The "Adult Quartet": Misato, Ritsuko, Kaji, and Gendo
As promised, I am going to try to answer anon’s message regarding my thoughts on the “adult trio” in NGE (meaning Misato, Ritsuko, and Kaji). I struggled with any kind of systematic analysis until I included Gendo in the equation, and I think it’s because his relationship with Ritsuko functions as a symbolic complement to Misato’s relationship with Kaji.
Thinking about it last night made me realize how much I should be delving into Lacan’s concept of desire, which I have only read about in summary thus far and still kind of makes my head spin. But, as usual, the consolidated existentialist-psychoanalytic framework that Ernest Becker develops from Otto Rank suffices just fine. At least for starters.
I could have typed that up to look nice but screw it, you get my scrappy handwriting/my oversimplified layout of Becker’s existential paradox as clumsily navigated by our characters.
Remember that according to Becker, the foundations of human behavior lie in the terror produced by this paradox, and the frantic attempts to ensure ultimate and transcendent meaning in the face of bodily death. If we use the paradox as a lens, it becomes obvious that both Misato and Ritsuko are grappling with this terror in complementary ways, and that the objects of desire upon which they enact their terror (Kaji and Gendo, respectively) are symbolically antipodal.
I think it’s pretty obvious why I feel Gendo symbolizes death denial, or a refusal to be confined to the limits of the human body. His entire M.O. basically involves becoming god, and defying death in order to reunite with Yui. Why Kaji is representative of death acceptance (or perhaps even resignation) is less immediately clear, especially since we know so little about him, but the concept coalesces more on examination. There is not a single character in the series who is more prepared to accept their inevitable fate. Kaji appears to have a good idea of both how and when he is going to die, and when he does, greets it with equanimity. Kaji’s humorous nature seems a hint at the inherent absurdity of the paradox, or the “cruel joke” that it is to be the “God who shits” (as Becker puts it). Yet his serious side, as evidenced by conversations with both Misato and Shinji, suggests a grace, wisdom, and self-awareness that is not shared by anyone else in NGE.
Misato runs from Kaji because he reminds her of her father, and coming to terms with this would mean accepting that she does not have the sole power to design her own symbolic meaning. It is the failure of the personal causa sui to achieve its primary childhood goal — the defiance of the imparted causa sui of the parent — and is thus a form of death confrontation: the death of the “self-generated self.” She seeks refuge in the body component of the paradox while stripping away the potential for her relationships to carry more profound symbolic weight. To confront her true desires, after all, would mean facing up to death anxiety. She must confine whatever meaning she seeks to areas that do not remind her of her own powerlessness. Probably helps to compensate by investing most of your worth into the identity of Skilled Military Captain.
Ritsuko, by contrast, cannot conceive of the body as a refuge (see also: her bafflement at Misato’s sexuality) and clearly desires a more meaningful relationship with Gendo than one confined to sex. Of course, Gendo is incapable of providing Ritsuko with any kind of emotional validation, and she plunges into suicidal despair. Unlike Misato, who copes with existential powerlessness with denial, Ritsuko attempts to transfer power — the power to designate ultimate meaning — into the wrong party: another human being who is as doomed to die as she is. Gendo may want to defy death, but he cannot; ironically, he pursues transcendence the same way she does, which is the misguided investment of ultimate power into a vessel that cannot hold it:
After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God? We want redemption — nothing less. We want to be rid of our faults, our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified, to know that our creation has not been in vain. We turn to the love partner for the experience of the heroic, for perfect validation; we expect them to “make us good” through love. Needless to say, human partners can’t do this. The lover does not dispense cosmic heroism; he cannot give absolution in his own name. The reason is that as a finite being he too is doomed, and we read that doom in his own fallibilities, in his very deterioration. Redemption can only come from outside the individual, from beyond, from our conceptualization of the ultimate source of things, the perfection of creation.
(From The Denial of Death, p. 167.)
