"Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!", also known by the Japanese title is the ninth episode of the Japanese anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was created by animation studio Gainax. The episode, written by Hideaki Anno and Akio Satsukawa and directed by Seiji Mizushima, was first broadcast on TV Tokyo on November 29, 1995. The series is set fifteen years after a worldwide cataclysm and is mostly set in the futuristic, fortified city of Tokyo-3. The series' protagonist is Shinji Ikari, a teenage boy who is recruited by his father Gendo to the organization Nerv to pilot a gigantic biomechanical mecha named Evangelion into combat with beings called Angels. The episode follows two Nerv mecha pilots, Asuka Langley Soryu and Shinji, who must defeat an Angel capable of splitting into two individuals, Israfel.
Anno conceived the episode to lighten the tone of the series after the previous episodes, which were characterized by an introspective, psychological mood. Shinji Higuchi, who worked with Anno on Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and is known for his work's humor, drew the storyboards, giving the story a comedic tone. The installment contains cultural references to history, religion, films, series, and previous works by the Gainax studio. The episode's first broadcast scored a 7.1% audience share on Japanese television, and was well-received by audiences and critics. Reviewers appreciated the episode's humor, music score, and action, ranking it as one of the best episodes in the series. Particularly positive was the reception given to the second and final clash of the installment, featuring the two mecha Evangelion 01 and 02 synchronized to music, which is also considered one of the best in the anime.
Plot Asuka Langley Soryu, the pilot of the mecha Evangelion Unit-02 who has recently arrived in Japan from Germany, moves in with Misato Katsuragi, commander of the special agency Nerv, and starts living with Shinji Ikari, pilot of the Eva-01. She and Shinji intercept the seventh in a series of mankind's enemies called Angels, Israfel, along Suruga Bay. Asuka, eager to show off her skills, strikes the enemy by slashing it with her Sonic Glaive; shortly afterward, however, Israfel splits into two small individuals, who defeat the two pilots and are temporarily stopped by the United Nations forces. While waiting for the enemy to resume its advance, Asuka and Shinji, under Misato's guidance, try to train themselves by synchronizing all their actions. After several days and nights spent acting in harmony in all the motions of daily life, Shinji and Asuka sleep alone at Misato's house, and Asuka urges Shinji not to enter her room. That night Asuka apparently sleepwalks into Shinji's room and lies down next to him. Shinji tries to kiss her, but stops himself when she starts calling out for her mother in her sleep. Meanwhile, Misato finds herself in a lift with her former lover, Ryoji Kaji, who kisses her. During the second clash against Israfel, Asuka and Shinji, aboard their Evangelions, perfectly synchronize their movements to a musical accompaniment and within a minute manage to defeat the enemy.
Production
Neon Genesis Evangelion first six episodes left the staff drained and feeling weighed down by the show's heavy mood; Hideaki Anno, director of the series, consequently decided to lighten the show's tone in the following episodes. Anno then inserted Asuka to lighten the installments, introducing her as a sunny, extroverted girl, but without thinking to re-evaluate her character much as in the final episodes of the series, and without foreshadowing. Particularly important was the contribution of Shinji Higuchi, who had already worked on Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and was known for the humorous character of his works. Higuchi infused the episode with an adolescent and comic tone, similar to his previous works. Gainax studio decided on the basic plot for "Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!" in 1993, when it wrote a presentation document of Neon Genesis Evangelion titled . The Proposal, published in 1994, describes "the Eva's first beside-water battle". Akio Satsukawa and Anno wrote the script for the episode, whose storyboards were edited by Higuchi. Seiji Mizushima was chosen as the director, Shinya Hasegawa worked as the chief animator, and Mahiro Maeda and Mitsumu Wogi as the assistant character designers. Maeda also worked on Israfel's design.
Hasegawa worked on the scene in which Shinji tries to kiss Asuka, while Ogura Nobutoshi drew the scene of Shinji and Asuka's final phone call. The first battle against Israfel was done by Fumitomo Kizaki. Masayuki took care of Asuka and Shinji's six days of preparation; Keisuke Watabe served as the person in charge of the first half of the final battle, while Yutaka Nakamura worked on the second half. Hasegawa also personally recruited new members to add to the animation staff, including artists not usually associated with Gainax works. The result, similar to Yoshinori Kanada's animations, such as perspective kicks and playful drawings, stood apart from the other Evangelion episodes. Staff conceived it as part of the "action arc" of the series, which features lighter comical tones compared to the previous installments. Furthermore, writer Alexandre Marine noted how Rei Ayanami, a silent and quite character which was the focus of the previous episodes, has just a few lines in a brief scene in the whole installment; director Anno himself said he did not feel particularly interested in her character. Shinji Higuchi stated that he paid particular attention to the characters' postures and expressions to lend greater realism to the story, given the limitations of animation, not limiting himself to drawing characters standing or walking while reciting their lines. He also noted that musical montages of training or battles are a well-established tradition at Gainax; this visual device was used not only in Gunbuster and Nadia, but also in Daicon III and IV Opening Animations (1981-1983) and Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987). Anno also gave Higuchi personal directions, suggesting that Asuka be portrayed as a cleanliness fanatic. He further proposed a scene in which Asuka is frightened by Misato's pet penguin, mirroring Shinji's reaction in "The Beast".
In the episode's original draft, Gainax planned a slightly different battle. During the first battle, rather than splitting into two from the bottom up after being struck by Asuka, Israfel was instead meant to split in two suddenly in the middle of the fight and strike the powerless Eva-01 with a kick; after the battle, Shinji would have been extracted from the Eva and warmed himself by a fire while wrapped in a blanket. During the second battle, Israfel was meant to adopt a silhouette resembling an Eva as a form of camouflage, and the fight was to be slightly shorter. Compared to the other episodes, this episode is distinguished by the abundant use of special animation techniques such as residual images and kinetic deformations. For this purpose, the characters' faces were deformed to unreal expressions, exaggerating movements, and caricatures. For the scene in which Misato screams with glasses in her hands, the staff used a wide-angle lens; this was not indicated in the script, as it was chosen later by the direction. Evangelion Chronicle, an official encyclopedia of the series, noted that the scene in which Shinji and Asuka argue at Misato's apartment first relies on long shots framing the characters in full, then shifts to close-ups of their faces, creating a strong visual rhythm. For the final battle, the Evas' coordination is technically replicated by a montage consisting of hand-drawn and digitally composited graphics by means of which both the two Evas' and their pilots' bodies appear to merge; the images were obtained by cutting and combining the images of Asuka and Shinji with their respective Evas along the vertical central axis. The series' staff composed the soundtrack before producing the animation for the scene; Evangelion music composer Shirō Sagisu therefore described the production process as "reverse spotting", with the music coming first and the battle visuals later synchronized to it. Gainax initially considered using a preexisting piece of music for the battle. Takehito Koyasu, Tomokazu Seki, Tetsuya Iwanaga, Hiro Yūki, and Kōichi Yamadera, voice actors of several main characters in the series, played unidentified characters in the episode. The staff also used the songs "You Are My Only One", "Aoi Legend" and "Toi sora no yakusoku" by Kotono Mitsuishi, Misato Katsuragi's voice actress, from the image album Lilia 〜 from Ys, while Yōko Takahashi sang the final theme song for the episode, entitled "Acid Bossa Version", a rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon" with a bossa nova and acid house sound. In late home video editions of the series, staff replaced Yōko Takahashi's version with an "Asuka Bossa Techno" version.
Cultural references
"Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!" contains references to films, historical concepts, or previous works by Hideaki Anno. Asuka, for example, awkwardly quotes an existing Confucian proverb from the Book of Rites, while the training between her and Shinji has been compared to the game of twister. During the episode, Asuka takes refuge in Misato's room to avoid sleeping alone in the same room with Shinji. The sliding door separating them is renamed by her the "unshakable walls of Jericho". This nickname refers to the battle of Jericho, a biblical episode narrated in the book of Joshua, and the movie It Happened One Night (1934). In one of the most famous scenes in the film, the two main characters spend a night in the same motel room, using a blanket as a divider between their beds, called by the characters themselves "walls of Jericho". In another scene, "Blood Type: Blue" is glimpsed on Ritsuko's PC, in reference to the Japanese title of Kihachi Okamoto's Blue Christmas (1978).
The final battle of the episode has been compared to tokusatsu shows. Yūichirō Oguro, editor of extra materials contained in the Evangelion Japanese home video releases, compared the battle of the two Evangelions without external power with Ultraman, the protagonist of the Ultraman franchise, who could only fight for a few minutes of activity; he and Gualtiero Cannarsi, responsible for the first Italian Evangelion localisation, also noted how in one sequence the body of the Angel defeated in the sixth episode, Ramiel, is visible. Oguro thus described this episode as a more realistic version of the tokusatsu of his childhood. The cut in which the legs of the Evangelions are seen toppled under the ground has been described as an homage to Kon Ichikawa's The Inugami Family (1976) and Shinji Sōmai's Typhoon Club (1985). Even the typefaces used in the titles of this and other episodes of the series, characterized by an unconventional sense of reading, have been interpreted as an homage to the style of Ichikawa.