Episode 04

Episode Information
Episode #04
Title 1: {{{japanese_title_k}}} {{{japanese_title_r}}} {{{japanese_title_e}}} Title 2: Hedgehog's Dilemma
Written By	Akio Satsukawa
Directed By	Tsuyoshi Kaga
First Aired	10-25-1995
Video Release Date	{{{video_release}}}
Angel Appearances	none
Episode chronology
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"Episode 3"	"Episode 5"

Overview

Misato is upset with Shinji for ignoring her orders in the last Angel battle, and he is so overcome by the stress of being an Eva pilot that he runs away. After wandering around Tokyo-3 for several days, Shinji is faced with the choice of quitting or staying in his new home.

Synopsis

It's been five days since the battle with Shamshel, and Shinji still hasn't returned to school. Misato knocks on his bedroom door and tries to persuade him, only to find that he has run away. Concerned about his absence, Toji and Kensuke come to visit. Misato lies and tells them he is training at headquarters.

Shinji boards a local train and rides it all day, repeatedly listening to tracks 25 & 26 on his SDAT, leaving only when the train is taken out of service for the night. He tells himself, "I've got to go back", but instead attends a late-night showing of a movie about Second Impact. The few other people there seem to be either sleeping or making out. He spends the night in the theater's lobby. The next morning he leaves the theater, but hallucinates that the buildings are closing in on him. Thus he flees to the countryside.

Back at Nerv headquarters, Ritsuko is examing Rei. Misato is there and we learn that Shinji left after she upbraided him for disobeying her retreat order in episode 3.

Meanwhile, in a violation of the law of incredible coincidence, Shinji meets Kensuke, who is in the wilderness playing survivalist. Kensuke reveals that he is jealous, both because Shinji is living with a beautiful woman, and because he is an Eva pilot. When Kensuke expresses a desire to be a pilot as well, Shinji admonishes him that his mother would be worried. Kensuke reveals that like Shinji, he has none. Shinji camps out with Kensuke that night. The next morning, several men in black from Nerv arrive and take Shinji into custody. Back at school, Toji upbraids Kensuke for not doing anything about it (as if he could have).

Back at Nerv headquarters Misato confronts Shinji, telling him they don't need a pilot with his attitude. Shinji elects to resign. Gendo orders Unit-01 reconfigured for Rei. Two men in black take Shinji to the train station, where Toji and Kensuke see him off, as they have so many of their other classmates. Toji insists that Shinji hit him to make up for the beating he gave Shinji in Ep. 3. Shinji hits him surprisingly hard for Shinji. As he is being lead away, Shinji shouts that he (Shinji) is the one who should be hit, for being so weak and cowardly.

Misato finally realizes that the reason that Shinji agreed to live with her was because he was looking for a family, and rushes to the station, seemingly too late. But Shinji hasn't boarded the train. They greet each other with "I'm home", "welcome home".

Notes

• This is the only episode that series creator Hideaki Anno did not write (or co-write). At one point during production, this episode was removed and what is now Episode 5 would have immediately followed Episode 3. However, it was later decided that time needed to be devoted to establishing Shinji's character and relationships, so the episode was added back in. The result was that this episode was written after what is now Episode 5 was already finished, and Anno did not take a direct role in developing either the plot or script.
• Kensuke reveals to Shinji that his mother is dead, just like Shinji's mother. Last episode, Toji also seemed to imply that his mother was dead.
• First episode in which an Angel does not appear.
• Timeline-wise, at the beginning of this episode Misato says that Shinji has not been in school for 5 days, which he left to fight the Angel Shamshel, and then he runs away. Misato later says that he ran away for two days (Shinji spent the first night sleeping in a movie theater, and the second night at Kensuke's camp). Shinji then prepares to leave on a train the day after that. Thus, the final scene of this episode at the train station occurs at the end of the 8th day after the fight against Shamshel.
• Kensuke points out to Shinji the noise the cicadas are making outdoors. Kensuke says that it used to be quiet outside when he was a kid (in the early 2000's) but that now cicadas can be heard constantly. Shinji responds that Misato told him that the ecosystem is returning to its former state. Second Impact caused drastic global environmental shifts, and the immediate affect on Japan is that the country now exists in a state of perpetual summer-weather, year-round. In effect Japan has experienced nothing but summer weather for the past 15 years, and no longer has seasons. A weather girl on a TV playing in the background in this episode also points out there there are no longer four seasons in Japan. A convention used as a subtle hint of this throughout the series is that any time a scene takes place outdoors, no matter the date, cicadas are always heard in the backround: in Japan, cicadas normally only appear during summer.
• 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 that Misato has an alarm clock with the NERV logo printed on the face.
• In Episode 2, Misato taped a paper sign to Shinji's room in her apartment indicating it as Shinji's. By this episode, Misato has replaced it with a somewhat inappropriate pink heart-shaped plaque that says "Shinji's Room" on it (original Japanese: "Shin-chan no heya")
• According to Misato, in the five days since the fight against Shamshel, Eva Unit 01 has already been fully repaired from the damage it sustained in the battle.
• The envelope Shinji leaves for Misato in his room when he runs away is literally addressed "Katsuragi Misato-sama" in the original Japanese. The honorific suffix "-sama" is the more formal version of "-san" (Mr. or Ms.) and is used to politely address those of higher social rank.
• The two songs we hear Shinji listening to on his SDAT while riding on the train are "You are the only one" and "Blue Legend" from "Lilia", an image album for the "Ys" RPG series (previously heard in Episode 2). However, none of the vocal sections are heard in this episode.
• The series of large mountain terraces that Shinji walks up (before he encounters Kensuke) is the real-life Owakudani area. Owakudani is the area around a crater created in the last eruption of Mount Hakone 3000 years ago. Sulfurous fumes, hot springs and hot rivers can be experienced on a walk around the area.
• Shinji never makes eye contact with Misato when she is yelling at him in the flashback to immediately after he defeated Shamshel, when he's tuning her out.
• Kensuke has a whole "training schedule" written out on a chalkboard in his tent for his military role playing, which translated from Japanese reads:

