WEAVING A STORY 2: oral stage – Neon Genesis Evangelion S01E20

➡ The text discusses a complex episode of the show Neon Genesis Evangelion. The characters are analyzing their relationships and identities, with Shinji, the protagonist, struggling with his self-worth and role as a pilot of a giant robot, Ava. The episode also explores the idea that the Avas are actually angels controlled by an organization, and that they regain their own will when they consume another angel. The text also suggests that the episode has elements of censorship and controversial themes.
➡ The text discusses an episode of an anime show, where a character named Shinji experiences a psychedelic dream sequence. The episode also includes a news report about a terrorist attack and new legislation. The text mentions that the episode was written by Hidekiana, who also directed it. The episode features technical jargon and a backup control center with uncomfortable chairs. The text also mentions that the show had budget issues, which affected the animation quality.
➡ The speaker reminisces about how Las Vegas used to be a fun and affordable place to visit, with free drinks and cheap hotel suites. However, they note that the city has changed, with prices increasing and fewer freebies. They compare this to the rising costs at Disney parks, and how both places seem to be pushing out their previous demographic. The speaker also discusses their experiences with gambling, particularly in Japan with pachinko machines, and how these games are less popular with younger generations.
➡ The text discusses a scene from a show where a character seems to be forced into situations rather than choosing them. The character appears to regress, and the scene ends with a controversial sexual moment. The creators improvised this scene, possibly due to budget constraints. The text also discusses the harsh working conditions in the animation industry, where workers are often underpaid and overworked.
➡ The speaker discusses a complex scene from a show, where they had to rewatch it due to overlapping dialogues and radio chatter. They also mention their upcoming comic releases on Paranoidamerican.com, including a Satanic Panic comic. They talk about their podcast, Time Enough, which covers different eras of the Twilight Zone series. Lastly, they promote Paranoid American sticker sheets featuring various conspiracy themes.

The CIA figured out a way to alter angels to put them under their will. So much more fun in games at the Cotton Cabal. Beyond what’s Just in a Name at the Cartoon Cabal. See just at what Costco’s fame at the Cartoon Cabal. So much for the founding games at the Cartoon Cabal. Welcome to the Cartoon Cabal. We are currently going through all of the episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Is Matt here? It’s a paranoid American over there. How’s it hanging? How’s it floating? How’s it floating? We’re floating. How’s it hanging? Well, this is weaving a story to the oral stage, so I think we’re going to jump straight to third base.

Yeah, well, if you say shape of heart, shape of human, it sounds a little more philosophical, right? Yeah, I didn’t say that. I just. I just said oral stage, and then I said third base. Of course. This. This one. Well, yeah, this one certainly is going to third base or. Well, actually, it’s making a home run by the end of the episode. So literally, does that make it the horniest episode? This one actually did cause controversy when I’m. When I was doing my research, it said, this one caused controversy because it was aired on t. Let me get this exactly right, if I can.

It was. They say it in a way that’s so annoying to me. Oh, it was designed for airing in a protected, protected time slot. Okay, so that suggests maybe not prime time. I’m still. I’m still really curious what time of day the show actually aired. I guess let’s just jump to it. If you’re watching this with us or listening to us, and we’re on episode 20, hopefully you’ve got a little bit of context. I just want to ask you, Matt, though, conversation between me and you here. Are they all Barbies? Like Barbie doll anatomy? Or is that how Shinji thinks people look? Or is that how they actually are? I’m going h.

Let’s see. I’m going to assume that he is in the dream world when we see the Barbie doll bodies. And we’ve seen them before, haven’t we? So it’s in the intro. Like, the intro is. Is Barbie doll body. But I. I figure the intro, they’re doing it as a silhouette just so that they’re not being too risque. Although here. Or is it, like a censorship thing? Is it. Is it. If, like, if I just don’t draw the nipple, I can show this on my TV show? Yeah, that’s still pushing it to be Perfectly honest. But I.

Maybe Shinji is just that like 14 year old, you know, awkward. Like, even in his dream world, he can’t. He can’t think of that part. But I’m just so. I’m just thinking, yeah, he’s only seen Barbies, and that’s how he thinks people look when you take the clothes off is however a Barbie will look. So. Okay, the real answer is censorship. But I like that answer. You can. You can head. Can in that one, you know, and in this one, Shinji is having a dream where he basically, he’s banging everybody. Right. Well, they’re at least throwing themselves at him.

