Notes from Gryphon
Notes from Jaymie

Were the bombs shaped like people? - One trick we used, shamelessly, and that I really liked was that between the first "full sized" trailer and the two looks at the fight scene in this episode, we gave you three totally different perspectives on the same battle.

Exodus 5 - Makes the assumption that the movie was basically Exodus 4, though it was never labeled as such.

I'll finish packing - One thing I love about the slightly older and wiser Asuka is she doesn't pitch a fit - doesn't even seem particularly surprised! She doesn't know who is in that Skyranger, but she's just accepted that This Stuff Happens, and she'd better get ready for whatever is coming next.

"I know people who've lost some money on that." - Kaji still owes her $50.

Gulf of Portolá - Named for Gaspar de Portolá i Rovira (1716-1786), first governor of Spanish Alta California, who was the first European to sight what became San Francisco Bay, or at least the first to report that he had.

Jon Ellison blinked in slightly flustered surprise - I've no idea why this shocks him - she does it almost every time they manage to get together for holidays or whatnot, but the lad always was a bit sheltered.

a threadbare Duran Duran T-shirt - The one with the cover art from Rio on it.

a little more Dr. Strangelove - "You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"

Special Agent Phil Coulson, MIB Southwestern US - Another of XCOM (or X-COM)'s grand old men, "C" was the squad support officer for the team that assaulted the Cydonia facility back in 1999. During the Angel War, he spent much of his time on counterintelligence and covert operations, including leading the team who demolished the Westinghouse EVA construction facility after SEELE took control of the United State.

local phase space was... twisted - Credit where it's due here. The original draft just had the Kaiju creating an AT field, but I happened to watch the episode of Mythbusters where they tested if an aquarium could serve as a bulletproof barrier (spoiler: it can!!), and the imagery inspired this change.

five-kilotonners was all we had handy - For comparison purposes, the total of those three warheads is about the same as the yield of the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

the remains of FEISAR's Stuttgart works - Last seen being blown up by Otto Keller and Ken Stanfield in Neon Exodus Evangelion the Motion Picture.

Transbelvia - Because the best joke is a running joke.

Westham Island - No particular grudge there, Vancouverites! I just needed a reasonable location for something coming out of the Pacific to make landfall!

Antonov-602 - Unlike the An-411 EVA transport aircraft seen in the original series, the 602 is large enough to carry an Evangelion fully enclosed, not just hanging under it like a hang glider pilot. This enables things like servicing the unit while on the move, impossible with the 411.

I tried syncing with EVA-03 after we brought it out of storage. It... didn't go well - We'll be back to this.

God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world - The motto of the "old" NERV, this is a quotation from the 1841 verse drama Pippa Passes by the English poet Robert Browning. Interestingly, in the original drama (and probably in the original Evangelion, come to that), it's meant ironically.

In hindsight, DJ had to admit it was a dumb opening move. - Poor DJ, his first go round never seems to go that well. But in his defense he HAS been out of the game for quite a while.

the giant lizard war dance - This moment was inspired by the habit of some creatures in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, particularly trolls, to waste a bunch of time in threat display animations when aggroed, which, if you're playing a reasonably skilled mid-to-high-level archer, gives you approximately all the time in the world to kill them before they get anywhere near you.

holding his water bottle - In the original cut of this scene, DJ was drinking a Red Bull, and then I realized, hang on, I want him to be able to sleep sometime this week.

"I'll be in your bunk." - This whole sequence cracked me up. Pretty much sums up their personalities to a T.

Croft's grandfather - This was mentioned in annotations, I believe, but never explicitly made clear - DJ's grandfather, Sir Henshingly Croft, spent most of the late 20th century (and early 21st) as "Zed", the head of MIB. After his recovery from a near-fatal heart attack in Exodus 3 and the end of the Angel War, he made the decision to step down from his position, and was later offered a seat on the XCOM Council by King Stephen II.

Does DJ actually know any of this? Probably not, though much as his mother accomplished some rapprochement with her father, I'd imagine DJ's relationship with Sir Henshingly is a bit more cordial these days.

