What follows is my interpretation of 25-26 and as it is relevant, Evangelion more generally.
The main conflict of the entire series, seem to me at least, to be a conflict between Inwardness and Outwardness. The A.T. field is the symbol of this conflict in the shows lore, the barrier between the Soul and the World, but each character seemingly appears as a new permutation on this basic conflict. I will describe the basic psychology of this conflict and then get into how each character exemplifies it.
In Freud’s meta-psychology, the organism creates a barrier to separate itself from the world as a condition of its own existence. It must maintain itself homeostatically within its borders and protect itself from stimuli in the outside world. The basic trauma of life is this separation. It is experienced phylogenetically in the form of the origin of life, its separation from the primordial soup it was once a mere part of, but it also reoccurs ontogenetically in the form of individual psychology. What happens to the genus – individuation out of primordial soup – is repeated on the level of the individual.
When an infant is born, they are in the stage of primary narcissism – the complete rule of the Pleasure Principle (all mental activity is directed towards immediate pleasure) with no concept of self. Without a difference between the self and the world, there is no distinction between fantasy and reality, self and other, desire and identification. This all changes with the first stage of development, The Oral stage. In the beginning the the Oral Stage, the infant finds itself hungry, but without its mother who would come and feed it. In this deprivation, it realizes the difference between itself and the world around it, and a basic split is made – its wishes are one thing, reality is another. This process is illustrated in the episode of the same name – Shinji is dissolved into LCL within the entryplug, returning to primary narcissism, existing undifferentiated without an Ego. The episode ends when he is pulled out of this state, regains his Ego and individuation – and comes back to reality.
As the infant grows, the Pleasure Principle, the principle that governs all its mental activity early on and leads it towards the immediate pursuit of the pleasure is overthrown and replaced by the Reality Principle. The Reality Principle says that Reality and Fantasy are different, and that in the interest of long-term satisfaction, some suffering and deprivation may have to be accepted in the short term in the interest of long term pleasure. For instance – obeying your mother is unpleasant and does not directly accord with the pleasure principle, but it is in line with the reality principle, which looks into the future and sees that greater pleasure may be had if one obeys.
The Pleasure Principle, once overthrown is banished to its own domain, Fantasy. Fantasy is the only part of the mind left that obeys strictly the pleasure principle. The imagination does not have to bear reality, but rather imagines whatever satisfies it and brings it pleasure. Inside ones own mind, one can fantastically achieve things that may take hard work and suffering to achieve in reality. Outside, in the world is the Reality Principle, the rule that says you need to risk suffering and endure work and effort to get what you want. Inside the imagination, inside the Soul, is the Pleasure Principle which tempts with the possibility of effort-free gratification, satisfaction without having to work for it. Fantasy is fleeing from reality.
The basic conflict underlying most of the characters is this conflict between the Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle, Inwardness and Outwardness. Shinji and Asuka are the best examples of this but Misato and even Rei could possibility also fit (if you interpret Rei as being generally human and having some of her own desires not stemming from her biology or nature, which I understand not everyone is convinced of). I’ll focus on Shinji and Asuka as the most archetypal cases.
Shinji and Asuka both suffer a very similar problem but deal with it in slightly different ways. Neither of them is willing to accept the possibility of pain and the suffering that is necessary to achieve happiness in reality. I think this is a fairly uncontroversial point when it comes to interpreting NGE.
Shinji constantly runs away and withdrawals from commitments and relationships for fear of getting hurt. His response to pain is to stay away from people – to run away – and to never allow himself to get close to them in the first place. He does this multiple times throughout the series, as I am sure you all know. This is a shield against being hurt. If he doesn’t try to achieve happiness in reality, then he cannot be hurt by harsh realities and disappointments.
Asuka, for her part, takes a different approach. She constantly tries to take domineering control over all of her relationships. This is also a shield against the possibility of getting hurt. If she enters relations only on the presupposition of her own superiority and control, then the rejection of others is less hurtful. Essentially, Asuka tries to disarm the opinions of others in advance by degrading them and placing herself above them. Her status as en elite Eva pilot is essential to this, and without it, she would be on the same level as everyone else.
