I'm thankful for anime, 3!
More Top Ten Anime Episodes of All Time!
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At this point I should reveal that Fullmetal Alchemist did not rate a top 10 anime episodes slot. Not at all. :( "All is One, One is All" almost made it, with the lovely little cicada scene, and the overall impactful storytelling, but Sai's final farewell makes me weepy and that is always a decisive factor in these things.
It's kind of weird that FMA doesn't rate, especially considering my deep love of Scar. But that's really a series where the interconnectedness of the episodes, and the careful building of story and characterization (until someone passed around the peace pipe, anyway) is not something well captured in any single episode.
Oh well, Scar. *pets him* You are still my favourite.
Onward!
4.
Neon Genesis Evangelion, episode 22, Don't Be
This is the most divisive anime series I can think of: everyone who has seen it thinks it is either 1)a masterpiece, never to be equalled, or 2) a steaming pile of crap that starts out promisingly enough but devolves into a pretentious non-sensical poorly animated jumble of self-pitying psychobabble.
I, obviously, am among the former.
Like others of my caste, I tend to feel vaguely sorry for people who loathe the ending, which is undoubtably a little pretentious of me. But then, there are people who hate it but who still fundamentally "get it," and this stance really doesn't bother me. It's the people who think the show is shallow and poorly planned out and then proceed to hate it who I feel sorry for. Because I think they are ones who will never truly understand the immortal words of The Little Prince: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Neon Genesis Evangelion is Hideaki Anno's masterwork, one into which he poured all of his deepest feelings and beliefs, and although one can easily fault Gainax for the budgetary mismanagements that caused some of Anno's vision to be stunted, and one can vigorously loathe everything Anno has to say as an artist, I think it's very narrow minded to consider this work "shallow," "simple-minded," or "retarded."
Hatred is something I have sympathy for. Willful misunderstanding, not so much.
To tell if someone is a true Neon Genesis Evangelion acolyte, all you need to do is mention the elevator scene. You know, that scene. It is unforgettable in its tedium, 50 seconds of almost completely still animation as Asuka and Rei stand silently, and separately, together in an elevator. Nothing happens in that time, other than a little cough from Asuka, until Rei tells Asuka that she needs to open her heart to the Eva if she wants it to move. Asuka responds by slapping her, a sudden explosion of energy, outraged that a doll like Rei would dare tell her ANYTHING about how the Eva work.
Many people claim that this scene was nothing more than a shortcut of animation, a way to save money. And well, I'm sure it DID save money. But! But! The tension that builds in that silence, that motionlessness... what it tells us about both Rei and Asuka and how they so differently deal with things, is incredibly important. And the fact that Rei is the one to speak first; and to not only speak, but to give Asuka useful advice that is clearly well intentioned... well, this is probably the first time Rei ever said anything nice to Asuka. And coming after another humilating drop in Asuka's syncro-rate, it's absolutely natural to see how Asuka saw this kind gesture as a brutally humiliating slight. This perfectly illustrated how far the two girls were from each other, how little they understood each other. It is profoundly sad, and is just one more small thing that pushes Asuka towards the crisis point emotionally.
This is, after all, Asuka's episode. Like the series itelf, Asuka is one of the most clearly divisive characters: many people think of her as a small-minded competitive jealous little bitch, one who is shamelessly manipulative and thoughtlessly cruel. In fact, she is the perfect epitome of the girl in Billy Joel's She's Always A Woman:
she can kill with a smile
she can wound with her eyes
she can ruin your faith with her casual lies
and she only reveals what she wants you to see
she hides like a child
but she's always a woman to me
Because, you know what? She is everything that the people who hate her think of her. Their complaints are completely justified. And yet, she is my favourite character in the series, and one of my favourite characters of all time.
Asuka had a wretched childhood. Although the anime doesn't make it entirely clear (they give most of the details, but not the worst), Asuka has no real mother or father. Pretty much, she never did. Her mother was a prominent scientist married to another scientist, a man she dearly loved. But they were unable to have a child together, and apparently the man fell out of love with her and remarried. The new wife was able to have a daughter, and in response (out of vengeance, and a need to prove herself), Asuka's mother was artificially inseminated with the sperm of some anonymous, but carefully selected man who was chosen for beauty and genius. Asuka was created to be a rival to the daughter of her MOTHER'S rival, to surpass her in every way. And this, basically, is what Asuka did, until her mother had the "accident" where she lost her mind (we later learn that her mother's soul had been extracted to become the core of Unit 02). After that, Asuka's mother was no longer able to see Asuka as her daughter; instead she cherished a doll and told the doll to ignore "that girl" who would come visit and stare at them from outside the room in the mental ward. Ultimately, Asuka's mother committed suicide, and the woman who had replaced her mother in the affections of one man decided to adopt her, a gesture of seeming kindness which could hardly be seen as anything other than smug gloating, the final humiliating coup de grace against Asuka's real mother, who had abandoned her.
