Everything About NEON GENESIS EVANGELION

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Evangelion Tropes and Idioms [ S ]

GUYS : Read it of you have time .. ^^ It's interesting ..

NOTE : Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole,tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite". In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

[ the following bold words are clickable dude .. per click is free , no need to worry .. ^^ ]

Scars Are Forever (Misato has a huge scar on her chest from injuries suffered during Second Impact. Gendou's hands are covered with burn scars from when he forced open Rei's entry plug after Unit 00's activation test went awry. His scars are much worse in the manga, too.)
Scary Shiny Glasses (Lots of them.)
Science Fiction Versus Fantasy (At the very least very soft science fiction. Of course, those robots are revealed to be biological. CLONED FROM ANGELS! Who are aliens. Aliens with weaponized pseudo-Chrisitian Kabbalah and existentialism-based force fields. And with human-like DNA but a different wavelength color(!?). All predicted by the Dead Sea Scrolls. The bodies of wizards and scientists alike are strewn across the field.)
School Uniforms Are The New Black (Shinji will wear his school uniform even when he goes out at night to wander the streets of Tokyo-3. Rei Ayanami is also an example.)
The Scrappy (Shinji has a huge Hatedom; Asuka is a very polarizing character too, to say the least — actually close to an Ethnic Scrappy. Gendou and Kiele also have a pretty fervent hatedom.)
Scenery Porn (Especially notable whenever Shinji runs away. Also, the Rebuild movies, in their entirety.)
Sempai Kohai (Ritsuko and Maya; surprisingly absent from Shinji's school, where all pupils seem to be the same age and in the same grade. The latter point is a deliberate subversion, as all of the students in Shinji's class are potential Eva pilots.
Sexy Discretion Shot (At one point, Misato and Kaji are in bed together, nude. The "camera" turns away, and stays focused, unmoving, on a nearby table while you hear the two of them going at it.)
Shadow Archetype (A good example is Gendou-Shinji: Gendou gives a pretty good idea of an embittered, corrupt and still antisocial adult Shinji. The Evangelions are also pretty good shadows for the pilots' mothers and possibly the pilots themselves. The Angels may also representhumankind's basest instincts.)
Shadow Men (SEELE, big time)
Shapeshifter (Several Angels.)
Ship Tease (Shinji/Rei. Shinji/Misato. Shinji/Asuka. Shinji/Kaworu. Kaji/Asuka. Kaji/Misato. Kaji/Ritsuko. Gendou/Ritsuko. Maya/Ritsuko. Touji/Hikari. Plenty of others.)
- Gendou/Yui is pretty much the only canon couple of the show. Even the relationships between Asuka's parents and Misato's parents went to hell.
Shotacon (Misato towards Shinji, possibly.)
Shout Out (Misato's "Yebisu" beer is actually labeled with a parody of the real label which references the manga Oruchuban Ebichu, of which both Anno and seiyuu Kotono Mitsuishi were fans. Anno later developed it into an anime at Mitsuishi's recommendation.)
- Later when Rebuild of Evangelion, uh, actually uses Yebisu.
- By Word Of God, Rei's first name alludes to a Sailor Moon character.
- The Human Instrumentality Project was named after Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind, though they are not otherwise related.
- In turn, the Hedgehog's Dilemma is an allusion to Schoppenhauer. It's also been theorized among fans that the original ending alludes to and borrows from some of the existentialists, such as Sartre and Kierkegaard.
- The title of the last episode, "The Beast That Shouted "I" at the Centre of the World," is a clear reference to Harlan Ellison's classic short story (and the anthology named for it) "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World", especially given the "i"-"ai" ("love" in Japanese) pun.
- Touji and Kensuke are allusions to characters from Ryu Murakami's Ai to Gensou no Fascism ("The Fascism of Love and Fantasy"), from which Anno borrowed much of the psychological material.
- The original ending is rumored to be a Shout Out to Space Runaway Ideon.
- Kiel Lorenz is an allusion to the ethologist Konrad Lorenz. He was originally named Konrad, too.
- Interestingly, this series is the one most referenced by later Gainax works, and possibly anime in general. Yes, even Gurren Lagann.
  - Gurren Lagann can be looked at as a Take That at this show overall.
- The manga seems to have shoutouts to Star Wars, of all things. For example, on a NERV writeup of Touji, there's a documentation of his Midichlorian count. In a recent chapter, Gendou also pulls a Darth Vader on Shinji, which is reminiscent of the fact he loses a hand in The End.
- And of course, the SEELE monoliths allude to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- One of the Scenery Porn shots when Shinji first runs away alludes to a small sanctuary in My Neighbor Totoro.
Shrinking Violet (Shinji. Rei combines this with Emotionless Girl.)
The Siege (Subverted)
Sinister Geometry (Ramiel. In Rebuild: Oooh, shiny!)
