Do you love me? My understanding of the "Air" part

Mackenzie 2022-01-05 08:02:23

Today is June 21, 2019. The day before yesterday, I was honored to watch "DEATH TRUE(2)" and "Air/Sincere For You" at the Shanghai theater. When I left Shanghai, I wrote something about it and sent it out indiscriminately.

My movie ticket


The scorching sun, the cicadas cried, and the black crowd approached the NRVE headquarters quietly. We don't know the date or the season at this time, but the scorching sun makes people sweat, and the noisy cicadas are annoying, just like the long summer vacation in childhood memories that will never end.

NRVE is headquartered in the third new city of Tokyo. In the old Hakone, Hakone’s underground is the egg of Lilith-Black Moon. With the internal space of the Black Moon, NRVE has built an underground city, the depths of the underground city. With EVA, the deepest final dogma, the huge white giant was nailed to the cross.

All the apostles were wiped out, and the NRVE staff became lazy and idle. The protagonist of the story, Ikura Shinji, also hides somewhere in the underground city, not knowing where to go. The best friend betrayed him. The former comrades-in-arms suffered repeated defeats, and finally collapsed in front of him. Another comrade in arms sacrificed to save him.

Everything is a precursor to collapse, and no one is aware that the light of the scorching sun is about to be blocked, and the cicadas born in the soil will also turn to ashes, as if the never-ending daily life will also end.


Image of blood

The story began under such a scenario, the under-restricted crowd was fully armed and began a general attack on NRVE. The eighteenth apostle, humanity, is the last enemy that NRVE will face. The army began to slaughter the staff of NRVE. Blood splashed everywhere. Without blood, human beings cannot maintain function and stability. Therefore, the loss of blood is the beginning of collapse. The status quo cannot be maintained. With the disappearance of the form that people love, people His heart will die, be dismembered, disintegrated, and be nailed to the cross.

In my opinion, the single symbol of "Air" is parting and goodbye, it is the severance of everything in the past. When the story of EVA first started, the audience followed Ikura Shinji to the Third New Tokyo City, where most of the storyline took place. It can be said that the third new city of Tokyo is the basis of the whole story and the stage where the protagonists interact. But at the beginning of "Air", Shinji stood on the sea with a billboard on the sea with a small advertisement for the treatment of venereal diseases. Then he came to Asuka's ward and masturbated under the drive of various complex feelings, his hands were covered with semen. . These plots symbolize the awakening of Shinji's sexual impulse, about to break away from the ambiguous and uncertain youth and enter adulthood.

The nymphs shed their shells and grow into cicadas with great pain. Many people around the world also have the custom of circumcision of males who are about to become adults, which means that they step out of the arms of their mothers and become independent people in the tribe. "Air" also has a similar metaphor. Therefore, the N2 bomb fell from the sky, melting the buildings of the third new Tokyo city, raising hills after another, breaking through the earth, twisting and tearing it, and tearing all the familiar Everything fell into ruins. The NREV headquarters was full of mutilated corpses, and in the underground city exposed to the sun, the No. 2 unit changed and killed mass-produced units. In the end, Misato, who had been caring for and tolerating Shinji, also fell to the ground, disappearing in the subsequent explosion. From childhood to childhood, Shinji has nothing to rely on spiritually, and the connection with the past cannot be maintained.

I saw in another analysis before that in the first episode, Shinji picked up Ayanami who fell to the ground. The blood-stained shot of Shinji's hands was highly similar to the shot of Shinji's semen-stained hands in this episode. In the fifteenth chapter, Dr. Akagi said that the power to maintain the status quo and the power to change the status quo is the same as self-balance and transient balance. Rei gave Shinji blood. At that time, Shinji decided to overcome his fear and drive the EVA to repel the apostle and maintain the status quo. But in "Air", Asuka gets Shinji contaminated with semen. Death and rebirth are opposed to each other, but they also accompany each other. After facing countless abandonment and betrayal, Shinji flinched in the face of huge pain. He never wanted to drive the EVA anymore. He wanted death, so he let the army slaughter people and change the status quo.

Blood is everywhere in "Air", and the blood splashed when NRVE personnel were slaughtered. The resin gel holding the No.1 machine is also red, just like a blood clot after coagulation. The way for Unit 2 to defeat the first mass-produced unit was to lift it over its head and tear its body apart. Then, the bright red body of Unit 2 was bathed in a pouring rain of blood.