Outline of Summer Training Practice Operations
Japan's Mobilization Schedule
15:00 Deploy for combat
16:00 Prepare for attack, commence firing
19:00 (left blank)

• When Toji refers to "balls" he actually says "matanki", which means nothing. It is really "kintama" spelled backward in Japanese characters (ki+n+ta+ma reversed to ma+ta+n+ki). Kintama is a slang term for testicles which literally means "gold balls".
• Rei and Shinji begin to be referred to on-screen (here in the scene between Gendo and Ritsuko) using the "Children" nomenclature: Rei is the "First Child" and Shinji is the "Third Child". That this skips over the "Second Child" designation is a subtle hint this early in the series that there is another Eva pilot that we haven't been introduced to yet: Asuka Langley Soryu, who does not actually appear for another four episodes.
• A mistake that occurs near the end of the episode is that when Misato drives her car up to the train station, she gets out of her car on the left hand side, even though cars drive on the right hand side in Japan. Further, we've actually seen Misato while driving in her car during an extended scene in the firth episode, during which she was sitting in the driver's seat which was indeed located on the right hand side of her car.
• While at the train station, background announcements make reference to trains departing for Gora (a tourist hub and spa town near Mount Fuji), and Atsugi.
• In an example of economy in casting, several of the regular Seiyu appear in this episode as train announcers, public announcers, movie cast members, etc. Including:
  • Yuko Miyamura (Asuka) as Movie Theater Woman, Public Announcer Right, Girl A, and Station Announcer Left.
  • Megumi Hayashibara (Rei, Yui, Pen Pen) as Train Announcer, Public Announcer Left, Station Announcer, and (in the movie) Woman.
  • Kotono Mitsuishi (Misato) as Girl B.
  • Yuriko Yamaguchi (Ritsuko) as Girl C.
  • Fumihiko Tachiki (Gendo) as Station Announcer and (in the movie) Doctor.
  • Tetsuya Iwanaga (Kensuke) as Assistant A (movie).
  • Tomokazu Seki (Toji) as Assistant B (movie).

