*PREVIEW* Lions Led By Robots 20: Multiple Dilemmas

Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Yes.

We watched episodes 10, 11, and 12.

So the first episode we watched was Magma Diver.

This actually, this like three-episode arc was like really good in terms of like, you know, deepening character development.

The kind of book ended by like some more action-heavy episodes, and then the middle episode is much more kind of contemplative, I suppose, is the word.

Yeah, Magma Diver, the cousin of Ronnie James Diaz, Holy Diver.

Magma Diver!

There's an angel inside a fire mountain.

I fucking, yeah, I lost the melody.

It's okay.

I can't really sing.

Yeah, it's the angel sleepy, sleepy instead of a volcano.

Yeah, uh, sandal fawn.

Yep.

Um, we do get like the show opens, episode 10 opens with more weirdness between Asuka and Kaji.

And I remember in our last episode, you said it was like more Asuka having a crush.

Kaji is not being weird.

You know, he's staying arm's length, whatever.

He's doing, you know, he is Asuka's Masato.

Yeah.

That's like how I came to understand it last episode.

And I was still on the fence about that until this scene.

Cause like,

Asuka's 100% flirting with him, which again is weird, but she's a teen girl.

Teens do this kind of shit to older people in their lives, especially ones that are

so much traumatic baggage, like every fucking character in this show does.

And he just like blows it off.

Yep.

He is the most normal man in anime.

Yep.

In any anime, any of them ever made that I've ever seen.

Yeah.

So essentially, um, Kaji and Asuka are uh going on a shopping trip.

Um, Asuka wants to buy bathing suits for an upcoming school trip to Okinawa.

And uh, he's just like, oh, is that what kids wear swimming these days?

Okay, whatever.

He's just like completely non-plussed with the whole situation.

He's just like, yeah, sure.

And then we find out that they're actually not going on the school trip because they have to stay on call.

Yeah, I did like this scene because

one of the through lines that I'm kind of putting together through Asuka so far is she wants desperately to be seen as an adult, namely Dikaji, but also everyone else.

And she's also so excited about going on a school trip, which is something that only kids would be interested in.

So it's like nice little hints like that.

She's still a kid.

Yeah.

Like, again, I keep comparing this to Foolie Cooley because that's one of my favorite series.

And the themes of children and adults are very, very similar.

And it's also this, there's multiple things in this three-episode arc that remind me of Foolie Cooley.

And this is definitely one of them.

Oscar reminds me a lot of Nauta, the main character and Foolie Cooley.

In that I do find them both incredibly insufferable.

But you can understand why they're insufferable.

It's like Asuka and Nauta to me as an adult

watching this is a lot like if you go back and read Catcher in the Rye, where like this little fucking shit, I hate you so much.

Like, this is why everybody hates you.

All my homies hate Holden Caulfield.

Yeah, like when you're a kid and you read that stuff, just like if you're a kid and you watch this, you probably empathize with them a lot more.

Whereas as an adult, you see it from the opposite angle.

Like, wow, you're an insufferable little fucker, aren't you?

But also, like, this scene is like, I think it, I like it because it, like, the thing with Kaji is like, early on in the show, you kind of have to try and figure, you're trying to figure out, like, okay, like, what is his angle?

What, what's going on with him?

And like, the thing that becomes like kind of apparent in like this episode is like, similar in the way that, like, Masato is like tasked with looking after Shinji and Asuka as well.

And like, she is in a way like manipulating like Shinji's like a sense of empathy and need for connection.

It's like Kaji's doing the exact same thing, but to everyone it's like in like he is you know emotionally manipulating masato by you know withholding kind of affection from asuka he's manipulating her and it's like and ritsuko and ritsuko and it's like that becomes like more and more apparent as the show goes on and like we start to see more of the cracks in people um and it's yeah it i do think it's because he's a spy still okay um because it's the only thing in his character arc that would make sense.

I don't think he's like a spy for like the angels or anything.

Like, that'd be ridiculous.

But if he is, fine, whatever the show is pretty ridiculous.

But

like some other government agency, all generally working towards the same ultimate, you know, quote-unquote goal.

But it's the only reason that I can plot so far of why every interaction he has with any character, whether it be Masato, Asuka, Ritzko, he's constantly fucking with them.

