it means i like you

neon genesis evangelion (episode twenty-four, "the beginning and the end, or 'knockin' on heaven's door'")

Long ago, before I had ever watched Evangelion, I was under the impression it was a turgid, pretentious, Freudian slog of a show, with obsessive fans who made mountains out of nothing. In particular, I was aware that there was a character named Kaworu who was only in one episode but with whom people were, nonetheless, completely obsessed. Kaworu represented to me everything that seemed ridiculous about this cartoon that I eventually decided to watch so I could hate it more competently.

Obviously, that’s not what happened.

In a odd sense, though, I was sort of right to fixate on Kaworu as representing something important about the show. While some of what is to come in the next couple episodes is (probably) due to the show running out of money (and/or Hideaki Anno having a nervous breakdown)… Kaworu is different. He was always meant to be this way. Even in the show’s original plans, Kaworu was always in the show and as far as I can tell he was only ever in the one episode. Originally, he was supposed to be a young child carrying a cat:¹

Episode 22: The cat and the transfer student: The first humanoid Angel (child with a pet cat) Nerv’s accidental allowing of the Angel’s entry into the laboratory. Shinji’s dilemma of fighting a humanoid Angel. The laboratory’s greatest secret is shown.

By the time the show actually went into production, much of that had clearly changed, because the fourteen year old–looking Kaworu is in the credits in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him sort of way.²

Anyway. In episode 24, we find Shinji looking out onto the lake that used to be Tokyo-3. His friends are either gone (Kensuke), almost dead (Asuka), or rendered suddenly terrifying (Rei). Even Pen-Pen’s about to be shipped out. Shinji is lost and looking for guidance and runs through a list of women in his mind he wishes could help him—Asuka, Misato, his mom—only to become aware of somebody humming somewhere close to him. He turns and it’s a strange boy, dressed like himself. His name is Kaworu Nagisa and he is the new pilot of Unit 02. Kaworu already knows exactly who Shinji is. Kaworu also says things like: “Songs enrich the heart. They’re the crowning achievement of Lilin culture.”

Misato is instantly suspicious of this brilliant new kid who’s been shipped to them straight from SEELE and who can instantly do everything perfectly, but Shinji is all over Kaworu like a lab puppy seeing grass for the first time. It’s not just that he has a friend again but that he has a friend who seems, immediately, to see and appreciate him on some deep and non-instrumental level. Kaworu is an open book, frank and straightforward with his affections, which is funny because he is also a double agent. And an Angel. He’s been sent by SEELE to retrieve Adam down in Terminal Dogma.

Except it’s not Adam down there. That creepy Adam embryo Kaji delivered back in episode eight is in Gendo’s hand. The crucified Angel in NERV’s basement is Lilith, the progenitor of human beings. Adam is the progenitor of the Angels. But Kaworu seems almost relieved things turned out this way. He tells Shinji that only humans or Angels can survive, and Shinji deserves to live, so he’s happy to die. And after a long, awful pause, Shinji crushes him to death.

The end of the episode finds Misato and Shinji together looking out over the same lake where Shinji met Kaworu. Shinji tells Misato that Kaworu should have been the one to live. Misato says no, that “only those with the will to live get to survive.” Shinji is shocked by what she says but it comes out of Misato as if it’s something that’s been hardening inside her for a long time—perhaps even before Kaji died.

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In Matthew 25, we receive one of Jesus’s cryptic sayings, that from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath. Well, it’s cryptic out of context, less so within,³ but “out of context” is how I usually think about it, and how I thought about it when I watched this episode. Shinji certainly hath not at the start of things; then he hath; then he hath not, in a more bitter sense than before. When he and Misato are looking out over the waters that now cover the ruins of Tokyo-3, they are both people who have lost everything.⁴

What Kaworu brings is transformative love. My reading of Kaworu is that he is completely honest and perhaps incapable of lying (though not of being wrong). After all, he does not actually lie at any point in his interactions with Shinji or others; he doesn’t even really pretend to be human. His instant affection for Shinji is disarming. All those difficult conversations with shields up that have characterized his relationships—no trace to be seen. Maybe all Shinji’s ever needed really is another boy with alarming levels of emotional directness to drift into his life and say, I like you. So Shinji does fall in love with Kaworu, instantly and easily, and it seems to be mutual—a Kaworu that liked Shinji less might not have been so willing to die.

