Rei II
"Rei II", also known by the Japanese title is the sixth episode of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was created by Gainax. "Rei II" was written by Hideaki Anno and Akio Satsukawa and directed by Hiroyuki Ishido. The series is set fifteen years after a worldwide cataclysm named Second Impact, and is mostly set in the futuristic, fortified fictional city of Tokyo-3. The episode's protagonist is teenage boy Shinji Ikari, who is recruited by his father Gendo to the organization Nerv to pilot a bio-machine mecha named Evangelion against beings called Angels. In the episode, Shinji must annihilate the fifth Angel Ramiel, who is able to destroy every enemy in its vicinity with an accelerated particles cannon. A plan called Operation Yashima is worked out, which involves Shinji shooting Ramiel from a distance with a Positron Rifle.
Production of the sixth episode took place simultaneously with the fifth, "Rei I", before the third, "A Transfer" and the fourth, "Hedgehog's Dilemma". The final scene, in which female pilot Rei Ayanami smiles at Shinji, has been described by staff and critics as the end of Evangelion
Plot
, the pilot of the giant mecha Evangelion, is attacked and damaged by Ramiel, the fifth of a series of enemies known as Angels. His Evangelion Unit-01 is recovered and Shinji is rescued and hospitalized. The Angel then settles over the headquarters of the special agency Nerv and began to drill the land to reach it, destroying every enemy that approaches with a particle cannon. While Shinji is recovering, Nerv's Major, Misato Katsuragi, comes up with a plan named Operation Yashima: to destroy Ramiel with a positron beam rifle, fired from outside Ramiel's attack zone. For the plan, the rifle must be able to withstand a high amount of electric energy, and is determined that it needs power from the whole of Japan.While the countdown for the shooting is starting, Ramiel starts to charge to attack the Evangelion and shoots toward it, simultaneously with the Evangelion's rifle's shot, resulting in the collision of the two beams and the shots miss. Ramiel charges up for a second attack, which it can fire at Shinji before he can prepare his positron rifle for a second shot. Rei Ayanami in Evangelion Unit-00 steps in and shields Unit-01 from Ramiel's beam, but both the shield and Unit-00 sustain severe damage in the process. Shinji fires his second shot, which pierces the Angel and kills it, stopping the drill. Shinji force ejects Unit-00's cockpit and opens the hatch. Rei is unharmed and unfazed. Shinji cries and Rei says she doesn't know what to feel; Shinji advises her to smile, and Rei smiles.
Production
In 1993 Gainax produced a presentation document of Neon Genesis Evangelion named New Century Evangelion Proposal, containing a first draft of the planned episodes. The Proposal document was then published in 1994. In the first draft, the basic plot for the sixth episode was already planned and the Japanese title "Showdown in Tokyo-3" was decided. "The Eva's revenge" was also planned to take place in the installment. Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno and Akio Satsukawa wrote "Rei II", while Masayuki drew the storyboards. Hiroyuki Ishido served as director, Nobuhiro Hosoi as chief animator, and Rei Yumeno as assistant character designer.Anno felt stuck after writing the script for the first episode, "Angel Attack", which took half a year to complete, so he wrote "Rei I" and "Rei II" before the third and the fourth episodes. For production reasons, the post-recording dubbing followed the same order. He encountered difficulties while writing for Rei, not feeling "particularly interested" or relating to her, but he thought of her as a representation of his unconscious mind and shaped the character with the phrase "You won't die, I will protect you". At the end of the episode he also inserted a scene where Rei smiles at Shinji, but he later regretted it, since Shinji and Rei manage to communicate with each other and establish emotional contact in the episode; according to Anno, the character of Rei thus reaches its conclusion smiling.
The episode was the first time two Evangelion units were portrayed at the same time, so they were intentionally represented with few movements, with the Eva-00 using only a shield and the Eva-01 motionless while shooting Ramiel, to save animation resources. Ramiel's design, made by Anno himself, was also conceived to save money. While Sachiel, the Angel from the first and second episodes, has a humanoid shape, Ramiel has a geometric abstract shape, because the staff did not have enough resources for an anthropomorphic enemy. Moreover, according to series assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki, "everything after the storyboard was ordered by another company", and Gainax had no control over it. Yashima Operation was in fact delegated to Vega Entertainment.
In "Rei II", captions were used to create a documentary feel, a technique Anno previously used in Gunbuster. The installment also depicts real existing places during the preparations for Operation Yashima, such as Mount Futago, Makurazaki, Betsukai, Ube and Mitaka Ward of Tokyo, the birthplace of Anno and the place of the headquarters of Gainax, respectively. A map of Japan is framed during the operation, drawn with differences from actuality. Since Second Impact raised the sea level in the Evangelion universe, the smaller islands are difficult to trace on the map, while the main islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu have different shapes. Megumi Hayashibara, Rei's voice actress, performed the voice of an anonymous woman making time announcements during the process; Tetsuya Iwanaga and Tomokazu Seki voiced as Nerv operators, while Yuko Miyamura voiced a female announcer. A version of Fly Me to the Moon named "Rei #6" sung by Hayashibara was also used for the ending theme of the episode.