We don’t. Or three, he’s. Well, well, hold on. They’re. They’re throwing themselves at him completely nude. And then it’s pov. They’re like going to town on him on. On all three of these visions where it’s Ashka, it’s Rey, and it’s the third one, the. The drunk. Oh, Misato. Yeah. Which is out of his age range. That’s like when you got the hots for teacher, you know, hot teachers, all that. Yeah. So what? So a teenager sure would. Would. Would be thinking that in there. Is that all this is? Is this just Shinji thinking this? Or are these previous clone lives or this.

Okay, one. This is. Gets more into the. Maybe the annoying thing about the show in particular. I mean, not like. Or at least culturally different thing is all these inferences. Right? So we’re supposed to kind of infer that this episode is getting Oedipal kind of, you know, like, because Rey is like a clone of his mother, I guess. Although it’s. And then this is also infer. This is like an infer on top of infer. On top of infer. But in the dream, he kind of wants to kill his father too, right? So, you know, Asuka and Usada are there for distractions, I guess, but I really do feel like they are kind of, you know, pushing an Oedipal button on the Shinji in this episode.

So then also, yeah, he hates his dad. But then he also maybe finds out that only when he’s piloting an Ava, people are proud of him. And the only way that he can ever feel like he has value is if people value him. So he has to fight, fly this Ava. But he also just quit and walked away from it, which I don’t believe. This is a kid that says, like, I’m not going to go to bed tonight. It’s like, okay, buddy. Oh yeah, you’re not Going to go to bed. So I feel like Shinji saying, I’m not going to be an Ava.

Say, okay, yeah, let’s go ahead and work through the next 24, 78, you know, 72 hours, and then he’s going to come back. I don’t feel like there’s any chance that he doesn’t come back. How I. I got a little thrown off by the cryonology in this one. Oh, oh, by the way, one of the reasons I was like a few minutes, I kept pausing, writing quotes. So his quote is, I have to fight what everyone calls the enemy, then everyone will praise me. Which, that sounds like, you know, mass media mind control stuff. It gets a little overly simplistic here.

And I lose a little bit more respect for Shinji if there was more to be had. Because if anything, this. This makes his thought process very simpleton. Like, even if he’s in a dream world, like, this would be a simpleton’s dream world. And I don’t know. I’m expecting more out of Shinji for being the protagonist. The deep down, I feel like he’s supposed to be Neo, right? And at one point, Neo is kind of a badass and he proves himself. But now I’m looking down, I’m like, man, we’re episode 20 and there’s 26 episodes. I don’t know where the story arc comes in where Shinji starts becoming a badass.

If anything, he’s just gonna learn something, but I don’t know. Badass. He might do something cool, but he’s never gonna be a badass. Did he already do that? He. He kind of already did it. And even the cool things that he did was really the Ava doing it for him. He just happened to be in the Ava’s belly. He lets mommy do it for him, doesn’t he? I mean, that’s kind of what we’re saying with Ava in this one. They’re saying, like, oh, we basically just reproduce the technology we found in. In Antarctica. But we had to, you know, we’ve added a human soul, which.

That’s the other inference that basically. And someone did actually comment that too on our. On our YouTube that, yeah, you know, basically Shinji’s mom is in the Ava is. It started. It started to make more. So that was a spoiler too. There was a starting point. They did say they did write spoiler, and I had to click to see them. So give that much. Yeah. So here’s some other rules that are like, things that aren’t infer they at Least spell it out for the dumb American like me. And one of those is that the Avas are clearly these Angels and that the Mech suits are the way to keep them in prison.

They kind of like really double down on that in this episode. They re emphasize it. They still don’t show it completely breaking out of its suit. So I think that they’re just stretching this out a little bit so we don’t get to see those badges right now. How would you like to have been on the AVA bandaging team? That would have sucked. But this. But this thing is just like going to be some kind of a organic looking creature, giant Nephilim type thing deep down under there, right? Like that’s essentially what these are going to be.

And then also there’s this implication that Nerve, you know, their CIA figured out a way to remove. I’m just going to be real general here, but like remove an organ from the angel that prevents the angels from going buck wild. I guess I don’t have a better way to phrase that. But then when this, when this Angel, Eve Ava angel eats another angel, then it absorbs that angel’s organ that it’s missing, and now it’s able to take control of itself again. And that’s what’s been happening is that as soon as one of the Avas ate another angel, that it has its own consciousness and its own willpower again.

