Character · Neon Genesis Evangelion
Misato Katsuragi
Operations director by day, and by night a woman whose refrigerator holds beer, instant curry and a penguin.
In Otakana the clue reads: Beer-loving guardian who commands the pilots
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Misato Katsuragi runs combat operations at NERV, which means she is the person deciding where a fourteen-year-old should stand while something enormous walks towards him. She is good at it. She is also the reason Shinji has a home, having moved him into her apartment on the grounds that a boy should not be billeted in a barracks.
The apartment is a disaster of empty cans and unwashed containers, and Anno mines the gap between the officer and the tenant for about ten episodes before he stops joking about it. Her father died during Second Impact, she survived it without speaking for years afterwards, and the cross she wears was his.
What makes her hold up is that the competence is not a costume either. She improvises operations that work, argues with command when it matters, and carries a private plan she keeps from nearly everyone. The show is unusually interested in what it costs an adult to be the responsible one in a building full of children.
Spelling MISATO
MISATO is six letters in three clean beats, mi-sa-to, with no long vowels to lose and no consonant clusters to guess at. It is the given name. The family name Katsuragi is longer and not what the row wants. Vowels and consonants alternate all the way through, so one confirmed letter tells you a great deal about position.