Like nobody is just naturally that slimy without a purpose.

Yeah.

And then we cut to them, like, yeah, them finding out that, no, you're not going on the trip, you have to stay on standby.

Asuka's like really like frustrated with it, and Shinji doesn't back her up.

And she gets like really frustrated with it, which means like, essentially, like, be a man and like stand up for me, which is like something that will, you know, come up more and more.

And then it cuts to them, like, at the pool where,

oh, they also find out that they also have to stay because they have to study because they're failing their classes.

Yeah, like, Asuka's the only one that really gets a pass on that that one because she admittedly in the show says she can't read kanji yeah but like the the other two are in school all the time like what the

it uh also they can read kanji um so it comes to the pool and shinji is working on his laptop beside the pool he's studying and everybody else is swimming and like asuka always turns everything into a competition specifically between like her and ray like almost like she's trying to impress shinji but like their dynamic doesn't really read that way to me.

As it just, she needs to be better at everything than everyone, regardless.

And she also has like a very specific bone to pick with Rey because she can't get under Rey's skin as a thing.

Like, she gets rises out of Shinji constantly, but Rey just doesn't give a fuck.

So, uh, both of those things are true.

In the Asuka calls like Rey, like, you know, the perfect girl, all the sort of thing.

And it's not, I think both things are true in that, like, she is like kind of competing for Shinji's attention with Ray, but also is like, oh, Rey is just kind of for reasons that we will eventually get into, is like the kind of preferred one of like Gendo and like other people because, you know, she just kind of goes by the book.

And there's a kind of an exchange at beside the pool with Asuka in the bathing suit and Shinji.

And it's like, once again, that kind of like expression of that team of like, they're uncomfortable teenagers that are developing and don't really know what to do.

But there is, there's a really good line that Asuka asks Misados, like, why don't we attack the angels where they live?

And Misado just says, we would do that if we knew where they were.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we get another line later that says, well, we haven't done that in 15 years.

And that was when the second impact was.

So.

people are a little bit more worried, which, you know, makes sense.

You don't want to accidentally trigger the living nuclear weapons to delete the planet again.

Yep.

But then they do it anyway.

Like, we get that whole scene where like if we knew where they were we would attack them so then of course they find the fetus angel which turns out to be more of like an egg than a fetus but uh they're like oh you know since the last time we attacked them 15 years ago this this could happen so like it's best not to risk it and then like suddenly like yeah we're risking this

but also like yeah it's like the pool scene is great because like you know she asks shinji's like oh what's this question you're working on and he's like oh like thermal expansion she's like oh you know, when things get hotter, they get bigger.

And then she says, like, if my breasts got hotter, would they get bigger?

And like, Shinji's like, oh, how would I know?

Because he's embarrassed.

And then like, Asuka's like, well, okay, whatever.

You're boring.

And like walks off.

And then Shinji turns and looks at Rey, which then frustrates Asuka because she's like, oh, you know, look at me, look at me before she dives in the pool.

So yeah, it's really that theme of like attention stuff, you know.

And she doesn't really seem to like Shinji at all.

Like every scene they're in, it's like, she's like bullying him.

And that could be multiple different reasons, of course.

Like it could be seeing him as something of like a younger sibling because they live together or because she likes him and she's bullying him that way.

It's hard to fucking tell because again, everybody in this show is a walking baggage train.

Once again, we'll uh I'm bringing up a Carl Jung.

Uh maybe read some Carl Jung.

Um, so we find out that they have found essentially the embryo of an angel inside of um a volcano as a sandal fawn, and they have to attempt to capture it before it hatches.

So they're trying to figure out who will go.

Asuka eventually volunteers, but tries to like back out when the D-type suit, which goes over the Ava to protect it, looks like a fat suit.

Yeah, it gets like inflated.

Oh, we got an inflated Asuka.

Yeah.

And don't Google those words.

And she gets frustrated when she can seize that Kaji can see her in the like big expanded um plug suit and like the D-type suit.

So Ray volunteers, but Asuka's like, No, I'll do it.

So and it's also because the prototypes, which are Ray's and Shinji's Ava, can't put the suit on, yep, which ends up not being that important actually.

They're at the end.

But that was the one thing that really bothered me in this episode: the ending, because it's not explained.

Yeah, well, it it it is, but we'll get there.