From: mew3point14@doramail.com (Daniel Snyder)

Fade out, fade in. Roll credits.

Joshua Tree is one of many cities in California that I have never visited. I 
know that it is a mecca for those interested in challenging themselves 
against the harsh conditions of the desert. For many, this involves such 
pastimes as rock climbing, mountain biking and hiking. Only for a few 
does it involve contemplating God. Fred Burke is one of these. Many of 
you will know Fred as the English adaptationist for the Neon Genesis 
Evangelion manga. He is an author and a poet in his own right. He knows 
more about Clive Barker than anyone on the face of the Earth except 
Clive Barker. And if there was a question I had to travel 4,000 miles to get 
the answer for, and that question involved Kabbalah, it would be to him 
that I would go.

Fred knows Kabbalah, and he knows it well. He knows it so well, in fact, 
that his adaptation of Kishiro Yukito's Gunnm manga stands on record as 
the first time that a translation of a comic book seriously affected the 
storyline of that comic book. It was in the context of Gunnm, in 1996, that 
I met Fred in Berkeley to talk about mysticism in general, Kabbalah in 
particular. Fred is even less comfortable with praise than I am, so for his 
own privacy and protection I won't go into great depth about what a 
goggle-eyed idol-worshipping fanboy he turned me into. Suffice it to say 
that he did.

Fast-forward now to Seattle, Washington in 1998. After being shown the 
last three tapes of Neon Genesis Evangelion in a single sitting with two 
more-hard-core Eva fans than myself, I found myself trying to tie my 
knowledge of Kabbalah to the Jungian symbolism apparent in the last 
two episodes. Mind you, I was trying to explain it to them as I sorted it all 
out real time in my head. Still, I recognized that the elements were there--I 
just needed time to let them digest. I had experimented with Evangelion 
fanfic before ("Evangelion:Damnation", "Dear Diary") but I wasn't sure 
how to apply what I knew about Kabbalah to the Eva universe. In the 
mean time, I wrote several fanfics that tapped on the doors of something 
deeper, something more symbolic and meaningful, but didn't bust them 
open. And I got in a lot of fun little arguments on the Net to hone my 
lines of thought.

Fast-forward one more time (I realize that this must be murder on your 
neck) to Gainesville, Florida in 2000. During the spring and the summer of 
that year, I had an encounter with Revolutionary Girl Utena. While I was 
impressed with the writing and the characters, I was a little bit 
disappointed with larger story and the symbolism. The symbolism 
seemed too Post-Modernist to really hit me at a gut level like the 
archetypical blasphemy of Evangelion did; and the issue of the Revolution 
itself was never addressed adequately for me. I agree with Alan Harnum 
on a comment he received, about the Revolution of the World as the 
"central non-idea" of Shoujo Kakumei Utena:

"As I see it, there are two possible intepretations of the phrase; either it 
has to represent some power capable of physically changing the entire 
world (obviously something worth fighting for), or it was something 
more subtle. 

"For me, the former idea just didn't seem to fit with the tone of the series - 
the world, and the way we perceive it are common themes, and I realised 
that to change the world, surely the far simpler way is to change how the 
world is perceived. In other words, the Revolution of the World is really 
the revolution of a heart."

There are plenty of things that can revolutionize the world that are both 
capable of physically changing the world and subtle in their action. They 
just have to operate soul by soul. The issue is time. Time and awareness.

I first discussed the idea of an Utena/Evangelion crossover on my way to 
Anime Weekend Atlanta 2000 with Donny Hummel. If you ever see 
Donny, say, at AWA or Dragon Con, please--give him a good swift kick in 
the butt. That bitch never paid me back for the hotel room at AWA.

Shortly after my release of Chapters One through Six, I was reminded 
that Joyce Wakabayashi had written an Utena/Evangelion crossover prior 
to my own. I had not read "Revolutionary Girl Asuka" prior to this 
reminder. Any similarities in the first chapters between "Fane of the 
Firebird" and Joyce's story are coincidence, and any subsequent 
similarities are unintended.