This dynamic is exemplified pretty well in the scene in which they kiss. Asuka proposes it as casually as possibly, implying she doesn’t care, and follows up with an insult to Shinji by remarking that he is coward. This acts as a shield against the possibility of his rejection of her advances – if he does reject her, then it won’t be so bad, because he’s an idiot or a coward or a weakling anyway. Shinji allows himself to be pushed into kissing her, but simply stands still while she holds his nose shut. He makes no move of his own – as this would involve the risk of pain and rejection, something he is unwilling to accept. Asuka seems angry at his lack of reaction and makes a show about washing out her mouth. Thus, while there is clearly some sort of mutual feelings between the two, it is cancelled in advance. Asuka can relate to people only by first degrading them as to preemptively make their possible rejection meaningless with very few exceptions. Shinji will not step outside his area of comfort.
Both do not have any kind of self-foundation, they lack any kind of inner self-value. They constantly try to gain such a value from the world. Asuka gets her value from her superiority and her Eva Pilot status. This is why she is inherently threatened by Shinji and Rei’s mere existence as other Eva pilots. Shinji tries to get his value in a similar way, though it is more focused on the praise and love of others that he gets from piloting the EVA. Neither of them have any love for themselves, and without this love for themselves, they do not have the security that would enable them to risk pain in the real world. Neither of them are able to form relationships with others because of this. Misato is in a similar situation, but I think you get the point, so I won’t bother describing the specifics.
Their basic conflict, like I said, is between between their self and their world. It is summed by the Hedgehog’s Dilemna, as Ritsuko explains. Shinji and Asuka do not have any internal self-worth, so they constantly seek out value in worldly relations, but they are also not willing to risk pain and so cannot truly dedicate themselves to any relation. They cannot stand to be alone but because they aren’t willing to risk the possibility of pain, aren’t willing to accept the reality principle that says to find happiness one needs to accept the possibility of pain, they also cannot exist with others.
As the series progresses, Asuka and Shinji’s neurosis around this is only exacerbated. I won’t describe every episode, but Asuka by episode 24 has completely lost her ability to pilot and with it her self-worth. She becomes lethargic and unwilling to interact with the world that has hurt and rejected her. This is pretty closely mirrored by Shinji, who by episode 24 has only the Eva left to ground himself, he is without his friends, Rei is for his purposes dead and replaced by something he views as an impostor, Asuka is hospitalized and his relationship with Misato has become increasingly strained. When confronted with a necessary choice - he MUST choose, either kill Kaworu, the only person who gave him unconditional love and affection, or accept the end of the human race, he chooses to kill him – this is the ultimate betrayal by reality. The connections he cultivated with Misato, his father and NERV generally that gives him value requires him to kill a person he loved in order to continue existing as he does, and the person he loved betrays him by turning out to be an Angel and asking to be killed. Having been hurt grievously by the outside world, by the betrayal of Kaworu and Misato – Shinji rejects the world that has hurt him previously and in episode 25, retreats into total inwardness, absolute fantasy.
We can see this play out generally in the majority of episode 25. The characters are treated as case studies and their relations to others and to reality interrogated, coming to roughly the conclusions I have already sketched: that each character struggles with the relation between the self and the world, that they cannot commit themselves to others because of fear of potential vulnerability. All of this is a synopsis of the character relations so far.
Million dollar question: Is all of this happening in instrumentality? I don’t think it does in a real sense, although obviously its abstract visuals suggest some sort of preliminary stage. What we see from Shinji, particular in the final scene is incompatible with complete instrumentality. Look at this short description of Instrumentality given by Gendo.
Incorrect. It is not a return to nothingness. It is merely a return to a state of beginning. It is no less than a return to the primal womb that we lost so long ago. Souls and minds will become one attaining eternal balance. The final goal is nothing more than that.
We can see from this description that Instrumentality, no matter how Gendo hedges it, entails the destruction of the self. It is a return to the mother, literally to the infantile state that precedes differentiation between the self and others. This is echoed in 26 with the “Mother is the first other” scene. Instrumentality is basically analogous to the Death Drive in Freud, the drive in all organic life, driven by the trauma of having to maintain itself against the world, to return to the inorganic undifferentiated matter from which it came – to return to the womb, in which it didn’t have to deal with the outside world. In End of Eva, if I am allowed to appeal to it as evidence, this is made even more clear. Instrumentality is essentially death for the self, as all self-identity is lost when the border between the self and the world is removed.
