Kawoshin “Chrysalis” doujinshi by Nobi Nobita/draft artist, analysis
**Scanned and translated doujinshi in the cut tag **
This doujinshi appears in the special June magazine “mook” (portmanteau for magazine / book), entitled “Like a Cruel Angel,” and it’s written by the artist that created the illustrations for episode 24′s early drafts.
It’s pretty much the same narrative vernacular about what happens at the end of episode 24, except the artist begins the short story with an interesting thematic element concerning the noisiness of cicadas, a summer bug in Japan.
>> There are a few blurry pages. I’m not sure how they ended up that way when I went to upload them, If anyone REALLY needs a cleaner copy of a certain page, please reach out to me.
>> When Kaworu says “I am 14 years” he literally says 僕は14年, I’m assuming he’s either continuing to talk to Rei given the very last scene with the Rei clones, and hinting that *he’s* been in his own aquarium for 14 years, OR he’s now talking to Shinji and referencing his lifespan in the context of the cicadas.
>> He also cryptically says “I think I’m also the 3rd one.” Not sure if he’s alluding to the fact he is on his third cycle, third clone, etc.
>> “Target lost” doesn’t mean they lost sight of Kaworu obviously…in Japanese, “lost” can mean “loss of life” lost soul, etc.
>> Shinji is reflecting back to a memory from the TV series when he sleeps in Kensuke’s tent out in the field. The episode did not have a lot of dialogue, it focused on sounds, and the sound effects for cicadas grew intensely the further away from people Shinji ventured outward. I had personally always interpreted this to mean that no matter how far he tries to run away, the deafening of his problems will always follow him.
>> There are only five pages in this doujinshi that do NOT have the sound effects for cicada chirping written across the pages. So it’s an ongoing element to show that he doesn’t easily escape them, and mirrors his earlier line in the doujin “the neverending summer continued.” This “neverending summer” will continue as Kaworu’s clones emerge, meet Shinji, and tragically die.
>> The cicadas symbolize Kaworu and his clones in this story in a few ways: He mentions they “emerge from the ground” after the 7th summer, and die after 7 days.” The last image in the doujinshi depicts a swarm of Kaworu clones underground, ‘in the soil’ just like the cicadas. Kaworu understands his own death and seems to be aware there is a cycle with himself, too. Shinji holds him with Unit 1′s hand and it immediately after shows him holding the cicada the same way.
>> The way Kaworu talks to Rei could be seen as her also being one of many cicadas that are caught and confined in a “basket” / dummy plug system.
>> The counting on the last page of the doujinshi equals to four summers. He mentions earlier that he “thinks he is the third.” So, if he is likening himself to the cicadas, then it is going to take “four more summers” to emerge from the ground (you can clearly see the symbolic placement of the Kaworu clones appearing to be underground) this last scene mirrors the earlier conversation he had with Shinji about the lifespan of the cicadas. This could be hinting at early ideas of there existing some type of time loop or cycle time line within the series, albeit just fan work of the storyboard artist. Whether or not his clones really are underground is open to interpretation, since Shinji does ask what he is doing “in a place like this.” Kinda creepy o . o
Hit the jump for my translation of the doujin:
romaincrisis
snowghoul
titsay
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