And previously the Nerve had done something to mutate or alter these Avas, which essentially we’re. We’re talking about angels, right? So the CIA figured out a way to alter Angels to put them under their will. But then if one of those CIA mind control angels eats another non mind control angel, then it gets the break out of its mind control. Yes. That’s kind of. That’s kind of how I’m rocking with it. I mean, because they’re like, oh, we’ve got it under lock and key. I’m like. And Masada is like, well, do we. No, no, we have.

We’ve got five episodes with several or six more episodes with several directors cut. So I’m gonna. I’m gonna. I’m gonna guess no on that. Is that enough time for Shinji Go badass? It is. Like you mentioned his. His simpleton dream sequence. And I also noticed much earlier in the episode there was the news report, which was the blandest, most obvious news report ever in the subtitles I had. In other news, it has been a month since the terrorist attack in Tokyo too. And the government has passed new legislation to prevent another and then the Japanese, like, it’s even blander than that.

It’s like just like the blandest news report ever. Just like, you know, here, here’s your. Oh, geez. What’s. What, what is the presentation for that again? Well, I was, I was just going to call this an exposition dump. Like this entire sequence, this entire episode, in a way, is an exposition dump. But there’s also really weird, surreal, abstract stuff going on. Yeah. So the Shinji’s dream sequence may have been simpleton somewhat, but it was also wildly psychedelic. And I like that. You know, as it’s gonna give, it’s gonna do like those Pokemon episodes that give, you know, kids epileptic seizures.

Right. This is, this is one of those animes. It was that. There was a lot of weird tropes in this one. Right. So yeah, there was this psychedelic, simple. A psychedelic simpleton sequence. But it’s. It’s just him going like, everyone’s the enemy. Anyone that wants to hurt me, they’re the enemy. If I harm the enemy, people will love me. If people love me, then Daddy will be proud. And I want Daddy to be proud. Like it just. And then it’s like him cutting back and doing lots of seizure inducing flashbacks of all these different frames that we’ve seen previously.

And then it gets like a little sexual with all the different women in his life, essentially. Right. Like that’s pretty much what happens for that. The simpleton psychedelics for 14 year old boys, really. But I did write that maybe pilots must be 14 because spending time in an ava makes you write bad teenage poetry and they just want to get you away from one. Yeah, this one is kind of interesting too, that this is, this is one of the few episodes where Hidekiana is basically fully running the show. Like he wrote the script of this one himself.

Right? This, this is, this is as his full, full participation. I mean, he’s participating all of them, but this one, like fully. He’s like, did he actually direct it? Let me have a double chunk at that while they’re talking after that little sequence too. Okay. Didn’t direct. He wrote. Okay, they cut. They cut back to nerve and nerve. They’re just writing off gibberish. They’re just talking technical jargon. And this is of course the English version that I’m listening to. But they’re just making up words as they go. And it gets a little bit silly just because it sound.

It sounds just slightly technical, but it’s. None of it’s really accurate, you know, babble. I believe Is the term for that. Yeah, because there’s certain shows that will at least go into an extra level of research and detail and actually cite, you know, mathematical theorems with everyone. They don’t do that in the English dub of this. I don’t even know if they do that in the Japanese, you know, original version in this. I didn’t like write a note about that. I was thinking about Contact, where their giant machine, like blows up and they’re like, well, we built two.

And that’s kind of what they have going on here. It’s like, well, we got another control center, but the chairs are uncomfortable. Which. That’s a snitty response. But why would you put uncomfortable chairs in the second one anyway? Oh, no, it’s Trek stuff. One Star Trek techno babble. When that is used to solve the episode’s problem, that’s called teching. The tech. You use the techno babble you made up to be the solution. That’s always fun. Those are usually the kind of more fun but dumber episodes of that show. And then they have, if you remember Star Trek, Next Generation have the battle bridge.

