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MISATO
Seiyuu: Kotono Mitsuishi
- Misato (thinking): "This is terrible! I just finished restoring my car... It's a wreck now... 33 loan payments left... And the repair costs... Even worse, my only good clothes have been ruined... And I was in such a good mood! Damn...."
Major Misato Katsuragi is the Director of Operations. As tactical commander of the EVA units, she briefs the pilots before they are launched into battle.
She is a very effective commander. She is third in the operational hierarchy. While both Ikari and Fuyutsuki were in the South Pole, Misato led NERV and the children to a major victory against the Tenth Angel.
If Tokyo-3 suffers five Ashino Lakes, NERV headquarters and the Geo-Front would be destroyed, therefore it was imperative to "catch" this angel, which functioned as an atomic bomb. The three units worked as a team, smoothly and effectively. EVA 01 caught the angel, which was the most difficult aspect of the mission, EVA 00 ruptured the angel's AT-Field, and EVA 02 stabbed it with the progressive knife. Even hard-nosed, not easily impressed Commander Ikari praised Misato and the children.
- Kaji: "I suppose I'll have to be polite to you from now on. Address you as a superior."
- Misato: "What are you trying to say? You jerk!"
- Kaji: "You know, it's unprecedented for both the commander and the vice-commander to leave Japan together. I guess they must really count on ol' Katsuragi here."
While she is an excellent tactician, Misato is thoroughly slovenly and out of control in her personal life. She drinks beer for breakfast. She doesn't like to clean up. She likes instant food. She dresses improperly in front of Shinji and his young friends. When Shinji moved in with her, she cheated at Jan-Ken-Pon, trapping him into doing most of the house work and cooking.
She lived with Kaji eight years ago but it's unlikely that she picked up her bad habits from him. In fact, it seems that the only time she cares about neatness and propriety is when she is with Kaji. She is constantly telling him that he should straighten his tie or that he should have shaved. She derides him for being immature and for constantly hitting on women.
But with Kaji she has the advantage of knowing that he was in love with her then and he is in love with her now.
- Ritsuko: "You're unusually sober today."
- Misato: "Yeah, a little ...."
- Ritsuko: "Work? Or a man?"
- Misato: "A lot of things."
- Ritsuko: "Still in love?"
Misato: "Don't be ridiculous!! Who'd want that idiot? I was young and it's still the biggest blemish on my whole life." - Ritsuko: "I meant that he may still love you. Did I scare you?"
- Misato: "Why you lousy ...."
- Ritsuko: "You're only proving my hypothesis. Why don't you go with your feelings? It's not like it's still eight years ago."
- Misato: "He hasn't changed. Not one bit. He's still immature."
Misato also has the unenviable task of taking care of EVA pilots, Shinji Ikari and Soryuu Asuka Langley . She must give a home to the motherless children and in essence become their mother, offering love and kindness to mend their tortured young souls.
This works while the Second Child outshines the Third Child as a combat pilot. But around the time that Shinji becomes Number One in his harmonics tests in synchronizing with his EVA unit, Misato becomes involved with Ryouji Kaji. Naturally, Asuka, who is infatuated with Kaji, comes to see Misato as a rival and as a poor guardian.
- Asuka: "Maybe you and Kaji have hooked up again, but the fact that you're happy doesn't mean that you can just ignore us."
Misato:
"There's nothing between me and Kaji."
(The phone rings. Answering machine picks up. In the background is Kaji's voice, saying: "Hey, Katsuragi! I've found a bar that serves a decent drink. How 'bout tonight? Bye.")- Asuka: "I've never been around anyone involved in such an indecent relationship! You're supposed to be our guardian! You hypocrite! It's disgusting!"
Misato has her own problems to deal with. Like Shinji, she has a habit of running away when personal relationships become difficult. She fled from Kaji once before. She thought he was too much like her father. Oddly enough, one of the reasons she wanted him over other guys was because he was like her father.
Although Kaji seems willing to love her no matter her reasons, she is too confused about her feelings to maturely reciprocate. She associates physical contact with comfort and love, as an infant would to its mother. But once those pesky emotions emerge and she must connect with person on another level, she flees.
Most of her problems stem from her parents. Her father was obsessed with science and absent often. Her mother cried a lot, unsatisfied with her life, her marriage. When her father left to do his job, to fulfill his obsession, her mother cried. And Misato resented it. She resented her mother for her dependence on her father and for her unhappiness. She did not want to become like her mother. Because of her mother's dependence on her father, she learned that she could only depend on herself.
