Dear Lord, I swore I wouldn't go back in here again....Sigh.
*Cracks knuckles*
Where to begin....
First, I'm just going to say this. Pretend you just woke up from a coma. You're been effectively dead for quite a while, and you're disoriented. You know, that feeling you get when you wake up from a deep sleep, and don't know which way is left. You're flailing about, and suddenly you see a familiar face. An old friend you knew from before your sleep. "Hooray!", you might say. "Someone who can tell me all about what happened while I was asleep!"
And then she straps a bomb to your throat.
You're horrified, understandably, and decide to reach out to another friend, one you thought was long dead. Surely, after fighting together with her and trying to be nice to her, despite physical violence on her part "Yay.", you might say. She's alive, and I can let the guilt from being partially responsible for your death go!" She basically tells you she thinks you're the scum of the universe and lower than dog shit.
You leave, and are basically treated like the second coming of Stalin. I realize that's an exaggeration, but please, see past the goofy dialogue to the point here.
Justifications and excuses aside, Shinji would never have left WILLE if they hadn't decided to treat him like a baby-faced extension of his father. He doesn't want genocide, he doesn't want to kill anyone, and he's certainly not the evil bastard that certain members of this forum seem to want to paint him as.
He's a scared, mentally unstable 14 year old trying desperately to piece his life back together, only to find that he's lost every meaningful relationship he ever had due to his own recklessness and his father's manipulations.
Everything he does in 3.0 is a result of WILLE treating him like dog shit when, as far as he knows, yesterday he just saved the Rei, and possibly the world, from an alien monstrostity AGAIN.
Speaking of 2.0's climax, I'm going to take the idealistic route instead of the cynical one people keep pushing here. Yes, Shinji said, and I quote:
Shinji wrote: I don't care what happens to me. I don't care what happens to the world. But I'm bringing Rei back... I promise I'll save you, Rei... EVEN IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!!!
The cynics would argue that Shinji's saying "FUCK THE WORLD, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE. LET ME HAVE MY DOLL ALREADY!" Again, hyperbole, but you see what I'm getting at here. I would argue it's more like "Finally, I see clearly! I have something to fight for, someone I care about more than anything else! I can do something without being told to!" Shinji doesn't want to cause genocide, he just wants to save someone he [s]loves[/s] has strong feelings for. EVA-01 was practically driving itself after Zeruel got smashed. I highly doubt that Shinji, who's spent the previous two movies protecting humanity, would suddenly make an about-face to blowing up the rest of it.
Regardless of his reasons, the fact that he has never left for good has to mean something. Yes, Shinji ran away more than once, and personally I can't blame him. The kid's a basket case even without the EVA/Angel-related problems ; dead mother, monstrous father, roommate that slaps him around on a regular basis, and a guardian that he practically has to take care of himself. Someone with his issues would've put a bullet in his head years ago....but he hasn't. He had a golden opportunity to kill himself in 1.0, and again in 2.0....but he hasn't. That has to count for something.
Now, that said, I have to be objective. Shinji dun goofed.
Third Impact was a horrific disaster that nearly wiped out what fragments of humanity were left after Gendo set off the Second one. Whether Shinji meant to or not, that kind of mistake is inexcusable, and in any other setting we'd all be howling for the responsible party's blood. Hell, people in this thread would probably shoot Shinji on sight if he was real.
With that out of the way, I can get back to the thread topic proper. Shinji finds out he caused an Impact and is horrified by it. Someone as callous and stupid as the fans seem determined to label him would not have cared in the least about setting off 3I. He's no madman like his father, and he's no selfish bastard either. If he was he wouldn't have bothered to save Rei and the rest of NERV from Zeruel, nor would he have agreed to pilot EVA-01 in 1.0 either. I know someone's going to bring up his egocentric rant in the previous scene, but he's entirely justified in blowing up at his deadbeat dad there. I've seen parents get crucified for less than what Gendo's (and Yui, for that matter) done to Shinji. Same with his rant in 2.0 either; someone earlier pointed out what Shinji said to Gendo was horrendously cruel...but Gendo deserves it and more.
