This Isn’t Your Mother’s Mecha: 

The Adolescent and Narrative in Neon Genesis Evangelion

    In his book, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche,  MURAKAMI Haruki relates

oral histories of the victims of the 1995 Aum cult sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways. This book departs

from his usual format of surreal and comedic science fiction (although I have to admit, his fiction is

delightfully difficult to label) to non-fiction. He claims to do so because he feels the Japanese media too

easily categorized the attack into black and white binary oppositions of "‘good’ versus ‘evil’ ‘sanity’ versus

‘madness,’ ‘health’ versus ‘disease.’" [1] Murakami believes that the witnesses were subsumed in this

process into one identity of "victim."  His wish to relate the diverse, complicated and sometimes

contradictory voices of these people is his answer to the "ego-consuming" identity of the cult who released

the gas into the subway lines. How else could something so terrible happen except when an individual's

identity is submitted to another's powerful ego. This overwhelming feeling of alienation to his fellow

Japanese citizens as a result of this tragedy (heightened by the fact he had lived abroad for many year)  led

him to recognize the media's "normalization" of the state of being a victim. His answer is to create

multiplicity.

    You may ask yourself at this point, besides the tenuous connection of nationality, what Murakami has to

do with the animated series (or anime) I will consider in this paper. Murakami rewrites the narrative of the

gas attack beyond a simple binary opposition to delve deeper into the questions – who are we who suffered

this attack? Who are we who produced those who attacked? How can we recover from the alienation we feel

as a result of this tragedy? What, in other words, is missing from this story that has not been told and can we

learn anything from that? He says, "what we need, it seems to me, are words coming from another direction,

new words for a new narrative. Another narrative to purify this narrative." [2] For this reason, I’ve picked

Murakami’s words to introduce my talk about the anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion (or Eva for short),

which, on the surface, tells a simple story of good versus evil through recognized genre conventions of the

mecha (or giant robots). This series, however, weaves a new narrative underneath these conventions –

revealing the transparent metaphors they stand for. The more simplistic versions of these genres assume an

easier, even heroic transition from child to adult but in Eva, the struggle is much more uncertain -- there is

no guarantee of success. For the rest of the paper I will organize the sections as following: First, what are the

conventions of this genre? Second, how does this narrative subvert these conventions? Third, what does the

unraveling of these conventions do to the authority of the genre? Last, what does it say about the formation

of an adult identity, socially and sexually, when these "safe" childhood stories collapse. Significantly, the

anime casts the transition from adolescent into adult into apocalyptic metaphors, but in this case, the world

is not in peril; it is the self.

    The Genre Conventions of the Mecha: Typically an adolescent male fantasy of power through the

technological extension of the powerful, robotic power. It’s a fantasy of control where young men and

women blend seamlessly into their robotic selves and battle another monstrous robotic other in order to

preserve the earth, their planet, any planet from annihilation. The boys and their robots are usually the last

line of defense.

    The 26 episode, Neon Genesis Evangelion, directed and written by ANNO Hideaki and produced by

Gainax in 1995, fits well into this convention. The protagonist, IKARI Shinji, is a 14 year old boy,

summoned by his father to pilot the mechanized evangelion machines against the monstrous angels who

seek to destroy the earth. As Susan Napier notes: "Recounted in this way, Evangelion would seem to adhere

to all the most important mecha conventions, a near-future high tech setting, a fast narrative pace, and above

all a youthful hero who pilots his robotic machine to victory over an apparently evil and apparently

mechanical enemy." [3] Shinji, as well as the other pilots, Rei and Asuka, are selected young for their ability

to "syncronize" with their assigned mecha.

    Napier notes, however, that these conventions are subverted even from the beginning– Shinji is reluctant

to pilot his eva from the start. "It is as if Shinji were looking into a distorting mirror and is horrified by the

self that he finds there." [3] The usually linear narrative is disrupted where the outcome of the first fight is

only recounted in eps. 2. [4] The eva’s themselves also do not cohere to typical notions of what a giant robot

should look like – shiny and technological or at the very least examples of easily reproducible toys. These

robots are lean, the colors dark, the faces, distorted human faces. Even the battles they face suggest

something more human, or even animalistic in they way they fight and are used, subsuming the pilot into

one. When Shinji and his eva "berserks," his identity is wholly subsumed by the robot. We no longer see

him in the cockpit and merely watch the violence from a distance. He and the eva become one, releasing an

intense rage directed towards his father, his friends, the girls he is attracted to but cannot connect to. The

roar becomes the release of an unarticulated anguish of alienation. 

