Institute for Japanese Studies (IJS) has been hosting serieses of talks encompassing Japanese politics, economy, cultures and arts. With the experts from Europe, U.S. and Japan, we deliver the talks in multiple languages including Japanese, Korean and English.

We are pleased to host No.270  lecture as a part of Japan Specialist Seminars, titled "The Boy in the Mech: Evangelion and Rupture”.

Unlike other seminars, this session will be starting from 10am KST.  

Title :  The Boy in the Mech: Evangelion and Rupture

Lecturer :  Michael Cronin, Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at William & Mary  

Language : English 

Time :  Nov 8th (Tuesday) 2022 10:00 – 11:30

Venue: ZOOM

Zoom  ID : 583 289 8745

Link : https://snu-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/5832898745

Summary :In January 1995, the Great Hanshin Earthquake opened the year of Japan's upheaval. In the wake of the subsequent Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack, the financial crisis, and the collapse of Murayama Tomiichi's cabinet, people's faith in Japan's postwar order was shaken and the unresolved conflict was on the way. A close reading of cultural products around 1995 clearly reveals the nature of this upheaval, which symbolically shows the cracks in the postwar order. In this presentation, we focus on the influential animation series "Neon Genesis Evangelilon'' (Hideaki Anno, first broadcast in 1995) to criticize the perspective of prioritizing individual subjects based on the humanistic tradition, human-centered ideologies and to analyze the gradual development of new existential conditions that decentralize humans. Japanese popular culture has expressed suspicions about the European-centered humanist worldview through the search for hybrid beings such as robots, megabots, and cyborgs. In this presentation, we track the trajectory of such hybrid beings, review how "Neon Genesis Evangelilon'' deviates from that trajectory, and discuss the implications of such cracks in the genre.

Inquiry : SNU IJS  (880-8503 / ijs@snu.ac.kr)