Analysis

• Ritsuko explicitly states that only 14 year old children can pilot Evangelions, but does not elaborate on why exactly this is so.
  • Possibly it is because hormonal changes in late puberty make it impossible for adults to synchronize with Evangelions, but they want the oldest possible child pilots (i.e. if the pilot has to be before the later stages of puberty, they'd rather use a 14 year old than a 5 year old).
  • All Evangelion pilots were conspicuously born in the year following Second Impact. There might be a connection with this.
• Did Misato go out of her way to buy a heart-shaped pink name plaque for the door to Shinji's room (clearly meant for a girl), or was it her own plaque which she had buried in one of her moving boxes (many of which remain unpacked), then found and arbitrarily hung on Shinji's door?
• When Shinji is standing on top of the mountain terrace and stands near the edge of a cliff, he appears to be contemplating suicide (the production notes for the episode describe the the cliff by noting that it "looks like a famous suicide site). However, if Shinji was contemplating suicide he apparently didn't have the courage to go through with it. Series creator Hideaki Anno has himself commented on Shinji by saying that he is a boy who doesn't even have the courage to kill himself.
• Kensuke Aida's obsession with military-related things goes beyond just "playing soldier". He appears to be a "military otaku"; basically nerdy uber-fans of military things which are a bit more common in Japan than North America. Series creator Hideaki Anno appears to himself be a bit of a military otaku, given that many characters on the series are named after World War II military vessels, so Kensuke might be a bit of self-referential parody on Anno's part.
  • It is, of course, a source of irony that throughout the series Kensuke desperately wants to be an Evangelion pilot, because from the outside it seems like "fun", when it reality it puts Shinji under a great deal of mental stress (not to mention physical danger).
  • A further layer of irony here is that if Kenseke were to become an Eva pilot, his Eva's core would be imbued with his mother's soul. Thus, despite her apparent death, Shinji's statement that she would be worried is likely correct.
• When Shinji decides that he wants to quit piloting Eva Unit 01, Gendo tells Ritsuko that they will begin reconfiguring Eva 01 so that Rei can pilot it. In Episode 1, it was stated that it took Rei seven months to synchronize with Eva Unit 00. Thus even though it might take months to get Eva 01 operational with Rei as a pilot (if Rei ever even could successfully synchronize with it), Gendo prioritizes having Eva 01 ready for operation with a pilot eventually over having Eva 00 ready to pilot with Rei in a matter of days.
• Gendo tells Ritsuko that "According to the Marduk Institute's report, the 4th Children has yet to be found." However, later in the series the "Marduk Institute" is revealed to be a dummy organization, and Eva pilots are actually hand-picked by NERV. However it's not entirely clear how Children are really picked, i.e. does Ritsuko pick them all by herself? Do Gendo and Ritsuko select them together? Does Gendo select them entirely on his won without consultation from Ritsuko? All of the potential Eva pilots are grouped together in Class 2-A by NERV to keep them safe and on-hand. Moreover, in this scene Gendo and Ritsuko are just talking to each other (albeit with Rei standing with them). Gendo and Ritsuko are fully aware of the true nature of selecting Eva pilots, thus when essentially in "private" (with only Rei to hear them) it should probably be assumed that they were saying the truth. Thus, has the "Fourth Children" actually not been "determined" yet? Eventually, Toji Suzuhara is "selected" as the Fourth Child in Episode 17, but his "selection" is shown to be a sham. The overall question is: did Gendo and Ritsuko honestly not know that they wanted to use Toji as an Eva pilot this early in the series, or, was he selected to be an Eva pilot since years before the events of the series begin? Shinji synchronizes with Eva 01 because his mother Yui's soul is in it, and Asuka synchronizses with Eva 02 because her mother Kyoko's soul is in it. It takes years to build Evangelion Units. At what point is an Evangelion Unit imbued with a human soul, which then has to be matched with the pilot?

Quotes

• (Toji and Kensuke have just met Misato for the first time)
  Kensuke: "This is an unexpected development."
  Toji: "She was a real babe, wasn't she?"
• (As Shinji walks down the street after running away)
  Public Announcer Left: "Yes, Cheap, Cheap! Blowout sale on hot young girls! When you get tired they'll lead you to paradise."
  
• (Shinji watches the Second Impact Movie)
  Man: "You really couldn't detect it?"
  Doctor: "Correct. An object tens of millimeters in diameter crashed into Antarctica at more than ten percent of the speed of light!"
  Assistant A: "Our technology could neither predict it nor defend against it."
  Woman: "But it's hell out there! Just what is the purpose of science!?"
  Man: "The atmospheric flux caused by the change in the Earth's axis has decreased by 3%."
  Woman: "So, has it calmed down a little?"
  Assisant C:"Negative!! There's a tidal wave approaching at 230 meters a second!"
  Man: "Doctor! We must evacuate!"
  Doctor: "No, it's my duty to remain here."
  Man: "Doctor, dying is easy, but you have an obligation to watch this Hell on Earth."
• Toji: "Don't you have any balls!?!"
  Kensuke: "Only an idiot fights when he knows he can't win. Balls have nothing to do with it."
• (Shinji has met Kensuke in the wilderness)
  Kensuke: "I really envy you. Living with such a beautiful woman and getting to pilot Evangelion. Oh, I wish I could get behind the controls just once!"
  Shinji: "You'd better not. Your mother would be worried."
  Kensuke: "Ah, that's okay. I don't have one."
  Shinji: "Ah…"
  Kensuke: "I'm the same as you, Ikari."
• (Shinji is saying goodbye to Toji and Kensuke)
  Shinji: "It's me who should be hit. I'm a scoundrel...a coward...Dishonest...and weak..."