Lilliputian Hitcher

Plot

Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami, and Asuka Langley Soryu, three pilots in charge of the Evangelion mechas, are subjected to an experiment by Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, head of the technology department of the special paramilitary agency Nerv. The three pilots are placed naked inside pseudo-Evangelions called Simulation Bodies. As the pilots undergo the test, an anaerobic bacterial Angel called Iruel begins to infiltrate through the blocks in the walls of Nerv's Pribnow Box room. The pilots are ejected from Nerv's headquarters. Nerv staff notice how Iruel did not infiltrate the areas with high oxygen presence, so they attempt to eradicate the Angel by increasing the presence of ozone in the area. Iruel, however, quickly undergoes an evolutionary transformation so fast that he acquires the characteristics of a computer, thus attempting to hack into the Magi System supercomputer, Nerv's beating heart.

Iruel infiltrates the supercomputer and tries to induce the headquarters into self-destruct mode. Its hacking is temporarily slowed down by Ritsuko, who devises a strategy called "reverse hack" in an attempt to defeat the Angel, believing it is better to increase the enemy's evolution and insert a program to make Iruel choose to coexist with the Magi System. During the operation, Dr. Akagi talks to Nerv's Major Misato Katsuragi discussing her relationship with her mother Naoko, whom she respected but hated at the same time. Ritsuko's program defeats Iruel, the headquarters are saved, and the central computer returns to ordinary mode.

Production

In 1993, Gainax wrote a presentation document for Neon Genesis Evangelion entitled New Century Evangelion (tentative name) Proposal (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (仮) 企画書, Shinseiki Evangelion (kari) kikakusho), containing the initial synopsis for the planned episodes. The Proposal document was then published in 1994. For the first twelve episodes aired, the company roughly followed the schedule envisioned by the first draft, with only a few minor script differences. From the thirteenth episode onward, however, the production deviated from the original plan of the writers and from what was initially envisioned in the submission document. The thirteenth episode of the series was to be titled "What comes after fear" (恐怖の後に来るものは, Kyōfu no nochi ni kuru mono wa); during the installment Shinji would be defeated in combat and trapped inside an Angel, beginning a trilogy of episodes with the same basic theme. The staff in progress abandoned the original project, and some of the ideas for the trilogy were later transferred and condensed into the sixteenth episode. According to Michael House, translator at the time for Gainax, the phrase "The end point of evolution is death," uttered by Gendo during "Lilliputian Hitcher," represents a watershed within the series' production. Neon Genesis Evangelion's main director Hideaki Anno in the making initially intended to give the story a happy ending, but he realized that he had created characters that were too problematic during production, so he changed his plans. According to Hiroki Azuma, a culture critic who personally interviewed the director, during the series first broadcast Anno began to criticize otaku, whom he considered too closed-minded and introverted, so he changed his original plans by creating a more dramatic and introspective story toward the middle of the series. 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.

Animator Mitsuo Iso, screenwriter Akio Satsukawa, and Anno wrote the script for the episode; Tensai Okamura handled the storyboards and served as director, while Masahiko Otsuka worked as assistant director. Kazuya Kise took the role of a chief animator, and worked with Ise as assistant character designer. Mitsuo Iso originally joined the project as an animator, but he actively entered other jobs by freely coming up with various ideas and writing about them to the director every day. Iso initially wrote a long original script full of science fiction concepts, but Akio Satsukawa had to rework it and remove some concepts. Only later did Anno take over, who made other changes before drafting the final script. The ending of the final draft was disappointing for Iso, because it was forcibly connected to a plot that he had planned to use in another episode. Iso even offered to work on the storyboards, despite having no direct experience in the field, but received no response from the main staff.

