Was emo Shinji becoming AN HERO in 25'?

[Monk Ed]

Well holy shit, this is big to me. Like really big. One long many-years-old myth dispelled. And this when we've learned all kinds of other things from these same storyboards, like what the Doors of Guf actually are.

Hehe, no. The storyboard says it, you follow it. Ipso facto, case-o closed-o.

I'm not even a DotA-er and reading this made me go at you. Bad Nukey. We're not dogmatists here who follow only one path to enlightenment.

[Rosenakahara]

Either way the point is still the same, like on the cliff Shinji thought about suicide but couldn't go through with it, the attempted drowning theory just takes it to the next step.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

- (insert tired old vague reminder that death of the author and disparagement of all sources but the film itself is a valid take here) -

- (insert using tortured logic in order to come up with the suicide conclusion anyway here) -

Honestly, Auteur Theory, Death of the Author Theory, they all fall short of what art really is anyway. It’s a form of communication. That makes EoE a form of communication, and communication works best when both the speaker (in this case, Anno) and the listener (the audience) realize the premise from where the other is coming from.

Also, I will point out that if the storyboards were officially released by GIANAX/Khara/Eva Production Team, then that still makes their public existence available Evangelion text. Death of the Author doesn’t mean that you can block your ears and shout “LALALALALA!” when the author speaks outside of his desired media. It simply means that both speaker and listener might have some valid points to make, especially when one isn’t using tortured logic to reach those points.

(Also, why would you listen to the author in the movie, but not in the associated published materials? What happens when both the narrative and the additional material are brought together in the same form of media and the same release, such as was the case in Cecile B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments remake? Do you skip part of the movie to help yourself pay attention to the movie? These reasons, among many others, are just part of the season DotA has a bit more flaws in it that Auteur Theory does. Though I will also admit that both are flawed. As I said earlier in this post, both fail to understand how communication actually works in some cases.)

[Monk Ed]

(everything)

ROCK ON. If I haven't said anything like this before it's something I've long meant to bring up and I appreciate someone taking the effort to put it into words where I haven't. I think I've even made the case before that modern internet Death of the Author doesn't seem anything like the Death of the Author I learned about in school nor on Wikipedia.

Except for the part about tortured logic -- I thoroughly believed in the suicide angle after the case was presented strongly enough, because I'm gullible like that about anything I don't already have a strong stance on, or something.

[Reichu]

- (insert using tortured logic in order to come up with the suicide conclusion anyway here) -

Honestly, I stopped feeling any kind of commitment to the attempted-suicide-by-drowning idea long ago. I'm always surprised to discover that others have been keeping my memetic offspring alive long after I abandoned them, and this is no exception. I hope you're implicitly criticizing their logic and not mine, as it's a little late for that. :p

Frankly I'm surprised none of the doubters way back when asked about what the storyboard said. That's what usually happens if I don't take the initiative and check them myself, so what went wrong this time?

[Monk Ed]

I hope you're implicitly criticizing their logic and not mine, as it's a little late for that. :p

Logic is independent of anyone. The idea has its own logic, and that's what's being criticized.

I assume.

I'm always surprised to discover that others have been keeping my memetic offspring alive long after I abandoned them, and this is no exception.

Einstein famously abandoned one of his own ideas (calling it his biggest blunder) that turned out to be totally on the money as best we know now. Not saying any of the ideas you've abandoned are necessarily correct (I mean this is fiction, it's all false anyway, right?), but just giving an example of an idea that took on a life of its own.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I'm not even a DotA-er and reading this made me go at you. Bad Nukey. We're not dogmatists here who follow only one path to enlightenment.

In this case, though, it's pretty cut-and-dry. It's not arguing over a slight nuance-- Shinji trying to kill himself would be game-changing and make us look at everything he does in EoE a lot differently. If the storyboard says that it didn't happen, then it saves us a lot of wasted analysis.

[Monk Ed]

Frankly I'm surprised none of the doubters way back when asked about what the storyboard said. That's what usually happens if I don't take the initiative and check them myself, so what went wrong this time?

Funnily enough, I just assumed someone would have already checked something like that. Part of my bad habit of assuming that anything I think of, especially something obvious, someone else probably already thought of and acted upon.

If the storyboard says that it didn't happen, then it saves us a lot of wasted analysis.

It saves us the trouble because we believe that storyboards are a perfectly valid way to gain insight into a work of fiction. Not everyone believes that. Some people believe, instead, that only information obtained from the final product is valid (for reasons including the fact that things can actually change between storyboard and final imagery). I'm not arguing for the validity of this belief -- just the respect for it. We support a variety of fiction interpretation [s]religions[/s] perspectives here.

[Reichu]

In this case, though, it's pretty cut-and-dry. It's not arguing over a slight nuance-- Shinji trying to kill himself would be game-changing and make us look at everything he does in EoE a lot differently.

