ElMariachi wrote:Personally I never saw those Shinji's smiles as "happy", more like "creepy as fuck", it would be like saying that all those soulless and mindless Rei clones in the Reiquarium are genuinely happy because they're smiling.
I once read an interesting essay on a German fansite who tied this into the main themes.
Despite the wild orange-blue contrast between Rei's color palette and the closes in the LCL, we have them mindlessly smiling and the 'older' incarnations of Rei almost universaly melancholy/sad/pensive.
You might say that the ones in the tank who never experience anything bad, never understand their fucked-up situations have it better than activated!Rei who actually does understand/exprience and is a "bitterly unhappy young girl" as a result, but you could also say that despite her sadness, Rei with her deep ponderings of the world led a much richer, more valuable existence than the vapid, perhaps 'instrumentality like' existence of the clones. Their head contents should be identical, too, since all they "know" (but can't
experience as empty shells) is what's loaded into them for the sake of whatever their role in the dummy plug system is.
As a further nuance, you could add how Rei III almost longingly stands infront of the tank with the dead clones, almost wishing she'd desintegrated with them, or could be back in there with them. In any case, the "mass Shinjis" are grinning because the Rei clones are. The picture also shifts to blue soon after the heads shift, forming another orange/blue contrast.
Consider the moment where this happens; Shinji/unit one was just absorbed into the GNR.
Another possibility is that they represent him becoming part of the 'unified entity' foor good.