If this were instrumentality, at least successful instrumentality, then the self would be destroyed. But clearly, Shinji at the very least still exists and the border between himself and others is still painfully real and still remains a problem. The end of the episode shows us what this really is, absolute fantasy, absolute inwardness, total withdrawal from reality itself. Take these quotations. Because this is 25, each line is its own character speaking. For legibility's sake, I will mash them all together as if they were one voice.
This is your world. A world that exists solely for yourself, one without time, space or anyone else. A world in which every facet is determined by you.
You wished for a closed world, that was comfortable for you. You wished for it in order to protect you from your weakness. To protect your few pleasures. This is merely the result of your wish. In your closed world, in a world where only you are allowed to be, others cannot live with you. But still you wished to close off the world that surrounded you. Your wish ejected things you dislike and created an isolated and lonely world filled with nothing. This is the world your wishes have created. A private haven in the recesses of your mind. This is how it all ends, one of many possible endings.
What does this indicate? Firstly that the self-other boundary has not been destroyed. Secondly that Shinji has not accepted instrumentality yet, but is rather seeking refuge in absolute inwardness, absolute fantasy. He exists in a “private haven in the recesses of [the] mind”. The very idea of the mind as a haven to hide away from the world already proves that instrumentality has not yet been completed, that the distinction between the self and others has not been destroyed yet. Instead, Shinji has retreated from the world and into absolute inwardness, absolute fantasy, into imagination where he is utterly alone and does not have deal with the things in reality he dislikes. It is spelled out clearly, “Your wish ejected things you dislike.” he has affirmed the pleasure principle over the reality principle to an insane, psychotic degree, completely rejecting reality and others to seek pleasure in his own monadic soul. The fact that he can do this already points in the opposite direction of instrumentality, which aims to destroy the border between the soul and the world, the soul and others.
Therefore, I propose we read episode 25 as Shinji struggling in complete aloneness, perhaps as the first steps towards his instrumentality.
Second, the focus on the “Wish” indicates that, just like in End of Eva, Shinji somehow has some measure of control over the process. This is the world his Wish created. He is not merely being passively disassembled by the instrumentality process, but rather is somehow at least partially in control of the process. His accepting instrmentality is thus not a forgone conclusion – he COULD possibly wish otherwise.
A few lines seem to conflict with my interpretation here, namely Rei and Asuka’s lines, also in the final scene of 25 that Shinji wished for “Total destruction” and “Destruction, death, return to nothingness.” The language of “return to nothingness” especially seems to imply that he did wish for instrumentality and his own annihilation and that is what he is experiencing currently. I think however, compared to the much more extensive evidence for the state of absolute inwardness or fantasy, we can dismiss these lines as merely suggesting that his wish was to be free of or to destroy the outer world, the things that hurt him, which makes it compatible with the fleeing into fantasy that he demonstrates.
This is also implied in the following lines (spoken by four separate people, I will again mash them up into one for legibility's sake).
This is your world unless you decide to change reality.
You yourself make the decision. This is the world where your mind decides what will be. Whether it is the will to survive or a wish for death, it is all up to you.
We can see that the drive to die and the drive to live are still in competition, the wish thus could not have been instrumentality, as this is equivalent to self-annihilation – rather it must have been perfect freedom, absolute fantasy, absolute inwardness, which is why the world is entirely up to Shinji, because he is inhabiting his own psyche and nothing more.
We can also see that even in the therapy sessions which seem to display some kind of interaction with the other characters, that the characters are in reality, in monadic isolation – mirroring each other without actual interaction. This is confirmed by the use of the phrase,
This is the me that exists in your mind, Misato.
And yet at the same time, this is also the me that exists in your mind, isn’t it Shinji?
We can see then that the characters maintain the borders between each other. In total instrumentality “inside your mind” is no different from outside the mind, when the border has been erased and everything returned to an undifferentiated state. We know then, that the characters have not been mashed together yet, but remain separate and remain self-identical.
Essentially, we can confirm from all of this, that Instrumentality has not yet completed itself, and that at the moment the Shinji’s thematic struggle is not with the wish for death (instrumentality) but with absolute inwardness, the total retreat from reality. This sets the stage for episode 26, which will deal with this and I believe, resolve Shinji’s character.
I will briefly outline what I believe to be the arc demonstrated in the final episode and then go into the specific evidence of this.