Right. Which is like just the set from the movies, but it looks more uncomfortable. So that’s kind of why I was thinking with Nerve two, like, oh, this is all busted up. Well, we got a second one right over there. Why is that one not busted up, by the way? Well, technically this would. This would predate those outside of Next Generation. This particular plot line is mid-90s, right. So everything after Next Generation comes up after this. Yeah, but yeah, I was like, why did the backup not get smashed too? It’s all. It was like right next to the stuff that got smashed.

Seems like it might. I mean, they were lucky in that case. Super lucky. Yeah. Why would you keep the backup right next to the non backup? The original? Yeah, I want to rewind because we went straight to the psychedelic, you know, simpleton dream sequence, which is the main thing. And we got raised in the first. Weaving the story. I guess that’s where the. And we got all the clip show stuff. That’s. I mean, I’m not going to call this a clip show one. Like in the first one, they’re changing some of the animation. That also got some criticism at the time.

They didn’t like it when they were giving you the clips and changing them slightly. I think that’s great, personally. But south park, of course, perfected that with their clip show episode. But I’m fine with it, honestly. If you’re going to put the effort in it’s probably lost on me. Once I recognize a few frames, I just assume the whole thing is, you know, previous. Which maybe it’s, it’s working on me. Right? Because like there’s probably some subtle nuances that I’m seeing but not paying attention to. And also, I mean just behind the scenes at this point, money is starting to become an issue.

So that is a money saving tactic. Okay, whatever. Two birds, one stone. I’m okay. I mean the first two minutes, the first two minutes of this episode are the last two minutes of the previous episode. There’s two minutes that you don’t need to animate, you know. Yeah, no, and, but to be fair, they were probably the best two minutes that you could have repeated out of this entire series so far. Because those two minutes, it’s, it’s an Ava eating an angel. I don’t know if we said specifically on this podcast, but the last two episodes of this, apparently money was real crunch time.

That is why there are the two follow up movies. It’s like, ah, once some more money came running through there, maybe we can kind of fix this a bit or at least do what we wanted to more, you know. So that means that once we get to like the last two episodes, we’re gonna be wondering where the rest of it is. And it’s there. It is there, but. Well, that’s in a. We’ll have to go searching for that bit. But yeah, that’s kind of like, I think, what is it called? Something like a sympathetic ending. I mean not like sympathy, but like a kind of, you know, like puzzle pieces that fit together.

I think that that was the plan with the follow up ones. But we’ll see. We don’t know yet. As long as they don’t. People are screaming at us right now because they’ve seen the whole thing and I’m, and I don’t know what I’m talking about. And you don’t either because we haven’t seen it yet. We’ll get there soon enough. Let’s rewind a bit to. We get, I think the mo. Well, the most Illuminati guys. The, the, the. Is that nerve. The guys in the room. I made sure to write the colors in order this time. I, I, Because I’m, I didn’t make anything particular out of it because I’m thinking of chakras or whatever, but maybe it fits something.

So from left to right it. Yellow, white in the center, green and red. I don’t know if you want to take anything out of that. Or just say it looks cool. We’ll have to do. After we do all these episodes, we’ll do like a. A separate episode maybe on just these. The neon Illuminati. That’s what I’ve been calling them because they always are in this neon room. It sounds cool. It’s like a bunch of businessmen. And I do love how they’re like, oh, we’re going off script. You know, I don’t know. And so much conspiracy talk, you know, it’s like, ah, it’s going off the script.

That’s why, you know, this. Or this happened. So that’s why Vegas doesn’t exist anymore. They went off script. Yeah. What is the. I’ve recently just been hearing people saying Vegas is extra rundown. Recently. What’s. What’s the Vegas? Yeah, I mean, this is definitely tangential, but I guess since Vegas just got completely decimated in the last episode of Ava, the Real World Vegas, it’s just that they’ve been nickel and diming everything, and they’ve been raising all sorts of different rates, and it’s no longer what. People went there 15, 20 years ago and had a really great experience.

Oh, my God. I got this suite and it was 200 a night, and they kept comping me drinks because I was gambling and. And they had a great time. You go back now and it is the exact opposite. They’re gonna fleece you on everything. There’s no free comps anymore. Even if you think you got a great deal, they hit you with, like, resort fees on the way out that make it so that your great deal is now way more than you ever expected. So it’s like, that’s what’s happened to Vegas. But it’s not gone. It’s not completely dead, but they’re definitely playing, like, the Disney thing again.