In this episode, we get most of this backstory, but we also see her many current day humilations: the way that Kaji chose Misato over her, and the fact that she knows without really knowing that Kaji is gone forever but never cared enough about her to send any kind final words. We see the way that Misato, absorbed in her own grief and also inept at dealing with people, reaches out to Asuka in ways that are caring but which Asuka cannot help but interpret as gloating, coming as they do from Kaji's chosen lover. And if Misato and Kaji together make her feel like she's reliving her own mother's humilations, it gets worse: she has to see Shinji, the boy for whom she has a fairly complicated set of feelings, not only excel as an Eva pilot, but also to talk freely and happily with Rei, who is her her most loathed rival.
Everyone loves Shinji, not her. Everyone loves Rei, not her. Everyone loves Misato. Not her.
Asuka feels rejected by the entire world. And she strikes back in the only way she feels is open to her: by shutting herself off from the world, by rejecting it 10 times... no, 100 times... no, 1,000 times harder than she feels the world has rejected her.
And this all happens BEFORE Arael's attack.
The scene where Asuka's mind is violated, where she is violently forced into communition with something outside of herself, despite the fact that she's closed herself off so much that she can't even move her Eva anymore, is one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. During this scene, the Hallelujuh chorus from Handel's Messiah plays, and she becomes just as contaminated as she believes herself to be, vile and untouchable. In the anime, she still continues to function, very marginally, in episodes following this, but in the manga she is driven directly into a psychotic break and has to be put into a medically-induced coma simply to reduce the trauma sustained by her psyche.
The battle sequence is elegant, and Rei's sortie with the Lance of Longinus is one of the most innovative counter-attacks, on a purely visual basis, that I have ever seen. The way the two-pronged lance ribbons back onto itself at the very last moment, sensing Rei's intent to let fly, is nothing short of stunning.
This episode ends with Asuka sitting in a quarantine circle with her Eva, the rest of the world forbidden to come close. Shinji tries, in his clumsy way, to comfort her, but at that point it is too late. The damage has been done.
++
At this point I should reveal that Fullmetal Alchemist did not rate a top 10 anime episodes slot. Not at all. :( "All is One, One is All" almost made it, with the lovely little cicada scene, and the overall impactful storytelling, but Sai's final farewell makes me weepy and that is always a decisive factor in these things.
It's kind of weird that FMA doesn't rate, especially considering my deep love of Scar. But that's really a series where the interconnectedness of the episodes, and the careful building of story and characterization (until someone passed around the peace pipe, anyway) is not something well captured in any single episode.
Oh well, Scar. *pets him* You are still my favourite.
Onward!
4.
Neon Genesis Evangelion, episode 22, Don't Be
This is the most divisive anime series I can think of: everyone who has seen it thinks it is either 1)a masterpiece, never to be equalled, or 2) a steaming pile of crap that starts out promisingly enough but devolves into a pretentious non-sensical poorly animated jumble of self-pitying psychobabble.
I, obviously, am among the former.
Like others of my caste, I tend to feel vaguely sorry for people who loathe the ending, which is undoubtably a little pretentious of me. But then, there are people who hate it but who still fundamentally "get it," and this stance really doesn't bother me. It's the people who think the show is shallow and poorly planned out and then proceed to hate it who I feel sorry for. Because I think they are ones who will never truly understand the immortal words of The Little Prince: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Neon Genesis Evangelion is Hideaki Anno's masterwork, one into which he poured all of his deepest feelings and beliefs, and although one can easily fault Gainax for the budgetary mismanagements that caused some of Anno's vision to be stunted, and one can vigorously loathe everything Anno has to say as an artist, I think it's very narrow minded to consider this work "shallow," "simple-minded," or "retarded."
Hatred is something I have sympathy for. Willful misunderstanding, not so much.
To tell if someone is a true Neon Genesis Evangelion acolyte, all you need to do is mention the elevator scene. You know, that scene. It is unforgettable in its tedium, 50 seconds of almost completely still animation as Asuka and Rei stand silently, and separately, together in an elevator. Nothing happens in that time, other than a little cough from Asuka, until Rei tells Asuka that she needs to open her heart to the Eva if she wants it to move. Asuka responds by slapping her, a sudden explosion of energy, outraged that a doll like Rei would dare tell her ANYTHING about how the Eva work.
