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dlamp-dictator · 4 years

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You know, I wanted to talk about the fun parts of the latest Arknights event, like how Texas and Waii Fu got into a fist fight in the streets of Lungmen. I wanted to start a small essay about how Granbelm’s Anna Fugo was a great and interesting villain and how Granbelm as a who was a pretty good mecha anime. I wanted to talk about how awfully predatory AFK Arena’s gacha system is.

But before all that, I think it’s high time I actually lived up the “X” part of Allen X.

So, I hate talk about current events, namely because they heavily date my posts. As such I usually save them for my end-of-the-year pieces that are dated by design. However, I don’t think I can quietly watch a lot of what’s going on in my country without at least addressing its existence.To be silent is to be compliant after all. I’ll try and keep this as brief as I can, but no promises.

But like most of my Ramblings, some background.

As of me writing this, the date is May 31st, 2020. For those unaware, a George Floyd has been killed by a police officer via strangulation a while back. As sad as it is for me to say, this is honestly nothing new in America. Racial discrimination and prejudice by law enforcement is, frankly, older than this country. However, this seems to have been the tipping point, as several states and larger cities have erupted into mass protest. For most of my research and feed searching, the protest have been mostly peaceful, and a lot of the violence has seemed to be done by White Nationalist groups like the Proud Boys and the KKK in an attempt to smear the peaceful protests, even by a few police officers.

My small town is as quiet as ever, but the world around me has exploded.

I’m usually seen as a quiet and thoughtful person for the most part in real life. I think only a handful of my friends actually know my temper can get razor thin in times of stress, and this has been a pretty stressful time for me. So... I’ll break this down as thoroughly as I can. I’ll try and stay calm and professional as I usually am in most of my ramblings, but I can’t make promises on that.

But let’s get to the first point.

Things are Scary

Something I was going to save for a future Art/Writing rambling, but I don’t think enough people have been admitting that things are very scary right now. In the same vein that I don’t think enough people admit art and writing is hard, I don’t think enough people, enough people with actual pull to their words, are admitting that, yes, things are very scary right now as of May 31st 2020.

In January we had a political situation that nearly started War World 3. In February we had the announcement of a global virus that is still just as contagious and deadly as it was then, and possibly was running about by late December. In either March or April I believe had major flooding in the state of Michigan, and now it seems we’re going to end May with civil rights protests where police and military are attacking protesters seemingly unprovoked.

And this is all very scary.

I know my words don’t have the same weigh as a celebrity or a political figure, but I feel that validation of basic human emotion is the key to coming to an understanding, so I’ll say again: this is all scary stuff. It feels like as my world continues to turn uninterrupted while the world around me is just turning more and more to ash. It’s like being in a safe haven while watching people run from a fire slowly approaching, and it’s scary. It’s outright terrifying. And I think it’s important to admit this and accept this. You can be afraid, you can say you’re afraid, you can cry and worry about how scary things are. Accepting those feelings is important, just don’t let them control you.

That said.

Allen X’s Take on Things

Here’s what I can say so far.

A lack of police accountability has be a fact of life here in the US for years, decades even.

The police have far more power than we give them credit for.

While many of my dealings with police have been good, I get the feeling I’m the exception to the rule.

Our current federal leadership has been nothing short of ignorant, arrogant, and domineering toward not only minorities, but the general population.

Supporters of this leaderships are, frankly, remarkably ignorant at best, and criminally dangerous at worst.

We have reached a point were basic health regulations such as wearing masks in the middle of a global pandemic is now a partisan issue. This is bad.

We have reached a point where more police accountability during a time of global pandemic is now politically divisive. This is also bad.

I could go on, but these are the most pressing thoughts I have on our current situation and the nicest I can be about this topic while maintaining an air of professionalism. Like I said, things are scary. The more I look into things, the worse I feel about the state of this country. The only positive thing I can say is that it should all be over once election day comes.

Now, here’s something else I’d like to state.

Allen X is Black

I never enjoy talking about my ethnicity on the internet. As someone who talks more about video games, anime, manga, and general niche “otaku” media, I feel like my ethnicity and race rarely play a role in my opinion of Asian media, as I’d always be viewing it as an outsider regardless. However, with this topic I feel I should at least state that there is a reason I use X as a stand-in for my pseudo last name. It was originally the name of an old self-insert OC, Allen X. Walker, but when I realized Allen Walker was already taken, I just left it to Allen X. A cheeky nod to both how a lot of only aliases of the early 2000s had “X” as a stand-in to keep original names, and a to my ethnicity, riffing on Malcom X, who used that letter as a stand-in for the last name our ancestors had stolen when taken to the US by force to work the plantations.

As I said, my race is rarely relevant to what I cover, but it does effect my everyday life. I get nervous when I say on my application sheets that I’m Black, wondering if that’d be a black mark. I get twitchy whenever I do my laps around my predominately white neighborhood, wondering if I’d get snide looks and sneers. I get agitated whenever anyone uses the n-word due to it never meaning anything positive in my past. I annoyed when people assume I’m either British or from the UK due to my not having the typical accent of most Black people since I lived in a white neighborhood for most of my life and took speech classes as a child to speak “normally”. Hell, I was bullied by the Black seniors in my high school as a Freshman for not being “Black enough”. And more recently, I was kicked out of the neighborhood I do my rollerblading laps in because that neighborhood suddenly became “private property” when some new neighborhoods moved in. New neighbors that are fine with me being ran over by a car, but not “trespassing” on their sidewalks.

Needless to say, I am very familiar with racism and prejudice. It doesn’t effect me as badly as the folks in the south and especially where these protests are, but I am familiar with it. And when I see these videos and tweets of the violence and police brutality, the anger of the people, it’s terrifying. It terrifying that this is real and is happening just a few states down south of me, and possible one state north of me. It’s terrifying that all this is happening so brazenly and with very few people in our system of government, at least at the executive level, doing anything about. And it’s terrifying that I’m not seeing this on too many major news channels and sites. That’s partially due to me rarely looking up the news aside from headlines, but most major places I’ve seen, save for maybe CNN, really haven’t been talking much about it, not as much as I’d like anyway. It’s all just a lot to take in, and those nervous moments I have due to my ethnicity start to make me shake with fear some days now.

But... I need to move on to the next topic, for the sake of my sanity.

What Must be Said

Like before, I feel like there are things that must be said. To be silent is to be compliant, and while my own position in life is a little to fragile to break out the picket signs and parade the streets, I will at least use my online voice to state what I feel must be stated, if only to say what I do and don’t agree with.

With that said:

Injustices by the police and general law enforcement must be given accountability.

The murder of innocent minority, racial or otherwise, is wrong and must be given the proper punishments.

The lack of care toward healthcare, workers’ rights, civil rights, and so on must be ratified.

Law enforcement should never be seen as or used as a force of fear as it currently is now.

And during a health pandemic like we are now, safety should be a prime concern before anything else. For the police to be acting as they are now makes me fearful of the future.

The fact that I have to say any of that, the fact that any of that is controversial is appalling. The fact that a simple hashtag like #blacklivesmatter is controversial is appalling. The fact that I even hesitated to write that hashtag to maintain professionalism is appalling. It sickens me a little to live in a country where any of that is said, written, or typed with a hint of hesitation or worry. It’s just... so appalling.

That’s all I have to say on this subject, at least in this tone. My purer, more raw thoughts I’ll save for my friends and family in private.

But... I think that leaves us with one question left before I end this. Which is...

How Did We Get Here?

Folks, I am a knowledgeable man, but I don’t consider myself an intelligent one. I didn’t study years of the underlying racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and antisemitism that lead to our situation.

However... I am very sarcastic and sharp-tongued man. I don’t show that side of myself often here on the internet aside from jokes and jabs at nonsensical things like anime, as it breaks my typical persona of an analytical and professional man, but I think I can sum up what’s happening by paraphrasing single quote that I feel many of the wrong people have used to justify their own feelings of injustices. So with that said:

What do you get when you cross an abused and patient minority with a society that abandons them and treats them like trash?

“I’ll tell you what you get. You get what you fucking deserve.”

Anyway, ideally I’ll have a much happy topic to talk about later this week. Like Arknights. Like I said in the beginning, A former mafia delivery girl got into a fist fight with a kung fu detective, a lot of fun things happened in the latest event.

#your dictator is speaking

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nivenus · 5 years

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I Need You: Why Evangelion Still Matters

If you’re even a casual fan of Japanese animation (colloquially known as anime) you’ve probably heard of a few classics held up as the best of the medium; films and television shows whose place in the history of Japanese culture is widely regarded as secure: Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Spirited Away, to name a few of the most prominent. They all have their critics, but few would dispute their place as landmarks of the industry. But there’s one classic piece of Japanese animation however whose legacy is far more contentious and which sparks controversy even today. Like the aforementioned pieces it’s well-known and has been watched by many, but unlike them it remains quite controversial, beloved by some and derided by others.

I’m talking about Neon Genesis Evangelion,¹ Hideaki Anno’s 1995 post-apocalyptic series about teenagers who pilot giant robots (known as mecha) in a war for the survival of humanity. And in my opinion it’s actually one of the best and most important television shows of all time, animated or not.

(Spoilers ahead, though I’ll try to keep major revelations to a minimum.)

I realize that in making my claim, I’m setting myself up for criticism. The value (or lack thereof) of Neon Genesis Evangelion has been one of the most heated debates in anime fandom for decades. But even on the purely objective level of its influence on the animation industry, both in Japan and beyond, NGE and its subsequent spin-offs, sequels, and re-imaginings is a significant work worth consideration. Although the show is decades old now (the first episode aired October 4, 1995), I believe it’s still worth examining why the show’s so acclaimed and why, in my opinion, it’s still relevant today, in no smal part because of the lessons it still has to teach us about self-acceptance.

(An earlier version of this essay was posted 4 years ago here.)

Weaving a Story

Concept art for Asuka Langley Soryu, the Second Child

Today, Evangelion is a major franchise, incorporating films, comics, video games, and more. But it all started with one TV show, Neon Genesis Evangelion, created by Hideaki Anno for Gainax. Even from the start, NGE was somewhat exceptional. In the early-to-mid 1990s when it was produced, most of the major animated shows on air (both in Japan and America) were heavily merchandise-driven and sponsored by either toy or video game companies. Nearly all were owned by a major studio like Toei or Toho. Conceived of by a single individual and owned by a small creator-run studio, Neon Genesis Evangelion was highly unusual and something of a creative risk.

The story of Neon Genesis Evangelion is, on first glance, nothing remarkable for Japanese animation. A group of teenagers are recruited by a unified global government to pilot giant robots (mecha) in a battle for the survival of humanity. In the process they have to face not only their deadly adversaries but also learn how to work together as a team, overcoming their many differences and personal issues. Gundam, Macross, and Hideaki Anno’s own Gunbuster had all covered similar territory before. But where NGE would go with its premise was far stranger, blending the well-tread concept of adolescent soldiers with theological imagery, Freudian and Lacanian analysis, and abstract writing that soon set the show apart from its contemporaries.

The show quickly caught the fascination of viewers. While Neon Genesis Evangelion started initially with solid but unexceptional ratings, it soon expanded into a massive pop cultural phenomenon as more and more people tuned in to find out what all the fuss was about, eventually reaching 25-30% of the targeted demographic.² The final two episodes, noted for their abstract nature and for seemingly leaving several plot threads hanging, prompted a highly polarized reaction. The follow-up movie The End of Evangelion, released a year later, divided audiences even further. As a consequence, despite Evangelion’s immense popularity and influence, the franchise remains one of the most controversial works to ever air on broadcast television.