You don’t even have to deal with this in Disney. But, like, Disney, they just like, okay, now it’s 200 to get to the park. Okay, now it’s 250 to get into the park. And they. And the more they do that, the more they weed people out. But it’s not like attendance goes down. It just means that the. The previous demographic they used to cater to is no longer welcome. Like, they don’t want you here unless you’re dropping money and spending money. $20 on a Toblerone because you don’t want to leave your hotel room. I’m still living my Tokyo dream with, you know, $60 day tickets at Disney.

But, oh, Vegas. Yeah. My Vegas experience was what, 22 years ago we drove. Probably not bad. Me too. No, it was great. Had great time. I said I was only gonna spend $20 gambling. I got bored after $8. Spent the other 12 martinis, which at that time, because like you said they were comping you and stuff, that was like four martinis for $12. So. And then I drunkenly went. Walked through all the casinos at midnight. It’s great. Woke up in the morning, went to Star Trek the Experience and drove out into the desert. Yeah, same. I mean, 15 years ago, I think.

And it was $200 for a huge suite at the Venetian, like one of the nicest hotels there. And you could go to like a buffet for 15 bucks. And just like you, I was like, I’ve got $20. I’m going to gamble with this $20 and see how far it goes. And I swear to you, I walked. I can’t remember where we were at. It might have been Circus Circus at the end of the Strip. But we walk in and I saw they had war. And that scene from Las Vegas vacation when they bring them to like the second hand casino.

And it’s like, which hand is it in? Or it’s like, you know, I’m thinking of a number one to 100. And one of those had war on it. I was like, oh, my God, I. I have to play this. And I won. I put 20 down. And we went through three wars and each time you hit a war, you can double your money. And I hit three in a row and I ended up walking away with like 80 bucks. I turned 20 into 80 bucks. So I lost my $8 and spent the rest of my live money on martinis as previously stated.

So I had a different approach. But yeah, I’m. I’m not a. Well, for me, what the gambling. I enjoy getting back to Japanese stuff. I do like gachapon machines. So my, my, my catch is it’s got to be something fluffy. What about pachinko? Still a thing? Or is that yesteryear? Oh, no, that’s. Well, is it yesteryear? It’s still a thing, but I don’t feel like young people are into it anymore. Have you ever done it while you’re. No. Foreigners notoriously never do pachinko because it’s annoying and pointless. And also the pachinko parlors are not actual gambling centers.

What you have to do is, what do you get your receipt for what you got and then you have to go like next door to a different establishment where they will take that and give and you will get your prize there. So that just adds another layer of, you know, needing to know Japanese and stuff. But the game itself is. I mean it’s loud, it’s annoying. Back when I was a radio DJ at my university, I remember I. I was doing the graveyard shift and people were calling, like I was getting annoying calls from people or something for requests.

And since I was 20 years old in an a hole, I just, I had a cd, it was like an hour long CD of pachinko noises. I just put that on the radio at like three in the morning. I like that. I love the pachinko. I had a friend in the military and he got a pachinko machine that he put in his basement. So when it was already loud down there and someone’s playing pool and, and you know, people are like talking and drinking, there’s like music playing. Pachinko is kind of cool. It’s kind of like a fun little thing.

But yeah, I don’t understand how you’d get money out of those machines. Right, right. It’s weird. And con blue. That’s part of the reason I think that like pretty much, you know, foreigners are into it. It’s that. And we got Plinko. Right? Plinko comes from pachinko and maybe even like pinball in general. I think I was going to say pinball because There was a 1942 thing where a New York City banned all pinball, saying it was gambling, not a game. Like there was no skill. And I didn’t know this. The flappers or whatever you call them, the, the things you use.

Yeah, they were not flippers. Thank you. Flappers were, you know, women of the 20s. The flippers were not added until 1947, but then New York didn’t allow them back until 1976. So from 1942-19 to 1976, no pinball in New York City. This is where we got Tommy. Right, Tommy. Because it’s a little badass if you’re a cool pinball player in the. At that time. Right now it’s like pinball. So that’s a Chuck E. Cheese, you know. It’s based on a real guy too. I can’t remember if it was a TV show or a documentary, but it’s about the guy like the guy that saved pinball because he personally proved he was like one of the best pinball players around.

