Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:As long as we're going off on a tangent about Shinji with regard to the specific example of Nazism and we're accepting it as a premise...
Shinji has limits. If there's something he really doesn't want to do, nothing's going to make him do it. I think that even if Shinji could be truly detached from whatever he was doing, it would not be a state of mind that he would be able to sustain for any great period of time. Sure, he'll pour Zyklon B into the showers easy as you please, but he's not going to do that forever. The reality of what he's doing is eventually going to catch up with him, he's going to break, and he's going to stop. Sachi's right.
All the versions of Shinji never question what they are doing in any meaningful way unless a close friend is involved or an angel or character forcibly makes him self-reflect. Realistically speaking I don't think we can reasonably expect him to have those luxuries in nazi germany and when left to his own devices Shinji will just float by, especially in an example like the one Reichu gives. To clarify my point wasn't to say he was bad like a super Nazi supporter. Only that his way of thinking, itself, makes him a "bad guy"(not sure if this is best phrase but w/e) because it's fundamentally just fucked up and the show makes me think (imo) that Shinji as person wouldn't be able stop himself. He literally needed a god like being to intervene to change him. Also I'm talking as if Shinji was real...I figured that's okay since we asking moral questions anyway. I don't wanna hear that "it only takes a god Rei armegeddon to change him only because it's fiction" unless there's a good reason to frame it that way because otherwise we'd be just cherry picky at that point.
Shinji would've been a nazi and he would've burned people at the stake during witch trials and he would've been a slave-owner and all it would take is someone telling him to do it.
And hypothetically if he did get lucky and things happen that make it all "catch up with him" , all we get is a Shinji that completely shuts down and who needs hot 27 year old old women to drag him around by the hand and who is completely okay with just letting the whole world go to shit as long as he doesn't have to do anything anymore in an effort to avoid any accountability/ personal responsibility.