The opening scenes of this episode involve Asuka remembering how when she became an Eva pilot, she knew everybody would be nice to her—which is basically exactly what Shinji said when he was dissolved in Unit 01, that people had to be nice to him because he was so useful now. Now that she’s no longer capable of being a pilot, Asuka, who remains just this side of “conscious,” has no reason to be alive.⁵ Shinji isn’t the same way, because he’s never really had his sense of personal pride wrapped up in being a pilot, going so far as to quit twice. But all the relationships he’s formed have been contingent on piloting. Even if he could quit, he’d lose all of them.

There’s nothing Kaworu wants from Shinji except himself, and nothing he needs from Shinji until he asks Shinji to kill him. He doesn’t need Shinji to pilot an Eva—he can do that. He isn’t the confused newbie another pilot would be in this situation, who might need Shinji to provide support and guidance.⁶ What I find so charming and sad about their moments together before Kaworu’s true nature is revealed is that there’s such an open generosity in him that comes from not needing anything. When Misato tries to hold Shinji’s hand he rejects her, and she admits afterward that she’s really the person who needs that kind of affection. When Kaworu does it, it’s a different story: he doesn’t need this, he just wants it.

So when Shinji finds out that Kaworu is really a double agent, and in fact not even human, he accuses his newfound friend of betraying his feelings—not the cause, but his feelings specifically, this thought that he’d finally found somebody who just liked him without caring about what he could do. And actually… he’s totally wrong; Kaworu really didn’t need Shinji to get into NERV. But that’s what really outrages him: the thought that he’d been duped and used, that he was so eager for affection he was just an easy mark. By the end, I do not think he thinks this anymore, even if he doesn’t really understand what’s going on either.⁷

Does he actually have to kill Kaworu? Once again we’re circling around the question of agency, and when Kaworu asserts that the only way to have complete freedom is to choose to die, we’re reminded once again that he and Rei are “the same” in some way—that is the choice Rei II made last episode, after all. But since he believes that one of them has to die, and since he cannot fulfill his mission from SEELE, and since he loves Shinji, Kaworu chooses himself.⁸ The long, agonizing pause where Shinji is clearly searching for some third option is one of the show’s most grueling moments. Does it really have to be this way? Why? What’s the point?⁹

So here is Shinji, seeking option three, some world in which he gets to win, or even a world in which everybody gets to win—Asuka gets better, Rei gets to be a person, Toji and Kensuke stay, and he gets to have this boy he loves. An option three, though not this option three, will emerge in the last two episodes, in which Shinji will finally be free to make a choice on his own.

Next episode: Things are about to get weird.¹⁰

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• Misato saying “facts are facts” to everybody in the tone of voice I use to myself looking at my bank account.

• Dept of inappropriate laughter: when Kaworu’s like “don’t you know the A.T. Field marks the boundaries of the soul” and Shinji screams in exasperation… HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT, KAWORU.

• On that not, one thing this episode really shows is how profoundly Shinji is out of the loop on just about everything except “Rei is a clone of my mom,” “my mother is a robot,” and “Kaji is dead.” He didn’t even know about Terminal Dogma! The reveal it’s Lilith and not Adam means absolutely nothing to him! Kaworu’s saying Lilin and he’s like okay we call ourselves Japanese but your way is fine too I guess.…

• Rei’s presence at the end is interesting to me—I don’t know what she’s doing there but I kind of think she doesn’t either. She intervenes to save Gendo’s plan, I guess, but Kaworu is clearly addressing her when he’s saying humanity deserves to keep going, and Rei III, in general, seems more doubtful about what she’s doing than Rei II. Perhaps inheriting Rei II’s feelings, but not her experiences beat for beat, means she’s less emotionally entangled with Gendo? I’m not sure.

• To me, this episode forms a kind of trilogy with episodes three and episode eighteen. In the first, the Eva seems like it removes Shinji from his ability to make friends, but ultimately brings him together with them as he uses it to protect them; in the next, he almost kills Toji; in this one, he does kill somebody he loves.

• It’s sort of necessary for the plot that they don’t meet, I suppose, but… I would have loved to see an Asuka and Kaworu interaction.

• I’m not sure I’ve ever fully grasped what SEELE’s plan is as opposed to Gendo’s. I’m just admitting this. Their dialogue with Kaworu implies to me that they want to become Angels themselves? What a dumbass plan. You deserve to lose!

• Here we get the second use of classical music. I think (but am not sure because my memory of the music in End of Evangelion is a little fuzzy) that classical music appears only in these moments of human/angel contact. To me this particular use of “Ode to Joy” is wildly successful, but it’s also kind of interesting that this piece and the “Hallelujah Chorus” are so canonical they’re kind of beaten to death.

