FGC:Episode 21 Scene 02

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Screenshots	Cut #	Description/Dialogue	Commentary
	001	MISATO (ANSWERING MACHINE):“Hello, I'm not home right now. Please leave your message after the beep.”
	002A
	002B
	003	KAJI:“My last job...”	Dr. Nick: Kaji is showing some truly grim determination - he knows he's dealing with an all-powerful, world-ending conspiracy no one person can topple. I find it fascinating that his exit happens in the same episode that finally starts revealing some key player motivations, but more about that a bit later.
	004
	005	KAJI:“The red is as if it's for the color of blood.” SUBTITLE:“Episode #21' Nerv Is Born”
	006	MISATO:“Abducted?! The vice Commander?” MAN:“It happened two hours ago. He was last seen in District 8 on the west side.” MISATO:“That's within our compound! What was your Intelligence Department doing?!” MAN:“There's an insider who leaked information and instigated this. He was able to get the better of us.” MISATO (OFF):“Someone who can pull the wool over the eyes of Intelligence Division 2? It can't be!”	UrsusArctos: Seele had begun setting up Kaji's execution at the start of the previous episode. The suggestion that Kaji himself abducted Fuyutsuki is questionable, since Cut 263 strongly suggests otherwise. It seems that Division 2 themselves abducted Fuyutsuki and set Kaji up to take the blame for it, with the intention of capturing him and finishing him off and presenting that as the official story to the rest of Nerv. Division 2 turns out to be under Seele's influence and remains demonstrably antagonistic to Nerv after this point, doing little to track or provide security to the Eva pilots and abandoning them outright by EoE.
	007	MAN:“Ryoji Kaji is the man believed to be the mastermind behind this.”
	008	MISATO (OFF):“And that's why you're here.” MAN:“We appreciate your quick understanding.”
	009	MISATO:“Considering the history between me and him, it seems like the logical step to take.” MAN:“As a member of the same organization, it is regrettable that we must suspect the Chief of Operations, but this is part of our job.”
	010	MAN (OFF):“Thank you for your cooperation. Take her away.”
	11-14
	015	FUYUTSUKI:“It has been a while, Chairman Kiel. This is quite a rude welcome.” KEEL:“I need not apologize to you for the impropriety. This is a necessary procedure in order to speak with you at leisure.”
	016	FUYUTSUKI:“You certainly haven't changed. Does my convenience mean nothing then?”
	017	07:“The problem being discussed is an urgent matter. It was unavoidable.”
	018	03:“Please understand.”
	019	FUYUTSUKI:“So, it's Seele and not the Committee.” ??:“We have no intention of creating a new god.” ??:“We would like your cooperation, Professor Fuyutsuki.”	Mbryo: The Human Instrumentality Committee and Seele are basically one and the same, the former merely being the 'official' designation that Seele uses for more public activities. The fact that they appeared before Fuyutsuki as Seele implies that they are here for more ominous purposes. Dr. Nick: Oddly, the Seele members other than Kiel use goofy voice changers in this scene, even though Fuyutsuki knows the identities of 40% of the monoliths thanks to being present at the Human Instrumentality Committee meetings. The monoliths speak with unscrambled voices later in episode 23 and in EoE. And since we're talking about Seele, I personally feel like this is the place where the show's sometimes frustrating lore vagueness actually works the best. Seele is a thinly-sketched group of antagonists, basically just "the cabal" with "the evil plan" and some cool, ominous visual signifiers. It's a simple canned trope, but it's also a future-proofed trope since the group is too featureless to be seen as an expy for any specific real-world thing. This also helps to keep the show clear from any harmful real-world conspiracy theories, although the early fandom kind of went there with the wild (and completely unsupported) "Kiel is the Wandering Jew" theory. Additional Commentary   Dr. Nick: Of course, this vagueness of the antagonists is an example of accidental greatness, as it resulted from a rewrite forced by an external event - the Aum Shinrikyo cult's deadly nerve gas attack in March 1995, a little over half a year prior to the airing of the first episode. It's always been a matter of fandom conjencture what was changed and how much these changes rocked the show's production process, and in the case of the western fandom we can be pretty certain that there are all kinds of juicy Japanese sources that have never been translated into English, but we do know that distancing Evangelion's plot from Aum's real-world atrocities was a major imperative for Gainax. One tantalizing, although a second-hand source is Krystian Woznicki's interview with the Japanese cultural critic Hiroki Azuma, who had talked with Anno about the rewrite situation among other things. Interestingly, the shape-shifting nature of the Angels too stems from this same impulse to make the enemy vague and abstract: "The angels change their form for example into pyramids, into shadows. I asked Anno about such abstract characteristics of the angels. He said that this reflects the feelings of his generation. For his generation the enemy is not political. It is also not definite. I mentioned to Anno that such abstract characteristics of the enemy are very close to the conception of Aum as enemy (e.g. poison gas) which he admitted."
	020	FUYUTSUKI (MONO):“Professor Fuyutsuki...” STUDENT 1 (OFF):“Professor!”
	021	STUDENT 1 (OFF):“Professor Fuyutsuki!” TEXT:“Year 1999, Kyoto”
	022
	023	FUYUTSUKI:“Oh, it's you two.” FUYUTSUKI:“Again?” FUYUTSUKI:“Sure, all right.” STUDENT 1:“You wanna join us for some beer in Kamogawa?” STUDENT 2:“Ryoko and the others are saying they'll go if you go.” STUDENT 1:“Our professor was also saying you should show up once in a while.”
	024
	025	FUYUTSUKI:“Yes, Sir.” FUYUTSUKI:“I'm sure you're right.” OLD MAN:“It's good to go out and have a drink every so often.” OLD MAN:“You excel at your work, but you don't take socializing seriously and that's not good.”
