#the seraphim protocol: revision 7

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 14

Don't worry, only half of the episode is clips from previous episodes.

But the second half manages to repeat a lot of stuff we've seen before as well...

Okay, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on this. Suffice to say, the first half of this episode is just a highlight reel focusing on all of the Angel attacks seen in this series from Episode 1-13. There's sound effect, but no music. There's some voice-overs on some of the footage, like Toji Suzuharu talking about how he blamed Eva Unit 01 for getting his sister hurt, or Big Rigg Mahoney expressing admiration for Rei's performance in the battle against the... fifth Angel? The octahedron one.

Objectively, it's a good introduction to the series if you've come in late, and I was talking before about how Japanese TV is organized into thirteen-week blocks called "cours", so it kind of makes sense that Episode 14 might benefit from bringing new or returning viewers up to speed.

Also, I'm sure the staff working on this show needed a breather. I read the Wikipedia article for this series and it talks about how they had trouble meeting their deadlines and the plot started to get... weird around this time. So from that perspective, I'm happy they got a chance to take it easy for a little while. It probably wasn't enough, but it's something.

However, as a guy liveblogging the whole series on DVD, this kind of sucks for me, because I just got done recapping the first 13 episodes, and now I'm stuck with nothing new to talk about. Also, Episodes 1-13 were kind of repetitive to begin with. An Angel shows up, the gang at NERV breathlessly discuss the threat, then they come up with some daring plan to kill it with giant robots. Some team-building happens, and maybe one or two of the characters opens up a little about their feelings. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, there's only been so many Angels in this show, so we wrap up with the 11th Angel from Episode 13, and it's mentioned how the existence of this Angel still hasn't been confirmed. That's because Gendo Ikari ordered NERV to cancel the alert and report it as a false alarm. Which brings us to the present, and...

The "Human Instrumentality Project Special Conference". I'm halfway into this show, and I still don't know what this is or who these spooky guys are that Gendo talks to on the holographic phone. They're supposed to be important, but when the call is over, he always dismisses them as toothless. NERV holds all the tiles, as he puts it. Admiral Clownshoes cautions him against irritating them, so I guess that they must have some pull in this thing, but not much.

Basically, they think an Angel did enter the NERV base and at least threatened the integrity of the Human Instrumentality Project. For all they know, it spoiled the whole works, but Gendo is covering up the entire incident and denying that the base was in danger at all.

So they're mostly upset that they can't get a straight answer out of Gendo about what happens. He insists everything is fine, but the know he's good at hiding the truth, so they'll never know for sure if he's lying. But they can't proceed with the HIP without Gendo, so why are we even having this conference? Because these guys just want to voice their frustration, I guess. I can see why Gendo doesn't respect them.

Gendo insists that everything is on track, in accordance with the timetable in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and "Seele's" plan, whoever that is. Oh, wait? Seele as in "the seven seals" from Revelation?

The thing about this show is that it tries to act all slick with these Bible references, but from what I can tell they're all just peppered in without any significance. There's something called "The Central Dogma", but I don't even know what it is. The Three Magi are the trio of Persians who traveled to Bethlehem to see the newborn Jesus Christ. In this show they're supercomputers. So for all I know, Gendo could be talking about the literal real-world Dead Sea Scrolls, or a schedule he pinned to the NERV company bulletin board.

It's all meant to sound very hoity-toity and intellectual, but they never really explain what the Human Instrumentality Project is or how it's to be accomplished. I assume it involves all of the times Gendo and Admiral Clownshoes have been off-site, like their recent trip to Antarctica. It probably also involves that embryonic thing Kaji delivered to Gendo from Europe, and so on.

And I don't demand an answer on the thing. It's clearly meant to be explained later on, but scenes like this where they talk about the thing without ever directly identifying the thing... well they just go 'round in circles.