Neon Genesis Evangelion’s ending was, however, just one of its controversial aspects. Moral guardians raised complaints about the show’s frank (and frequently bleak) depictions of sex, violence, and mental illness, demanding networks censor its content. Critics such as Eiji Otsuka and Tetsuya Miyazaki accused Anno of “brainwashing” his audience and affirming, rather than criticizing, anime fans’ escapist tendencies. Yoshiyuki Tomino, the director of both Gundam and Ideon, complained that Anno tried “to convince the audience to admit that everybody is sick” and that it “told people it was okay to be depressed.” Additionally, much was made of the show’s religious imagery, particularly due to the then recent sarin gas attacks by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which like NGE utilized a blend of Western and Japanese religious imagery.

Other complaints centered on NGE’s main characters, many of whom were found to be unlikeable or unheroic. Many attacked the lead protagonist Shinji as weak and indecisive, unbecoming of the hero in a show aimed at adolescents. Some further asserted the character was an attack on the show’s audience and that Anno wanted to “punish” his audience for their anime-loving ways. The rest of the cast didn’t escape criticism either and were variably found to be cruel, schizophrenic, or perverse. All could easily be characterized as dysfunctional.

But despite the backlash against Neon Genesis Evangelion, whether it was centered on the show’s ending, its thematic elements, or its characters’ deficiencies, none of it seemed to put a lasting dent in the show’s influence or popularity. And a lot of that, perhaps, has to do with the time in which it emerged. At the time NGE was originally produced in the early to mid 1990s, Japan was in the midst of an extended economic downturn that would come to be known as the Lost Decade, following a major asset price crash in 1989. During this time, Japanese animation, like many industries, experienced a contraction, resulting in slashed budgets and an increasing reliance on merchandising and product placement to sustain both the studios producing the content and the major networks who broadcasted (and often owned) it.

In addition to these economic concerns, there was also a growing feeling in the 1990s that animation was a thing of the past, whose glory days were long gone and which only inspired passion in either adolescents or callow, sheltered men in their 20s or 30s. The content of most anime was regarded as puerile or derivative and hardly becoming of serious adult interest. The term otaku,³ a word that literally means “house” but was used to mean “shut-in,” quickly became shorthand for anime fans who spent their adulthood collecting memorabilia and memorizing lines from their favorite shows.

But Neon Genesis Evangelion helped to change all that and to reclaim anime’s respectability. Breaking through the traditional animation fandom to a wider audience and owned solely by the creator-run Gainax, NGE was an invigorating shock to the industry, shaking it up and reviving interest in what had been regarded as a dying medium. Within a few short years, new creator-owned studios were cropping up across Japan, a trend which would continue well into the next decade and bear such fruit as Bones, manglobe, Ufotable, or Gainax’s own offshoots Trigger and Khara. The animation industry was expanding again and was beginning to boom overseas, in no small part thanks to the popularity and notoriety of NGE.

Devilman: Crybaby by Science Saru, a series itself based on one of Evangelion’s chief influences

The new anime boom would also reflect its origins in a number of different ways. More than a few of the new shows to debut in the late 1990s and early 2000s were directly influenced and impacted by Neon Genesis Evangelion, including such notables as RahXephon and Revolutionary Girl Utena. More subtly, the starkly realistic depictions of violence and sexuality in NGE as well as its bizarrely surreal imagery encouraged many directors to try similar techniques, resulting in a shift in style throughout the industry.

Neon Genesis Evangelion’s influence on later anime can be attributed in some ways to its technical sophistication. At its most basic, visceral level, NGE was startling to look at. Even compared with other Gainax works that had come before it, like Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water or Gunbuster, NGE immediately stood out as something unique in an increasingly homogeneous industry. The character designs of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, strangely subdued yet striking and expressive, helped distinguish the cast while Ikuto Yamashita’s monstrous and biomechanical designs for the Evangelions did the same for the show’s mechs. Combined with the intense direction of Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Masayuki, and others NGE drew the eye right from the start.

The technical splendor wasn’t just limited to NGE’s art design or animation either. The voice talents provided by performers like Megumi Ogata, Kotono Mitsuishi, Megumi Hayashibara, and Yuko Miyamura gave life to the characters and helped audiences empathize with them, despite their dysfunctional and emotionally-wrought nature. Also contributing to the audio portion of Neon Genesis Evangelion was Shiro Sagisu, whose music swung significantly from jazzy to melodramatic and even to surreal, changing and evolving to match each scene with an appropriate mood. Assisting Sagisu was the vocal work of artists such as Yoko Takahashi, who made the show’s central theme, “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis,” a pop sensation.

But while the technical triumphs of Neon Genesis Evangelion certainly contributed to the show’s lasting appeal and influence, they’re hardly the whole story. For many viewers, the appeal of Evangelion went well beyond the surface, to narrative and thematic elements they felt spoke directly to them. Indeed, it is arguably NGE’s complex characterization, unorthodox narrative structure, and thematic depth which have made it stand out as one of the most legendary examples of Japanese pop culture.

A Cruel Angel’s Thesis

It’s not an exaggeration to say that essays—and books—have been written about Neon Genesis Evangelion and its thematic qualities. Most of this has been concentrated in Evangelion’s own native Japan, but the sensation has breached the other side of the Pacific as well, resulting in comparisons to the works of David Lynch and other Western directors. Contributing to this no doubt has been Anno’s own numerous references in NGE not only to native Japanese culture but to the West as well, with tributes to works like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, and UFO found frequently throughout.

The most obvious thematic element present in Evangelion, at least to Western eyes, is its frequent allusions to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It’s not hard to see why: the monstrous foes besetting humanity are “Angels” who shoot cross-shaped energy bolts, which the main characters fight with “Evangelions” (the Greek word from which “evangelism” derives). Coupled with other bits and pieces here and there referring to original sin, the will of God, and ancient Judaism, these details give Evangelion a strikingly religious appearance to Western viewers.

However, while they’re certainly the most obvious elements in Evangelion, the religious references are also easily some of the most transient and insubstantial. Although initially viewed as central to the plot by many Westerners, it has since been revealed that most of the Biblical references are there for styling rather than substance and were largely intended to make the show stand out. In many respects, the usage of the Abrahamic faiths in Evangelion is similar to the use of Buddhism in The Matrix or Egyptian mythology in Stargate: a bit of fun exoticism to keep things interesting.

The Sephirot from Kabbalah, as represented in The End of Evangelion

That being said, the religious themes are not as vacuous as is sometimes alleged and the sheer number and obscurity of some of them indicates some real effort on the part of Anno. Each of the Angels, for instance, (which are called shito⁴ in Japanese, meaning “messenger” or “apostle”) are named after actual angels from Abrahamic mythology and their names, when translated from Hebrew or Arabic, often do indicate their nature in some way (e.g., Arael’s name means the “light of God” and it is an enormous winged being who attacks the characters with a beam of light). And while the use of the Kabbalah’s Sephiroth may be perfunctory, many other references to Jewish mysticism appear more meaningful, such as the Chamber of Guf or the duality of the Trees of Life and Wisdom.

Less obvious to Western eyes but possibly even more sophisticated are the references Evangelion makes to non-Abrahamic religions. There is, for example, the notable similarity between what the show terms “Instrumentality” and traditional descriptions of “egoless” nirvana in Buddhism (a religion also referenced by way of the Marduk Institute’s 108 dummy corporations).⁵ Japan’s native religion Shinto also shows its hand, most notably through the depiction of the Evangelions themselves, which Anno consciously designed after the monstrous oni of Japanese legend. All in all, while he may not have intended to portray a particular theological message, it’s clear that Anno put a lot of thought and research into giving Evangelion a suitably mystical appearance.

However, obsessing over the religious imagery in Evangelion obfuscates something far more important: Evangelion isn’t really about religion. Rather, where Evangelion’s thematic depth and complexity most clearly comes into play is psychology and philosophy of the mind.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is often described as a deconstruction of mecha anime. To a large extent that’s true, but it’s deconstruction is specific in outlook, focused on the psychology of its characters in the form of a question: just what kind of people would put the fate of humanity in the hands of adolescent children? And just what would that kind of stress and responsibility do to a child’s mind? In that regard, NGE is in far closer in kinship to Ender’s Game than to its natural predecessors like Macross, Gundam, or Gunbuster.

When the story of Neon Genesis Evangeliom begins, the world has already experienced disaster on an unprecedented scale. 14 years before the show begins, a massive apocalyptic event called the Second Impact devastated the Earth’s climate, precipitated global nuclear war, awakened the monstrous Angels, and resulted in the deaths of half of all humans on the planet. In response, civilization has been restructured and militarized in anticipation of an even worse Third Impact threatened by the Angels. To combat this threat, the secretive organization Nerv assembles biomechanical monsters of their own (the Evangelions) which, as it so happens, can only be piloted by teenagers.⁶

Rei Ayanami, the First Child, believes that her life is expendable

This is the kind of world people like Misato Katsuragi, Gendo Ikari, and Ritsuko Akagi live in and it’s the severity of their situation which ultimately shapes their actions. Although many of the adults, particularly Misato, wish they could let the series’ child protagonists lead a normal life, they know that’s not an option. As a result, the adult characters are driven towards a cold pragmatism that means, no matter how warm or compassionate they may act towards their wards at any given time, they’re still ready to sacrifice them when necessary.

This ruthless approach has its costs, however. The constant pressure to succeed, alongside the emotional whiplash they receive at the hands of the pilots’ supervisors and the repeated trauma they experience in combat results in each pilot’s gradual psychological degradation. Beginning as relatively competent and capable (if slightly dysfunctional) individuals, each pilot eventually succumbs to their trauma and breaks, causing them to isolate themselves from one another and resulting in a breakdown in morale which puts not only themselves but humanity itself at risk.

In keeping with this theme of psychological frailty and the ways in which we as people both intentionally and unintentionally harm those we care about, including those we care about, the series makes numerous allusions to the work of past psychologists and philosophers. Many concepts are mentioned specifically by name, such as the “oral stage,” “separation anxiety,” or the “hedgehog’s dilemma,” while others are alluded to more subtly, such as the Oedipus and Elektra complexes, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, or Lacan’s dichotomy of the constructed and ideal selves.

Hideaki Anno has himself said he researched psychology both before and during the production of Neon Genesis Evangelion and that many of the show’s characters are based upon both these concepts and his own experiences. He has, for instance, described the protagonist Shinji as a reflection of his own conscious self, while the emotionally withdrawn Rei is a manifestation of his unconscious, and the enigmatic Kaworu is his Jungian shadow. Altogether, the works of Freud, Lacan, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Jung, and Sartre have all been identified by staff or critics as influences on the show’s characters and plot.

One of the chief psychological themes in Evangelion is abandonment, particularly by those you love or have been cared for by. Throughout the story—in its past, present, and future—each of the main characters is abandoned by people important to them: their parents, their guardians, their lovers, their friends, etc. Invariably, this abandonment leads to a breakdown in identity and self-confidence, as each character is forced to redefine themselves from within after devoting so much of their identity to how they were perceived by others. Thematically matching to this issue of personal abandonment is humanity’s own abandonment by their unknowable creator eons ago, a detail alluded to occasionally as the story progresses. Like the individual characters then, humanity must learn how to manage and master its own fate when it has no one left to depend upon.

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma

These themes, however, would have little resonance were they irrelevant to the show’s human drama. It is to Neon Genesis Evangelion’s credit that they are not; each of the characters represent the show’s themes in both significant and personal ways. It is quite arguable then that it is the show’s protagonists, however controversial they may be either as individuals or an ensemble, which have truly allowed NGE to endure for decades as an icon of Japanese pop culture.