	026	OLD MAN:“By the way, Fuyutsuki, there's a bioengineering student who submitted an interesting paper. The student's name is Ikari. Do you know her?”
	027	FUYUTSUKI:“Ikari? No, I don't.”
	028	OLD MAN:“I told her about you and she said she was interested in meeting you. She'll probably contact you eventually, so take care of things, will you?”
	029	FUYUTSUKI:“Ikari, was it? All right.”
	030	TEXT:“Metaphysical Biology Research Room 1 Fuyutsuki”	Dr. Nick: A GIGANTIC plot point is understatedly spelled out: this is the made-up science that makes NGE's plot happen. In that sense, it's somewhat comparable to Minovsky physics in the original Gundam. The basics of Evangelion's soul science are of course recycled from another Tomino series, Space Runaway Ideon, wherein a temperamental hivesoul called the Ide resides within the titular robot and serves as the all-powerful cosmic horror macguffin over which the two factions fight. Anno puts his prequelist spin to this, with the Third Impact being an event that can potentially create such a cosmic being. Additional Commentary   Dr. Nick: Ideon, in turn, gets a big chunk of its metaphysics from - believe it or not - the 1956 scifi classic Forbidden Planet. The movie is of course one of those ur-influence texts whose DNA can be found in basically every single work of pop science fiction that came after it, but in Ideon's case the things borrowed are remarkably specific. This goes even for the name of the hivesoul: turns out IDE isn't just a cheeky anagram for DIE. UrsusArctos: As a super-quick primer for those who don't know, Forbidden Planet is often described as "Star Trek without Spock" and that's actually a fairly accurate description - its influence on no less than Star Trek is particularly clearly visible in the pilot episode, not seen publicly until 1988. The power of Id that drives the Krell machines and the *cough*idmonster*cough* has a direct parallel in the Ide that powers the Ideon and drives it to perform impossible feats - or for that matter, the *cough*maternal love*cough* of the Evas in Evangelion.
	031	FUYUTSUKI:“I read your paper. I found a couple of things questionable, but it was a stimulating paper.”
	032	YUI:“Thank you very much.” FUYUTSUKI (OFF):“Yui Ikari, wasn't it?” YUI:“Yes.” FUYUTSUKI (OFF):“What are your plans for the future? Are you going to find work? Or do you intend to join the research lab here?” YUI:“I haven't thought that far ahead yet. And besides, aren't you forgetting a third option?”
	033
	034	YUI:“I'm also considering a domestic life. Of course, that's only if I can find someone nice.”	UrsusArctos: (Due to formatting issues I moved a rather substantial discussion on Yui's character and motives into the "additional comments" section). Additional Commentary   Dr. Nick: We're given important glimpses of her backstory, but Yui still remains mysterious to this day. The potentially extracanonical revelation that she's the daughter of an influential member of Seele feels like an important puzzle piece that should've been in the show proper, as it explains how this random young scientist knows about the conspiracy she then sets out to thwart. But when we start considering the details of her plan, things get highly speculative. For example, does Yui choose to let herself become Unit-01's resident soul and then manipulate the proceedings during 3I to her liking simply because it's the only option, and stopping Seele outright is impossible even for her? Is her becoming a living monument to humanity's existence just her making the best out of an unfortunate situation, a consolation prize of sorts ("I will go along with the flow of things.")? Because if she prioritized the monument thing over shutting the Third Impact down cold, that is morally suspect. It's no wonder that "Yui is a stealth villain" is a pretty popular fan theory. Similarly, consider the cold pragmatist/sociopath reading of this line: is Yui implying "I need to have a child (who'll become an Eva pilot I can manipulate) for my plan to work"? Seele doesn't yet have a practical roadmap to their end goal, but is Yui, being a scientist, ahead of the old religious weirdos? Has she already foreseen pilotable biomechs at this point in time? UrsusArctos: Yes, it's for good reason that "Yui is a high-functioning sociopath" theory has gone everywhere from heated EGF discussions to Shinji and Warhammer 40K where Bhepin turned it into dramedy in his usual absurdly over-the-top style. A lot of Yui's actions, such as "showing Shinji the bright future" while disappearing inside Eva-01 and traumatizing the poor kid (and turning her husband into an obsessive wreck) really come off as the work of a sociopath, especially since we don't have any information about why she thinks doing what she did was a remotely good idea. Even talking to the single, lonely Fuyutsuki about marrying the right person could be interpreted as a callous attempt at manipulating Fuyutsuki's feelings. Given just how much of an upward battle women have against sexism, especially in Japan, I really don't see someone in Yui's position willingly giving up a promising research career for cozy domesticity - it's so blood-boilingly anti-feminist and misogynist that it invites suspicion on the woman voicing such an opinion. I vaguely remember an ancient (and crazy) theory that Yui's ahead of the old geezers because her time in Eva-01 allowed her, Dr. Manhattan-style, to live her life in a nonlinear fashion and that this extended to her Lilin existence, and she can "go with the flow" because she already knows how that'll work out. On the balance, I'd say Yui benefits from a lack of backstory in exactly the same way as Seele. By being a cipher it really is hard to pin down her motivations, good or bad, and it leaves it to the viewer to try to piece something together from the scraps that we are given, utterly unlike the deep dives we get with Shinji, Misato, Asuka and Rei. We get moments where her behavior seems bizarre and even sociopathic, but on the other side we have powerfully maternal moments that seem to throw any such notion out of the window. We have no choice but to accept Yui as the strange constellation of contradictions that her actions present, rather than get to truly know her.
	035

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