He was Tommy. He was like a real life Tommy and that he played it for like a jury or for a judge and was able to prove no, this is skill based and not. But which is weird too, because I. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pinball machine that paid out that they used to pay out. I don’t. That’s a part. I don’t know. That’s. It might have been more like pachinko back. Like, maybe it was like the same thing in Japan where you do the pinball and then you take your winnings and get something next door at a quote unquote different business.

Well, all that’s gone now and Vegas is gone. In the world of Ava, all the fun and games are completely gone. You’re either going, they still pachinko. Tokyo 3 has pachinko. I promise I. I will promise you. Tokyo 3 has pachinkO. Oh, one more story. It’s still Japanese stuff, but Scott, who we’ve talked to on the Call Disney podcast, this is like when I think I was dating my wife at the time, and he came and my wife’s university friends were there, and we did karaoke and. And. And he kept saying pachinko, which a chin. Chin.

Chin in Japanese is penis. And the way you would say it is pachinko. You wouldn’t stress the middle one. So he kept saying it, and then my wife’s friends were getting offended because if you say pachinko, pachinko, then it sounds like you’re saying. It sounds like you’re stressing like. Like if I say let’s. Like if I was saying the word dictation, but I kept saying dictation like that’s how it kind of sounded to my wife’s friends. I haven’t seen those friends since either. Maybe they really got offended. Pachinko. Yeah, that’s. Yeah. So I’m very careful when I say it now, especially around Japanese.

I mean, I always say pachinko, which makes it sound like I’m saying padiko. Exactly. So, yeah, because that’s how. That’s how pretty much any English speaker would say it. But, you know, if you don’t know English, it’s like, why is he doing that? That’s weird. No, they’re weird for not knowing English and understanding the inference. That’s right. They had English class in high school. What’s the deal? Let’s see. I’m looking through my notes for anything else. Oh, I was thinking that they describe. When they’re describing what Shinji’s floating and it does one, he’s in, like, what, a quantum? He’s like.

They show him and he’s kind of. Kind of like in and out. Of phase. And he’s like, underwater. Yeah. It shows, like, the crests of water if you were in the ocean. And he keeps kind of like floating up to it and getting yanked away. And then at one point, I think, clearly, it shows him almost being aborted out of an Ava. And it looks like a. Like a fetus that just got, like, pushed out. So was he given a choice of be with mommy forever or get the hell out? And at the last second, it just becomes get the hell out at Chinji.

Always getting stuck in plugs. The way. The way that I interpreted that is he’s done all of these things. Like. Like, these weren’t options for him to choose from. These are all different things that he’s already done. That’s kind of how I interpreted it. Yeah. But it does seem like it’s like the anti meditation. Like, I feel like the Shinji that comes out reborn is. Probably has more wrong ideas than the Shinji that went in there the day before. That’s not hard to do when you’re a Shinji. Yeah, but he was starting, like. Like, people were pointing out to him he was taking a little bit more agency.

But now he’s kind of just like, I guess I’m just gonna. I have to do this, and I’m gonna do what people tell me. It’s like. It seems like he’s kind of reverted a bit in this episode by the end. Like, that was not a good psychedelic dream with mommy that he had and other. And then a bunch of naked women at the. At the very end of this episode. Was. Is this artistic or was this also just. Hey, we’re running low on budget. Let’s just show two minutes of a frame, essentially, and then just have sexual noises going, oh, no, don’t put that in there.

That doesn’t go in there. And then just moaning for about two and a half minutes. The voice actress, by the way, they told her, improvised her in that scene. So when she’s saying that stuff, she’s just, like, trying to think of things to say. And I got the English version, so I wonder if the English version, they were also improvising or if they had to just translate the improvisations. I believe they trans. You just said exactly what was in the Japanese. I think they translated the improvisations. Yeah. Actually, the wiki that I’m looking at right now has, like, two paragraphs on the final scene.

If I can look through a little bit more, if you want. According to academic Jose Andres Santiago, this particular interrelation shot is reminiscent of Panel traditions and manga pillow shots in Japanese classic cinema. The shot was very evocative of. I guess they were at another ryokan or they were more likely at a love hotel. But a crappy love hotel. Do you know love hotels? Yeah, I mean, but how would you know that? From the frame. From the frame, it looked like a. Like a traditional Japanese end. So I think that’s actually where they were. And that, that, it just.

