Character · Neon Genesis Evangelion
Ritsuko Akagi
The scientist keeping the Evangelions running smokes through every briefing and explains nothing she is not forced to.
In Otakana the clue reads: Blonde scientist in charge of the computers
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Letters
- 7 · Hard
Ritsuko Akagi is NERV's chief scientist, responsible for the Evangelion units and for the Magi, three supercomputers that vote on every decision the agency makes. She wears a lab coat over dark clothes, bleaches her hair, and delivers exposition in a tone suggesting she has already had this conversation with somebody less intelligent.
Her mother built the Magi and put a piece of her own personality into each of the three, which is either elegant systems design or something else entirely. Ritsuko inherited the machines and the department. She is close to Misato from university and close to Gendo in a way the series reveals slowly and never makes comfortable.
Anno uses her as the character who knows. Almost every technical answer in the series arrives through her, and almost every time she gives one she is withholding a larger one. Later episodes turn her into one of the show's genuinely unsettling figures without her ever raising her voice.
Spelling RITSUKO
RITSUKO is seven letters covering four Japanese characters, because TSU is a single kana written with three of them. Ri-tsu-ko. The name ends in the KO that closes a great many Japanese women's names, which is useful in a word game: once those last two letters are green, guess the ones in front of them accordingly.