The most important of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s characters by far is easily Shinji Ikari, the pilot of Evangelion Unit-01 and the son of Gendo Ikari, the enigmatic director of the Evangelion program. At the beginning of the series Shinji is called to Nerv by his father, who abandoned him years earlier following the death of Shinji’s mother. Shinji hopes that this sudden call is for the purpose of reunion, but he is quickly disillusioned when his father reveals to him that he needs Shinji to pilot one of the monstrous Evangelions he’s built—a machine Shinji has hitherto never heard of—and to save humanity from extinction. Brokenhearted by his father’s coldness and terrified of the task he’s been blackmailed into performing, Shinji puts off his own desires and self-identity aside for the sake of pleasing his father and others, becoming the so-called Third Child.

Series protagonist Shinji Ikari, the Third Child

Shinji’s a complicated character and one many find difficult to empathize with. He is self-consciously cowardly and phlegmatic, prone to self-criticism, and afraid of getting close to others for fear that they’ll reject him. At times he thinks seriously about running away from his responsibilities, but whenever he actually does he quickly returns, unable to commit to so blatant an act of rebellion for long. Despite this and despite his own reliance on others to define his value, Shinji does have his virtues: he’s thoughtful, easy to get along with, and proves remarkably skilled at piloting, even if he has no real passion for it.

Shinji’s commanding officer, Misato Katsuragi, is NGE’s most prominent adult character and (according to Hideaki Anno) the series’ deuteragonist.⁸ Loud, goofy, and irreverent, Misato strikes quite a different first impression than Shinji, but despite their outward differences they’re actually quite similar people with comparable issues, merely approaching them in different manners. Like Shinji, Misato feels abandoned by her father, who neglected her and her mother before his death years ago. But despite that Misato still yearns for his affection, manifesting her desires in the form of her relationship with Ryoji Kaji, a coworker and lover she admits resembles her father. And, also like Shinji, Misato fears getting close to other people for fear of being hurt, but whereas Shinji manages his anxiety by avoiding people, Misato does so by acting flippant and flirtatious in public, living lightly and maintaining only “surface level relationships.”

Shinji’s move into Misato’s apartment comes largely at her insistence and Shinji is initially quite uncomfortable with it, a feeling which does not subside when he learns she’s an extremely messy housekeeper and an alcoholic. But despite her irreverent personality, Misato turns out to be a deeply caring person who wants very much for Shinji to be happy and, over the course of the series, she tries to direct the development of Shinji as a good parent would, all the while concerned her own flaws make her an unsuitable guardian. Notably, these moments where the two of them bond are some of the most light-hearted in the series.

Although Shinji is the first pilot the series introduces, he is preceded by two others at Nerv. The first, Rei Ayanami, is arguably Neon Genesis Evangelion’s most popular (and certainly influential) character. Enigmatic and asocial to a degree that goes beyond mere awkwardness, Rei lives alone in a desolate apartment she doesn’t even bother to clean, close to no one but her pseudo-guardian Gendo Ikari. Because of her closeness to his father, who has raised her as his own daughter, Shinji initially sees Rei as a replacement for him. It soon becomes apparent however that Rei’s trust and faith in Gendo go well beyond that of a healthy parent-child dynamic. Obedient to a fault and unconcered for her own well-being, Rei causally throws herself into danger for Gendo and Nerv and comes across as emotionless to those around her.

But beneath Rei’s cold, ultra-stoic exterior beats a heart as capable of joy and sorrow as that of any other. Far from the robotic doll many assume her to be, Rei has a secret yearning for others to understand her and her them and, over the course of the series, slowly opens up to Shinji. But although she desires human contact, she doesn’t really know how to initiate it and she’s terrified of the possibility that there’s something about her that makes her fundamentally unlike other people.

Asuka Langley Soryu, the third of the child protagonists to show up,⁷ strikes about as strong a contrast to Rei as one can imagine. Egotistical, loud-mouthed, and possessed of far more bravado than either Shinji or Rei, Asuka joins the cast about a third of the way through the show, after transferring from Nerv’s facility in Germany. Raised since childhood to be a pilot, Asuka prides herself on her skills and looks with disdain on Shinji’s self-deprecating nature and inability to recognize his own accomplishments. Already a college graduate and convinced she’s as much an adult as anyone, Asuka also proves precociously sexual, pining for both Misato’s lover Kaji and, to a lesser but still significant extent, Shinji himself, whom she frequently teases for attention.

Asuka is like Shinji a controversial character; people often look at Asuka and see one of two sides to her: a selfish jerk who bullies Shinji and Rei or an accomplished young woman whose confidence and inner strength makes her the real hero of the show. The truth, however, is that in many ways she’s both. Asuka really is brave—far braver than Shinji or even Rei, who doesn’t really fear death—and she’s definitely skilled. But she’s also prone to jealousy and vindictiveness, as well as a consciously manifested attitude of not caring for anyone. In many ways, however, her bravado is a cover for own insecurity, built upon the belief that no one really likes or loves her.

The cast of the original Neon Genesis Evangelion

There’s a lot to admire about NGE’s characters, even with all their flaws and personality disorders. It’s easily got one of the most complex and diverse casts in anime and there has to be something said for the fact that of its four principal characters, three are female, allowing it to easily pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test (which it does). The characters each have their own virtues, which in a more easygoing series could make them quite endearing. Lead protagonist Shinji’s selfless and has a fairly noble streak, though it’s hidden deep beneath his own self-doubt and loathing. The adult Misato’s fairly protective of her young charges, at least insofar as she is allowed to be given the circumstances, and is also quite a bit more capable than many expect. Selfless Rei’s loyalty and discipline easily make her one of the most sympathetic characters in the series, even if she does sometimes come across as alien or inhuman. And there’s little question that the daring Asuka has enough chutzpah for the whole cast.

But it could also be argued that the complexity and harshness of NGE’s characters which ultimately make them work, even if at times they also make the show hard to watch. Shinji, Misato, Rei, and Asuka are not the idealized paragons of humanity you’d expect to find in most television shows aimed at teenagers, but they’re not the imaginings of a bitter misanthrope either. They’re deeply flawed, yes, and when they’re hurt they keep on hurting, but they also keep going and keep trying to find a way to live with others that doesn’t result in pain. It’s this idea, the recognition that people screw up and hurt one another but want to do better, that really enlivens the franchise. For all the reputed darkness of Evangelion’s story, it is in many ways idealistic, always hopeful that it’s characters might find a way to be happy. You don’t have to be broken, it says, even if you are damaged.

And it is that core ethos of qualified hope that elevates Neon Genesis Evangelion from just another mecha anime or even a deconstruction of mecha to something more. Something sublime and, in its own strange way, even inspirational.

The Sickness unto Death

At this point I feel it’s useful to provide some personal background. I first watched Neon Genesis Evangelion when I was in high school, sometime between my third and fourth years. My initial reaction was, I think, largely typical. The first episodes interested me and as the storyline moved forward and became more complex, I became more invested in the show’s events and characters. I even appreciated to some extent the bizarre and abstract final two episodes, though I’d hoped for a more conventional ending. Then, I watched The End of Evangelion, whoch left me shocked and dismayed at its harshness. I still cared about the series, but I felt more ambivalent as a result.

Over the next few years I continued to keep up with the Evangelion fandom to a small extent, checking out the rumors about the new movies and reading some fan fiction online, but I gradually drifted away. None of the fan speculation or fiction really seemed to scratch the same itch the original series had and eventually my interests in anime shifted more towards Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Fullmetal Alchemist. Evangelion, as much as I’d enjoyed it before, fell gradually into the background of my life.

And then I entered college.

In my youth, I was generally regarded as a “bright” student, fawned over by teachers and regarded by my peers as either a genius or a “know-it-all,” depending on how much they liked me (or didn’t). As I entered the final years of high school it was clear that I was expected to excel in university. But when I actually began my college career I quickly faltered. Depressed, socially isolated, and exhausted from getting four to six hours of sleep a night, my grades slipped quickly and my social life evaporated. For awhile, I tried to deny my problems and ignore them, believing I could power through without help. Eventually, though, I had no choice but to confront my issues: I was put on academic suspension and my financial assistance was pulled.

I was devastated. I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know how to tell my parents, who I’d let believe I was doing fine. I didn’t know where to go with my life now that I’d failed to live up to the expectations I’d allowed other people to put on me. I didn’t even really know who I was anymore. If I wasn’t a brilliant student and child genius, who was I? In my own eyes I was worthless and contemptible.

Eventually, with the help of my family and friends, as well as staff from the university, I was able to make my way back to daylight. I began to undertake counseling. I went to community college to bring my GPA back up. I started talking more openly with my loved ones about my problems, even though I was worried it would make them think less of me. And I began to be more honest about my flaws and limitations.

A scene from Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, the third Rebuild film

It was also around this time, rather coincidentally, that I began to seriously revisit Evangelion. I was prompted, as much as by anything else, by the release of the new “Rebuild of Evangelion” films. After my brothers and I attended a screening of the second film’s release in early 2011 with several of our friends, the latter (hitherto unfamiliar with Evangelion) expressed interest in catching up with the franchise. Indulging them, my brothers and I rewatched the original TV series. To my surprise, I began to see the series in a new light. Where once I had simply been sympathetic to Shinji, Misato, Rei, and Asuka’s inner turmoil, now I felt deeply empathetic. Where previously the show’s harshness had at times alienated me, now it felt deeply relatable and truthful. And where earlier the TV show’s decision to focus on the internal psyches of its main characters instead of the plot had puzzled me before, now I felt as if I understood it completely. I even began to appreciate the theatrical finale, a film so brutal some regard it (falsely) as Anno’s revenge against fans angry with him for the original ending.

What had changed? Certainly not the show. Rather, it was my perspective. I possessed now of a viewpoint I hadn’t held earlier. I knew now what it was like to be full of contempt for one’s self, to be a defeated shell of a person who felt as though their value was slipping away or was already entirely absent. I knew what it was like to believe I was a failure in every meaningful way. In other words, I’d gained the perspective of a person suffering from depression. The same perspective as that of Evangelion’s principal characters as well as their creator, Hideaki Anno.

It’s hardly secret knowledge that Hideaki Anno was suffering from depression when he first created Neon Genesis Evangelion. The extent of his depression, however, was far graver than is generally recognized. When Anno began work on the project that would become NGE, he had already been suffering from severe depression for at least four years. In a statement released with the first volume of Evangelion’s manga (comic) adaptation Anno described himself as “a broken man... who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead.” And while the production of NGE had originally been intended to break him out of a rut, the stress only compounded the severity of his condition. By the time of the show’s completion Anno was, by his own later admission, borderline suicidal.

No one’s ever said precisely what drove Anno over the edge publicly, but it’s widely agreed it had much to do with the production of his previous work, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Originally conceived by Anno’s mentor Hayao Miyazaki in the mid-1980s Nadia was eventually handed off to Anno after Gainax made a bid for the project. Far gentler and family-friendly than NGE, the comparative sweetness of Nadia obscured a troubled production that saw animation work outsourced and Anno frequently butting heads with NHK, the series’ broadcaster, over the show’s content and creative direction. Coupled with rumored trouble in Anno’s personal life, the experience proved too much for him, driving him into the deep depression that would haunt him for most of the 1990s.

The roots of Anno’s emotional troubles may go deeper, however. Long regarded by those close to him as a lonely and eccentric oddball, Anno was socially withdrawn as a child, preferring to spend his time watching and recreating scenes from his favorite anime and tokusatsu to interacting with others, a choice he’d later say he regretted. In 1983, due in large part to his social isolation and inactivity at school, he dropped out of university and lived homeless for a time before he was discovered by Miyazaki and employed as an animator for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The experience proved vital to his career and soon afterward he and a few friends gathered to form Gainax, their own animation studio. It was during this time that Anno directed Gunbuster alongside working on other projects such as Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise and Grave of the Fireflies. For a time, he seemed happy. But then came Nadia and he withdrew entirely from his work and social life, before reemerging to work on Evangelion.

