Misato Katsuragi
Misato Katsuragi is a main character of Neon Genesis Evangelion, NERV's operations director and the children's guardian. She is voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi in Japanese and, in the current Netflix English dub, by Carrie Keranen.
About Misato Katsuragi
Misato Katsuragi is a main character of Neon Genesis Evangelion, NERV's operations director and guardian to Shinji and Asuka. The sole survivor of the Katsuragi expedition at Second Impact, she fights Angels with a strategist's brilliance and comes home to a messy apartment, a penguin and too much beer. Misato is the adult the children almost get: warm, brave and nearly as damaged as they are, hiding it behind noise instead of silence.
Appearance
Misato is a striking woman in her late twenties with long dark purple hair, a red jacket she wears like a signature, and a cross pendant she is never without. Off duty she lives in shorts and beer shirts in an apartment full of empty cans and a warm water penguin. On duty, in NERV uniform with her operations headset, she is visibly a different person: upright, fast and exact. The animators lean on the contrast hard. The two Misatos, the slob at home and the officer who talks pilots through the end of the world, are the same woman managing the same damage in two registers.
Personality
Misato is loud, warm, flirtatious and funny, and all of it is load bearing. She fills silence the way Rei avoids it, because silence is where Antarctica is. At work she is one of the most competent people in the series, improvising battle plans that save the city weekly, and she mentors Shinji with real insight when she can reach him. Her failures are adult failures: drinking, avoiding hard conversations, leaning on an old boyfriend, and arriving at emotional honesty about five minutes after it would have helped. The children love her anyway, which tells you the warmth is real too.
Background & Story
Misato was at Antarctica with her father, Dr Katsuragi, on the day of Second Impact, and survived because he put her in an escape pod, giving his life and leaving her the cross she still wears. She stopped speaking for two years. As an adult she joined NERV to fight the Angels her father's work had foreseen, and rose to operations director on merit. When Shinji arrives she volunteers to house him, recognising another survivor building a personality over a hole. Through the series she directs every major battle, digs into NERV's secrets with her former lover Kaji, and learns, too late to use most of it, what Gendo and SEELE are really planning.
Powers & Abilities
- Battle Operations: Misato plans and directs Evangelion combat in real time, inventing plans like the 120 million kilowatt sniper operation against Ramiel and the dance synchronisation attack, under pressure that breaks her staff.
- Investigation: With Kaji, Misato pieces together NERV's buried structure, Second Impact's true cause and the Human Instrumentality Project, working against her own organisation's secrecy.
- Crisis Leadership: In the final crisis she keeps functioning when NERV itself is being destroyed, getting Shinji to his Eva and her post with seconds to spare. Her competence never deserts her, even at the end.
Key Relationships
- Shinji Ikari: Her charge and, increasingly, her family. She gives him the home no one gave her, and her final scenes with him in The End of Evangelion are among the most quoted in the franchise.
- Asuka Langley Soryu: Her other charge, and her mirror: another woman performing confidence over an ungrieved childhood. Misato sees it, says too little of it, and knows she did.
- Ryoji Kaji: Her college boyfriend, broken up with because he reminded her of her father, and her partner in investigating NERV. Their circling, adult, unresolved relationship is the series' one romance between grown ups.
- Ritsuko Akagi: Her oldest friend at NERV, from university days. The friendship frays as Misato learns what Ritsuko has been building in the basement, and neither woman can quite save the other.
Quick Answers
Who voices Misato Katsuragi?
Misato is voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi in Japanese. In the Netflix English dub she is voiced by Carrie Keranen, who also directed that dub. In the classic ADV dub she was voiced by Allison Keith.
Why does Misato wear a cross?
Misato's father died saving her during Second Impact in Antarctica, and gave her his cross pendant as he put her into an escape capsule. She wears it for the rest of the series, through every version of the story.
Pen Pen is a warm water penguin, a genetically tweaked pet who lives in a refrigerated unit in Misato's apartment, reads the newspaper and drinks in the bath. He is comic relief, and also the most emotionally healthy resident of the flat.
What is Misato's job at NERV?
Misato is NERV's chief of operations: she plans the Eva units' battles, directs the pilots in combat from the command centre and holds the rank of captain, later promoted to major. The apartment slob and the commander are the same person, and the series never lets you forget either.