streaming services. It has also featured quite a few times on this blog. I wrote a full-length review of Raging Bull - particularly focusing on its status as possibly the last "consensus classic" - as part of my series on "The Big Ones" in 2011. I included it on my cinema-retrospective series Remembering the Movies, in which I discussed movies that had come out on a particular date. The opening frame was included as part of my visual collection "In the Beginning", which honored nine memorable cold opens from cinema history. And I included a clip at 5:55 in "'Neath the Marquee Moon" (a chapter of my "32 Days of Movies" video series).

What do you think? • Is this Scorsese's masterpiece? Is it the greatest film of the 1980s? Is it Robert De Niro's greatest performance? Why do you think the movie has won so many accolades and maintained such a canonical status? Do you feel it is the last movie to achieve this sort of undisputed status? Do you feel its overrated, if so why (meaning what don't you like, and what do you think others are overvaluging) - and which Scorsese films, if any, do you greatly prefer? Are the fight scenes in this film too stylized for (especially if you are a fight fan)? Is this a great "boxing movie" aside from its value is drama? Is the film too sympathetic towards Jake? Not enough? Do you find him interesting, repellent, boring, all of the above, none of the above? And why is Frank Vincent so perpetually punchable, at least when it's Joe Pesci doing the punching?

I thought this would be a good week to fully share the graphic I made a month ago for Tumblr and Twitter, a photoset of images and text outlining the various creators of the character of Laura Palmer for Twin Peaks, and what we know they contributed (click on the images for large, hi-res versions). If you want to share these images as well, I've also included various compilations (2 sets of 4, 1 set of 8) for easy sharing (if you only share some and not all of the individual creator images, please include the above picture with my name and sit, or provide credit some other way - thanks!). Incidentally, I've also uploaded an image from my Side by Side video comparing Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks, but I'll link it here rather than display it since it doesn't quite fit this image template!

This would also be a good opportunity to offer a brief status update since the past month or two has been chaotic, with some ongoing projects and incomplete videos that finished only after I announced them here - there have been a lot of October posts that were updated days or even weeks after they were posted. First of all, last night I finished my out-of-order rewatch of Twin Peaks. It was a fun and illuminating process and I would love to hear anyone else's ranking of favorite episodes! If you want to share or read the reviews individually, you can check out the Tumblr tag. I will also probably be re-sharing them a day at a time on Twitter in November.

The posts for my last three videos for YouTube, as well as my last video for Fandor, all went up before the videos themselves were ready, as placeholders/announcements. I have linked the Side-by-Side video above; additionally here are Idylls of the King (Cinepoem), Symphony of the Devils (Montage), and - just in time for October 21's Back to the Future Day last week, Welcome to Hill Valley, a video tribute to the time-travel classic. I believe that now I'm in a position where all of my YouTube videos can go up right on schedule (as last week's 5 from Fandor teaser did) but I've been wrong about that before so we'll see.

Finally, a word on upcoming posts. I have a lot of completed material awaiting publication here or elsewhere this fall. First, there is the Out 1 video essay collaboration I created with Covadonga G. Lahere this summer, which will eventually be shared alongside several other new entries, concluding the Melbourne International Film Festival's video project that began last year in anticipation of the upcoming Jacques Rivette boxset. There is also a guest post I wrote for Welcome to Twin Peaks, chronicling the creation and purpose behind my Journey Through Twin Peaks videos, which has been put on hold (likely because of the exciting spate of news from the Twin Peaks set) but will hopefully see the light of day at some point.

Meanwhile, I have participated in two more interviews on the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast - a guest spot to discuss the killer's reveal (it should be posted some time in November, after their coverage of episode 16), and a short appearance to discuss Mulholland Drive in light of the forthcoming Criterion Collection release. I have also been invited to talk on the Sparkwood & 21 podcast, along with other long-time providers of listener feedback, so keep your ears tuned for that.

With all that in the pipeline, I still didn't have anything ready for today! So this Monday let me share one of my favorite posts that hasn't yet popped up here, "The Creators of Laura Palmer"...




Here are the images grouped together and split into two pages...:



...and everything in a single image: