is the twenty-second episode of the Japanese anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion, created by animation studio Gainax. The episode was written by Hideaki Anno and Hiroshi Yamaguchi and directed by the animator Akira Takamura. In the episode, Asuka Langley Soryu, the pilot of the giant mecha Evangelion Unit-02, comes into conflict with Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami, her fellow pilots, due to several defeats in previous battles. The fourteenth of a series of enemies named Angels, Arael, launches a mental attack on Asuka, revealing her repressed past, marked by the suicide of her mother, Kyoko.
The original premise for "Don't Be" involved an aerial battle between the Evangelion and Arael; however, the concept was shelved due to production restrictions. The episode explores Asuka's psyche and contains several references to psychology and psychoanalysis, including reaction formation, psychological regression, repression, and masculine protest. It uses experimental directorial techniques to explore Asuka's psyche, notably using George Frideric Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. Critics have compared the Chorus' use to the direction of Stanley Kubrick and Kihachi Okamoto's Blue Christmas.
"Don't Be" was first broadcast on 28 February 1996, and drew a 7.9% audience share on Japanese television. The episode received an overall positive reception from critics, who particularly praised Asuka's exploration and psychological development. However, some critics have criticized the use of the Hallelujah Chorus and a long freeze-frame scene in which Asuka and Rei remain silent in a lift.
Plot The director's cut of the episode opens the night before the eighth episode of the series, "Asuka Strikes!". Asuka Langley Soryu, pilot of the mecha Evangelion Unit-02, and Ryoji Kaji, a member of the special agency Nerv and Asuka's legal guardian, talk while en route to Japan. Asuka attempts to seduce Kaji by showing him her breasts and saying she is an adult, but he rejects her advances. The broadcast version of the episode begins with Asuka remembering her own refusal to cry at the funeral of her mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, who died after a contact experiment with an Evangelion unit. During the flashback, Kyoko speaks to a doll she believes is Asuka while Asuka's father cheats on Kyoko with a nurse—her future stepmother. Asuka overhears a conversation between her father and the nurse in which they describe humans as God's dolls.
Sometime later, Asuka practices at the Nerv base, achieving shockingly low results with her Evangelion. Misato Katsuragi, Asuka's new guardian after Kaji's death, argues that this may be due to menarche, but Ritsuko Akagi, a doctor in Nerv's science department, argues instead that the cause is rooted in Asuka's psychology. After the drill, Asuka attempts to call Kaji, who does not answer. She sees Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami, her fellow pilots, engaged in conversation, and feels jealous. In the evening, Asuka has dinner with Misato and Shinji, but all three remain silent. During dinner, Asuka receives an international call from her stepmother. After the call and a bath, she feels disgusted for living in the same space as Shinji and Misato. Misato and Ritsuko discuss Asuka, who feels a strong animosity and sense of inferiority toward Shinji. Asuka and Rei, meanwhile, are left alone in the elevator. After almost one minute of silence, Rei suggests that Asuka open her heart to Eva-02. Asuka insults Rei by calling her a "doll" and slapping her.
The fifteenth in a series of mankind's enemies called Angels, Arael, appears in geostationary satellite orbit. Asuka, fearing the loss of Eva-02, and refusing her assignment to cover Rei's Eva-00, attempts to intercept the enemy with a Positron Rifle. Before Asuka can attack, Arael, via a beam of light, erodes the girl's psyche. Asuka experiences a flashback in which she rejects a stuffed monkey from her stepmother, and her real mother suggests that she commit suicide along with her. Meanwhile, Rei attempts, with her own Positron Rifle, to shoot down Arael in orbit, but she fails. Gendo Ikari, supreme commander of Nerv, orders the use of a weapon called the "Spear of Longinus". Misato and Nerv's deputy commander Kozo Fuyutsuki attempt to prevent this, but the commander refuses to stop. Eva-00 extracts the Spear from a white giant in the deepest level of Nerv headquarters and launches it into orbit, defeating Arael. Asuka is angered by her defeat, which is worsened by her hatred of Rei. Shinji tries to console Asuka, but she angrily lashes out at him, telling him that she hates everyone and would rather be dead.
Production Background Hideaki Anno, the director and main scriptwriter of the series, wrote the script for "Don't Be" with Hiroshi Yamaguchi. Kazuya Tsurumaki drew the storyboard and worked on character design. The episode was directed by Akira Takamura, while Mau Hanabatake was the chief animator. Yō Yoshinari was the chief animator of the mecha.
In 1993 Neon Genesis Evangelion studio Gainax released a presentation document for the series called , containing a presentation of the series and its planned episodes, which was then published in 1994. "Don't Be" was based on the studio's original plan for the twenty-first episode, which was to be titled "At least, human". The original premise had Shinji, rather than Asuka, suffering from a mental attack. The episode would have included an underwater battle near a sunken ship and explored the past of Yui, Shinji's mother. Gainax's early concept for the Angel Arael was for it to be equipped with high-frequency swords on the tips of its twelve luminescent wings. Arael was also intended to fight the Evangelions within Earth's atmosphere, rather than just appearing in outer space, in the nineteenth episode. In the original version of the script, Asuka's memories during the mind rape sequence were instead meant to flash by like a fast-forwarded video; Gainax also planned to include, among other images, a shot of Asuka's parents having sexual intercourse. Furthermore, in a proposal put forward by animator and writer Mitsuo Iso, Asuka would have used a suicide bomb attack in combat, but would have ultimately survived.
Development Hideaki Anno originally introduced Asuka in the eighth and ninth episodes of the series in an attempt to lighten the heavy, moody tone of the previous installments. He did not have an initial plan for the character at the time; he developed Asuka as a character through her catchphrases, such as "Are you stupid?" or "Chance!", without thinking about a future devolution of her character. According to the Japanese cultural critic Hiroki Azuma, the change was the result of a decision made by Anno during the airing of the series. During the first broadcast of Neon Genesis Evangelion on TV Tokyo, Anno began to criticize animation fans, or otaku, for being emotionally closed and excessively introverted. This prompted him to take the second half of the series in a darker direction than the first half, which was seemingly headed towards a happy ending. Asuka's character development reflects this change; initially introduced as a comedic character, she suffers heavy physical and psychological wounds in the last half of the series. Azuma has stated that Asuka's injuries broke with the conventions of classic mecha anime, in which a character like Asuka would not be hurt. Anno claimed in an interview that he wanted to go against the pleasure principle of viewers who watch Evangelion and television to see an enjoyable character and a happy Asuka.
The episode features a scene with Asuka and Rei in a lift together that uses an almost one-minute-long freeze frame, during which there is no movement apart from Asuka's occasional blinking. Scholar Susan J. Napier noted that the still frame lasts "an astonishingly long time in anime and even in television in general". According to the academic José Andrés Santiago Iglesias, "the sequence recreates the social awkwardness of being stuck in a lift with someone you simply don't want to share the room with". The tension between the two characters is created without explicit images; at the end of the scene, for example, Asuka slaps Rei, but the viewer only sees the initial image of a slap and the sound, and not the actual slap. This expedient allowed the animators to avoid drawing a scene with elaborate movements. Beginning with "Lilliputian Hitcher", the production also 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.
During Asuka's subsequent mental attack, Gainax inserted distorted kanji and handwritten German terms in quick succession, such as (), (), (), (), (), (), (), () and (). In an interview, Michael House, the only American member of Gainax and the company's official translator at the time, stated that he had inserted German terms using his basic knowledge of the language acquired in high school and a Japanese-German dictionary. The terms also include () and (), which, according to the magazine Evangelion Chronicle, indicate emotions lurking in Asuka's heart, as well as menarche, a woman's first menstrual cycle. According to the writer Sellés De Lucas, these inscriptions in rapid succession challenge the viewer's attention span and drawn on cinéma vérité, "which ha[d] been often considered one of Anno's inspirations for his fractured narrative".
In the same scenes, Asuka waits for the Angel Arael with her Eva-02 in the rain. Writer Virginie Nebbia has stated that Asuka is then surrounded by a divine light without drops in the same sequence, which could be inspired by the directorial style of Akio Jissōji, who directed the tokusatsu series Ultraman. Furthermore, according to the Neon Genesis Evangelion official filmbooks, Asuka is unable to pilot the Eva-02 as she once did due to her first menstrual cycle in the episode. Anno initially planned to include more scenes about Asuka's first experience with menstruation. However, not feeling, as a man, capable of exploring such a feminine subject, he condensed everything into a single scene. In the Eva-02 ejection scene, a spark caused by rubbing against the rails used to launch the mecha is visible. In response to possible criticism from viewers that the Eva's Linear Rail System should not cause such vibrations, the Evangelion staff attempted to give realism to the sequence. On the other hand, the animators unrealistically depicted Eva-00 launching the Spear of Longinus into orbit, prioritizing the spectacle of the scene.