Anno’s turbulent life and emotional turmoil is reflected in the characters of Evangelion, many of whom enter the story damaged but apparently functional only to completely fall apart later on. Shinji is lonely and dependent when he first appears, but he still manages to form friendships and do what’s required of him. Misato may be an alcoholic with a mess of a home, but Nerv’s trust in her is rewarded time and time again by her effectual planning and coordination of her pilots. Rei’s cold and emotionally withdrawn, but her dutiful selflessness both inspires and attracts others to her. Asuka can be arrogant and reckless, but she’s also intelligent and capable of real kindness towards those she respects. Like Anno in the early days of Gainax, they all seem to be on top of things.

But just when it seems like the team’s getting the hang of things and finding their groove, disaster strikes. Soon, as one crisis mounts on top of another, from near-death experiences to being forced to hurt his friends, everything falls apart. Shinji’s newfound self-confidence shatters and he becomes even more needy than before. Misato’s constructed domestic bliss blows apart just as her own convictions are thrown into question by new revelations about her work. Rei becomes colder and more distant than ever before, withdrawing even from Gendo, the one person she trusts implicitly. And Asuka collapses into a pit of self-loathing despair, savagely lashing out at anyone who gets close to her. It’s ugly, it’s nasty, and it’s real.

Shinji admits to his feelings of worthlessness to Misato Katsuragi, his guardian and confidante, in The End of Evangelion

This cycle of crash, despair, and recovery is not unusual for suffers of depression. Contrary to what is often thought, depression is not really something you have at one point in your life and then “get over;” it’s something that can shadow you your entire life, kept in check by momentary pleasures and good times but always threatening to surge and overwhelm you when things go awry, sending you into a spiral of self-hate and abnegation that can last for weeks, months, or even years. Friends and family help keep it in check, as does therapy and pharmaceuticals, but it never goes away completely. The only thing you can do is recognize the symptoms and do your best to confront them. You have to keep going. You can’t let your fears drive you to abandon the world. You must not, in other words, run away.

And really that’s what the characters’ struggles in Evangelion come down to: facing reality and acknowledging their flaws while also recognizing their own potential to overcome them and the painful struggle for acceptance we all, on some level, endure. The first instinct of every character in the series is to run away from their problems, to obscure them with outwardly derived duties, relationships, or purposes. Shinji and Rei both look to Gendo, Misato to her job, and Asuka to her pride as an Eva pilot, but all of them are running away and, as a consequence, are unprepared to deal with reality when it hits them flat in the face.

Or are they?

As Long As You Try to Continue to Live

It’s worth noting that when Anno created Neon Genesis Evangelion he didn’t initially set out to create a dark and cynical deconstruction of mecha anime. When asked what initially gave him the impetus to create NGE, Anno has said repeatedly that he originally meant to make a show more in the spirit of Gundam or Space Battleship Yamato, two of his favorite TV shows from his youth, but without the shackles inherent to sponsorship by a toy company, as was common practice for anime at the time. “I made Evangelion to make me happy and to make anime lovers happy,” he said in a 1996 interview, “in trying to bring together the broadest audience possible.”

But as pre-production on the series progressed (and his emotional state regressed) Anno became further disenchanted at the state of anime, concerned that fans were turning to it as a way to escape reality as he himself felt compelled to. “I wonder if a person over the age of twenty who likes robot anime is really happy,” he stated in an article for Newtype half a year before the series aired. This change in perspective, coupled with his resurgent depression, caused Anno to shift focus as he became more and more concerned with the characters’ emotional development, hoping that by the end of the series’ narrative “the heroes would change,” breaking away from their regressed emotional state and achieving the same emotional well-being and self-dependence Anno still sought for himself and which he felt his audience needed as well.

It’s this perspective of Anno’s—that anime otaku were and are caught in a kind of prolonged childhood—which has led to the impression that Anno hates otaku and believes their lives to be worthless. But the truth is that Anno’s thoughts on the subject are quite a bit subtler and more reflective than many give him credit for. Far from hating otaku, Anno counts himself among them and feels defensive whenever they’re derided by others. The issue, he thinks, is less that otaku are permanently stunted and more that they’re afraid or reluctant to open themselves to new experiences:

“I feel that otaku have already become common to all countries. In Europe, in Korea, in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, in America, otaku really do not change. I think that this is amazing. I say critical things towards otaku, but I don’t reject them. I only say that we should take a step back and be self-conscious about these things. I think it’s perfectly fine so long as you act with an awareness of what you are doing, self-conscious and cognizant of the current situation. I’m just not sure it’s a good thing to reach the point where you cut yourself off from society. I don’t understand the greatness of society, either. So I have no intention of going so far as to call for people to give up otaku-like things and become more suited to society. Only, I think there are many other interesting things in the world, and we don’t have to reject them.”

Despite everything, the characters still care for and want to see one another happy

And that’s what I mean by Evangelion’s subtle, qualified idealism. Despite Anno’s frequent cynicism and troubled state of mind during the production of the series, it’s clear that at heart he’s a person who believes people can change and improve themselves. He’s someone who believes that, even in the worst or most desperate of situations, people can find happiness if they’re open to it. “As long as you try to continue to live,” one character states in The End of Evangelion, “any place can be a heaven… there’s a chance to become happy everywhere.”

It would certainly be easy to define the characters of Evangelion by their failures and—given the magnitude of their failures—it’s understandable why many do. After all, much of the series’ narrative is caught up (as I noted earlier) in deconstructing the kind of scenario typical of mecha shows and examing what really would happen if teenagers were put in charge of the world’s salvation. As such, as in other deconstructionist narratives (such as the Battlestar Galactica reboot or Watchmen), the characters screw up about at least as often as they succeed.

That being said, more often than not, when the characters are hit with tragedy or trauma, they eventually recover and bounce back. They’re definitely damaged and shaken by their experiences, but they keep on going anyway. As much as Shinji fears and abhors piloting he’s also someone who, when people are really depending on him, will almost always get right back in the cockpit and try to help. Rei may be over-compliant and lack any regard for herself, but she’s also capable of defying orders when she knows they’re wrong. And for all Asuka’s jealousy and grandstanding, she’s also a person deeply capable of love and self-sacrifice, who would die for those she cares about.

This ray of hope at the core of Evangelion’s story is made most clear in the television series’ original broadcast ending, wherein Shinji rediscovers his own self-value and the joy of living in a world with other people and declares that, although he hates himself, “maybe, maybe I could love myself. Maybe, my life can have a greater value.” But such idealism is even found in the much more outwardly harsh vision of The End of Evangelion. After coming face to face with the world he thought he desired—a world without pain or individuality—Shinji realizes that it’s also a world without happiness. “This isn’t right,” he says. “There was nothing good in the place I ran to, either. After all, I didn’t exist there... which is the same as no one existing.” Realizing this, Shinji chooses to return to the physical world he knew, even if it means feeling pain again.

The idea that joy and pain are in many ways coterminous with one another is hardly original to Evangelion; indeed, it’s a fairly important concept to Buddhism. But I’ve rarely seen the idea expressed in quite the same way as Evangelion, in a way that’s both fully formed and strangely life-affirming. Pain is inevitable, but so is joy. You’ll be hurt, but it’s better than never feeling anything at all and may only give you more appreciation for what you have. You may feel alone, but you’re not; everyone suffers in their life at one point or another, and you don’t have to carry that burden by yourself.

Reflecting upon and considering these themes through Evangelion, as I rediscovered it during a low point in my life, allowed me to appreciate it in a way I’d never been able to before. And it also helped me to move on with my life, to accept the losses I could never recover while also believing it didn’t mean my own life was over. Like Shinji, Misato, Rei, and Asuka, I didn’t have to be defeated by my experiences. I could keep on going. I didn’t have to run away. And that’s a message I believe everyone needs to hear at least once in their life.

Series creator Hideaki Anno (left) with mentor Hayao Miyazaki (right)

Today, Hideaki Anno has found some peace of mind. He’s happily married, the head of his own production company, and he’s physically healthier too. He still suffers from depression—he’s not cured by any means and he probably never will be; depression isn’t that kind of disease. But he’s able to fight it now and to find the happiness he once believed illusory. He has the same hope he wanted his characters to find in Evangelion. And which I also feel I’ve found, in some small part, thanks to him.

¹Throughout this essay, Neon Genesis Evangelion or NGE refers to the original TV series, The End of Evangelion refers to its theatrical sequel, Rebuild of Evangelion refers to the series of rebooted films produced decades later, and Evangelion on its own refers to the franchise as a whole.

²Specifically, shōnen, meaning boys aged between 12 and 18.

³The term has since been adopted by Western anime fans, but in Japan the word does not necessarily refer to animation fans specifically but to anyone with an obsessive interest in something.

⁴Ironically, “messenger” is a literal translation of the word angelos from Greek—the origin of the English word “angel”—as well as the original Hebrew mal’akh.

⁵The numbers 8 and 108 are both significant in Buddhism. 8 refers to the Noble Eighfold Path to enlightenment. 108 refers to several things, including the number of beads in a Vajrayana prayer rosary, the number of questions asked of the Gautama Buddha in the Lankavatara Sutra, or the number of times Japanese Buddhist temples ring a bell on New Year’s.

⁶The reason for this is never fully explained. Behind the scenes, this was largely because of the show’s target demographic. In universe though it may be related to the secret nature of the Evangelions themselves, which have human souls.

⁷Deuteragonist is a term which means the second-most important character with whom the audience’s sympathies are intended to lie.

⁸Though referred to as the Second Child(ren) because she was the second candidate approved to pilot Evangelions, before Shinji but after Rei.

#neon genesis evangelion #evangelion #hideaki anno #my writing #essays #retrospectives

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anime-scarves · 6 years

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Fall 2018 First Impressions

It’s a new season which means new shows which means impressions of the shows I picked up after 3 episodes. I’ve picked up quite a few more shows this season than I usually do. So I’ve either been really bored, or there’s a pretty good selection of exciting new shows. Let’s take a look.

Zombieland Saga

There was a bit of quiet excitement for this show before it came out, and it had unexpectedly good reviews coming out of a private prescreening. So what’s the show about? Well zombies being idols of course. Yes, you were tricked into watching an idol show and now you’re actually loving it. It’s not a traditional idol show by any counts because the first episode was metal, and then the 2nd episode had a rap battle, and so on. I’ll admit the 3rd episode was a bit disappointing compared to the first two but it was still enjoyable. There’s a lot of questions for the show going forward, but so far I’ve really enjoyed it. Definitely recommend giving it a go.

Goblin Slayer

The first episode came out and this was the hottest show to talk about. Not exactly because the first episode was so amazing, but because it was very controversial and contained some graphic sexual imagery (adventurer being raped by goblins). The show is unsurprisingly about an adventurer that goes and slays goblins, and so far that’s really it. The story is loosely based off of the author’s many years of role playing games and it shows a lot in the world too. You’re basically watching an animated DnD campaign. After the edge got toned down from the first episode it’s a reasonable but not particularly noteworthy fantasy show.

Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai

I still don’t know what people are calling this show short hand, so I’m gonna go with Bunny Senpai. The comparisons to Monogatari and Oregairu are apt, but do sell the show sort of its own charm. One thing the show really has going for it is that by the 3rd episode it has already finished its first arc which gives you a really good idea of what exactly you’re going to get for the rest of the show. There isn’t a lot of wasted time on needless things, and the chemistry/banter between the two leads has been good so far. If you’re looking for a character based drama/romance/something than this is a solid pick. I’m definitely excited to see how the show ends up.

Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken

I’ve been reincarnated as a slime has been a surprising treat. Going in I was expecting “just another Isekai with a twist” but it’s done quite a bit to set itself apart from the rest of the pack. The premise is pretty fun, it’s got a bright and colorful animation style, and the studio is making excellent use of digital effects in the production. So far it’s been a charming adventure of a slime consuming the world it comes across and assimilating it all and learning new skills. The world seems to be heavily based off of RPGs and the OST plays into that with some great classic video gamesque music. This is quite the fun Isekai and I’d give it a go if you were looking for something a little more light hearted.

JoJo part 5: Vento Aureo

Are you watching JoJo? If you’re not you really should be. Since this is the 5th entry into a series I’m not really gonna be trying to convince you to pick up JoJo since there’s quite a bit to see before this, so I’m just gonna comment on how good it is. David Pro has knocked it out of the park with Vento Aureo. The animation is exceptional, the stands look so good animated, really everything is good so far. The ED caught me off guard so hard, but I’m loving it now lol. It’s been so long since I’ve read part 5, and part of what I read was the not as great scanlations so there are large parts of the show that I’ve completely forgotten or were sort of unclear when I read it. Getting to see those animated is going to be at treat.

SSSS.Gridman

Trigger’s show for the season has got me really excited. It’s a mecha that pays homage to the classics but with a good modern touch the to animation style and character designs. I’m not really sure how to describe this show tbh. There are mecha, kaiju, the over the top Trigger touch, and so on. Understanding the historical context of the show as well as some of the directing choices really made me appreciate the show a lot more. So I’m going to leave a link to Sakugabooru’s production notes for the first two episodes. It was a very insightful read. I wasn’t entirely sold after the first episode, but it’s been growing on my steadily. Having a great time with this one so far.

Sakugabooru post

Release the Spyce

Did you watch Yuru Yuri and think to yourself this is pretty swell, but what if they were spies that got pseudo super speed/agility by eating spices. Then I have the show for you. Character designs are done by Namori and I want to say the director worked on Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero. So far it’s been cute and fluffy as you’d expect from something Namori is working on, but the content itself actually goes really hard. There have been drug rings, brothels, military smuggling, illegal pharmaceuticals, and so on. I’m actually sort of expecting this one to end up quite a bit darker than it has started out. Also the OST is amazing and just throws out trap and dubstep bangers during fight scenes. It was so unexpected but it really adds so much to the aesthetic of the show. Definitely excited to watch more of this.

Skull faced Bookseller Honda-San

And to round things out I’ve got a short at the end of the list. The show is about Honda and his colleagues that work at a bookstore and their daily adventures of dealing with customers, sales people, and all the daily tasks of running a retail store. I suspect that if you’ve worked in retail, or more specifically a bookstore, this will be extra funny. Even if you haven’t it’s a good laugh.

And that’s it! This one got a little long, but I hope you enjoy it or something.

#text #it's a lot of shows #i'm not gonna tag them all #I got kind of tired halfway through #so I started writing less and less #anyways they are pretty good shows this season #watch them #or don't #that's up to you #slime is probably the biggest surprise #i'm enjoying that a lot more than I was expecting to #long post #review

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hyacinthetic · 5 years

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IF I CAN LIVE THROUGH THIS, I CAN DO ANYTHING: interpreting shiro's character in season 8 of voltron

i've been thinking about shiro's character development a lot since vld ended.

of voltron's seasons, s8 seems to have been the most controversial and criticised. many reactions have articulated feelings i couldn't quite express for myself in the first few weeks after the finale, so the backlash has been endlessly fascinating to me.

much of the shiro-specific criticism seems to boil down to "shiro was passive in scenes when he should have taken action." by and large, i agree with this. but season 8 was very clearly not a season about either keith or shiro's personal growth. we know from the production codes that voltron's production team structured the show into three seasons of twenty-six episodes apiece. coming on the heels of season 7, season 8 was written as the back-half of an arc that spent its first half highlighting shiro and keith's new roles. in order to balance out the preceding season, these thirteen episodes were supposed to be the culmination of the lance/allura romance, the last stage of The Galra Empire Strikes Back -- and the final installment of a highly-anticipated mecha/sci-fi show, which often puts show-writers under pressure to plug in a lot of explosions and Now The Stakes Are Higher Than Ever.

this means that, by design, both keith and shiro had to take a back seat in season 8. there just wasn't enough room to highlight them in the chapter that the production team wanted to write: a final chapter where the atlas is ultimately a support for voltron and keith is, above all, a leader to the rest of his team, someone they can count on for personal advice and inspirational koans. thus, shiro had to miss narrative cues that he would have picked up in seasons 1-6. it's a simple case of "don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story".

that answers the question of "why did they write shiro like that?" the questions of "but what are our in-universe justifications for shiro's behavior?" and "where is shiro likely to go from here?" are separate issues. both, i think, are essential for anyone interested in creating fanworks for a canon-compliant post-s8 time period.

as an important foreword: i didn't write this post to criticise the show, to defend its characterisation choices, or to suggest that this is what the vld writers intended when they wrote the final season. this post is a non-definitive reading of shiro's character. it was written for people who found it difficult to recognise his inaction and distance from his team in season 8, and still haven’t come to their own conclusions. it takes shiro's s8 portrayal at face value, as presented, and attempts to reconcile it with the way we interpreted the character in the preceding seven seasons. ultimately, my hope's that someone in this tag enjoys it unironically. all ... 5,800 words of it. good lord.

here's my argument: the shiro we saw in season 8 was still recovering from the loss of his role as a paladin of voltron and his connection with the black lion. he hyperfocused on his new role as the atlas's captain in an effort to crush down any remaining longing for his old life. this is not a new habit: more than once, shiro has fixated on his role for a greater cause, and used that role to deny something significant in his own life. every time, that fixation's come back to bite him.

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S MORE FULFILLING THAN BEING A PALADIN." the importance of roles to takashi shirogane

in eight seasons of canon, we see shiro go through a five-stage cycle over and over: (1) he wants to deny something, (2) he finds a role that will allow him to live in denial of that thing, (3) he succeeds in the role, but only by defining himself almost exclusively according to its duties, shutting out everything that could oppose it, and eventually (4) pouring everything he's got into his role hurts shiro more and more (5) until he's cut off from that role and forced into a new cycle.

(i don't intend to argue, either here or at any point in this post, that shiro's only reason for becoming a pilot/paladin/captain is because he knows he can use it to live in denial; i don't think it's even a primary consideration. but it's interesting to note that the way he occupies these roles always helps him to ignore his own issues.)

for clarity's sake, i'll be using the following template to look at shiro's cycles through his roles as garrison pilot, black paladin, and captain of the atlas:

(1) denial —

(2) role —

(3) temporary success —

(4) losses —

(5) breakdown —

let's start by looking at shiro's garrison record. we know that, at least one year before the kerberos mission's launch, shiro discovers that he has a neurological degenerative disease. adam's remarks strongly suggest that shiro's record at the garrison was driven by this, at least in part. ("there's nothing left for you to prove. you've broken every record there is to break", s7e01.) undeterred, shiro continues on his path as the garrison's best pilot; he lets adam go without protest when the latter breaks up with him, and makes sure that his remaining years of assured good health will be spent in space.

or, to rephrase:

(1) denial — shiro wants to deny his illness.

(2) role — shiro goes beyond the usual reaction of refusing to allow his illness to define him, and explicitly chooses to inhabit a role/life that should be barred to a man in his condition. in effect, he uses this role to further his denial.

(3) temporary success — shiro becomes the garrison hero, and a highly-regarded commander's go-to pilot for groundbreaking missions.

(4) losses — as a direct result of these choices, shiro loses the man he was once willing to marry. i can't stress the enormity of this enough. the show strongly implies that shiro has no family left on earth -- even in season 7, the season where every single one of the human paladins is reunited with loved ones, the only close relationships we see for shiro are with keith, sam holt, and adam, the three people who seem to know that he's sick. and shiro deliberately sets that last one aside before the series even starts, all for the sake of living out his role. being a successful pilot is more important to shiro than not being alone, because the role defines who he is.

(5) breakdown — shiro's cut off from his role as pilot when he's kidnapped by the galra.

the next time we see him on-screen, shiro's fresh from a year as the champion of the galra's prisoner arena. we aren't given enough information from that period to know exactly how shiro survived that role, but it's clear that the experience traumatised him -- we see shiro suffering flashbacks, memory loss, and hallucinations. despite the fact that shiro knows the galra's priorities -- e.g. to conquer earth and find a weapon on the planet, both much more important than punishing a single escapee -- he responds to seeing a galra warship in the sky, not with a hero's anger, but with the very personal horror of a prisoner who has nightmares about getting taken back to his cell: "they found me." (s1e01)

in spite of this, shiro pulls himself together to pilot the black lion. he leads the paladins to save planets left helpless under galra rule. but shiro also isolates himself from the rest of the team in a hundred different ways. when we see shiro in his downtime, he's usually alone, doing push-ups in his paladin gear or reviewing star-system data. he puts an unnatural responsibility on his own shoulders, one that seems to be expected from no one else. even knowing that memory extraction doesn't require his presence, shiro stays with sendak's pod in s1e09, waiting for the process to start, focused and unmoving with an intensity that the scene takes care to show isn't matched by any other member of his team. when zarkon tries to take control of the black lion in season 2, shiro responds "i'll have to forge a new bond with my lion. one that's stronger than his." -- in spite of the fact that allura just announced that there'd never been a precedent for two paladins battling for the same lion, and so what he suggests might not even be possible.

it takes us seven seasons to find out that shiro was ever sick, because he never drops any hint of it to the team -- except keith.

over the course of the show, we see pidge, lance, hunk, and allura admit their secrets, their fears, and their personal goals to the other paladins. we even see keith share his concerns with krolia, shiro, hunk -- and, on a few occasions, allura. but it's very rare that shiro gets any opportunity to be vulnerable. outside of his moments with keith ("how many times are you going to save me?"), and a minor breakdown with lance to foreshadow the kuron project, every instance of shiro's weakness happens when he's alone.

the show never outright states why shiro chooses to isolate himself. but i think it's reasonable to suggest that shiro didn't want to detract focus from the war, and -- as with his position at the garrison -- didn't want to be defined by what he's been through. voltron isn't only a unit of soldiers -- it's a group of friends who increasingly tell each other to take it easy and rest as soon as they see one another faltering. as soon as the team knows that he has a debilitating disease, they'd know that his time as black paladin is limited, and part of voltron's focus would have to be diverted towards training a new leader. that would be a practical step for a man who knows that he has to step down sooner or later -- but, by and large, shiro holds back.

see also: denial.

to recap:

(1) denial — shiro wants to crush down and deny the trauma he still suffers from his time as a prisoner/experiment of the galra.

(2) role — shiro goes beyond the usual reaction of refusing to allow his trauma to define him, and explicitly chooses to inhabit a role/life that should be barred to a man in his condition. in effect, he uses this role to further his denial.

(3) temporary success — shiro becomes the leader of voltron: its face and its hero.

(4) losses — time after time, shiro isolates and pushes himself to the breaking point. these incidents range from minor to life-changing: shiro stays behind when the other paladins go out together to see an alien space mall for the first time. he keeps his own worst fears and concerns secret from everyone but keith. in s1e09, shiro's inability to deal with his own trauma alone causes shiro to jettison sendak's pod into space. as kuron, he diminishes his own issues as "a weird headache". and his isolation means that haggar's mind control takes everyone by surprise. tellingly, shiro sums up his entire philosophy in blackout,* the season 2 finale: "one way or another, this may be our last battle. we've got to give everything we have." and in the end, he does -- the original shiro dies in the course of voltron's first major victory against zarkon.

