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"An Unfamiliar Ceiling" is the second episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Overview[]

Shinji wakes up in the hospital, with no memory of the fight against the Angel the night before. His father wants nothing to do with him, so NERV's head of operations, Misato Katsuragi, becomes his legal guardian. Settling into life in Misato's apartment, he eventually recalls the furious battle.

Extended Summary[]

Episode 02 resumes the first episode, with Shinji preparing to face the Angel in Evangelion Unit-01. Shinji's fear makes his attempt to move his Eva fail, vulnerable to the Angel's attack. The Angel then proceeds to seriously damage the Eva, breaking its left arm and piercing through its skull. The pilot's signal is lost, and the Eva shuts down. The scene then cuts to the hospital, where Shinji suddenly wakes up, noting that he doesn't recognize where he is.

Gendo discusses the reappearance of the angels after 15 years with the Human Instrumentality Committee,[1] while Misato and Ritsuko survey the aftermath of the battle. Gendo is instructed not to let the reappearance of the Angels allow the Human Instrumentality Project[2][3] to fall behind schedule. Shinji sees Rei at the hospital. Misato comes to pick Shinji up at the hospital and they meet Gendo by the elevator, but Shinji wordlessly refuses to enter.

Misato takes Shinji to be assigned accommodation, but discovers that he is to live on his own. She decides to take him to live with her instead, after jokingly promising Ritsuko not to "put the moves on" him, drawing Ritsuko's outspoken ire that she would even joke about it being a possibility in the first place.[4]. On the way home from shopping[5], Misato takes Shinji to an observation point overlooking Tokyo-3 and they witness the city building emerge from underground. ditsource&section=2

Misato and Shinji arrive at Misato's Apartment. The latter tries to enter as a guest, but Misato insists that the apartment is now his home, which Shinji reluctantly agrees to. Misato's apartment is in an incredibly messy state, the instant meals and many beer cans giving away her usual life at home. Misato changes and they begin eating while the former also succeeds in getting drunk.

While taking a bath, Shinji meets Pen Pen in the bathroom and is so startled that he runs back into the kitchen to tell Misato who explains that Pen-Pen is their other "roommate", and advises Shinji to cover up. As he slinks back into the bathroom in extreme embarrassment, Shinji reflects on the day's events.

We see Evangelion Unit-00 frozen in Bakelite being observed by Gendo and Ritsuko. They discuss Rei's recovery in a ruined control room and Gendo reveals that despite their hardships he will continue to have the children pilot the Evangelions.

Shinji lies alone in his bedroom, listening to his SDAT player while Misato speaks with Ritsuko on the phone about their situation. Shinji reflects on his presence in Tokyo-3, and as he does so, sounds from the battle are heard and images of nerve cells as viewed through a microscope flash across the screen. A flashback then begins which shows the events of the earlier battle.

NGE02 96

Unit-01 charging at Sachiel

Unit-01 was rendered inoperative by Sachiel's attack, with NERV losing control of the Eva and contact with the pilot. Misato orders the ejection of the Entry Plug, but the system is completely out of control. Unit-01 suddenly reactivates and begins to act on its own, launching a vicious attack upon the Angel and succeeding in damaging its face. A second attack by the Eva is blocked by a powerful A.T. Field barrier. The Eva then repairs its broken left arm and erodes the Angel's barrier with another A.T. Field.

Once the barrier is down, Unit-01 soundly defeats Sachiel by shattering the downed Angel's Core. As a last desperate attack, Sachiel wraps itself around the Eva and self destructs in a massive cross-shaped explosion, though Unit-01 emerges from the explosion with little apparent damage.

NGE02 114

Sachiel's death explosion

As NERV regains control of the Evangelion, Shinji comes to in the entry plug. The damaged helmet sloughs off, and Shinji is able to glimpse the Eva's face reflected in the windows of a building. As he looks on, the Eva's eye regenerates and suddenly stares straight at him, resulting in him screaming in terror before the scene abruptly cuts back to Shinji in his room.

He slowly curls up in bed after recalling the battle before Misato comes to his door and praises him for piloting the Eva and saving the city.

Notes[]

  • 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"."
  • 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.
  • The outfit that Misato changes into when she brings Shinji back to her apartment (blue cutoff short shorts, a loose-fitting yellow t-shirt, and apparently no bra) is exactly the same outfit that Asuka wears when she kisses Shinji in Episode 15.
  • The shot of Misato grabbing Shinji's head from above while at her kitchen table visually parallels the shot when Sachiel grabs Eva-01's head from above.
  • Unit-01 is seen without it's helmet on, revealing that Evangelions are clearly not robots, but more living organic creatures with cybernetic machine and computer components grafted onto them. Eva Unit 01 can apparently regenerate battle damage, just like an Angel. It doesn't do this very often in the series, but it's the only Evangelion ever seen actually doing this.
  • First appearance of Pen Pen, Misato's "warm water penguin".
  • 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".
  • Whenever an Evangelion screams when it goes "berserk" in the series, it is part of the episode's dialogue track, not just the background effects sound track. As a result, when episodes such as this one are translated into different languages, the Evangelion screams have to actually be re-produced by different voice actors. The result is that Eva screams sound noticeably different between the original Japanese and English dub versions.
  • 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.
  • Misato's apartment is littered with several car magazines; Gainax character designer and animator Yoshiyuki Sadamoto is himself a car enthusiast.
  • When Shinji's memories about the battle against Sachiel return to him, images of nerve cells as viewed through a microscope flash across the screen.
  • 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.
  • 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

Quotes[]

  • Shinji Ikari: "I don't know this ceiling."
  • Misato Katsuragi: "This is New Tokyo-3. This is our city. And it's the city that you helped to protect."
  • Ritsuko Akagi: "It's gone berserk?"

References[]

  1. This marks the first appearance of the "Human Instrumentality Committee" of Seele, and Seele's leader Chairman Keel Lorenz. The Human Instrumentality Project is incorrectly translated as "Human Complementation Project" in this episode by the English dub, though correctly translated in all subsequent appearances.
  2. The translation of the file cover displayed during the meeting of the Instrumentality Committee is: "Top Secret/Human Instrumentality Project/International Alliance Supreme Executive Council/17th Interim Report/Human Instrumentality Committee/2015 Business Plan Outline/Summary"
  3. "Speaking of improvisation, when I added the ‘Human Complementation Project’ that appears in the second episode, and which was going to become the fulcrum/pivot of the plot, I still had no idea about what it was going to ‘complement’. It’s just a verbal bluff (laughs). - Anno June 1996 Newtype Interview
  4. Misato's promise not to "put the moves" on Shinji foreshadows both the scene in ep. 23 where she tries (and fails) to "comfort" Shinji by seducing him, and the scene in The End of Evangelion where she gives him an "adult kiss" (and promises to "do the rest" later) to encourage him to pilot Eva-01.
  5. 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 voice actress.
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