Shinji attempts to place his value on the world but realizes he cannot, as the world is transient and fluctuating and one risks becoming like Asuka,worthless because of some change in the world. He hates himself and thus must seek comfort in the world, but also fears the pain and the potential for failure that doing so implies. The Hedgehog’s dilemma of inwardness and outwardness, solitude and others, raises to a fever pitch. Finally Shinji realizes that nobody but you can give you your value and that he cannot get it from the world. But Shinji doesn’t yet know who he is and cannot find any reason to love himself. It is shown that his essense is his worldly existence, his circumstances, relations, situation. Absolute inwardness, total fantasy and total hiding from the world is refuted by the realization that without the world, Shinji does not exist either. That the self is always in the world is confirmed by the view of alternate possibilities and how they might change Shinji. Finally, Shinji, after some lecturing from the other characters, realizes that he cannot exist in absolute fantasy OR gain his meaning from the world. Absolute inwardness AND absolute outwardness are refuted. Both extremes of the dilemna are abandoned. Rather to contest anything in the world, to fight to change the world and thus himself, he must love himself, not abstractly, as in perfect freedom, but concretely in the world. Only this allows the possibility of finally interacting with others without losing himself in them, without hinging his value on them. Shinji gains self-love, affirms himself and thus finally has the security in himself to seek to change the world, to love others and to have truthful relationships with them. He affirms himself and rejects death (instrumentality, the dissolution of the self as a sollution to the self-world problem) and is congratulated by all the characters, because he now loves himself enough to have true relations with them. The show ends with “Mother, farewell, Father, Thank you.” which illustrates that he has come to terms with necessity and outwardness, represented in the Oedipal context by his Father, and no longer relies on fantasy, the pleasure principle, return to the womb, his Mother.
I will go more or less scene by scene to try and demonstrate the truth of this general interpretation and the incoherence of any other interpretation which sees Shinji as accepting instrumentality or wallowing in absolutely inward fantasy.
Firstly Shinji/Asuka think about what they fear. Misato sums it up pretty well, in line with what I had previously said about the characters and their inability to accept the possibility of pain, the reality principle, involved in interacting with the outside world.
What you truly fear is failure, isn’t it? You fear that you may be hated by others. You fear acknowledging that weakness, even to yourself.
Instrumentality is then justified – it is a solution to the irreducible problem of inwardness and outwardness – that it destroys the self.
Mankind cannot live without being surrounded by others. Mankind cannot live alone. Although you yourself are always unique. That is why life is hard. That is why life is sad and empty.
Via the instrumentality mankind must fill and compliment one another.
Why?
Must you ask? Because there is no other way to exist.
What is said here is that the dilemma is impossible to escape, on one hand, human beings also seek out others and cannot live alone. On the other hand, they are irreducibly separate and unique. The Hedgehog’s dilemma that was mentioned in previous episodes applies here perfectly. The only way out, according to the ideology of death Gendo and SEELE are peddling, is Instrumentality, the annihilation of the barrier between the self and others, all people become one at the cost of no longer being themselves.
Next, Shinji, Misato and Asuka attempt to justify their existence as themselves. They quickly enter into the same dilemma of reality vs fantasy that constantly reoccurs within these episodes. Shinji here rejects fantasy, but only on the assumption that it will hurt him more to lose the people he cares about. Essentially, Shinji, just like the Hedgehog in the Hedgehog’s dilemma, cannot completely desert his companions, even though their presence brings him pain, running away from them also brings him pain. He is yet again within the dilemma that instrumentality is supposed to solve. This is straightforwardly evidenced by this section.
Shinji : I musn’t run away!
Rei : Tell me why you musn’t run away?
Shinji : Because, escaping from reality can be painful!
Rei : Even though you’re running from something more painful?
[ . . . ]
Rei : If you really hate it Shinji, you can stil run.
Shinji : No! I won’t! I’m tired of escaping. Yes. I musn’t run away!
Misato : That is true. That is because you are now aware that running only brings you more pain.
Asuka : This is because running away can be far worse.
Rei : That’s why you do not wish to escape.
Shinji : Because if you run away, nobody will respect you! Don’t leave me alone. Don’t desert me, I beg of you!
Shinji cannot bear to be alone, nor with other people, he has found an unhappy medium between the two, trying not to expect much from people and trying to attain their praise. The tension remains, he does not have a sense of self-worth, he does not have a self-founded Ego. His entire worth is dependent on the Eva and the people around him, so he cannot run away from them completely, but is yet too dependent on them to take the risk of truly connecting with them.
