*PREVIEW* Lions Led By Robots 17: Get in the Robot

Essentially, the plan is that, like, Shinji is going to get in AV Unit 1.

And he's obviously, like, very terrified because he's a 14-year-old child who hasn't seen his dad in three years.

Yeah, he's effectively been shang-haid to be a robot pilot.

Yeah.

And he's naturally quite a skittish kid.

Famously, obviously, like, his personality is probably one of the best ones known of anime, of like being very depressed and confused and all those other things.

I don't really see him as being depressed at this point.

I see him as being a 14-year-old who's been abandoned by his family.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's

Shinji refuses pretty much.

He's like, I, no, I can't.

I'm too scared.

And like, Gendo knows that like Ava Unit 1 is, it's for Shinji.

Then he says, well, oh, well, bring out fucking Ray Ayanami, who earlier on in the episode, in one of the very first scenes, when Shinji hangs up the telephone, he sees Rey on the street.

Right around now, Rey gets like wheeled out in a hospital bed because she got all fucked up in the last fight.

And Ava Unit 1 kind of reinforces the fact that it was built for Shinji with Shinji in mind because the angel attack knocks all much debris loose from the ceiling.

And Ava Unit 1 reacts by protecting him, despite the fact it's not plugged in or anything.

Because that is probably my favorite little tidbit fact for Avas is that they must be plugged into the wall at all times

other than like the five minute time limit they have uh from their umbilical cord system but yeah much like my vacuum cleaner the ava must be plugged into the wall

yeah so we find out that ava unit one is like designed for shinji and he

gets in it.

He gets in the robot.

Also, it's weird.

Maybe it's because I don't remember anything from either A, not watching it or B, too many shots to the head.

But I do think it's funny that whenever you close your eyes and you picture Ava, you picture them in a very specific kind of way.

And not that horrible scene with Shinji and Rey, which we'll get to.

But

in those Ava uniforms, right?

They're very iconic in a way.

Yeah.

And the first time Shinji climbs inside Ava, you know what?

He's just wearing his like white button-up fit.

Yeah.

And they flood the cockpit with breathable water.

I forget what they call it.

LTL or something like that.

And mysteriously, he is not wet when he comes out.

I need that waterproof white button-up.

Yeah.

So Shinji can like breathe in the special liquid.

Also, as well, when he gets in the Ava through the insert plug system,

he immediately synchronizes with unit one.

Yeah.

And it has also kind of shown that he synchronizes with it but he also can't really control it at all which certainly won't come up again in the future

yep and we see shinji you know kind of stumble on fall onto the ground he doesn't really know how to use the ava then it kind of blacks out he's fighting the angel for a little bit

and it's not going well the angel is absolutely kicking his well the ava's teeth in and then we flash forward episode two and he's in hospital bed Yep.

Which tells us it did not go great.

Honestly, like fucking perfect first episode.

Like that cut to black is like such a incredible like directorial choice.

Like a lesser director would have actually shown the battle in the first episode.

Yeah, that's something that through three episodes now.

I will say that the animation, the direction, everything is really good.

It's gripping in a way.

Like, it kind of pulls you.

And the battle scenes are great.

I even don't mind the new voice actors in the Netflix version.

The script is shit.

The translation they have is real bad and it kind of pulls you out of it.

But

it's not their fault.

But it's a great cut.

Unfortunately, it cuts to not fly me to the moon at the end of episode one.

It cuts to elevator music volume two.

There's so much.

like beautiful like cell work in episode one like the scene in the elevator with ritsuko misato and shinji where it's just their silhouettes and it's just the hand of the ava in the background is so fucking good if i remember correctly this show pretty much bankrupted the studio yep to the point that it was almost not finished and in fact is the reason why it did not have the ending that anno wanted if i if i am to understand the lorry correctly and i'm kind of understanding why even when you compare it to to its

other shows of its era that have kind of broken into mainstream, the animation quality is so good.

