is the thirteenth episode of the Japanese anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was created by anime studio Gainax. The episode, written by Hideaki Anno, Mitsuo Iso, and Akio Satsukawa and directed by Tensai Okamura, was first broadcast on TV Tokyo on December 27, 1995.
The series is set fifteen years after a worldwide cataclysm known as Second Impact and is mostly set in the futuristic, fortified city of Tokyo-3. The series' protagonist is Shinji Ikari, a teenage boy recruited by his father Gendo to the special military organization Nerv to pilot a gigantic, biomechanical mecha named Evangelion into combat against beings called Angels. During the episode, a microscopic Angel called Iruel begins to penetrate Nerv headquarters and, after a quick evolutionary leap, acquires the characteristics of a computer by attempting to hack into the agency's central supercomputer, the Magi System. Ritsuko Akagi, in charge of the Magi, tries to thwart his advance with a reverse hack.
The episode, in the animation of which Production I.G. studio was involved, initially contained many more science fiction concepts, added at the writing stage by Mitsuo Iso. In its final version, "Lilliputian Hitcher" contains several references to biology, particularly genetics, including polysomes, the Pribnow box, the central dogma of molecular biology, and the sigma factor. Its title is also a reference to the Lilliputians, the microscopic men introduced in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
"Lilliputian Hitcher" drew a 3.4% audience share on Japanese television. It received a generally positive reception. Reviewers praised hacking's sense of suspense, the aesthetics of the Nerv headquarters, the focus on Ritsuko's character, and the computer battle against Iruel.
Plot Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami, and Asuka Langley Soryu, three pilots in charge of the Evangelion mechas, are subjected to an experiment by Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, head of the technology department of the special paramilitary agency Nerv. The three pilots are placed naked inside pseudo-Evangelions called Simulation Bodies. As the pilots undergo the test, an anaerobic bacterial Angel called Iruel begins to infiltrate through the blocks in the walls of Nerv's Pribnow Box room. The pilots are ejected from Nerv's headquarters. Nerv staff notice how Iruel did not infiltrate the areas with high oxygen presence, so they attempt to eradicate the Angel by increasing the presence of ozone in the area. Iruel, however, quickly undergoes an evolutionary transformation so fast that he acquires the characteristics of a computer, thus attempting to hack into the Magi System supercomputer, Nerv's beating heart.
Iruel infiltrates the supercomputer and tries to induce the headquarters into self-destruct mode. Its hacking is temporarily slowed down by Ritsuko, who devises a strategy called "reverse hack" in an attempt to defeat the Angel, believing it is better to increase the enemy's evolution and insert a program to make Iruel choose to coexist with the Magi System. During the operation, Dr. Akagi talks to Nerv's Major Misato Katsuragi discussing her relationship with her mother Naoko, whom she respected but hated at the same time. Ritsuko's program defeats Iruel, the headquarters are saved, and the central computer returns to ordinary mode.
Production In 1993, Gainax wrote a presentation document for Neon Genesis Evangelion entitled , containing the initial synopsis for the planned episodes. The Proposal document was then published in 1994. For the first twelve episodes aired, the company roughly followed the schedule envisioned by the first draft, with only a few minor script differences. From the thirteenth episode onward, however, the production deviated from the original plan of the writers and from what was initially envisioned in the submission document. The thirteenth episode of the series was to be titled ; during the installment Shinji would be defeated in combat and trapped inside an Angel, beginning a trilogy of episodes with the same basic theme. The staff in progress abandoned the original project, and some of the ideas for the trilogy were later transferred and condensed into the sixteenth episode. According to Michael House, translator at the time for Gainax, the phrase "The end point of evolution is death," uttered by Gendo during "Lilliputian Hitcher," represents a watershed within the series' production. Neon Genesis Evangelion main director Hideaki Anno in the making initially intended to give the story a happy ending, but he realized that he had created characters that were too problematic during production, so he changed his plans. According to Hiroki Azuma, a culture critic who personally interviewed the director, during the series first broadcast Anno began to criticize otaku, whom he considered too closed-minded and introverted, so he changed his original plans by creating a more dramatic and introspective story toward the middle of the series. Beginning with "Lilliputian Hitcher", the production also ran into severe scheduling problems because of delays in episode delivery. Gainax had completed only twelve episodes by the time the series began airing after nearly two years of production, leaving the staff to produce the remaining fourteen in just six months—roughly one-third of the time they had spent on the first twelve.