My life is pointless otherwise.
Shinji exclaims:
Piloting Eva gives me an identity, a purpose!
And Asuka mirrors him with the same sentiment.
Piloting Eva gives me an identity, a purpose.
This demonstrates the basic conflict shared between the two and shows through the example of Asuka, the fallacy in Shinji’s reasoning. He cannot really depend entirely upon the Eva for his purpose, at pain or becoming like Asuka in her current state.
Shinji believes himself to have no value and thus hates himself. The other characters, who I believe are not truly present, but merely operate as psychic projections in this instance and perhaps others, all agree and proclaim their hatred for him over the phone.
In realizing that people praise him and love him when he pilots the EVA, Shinji has thematically given himself over to the world. He has leaned “the real you” as Misato says, on the Eva and on others. The line:
I don’t care, I had no other value to start with anyway!
Demonstrates that his dependence is based on a lack of self-value. He has to give himself to the world because he finds that he has no value apart from it, no self-love. But his attempt to rest his identity on the world is shattered by Asuka,
No, soon you may lose your identity, Soon you may lose Eva and your self-worth.
The conflict has become intractable. There appears to be no solution. Necessity, mere existence of the world and of others, the source of pain, has become a crushing weight. Each character declares their hatred for mundane existence, the sun, the rain, other people, the world itself. The conflict has become impossible to deal with, inwardness and outwardness are both unsustainable and painful.
This isn’t how I want it to be.
I wish this wasn’t the way it is.
I don’t want it to be this way.
A medley of characters, all representing Shinji’s mother in some way, Misato, Rei and Yui herself, all ask Shinji what he wants. Asuka is notably absent, as she is not a stand-in for his mother. He makes it clear: he fears rejection and wants to connect with and be recognized by other people.
Shinji is asked why he doesn’t try to reconcile with his father. His answer falls in line with the conflict I have already illustrated.
Because I’m afraid of being hated.
Asuka is asked why she doesn’t try to reconcile with her mother. Her answer also illustrates the basic conflict.
Because I might lose my identity.
Shinji wants to connect with people but is afraid of being vulnerable to their rejection and hatred. Asuka wants to connect with people but is afraid of the vulnerability of being dependent on others. These are two versions of the same conflict. Again, they cannot find true relations with others because they have no security, they depend completely on others and thus cannot risk the possibility of pain involved in a true connection with them.
Shinji’s wish is spelled out once again:
A resolution to the insecurity
This might be Instrumentality, which would resolve the insecurity by destroying the barrier between the self and other and thus end the possibility of rejection and pain. I interpret Shinji as finding an alternative way to resolve the dilemma however, as I aim to demonstrate. Shinji confronts the question of his self-worth yet again.
To be secure… I have to have value. I want to be worth something. I want to be worth enough to attract the attention of others.
This line is accompanied by the image of Gendo’s retreating back. Shinji’s father is in this case, an image of necessity, like usual. Yui responds.
But your value is something you have to find for yourself. You have to find it, Shinji!
This, along with what follows demonstrates the refutation of total outwardness. Shinji cannot completely base his value on the outside world, on other people. If he did, he would become like Asuka, who constantly mirrors his statements in this section.
Without the EVA, without outwardness, Shinji is unsure of who he is. Shinji looks inward, but cannot find any substance that correponds to himself apart from all of his circumstances. Shinji essentially realizes that the self does not exist as an object sitting apart from its perceptions, its world, its situation and circumstances. To quote David Hume,
When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observe anything but the perception.
Shinji finds only representations. His name, his body, his description, his clothes. He cannot find a self beneath all of this to anchor himself in. But in this case, who is he?
says Rei.You are you. There is little difference between how you interpret yourself and how others interpret you.
This is important, as elaborated the reasoning behind why one cannot give themselves up to the world in outwardness, we now turn to elaborate the reasoning for why one can’t exist apart from the world. There is nothing deeper beneath the concrete circumstances and situations that Shinji finds himself in. He cannot exist separately from the world, but only gains his meaning from it. He cannot run away. Just like how he draws an interpretation of others from their behavior, their clothes, their circumstances, Shinji realizes that he himself creates himself by drawing an interpretation from his own behavior, clothes, circumstances. His self-image is created by himself, he has the power by changing his world and his behavior, to change his self.