(5) breakdown — after his return in season 6, shiro's literally cut off from his role when allura pulls his soul from the black lion, thus -- according to showrunner interviews -- stripping away the bond necessary for him to be black paladin.

(* sidenote: in retrospect, there's something horrifically funny about the title 'blackout', which doubles as a morbid joke: 'black, out'.)

two roles aren't a significant sample size, but shiro's behavior in each role gives us some clues as to what attracts him to them. shiro doesn't limit himself to roles that play to his strengths. instead, he goes for roles that will help the biggest number of people. shiro favors roles that keep him at the frontlines, capable of making decisions based on his own discretion -- but also roles that force him to minimise and ignore his own weaknesses for the greater good.

with this in mind, we can make some guesses about shiro's mindset from seasons 6 to 7 as he transitions from black paladin to captain of the atlas.

* "WE'VE BEEN THROUGH MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE." shiro's recovery through season 7

for the first half of season 7, shiro's very obviously kept away from the action: he, romelle, and keith's wolf are left behind when krolia leads the paladins to investigate the blades of marmora rally point in s7e02. krolia explicitly notes that shiro's "still recovering" during their flight away from zethrid and ezor's ships. despite the affirmation of the keith-shiro bond only two episodes ago, it's lance that keith tells to keep the team back together as they escape in the final act of s7e03. and in the same way that coran and romelle have to hold onto krolia and hunk respectively as they fly through space back to the lions, so does allura hold onto shiro. he is, in every way, positioned as a non-combatant: someone who can't be expected to fend for himself in an ongoing warzone.

as the season goes on, shiro starts to take an active role again. he tells the team that "replacing the castle of lions is our top priority" in s7e06, a leaderly decision that keith backs up immediately. he stands against admiral sanda when she suggests using the lions as a bargaining chip with the galra. in a bit of mysticism inspired by his time in the black lion's timeless void, shiro's the one who tells the team that they're capable of the impossible: remotely directing their lions to earth.

still, while it was clear that shiro was getting better over the course of the season, i was never quite certain that these scenes were meant to show that shiro'd fully recovered. as i noted at the end of the previous section, shiro tends to choose roles with clear responsibilities -- roles that keep him in the fray, where he may be responsible for the safety of others as part of a team but which give him some leeway to make his decisions independently. as a mentor, a strategic advisor, and a part-time leader, shiro had a role that gave him some of these things. but ultimately, mentorship didn't seem to offer the same agency that he'd once had as the kerberos pilot or the black paladin.

this uncertainty seems to fade in the last three episodes of season 7. i don't think it's a coincidence that shiro takes a decisive step forward in each of these episodes: in episode 11, he oversees the launch of the igf atlas and takes command as its captain; in episode 12, he faces sendak, who was a memorable and visceral trigger for shiro's ptsd in season 1; in episode 13, shiro manages to transform his new ship into a giant mecha fighter in its own right -- just in time to support his friends.

the end of season 7 could have been groundwork for the final act of shiro's recovery. in an interview, lauren montgomery confirmed that, in kuron's body, shiro no longer has the disease which once put a time limit on his piloting. he's faced his worst horrors -- failure, dying, sendak -- and come back from them. i think it's reasonable to suggest that shiro at the end of season 7 is stronger than the one we meet in season 1. at the close of the season, shiro has a promising new role with opportunities for action, and a group of friends who have supported him through his every trial. while he still had a few storylines to tie up (most notably: the fallout from being replaced by 'kuron' and the staggering loss of his bond with the black lion), these weren't impossible for season 8 to address.

to end shiro's arc on a satisfying chord, his recovery needed to hit three notes: (i) show that shiro didn't lose his connection to the paladins -- the bonds that got him through actually physically dying -- when he became captain of the atlas; (ii) show that shiro has moved past, or is in the process of moving past, his death and his loss of the black lion; and (iii) show that shiro's new position as captain of the atlas fulfills him in the same way that the positions of garrison pilot and black paladin once did.

what we got, instead, was a season that drove shiro's development backwards on each point. by failing to cement shiro's recovery, and ignoring his unresolved issues, shiro in season 8 comes off like a man relapsing into a familiar unhealthy cycle: denial, obsession, and a breakdown on the horizon.

* "WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS." shiro's isolation as captain of the igf atlas

there are quite a few descriptors you could use for shiro's behavior as captain of the atlas in season 8. but the one that you can't use, i'd argue, is joyful. gone is that tone of open delight from when shiro said "welcome back to the fight, paladins!" in s7e12, the relief when he looks at sam holt and offers him a place on the igf atlas as its chief engineer, the worldbreaking resolve that drives him to transform the atlas and save voltron. throughout the season, shiro's stern. he's distant. he addresses his friends -- the only people who know exactly what he's been through -- collectively as "paladins". he's exhaustively business-like. in thirteen episodes, only once do we see shiro take a break; in every other scene, he's in the bridge, in the strategy room, or frozen in place in a garrison flyer, just a little too late to rescue one of his closest friends.

so what changed between the moment that shiro took command of the atlas and season 8?

easy. the atlas failed.

in the closing episodes of season 7, shiro fought as hard as anyone to win against haggar's robot. after an extended recovery period -- presumably an unsettling and restless state for a man who's hardly ever gone easy on himself -- shiro came back just in time to throw himself against impossible odds. and, for a while, he seemed to be winning. driven by willpower alone, shiro forced an unflyable ship into the air; he drove it to transform into a mecha fighter even bigger than voltron -

and he still had to watch as his friends pulled a ticking bomb into space to save the earth from its blast radius. he watched its explosion swallow their lions, and watched them fall to earth, knowing that he'd tried his best, and that it hadn't been enough.

remember: shiro's used to being the one people count on. from the garrison to the castle of lions, he's always taken a disproportionate share of the responsibility for himself. he's done it because he wants to, because being in the thick of the action fulfills him, because giving everything he has to the cause is what shiro does best. but based on past incidents, we know that shiro responds to personal failure by pouring even more of himself into the fight. we know that he spent over half a season on the sidelines, treated as a non-combatant while people shielded him. we also know that he has multiple losses that he hasn't addressed by the end of season 7 -- nor can he address them without diverting time, energy, and resources away from the fight at hand.

what better way to suppress his own issues than by obsessing over his new role as captain of the atlas?

so, to recap:

(1) denial — shiro has no productive way to deal with the losses he's faced over the series: being stripped of his bond with the black lion, his feelings over dying and getting trapped in a timeless void, his issues with being replaced by kuron (whom he describes, rather reductively, as an "evil clone"), and his failure to protect his friends against haggar's robot. thus, he has a strong incentive to deny them.

(2) role — shiro goes beyond the usual reaction of refusing to allow his losses to define him. thus, he throws himself headlong into being captain of the atlas. in effect, he uses this role to further his denial.

(3) temporary success — shiro lives and breathes his duties as the atlas's captain. he oversees the repairs to the atlas, galra activity around the milky way, and the rebuilding of earth's defenses (s8e01). he inspires and encourages the people who turn to him, and he takes no time for himself.

(4) losses — as a result, shiro's losses in season 8 are small but increasingly felt. after telling garrison crew, rebels, and voltron paladins alike to take a night off and "be with the ones [they] love" -- shiro disappears for the rest of s8e01. in an episode explicitly about reinforcing the bonds established in the preceding seasons, shiro's absence feels deliberate. for the next twelve episodes, shiro gets exactly one moment of familiarity -- when he's standing with the rest of the paladins, showing his quiet, grieving gratitude for the final sacrifice of the woman who gave him back his right arm. in a season that starts off as a story about the universe coming together to defeat the galra once and for all, shiro is emotionally isolated in almost every scene: a man who lives to strategise and give orders and nothing else.

point (4) seems especially worth examining. shiro's disconnection from the paladins, and from his own former role as the black paladin, is staggering. where he once flew and fought in his own right, shiro-as-captain only succeeds when he's managing and delegating tasks. he might give the order to fire, but someone else is pulling the trigger and telling him what happens when it hits. when we see shiro take a break at last, it isn't of his own accord -- a tough-talking alien has to show up and guilt-trip him into it. even then, shiro justifies the day off as something the atlas crew needs: "morale on the atlas is low after what happened on oriande. who knows? a few hours at the carnival might give us the boost we need to get back on track." (s8e08, clear day.) no mention's made whatsoever of the paladins' feelings or exhaustion, let alone his own.

bearing in mind shiro's previously established character -- a devoted leader and a friend with nothing but good intentions -- this lack of explicit interest in his friends' well-being is pretty disorienting. but it's understandable, i feel, if you read shiro as a man trying desperately to distance himself from a bond that once defined him and whose loss he hasn't properly mourned, struggling to distinguish his new role in every way from the one he can never take back. as black paladin, shiro was largely independent -- he was responsible for a team, but he could fly alone and make his own decisions in battle with the pull of a lever. as captain of the atlas, he has an entire crew to do that in his stead; his authority stems from the garrison and he can no longer afford to make independent judgment calls. as black paladin, shiro's priority was the well-being of the paladins, his friends; as the atlas' captain, shiro's top priority has to be the professional one -- watching out for the officers serving aboard the atlas, his garrison-assigned crew.

but this creates a new problem -- specifically, monitoring and managing the atlas isn't what brought shiro such triumph and joy in season 7. in episode after episode, we've seen that shiro thrives in roles that allow him to save people directly -- roles that let him charge into the action for himself, and that give him as much independence as possible. it's why the atlas's transformation in s7e13 resonates as the final step in the season towards shiro's ongoing recovery, and it's why his actions as captain in s8 fail to carry any such emotional charge.

merely being the captain of the atlas isn't what shiro needs -- at least, not if it's as hands-off and delegatory as it seems for most of season 8. but it's the only role he has left to help his friends, and it's his best chance of crushing down any inconvenient feelings of personal loss. given his choices, it shouldn't surprise anyone that shiro goes back to an old familiar cycle.

this tension between what shiro wants and shiro allows himself, i think, works as a useful explanation for a lot of his behavior in season 8. shiro's pouring everything he's got into his new role; he's running on autopilot, and wearing out fast. as examples, here are four more commonly raised criticisms:

why does shiro only ever address his friends collectively as "paladins"? because it's their formal title. it's correct according to garrison procedure -- which, as the commanding officer of a garrison ship, he's bound by regulation to follow while on duty. and it reminds him, over and over, of what he isn't -- what he can never have again.

why isn't he with his friends in any of the scenes where they're taking a break? because he's working -- monitoring every force on their side, reviewing the atlas's operations, and all the thousand other managerial details of an ongoing war. going into season 8, shiro knows that he's already failed his friends once, and that they nearly died in the process. how can he give himself a break when he's already been shown that his best isn't good enough?

how does shiro fail to notice that it isn't keith on the line in s8e05, even though the false keith spits out stiff lines like "we had some technical difficulties" and "we're still assessing that", and why does he freeze up when he sees zethrid on the precipice holding keith by the throat? hey buddy, have you ever tried facing the living embodiment of your nightmares after months of overworking and sleeping four hours a night?

no, but seriously, a handgun? whatever the garrison's feelings on firearms before the war, i feel it's fair to assume that every ranking officer started carrying some kind of ranged weapon once the galra invaded. as a newly-promoted captain, shiro would have been entitled to the privileges and regulations that come with his rank. as to why he'd use a gun -- what are the odds that shiro, exhausted and overworked, would put his faith in his own self-control when it's already failed him so many times? taken by itself, the character decision is bizarre but not inexplicable; in context, it's one more sign that he's leaning into his role of 'garrison officer' more than 'former paladin' or 'man with non-regulation weaponised prosthetic'.

we aren't shown the full scope of shiro's duties as captain of the atlas in the closing scenes of season 8. but what we see doesn't seem to be especially engaging for shiro on a personal or a professional level. shiro takes a supporting role as hunk handles the actual speech at a table of feuding alien diplomats. learning that sam holt's stabilised the teladuv technology, shiro responds as if pidge's news is pleasant, but completely new, information: "that'll make travel on the atlas much easier." he's unfamiliar with the most recent developments on daibazaal, the epicenter of a culture that was still conquering galaxies only a little while ago.

in short, shiro's shifted away from the highly managerial role he took during the war. this final transition from part of the action to a role whose duties are mostly delegation and support shouldn’t be particularly surprising -- the atlas is, after all, property of the garrison, and shiro operates it under the garrison's authority, which was (despite its name and design) introduced by emphasising its scientific function, not its military one. but it's clear that shiro's no longer the primary contact for coordinating efforts between the garrison, the rebels, and voltron. it's also clear that he's drifted apart from both keith and sam -- the two people who once saw shiro through some of his lowest moments. in a way, shiro's succeeded in what he's set out to do when he latched onto his new role as captain of the atlas: he has completely divorced himself from the man who helped sam holt achieve his dreams, and the black paladin who first forged voltron into a true team.

shiro isn't, strictly speaking, isolated at the end of season 8. but it's hard to be happy for a character who goes into his epilogue stripped of what he'd once fought for so desperately.

* WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? speculations on shiro's epilogue

given our limited context for shiro's post-series responsibilities, it feels very difficult to analyse his epilogue photos (stubble, glasses, marriage) in any meaningful way. but if we accept this post's hypothesis that shiro tends to go through role after role in cycles, then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to suggest that he's overdue to leave his role as captain of the atlas, or at least the duties framed in season 8. shiro's denied himself so much in order to live up to the position. there's no sign that its supporting/delegation-heavy role dovetails with anything he loved in his previous roles. and the show's final scenes don't do anything to suggest that shiro's attempted to tailor the role to fit his own passions at all.

so let's go for some wild conjectures.

let's assume, first of all, that shiro wants to be happy, and can eventually recognise when he isn't.

assume that shiro continues in his position as the atlas' captain for a while after the team dinner on allura day in s8e13. the epilogue photos leave this possibility open -- despite never having any issues with eyesight or with keeping himself clean-shaven before, shiro turns up in the second team photo with glasses and stubble, both of which tend to be fairly standard cartoon-signals for overwork. assume that shiro isn't stupid and realises over time that -- having poured all of his energy into his position, having made sacrifice after sacrifice to serve the atlas crew well, having pushed away the bonds that he'd once formed as black paladin -- being a garrison captain isn't exactly what he wants either.

with the above as our basis, let's go further and suggest that the shiro we see at the allura day reunion dinner is a shiro who, despite continuing to put in his best efforts, already has one foot out the door, looking for a more fulfilling role. this accounts for his continued distance, his ease in playing a hands-off backup role, and his surprise at the world-changing news from each of his friends.

but shiro's still shiro. so when he decides he wants to be happy, he thinks of the most ordinary, far-off dream of happiness. he imagines something that contrasts his duties as captain of the atlas in every way -- and dials that up to eleven, because shiro doesn't commit himself by halves. in short, shiro moves away from the action and backlashes into devastating normalcy: he finds an attractive man who seems to like him and he marries him as soon as he can, hoping that the role of 'good husband' will finally be enough.

let's take a moment to acknowledge that the wedding photo's caption is vague: "left the battlefield behind" is not synonymous with "retired and never touched intergalactic matters again". hunk left the battlefield and became a chef, and yet his epilogue photo leaves it plausible that he's still very much involved. but i think there's a reason that so much of fandom read shiro's leaving the battlefield as retirement, and it's this: in eight seasons of canon, we've never seen shiro torn between multiple personal priorities for long. he has always committed himself to a single role at a time. if you read shiro as a character who puts everything he's got into one passion, then it's likely that you recognise him as someone who won't juggle his roles -- he only exchanges them, one for the next: garrison pilot to leader of voltron to atlas captain to husband.

and yet: even if we disregard his multiple unaddressed issues and assume he no longer misses the freedom of being garrison's top mission pilot or the black paladin, shiro's new role doesn't feel plausibly satisfying. in season after season, shiro's been consistent about his need for independence, his desire to help and save as many people as possible, and his interest in doing the work with his own two hands, as directly and immediately as possible. consider what we know about shiro's ambitions and passions. he was the first human being to fly to kerberos. he's rejected every opportunity he's ever been offered to live as an invalid or a mentor or any position on the sidelines. time and again, he's saved the universe, and he's never been more fulfilled than when he's been on the ground and at the heart of the action.

whether or not shiro keeps his position aboard the atlas after marriage, what are the odds that playing spouse, supervisory officer, or second-string diplomat will be enough to make him happy?

read in this light, "the end is the beginning" is the perfect title for the show's final episode. like his friends, shiro's story is far from over. if vld was meant to be a show about hope, then let's close on this thought: shiro arrives at the epilogue as a character who's lost and denied himself so much -- but he hasn't lost everything. a little backsliding doesn't put an end to all hope of recovery. whatever shiro's left behind, there's a chance that it can still be won back.

if there's hope, then there is a satisfying place for shiro in vld's infinite universe -- somewhere in the thick of the action as star-systems begin to heal from galra tyranny. there's a place where he can take charge without resorting to violence or deferring to the garrison's authority or diplomatic rites. keith clearly found one, after all -- we see in his epilogue photo that he's delivering supplies to areas still getting used to being free, traveling to far-flung worlds desperate for the kind of help that few can offer.

so it's not hard to imagine that shiro might find something similar -- that his search will bring him back to the people who love him as he learns to prioritise his own strengths, weaknesses, and needs at last. of course he'll find happiness eventually.

all he needs to do is to keep looking for it.

#sheith

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csykora · 6 years

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hey i've been meaning to ask this, but would you mind explaining to me in general terms (or specific, if you're so inclined, i like detailed explanations but I don't want to give the impression that I expect them), like, What Happened With Alex Semin That Makes Everyone So Weird About Him? I know you've referenced a complicated legacy that makes caps fans weird about him, and maybe some way that caps fans/ western hockey culture/the nhl wronged him, but wikipedia was not very helpful (1/?)

3/3) None of that as presented seems, like, worthy of the level of weirdness/erasure that you've mentioned/hinted at, so I'm assuming there's a lot more complexity and detail involved here, which I would love to understand.

First, I need to say this, you are an utter doll. You’re out there reading and questioning and investigating further and it’s all so great.

And you’re right, on dry paper the whole thing is pretty weird.

There isn’t a smoking gun, here. I’m not going to point at a particular coach or GM and tell you, “They made a poor or a prejudiced decision, and the rest of us are fine.” A staggering number of things happened to happen to Semin. Each one of them didn’t mean so much by themselves. But I think the fact that they happened, and kept happening, and were expected to happen, all to him says a lot about us.

What there is is a context, and then there’s a story here. I think what a lot of us missed at the time, and are still missing, is how they fit together.

So I’m gonna drag us all through both. Congratulations: you get two posts.

I’m traveling through Montréal, so I come down to grab coffee in just a jersey and my little pink running shorts. I’m not surprised when a man stops me. He asks what’s up, am I Russian, am I a Caps fan. “Oh, yeah,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah. They’re a great team every year,” he says, for the benefit of the man next to him. “No luck in the postseason though!”

The second man is Danish, and nervous, stuck between us. “You have a big rivalry?” he asks.

I have a personal rivalry with Les Habitants. “Oh, no,” I say.

I negotiate. If I admit I grew up watching the Canadiens as my hometown team, the first man will quiz me. So it’s friendly overture #2, angling towards him to show him the back of my sweater. The first man isn’t looking. “My favorite guy, Alexander Syomin, he played up here for a bit.”

I pronounce it that way, Сёмин, not an Anglicized eh. We can come back to that.

He admires my sweater. “Good player?” he tries.

“Oh, yeah, real skilled player,” the first man says, checking back in. And then, like he’s watching Semin backcheck right now, like the insight just struck him, “Lazy, though.”

“Oh, no,” I say, reassuring the Dane. “That’s just he plays Russian hockey, it just looks different than Canadian style, so some people think it looks like that.”

First man says, “Ovechkin doesn’t play like that.”

Of course he says that.

“Oh,” I say, laugh, cut him off. “Nobody plays like Ovechkin.”

(The Dane is looking between us like he’s about to ask how these people died.)

Something percolates through the first man’s mind. “Who’s your favorite player?”

And I turn around and walk away. He says, “Oh,” reading my shoulders. He hadn’t heard a word except the opening to tell me what he already Knew.

Listen, I don’t like feeling rude. But I was about to be late to interview for a graduate research position in hockey biomechanics, and I already knew I needed to go put on pants and fold Semin’s name back into a suitcase if I wanted them to respect me.

I’m not being dramatic so much as I’m trying to show the odd way that we all know things. That man knew I wasn’t an expert, because I don’t look like one. We all know my favorite player isn’t a good player because he doesn’t look like one.

(And I don’t mean the ethnocentrism and neurotypical judgements we paint all over his face, although that’ll come back into it.)

G, you might be saying, that guy was a stock character of a misogynist hockey fan. Of course he only saw what he expected to. Well, here’s one thing: we all kind of think like that. Of course we don’t know when we aren’t seeing things that conflict with our view. Just keep that in mind when we talk about Russia.

And when we watch hockey, a good amount of the time, our eyes are telling us real persuasive narratives. There are certain visual cues in the game that we think mean good, make someone valuable. They signal to us that the player is playing ‘well’, and once we’re hooked on them that reading is hard to shake. Experienced analysts like Steve Dangle will talk about this: after decades watching hockey, they still get caught up in all the great-looking things a player is doing and miss underlying weakness, or get stuck on what a player doesn’t do and miss what they contribute overall.

(This is why statistics are valuable and controversial: they can be used to reveal patterns, like how a player who scores plenty of pretty goals is also on the ice for a suspicious number of goals against, and sometimes that conflicts with what seems obvious to the eye-test.)

Ethnicity comes back into it because what we think looks valuable depends where we’re from.

Later, I’m laughing over it to my buddy. She’s an older fan than me, and I admire her so much, because she listens to me, and she says, “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you—I don’t know what you mean when you keep saying Russian hockey.”

Context: Soviet and Russian Hockey

Any moment that I have the puck and you do not seems like it should be good for me.

But if you’re allowed to just come up and smash me, and I just hang out holding it, you’re going to try to take it away. Some of the time you’ll manage and then you’ll have it and you can score goals with it. So maybe I want to risk trying to score goals with it before you do.

That’s good old North American.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you want this? Did you want to try to score some goals with it? Sure, I suppose you can borrow it for a bit.

Catch me first.

That’s Soviet.

This is a difference of philosophy; it’s a preference in coaching and play-making. There are some kids who weren’t considered particularly naturally talented who would be in Russia, and the other way around. But people also train to meet those standards, so by the time you’re in your teens or early twenties, you’re caught somewhere between the abilities and inclinations you were born with and the values you shaped yourself to try to fulfill.

Imagine a benchful of Evgeny Kuznetsovs.

Soviet hockey players were skaters first. At age 4 or 5, they would be learning skating fundamentals for an hour two or three days a week. Then an hour and half. At 10, they would skate every day. At 12, two practices a day.