[example of the eva eating the angel in episode 19 -- the eva moves on four legs, grunts like a beast (a lion)

and crawlwalks over to the fallen figure of his enemy. Holding the head down, he begins to tear at the

creature with his mouth. The onlookers, members of the Nerv organization who are responsible for the

creation and maintainence of the evas, look on in horror. One even throws up in his revulsion. We see the

eva from a shadowy distance; He looks up at us, his eyes glowing like an animal in the dark. Victory is no

longer the clean, unambiguous position in the conventional mecha genre]

    Susan Napier, building off of critic’s Kotani Mari’s observations, problematizes the identity of the eva to

say it is also feminized – the eva pilots are immersed in liquid in their cockpits and the environment

becomes womblike. The abjected mother stands in opposition to the cold, technical father who makes it

completely clear that he summons Shinji out of need not out of love. The eva perhaps replaces Shinji's long-

dead mother and at the same time, as I have said previously, his own identity. But the embrace that this

"mother-figure" offers is horror.

     The anime, however subversive of this genre's conventions, still proceeds in a linear plot, unraveling the

mysteries of who are the angels? What is Shinji's father's real plan behind the x-files' like conspiracy? Will

Shinji ever become a hero who accepts his eva and doesn't run away from his responsibilities? All these

questions are ultimately answered but in a very unexpected way. The last angel is defeated in battle but it is

revealed that the angel represents humanity. The AT fields or "force-fields" that the angels project,

signalling them as enemies, is revealed to be a field that every human has to keep others at distance. I want

to make clear here that this is not a simple defense mechanism but an inherent boundary that shields the true

self from knowability (to itself and to others). Shinji's father's plan is not the defeat of the angels through the

eva but the "Instrumentality project" where the boundaries of ego fail, dissolving into one mind.

    One character states that "there is an emptiness in our souls, a fundamental incompleteness. All man's

accomplishments stem from the hope of fulfilling it. By pushing all minds into one will fill this void"

Although ANNO Hideaki has admitted to being influenced by Jungian psychology, this statement

desperately begs a Lacanian reading of the formation of identity. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), the French

psychoanalyst and critic notes that the every person goes through a "mirror stage" as an infant. In this stage,

the child looks into a mirror and forms an identity based on recognizing that image. The child then

understands that other people become unknowable "others." While this is the key  moment upon which

individual identity is created, is it also accompanied with a great sense of loss of that previous, pre-language

identity that existed without boundaries. Lacan claims that we then search for something to fill that lack.

Shinji's identification with the eva evokes the Lacanian notion of gestalt -- that is, the moment "that unite the

I with the statue in which man projects himself, with the phantoms that dominate him, or with the automaton

in which in an ambiguous relation, the world of his own making tends to find completion" [5] (735). In

essence, Lacan states that once a child goes through the mirror stage and recognizes the "other," then he

continually tries to overcome the alienation that is created by that separation. The statue, a phantom, an

automaton that attempts to fulfill that lack. In the case of this anime, it is the eva. But that too, is recognized

as a failure. The Instrumentality project has the desired goal of "one mind" (or, in Lacanian terms, the pre-

language, pre-Mirror Stage identity) wishes to truly erase the separation from the other. But what happens to

identity when this occurs?

    To represent the dissolution of these boundaries, the animation breaks down visually. We no longer see

the classic animated figures but text intermingles with line drawings, abstract pictures and even real

photographs. The genre dismantles itself completely. Susan Napier: "the alienation of the characters,

especially that of Shinji, is spectacularly apparent in the puzzling and genuinely subversive final episode, a

grand finale in which, bizarrely for a work in the mecha genre, not a single mecha is shown." [6]

    This last episode is titled "The Beast that shouted 'I' at the Heart of the World" tellingly signalling that

identity is beast-like (primal) but also has a fierce need for a simpler Cartesian sense of "I." The beginning

of the episode slides from bloody and important vignettes from the series to still photos of real, unanimated

places, empty of human begins. This suggests that the battle of the ego is not just Shinji's but includes the

viewers as well. Text questions flash to the viewers as signals of Shinji's mind: "What do you want?" "What

do you desire?" "What do you fear?" "Why do you pilot the eva?" Shinji, as well as the other characters he

projects in his mind, answer the questions superficially and are pushed by the demanding questions to

further pursue their motives. In this place, they cannot lie to themselves. The central question to Shinji

becomes the source of his own identity -- why does he pilot the eva? His answers vary -- to be liked, to be

close to others, to win their praise, it's his duty; to save the world. But all these answers are unsatisfactory

because he is not close to others; he receives little praise; he loathes piloting the eva and runs from it

everytime he can and yet is always compelled to go back to it; and the world is still in danger.