Exodus 5:2—The Best Toys

June 11, 2015 - Hard date stamps are few and far between in early NXE, but this scene takes place around a month before Exodus 1:1.

(SEVENTH CHILD) - Canonically, I think Tōji was the Fourth Child, but in NXE, the numbering gets thrown off after Shinji because of Jon and DJ.

the Vickers-Mitsubishi shipyard in Yokosuka - IRL, the Vickers shipbuilding firm (in any of its various guises) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have never, to my knowledge, had a collaborative venture, and Mitsubishi's shipyards aren't in Yokosuka. There is a vague connection in that the Kongō-class battlecruiser Hiei was built at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal (a government shipyard) from parts supplied by Vickers-Armstrongs (which had constructed the lead ship in the class at its own yard in Barrow-in-Furness, England). For that matter, Vickers hasn't existed as a shipbuilding concern since 1977. Their joint operation here is poetic license.

poor old Mikasa - The pre-dreadnought battleship Mikasa is Japan's most famous and revered naval war monument. Built in England (at the same Barrow-in-Furness shipyard that would later construct Kongō) for the Imperial Japanese Navy at the turn of the 20th century, she gained renown as Admiral Heihachiro Tōgō's flaghship during the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War, and was retired in 1923 under the provisions of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty.

Even in real life, Mikasa's had a tough time of it. She sank once during her time in service, due to an accidental magazine explosion shortly after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, and was salvaged, repaired, and put back into service. She became a museum ship in 1926, and was not maintained by the U.S. occupation forces after World War II. By the mid-1950s she was in a very sorry state and there was talk of scrapping her, but a coalition of supporters which included a businessman from Barrow and, of all people, Admiral Chester Nimitz secured funding to refurbish her in the nick of time. Today, she is the last pre-dreadnought battleship, and the last British-built battleship, in the world.

Here in NXE, she's had the further indignity of being sunk again during the inundation of the Japanese coastline that followed the Second Impact. She remained at the bottom of the new Yokosuka Harbor for years afterward, thanks to the economic and political chaos of post-Impact Japan, and was only raised once again and refitted as a museum ship after the conclusion of the Angel War in 2016.

Mobile Fortress Ryūjō - The joke here, if there is one, is that the historical aircraft carrier Ryūjō was tiny, on the scale of a contemporary destroyer. She was built as an attempt to sneak a new carrier type past the tonnage limitations of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, and you can gauge how well that worked by the fact that she was the only ship of her type.

Her name translates to "Prancing Dragon", following the IJN's interwar convention of naming aircraft carriers something to do with dragons. (Akagi and Kaga did not follow that naming convention, because they were converted from a battlecruiser and battleship hull, respectively, which is why Akagi is named after a mountain and Kaga after a province of feudal Japan.)

X-COM's last resort in the event that... Earth's governments fell - In other words, something akin to the Avenger's role in XCOM 2.

an enormous graphic painted on the towering side of the ship - Based on this illustration.

a small antigravity drone - Similar to a GREMLIN from XCOM 2.

Willkommen in meiner Welt, Frau Doktor - "Welcome to my world, Doctor."

Gendou's motivational speech - Provided by Jen as a reprise of his address to the troops after being freed from Ethereal mind control back in Exodus 3.

if we're cowboys, then I'm the Marshal and these are my Rangers - Inspired by the structure of the Pan-Pacific Defense Coalition in Pacific Rim.

This is PALADIN - The organization, in turn, is named for the protagonist of the classic Western TV series, Have Gun—Will Travel. Paladin (no other name was ever given to him on screen) was a well-dressed, well-spoken, well-armed gentleman who made his living as a sort of one-man precursor of the A-Team. If you had a problem, if no one else could help, and if you could find him (which wasn't hard, since he lived in a fancy hotel in San Francisco and freely distributed business cards), you could hire Paladin.

a very confused IP lawyer at Kadokawa - From this we may infer that Kantai Collection exists as a game in the NXE universe, and that former Project Evangelion ops engineer Shigeru Aoba has played it. Perhaps played it a bit too much. :)

Ain't my silhouette distinctive? - The historical Ryūjō was a flush-deck carrier—that is, she had no "island" or other structure standing proud of the flight deck—which was an uncommon configuration, so her silhouette was, indeed, quite distinctive. The line is spoken by the kanmusu incarnation of RJ in KanColle when she first joins the player's fleet.

