Evangelion: Ritsuko Akagi's Death (2/2)

[wonderwomanhero]

In my last post, we saw the breakdown of one of the many Evangelion characters: Ritsuko Akagi. But what will become of her now?

In the original anime, Ritsuko took Misato Katsuragi and Shinji Ikari down to what was known as an 'Eva Graveyard' where failed prototypes of Eva's are housed, their skeletal remains scattered all about. The three then venture into a gigantic room housing tanks holding clones of Rei Ayanami, who we originally thought dead after dying in a battle with one of the Angels. Ritsuko broke down showing them this, and in a rage of fury, anger, sadness, and whatever else she was thinking, she destroyed the Rei clones. Every. single. one of them.

She of course, gets caught, and we see her being interrogated by Gendo Ikari, the man she solely blames for destroying her life and that of her mother's. .









I believe she just vomited, did she not?

Misato later visits her while she is in confinement.









So anyway, stuff happens, shit gets blown up, everybody goes whack. Seems Asuka and Ritsuko missed it all (or do they?). Oh and Kaworu dies.

Anyway some other stuff happens, and where do we find Ritsuko?



Oh hey she got out. Yay!






And this is where we find out that poor Rit-chan ain't gonna live for much longer....or at least, she doesn't think that. Seems she's embracing death.

So anyway, the MAGI is stopped from being hacked, SEELE goes batshit, and decides to storm the NERV complex. If you remember in the film, basically everybody gets killed when they storm the complex, lots of blood...death...people getting shot down. Yeah I didn't get it either.

Anyway, Ritsuko manages to somehow...not...get...involved with the raid. Meanwhile, Misato and Shinji are of course, running like bats out of hell. Misato did a BOOM!HEADSHOT to one of the SEELE people...anyway they run to an elevator...and...well...






Yeah....poor Kotono Mitsuishi Misato....so basically, she pushes him into the elevator, delivers her "you need to stop whining cause people aren't always gonna be here for you so now you gotta just grow a pair of balls and be a man and fight for what is right k?" speech. Oh and she kisses him. Like how the French kiss.

Now, if you remember in the film, her death played out slightly different, after the lip lock, she basically lays on the ground, thinks of Pen Pen, her pet penguin, and everyone else, then gets blown to smithereens. (Freeze frame right as she dies and you see her body literally gets torn in half!!!)

Well shit, my mom betrayed me and now my ex-lover/ex mother's lover is going to kill me any second now.

Anyway, we don't know what the line is in the film. In the manga however........







And that, dear children, is how Ritsuko Akagi died. FIN.

Now, I wanna say something. If they ever did (and hopefully god willing they NEVER do) a live action Evangelion film, if they had to cast Ritsuko....why not go with Dutch actress Carice Van Houten? She's perfect, have you seen her film Black Book? And she's portraying Melisandre on Game of Thrones this April.



*pant* *pant* *wheeze* ugh....that took a lot to work. Now....maybe in the future I'll cover Misato's story, and even the cracked up sequence that is Instrumentality, I might even sing Komm Susser Tod for you all on purpose so we have some background music. Again, if I have misinterpreted anything you see here, please feel free to comment.

Comments

[salinea]

Hollywood is bad enough, I really wish we didn't whitewash characters in our imaginary fancasting as well x_x

[toby_wan_kenobi]

To be fair, the character does have blonde hair and blue eyes in the anime, despite her Japanese name. I know that doesn't mean that the character is necessarily not Japanese, but it's an understandable mistake.

[salinea]

The character canonically dies her hair. And even if that wasn't the case, hair colours and eye colours in anime very often have a purpose of characters differentiation and stylisation which has nothing to do with their assigned ethnicity.

[toby_wan_kenobi]

I didn't know the hair dye was canon, but my second point is still that it's an understandable mistake if you haven't had that specific conversation about hair-and-eye signifiers in anime. Until about two years ago, I would have said sure, Naruto Uzumaki is a white kid because of the hair and eye thing.

My first point was more snark that Hollywood doesn't even CARE about the intent of the actual creators of something - they just want white folks in it because they think America isn't interested in seeing pigment.

And I suspect that the OP is someone who hasn't had the discussion about eye and hair colors, so this is a teachable moment. (That I snarked all over. Bad on me.) And then I followed that up with an atrociously worded sentence.

TL:DR version. I get what you're saying, Hollywood sucks, and let's explain the hair/eye to the OP because I don't think they get it.