Slap On The Wrist Nuke (N2 Mines. Although they are devastatingly effective against man-made targets (the Geofront in End), their effectiveness against the Angels ranges from significant ( Israfel takes six days to recover from one) to minimal ( Sachiel is damaged but heals very quickly) to useless ( Sahaquiel and Zeruel are completely unfazed).)
Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes (Shinji is a textbook Type I ("anti-hero as loser") with hints of Type IV ("What the hell, anti-hero?") as the plot advances. Most of the main characters share some of the Type I characteristics. Ritsuko is closer to a Type III (super-cynical / Good Is Not Nice) or Type IV depending on how likeable you find her. Gendou is closer to a Type V (villainous asshole) with hints of Type I and Type III.)
- While not as villainous as Gendou or the guys from Seele, Ritsuko has more than her fair share of Type V. She just hides it better...most of the time.
Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism (Far on the cynical side, though arguably not as it has often been represented. Evangelioncharacters do long for love and harmony...they're just existentially completely out of their reach, especially since all the characters are struggling with crippling mental illnesses and PTSD. Oh, feel the tragedy.)
Smoking Hot Sex (In episode 20, Misato says she only smokes after ""things like this".
Soaperizing (To the point where the last 2 episodes abandon the rest of the plot.)
The So Called Coward (Subverted; Shinji saves the day again and again, but never does get any respect.)
Soundtrack Dissonance (ASUKA IS VIOLENTLY DISMEMBERED/ASUKA IS VIOLENTLY MIND RAPED/EVERYONE IS TURNED INTO TANG/KAWORU IS CRUSHED AND DECAPITATED WHILE I PLAY UNFITTING MUSIC)
Spell My Name With An S (Aside from the usual romanization problems...even Japanese given names are rendered in katakana; materials forRebuild use the obsolete character we to spell Evangelion.)
- And seen on this very page — canonically, his name is Keel Lorenz.
Spider Mech the new Eva-05 from Rebuild.
Spike Spencer - The anime that either made or ruined his career, depending on how you look at it.
Spirit Advisor ( Yui Ikari to Shinji and Gendou — and also to Fuyutsuki in the videogame Evangelion: Another Cases; in The End Of Evangelion, the three Reis and Kaworu become this. This raises questions about Omniscient Morality License, though, as they all do some pretty questionable stuff.)
Springtime For Hitler (Rumor has it that after Nadia turned out to be something of a financial dissapointment, Gainax's executives planned to deliberately produce an even bigger flop to take advantage of a loophole in Japanese tax law. They thus put Anno, known to be mentally unstable, at the helm and allowed him and the rest of the creative team to throw in whatever insanity they could come up with. Needless to say the plan backfired spectacularly and several of the studio bigwigs served prison sentences for tax evasion.)
Squick (End of Evangelion pegs the Squickometer multiple times; heck, even Shinji has been touched (ahem) by the disease. There's also pretty much everything Gendou does, especially in The End Of Evangelion. The whole Shinji-Rei relationship is also some subtext for you. Finally (?), the manga goes extremely far in making all the Freud Was Right explicit when Shinji, trapped in the Eva, is 'tempted' by a seductive apparition of naked Yui, or rather Unit 01's Angelic side in her guise. Even for Evangelion, that scene was seriously disturbing.)
- The manga's storyline, in the published tankobons, has only just reached the JSSDF's invasion of NERV, so the Gendou/Rei/Ritsuko sequence hasn't been depicted yet. Given that Gendou swallows Adam in the manga, if that sequence actually happens, the resulting subtext and possible variations leapfrog Squick and go straight into a High Octane Nightmare Fuel / Moral Event Horizon margarita.
Stepford Smiler: Lots. Misato, Kaji, and Asuka, to name a few.
Stock Footage (Note how much time the characters spend on elevators and escalators in most episodes; also, Eva launch sequences. The end of the Unit 01 vs. Kaworu scene was also the longest still shot in anime history back then and might still be (but the end of the "Ode to Joy" sounded good!). Let's also not forget the original episodes 25 and 26, which consist almost entirely of reused footage, as the studio had run out of budget by that point.)
- The same clip of Shinji eating breakfast is reused several times, as is a clip of Misato drinking beer.
- And one scene of a forest being destroyed was actually recycled from Nadia.
The Stoic (Gendou and Kouzou; Rei; arguably, Ritsuko.)
Strange Girl (Rei)
Summon Bigger Fish: The Evas turn out to be this.
Super Robot Wars: Has appeared in F, FF, Alpha, Alpha 3 and MX.
Superlative Dubbing: At least according to some fans (one of the most visible being ANN's Theron Martin), though some others disagree in varying degrees of extremity.
Surprisingly Good English (The people in charge of bringing over Unit 03 from America speak perfect English, and are accompanied by subtitles in Japanese. English being the IACO's required language for flight operations, it isn't surprising that an aircrew would speak it well.)
- What's also to say the plane's pilots weren't American themselves.

Labels: Tropes and Idioms : S

Posted @ [10:49 AM]