Cultural references and themes

Evangelion Chronicle magazine identified several scientific references in "Lilliputian Hitcher", particularly nanotechnology and genetics, although these take on a different meaning than real-world biology. In one scene, machines called Polysomes, named after the polysomes from molecular biology, are presented. The room in which the initial Nerv test is carried out is called the Pribnow Box, a reference to the biological concept of the same name. Other references include the Central Dogma, whose name is taken from the central dogma of molecular biology, and the Sigma Unit, whose name refers to the sigma factor, a factor in the initiation of RNA synthesis. Evangelion Chronicle also likened Iruel's properties, such as self-replication, data processing, and colony self-regulation, to micromachines and K. Eric Drexler's universal molecular assembler. Ritsuko's strategy to annihilate Iruel, in which the Angel is induced to choose coexistence with the Magi and annihilate itself, has instead been compared to the biological concepts of apoptosis and symbiosis. Apoptosis itself and heavy water are also mentioned in the episode.

"Lilliputian Hitcher" mentions a "pituitary system" inside the Simulation Bodies, an internal system that mimics the pituitary gland; the pituitary gland resides in the brains of living beings, but since the Simulation Bodies do not have heads, the pituitary system is thought to reside in the bodies of the units. Ritsuko and Misato talk about "personality transplant OS" during Iruel's attack, a system by which an individual's personality is transferred into a seventh-generation organic computer, so it can think. The book Evangelion Glossary (エヴァンゲリオン用語事典, Evangerion Yougo Jiten) by Yahata Shoten likened the concept of personality transcription to Hans Moravec's studies on artificial intelligence and identified a reference to the actual generations of computers, stopped at the fifth at the time the series aired. Writer Kazuhisa Fujie and Martin Foster similarly wrote that, "it is believed that the powers of the Magi system far outstrip the capabilities of any of the neural network systems". Furthermore, "Lilliputian Hitcher" mentions the concept of protein barrier. Evangelion Glossary compared it to protein engineering, a discipline that uses genetic engineering to produce proteins with new functions.

According to the Evangelion Encyclopedia, published along with the Italian Platinum Edition of the series, the staff wanted Iruel to suggest an answer to the debate between evolutionism and creationism. The title of the episode is a reference to Iruel and the Lilliputians, a race of tiny men mentioned in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The names of the three Magi constitute a reference to the three wise men from the East mentioned in Matthew's Gospel, whom tradition indicates as Balthasar, Gaspar, and Melchior. Their names firstly appread in an eighth-century religious chronicle named Excerpta Latina Barbari. The Magi System, developed by Naoko, looks like a human brain and has been compared to the concept of artificial intelligence. Each of the individual computers has a slightly different programming model, so that they metaphorically reflect Naoko as a scientist, mother, and woman. According to the official Evangelion film books, like the three astrologers from whom it takes its name, the supercomputer is composed of three independent calculators that to solve any kind of problem consult each other and make a decision by majority. Writers Víctor Sellés de Lucas and Manuel Hernández-Pérez similarly wrote that, as later Christian tradition identified Magi as astrologers and scholars, the Magi System "operates as a council of the wise and sometimes even as an oracle of sorts".

Reception

"Lilliputian Hitcher" was first broadcast on December 27, 1995, and drew a 3.4% audience share on Japanese television. Merchandise on the episode has also been released. The installment received a positive reception from anime critics and reviewers. The Anime Café's Akio Nagatomi, while finding the "human interest" of the episode "simplistic and contrived", praised the sense of suspense, saying, "Very clever and fast-paced direction keep the tension levels high, in what I believe is the best episode yet". Writer Dennis Redmond positively commented on the "extraordinary aesthetic beauty of Nerv's instrument panels". In an analysis of Neon Genesis Evangelion's visual style, Slant Magazine writer Michael Peterson cited the scene in which Ritsuko is shown inside the Magi system within a dark, barely defined space as an example of Hideaki Anno's directorial style, arguing that such scenes "gain their emotional power through spatial composition". Film School Rejects' Max Covill similarly lauded "Lilliputian Hitcher" as a "great episode", especially for the "interesting" focus on Ritsuko's character. For Digitally Obsessed's Joel Cunningham the installment "makes a character that was previously bossy and annoying very sympathetic". SyFy Wire website's Daniel Dockery cited the battle against the Angel among the show's best "non-depressing" moments. Comic Book Resources editor Ajay Aravind also praised the computer battle against Iruel, ranking it as the second-best fight in Neon Genesis Evangelion.