Shinji: Right, my clothes, my shoes, my room, these are all parts of what makes up my self.
Rei: These thing are connected through your consciousness.
Shinji: So what I think is me is me. What I recognize as self is myself. I’m no more and no less than the sum of my self-awareness.
Shinji is now aware of himself as being self-created. The self is a continual fiction written from practices and habits of daily existence. This much is realized, but he still doesn’t understand himself. He cries out:
Nobody understands me!
To which Asuka, Misato and Rei reply,
Asuka: What are you stupid? Of course nobody understands you, nobody can ever understand you!
Misato: The only one who can take care of you and understand you is, you. Your self.
Rei: So you must take of yourself.
Shinji still doesn’t understand however. He has found nothing substantial to himself beneath his worldly associations and thus doesn’t understand what it is he’s supposed to love and take care of. Misato, Asuka and Rei further imply that the self is created out of the people it relates to, the world it interacts with.
Asuka: And the people around the present you.
Rei: And the environment that surrounds the present you.
Misato: None of these elements of reality last forever.
Asuka: Time continues to flow and time brings change.
Rei: Your world is in a state of constant change. You’re capable of change anytime your mind perceives these changes.
Notice here the parallel between a change in the world and a change in the self, this confirms strongly my interpretation that the self in this account is fashioned from concrete activity in the world. Shinji is what he does, and to change himself, he only needs to change his environment, his world, his behavior, his activity, his reality.
This interpretation is confirmed by the perfect scene which also serves as a final refutation of fantasy, absolute inwardness, the state Shinji was in at the end of 25, “your world”. The perfect freedom scene represents absolute freedom from the requirements of reality, here is completely alone and completely boundless. This the furthest he could “run away” from necessity, as here there is no necessity simply because there is nothing at all.
What is this, a world of nothing? A world with nobody in it?
Shinji has no restrictions and is thus completely free to define himself in any way he wants. He shifts between forms and alters reality, but ultimately discovers that without restrictions he has no identity. Without concrete circumstances and concrete existence, without relations to other people, he has no self.
I don’t know what to do or think of!
He has no self-image to orient himself.
Gendo, again, his father, representative of necessity, gives him a restriction, a floor, and now he can walk, he has a more defined self, his self-image has been made more concrete.
Gendo says.The thing that forms your shape is your mind and its interaction with the world that surrounds you.
But in pure freedom, there is no world, and the self is totally boundless, there is no difference between the self and the world, there is no difference between reality and fantasy, and there is thus no self at all. Absolute freedom turns out to be the same as self-annihilation, death. The A.T. field is the boundary of the self, but it only exists to protect the self from the possible pain of the world outside. In the state of absolute freedom, with no world, there is nothing for the A.T. field to protect against. There is no boundary between the self and the world and thus no self at all. Absolute freedom, absolute solitude = death. Fantasy, “running away” has been refuted. One MUST bear reality, the world – other people, to even exist. This is supported by many lines from within the perfect freedom scene.
What is this? An empty space? An empty world? An world where nothing exists but myself? But with only myself I have nothing to interact with. Its as if I’m here but not here at all. Its as if I’m slowly fading out of existence.
Without others to interact with, you cannot truly recognize your own image.
In the act of observing others you may find and recognize your self.
Your self image is restrained by having to observe the barriers between yourself and others.
And yet you cannot see yourself without the presence of others.
For of this world is only of me then there will be no difference between me and nothing!
The development of the subject via the oral stage is spelled out explicitly.
The very first other person is your mother.
Your mother is a different individual.
Shinji asks one final time,
But are you sure the perceptions of others form my true self?
With this question we have refuted pure inwardness. The self cannot exist apart from the world and we acknowledge that we must engage with the concrete real world of other people to exist in the first place. We need other people to exist as ourselves, without the restrictions provided by an outside world, other people, etc – then we are like the Dove that Kant talked about, who in feeling the resistance of the air to its wings, hoped to fly in a vacuum unrestricted, not realizing that it is the presence of the resistance and friction that allows it to fly at all.
The Slice of Life AU scene spells out the conclusions about the nature of the self that have been built up over the course of the episode. The self is necessarily an activity of existing in the world, grappling with it, coping with it, and defining oneself in it. The Slice of Life AU shows to Shinji an alternate possibility, another possible self that might exist if he were to exist in a different world with different circumstances and different relations to other people. Its actual content, is, forgive me for believing, not really that important and mostly kind of goofy. I trust anybody who had read this far knows the scene more or less, so I will skip over it to the realization that Shinji delivers at the end.