Getting back to the point, Shinji finds out he didn't save Rei on top of everything else and his heart probably shattered inside. Everyone he ever cared about either hates him, wants nothing to do with him, or is dead. His worst nightmares have come true; he's stuck in the middle of the ocean and everyone he ever cared about hates him for something that really is his fault. He probably doesn't have much to live for at this point.
Then a light of hope shows up. Rei takes him back to his father. And then Shinji meets Kaworu, who tells him that there's a way to fix all this. Had WILLE bothered to warn Shinji that his father was a genocidal madman and the one everyone's
really angry with, that might not have happened, but they didn't. Now Shinji's about to hand his dad exactly what he needs to blow up the world AGAIN.
*Points to WILLE* Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen. Psychologically torturing a 14 year old boy for something that's only technically his fault and they all had a hand in anyway.
I'm going to be in the minority position on this, but I would just like to point out something. Back before the NERV/WILLE civil war, everyone was just fine with running a pack of mentally unstable teenagers into the ground as long as they got to keep sucking air. Before you all say the standard cliched objection, I know they had no choice. I get that, and it sucks. What bothers me is that we barely see anyone make more than a token protest about it throughout all three movies, nor do we see them researching alternate means of fending off the Angels. At least in the original series we had Jet Alone. The closest thing we got to that was the Dummy System and that was an abject failure. This oversight is terrifying, especially now that in 3.0 we found out that those children will be trapped in their pre-teen bodies for the rest of their lives, and one of them is literally being held together with duct tape. Now, that horrific setup has blown up in their faces and they all have the gall get mad at one of the teenagers. The hypocrisy is disgusting. I know there's some pretty good justification behind it, but Anno didn't bother to flesh that out so I won't pay it any attention either.
Now, as for the spears scene....oy, it's the hospital all over again.
Shinji does not know that the Spears are going to set off another Impact.
I cannot stress this enough. Shinji does not want anyone else to die. Kaworu has told him that if he does nothing, you know, like everyone here says he should, the human race will go extinct. On top of that he tells him that there's a way to give everyone a future. Shinji immediately agrees to help him, but is so desperate at this point that its made him stubborn. Yes, Shinji should have listened to Kaworu's warning. I get that. But ignoring Kaworu's vague warning does not mean that Shinji wants to commit genocide.
Shinji just wants things to be as they were; that is to say, Shinji wants his friends and family to STOP FUCKING TORTURING HIM. He wants his life back. He wants to fix the planet so Misato won't hate him, Asuka won't hate him, and quite possibly so Gendo won't hate him. (Nobody told him the title is You Can (Not) Redo.) Everyone here seems to think that his motivations here count for nothing, which is kinda dumb considering the main draw of this franchise is the character interactions. Hell, look at his reaction right after EVA 13 locks both him and Kaworu out and it starts up 4th Impact! If he had a pistol he'd have shot himself then and there to stop it. He does not want to kill anyone, he just wants peace and happiness.
How selfish of him, really, to act like a human being.
He's not being willfully stupid about the spears, he's being exactly what we all wanted him to be in NGE. We all wanted to see him shine and assert himself. Everyone outside of this forum cheered when 2.0's ending happened; well, before the over-analyzing kicked in. He finally acted the part of a hero and saved his love interest from certain doom. The same thing pops up here in 3.0; he's found a way to get his life back in order, and no one is going to stop him. That kind of determination would work in just about any other setting. No one told the boy Anno don't like it when Shinji gets happy.
These views aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, mind you. I'm not going to pretend I've watched this as the shades of grey it should be seen as. I like Shinji far more than I should. He's an interesting character, and fun to watch. I'm also aware that EVA isn't supposed to be an idealistic series. I'm much more cynical than this; you all bring out the idealist in me. Or maybe it's just that after NGE and the original movies, I was enjoying seeing my old high school friends finally getting their lives on track...until this crap happened.
"Crapsack worlds and anti heroes have their place. Sometimes, they are very necessary. But an endless diet of dreary cyberpunk and dark fantasy won't do us any more favors than an endless feast of glurge. I'd argue that the cynical nature of these really hurt our ability to hope and work for better. It gets us to accept the hopelessness and jaded outlook of things as 'That's the way it is. I can't change it,' and stops us from fighting when we NEED to fight."
I am ask-shinji-ikari on tumblr.com. Feel free to ask me questions!