"The Beast", known by the Japanese title is the second episode of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, created by animation studio Gainax. The episode was written by the series director Hideaki Anno and Yōji Enokido and directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki. It aired originally on TV Tokyo on October 11, 1995.
The series is set fifteen years after a worldwide cataclysm named Second Impact, particularly in the futuristic fortified city of Tokyo-3. The protagonist is Shinji Ikari, a teenage boy who is recruited by his father Gendo to the organization Nerv to pilot a giant biomechanical mecha named Evangelion into combat with beings called Angels. During the episode, Shinji faces the Angel Sachiel but freezes with fear and fails to defend his Eva-01, which is left damaged and inoperable. Shinji wakes up in a hospital the next day and is taken in by Nerv's Captain Misato Katsuragi, who becomes his new legal guardian.
Production of "The Beast" began in September 1994 and ended in May 1995. Staff used Christian religious symbolism in the episode, with the intent of differentiating the show from other mecha series. The title itself, "The Beast", references the beast from the Book of Revelation. The episode scored a 5.3% rating of audience share on Japanese TV and received critical and public acclaim focused on its visuals, direction, and sound.
Plot Pilot Shinji Ikari prepares to face an enemy named Sachiel, the third of a series of beings called Angels, in his mecha Evangelion 01. Shinji manages to move his Eva, making it try a successful first step. As he attempts to take a second step, the Eva trips, falls over, and lands face-first on the ground. Eva-01 is left helpless as Sachiel advances on it; Shinji is frozen with fear and fails to defend himself as the Angel proceeds to pick up the Eva by the face and then damages its left arm and right eye. The pilot's signal is lost, and the Eva powers down. Suddenly, a confused Shinji wakes up in a hospital room the next day; the dramatic battle having been resolved off-screen. Meanwhile, his father, Gendo Ikari, head of the special agency Nerv, meets with the organization's mysterious benefactors, the Human Instrumentality Committee. The Chairman of the Committee, Keel Lorenz, instructs him not to let the reappearance of the Angels allow a process named the Human Instrumentality Project to fall behind schedule. Shinji sees his fellow pilot Rei Ayanami at the hospital. He also has a brief encounter with his father, but the two of them don't talk. Nerv's captain Misato Katsuragi shows up to check on Shinji in the aftermath of the battle. When she learns that Shinji is going to live alone, she decides to take him in to live with her instead.
Shinji arrives at Misato's apartment. Later that evening, he lies alone in his new bedroom. As he does so, sounds from the battle are heard and images of nerve cells as viewed through a microscope flash across the screen. In a flashback, Shinji remembers that Eva-01 was rendered inoperative by Sachiel's attack, with Nerv losing control of the Eva. Eva-01 reactivates and begins to act on its own. It launches a vicious attack upon the Angel, succeeding in damaging its face. A second attack by the Eva is blocked by a barrier named A.T. Field, but the Eva erodes it with another A.T. Field. Once the barrier is down, Eva-01 soundly defeats Sachiel by shattering the downed Angel's core. Sachiel wraps itself around the Eva and self-destructs; Eva-01 emerges from the explosion with little apparent damage. As Nerv regains control of the Evangelion, Shinji comes to in the cockpit. The damaged helmet sloughs off, and Shinji can glimpse the Eva's face reflected in the windows of a building. As he looks on, the Eva's eye regenerates and focuses straight at him. Shinji begins to scream, and the flashback ends. He slowly curls up in bed after recalling the battle; Misato comes to his door and praises him for piloting the Eva and saving the city.
Production
Production for "The Beast" began in September 1994, simultaneously with "Angel Attack", and ended in May 1995. Yōji Enokido and Hideaki Anno wrote the script, while Kazuya Tsurumaki served as director for the episode. Unlike the previous installment, Gainax produced "The Beast" with a non-linear narrative, interspersed with continuous flashbacks and scene changes; Anno remained dissatisfied with "Angel Attack" during the post-recording and described it as "a failure", since it couldn't beat the first episode of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, an episode so highly regarded by Anno himself and the series' staff that they knew its scenes, shot compositions, and narrative structure by heart. He was disappointed by the script and the structure, judging it "three minutes too long", so he completely reworked "The Beast" in the middle. Continuing their work from "Angel Attack", Anno and assistant director Masayuki composed the storyboards. Shinya Hasegawa handled the key animation around the scene where Misato is drinking beer in her apartment and suggests Shinji take a bath, while Yoshitō Asari and Seiji Kio served as assistant character designers.
The Japanese title "Unfamiliar Ceilings" was decided on in 1993, when Gainax wrote a presentation document of Neon Genesis Evangelion titled . The beginning of a battle between an Angel named Raziel and berserk Unit 01 was planned for "Angel Attack" in the Proposal, but it was moved to "The Beast" and the Angel changed to Sachiel. In Gainax's original plans, Sachiel was to fire a rapid-fire cannon and tear off Eva-01's arm rather than merely breaking it. Shinji would awaken in the hospital thinking about the loss of the arm, without the scene of the pierced skull, and the Committee for the Instrumentality Project would also include female members. After the meeting with the Committee, which contained no explicit mention of the Instrumentality Project, Gendo would slam his fist on the table. The episode's original draft did not yet include either the name of Misato's pet penguin, or the scene in which Misato feels guilty for using Shinji. During the second half of the battle, Sachiel was also to wield an arrow, which it would drive into Eva-01's head; in Gainax's original plans, Eva-01 was also to have biological teeth. The episode would conclude with Shinji crying on his bed.