Yeah, the. That very 80s or 70s looking ashtray. You know, Japanese have only stopped smoking in the past, like five years. So, you know, everyone was smoking. Our kid. Kids aren’t smoking anymore in Japan. The new kids. Well, a lot of people were vaping, right. And then I. There’s not. I don’t feel like there’s that many cigarettes around. So, I mean, I haven’t smoked a cigarette for what, nine years. And before that I would smoke socially a lot. Right. And walking down the street. But yeah, I guess it just turns into vaping more so than people stop smoking.

I mean, technically, yes. Like at my company, I feel like a lot of people, you step out and take a smoke break where. Now I think it’s just the. The three male math teachers that do that. Interesting. Oh, no, there’s one high school English teacher, but he. He’s the one that. He’s like, if you want to talk to me, please write to me. Because he, even though he’s an English teacher, he doesn’t want to talk to you in English because he’s not confident enough to do that. So if you want to talk to him, you have to write to him.

I like that. Yeah. Where were we? Vaping, smoking. Sex scene. That’s where we were. Yes, but yeah, improvised. I mean, it’s funny, but yes, it is. Like you could, you could try and make it or like try and talk about the artistic approach as much as you want. But at the end, it’s like. We started with two minutes of previous footage. We’re finishing with two minutes of one shot. You know, it’s. Oh, it’s classy. I’m like, well, there’s too much orgasm noise to make it classy. So, yeah, it wasn’t. Yeah, it didn’t seem like it was artfully done.

It seemed a little bit gratuitous. And I was wondering, am I missing some deeper message here or are they just milking this to be funny? Are they milking it? The budgetary thing makes the most sense to me that they ran out of a little bit of budget. So here’s some fun. We can have by just recording VO for a couple minutes. Yeah, I get it, man. I get it. I. Because when you realize how much time and effort and I guess capital it costs to do just 10 seconds of animation, to just milk two minutes and be able to get away with it, it almost feels like you just got to print money a little bit.

But I’m sure at this point, what is it like they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul or however the phrase goes, right? That they’re like they’re just paying themselves back for maybe some earlier gratuitous animation that they went into. Yeah. Here’s film theorist Noel Burch saying, scenes composed of apparently random shots, panel transitions, there’s people trying to talk it out. Anno himself. It says that they finished these episodes just before and TV Tokyo just aired it. So the producer of the series did not see that scene and stated if he had known in advance what Anno had done, he would have stopped it.

Staff members felt so tired due to the production schedule that they wanted to show a close up of human genitalia so the show would be canceled at some point. Otto is saying sex and violence are integral parts of human life and these scenes are necessary for the unraveling of the plot and understanding life. I like the fact that the animators are just trying to get the show canceled with only six to go. What if, what if you’re working on this and you don’t know, maybe you think this is a 200 episode series, then yeah, they’re like, we need to kill this thing off before it hurts anyone else.

Yeah, well, I mean, I. I mean, at least I watched the Ghibli documentary the Kingdoms of Dreams and Madness, which makes Ghibli look like a weird place to work. Right. And you know, I mean, if you want to work in a sweatshop in Japan, go, go work in anime. Is usually, you know, what, what people would say because, yeah, making anime and making video games, you’re just like even more brutal hours than the normal brutal, you know, Japanese office job. So it’s. They probably. I can see where people doing most animes you’re watching aren’t like in the best mood and.

But think about how great it’ll look on your resume, kid. That. That’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? How great will this look on my resume? And you get to a point where it’s like, huh? Well, if they’re gonna. If they’re gon pay me and does it need to look? I don’t know. That’s neither here nor there, but I think it’s usually what it is, though, is that it’s kind of like the same military roles. Like, when you’re in this particular job, whether it’s Disney or military or maybe Ghibli. But when you’re in the role, it’s seen as you’ve hit this pinnacle, or at least like you.

You’ve gotten as far down this road as you can in that angle. But you’re usually not compensated as well as. As outsiders would think because this huge, like, beast that you’re part of, it doesn’t necessarily pay well, but you can take the fact that you were there somewhere else and get them to pay you more because they think that it. It gets kind of weird how it works. But this is how I’ve. I’ve sort of noticed things working, especially in animation world. Like. Like, usually people assume that you get paid way more than you do, but then because of that, you can get better jobs outside of the role itself.

