Episode 02 Supplemental Notes and Analysis

From The NGE Fan-Geeks Project

Notes

• First appearance of Pen Pen, Misato's "warm water penguin".
• First appearance of the Misato theme, bouncy light background music that plays in her apartment.
• First full appearance of Evangelion Unit-00, glimpsed briefly while frozen in bakelite when Gendo and Ritsuko are standing in the experiment room it wrecked when it went berserk. (In Episode 01, only her hand was seen.) Flashbacks to this and a full introduction of Eva Unit 00 will be given in Episode 05.
  • The "Signal Termination Plug", inserted into Eva 00, resembles a crucifix.
• Timeline-wise, Gendo says that Rei will be out of the hospital in 20 days, at which time Eva 00 will be brought out of cryo-stasis.
• When Shinji is shocked by the appearance of Pen Pen and runs out of the shower naked, a strategically placed beer can hides his crotch from view, until Misato takes the large beer can away and a much smaller container still obscures his crotch from view. In Japanese, the smaller container is labeled "toothpicks".
• When Misato stops with Shinji at a convenience store to pick up food, she illegally double-parks her car. She doesn't simply go over the dividing line between lanes: Misato utterly ignores that the parking spaces are obviously arranged so that vehicles are supposed to park with their front facing the curb, and instead parks her car fully parallel to the curb, so that it takes up two full spaces. Judging by the large amount of food that she and Shinji bought, she apparently wasn't just running in and out of the store, but must have left her car intentionally parked like that for a considerable amount of time.
• NERV apparently makes or contracts out for production its own merchandise and accessories for its employees (like many real world large organizations). In this episode we see coffee mugs and even disposable paper cups that have the "NERV" logo on them.
• The song playing in the background in the convenience store Misato and Shinji stop at is the song "You are the only one" from "Lilia", an image album for the "Ys" RPG series. Not at all coincidentally, the vocalist is Kotono Mitsuishi, Misato's seiyu.
• Misato's apartment is littered with several car magazines; Gainax character designer and animator Yoshiyuki Sadamoto is himself a car enthusiast.
• Before Misato and Shinji begin eating (their meal of microwaveable insta-food and beer), in the original Japanese dub they say "itadakimasu". This is a traditional prayer before beginning a meal, literally meaning "I will humbly receive"; this is done to show proper thankfulness to the preparer of the meal in particular, and more generally to all those living things that lost their lives to make the meal.
• The brand of beer that is Misato drinks is "Yebisu" which is actually a real-life brand of beer in Japan. When the series was originally broadcast in Japan, the TV network the series was airing on complained that they didn't want to advertise for Yebisu for free like this, so by Episode 2 the name was changed to the fictional "Yebichu" (named as a direct homage to the manga series, "Oruchuban (Ebichu)"). However, when the series was released on video and DVD the name "Yebisu" was restored.
• When Shinji and Misato are dividing up household tasks between themselves, they are playing "Janken" to determine who gets a given task. Janken is actually exactly the same as "Rock, Paper, Scissors", though the terminology is of course different. Misato wins most of the matches, resulting in Shinji getting stuck with most of the chores. The chart they make up says they divided up the chores so that Misato makes breakfast on Tuesday, dinner on Wednesday and Saturday, handles the garbage on Monday, and bath cleaning on Thursday. Shinji handles these chores on all other days of the week.
• When Misato is channel-surfing on TV while in the Nerv tent with Ritsuko, it is difficult to tell exactly what they are saying, however the full lines of dialogue for the people on TV were actually included in the script: (parts actually heard on-screen are italicized):

Woman on Channel 12: "...the government administration's announcement was carried out this morning in the official residence of the prime minister of Tokyo-2."
Man on Channel 4: "As for the participation of the SSDF in this incident not being recognized, this was negated."
Woman on Channel 8: "They advocated that the U.N. forces' sortie into Japan was within the scope of the law."
Man on Channel 1: "When confronted with the claim, "Was this not an alien attack?", they laughed, saying, "This isn't manga"."

• What function could the backpack that Pen Pen wears possibly have?

Analysis

• Misato complains that it is hot out when they are in the truck transporting Eva Unit 01's helmet, and even with the air conditioning turned up, takes off several layers of clothing to be more comfortable. However, Ritsuko does not take off her heavy lab coat. This would seem to be emblematic of their personalities; Misato is casual and laid-back, while Ritsuko is very professional and concerned with appearances.
• There is a brief shot of a construction schedule for some of Tokyo-3's defensive emplacements, soon before Misato picks up Shinji at the hospital, which reads that this particular construction began in November 2014 and was scheduled to end in August 2015. As the construction is still ongoing, this places the latest possible date for the start of the series in August 2015.

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