The Beast
Starting from where episode one left off, Shinji is about to do battle with the Angel Sachiel. After taking a few tentative steps like a baby would, Eva Unit 01 is savaged by the Angel, breaking the Eva’s arm as well as cracking the armor on the Eva’s head with the Angel’s arm outstretched emitting powerful beams of light. Just when we think that Unit 01 is defeated we cut away from the action and Shinji wakes up in a hospital room all by himself. As he looks up he sighs “…an unfamiliar ceiling…” which is the secondary title of this episode.
At the site of the battle we see that work is being done to clear away the mess and Unit 01’s head armor being hauled away, throughout the episode we are also shown that the city is being fortified. Gendo commences his meeting with the “Committee” (at first we are led to believe they are UN representatives but later we’ll know them better by another name), which is basically just a lot of head-honcho looking bunch of old farts, who can’t stop whinging to Gendo about how much it’s costing. They also mention something about a “Human Enhancement project”, in later episodes it’s uniformly called the Human Instrumentality project, with no explanation at all as to what it is.
Meanwhile Shinji readies to come out of hospital and catches another glimpse of Rei in her bandages. As Ritsuko is informed about his improved condition Misato exclaims “Airconditioning is the greatest thing, man’s triumph over nature,” our first indication that the seasonal weather is not as it should be and that mother nature is in a state of dystopia too. In the Japanese original Ritsuko and Misato talk about Shinji’s condition and only mentions about his brain, in the English dub they mention the word cerebellum instead. For those who don’t know cerebellum is just another fancy word for a part of the brain that controls perception, it’s where the word cerebral comes from. Misato also says “…don’t you mean his heart?…” at the end of the conversation.
Shinji has recovered and is offered to be taken in by Misato to live at her place, after she finds out that Shinji and his father don’t want to live together, “because to them living together is unnatural”. Ritsuko has some misgivings about the idea as Misato quips about making a pass at Shinji. This is one of the evidence that at this stage Ritsuko genuinely cares about the chosen children.
On their way to Misato’s apartment they make a few stops. First they go to the supermarket where they pick up some groceries, also they overhear other residences of the city contemplating to move out to escape the way it is turning into a battlefield. Their second stop is described by Misato as “…a really cool place…” They watch from afar the transformation of Tokyo 3 as buildings retract above ground. “This city is a fortress, designed to stand against the Angels…and it’s the city that you saved” she tells Shinji.
When they arrive at Misato’s place, the hesitant Shinji is reassured by Misato that it’s his new home. He soon realises that Misato isn’t the ideal roommate after a series of light hearted comedic moments. Such as dinner with Misato giving as a helping of fan service. Also Shinji meeting Pen Pen (a Wal-Mart penguin, Misato’s pet) for the first time in the bath, and a well placed beer and toothpick gag, literally.
In contrast the next scene is more serious. Ritsuko shows her concerns about the children, in particular Rei, as she questions her boss Gendo’s motives towards them. Note that the background is that of the Eva training area, in which Eva unit 00 is locked in an actionn pose, that of punching the wall. An explanation for this comes in a later episode involving Rei’s Eva activation test.
As Misato (in the bath, another helping of fan service) confides in Ritsuko over the phone about her decision to take Shinji into her home, Shinji in bed reflects on his first sortie against an Angel, his memory drifting back into the heat of the battle. 
Eva Unit 01 has sustained heavy damaged, including a broken arm and cracked head armor, so much so that it deactivates. But somehow when all hope is loss, it reactivates itself in a berserker mode that not only breaking through the Angel’s AT field and self healing the broken arm but also totally annihilates the angel Sachiel. It rips apart Sachiel’s ribs and is battered with one of the broken ribs (this is an adam and eve metaphor). Realising that it cannot win, the angel self destructs, in the hope of destroying the Eva along with it.
The episode ends with the Eva surviving. Shinji witnesses the head’s armor fall off and the regrowth of it’s eyes. Shinji screams in terror, and we fall back to the present. Misato tries to comfort him by telling him that he did “something very noble today, you should be proud…hang in there.”
To watch the episode just click here The Beast
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