Cultural references
According to Yūichirō Oguro, an editor of some Japanese home video editions of Evangelion, the Japanese title "Showdown in Tokyo-3" is a possible reference to the sixth episode of Return of Ultraman, "Showdown! Monsters vs. MAT". Like "Rei II", "Showdown! Monsters vs. MAT" contains a large-scale operation. Oguro noted that ticker tape is also used during the episode, similarly to Anno's previous works Gunbuster and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. He compared the use of ticker tape to the works by director Kihachi Okamoto. Critics also speculated that Ramiel's design was influenced by Mirai Keisatsu Urashiman and 2001: A Space Odyssey.The name of Operation Yashima originates from the Battle of Yashima, fought in 1185, during the Genpei War. According to a legend, the samurai warrior Nasu no Yoichi riding his horse shot an arrow through the water and hit the red fan of his enemy Tamamushi, resolving the battle in favor of the Minamoto clan. In Neon Genesis Evangelion Ramiel is similarly centered and beaten by a precise shot fired from a position located across the waters of Lake Ashi, Mount Futago. A different spelling of the term yashima can be translated as "eight countries", an ancient epithet of Japan, a reference to the Positron Rifle's electrical energy, taken from the entire Japanese archipelago. The naming is the result of a specific request from the series' director, Hideaki Anno, who asked to include something related to the name Yashima during the production.
In "Rei II" scientific concepts are used as well. During Operation Yashima, for example, Eva-00 uses a SSTO as a shield, while Eva-01 uses the Positron Sniper Rifle as a firearm, which draws its power from positron acceleration, generating a bright beam of photons. The expression "phase transition space" is mentioned. The book Evangelion Glossary by Yahata Shoten linked the espression to the phase change and the cosmological phase transition. The Magi System, a biological supercomputer composed of three computers that rule Nerv and Tokyo-3, is also mentioned for the first time in the episode. The Magi System is a democratic and rational system similar to the concept of artificial intelligence. Its name originates from the Biblical Magi who came from the East mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, traditionally named Balthasar, Gaspar, and Melchior. According to the official Evangelion film books, like the three astrologers from whom it takes its name, the supercomputer is composed of three independent calculators that to solve any kind of problem consult each other and make a decision by majority. Writers Víctor Sellés de Lucas and Manuel Hernández-Pérez similarly wrote that, as later Christian traditional identified Magi as astrologers and scholars, the Magi System "operates as a council of the wise and sometimes even as an oracle of sorts".
Themes
"Rei II" depicts the inner world of Rei Ayanami, focus of the episode. Neon Genesis Evangelion assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki pointed out how "distant, awkward communication" can be initially observed between Shinji and Rei in the first episodes, describing Evangelion as a story about communication. In "Rei I" and "Rei II" Ayanami is initially cold towards Shinji, who tries to communicate with her but is rejected. At the end of the episode, Shinji saves her in a similar way to how his father Gendo did in the previous episode. Shinji bursts into tears, and Rei says she doesn't know what to do at times like that; Shinji advises her to smile. Rei overlays Shinji's and Gendo's faces and smiles, and it is not clear if she is able to understand Shinji's feelings in the scene. For critic Manabu Tsuribe, the show reaches its climax at the smile scene, and "as a story of 'growth and independence of a boy'—like a Bildungsroman—ended there once. Evangelion as a story has stopped there". Assistant director Masayuki gave a similar interpretation.Evangelion Chronicle magazine noted how the tactical realism of Operation Yashima was a rarity for anime at the time. The magazine linked the realism of the strategy to the Gulf War, the images of which had a high resonance in the Japanese and world media; following the conflict from the 1990s onwards, there was an increased focus on the war realism of the fighting in TV shows. In the scene before the beginning of Yashima Operation, Shinji asks Rei the reason that pushes her to want to pilot Evangelion 00; Rei replies saying that she has nothing else and she finds her "bond" with other people in this. For sociologist Satomi Ishikawa, this shows that she is committed to the struggle against the Angels "as if it were the only reason why she exists".
Writer Dennis Redmond noted that Rei is silhouetted against a close-up of the full Moon before Yashima Operation. Writer Yumiko Yano noted that the Moon is a celestial body associated with passivity and femininity and observed an unattainable aura in Rei, comparing her to the Virgin Mary. Yano also associated her figure with the fragile and chaste women portrayed in fin de siècle art, particularly popular among the works of Symbolists painters. For Redmond, "Rei II" illustrates the Japanese national power grid via a satellite shot of Japan from outer space; he also compared the social and natural landscapes of Evangelion to that of postwar Japan. For reviewer Akio Nagatomi, Rei's attitude in the episode also reflects one of the traits of traditional Japanese society, the martyr complex, in which a person will do whatever it takes to accomplish a given task, regardless of personal consequences.