• “Komm, süsser Tod” is basically Pachelbel’s Canon (another canonical and beaten to death piece of music) but Pachelbel’s Canon is also (I am now reminded, upon looking it up) in Evangelion: Death and Rebirth.

• I guess my point here is something like, the use of classical music here is in line with the show making old things feel new in other ways.

• Kaworu’s flirtatious directness, mostly with Shinji but also with Rei, is in line with how we’ve seen the progression of Angel–human interaction thus far—he comes on strong and seems not to have a sense of where the boundaries are, but comes on less strong than his predecessors.

• Which is another way of saying: Kaworu is a lil creepy ain’t he.

• On that not, Tayvangelion will come out next week but while I was writing this one, Gaga’s “How Bad Do U Want Me” came on and something about “she’s on your mind like all the time / but I got a tattoo of us last week” feels very Kaworu-coded. Anyway that’s not a Taylor song but enjoy this mashup anyway:
  

• I think finishing this episode is the most sympathy I’ve felt for people watching the original Evangelion run who were expecting a plot resolution in the next two episodes that they one hundred percent were not going to get. I mean I wouldn’t personally barrage Hideaki Anno with death threats but you are like—yeah, it’s answers time. No, friends. It’s never answers time.

1. While I don’t know why that plan got scrapped exactly, I can guess that the image of Shinji crushing a child to death had something to do with it.

2. It’s right after the frame that says ABSOLUTE TERROR FIELD.

3. Context.

4. It’s kind of funny that “Misato killed Kaji” is one hundred percent vetoed by Anno himself because………… the parallel would be stronger if she had.

5. Yet she isn’t dead—that will to survive that Misato mentions is, perhaps, still active inside her.

6. It’s an interesting question how and why SEELE’s vat-grown person is one hundred percent better adjusted than NERV’s.

7. Join the club, Shinji.

8. Does one of them really have to die? I wonder about this. Kaworu seems to be saying only one evolutionary path can exist: either the children of Adam (Angels) or the children of Lilith (humans) can survive, but not both. But every instance of Angel-inflicted violence we’ve seen has really been instigated by human beings—and specifically by SEELE—and SEELE “raised” Kaworu. It seems quite possible to me he’s mistaken.

9. To return for a moment to the original Evangelion TV proposal—I think I’ve quoted this part before, but I think it’s worth going back to it (all the bolding is in the document):

One day, a normal 14-year-old boy is given great power, embarks on a mission, is thrown into an adult world, and is forced to grow up... This is the situation we have given our protagonist. Whether he is inside the small cockpit of a giant robot, at school, in the middle of one of his many battles, or amidst the chaos of modern society, the audience walks alongside him through his anguish. For them to say, “What am I supposed to do now?” is what we hope for.…

He is a 14-year-old middle school student in his second year. Now in puberty, and entering a rebellious age, he is in the last stages of forming his own self identify. In short, he is in the process of entering into adulthood. At first, he is indecisive and unsure in the heat of battle and in adult situations, while the opinions and views of the adults misguide and confuse him.…

Children stuck in a reality wrought with pressures are left unable to act on their own. Are things really okay the way they are?

A couple weeks ago, I was reading Marie-Louise von Franz’s The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, and there were specific ways in which it struck me as quite relevant to Evangelion—in particular, that the children in this show are governed by adults who can’t, or won’t, really become adults. Here I don’t mean (for instance) Misato, whose occasionally childish behavior serves a different purpose, but Gendo and Fuyutsuki (and perhaps Ritsuko).

These adults resent and fear independent action, resorting to scolding to manipulate the children. They create a world in which “adulthood” is synonymous with “shutting up and doing as you’re told.” They pine after unavailable love objects and live in state of where they are in active denial of death, yet they always have their finger on the trigger to blow the world up. “Life is death” (Franz writes) “and if you accept life and move into it…you are moving toward your own death. Death is the goal of life.” I do not entirely agree with that, but I found it resonated quite a bit in thinking about the show. I usually have Evangelion tagged as the weird Freudian show and Utena as the weird Jungian show but maybe they’re both weird hybrids.…

10. The summary some poor soul at either FUNimation or Apple TV came up with: “Betrayed by those he believed in, Shinji looks into the depths of his own soul and questions his reason for existing. Is there any salvation for a young man who has rejected everything? Reality and the world are quickly shut away in the darkness of his heart...”