How much did (Anime) Shinji know?

[NIkkolas]

So obviously we the audience know all about the giant conspiracy with SEELE and Second and Third Impact and all that. But I only watched the anime through once (and didn't much care for it...) and to see how it compares and contrasts with the anime I am currently reading the manga. I'm at the end of Volume 5 and Kaji just dropped an exposition bomb on Shinji and us. He laid it all out there for him in refreshingly clear langauge - that his pops knew about Second Impact, that Yui was the one who "created" Gendo and the Evas, that the Dead Sea Scrolls tell all about the entire history of human existence, that Angels attack Nerv HQ for a specific reason and that the one behind Gendo, Yui and the rest of it are SEELE.

Was Anime Shinji ever this clued into the inner-workings of his universe? Did he ever even know the term SEELE? I don't think so but I honestly can't recall.

Might I just say though that Sadamoto's storytelling is a lot more...uh, digestible? He explains it pretty well in one of his interviews in the manga. The manga "bombards" (his word, at least his word in the Viz translation) you with much less needlessly convoluted information than the anime did so it's easier to put all the pieces together. I'm certainly enjoying the manga a lot.

[UrsusArctos]

I don't think Anime-Shinji or any of the pilots for that matter ever uttered "Seele". He was pretty oblivious to most of the things going on in the anime, although he did manage to connect Rei to his mother, and to Gendo's machinations. In EoE, Misato told him all that Kaji had revealed to her, although he was in no state to absorb much of it. How much did he know about what was going on by the bitter end? I'd say, not very much.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I like to think that Anime Shinji didn't know squat about Seele's plans. I mean, he was aware of his mom in the Eva by the end, but everything else? He was probably pretty oblivious.

[Atropos]

Misato does tell him what Seele's planning in EoE, but that's close enough to the end that he has no real capacity to stop it.

On the other hand, Seele knew nothing about HIM, either, which is why he's useful to Gendo.

[NIkkolas]

So wait is it SEELE or Seele? I thought it was supposed to all be in caps?

Kinda not really important but figured I'd might as well ask here.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

We typically post it as Seele. Same goes for Nerv, Wille, etc.

[pwhodges]

They're not acronyms, so they don't need to be caps.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

[s]Just about everything[/s] Everything in The End of Evangelion came as a complete surprise to Shinji. Heck, he even thought that he would be able to come out of the cage with Eva Unit 01 save Asuka, with his unit operating just like it normally would. (Maya was never able to utter Asuka’s fate over the PA system, which is why her death and Unit 02’s defeat was a shock to him.)

But instead of a typical fight scene (though probably slightly more bad-ass than usual; this is a movie after all) Shinji gets hoisted into the air by these benign Eva things and a giant Rei rises up to look into his soul. He didn’t even know that Lilith or Adam were still around and what they looked like (though Misato did mention their existence to him in EoE) or what Rei basically was outside of “replaceable human clone.”

And not only do the Eva Pilots not utter “Seele,” I don’t even think the organization is mentioned to them at all. Shinji probably knew more about Jet Alone than he did about Seele.

[Tumbling Down]

I've only seen End of Evangelion once, but the one of my favorite scenes is the one where Misato dumps exposition on Shinji that he clearly doesn't care about. It reminded me of the South Park episode "Towelie".

[Kendrix]

I like to think that Anime Shinji didn't know squat about Seele's plans. I mean, he was aware of his mom in the Eva by the end, but everything else? He was probably pretty oblivious.

Yup, he wasn't told much.


'uncover the conspiracy' is pretty much the sphere of Misato's PoV, there are mny significant things he never learns - See his idea that Gendo is 'using' Yui and heartlessly used her as a test subject, later reaching the conclusion that Rei is in a similar cathegory, when the Yui situation is really way more complex: She is the mastermind who first 'recruited' Gendo into the conspiracy, and he's probably part of what made her betray SEELE.

Manga!Shinji gets a brief glimpse of 'Yui the Mastermind' and 'The SEELE conspiracy' when Kaji infodumps him, but even that is vague and mostly overwhelms him.

EoE's infodump consisted mostly of "Humans caused SI" and "angels are people", but nothing that Shinji could've gathered a compehensive picture from, even if he hadn't been completely unable t process any information all the time because of Kaworu's recent demise etc.


We see him reflect on his general cluelesness in ep 7, but he's also obviously not someone who... goes and seeks the truth like Kaji or Misato. But he knows there's some larger pattern, and he's pessimistic about working it out, but doesn't have more than a veillete here, motivation wise.



...this trait, although present all long, becomes a bit of a defining factor in Q, because he's tricked into causing NTI, and confronted with the paranoralities about Rei and Yui. You see a bit of a shift there, to, when he asks to see what happened despite how scared he is of unpleasant surprises, but this is followed by a paralyzing experience - But knowing that Gendo's part of a world-destroying conspiracy did not keep Gendo from using him, having him assessed and understood. But it does suggest that he'd want no part in the conspiracy if he knew of it, although how much any of this is transferable to the "prime" timeline is, of course, speculation.