Minnajima - An island in the Miyako Islands, between Okinawa and Taiwan in the East China Sea. Not permanently inhabited now, though there was a fishing village there before the 1960s. In-setting, one of XCOM's several isolated island bases.

Miurajima - An island at the mouth of Yokosuka Harbor.

a vintage Soviet Chaika limousine - Specifically a GAZ-13A, the long-wheelbase limousine version of Gorky Automobile Plant's 1958–1981 luxury model. Bigger and more luxurious than any car made for ordinary people but faster and handier than a full-on ZIL limousine, the GAZ-13 was a favorite of the KGB. This one was "liberated" by the Sindikat Karpathika when the KGB's "liaison" office with the Transbelvian State Police was closed in 1991.

the 8-track player in the dash - Soviet cars were not normally equipped with 8-track decks; indeed, they were little known outside the United States... and Transbelvia, which maintained a fascination with them for many years after they disappeared in their country of origin.

Meanwhile, Raised on Radio came out in 1986, four years after an 8-track release stopped being obligatory for mainstream records in the US—but it was available on 8-track from the Columbia House Record Club, which clung to the format longer than retail.

one of those little aircraft carriers - Technically an Izumo-class destroyer. The Izumo-class ships were built as helicopter carriers and designated "multi-purpose destroyers", but even IRL there are plans in place to convert them to carry F-35s instead of helicopters. The one seen here is the second ship of the class, Kaga, which was launched in 2015, just as in real life.

one of the destroyers was named Ayanami - A fictional ship, fifth of the (IRL four-ship) Akizuki class. As with many of the characters in Evangelion, there was a real WWII destroyer named Ayanami; she was the lead ship of the Special Type II subset of the Fubuki-class ships.

Hot Stuff, the Little Devil - Hot Stuff is a character who appeared in publications by Harvey Comics (of Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Wendy the Good Little Witch fame). He was customarily presented as a prankster whose mission in life was to be annoying--even to his superiors in Heck, whom he irritated by being altruistic. You can, perhaps, see why San feels a certain kinship with him.

Yagtal 2-5 - Yagtal is Korean for "blackmail", continuing the general convention of XCOM aircraft callsigns referring to things that are sinister and/or dangerous.

missiles... YJ-83 type - The YJ-83 is a Chinese-manufactured subsonic cruise missile optimized for anti-ship usage (NATO reporting name CSS-N-8 Saccade). This doesn't necessarily mean that the People's Liberation Army is attacking PALADIN, since the Chinese offer several variants of the YJ-83 on the export market and, if the various reports of them turning up in hotspots around the world are anything to go by, aren't terribly particular about who buys them.

for'ard an' up ta starboard, down an' aft ta port - The traditional traffic pattern aboard a modern US warship at battle stations. Personnel moving toward the front of the ship and/or up do so through passages and on ladders to the right of the hull centerline (facing forward), personnel moving down and/or toward the rear of the ship do so on the left side (facing forward; their right, since they're heading aft). Otherwise, with people's battle stations and duty stations scattered all over the ship, there would be wholesale traffic chaos as everyone tries to move from one to the other simultaneously.

Interestingly, despite being an international organization's ship that was built in Japan and is commanded by a Royal Navy reservist, Ryūjō uses US Navy conventions for this and the items below. Possibly this is a reflection of the fact that the remnant of NERV from which PALADIN sprang was largely the American branch of the outfit.

Condition Zebra - The three material conditions observed on American warships are:

Condition X-Ray: The lowest acceptable standard of watertight integrity. Only doors marked with an X are kept closed; all others are open. This condition is set when the ship is in port during peacetime, with no perceived danger of coming under attack or encountering dangerous sea conditions.