Misato believed she had to be a good girl in order for him to love her and to pay attention to her. She was told to be a good child, as if she was the one who drove her father away. She had to be good and not bother her depressed mother.
Misato grew up believing that she hated her father. She grew up telling herself that she had to be pure so that her father would love her. And then he sacrificed his life for hers, saving her during the Second Impact. And she could not understand her feelings for him any longer. How could she hate the man who gave his life for hers? How could she love the man who ignored her and made her mother's life miserable?
"Misato didn't show up for classes the last few days and I finally forced her to tell me why. Talk about stupid! She'd spent the whole week having nonstop sex with her new boyfriend! She introduced me to him today. He's handsome, but his unkempt manner bothers me." -- from Ritsuko's letter to her mother.
So she rebelled against the person she made herself become, the person she was told to be, a good child, so pure and noble. Her rebellion started during her university years, when she met Ryouji Kaji.
In Japanese culture the dichotomy is not a question of Western Judeo-Christian good and evil, but rather the idea of purity and impurity. So for her to rebel, she had to turn away from the idea of purity. She wanted to become dirty, to see the impurity within herself. Through Kaji, she wanted to see her life and her reputation ruined.
"Wasn't it really peace of mind that you were seeking in Kaji's bed? You wanted peace of mind and warmth from Kaji, right? You wanted to find your father in Kaji's embrace, didn't you?"
She ran away from Kaji not simply because he was like her father, but because she was ashamed. She did not begin her relationship with Kaji because she loved him, but she because she wanted to make herself dirty.
Kaji never conformed to the social ideal. He dressed the way he wanted to dress and flirted outrageously and had a reputation as a "bad boy." She thought that someone like him could aid her rebellion.
It was not until deeper into their relationship that she learned that Kaji was a lot like her father.
That's when the shame entered into the equation. Kaji accepted her for who she was, never trying to change her. He was kind and gentle with her. And still she is embarrassed about why she slept with him.
Kaji: "So, no reason was required to begin our love, but you needed a reason for ending it?"
Misato: "You are so kind, Kaji. You are so kind. I want to make me dirty."
Kaji: "Just because you hate yourself is no reason to injure yourself further. Punishing yourself is simply a cheat to make you feel better for a little while. Don't do this to yourself."
Misato: "And now you'll tell me to take care of myself. Men always do that. They escape to their jobs, their own world, and they leave me behind. They always leave me behind. Just like my father did. They always escape from harsh realities."
She came to resent Kaji too.
He had to work. He went to his world -- this place in her mind where guys go -- leaving her behind as her father had. She said she was the reason he escaped to work, to avoid her. She believed herself to be his harsh reality. She called herself a problem, his problem. She feared him. He was just like her father.
But she was so happy. There was a joy in being with him, a truly pleasurable joy and because of the happiness, she hated him. That's why she ran from him. But she left him without telling him why.
And she found other men to escape her pain and loneliness. She found a momentary comfort in each physical embrace. But all of it was fleeting. In her mind, she would be alone and afraid if there was no one sleeping next to her. She has to have human touch to define herself, because without out the embrace in the night, she would see how empty her life has become.
She fills the whole inside her with temporary fixes of human contact. She used Kaji to soothe the pain she cannot heal.
She claimed that she joined NERV for revenge, to kill the thing that killed her father. Which makes her cause a little less noble, because it lacks the power of true conviction.
Because of her father's sacrifice, Misato was the only survivor of the Katsuragi Investigation Commission. The horrors she witnessed in the Antarctica during the Second Impact caused her to become aphasic for two years. When she recovered, she attended Tokyo University in Tokyo-2, where she met Ritsuko and Kaji. In 2008, she joined Gehirn and then transferred to NERV in 2010.
She met up with Kaji again when he brought the Second Child, Soryuu Asuka Langley, over from Germany along with EVA 02 and a UN Pacific Fleet escort. She was not at all happy to see him again. She was even more unhappy to find that he was going to stay at HQ indefinitely, rather going back immediately to NERV Germany.
She had to see him almost daily at work and in their enclosed city. And seeing him meant she had to deal with what she did to him, how she used him, and who she truly was. She had to deal with her self-loathing and stop blaming others for her unhappiness. She had to face the fact that she actually loved him -- in spite of them both.