Mediagraphy

The Bible, King James Edition. Published by the Gideons.

The Holy Qu'ran, Bilingual Edition. Published by Idartul Quran.

The Book of Tao, translation by F. J. MacHovec. Published by Peter 
Pauper Press, 1963.

Anderson, Laurie. "O Superman". Big Science. Published by Warner 
Brothers Music, 1981.

Bakhtiar, Laleh. Sufi--Expressions of the Mystic Quest. Published by 
Thames and Hudson, 1976.

Be-Papas. Shoujo Kakumei Utena/Revolutionary Girl Utena. Produced by 
TV Tokyo, Flower Comics, US Manga Corps and Viz Communications.

Carruth, Hayden. (Ed.) The Voice that is Great Within Us. Published by 
Bantam Books, 1970.

Davidson, Gustav. A Dictionary of Angels. Published by the Free Press, 
1967.

GAINAX. Shin Seiki Evangelion/Neon Genesis Evangelion. Produced by 
TV Tokyo, Katokawa Shoten Publishing, AD Vision and Viz 
Communications.

Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah--New Perspectives. Published by Yale University 
Press, 1989.

Kaplan, Aryeh (Ed.) Sefer Yetzirah--The Book of Creation, in Theory and 
Practice, Revised Edition. Published by Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1997.

Keyes, Daniel. The Minds of Billy Milligan. (2nd Ed.) Published by Bantam 
Books, 1999.

Kishiro, Yukito. Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita. Published by Shueisha and 
Viz Communications.

Kurosawa, Akira. Rashomon. Published by Akira Kurosawa Films, 1956.

Machiavelli, Nicolai. The Prince. Project Gutenberg Edition.

Matt, Daniel C. The Essential Kabbalah--The Heart of Jewish Mysticism. 
Published by HarperCollins, 1996.

Nelson, Andrew N. The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character 
Dictionary, Revised Edition. Published by Charles Tuttle Co., 1966

Poitras, Gilles. The Anime Companion: What's Japanese in Japanese 
Animation. Published by Stone Bridge Press, 1998.

Queensryche. Operation:Mindcrime. Published by Emi/Jill Music, 1988.

Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades: a Short History. Published by Yale 
University Press, 1987.

Steinsaltz, Adin. The Thirteen Petalled Rose. (tr. Yehuda Hanegbi) 
Published by Basic Books, Inc., 1980.

Trumbo, Dalton. Johnny Got His Gun. Published by Bantam Books, 1969.

Several chapters, primarially 14-21, included quotations from 
Queensryche's Operation:Mindcrime album. Elements of Chapter 8 have 
been inspired by the work of Kurosawa Akira. Elements of Chapter 30 
have been inspired by the work of David Darling and Wallace Stevens, 
and used quotations from Laurie Anderson and Dalton Trumbo. Lyrics 
translated in Chapters 29 and 30 represent my own translations, adapted 
from extant translations of the lyrics.

Special thanks (in no particular order) to: the Evangelion Fan Fic Mailing 
List, especially Andrew Huang and Jason Carter; the Utena Fan Fic 
Mailing List; the Fanfic Revolution; the Seraphim, an ecclectic group of 
colleagues who have been helping me (in one fashion or another) make 
the world a more interesting place for fanfic since 1995; Fred Schodt, the 
first person I have ever bought a book from to argue convincingly that 
comic books are anthropology; Music from the Heart of Space; Carl Horn; 
Jimmy Davies; DL, for the fan art; and Fiona, who has provided umbrage 
for me lo these many years.

Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 Daniel Snyder. Permission granted to 
distribute in any digital/binary/e-mail form; however, any physical copy 
of this manuscript is prohibited. Any resemblance between the events and 
characters in this story and actual events or persons is coincidental.

Begun: August 19, 2000, Atlanta, Georgia
Reader's draft completed: January 19, 2002, Iowa City, Iowa