Evangelion as the Immaculate Virgin

Evangelion as the Immaculate Virgin

by Mari Kotani
Hideaki Anno and Gainax's animation Neon Genesis: Evangelion was broadcast every
Wednesday over Tokyo's Channel 12 for 26 weeks, from October 4, 1995 trough March 7,
1996. Once it got started, this film attracted a number of fans with its detailed
characterization and mysterious storytelling, easily excelling in popularity the 70s
Japanimation classics like The Space Battleship Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam. Now
Evangelion has become one of the most conspicuous Japanese social phenomena.
Why did it get so popular?
Of course, the execution of the work largely relies upon the director Anno's creative approach
to narratology. Basically all he did is repeat and displace and remix certain patterns of human
relationship and plot structure, winding up with an undulating effect. Note that in this text
relationship does not take place linearly. The patterns of human relationship and plot structure
transform themselves trough diferent viewpoints and interpretations, orchestrating the
integrated circuit of contradictions, leading the audience to envision a magnificently
phantasmagoric world. Cunningly juxtaposing infomaniac details and interpretative blanks,
Anno succeeds in accelerating the narratological drive, making his animation mostly
compatible with hypertext.
The story centers around the way the giant cyborg tribe called "Evangelion" fights with the
alien tribe nicknamed "Shito" (Angel), which literately means "Apostle." Evangelion is
promoted by NERV, the special service agency of the United Nation. It is notable that with Mr.
Gendo Ikari as the supreme commander, NERV represents a virtual patriarchal family, as is
the case with Japanese corporations. Main characters include fourteen year old boys and girls,
who are trained to pilot Evangelion cyborgs. among them Shinji Ikari, the only son of the
patriarch Gendo Ikari, plays the most important role. The story of Evangelion foregrounds how
the patriarchal NERV outwits the tribe of Angel as the absolute Other. This work is not
necessarily didactic, however.
The theme of Evangelion is the identity quest of a young man of the 1990s. Who am I on
earth? The author carefully caricatures our own contemporary life, in which the post-80s
advancement of high-technology and the dismemberment of family structure still come short
of the deconstruction of traditional ideology. The identity crisis detailed in the work finds the
boundary between self and the other at stake. In this context, Evangelion follows the western
discursive tradition, demonstrating how the advancement of technology unveils contradictions
within the structure of conventional ideology.
To ask "Who am I?" in the western fashion is to inquire "Who is the Other?"
In the first half of the story, it is the tribe of Angel as the absolute other that storms the virtual
family of NERV. In the latter half of the story, however, Angels come to transfigure themselves
into the other within, obfuscating the difference between Man and Angel. Here, poststructuralist psychoanalytical theory will enable us to redefine Angel as the representation of
'abjection," in Julia Kristeva's terms, and the erotics of the fight between Man and Angel as the
explosion of the radically feminine, that is, what Alice Jardine calls "gynesis."
The idea of fighting with the Other produces the ultimate terror within the hero Ikari Shinji. Let

me recall Barbara Creed's radical rereading of Jerdine's "gynesis" into David Cronenberg's film
Videodrome, in which the most violent rape narrative coincides with the extraordinary
feminization of men. By feminizing the enemy, the hero Shinji gets feminized quite
paradoxically.
What happens in the nineteenth and the twenty-first story is especially remarkable. Once it
becomes exhausted in fatal crisis, the Test Type of Evangelion that Shinji has piloted abruptly
strikes back at the Angel, with the organic structure hidden under the armature reanimated.
Moreover, suddenly on its hand and knees, the Test Type approaches and devours the enemy
gluttonously, transgressing all the conventions of post-mediaevalist chivalry. This disgusting
scene is followed by a much more astounding revelation. As soon as the Test Type gets out of
control and performs cannibalism, Shinji the pilot disappears from the cockpit, melting into
the very cyborgian matrix of Evangelion, with all the memories of the war deleted. At this
critical moment, we can look trough his innerspace only to find the mirror stage figure of the
baby Shinji floating on amniotic fluid safely and happily.
It is very ironical that the more phallocentric he wants to become, the more feminized the
hero gets. Winning the fight, the hero is also incorporated into the cyborg feminized matrix of
Evangelion. Yes, as as is clearly know from its anorexic body, Evangelion turns out to be a
feminist robot, into which Yui Ikari, the mother of Shinji, had already been melted. Then what
we once conceived as the Otherness of Angel, just like a fatal virus, is structurally transferred
to the selfless of Man, and further to the identity of Evangelion=Shinji. This is why I cannot
resist the temptation to reinterpret Evangelion's cannibalism as another perfect signifier of
"abjection" and "gynisis." The dramatic leak of the feminine jeopardizes and even melts the
outline of the male body politics.
Desperately searching for the identity of Angel the Other, the virtual family of NERV is
entrapped within gender panic. This identity crisis of Shinji and Evangelion forces NERV itself
to witness its homosocial and lesbian relationships among members. The denoument of the
animation, thus, convinces us that patriarchy in Japan has long been one of the costumes we
have perennially put on. Repressing differences within, our country has naturalized and
established patriarchy as a cult of meta-masquerade. The near future Japan described in
Evangelion represents a type of post-apocaliptic nation well-reconstructed in the wake of the
Second Impact. Let me reconsider the Second Impact as the perfect metaphor for high-tech
revolution, which helped overturn the good old western Crhistian family structure. As a result
of that, the author of the film decides to criticize Christian Orthodoxy and exaggerate Gnostic
meta-narrotology. Certainly, none of his purposes is made clear in the narrative. Nevertheless,
the supreme comander Gendo Ikari seems to attain the status of the Gnostic Supreme Being,
by grafting the fmininity of his wife You Ikari into the cyborg structure of Evangelion. To put it
another way, while a number of critics have analyzed the metafictional aspect of the work, I
would like to rediscover this metafictionism as the Gnostic effect of the director Anno's own
struggle with Christian Orthodoxy.
The concluding sequence of the narrative clarifies the truth of the statue of Adam on the cross
exhibited in the basement lounge "Central Dogma" of NERV. Evangelion was born a clone of
what is called "Adam." But, this "Adam" proves to have been Lilith, the first wife of Adam. This
revelation constitutes the most intriguing climax of Evangelion. For this radical
reinterpretation of Lilith coincides with that contemporary Anglo-American writers want to do
by creating a variety of female saviours in the coming cyber-Millennium. With the rise of hightech revolution in the 80s, Margaret Artwood reinterpreted the Virgin Mary as a surrogate
motherm whereas Octavia Butler refigured Lilith as a colored woman whose body is colonized
by Alien biotechnology. From this perspective, Evangelion seems to skillfully reconstruct the

figure of Eve, who was born a near-clone of Adam in the Old Testament, not simply as a type
of immaculate conception, but also as the impeccable signifier of Japanese simulations in the
1990s. It is this context that Evangelion deserves the evangelical name of the self-reflexive
Japanimation.
May 20, 1997