is the eighteenth episode of the Japanese anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was created by animation studio Gainax. Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi wrote the episode, which the animator Tensai Okamura directed. The series' protagonist is Shinji Ikari, a teenage boy whose father Gendo recruited him to the special military organization Nerv to pilot a gigantic biomechanical mecha named Evangelion into combat against beings called Angels. In this episode, a new pilot named Toji Suzuhara enters Eva-03. Eva-03 goes out of control after being possessed by the Angel Bardiel during its activation experiment. Shinji, aboard his Eva-01, refuses to fight against 03, bringing him into conflict with his father.
"Ambivalence" was produced by Production I.G., among others; Shinji Higuchi conceived the episode as a diptych with the previous episode "Fourth Children", and was inspired by the Ultraman franchise. Critics have compared the writing on Ambivalence to Anno's personal experiences and the direction of the works of Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, and especially Akio Jissōji. The conflict between Gendo and Shinji has been compared to the dilemma of the Carneades table. The episode contains cultural references to earlier anime, including Dear Brother, and its title references the clinical psychologist Eugen Bleuler's concept of the same name.
The episode was first broadcast on January 31, 1996, and drew a 9.6 percent audience share on Japanese television. Critics praised the script, direction, and battle scenes, considering it one of the best episodes in the series, although some viewers during the first airing criticized it for the violence of the confrontation against Bardiel.
Plot During its airlift between the United States and Japan, the mecha Evangelion 03 passes through an electrical storm. Misato Katsuragi, head of the strategic department of the special agency Nerv, fails to tell her subordinate Shinji Ikari, the pilot of the Eva-01, the identity of the 03's pilot. At Tokyo-3 Middle School, Eva-02's pilot Asuka Langley Soryu verbally attacks her classmate Toji Suzuhara. Toji then talks with Eva-00's pilot Rei Ayanami about Ayanami's feelings for Shinji. After school, Asuka and her friend Hikari Horaki talk about Toji, and Hikari reveals she is in love with him. In the absence of Misato, Shinji and Asuka's legal guardian, Misato's boyfriend Ryoji Kaji takes care of the two and sleeps at their house; Asuka refuses to talk to Shinji about the new pilot, while Shinji and Kaji discuss the psychological distance that separates people, especially men and women.
During an activation test, the Eva-03 goes out of control, gaping its jaws and causing an explosion. The Evangelion 03 is revealed to be possessed by Bardiel, the thirteenth in a series of enemies of humankind called Angels. Bardiel fights Rei's Eva-00 and attempts to merge with it. The Angel easily defeats both Eva-00 and Eva-02. Shinji refuses to fight 03 and injure its pilot. Gendo Ikari, captain of the Nerv, activates a device named Dummy System; the Eva-01 self-activates and violently destroys the Eva-03, including the pilot's cockpit, while Shinji helplessly watches. Meanwhile, Hikari is in the kitchen preparing a bento for Toji, wondering if he will eat it. After the battle, Shinji sees the pilot Toji, who has survived, extracted from the cockpit; Toji is seriously wounded, and Shinji screams.
Production Genesis and staff
In 1994, Gainax published a presentation document for Neon Genesis Evangelion containing synopses of the planned episodes. For the first twelve episodes, the company followed the proposal's schedule with a few minor script differences. Gainax already planned an American-built Eva-03 in the proposal document. From the thirteenth episode onward, production deviated from the writers' original plan and the submission document. According to Michael House, Gainax's American translator, Neon Genesis Evangelion main director Hideaki Anno initially intended to give the story a happy ending, but his plans in the making of the series changed after he realized he had created problematic characters. According to Hiroki Azuma, a culture critic who interviewed Anno, while the series was being broadcast, Anno began to criticize obsessive anime fans, known in Japanese as otaku, whom he considered closed-minded and introverted. Anno changed his original plans by creating a more-dramatic, introspective, mid-series story.
Beginning with "Lilliputian Hitcher", the production ran into severe scheduling problems because of delays in episode delivery. Gainax had completed only twelve episodes by the time the series began airing after nearly two years of production, leaving the staff to produce the remaining fourteen in just six months—roughly one-third of the time they had spent on the first twelve. The disastrous production schedule drastically reduced the number of available animation cels, leading to a corresponding decline in animation quality and provoking disagreements among the series' staff. Around the time of "Ambivalence" and the following episode, Anno and Gainax realized that they could no longer produce the series to a satisfactory standard while still meeting the broadcast schedule, although they continued trying to do so until the very end. These therefore became the last episodes to make full use of virtually all the studio's remaining resources before the production system completely collapsed. Anno himself likened the production to a "live performance" without a strict plan allowing the series to take shape in response to changing circumstances and production constraints. Around the eighteenth and nineteenth episodes, he finally decided how the series would end.
Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno wrote the screenplay for "Ambivalence", and Tensai Okamura produced the storyboards. Okamura also directed the episode, assisted by Masahiko Otsuka and Ken Ando. Kazuchika Kise worked as the chief animator. Production involved studios other than Gainax, including Studio Mark and Production I.G. Production I.G previously worked on animation for the thirteenth episode, which includes another microscopic Angel called Iruel, and also worked on computer-generated imagery (CGI) for The End of Evangelion (1997). According to the Red Cross Book, the official booklet on The End of Evangelion, the series makes extensive use of CGI, which was processed in a flat, two-dimensional manner like computer screens. At first, Production I.G. was supposed to produce the whole anime, and the company president, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, was willing to do so; for various reasons, including Mamoru Oshii's apparent refusal, the original plans were changed, so Production I.G. only took care of "Lilliputian Hitcher" and other individual episodes.
Development and writing
In the 1993 Proposal, Gainax decided the basic plot for the eighteenth episode would have Shinji making a choice and fighting an Angel-controlled Eva-03 piloted by his friend. Hiroki Azuma noted that while Evangelion parodies earlier anime shows and uses "a lot of clichés" in its first part, Anno later subverted the anime tropes. While comic characters like Asuka and Toji "must not be seriously injured in an anime", Anno broke the implicit audience expectations, making them become injured in battle. Asuka's story reflected the changes. Despite receiving criticism for the violence, Anno defended his choice; believing violence is part of normal human life, Anno attempted to show the horror and crudeness of life, contradicting expectations and the pleasure principle of anime fans. According to Evangelion assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki, the show's writers conceived Unit-03 incident as a "crucial, climactic episode" and were forced to abandon the portrayal of Asuka as a major character. After the Unit-03 incident, "even the scenes where she does appear were bound to be reduced".
Shinji Higuchi, who worked on the episode's script, also wrote the previous episode "Fourth Child", as a precursor to "Ambivalence". According to writer Virginie Nebbia, Higuchi borrowed the idea of two linked episodes from the Ultraman franchise. Nebbia also compared Bardiel's role in "Ambivalence" with that of Imit Ultraman from the Ultraman series, in which fake Ultramans are controlled by Alien Zarab. Because of his commitments to Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (1996), after writing the drafts for "Fourth Child" and Ambivalence", Higuchi left finishing the scripts to Anno, causing problems for the production. Other proposals were put forward during production by animator and writer Mitsuo Iso. In Iso's ideas, Gendo would have inserted a password to disable a function that prevents Evangelion units from fighting each other, thus delivering the final blow to Toji via a device called the Black Tower. In the twenty-third episode, Shinji would later testify before a commission against Gendo about the incident. Gainax originally planned a scene in which Shinji, standing on the roof of Tokyo-3 Middle School, asked Asuka whether something had happened between her and Misato; Asuka would have brusquely denied it before turning away. The scene between Rei and Toji, meanwhile, was originally set on the hill behind the school rather than on the roof. During the battle against Bardiel-infected Eva-03, tentacles were also meant to emerge and infect Eva-00.
In the scene in which Eva-03 arrives in Japan, a diffusion process was applied to the cels to depict a heat haze. Furthermore, in the episode's original script was a scene in which Toji visits his sister in her hospital room. Although his sister was not supposed to be framed and have dialogue, Toji would tell her he had made his decision and leave her a gift. According to the Evangelion Chronicle magazine, "Ambivalence" does not explicitly state the name of the Fourth Child, although his identity is clear; the characters become anxious, arousing suspense for the climax in viewers. The same magazine noted there is no scene showing Toji wearing the Evangelion pilots' plugsuit and boarding the mecha, perhaps to shock viewers. According to official filmbooks on the series, the scene in which Hikari happily prepares bento for Toji unaware of the battle emphasizes the brutality of the confrontation.
Anno initially considered killing Toji after his confrontation with Eva-01; at the beginning of the series' production, he promised King Records producer Toshimichi Ōtsuki he would not kill child characters, so he reconsidered, and the writing staff decided to leave Toji mutilated. The production had fallen so far behind schedule that Otsuki had not even seen Eva-03 before the episode aired. When he came across a model of it at a party celebrating the end of the series' production in a building in Shinjuku, he was taken by surprise and wondered who had authorized its release. In the final version of the script, Toji loses only his left leg. This event is related to Anno's personal experience; his father, Takuyo Anno, lost his left leg in a youthful accident with a power saw and was forced to wear a prosthesis. Following the accident, Anno developed a fascination with deformity, believing he could love only something that is stumpy. In Tetsujin 28-go, one of Anno's childhood shows, a robot loses an arm; Anno grew up believing he could not love a perfect thing and that amputated mecha were more beautiful. For this reason, Anno included scenes in which mechas are cruelly mutilated in his works. Academic scholar River Seager described the result as "eerie and gothic, often blurring the line between the genres of mecha and horror". Writer Claudio Cordella similarly stated that Evangelion units' fights are "brutal, taking on authentic splatter horror film tones".