Condition Yoke - An intermediate state of watertight integrity, customarily set when the ship is under way (and also when in port during wartime). All doors marked X or Y are closed, those marked Z remain open. There is also a modified form of Condition Yoke that leaves the Y doors above the waterline open, to improve ventilation, when under way in peacetime with minimal threat of attack or bad weather.

Condition Zebra - The highest state of watertight readiness. All doors marked X, Y, or Z are closed and must remain closed until the order is given to reduce to Condition Yoke.

There are also variations in door markings that provide for special conditions. For example, doors marked with a circled X or Y can be opened long enough to get through them without special permission in the course of carrying out required shipboard activities, while those without the circle can only be opened with command permission when their marked condition is set. There is also the special case of "Dog Zebra" doors, which must be closed under Condition Zebra or when the order has been given to Darken Ship, regardless of whether Condition Zebra is set along with it.

The names are throwbacks to the phonetic alphabet in use during World War II. For whatever reason, they seem not to have been updated when the alphabet was (the modern code words for Y and Z are Yankee and Zulu).

declared over the 1MC - The 1MC (an abbreviation for 1 Main Channel) is the all-call function on US warships' public address systems—the one used for announcing something to everyone on board. There are other channels for various departments (e.g., 2MC calls the engine room, 4MC the damage control department, and so on).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Westham Island - No particular grudge there, Vancouverites! I
>just needed a reasonable location for something coming out of the
>Pacific to make landfall!

With probably more potential for mayhem than Santa Catalina. (And closer to the mainland.)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

--G.
Of course Fat Slice survived the apocalypse and the giant monster attack.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The Px4 was originally developed as Beretta's entry into the competition to replace the M9 pistol (also a Beretta product, a militarized version of the Model 92FS) as the standard sidearm of the United States armed forces. The United States armed forces then decided not to replace the M9 pistol, and Beretta decided well, fine, we'll just sell it on the civilian market, then.

As can probably be told from the pictures, the Px4 is a polymer-framed pistol, a construction method many manufacturers are using nowadays. It uses the same range of double-action trigger mechanisms as the Model 92; this particular example is the default or "Type F" configuration, in which the decocker and manual safety are the same control (engaging it decocks the hammer, if cocked, and prevents it from being recocked, although, interestingly, a double-action trigger pull will still move it; it just doesn't fire when it falls again, presumably because the firing pin is also blocked or disengaged).

It's an interesting gun mechanically, since it uses a rotating barrel lockup rather than the usual Browning-style tilting barrel, and the styling is quite a departure for Beretta's usually-hyper-traditional designers. The polymer frame comes out of the box with a short under-barrel rail, suitable for attaching a tactical light or laser sight, and (as DJ alludes to in the episode) the grip ergonomics are very good, particularly as there's a modular piece that can be swapped out to optimize the fit for different hand sizes.

The real gun is available in 9mm Parabellum, .40 S&W, or .45 ACP. The Evangelion version is based on 36-centimeter naval artillery (that's 14" in Church of England)—the same bore diameter as the guns on many of the best-known battleships of the interwar period, e.g., Britain's King George V class, Japan's Kongō and Ise classes, and any number of US battleship classes before the Colorado class brought in 16-inchers (in response, as it happens, to the Japanese Nagato class).

No one really expected Beretta, known in the 21st century as a small-arms manufacturer, to be up for making artillery-scale EVA weaponry—which is why Misato et al. were able to get the new pistol cannons built on the sly, but they actually have a long and distinguished history in artillery; they developed the first breechloading cannon in the 1600s.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I have to say, I find this one a little hard to believe. After all, One of the major points of Lara's falling out with her father was a lack of common points of reference after her near-death experience. Given MIB's various activities, I think Zed would be at least familiar with that sort of thing happening to the people who reported to him, if not actually having experienced it himself. Unless I'm missing something else, it seems to me that unless he's compartmentalized himself to the point of having multiple personalities, I don't understand how that could have been quite the barrier to their relationship that it was.

Plus, I would have thought that he would have had a much better understanding of DJ and his activities with NERV back in Exodus 1 when he tried to take control of his life yet again...

I have no issues with his presence on the XCOM Council, but having him as Zed just doesn't ring true for me. Just my $0.02.

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>