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The first half’s title essentially says it all: “Rain, After Running Away.” It’s a tone piece and almost wordless character study, and it is a triumph of both. Shinji has received no support beyond a halfhearted “hang in there,” and even if the specific details of his situation are extraordinary, his reaction to it is what you’d expect out of any child forced to perform for unsupportive caretakers in a loveless home.Įpisode four is a slow episode, much slower than any of the prior three, and it doesn’t really contain that much clear, point-to-point conflict. That fight was even more horrible, and ended with him sobbing right in front of the schoolmates who’d bullied him. Nothing good came of that fight, either in fact, he actually got beaten for the crime of piloting it, and then forced to fight another monster, this time without his father even present to witness him. He didn’t fight the first angel out of some genuine desire to pilot the robot, or even a sense of larger moral obligation – he did it because his father told him to, and then used a suffering girl as a prop to make him feel bad about himself. Honing in on Misato’s apartment, we quickly learn that Shinji’s fear and unhappiness have finally won out over his sense of obligation and desperate need for validation after holing up in his room for five straight days, Shinji has run away.Īs Misato herself acknowledges, it’s not surprising that Shinji runs away. The city itself echoes Shinji’s moods, though as he travels its unfamiliar reaches, he can find no comfort in it. With no immediate angel attack to handle, this episode instead offers a focused, almost suffocating dive into Shinji’s psychology – his sense of isolation, his self-hatred, and that overhanging, stifling film of depression. Whether you ignore it or acknowledge it, the rain doesn’t care – in the malaise of depression, it will remain your only true companion.Įvangelion’s fourth episode opens on that rain, a cold curtain drowning Tokyo-3 in shadow. Others seem not to notice the rain, but simply emulating their behavior doesn’t make it go away. It steals color from our surroundings, painting everything in a somber gray, draining the vitality of the landscape just as it drains our passion for the things we love. It’s cold and damp, and it makes us feel cold and damp in turn, unclean, ashamed of our clammy skin. It pours down at all times, holding us up in bus stations or entryways or lonely stairwells, forcing us to relive old failures again and again. A great part of it is the rain, or rather, the felt sensation of perpetual rain.