In this bloody and cruel ceremony, the teenager wants to leave his warm and tolerant home, bid farewell to his former friends, and head towards a broader world.


Miri kiss

At the last parting, Misato kissed Shinji. I think the reason for this kiss is because Misato knows that she can’t accompany Shinji to go down, but she hopes that after the separation, Shinji understands that although she has suffered repeated betrayals and injuries, as long as you are willing to discover, the world Still soft and warm. This is a kiss from an adult, and this is a kiss from the adult world. She sends this warm kiss to Shinji who is about to travel and enter the adult world. I hope he knows that even if he wants to leave everything familiar and attached, there are things in the seemingly cruel adult world that will give you warmth and are worthy of your protection.

Next you can only rely on yourself
You have to choose everything for yourself
No one will help you anymore
...
Don’t make excuses, think about what you can do
You have to use your own hands to atone for your sins
...
You ask yourself why you want to drive an EVA
What are you here for
Why stay here again
To find out the answer in your mind

In "Sincere For You", there is a line from Misato, "In the end, I still failed to become Shinji's mother." But in fact, in my opinion, Misato is the closest person to Shinji's mother in the play. When Shinji first came to the third new Tokyo city, it was Misato who took him to NREV, let him live in his own home, accepted him, and took care of him. And when Shinji was about to leave here in the end, the person who saw him off was Misato.

This scene is too classic QAQ


The meaning of "Air"

Freud once put forward the concepts of "life instinct" and "death instinct" which are opposite and tolerant. "Life instinct" makes every creature crave for survival and reproduction and all kinds of beautiful things, so that the population continues to expand. The "death instinct" expects life to return from the state of inorganic matter to inorganic matter, giving organisms the urge to commit suicide and violence against other individuals, and prevent organisms from excessively consuming limited resources.

The subtitle of Chapter 25 in the theater version is , which literally means love is destructive. Love and hate, life and death, accompany each other. Shinji repeatedly said "Let me die, let me die" in "Air". When the army bombed the No. 2 plane hidden at the bottom of the lake, Asuka began to frantically shouting "I don't want to die, I don't want to die" (perhaps this is also an explanation for Shinji's final choke of Asuka's neck?). Then Asuka finally felt the mother's soul hidden in the second plane, and had a desire to fight.

Sometimes I wonder why Chapter 25 is called "Air". I once saw a saying on the Internet that the Japanese pronunciation of "Air" is the same as the Japanese pronunciation of "爱". Love is like air, maybe this is one of the metaphors of this title. Asuka has always thought that she is the one who lacks love, so she has to pretend to be an adult and be strong and sophisticated in front of other people. But in the end she understood that her mother's love for her had always been hidden on the second plane, wrapping her like air. Maybe Asuka's heart has been filled up at this moment.

Shinji is the same. Although he is constantly deceived and hurt by people around him, he also has Misato as his backing. Rei is also willing to die for him, and after Rei succeeded in her death, she was resurrected by Commander Ikoji. Angrily smashed Commander Ikoji's glasses. In fact, Shinji has been treated sincerely by others, but this love is like air, too transparent. Only after entering a vacuum can you remember the beauty of "Air".


In my opinion, what "Air/True For You" wants to talk about is the pain in the growth of a teenager and the courage to face the pain, but this part may be put in the part of "True For You" .


In addition, I would like to mention a point of tribute to Hideaki Nakaamano of "Air". When the second machine was fighting the mass production machine, the second machine had only three and a half minutes of active time. The battle time limit of the giant of light who once guarded the earth is also three minutes.

Guiman’s battle time limit is 3 minutes

View more about Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion reviews

Extended Reading

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion quotes

  • Misato Katsuragi: This is it, Shinji. Do you want to run away, or do you want to pilot the EVA? It's your call. If you sit here and do nothing, then you're already dead!

  • Misato Katsuragi: Giving up halfway is worse than never trying at all. Come on! Get up! MOVE IT!

    Shinji Ikari: I want to die. Just leave me here.

    Misato Katsuragi: Stop talking like a stubborn little brat! Like it or not, you're still alive. Get moving and DO something! You can die later!