    The animation then slips into simple line drawings until Shinji floats in a white space, free from the eva,

free from the other characters. He is told that this is perfect freedom. This, however, doesn't satisfy Shinji

because he feels himself fading away without any reference to anything or anyone. His father's voice gives

him a restriction -- a straight line that delineates ground from sky.  He can no longer fly but his ego has

become anchored. He is told "In the act of observing others, you may recognize yourself -- but this is

tempered by the barriers that must exist between yourself and others." Shinji's world slowly rebuilds itself.

He has broken down his alienation to discover perhaps a fundamental truth of identity: that difference from

others is a key part to it. This separation does not have to be ultimately and devestatingly alienating. Shinji

has a choice how to separate himself from others and still have a connection to them. Murakami says

"Autonomy and dependency are like light and shade, caught in the pull of each other’s gravity, until, after

considerable trial and error, each individual can find his or her own place in the world" [7].

    In the process of reconciling his difference from others, Shinji realizes that piloting the eva is only one

such possibility for him. It is just one narrative of his life. He, therefore, rejects the eva as the defining

narrative of his life. The perfect freedom of nothingness in eps. 26 becomes a stage for other stories he can

create about himself. This give and take about whose narrative/whose life is being lived is summed up well

in Murakami's statement:

 Haven’t you offered up some part of your Self to someone (or something), and  taken on a "narrative" in

return? Haven’t we entrusted some part of our personality  to some greater System or Order? And if so, has

not that System at some stage  demanded of us some kind of "insanity"? Is the narrative you now possess

really  and truly your own? Are your dreams really your own dreams? Might not they be  someone else’s

visions that could sooner or later turn into nightmares? [8]

So, Shinji tells a happier story -- this time casting himself in another conventional anime genre, the teen

comedy, where he has the perfect family life and sexuality is "normalized" (in the sense that unknowability

is exciting not necessarily alienating). He discovers that there is a certain pleasure in discovering a new

person and her identity. Ayanami Rei  becomes a typical, bubble-headed, late-for-class new student at his

school instead of her usual cool, ego-less self. When they run into each other, there is a brief exchange of

comedy as Rei is horrified that Shinji might have glimpsed her panties. This encounter clearly echoes an

earlier event in the Eva series where Shinji falls on top of a nude Rei. Shinji is terrified; Rei is indifferent.

The scene takes place, not on a sunny street corner, but in Rei's dark and filthy room. Her pillow is

bloodstained; mail has piled up at the door; trash is piled around. All the clues provided in her room only

turn Rei into more of a scary enigma than a real human girl. It is a disturbing scene and by juxtaposing the

light-hearted one of the teen comedy, do we see how such a meeting can be positive rather than negative.

Shinji has essentially rewritten the narrative in eps. 26.

     We then return to the eva story line where Shinji realizes he can exist without the eva. And while he still

doesn't love himself, he recognizes that he could. At that moment, the scene changes to a blue-green world

with Shinji surrounded by the other characters -- including a reunited mother and father, all who applaud

Shinji and wish him congratulations on his realization. It's only when he realizes that he is separated from

people fundamentally can he finally be accepted by them. His Lacanian crisis has been resolved.

    Of course, Lacan would doubt the validity of this success -- that Shinji can accept his identity in this way

since he claims the search for the other takes up our existence, ending only with our deaths and it's a keen,

alienating lack that we feel. Even Susan Napier is cautious to call this a happy ending given the overall

darkness of the series. However, I would like to give the last words to Murakami:

Now a narrative is a story, not logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you  keep having, whether you

realize it or not. Just as surely as you  breathe, you go  on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these

stories you wear two faces. You  are simultaneously subject and object. You are the whole and you are a

part. You  are real and you are shadow. "Storyteller" and at the same time "character." It is  through such

multilayering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of  being an isolated individual in the world.

[9]

[1] Murakami, Haruki. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. New York: Vintage,

2001. 225.

[2] ibid., 227.

[3] Napier, Susan. Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese

Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillen, 2001. 97.

[4] ibid.

[5] Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic

Experience." In Critical Theory Since 1965. Eds. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle. Tallahassee: Florida

State University Press, 1986. 734-738.

[6] Napier, 101.

[7] Murakami, 230

[8] ibid., 233.

[9] ibid., 231.