When designing Misato's apartment, Gainax chose to include automatic doors from the outset because they were easier to animate. To represent Sachiel's AT Field, the main staff used special lighting effects, which appear and disappear for short frames. Yoshinari took care of the battle scene, trying to draw the shoulders and face of the Eva-01 using rulers. The staff also made extensive use of close-ups during the episode. During the battle, before Eva-01's berserk mode, the crew zoomed in on Shinji's face in close-up, giving the idea of wide-angle lens, and deforming it with CG. Writer Giuseppe Gatti described Shinji's face cut as "psychedelic". Shinji was originally supposed to reach a 400% synchro rate with Eva-01 in the clash, but the idea was later presented in the last part of the series instead. For the image of the Eva-01 destroying the AT Field, Hideaki Anno took inspiration from the image of tearing clothes, considering them as the most elementary form of protection for human beings; the concept was included in "The Beast" with no philosophical implications, and Anno thought about its meaning as the "walls of the heart" during the production of the latter part of the series. He also added the term Human Instrumentality Project, one of the most important concepts for the plot, by improvising and without having clear ideas about it. He stated that he had no idea about what Instrumentality was going to "complement" at the time, so the whole scene "is just a verbal bluff".
For the battle between Eva-01 and Sachiel Gainax created integration between the backdrops and the moving objects on several levels. Takeshi Honda, chief animator for the episode, and Yō Yoshinari handled the key animation of the scene. The fight was initially close to a tokusatsu battle in the style of Ultraman, but, according to Yūichirō Oguro, Honda apparently decided to give the scene a more anime style. Oguro noted that Honda draws characters in a more sophisticated style, unlike the animation director of the first episode, Shunji Suzuki, who tries to be more faithful to Sadamoto's character design instead. He also noted that people are depicted at the edge of the screen in "The Beast", a style he attributes to Masayuki. The green parts of Eva-01's armor were supposed to light up and stand out against the dark sky during the battle against Sachiel; although technically possible, the staff avoided doing so because it would have been costly and labor-intensive. Animation scholar José Andrés Santiago Iglesias noted how during the episode there is a visual juxtaposition between two frames from Shinji's point of view, depicting the ceiling of a hospital and his new room, which consist of a series of still images followed "by a high-speed sequence of different still images played at a rate of one image per frame"; Iglesias cited this directorial device as an example of Evangelion's extensive use of limited animation for artistic purposes. In the hospital scene, where Shinji stands alone in an empty corridor, contrasts of light and shadow were used, keeping the scene monochromatic, to represent Shinji's inner emptiness. Yūko Miyamura, Katsumi Suzuki, Megumi Hayashibara, and Takashi Nagasako voiced unidentified characters in "The Beast", while Nagasako, Suzumi, Motomu Kiyokawa, and Koyasu Takehito voiced the men of the Instrumentality Committee. Besides the original soundtrack, composed by Shirō Sagisu, Gainax also used You are the only one by Kotono Mitsuishi, Misato's voice actress, first released in her image album Lilia ~from Ys~ (1992). British singer Claire Littley sang a cover of "Fly Me to the Moon" named "Normal Version" which was later used as the episode's closing theme song, replaced in late home video editions by a "String Version" sung by the same singer.
Cultural references The scene where Misato talks about air conditioning in a truck with Ritsuko is a reference to Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Gainax's previous work, while the sequence in which Eva-01 is bleeding from the skull is similar to a scene from the Getter Robo manga, of which Anno is a fan. After Sachiel's defeat, Misato watches the battle report on television and remarks how Nerv hides the truth from the general public with a B-22 protocol; Anime Feminist website writer Jeremy Tauber and scholar Laura Montero Plata interpreted this as a reference to the Japanese government's reaction to the Kobe earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyō Tokyo subway sarin attack. Moreover, in the scene where Misato dines with Shinji in the apartment, the staff used the "Gainax bounce", a fan service that made the breasts of the female characters bounce, which Gainax invented and first used in the Daicon III and IV Opening Animations (1981-1983) short films. The city of Tokyo-3 is mentioned in "The Beast" for the first time. Its name is a tribute to the spaceship Tokyo III from the movie Sayonara Jupiter (1984). The scientific concept of phase space is also mentioned in relation to Sachiel's AT Field during Eva-01's battle. Furthermore, the main staff used real brands in "The Beast" scenes to depict a realistic fictional world, including a Mitsubishi Fuso truck, a Sony Digital Audio Tape and Yebisu beer with its logo depicting Ebisu, one of the Seven Lucky Gods. The inclusion of the real-existing Yebisu brand caused troubles during the first airing, so staff changed the name as Yebichu in the on-air version while maintaining Yebisu in the home-video release.