“We put kids on skates at a very young age. Much earlier than in the U.S. and Canada. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. On one hand early development may influence game thinking, on the other skating may become a burden and be detrimental for the health.”—Sergei Gimaev (USSR champion)

I’m quoting Sergei because that’s my stance: on the one hand, and on the other. There’s a lot to say about the Soviet hockey schools. Athleticism was patriotism in the Soviet Union, as it is in many states, and the treatment of athletes was frequently disturbing—but it’s always more complex than a dystopia.

Their eerily effortless technical skating contributed to the outside image of the “Red Machine”, a North American narrative than Soviet skaters were only trained to be interchangeable pieces without any fun or independence or Canadian grit, but the Soviet style also valued a child-like intellectual creativity.

“Kids were always allowed to improvise on the ice,” according to Dmitri Efimov. “We surprised our opponents with the fact that we were difficult to ‘read,’ our actions couldn’t be anticipated.”

This play, from hockey-graphs.com, is a great example.Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov, and Sergei Makarov skate so tightly they seem about to combine into a single giant mecha, luring in the Canadians, and then fly past them.

All that skill and creative energy fed into the endless, eternal, interminable passing. Each player on the line swung around each other, dragging the opposition into position until one of them found a chance to shoot. The goal of Soviet hockey wasn’t to score goals: holding possession and winding the clock down was pretty much an end in and of itself.

“For me, I would love to have empty net at end of season, then (have someone else) score a goal you know? For me, that’s how my father teach me and how my whole coaches when I grown up teach me. You better to give your partner empty netter than you score it. It’s in my heart.”

So, Evgeny Evgenyevich…if you’re always giving the goal to your teammates, who’s taking the shots?

Ovechkin isn’t like that

Kristi St. Allain of St. Thomas University wrote a dissertation on why people say this. It was adapted and accepted for publication by the Sociology of Sport Journal in 2016, it’s 43 pages, and it’s worth a read.

There’s a more technical take, which I think is also interesting: yes, he is like that.

Ovechkin is a monster. He’ll be once in the world, not once in a lifetime. Comparing any Russian player to him is pretty pointless, but comparing him to them is actually useful, because we can see that Ovechkin plays a specific role in Russian hockey.

Hockey was at its lowest low in Russia in the ‘90s, after the dissolution of the Soviet national team. Everyone had gotten used to Soviet hockey, and that was over. The new nation was wondering what the new Russian hockey was going to be, and it mostly seemed like it sucked.

And then they got...these two.

The Aleksandrs revolutionized Russian hockey by building a new role for themselves: the specialized sharpshooter.

I’m not saying there weren’t skilled shooters before them in the Soviet system, but those teams made plays in a more balanced way, effective divvying up shot attempts between three fairly equal forwards.

Two years older than Ovechkin, Semin was the first player to prove what that shot could do. In 2008 he led Russia to the first World Championship gold since 1993, against Canada in Quebec City, ending over a decade of low self-esteem in a moment of transcendently wicked awesomeness to a generation who grew up after but still very much under the weight of the Soviet Union.

Arguably, he’s the one who told us all what Russian hockey was going to be.

Sasha and Sasha both stood out from their teammates for their spectacular aim and strength. Semin’s wrist-shot was described “arguably the most powerful in the game” during his years in the NHL. (And that’s from SB Nation, not just me and Kuznetsov.)

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Instead of skating and passing until they happened to be in position for a particular shot, both Semin and Ovechkin would deliberately take up a shooting position, and their linemates would pass between themselves, dragging the opposition around until they could send the puck to the Sasha for a shot.

Taking those shots isn’t selfish: it’s a new way of using their unique skill to play for their teammates.

At this point in his career, we often get to see Ovi skate straight to his office and crouch there in active waiting. He’ll slide a little up and down in search of openings as the other team chase his center and right winger: “he’s the best in the world at adjusting to passes.”

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Semin would circle. He hovered over the blue line like some large and carnivorous bird, allowing him to either swoop in for a shot, or swing and pass back and forth with his center to set up his opposite winger. He could essentially shoot like a second Ovechkin or partner with Nick Backstrom to hold possession.

We can succeed

There’s something heart-wrenching to me about that quote from Kuznetsov. Because many Russian players don’t succeed in the NHL; they don’t fit in the spaces allowed for them in the Canadian conception of hockey. That should hardly count as a failing: like Kuznetsov said, Canadians don’t know how to play Soviet or Russian hockey. And they aren’t asked to.

Do you know how many Russian players are in the NHL right now?

It’s 39.

(Less if we set aside the goalies, which arguably we should here). That’s barely more than one per franchise, and that shakes out to mean something pretty profound for players who have it in their hearts to try to match what their teammates are doing, but who by their late teens and twenties simply can’t reshape the entire way they play the game.

Semin is a spectacular player in context. So is Ovechkin. For most of his career Ovi’s context was Semin, and Ovi is quite honest about that.

Semin was the best possession player on the Washington Capitals in 2012, while also seeing the highest percentage of scoring chances. He was a 40+ goal scorer while being someone else’s main man for assists.

I’m going to come back and to talk through his actual story in order, but this is the first thing to keep in mind:

All that circling didn’t look good. When he looked for passes, waited for scoring chances, played high-scoring but still play-making Russian hockey, he looked lazy.

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jesusmylordfan-blog · 7 years

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXxX3fnDETs)

MUSLIMS ARE GOOD FOOLISH PEOPLE,THEY ARE RELIGIOUS BUT NOT SPIRITUAL !

MUSLIMS ARE LIKE A BLIND MAN SEARCHING A BLACK CAT IN DARKNESS.

YOU KNOW HOW TO MISINTERPRET AND TWIST THE SCRIPTURE .YOU KNOW HOW TO PULL THE CROWD.YOU KNOW HOW TO INSULT NON MUSLIM IN CROWDED PEOPLE.YOU KNOW HOW TO FOOL THEOLOGIAN AND ALL CHRISTIAN LEADERS.

I CHALLENGE YOU AND I PROVE YOU THAT JESUS CHRIST IS GOD FROM THE BIBLE,YOU CAN NOT DENY BIBLE BECAUSE KORAN IS TAKEN FROM THE BIBLE .BIBLE WAS WRITTEN 2000 YEARS BEFORE KORAN.

ALL PROPHETS ARE GODS SERVANT ,IN OLD TESTMENT THERE WERE GOOD PROPHETS AND FALSE PROPHETS ,ALL PROHECY ARE FULL FILLED BY GOOD PROPHETS BUT FALSE PROPHETS LIKE MOHMED DID ALL FALSE PROHECY CREATOR OF CONFUSION .

YOU KNOW ALL APOSTLE ARE BIGGER THAN PROPHET MEAN THEY CAN PROHESY,THEY CAN HEAL,THEY CAN DO MIRACLE BUT YOUR MULLAHS HAS NO POWER TO DO MIRACLE THAT'S WHY ALL CHRISTIANS ARE APOSTLE AND THEY ARE BIGGER THAN YOUR PROPHET.

YOU ARE SON OF DEVIL BECAUSE YOU DENY JESUS THE GOD.ALLAH IS NOT GOD ,HIS WORK IS NOT LIKE GOD,WHAT IS KORAN NO ETHICS ONLY MAN MADE RITUAL FULL OF KILLING,FIGHTINGS AND WARS.IT START WITH WAR AND IT WILL FINISH IN WAR,LAST MANY YEARS YOU MUSLIM COUNTRIES ARE FIGHTING EACH OTHER,KILLING YOUR MUSLIMS BROTHERS,THIS IS YOUR HISTORY.

YOU KNOW HOW TO SUPPRESS YOUR WOMEN .50%WORLD WOMEN MUSLIM POPULATION ARE SCARED BECAUSE THE DANGER OF DIOVORCE.YOU HAVE CHAINED WITH BURKHAS.YOU ARE NOT ALLOWING TO WORSHIP ALLAH IN MOSQUE .WHY THIS DOUBLE STANDARD IN KORAN.

WHY YOU PRAY NAMAJ 5 TIME WITH FUNNY POSTURE ,DID MOSES AND ABRAHM TOLD YOU DO LIKE THIS ? IS MOHMED IS GREATER THAN MOSES ? HE MAY BE A LAST PROHET NOT GREAT PROPHET LIKE MOSES. GOD IS EVERY WHERE BUT NOT IN MECHA BECAUSE HE IS NOT YOUR SERVANT ,HEAVEN IS HIS DWELLING PLACE ,DO YOU KNOW WHAT DIRECTION HEAVEN IS ? YOU FIX 5 TIME NAMAJ,YOU FIX THE RITUAL,YOU FIX THE DIRECTION MEANS ALLAH IS AVAILBLE ONLY BY THE RULES MADE BY YOU MEANS YOU ARE GREATER THAN ALLAH BECAUSE HE FOLLOW YOUR RULES.

THERE ARE MANY LOGICS THINGS I HAVE TO SAY BUT YOU CAN NOT DIGEST BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE SPIRIT THAT'S WHY YOU ARE AWAY FROM SPIRITUALITY ,YOU USE YOUR FOLISH MIND BUT GOD DWELS IN SPIRIT AND YOU ARE CLOSE TO HELL .

I GIVE YOU ALL BIBLE REFERENCE ABOUT JESUS IS THE LORD ,DO YOU COVERT TO CHRISTIANITY.

John 17:1-4 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

IF GOD GLORYFY JESUS (ISA) THEN WHY NOT YOU.

Some Bible Verses that say “Jesus is God”

Some people claim to believe that Jesus was a “good prophet”, but they deny that Jesus is God. If that is you, I would like to encourage you to consider some of these Bible verses: Matthew 1:23 - “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”

Isaiah 9:6 - For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 43:10,11 - “You are My witnesses,” says the Lord, “And My servant whom I have chosen, That you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no Savior.” Revelation 1:17-18; Revelation 2:8 - (Jesus is the First and the Last)

Isaiah 44:6 - (God is the Redeemer) 2 Peter 1:1 (Jesus is the Redeemer) - “To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ”

Isaiah 44:24 - (God created the world by Himself alone) John 1:3; Colossians 1:16 - (Jesus made all things)

John 1:1-3 - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made... 1:14 - And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,

John 5:17,18 - “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” Therefore the Jews sought to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.

John 5:23 - that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

John 8:24 - “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I AM [He], you will die in your sins.”

John 8:58 - Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”

John 10:30-33 - Jesus answered them, “I and My Father are one.” Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me?” The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”

John 14:6-7 - Jesus said to him, “I AM the way, the truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

John 14:9-11 - Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?”

John 20:28 - And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”

Acts 4:12 - “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Acts 20:28 - (God purchased us with His own blood) Revelation 1:5-6; Revelation 5:8-9 - (Jesus' blood purchased us)

Philippians 2:5-7 - Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of men.

Colossians 2:9 - For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily

1 Timothy 3:16 - And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory.

Titus 2:13 - looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ

Hebrews 1:8-9 - But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions.”

2 John 1:7 - For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

Revelation 1:8 - “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 22:13 - “I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.”... 22:16 - “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches.”

1 Timothy 6:14-16 - “our Lord Jesus Christ's appearing, which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.”

Hebrews 2:17-18 - “Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.” Hebrews 4:15-16 - “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” 1 Peter 2:24 - “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we having died to sins, might live for righteousness - by whose stripes you were healed.”

He went from sovereignty to shame and from deity to death? Why!? For you. John 15:13 - “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.” Romans 5:8 - “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Matthew 3:16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on Him.

Matthew 17:5 While Peter was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him!"

DEAR MUSLIM BOTHERS PLEASE LISTEN JESUS NON OTHER FALSE PROPHET MOHAMED.

.Moses said, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear. And the LORD said to me: . . . ‘[I] will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.’” Deuteronomy 18:15, 17–18

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