Yeah, it’s like, again, the Ghibli studio, they had sign signs post around just being like, if you’re no longer expired, inspired, quit, you know, so that’s a weird little form. Hey, if you need to inspire me, throw another zero at the end of one of these paychecks every once in a while or permanently. I wonder how much that would truly inspire somebody. You know, I don’t know. I honestly. Because I guess not everyone’s motivated. But I don’t know, if you threw another zero at the end, I think I’d be pretty motivated. The only other thing I have on this episode is that I had to watch the car scene twice because there were like, two layers of dialogue.

And then I’m reading subtitles where it’s Ritzuko and Misato in the car just before the sex scene. And I was like, you cannot actually watch this scene once and get it. You actually. Because there’s something on the radio and they’re talking, so you. And it’s all overlapping. I don’t know. Do you have to do that or just kind of let it, like, float through? I mean, I just watched it. I didn’t. I didn’t stop it and rewatch and be like, I make sure that I also heard what they had on the radio. I was paying more attention to what they were saying.

I guess I don’t do that all the time. I guess it’s because I got that amazingly bland quote earlier. So I wanted to check the radio again. This. Well, so what did we get. What did we get out of the radio that was worth paying attention to? It wasn’t really worth paying attention. Yeah. Okay. So there you go. It was just like we were playing gta and yeah, they’re saying something on the radio, but it’s kind of secondary. Anyway, I felt the need to check, so I think that’s. I’m glad you did because I didn’t. I guess we’ll.

We’ll weave this one down then we’ll. We’ll finish weaving this story and then have an oral stage. But. Yeah. Yeah. What’s going on in your world? Paranoidamerican.com we got a lot of releases that have been lined up. There was no big releases in 2025 because I’ve been planning to get them all out in 2026. So let me just grab one out of a hat. But I’m going to say Satanic Panic comic dot com. You can go there and sign up and get notified for when it launches. Artwork’s done. Figuring out what the cool little merch and swag will be.

I’m. I’m kind of leaning into. Every release gets a patch going forward. And then maybe releases that hit a certain amount raised will get like little challenge coins. I’m not really sure, but I, I love the patch idea because they’re so easy and I want to have like a badass jacket that just has like a patch for all these different releases. So Satanic panic comic and paranoidamerican.com for all your weird conspiracy occult comic book story fetish needs, I guess over on my side, what I plug today, I want you to go for Time Enough podcast. That’s where we cover the Twilight Zone.

We completed the original Twilight Zone series. We’re now doing the Jordan Peele one. We’ve decided to follow a vortex pattern where we do the original 60s. We jump all the way to Jordan Peele, then we go back to Night Gallery. Then we do the Forest Whitaker one from the early 2000s. And we finish with the 80s Twilight Zone series, which was my Twilight Zone growing up. I didn’t have cable and that’s what was showing on UHF at the time. So, okay, story woven, then. Favorite conspiracies. All the more sticker sheets. There are non American stickers. They’ll make you smile and snicker false threads and secret society.

All of these and more on our sticker sheets. Explore the unique with Paranoid American sticker sheets. Unearth tales of cryptids, cults and mysteries through each sticker. These won’t last Long long get yours now@paranoidamerican.com American stickers Cryptids, cults and killers killers we got all your favorite conspiracies all that sticky sheets there are North American stickers make you smile and snicker false flags and secret society all of these and what the heck are you waiting for? Discover the extraordinary with paranoid American sticker sheets from cryptids in the night to cults out of sight each sticker is a unique find get yours now@paranoidamerican.com.

Yeah I scribbled my life away driven the right page will it enlight your brain give you the flight my plane paper the highs ablaze somewhat of an amazing feel when it’s real to real you will engage it your favorite of course the lord of an arrangement I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional hey maybe your language a game how they playing it well with the out Lakers evade them whatever the cost they are the shapeshift snakes get decapitated met is the apex execution of flame you out nuclear bomb distributed at war rather gruesome for eyes to see max them out than I light my trees blow it off in the face you despising me for what though calculated and rather cutthroat paranoid American must be all the blood smoke for real Lord give me your day your way vacate they wait around to hate whatever they say man it’s not in the least bit we get heavy rotate when a beat hits a thank us you welcome three niggas for real you’re welcome they never had a deal you’re welcome man they lacking appeal you’re welcome yet they doing it still you’re welcome.
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