Coming back to some things from earlier posts...
I wonder if Anno's apparent disinterest in developing Rei's personality might be part of the key to her popularity. Compared to the other main characters, she seems far more like a blank slate for people to project their own interpretations on to.
I do really like that interpretation. I think there's a lot of truth to that.
It brings something else to mind. I have a little book on my shelves called "Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How teenage girls made a nation cool". It's written by American journalist Brian Ashcraft and his Japanese wife, Shouko Ueda, and charts the iconic image of the sailor-suited high-school student in its myriad appearances in Japanese pop culture. There's a chapter on anime, and a boxout on Evangelion, focussing on Rei in particular. Here's an excerpt from it:
"When the mysterious Rei first appears in the series she's injured and her head and arms are bandaged. The image of the wounded eighth grader struck a chord with viewers — she was an incredibly sympathetic character in a country that was struggling after the economic bubble burst. Rei, more than any other character, captured the melancholy mood of the nineties and epitomized Japanese ideals of loyalty, honor, and dedication."
I found that insightful.
Lastly, we got an instrumental rendition of 'I Can't Be Yours' after Shinji gets back into the Eva. Not hugely significant, but I remember the vocal version is the track that plays during the intermission in Death and Rebirth, so I was a little surprised that it predated that.
If memory serves (and I think it does in this case), the vocal version of "If I Can't Be Yours" is actually used during the midpoint credits sequence of The End of Evangelion (between the two "episodes" that make up the film). The intermission music of D&R is an acoustic guitar version of "A Cruel Angel's Thesis", followed by the brassy musical selection that accompanies that TV drama that's heard in the background a few times in Misato's apartment.
Can't remember exactly which episodes of the series it appears in.
EDIT: It's in Episode 23, for example. 13mins 43secs in the original version, 14mins 50secs in the Director's Cut, as Pen Pen is watching TV.
Is that the right episode/time stamp? I get Misato asking for people to find out if anyone is alive after the explosion.
Ah, okay. Yeah, 12mins 30secs is the timestamp for the
original version of Episode 23; for the Director's Cut it's at 13mins 35secs instead.
I do think you're right about Ritsuko being the person SEELE are talking about, because the vocal echo on the discussion sequence segues into the following scene with Ritsuko. That scene also has no real reason to be there unless SEELE are referring to
her. It mirrors how their discussion of "the bell around [Gendo's] neck" cuts straight to Kaji. It was the bit about them using
her against Gendo that I couldn't quite square because, like you say, SEELE only come into contact with Ritsuko because Gendo sent her to answer their questions in Rei's stead — unlike Kaworu, whom we
know SEELE sent themselves. Maybe Episode 23's just as much of a mystery as Episode 24, then!
(Reading the notes for the episode synopses on Evageeks, it becomes clear that the script is inconsistent in places, anyway, so...)
One thing I did notice in the first SEELE scene is after Fuyutsuki calls and Ikari breaks off the meeting the subs say "Your seat will be waiting for you" however the old dub and the new sub and dub all say words to the effect of "assuming you're still in command".
. . .
So anyone who has only seen the old sub is very much getting the wrong impression of that line it seems!
Yeah, that line's mistranslated in the original version's subtitles. The actual line in Japanese is:
"Sono toki, kimi no seki ga nokotte itara na."
I can only assume that the translator misheard the last part as something like:
"...nokotte'ru kara na."
That would turn it into a guarantee that Gendo's place will indeed remain.