No detail is literally ever spared in any shot.

I can only imagine how astronomical the production costs of this show were.

And we all know Anno is a perfectionist.

So working for him must have been horrible.

Yeah, I fucking say so.

Yeah.

Then we get on to second episode.

Shinji wakes up in a hospital bed.

Yeah.

Thankfully, it's not the worst scene we're ever going to get in a hospital bed in Evangelion.

And we get a, I keep alluding to that scene, and I'm not going to say what it is until it happens.

Everybody who understands is internally cringing.

Now, we get what I assume is a nerve meeting.

They're going over like, you know, the angels have returned after 15 years, but now we get something interesting.

And that is, this is a Nirvan is effectively the government in a way.

And obviously, the Japanese government is involved with them and everything, because NIRV is a government program.

And yes, I'm going to keep saying it that way, so you all can suffer with me.

And they're like, oh, but the main difference between now and 15 years ago is people are picking up on what happened.

Word is spreading quickly.

They're like, oh, don't worry about it.

We'll deploy our disinformation program.

And then it flashes to Masada watching the news, and there's no word of the angels anywhere.

Yeah.

We also get a scene where Gendo is having a meeting with a committee about the, you know, the funding for the Evangelion project, but also like protecting the city.

Nerve is in charge of protecting the city, but also kind of the world.

But we find out that they say his priority should be the human instrumentality project, which we will talk about later on.

It's turning all of humanity into one giant banjo.

You know how like, like we've already talked about, everything slowly turns into crabs.

The human instrumentality project is to slowly turn all of humanity into a pair of bagpipes.

Yep.

So then we find out.

So Shinji sees Rey in the hospital all broken up.

Also, the scene with Shinji in the kind of like, I assume it's the foyer of the hospital where it's just him silhouetted from behind is.

beautiful.

Like the first 12 episodes of Evangelion are just like a kind of perfect measure of quiet and kind of like silence, and it's so good.

So, the 12th episodes is where Anno really loses his mind, is what you're telling me.

No, I'm not going to say what number it is in case anyone's watching it for the first time, but we find out that Masado has now become the legal guardian of Shinji, and he's going to come and live with her.

Yeah, which is weird.

There's also some like ominous vibes.

There's a cloud around Masada where it's just like you get hints that she is actually not a nice person and she's doing this for nerve.

Like, you know, she's on the phone with Ritzuko.

She's effectively Shinji's handler because I think they realize upon meeting Shinji is he needs someone to kind of nicely goad him into being a pilot.

It's not going to work like Ray or as we'll eventually meet, we'll meet Asuka.

where you just be like, you need to fucking do this.

That won't work on Shinji.

So he needs like a mother figure and he has been issued the alcoholic who lives with the penguin yeah so

they like do some grocery shopping and arrive back at misada's apartment uh she has only just moved in recently as well shinji's stuff has arrived and he's kind of like reluctant to go in and she's kind of like no this is your home too you know you're welcome here and shinji gets in and they just finds out that oh the only thing that's in this house is like ramen and beer and whiskey.

It is

beer cans and whiskey bottles, as far as the eye can see.

And we also get a shot of Misato's bedroom, which is, again, still mostly beer cans, and some very suspiciously placed bottles of lotion

and the tissues by the bed,

which I assume are for PenPen.

I don't know.

Also, Misato makes a joke that she's not going to put the moves on Shin Shi.

And Ritz goes like, I would hope not fuck.

That is like a constant, right?

Like that going forward is this uncomfortable bit of space between them, which.

We will talk about this in episode 16.

Yeah.

And we get the first hints of it on this one because, you know, she's getting drunk.

She's very obviously like...

flirting with him in a kind of way because then she retreats to the like when he ends up taking a bath and meeting Pen Pen, but like she is like, oh, I'm worried I'm putting it on too thick and he's gonna get onto me.

You know what I mean?

Like he's gonna figure out that I'm fucking with him.