(This is a lightly edited republication of a post I originally made as part of the now-defunct climate writing project, “Exquisite Climate”. This was originally published ~12 April 2021.)
As summer approaches, cicadas are on the brains of many a North American. In the summer of 2021, the east coast of the United States will experience the mania of periodical cicadas emerging from the ground after 17 years. Periodical cicadas only exist there; in other parts of the world, there are annual cicadas that reveal themselves every summer.
But enough entomology.
I didn’t grow up where there were cicadas (annual or periodical), so their loud, droning buzzes do not spell summertime nostalgia for me. However, many people have that association. One prominent example is the creators of the classic anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion (I will refer to it as Eva throughout), which heavily features cicada choruses throughout the series. Their not-so-dulcet tones serve to set the scene and are not part of any orchestrated music per se.
Those of you familiar with Eva, you may wonder why I am focusing on the sound bugs make when the anime largely features giant robots fighting giant visitors from outer space (and other, wilder things). Well, as with many well-regarded works of fiction, the setting of the story is important, and arguably is a character itself. Cicadas in Eva are part of the setting, and this is no coincidence.
Eva has a lot going on, so it is easy to forget the setting details, but here’s an overview. The cicada music usually is featured over hazy images of fields or streets, evoking a very hot summer day. Except the story of Eva doesn’t happen over the course of a summer, but for longer. In the Earth of Eva, a catastrophic event called the Second Impact happened in the year 2000, in which the polar ice caps melted and Earth’s axis shifted. The Second Impact was the result of a scientific experiment that was, to put it mildly, badly covered up. (If you want to learn more about what that experiment was, watch the anime.)
If we consider the Second Impact a scientific breakthrough having unintended geoengineering consequences, then the happenings of the anime are intentional geopolitical action. It led to immense sea level rise, tsunamis, and many more natural disasters; it wiped out half of Earth’s human population and instigated countless violent conflicts and refugee crises. It led to interesting political tensions and the creations of ultra-powerful and ultra-secretive government agencies developing humanity’s only defense against the aliens who were the subjects of said experiment. Due to the change in axis, seasons were disrupted; in Japan, where the anime takes place, the only remaining season is summer.
The cicadas don’t just serve to mark Japan’s perpetual summer, but they also carry emotional meaning. The protagonist, Shinji, has perhaps some of the most complicated and abusive family dynamics in anime, and a lot of his character development involves him battling immense depression. He and the other adolescent characters deal with the painful end of their innocence and a longing for a simpler time, of childhood or at least prior to their lives as Eva pilots. Cicadas evoke playing outside as a child in summer.
I don’t think the creators of Eva intended a deep climate message, but watching Eva in 2020 certainly left me with haunted feelings. We are already seeing lengthening summers, and earlier springs; more extreme droughts, and longer hurricane seasons. The situation in the Arctic is extremely dire. In 2020 a lot of us certainly felt like the veil over our eyes had been lifted, and that our perception of the world would never be rosy again.
We are new to this rapidly changing climate. Not only that, but humanity has been on Earth for a blink of an eye in geological time. We are hardly adolescents on this planet, yet we are thrust into piloting our way out of a crisis we created that is quickly spiraling out of our control. For the younger human generations, we especially feel that we are having to clean up the mess our predecessors left us...much like Shinji had to do. And, of course, we are cast into this role while battling our own, intra-humanity struggles; the societies we live in are far from utopian.
Yet early spring is gorgeous. We marvel at the flowers and warmer days. We, perhaps foolishly, fondly recall lazy summer days at camps, beaches, and more. My favorite poem, “Anthropocene Pastoral” by Catherine Pierce, starts: “In the beginning, the ending was beautiful.” Indeed, “Near the end, we were eyeletted...We were sundressed and barefoot. At least it’s starting gentle, we said.”
Cicada choruses are but a small detail in our natural world. Yet they are so memorable that, even in a fictional age of gigantic robots and extraterrestrial battles, cicadas are not forgotten. Lots of big changes are already happening all around us, but climate change will cause countless tiny changes, too.
The cicadas are on the verge of chirping this year. Perhaps we will hear them sing for longer and longer. Perhaps in the future the periodical cicadas may emerge every 34 years, or every 8 years, or every 170 years. We will find out as the impact of the Anthropocene unravels.