Many people claim that this scene was nothing more than a shortcut of animation, a way to save money. And well, I'm sure it DID save money. But! But! The tension that builds in that silence, that motionlessness... what it tells us about both Rei and Asuka and how they so differently deal with things, is incredibly important. And the fact that Rei is the one to speak first; and to not only speak, but to give Asuka useful advice that is clearly well intentioned... well, this is probably the first time Rei ever said anything nice to Asuka. And coming after another humilating drop in Asuka's syncro-rate, it's absolutely natural to see how Asuka saw this kind gesture as a brutally humiliating slight. This perfectly illustrated how far the two girls were from each other, how little they understood each other. It is profoundly sad, and is just one more small thing that pushes Asuka towards the crisis point emotionally.
This is, after all, Asuka's episode. Like the series itelf, Asuka is one of the most clearly divisive characters: many people think of her as a small-minded competitive jealous little bitch, one who is shamelessly manipulative and thoughtlessly cruel. In fact, she is the perfect epitome of the girl in Billy Joel's She's Always A Woman:
she can kill with a smile
she can wound with her eyes
she can ruin your faith with her casual lies
and she only reveals what she wants you to see
she hides like a child
but she's always a woman to me
Because, you know what? She is everything that the people who hate her think of her. Their complaints are completely justified. And yet, she is my favourite character in the series, and one of my favourite characters of all time.
Asuka had a wretched childhood. Although the anime doesn't make it entirely clear (they give most of the details, but not the worst), Asuka has no real mother or father. Pretty much, she never did. Her mother was a prominent scientist married to another scientist, a man she dearly loved. But they were unable to have a child together, and apparently the man fell out of love with her and remarried. The new wife was able to have a daughter, and in response (out of vengeance, and a need to prove herself), Asuka's mother was artificially inseminated with the sperm of some anonymous, but carefully selected man who was chosen for beauty and genius. Asuka was created to be a rival to the daughter of her MOTHER'S rival, to surpass her in every way. And this, basically, is what Asuka did, until her mother had the "accident" where she lost her mind (we later learn that her mother's soul had been extracted to become the core of Unit 02). After that, Asuka's mother was no longer able to see Asuka as her daughter; instead she cherished a doll and told the doll to ignore "that girl" who would come visit and stare at them from outside the room in the mental ward. Ultimately, Asuka's mother committed suicide, and the woman who had replaced her mother in the affections of one man decided to adopt her, a gesture of seeming kindness which could hardly be seen as anything other than smug gloating, the final humiliating coup de grace against Asuka's real mother, who had abandoned her.
In this episode, we get most of this backstory, but we also see her many current day humilations: the way that Kaji chose Misato over her, and the fact that she knows without really knowing that Kaji is gone forever but never cared enough about her to send any kind final words. We see the way that Misato, absorbed in her own grief and also inept at dealing with people, reaches out to Asuka in ways that are caring but which Asuka cannot help but interpret as gloating, coming as they do from Kaji's chosen lover. And if Misato and Kaji together make her feel like she's reliving her own mother's humilations, it gets worse: she has to see Shinji, the boy for whom she has a fairly complicated set of feelings, not only excel as an Eva pilot, but also to talk freely and happily with Rei, who is her her most loathed rival.
Everyone loves Shinji, not her. Everyone loves Rei, not her. Everyone loves Misato. Not her.
Asuka feels rejected by the entire world. And she strikes back in the only way she feels is open to her: by shutting herself off from the world, by rejecting it 10 times... no, 100 times... no, 1,000 times harder than she feels the world has rejected her.
And this all happens BEFORE Arael's attack.
The scene where Asuka's mind is violated, where she is violently forced into communition with something outside of herself, despite the fact that she's closed herself off so much that she can't even move her Eva anymore, is one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. During this scene, the Hallelujuh chorus from Handel's Messiah plays, and she becomes just as contaminated as she believes herself to be, vile and untouchable. In the anime, she still continues to function, very marginally, in episodes following this, but in the manga she is driven directly into a psychotic break and has to be put into a medically-induced coma simply to reduce the trauma sustained by her psyche.
The battle sequence is elegant, and Rei's sortie with the Lance of Longinus is one of the most innovative counter-attacks, on a purely visual basis, that I have ever seen. The way the two-pronged lance ribbons back onto itself at the very last moment, sensing Rei's intent to let fly, is nothing short of stunning.
This episode ends with Asuka sitting in a quarantine circle with her Eva, the rest of the world forbidden to come close. Shinji tries, in his clumsy way, to comfort her, but at that point it is too late. The damage has been done.