I don't think it would really change anything. We already know that Shinji in EoE doesn't value his own life and wouldn't mind dying, but doesn't have it in him to self-terminate. A failed drowning attempt would show that he's at least cracked enough to TRY, but if he still can't go through with it, what difference does it really make? It doesn't add anything to the breakdown of his psyche that isn't adequately covered in... other ways.

Well, anyway, speaking as the person who suspects that she originated the "drowning attempt" meme, it didn't affect my interpretation of Shinji's actions in EoE so much as I liked the way it supposedly referenced back to episodes 4 and 16. :p

[barnett]

Staff Edit: tangent moved here from: post/875970/333-Tonal-Shift/#875970

@AGCT It's absolutely clear that he didn't try to drown himself at the beginning of EoE. It was sweat.

[ACGT-Samael]

@AGCT It's absolutely clear that he didn't try to drown himself at the beginning of EoE. It was sweat.

So he just happened to be sweating so heavily he was soaking wet from head to toe and just so happened to be standing in front of the artificial lake that just so happened to be where he met Kaworu. Y'know, the guy he was forced to kill after getting closer to him than literally anybody else in his life, an action which it's clear threw him over the psychological cliff?

You'll forgive me if I have a hard time swallowing that pill.

[Sachi]

@AGCT It's absolutely clear that he didn't try to drown himself at the beginning of EoE. It was sweat.

You're gonna need to justify that one, rather than passing it off as given fact.

[Reichu]

soaking wet from head to toe

You can only see him from the neck up, you know.

The expanded view of the shot included with Collector's Disc 6 doesn't depict soaked clothes.

[ACGT-Samael]

You can only see him from the neck up, you know.

The expanded view of the shot included with Collector's Disc 6 doesn't depict soaked clothes.

Hmm. I wasn't previous aware of this.

It still makes more sense as Shinji attempting and failing to drown himself than just getting super sweaty, because the latter has no character or plot significance.

[Sachi]

Ugh since this shit got dragged up in the 4.0 speculation topic I decided to see there's a thread. I'm disgusted and disappointed you people had a 4-page discussion without bothering to look at the storyboards.




Note:
ほほに汗 = sweat on cheeck
汗 is underlined twice for emphasis. 汗 is specifically sweat, not any other fluid.
汗　　　　　　　　　あせ　　　　　　　　　　　ase (n) sweat / perspiration [Common]

The entire scene is set up to show it's hot as fuck with the ultra bright sunlight and wavy air. Anno's words + storyboard = doubly disproving the nonsense suicide suggestion.

This is an exact repeat of the cliff scene. Shinji a bit from the edge but then can do nothing more than find somewhere else to sulk.

This is worth requoting.

[Asuka'sBigBrother]

Triply disproven because his shirt is not wet as it would be if he'd put it on right after going in the water

[Joseki]

This is worth requoting.

Good (?) to see that we've been speculating the same things over and over again about Shin Eva for 4 years now.

[traumalamb]

I find Shinji's inability to commit suicide much more interesting than the fact that he attempted it. Why can't he do it? Is it due more to a physical or a mental/psychological inability?

Can provide some insight.

This is a multifaced issue. Suicide can be an impulse (why SSRIs aren't usually given to teens: they lower GABA levels so even if they haven't attempted it before, they may suddenly try with no thought beforehand out of sheer impulse) or a planned out event, with some plans being made decades in advance.

Shinji clearly has wanted to die before, so it's not purely an impulse, but he may have not had any plan either. It may be that he noticed it was convenient, and took the chance. We don't know, but it isn't without a history of suicidal thoughts.

With that, let's go into why he can't.

Sometimes, you just don't know why. Something inside you just stops you. Maybe it's some guardian angel. Maybe it's evolutionary self-preservation. But something keeps you from doing it, psychologically. Since this could be considered a cop-out when it comes to explaining a character's motives, let's not go with this explanation.

Sometimes you just care so little, you can't even put in the effort to kill yourself. Shinji does care about lots of things, so it's not this.

Sometimes it's fear of being an even bigger disappointment. Shinji cares a lot about what others think, so this is a possibility.

Sometimes it's a small ray of hope, something you cling to. Shinji seemed to be without hope before the Instrumentality, so probably not this.

Sometimes it's fear of death. Shinji deals a lot with existential depression, and may struggle with existential anxiety, so it may be this, but it's not clearly stated, at least in my memory.

Sometimes it's lack of opportunity. Shinji had chances to try, but it would have been harder in the home. And who knows how close of tabs Gendo was keeping on him, near the end. So, maybe...?

In the end, I don't know, but there's a lot of options, here.

[DarkBluePhoenix]

I find Shinji's inability to commit suicide much more interesting than the fact that he attempted it. Why can't he do it? Is it due more to a physical or a mental/psychological inability?

He probably believes that he's not worthy of death because he's that insignificant.