Animator Mitsuo Iso, screenwriter Akio Satsukawa, and Anno wrote the script for the episode; Tensai Okamura handled the storyboards and served as director, while Masahiko Otsuka worked as assistant director. Kazuya Kise took the role of a chief animator, and worked with Ise as assistant character designer. Mitsuo Iso originally joined the project as an animator, but he actively entered other jobs by freely coming up with various ideas and writing about them to the director every day. Iso initially wrote a long original script full of science fiction concepts, but Akio Satsukawa had to rework it and remove some concepts. Only later did Anno take over, who made other changes before drafting the final script. The ending of the final draft was disappointing for Iso, because it was forcibly connected to a plot that he had planned to use in another episode. Iso even offered to work on the storyboards, despite having no direct experience in the field, but received no response from the main staff.
For the structure of Central Dogma, Iso drew inspiration from The Andromeda Strain. According to Iso, Andromeda was known only to otaku at the time, so he had already anticipated that Anno would accept his proposals. He also included scientific terms like Polysome, which he learned at university. The Nerv headquarters was to have a shape reminiscent of the secondary structure of tRNA; the chamber of Guf would also be mentioned, and Gendo would lie to the Japanese government about the Angel invasion. He initially gave a humorous and comedic tone to "Lilliputian Hitcher" and many secondary characters, who were later eliminated during production. For example, the characters were depicted as exhausted from work and surrounded by energy drinks, reflecting the animation industry and the pressing broadcast deadlines. He also added a line by Maya which later became "It's the C-int" in the final version of the scrip; Maya's line, according to Iso's recollections, is a reference to an interruption code for the Z80 CPU, a very popular 8-bit CPU at the time. Iso taught himself some computer language in middle school, projecting this passion into the character of Maya. He would later return to the hacking theme in his subsequent works, including Dennō Coil and The Orbital Children.
In the final version, Misato believes that the Evas are based on a personality transcription system, whereas in the episode's original draft she instead knows that the technology underlies the Magi System. Iso suggested a senpai and kōhai, or mentor-student, relationship between Ritsuko and Maya. Since Maya had remained anonymous until then, he tried to portray her as an eccentric programmer obsessed with mathematics. In Iso's initial ideas, it would have been Ritsuko's father who built the Magi, not Naoko, but this was changed to avoid similarities with Shinji and his cold relationship with Gendo; Ritsuko would never have known her father, except indirectly and through documents. The idea of having Ritsuko use a chainsaw to open the Magi's "brains" wasn't his idea; Iso suggests the image may have been influenced by footage of raids on an Aum Shinrikyō headquarters, whose door was opened with a chainsaw. He also added details to Ritsuko's characterization to try to deepen her. In Iso's script, Ritsuko would have mentioned their first meeting to Gendo, talking about memories; Iruel would have also killed members of the Nerv staff, and would have grown into "a complex structure, similar to a futuristic city". The Angel's micromachines would also have formed a pattern similar to a crop circle. He finally proposed using classical music, something along the lines of Mozart.
Yūichirō Oguro, the editor of supplemental materials included in the Japanese edition of the series, noted how Kise has a particular style with respect to the graphical rendering of characters' faces, as he adds detailed shadows and tries to make the characters' bone structure evident. For his work as an animator, Kise was also particularly inspired by the manga version of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, the character designer of the series, giving a different interpretation of Sadamoto's directives than the other animation directors of the anime. Evangelion Chronicle magazine, on the other hand, noted how Okamura, in charge of producing the storyboards, blends science fiction and human drama into his works. Furthermore, in the final version of the episode, Gendo and Fuyutsuki say that the Angel Iruel is "too close to Adam", the first Angel, who is believed to be kept in Nerv's headquarters; in the series finale it is revealed that Lilith, the second Angel, is secretly kept in the deepest section of Nerv, not Adam. According to character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, the original story for the series did not feature Lilith, but was included following the premiere of the series and some staff research performed on Christianity; Sadamoto stated that Lilith's inclusion occurred because "not touching [her] seemed to hurt Anno's pride".