Conception
Yoshiyuki Sadamoto found Misato's design the most difficult - conceiving her as an older "girl next door" who was also in the military. He wished to have Misato be a fashionable character, changing her clothes constantly, but found that his own lack of fashion sense made him unable to show this. Furthermore, he envisaged Misato as a "loser girl" who would be promiscuous and not take things seriously. Director Hideaki Anno described Misato as "...a woman, twenty-nine, who lives life so lightly as to barely allow the possibility of human touch. She protects herself by keeping relationships on the surface, and by running away." He has also described her as an adult Tsukino Usagi, with whom she shares a voice actress as well as hair design. The disparity between her professionalism on the job and her slovenliness at home, as well as her issues in her relationships with her father and Kaji and the ambiguous nature of her relationship with Shinji, ties into her psychological issues (Incidentally, foregoing her psychological issues happen to resemble Shinji's psychological issues, so the two gradually begin to retain sympathy for each other as the story develops in spite of their clumsy relationship). While grateful to her father for saving her life, she also admits to hating him, as he devoted his life to his work and neglected her and her mother. Her reason for joining Nerv (and later, her drive to fight the Angels) is related to her issues with her father. Kaji implies in one discussion that Misato suffers from nightmares about her past, as he describes her as "sleeping uncomfortably." Also, Misato admits "seeking her father in Kaji's embrace."
Like many characters in Evangelion, Misato was named for a ship: the Katsuragi, an Unryū class WWII Japanese aircraft carrier. Her given name is from a heroine in Minako Narita's manga Aitsu.
Misato drives a bright blue Renault Alpine A310. She is a devotee of this particular marque of car, as on her bedroom wall she has a poster of an earlier Alpine A110 shot from the back during a race. She also carries an Heckler & Koch USP as a sidearm. It is only seen a few times throughout the series, but she is revealed to be a crack shot with it.
Read more about this topic: Misato Katsuragi
Famous quotes containing the word conception:
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“If the Nazis have really been guilty of the unspeakable crimes circumstantially imputed to them, then—let us make no mistake—pacifism is faced with a situation with which it cannot cope. The conventional pacifist conception of a reasonable or generous peace is irrelevant to this reality.”
—John Middleton Murry (1889–1957)
“The world ‘s a bubble, and the life of man
Less then a span:
In his conception wretched, from the womb
So to the tomb;
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
With cares and fears.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)