Meanwhile... whatever this is. NERV is running an experiment to see how well Rei and Shinji can sync up with each other's Evas. So this is Rei's first time in Unit 01. She has some sort of psychadelic experience that culminates in her asking "What am I?" over and over again, and when she finally comes out of it she observes that it "smells like Ikari". I assume she means Shinji, although it might smell like Gendo too, I dunno.

Asuka isn't included in this experiment, and when she asks why she's not participating, Misato reminds her that she doesn't want to pilot the other Evas anyway, so why bother? All right, but why is she suited up, then? Are they doing a different test with Asuka, or did they have to let her sit in on this so she wouldn't feel left out? Because I'm betting it's the second one of those.

Yeah, definitely the second one.

So Shinji also observes that syncing up with with another Eva feels strange, and he thinks it smells like Rei. Then he reports that something is "trying to get into my brain", and he has hallucinations of Rei.

In the control room, they call this "mental contamination", so it sounds like Shinji's description is accurate. As far as I can tell, when you pilot the same Eva long enough, you leave some sort of "psychic residue" behind, which the next pilot might encounter when they try to use it. That's what caused Rei to experience that identity crisis earlier, because she was picking up Shinji's thoughts. But when Shinji picks up Rei's thoughts...

Unit 00 goes berserk, just like it did when Rei had that accident pre-Episode 1. The only difference this time is that when Unit 00 attacks the control room, Rei herself is standing at the window. Also, they can't eject the plug for some reason, so Shinji's stuck in there until the battery runs out of power. I think he might be better off that way, since ejecting the plug seemed to be what got Rei so badly hurt.

Misato and Ritsuko discuss the accident afterward. Misato notes that this is almost exactly what happened back when Rei got hurt, almost like they're in a cartoon, and the animators reused the same cels of the Eva punching the wall in an attempt to save time and effort. That can't be a coincidence, but Ritsuko tells her she can't say much until they run more tests. Privately, Ritsuko considers that Unit 00 was trying to attack Ritsuko, specifically.

Anyway, Shinji is okay. We see him wake up in a hospital bed, just like he did in Episode 2. Almost exactly like in Episode 2. It's like he's in a cartoon and they reused the footage from that previous stay to save time and effort. Nah. Nevermind that shit, it's time for Math Puppy.

Okay, so in this dystopian world, there's a puppy from Niigata who somehow knows how to solve math problems. It's insane, right? Only humans, pigs, and certain horses know how to do math, but Kana somehow has the same power. And Kana's only a puppy. Imagine the kind of mathematics Kana will be capable of in the future.

Naturally, Kana is excited to be on the radio, barking "Wan! Wan! Wan!" over and over. Then they ask Kana what 325 minus 324 is. Damn, that's a hard one. I think it's six, but I don't know. But Kana gets it right! I checked it on my calculator and boom. 325 - 324 = 1. Good dog!

We close on Gendo and Admiral Clownshoes, still discussing that conference from earlier. They talk about SEELE interfering. Wait, I thought it was Seele's plan they were following. Why would SEELE interfere? Fuck this cloak and dagger shit.

Also Rei is no worse off from the experiment, and she's already retrieving the "Lance of Longius". That seems like the sort of plot development that should be elaborated upon, but oops, the Math Puppy segment went a little long, so we're out of time.

Next episode... Misato is having a quarterlife crisis and she's worried that she won't find a husband, so getting back together with Kaji might be her only chance. That sounds really, really bad, actually. For the first time since I started this, I actually kind of want to skip this episode.

She does promise more fan service, so maybe Misato did me a solid and burned all the footage, forcing them to air Episode 16 in its place. A man can dream, can't he?

#neon genesis evangelion #2024ngeliveblog #shinji ikari #rei ayanami #asuka langley soryu #misato katsuragi #ritsuko akagi #gendo ikari #clownshoes #the lance of longius #the dead sea scroll timetable #the seraphim protocol: revision 7 #the apollyon smartphone with 5g #the zebulon treaty #the simon peter ncaa tournament brack sheet you fill in for the office pool #i can do this shit too nge you're not special #the galatians contingency #see? it's easy!