I see. So this is another possibility. Another possible reality. This current myself is the same way. Its not the true myself. I can be any way I wish to be!
Finally Shinji understands. He exists as his actions, his relations, his choices in the world. He can change himself merely by changing his world and his relations to others. He is not inherently cowardly or weak, but rather this self, just like the self in the Slice of Life AU, is merely a product of circumstances and relations, worldly situations that can be changed.
If you take that into consideration then perhaps this world isn’t that bad.
Is Misato referring to the world of instrumentality or the world of reality here? Considering the line alone, it is unclear, and different translations I have seen disagree on how this is to be worded - to truly figure out what she means would require that I know Japanese, which I don’t. However, I think we can say with confidence despite the ambiguity here that the world she is referring to has to be the real world, the world where pain is possible. It makes perfect sense to conclude this based on context: she has inferred from the premise that Shinji may change himself by altering his interactions with the outside world to the conclusion that in this case perhaps the world isn’t so bad. This makes sense if she is talking about the real world. If we assume that she is talking about the world of instrumentality, in which there is no self at all or fantasy in which there is no world, then this argument in a non sequitur and makes no sense. To make the narrative coherent we must assume that Misato means the real, concrete world, not an LCL ocean. I will come back to this argument after I conclude my analysis of the final scene.
Nevertheless, Shinji still hates himself, or at least believes he could hate himself. The other characters remind him of everything he has learned, that he can change himself just by changing his interaction with the world outside of himself, that his own perspective on the world changes himself and that it is his own interpretation of things and perception of things that makes them bad.
This talk of perspectives is the final synthesis of inwardness and outwardness. On one hand, one MUST accept the world as it is. On the other hand, one has control on how to approach the world and can always work to change it and. The two extremes, completely losing yourself in the world, and completely withdrawing from the world, outwardness and inwardness are both refuted and synthesized to form a solution.
Rei: One who truly hates himself cannot love, cannot place his trust in others. (!!!)
Shinji: I’m a coward. I’m cowardly, sneaky and weak.
Misato: No, only if you think you are, but if you know yourself you can take care of yourself.
Shinji: I… hate myself. But maybe, but maybe I could love myself! Maybe my life could have a greater value! That’s right! I am no more or less than myself! I am me! I want to be myself! I want to continue existing in this world! My life is worth living here!
These last few lines confirm my interpretation. We have finally reached a synthesis of inwardness and outwardness and rejected both extremes. Shinji comes to love himself because he knows that he needs to love himself in order to have the security to contest the world, to try and change himself, change the world and exist in the world. He finally has value for himself – but with his new understanding of the self, this is not merely abstract self-love but REAL concrete self-love for himself in the world. It cannot possibly be anything else, we have already determined that the self is created by the interaction with the world and with others, to love yourself cannot be anything less than to love yourself IN THE WORLD, not abstractly, not fantastically, BUT IN REALITY. He cannot exist in fantasy, because he needs others, needs reality to define himself. But he also cannot let reality define him completely. The only way for Shinji to exist is for him to both realize his boundness to the world and to transcend it, to love himself! This is the only way to gain the security that makes real relations possible, the self-love that makes a healthy interaction with the world at all possible.
Some interpretations propose that Shinji in this final scene is accepting instrumentality. This is normally hinged on the text at the start of the episode and the line “My life is worth living here”, with some interpreting “here” as being within instrumentality. The Congratulations scene, to some viewers, suggests this, and admittedly it is easy to see why. After his long and arduous 40 minute travel on the highway of despair, Shinji is granted everything he wanted, his father suddenly seems to love him, his mother and Kaji are suddenly alive, etc. It seems psychotic or fantastical and thus is assumed to be taking place in instrumentality.
This however, cannot be the case. The self-love that Shinji has developed is evidently, as I have extensively demonstrated, developed with the understanding that the self is always worldly and defined by the others it relates to, the circumstances it apprehends and perceives. This is seen in the Perfect Freedom scene. He has cultivated self-love for the purpose of finally having the security and self-foundation to enable him to have relations with others. Remember Rei’s line, “One who truly hates himself cannot love, cannot place his trust in others” which contains within it practically the entire message of the show. His self-love is gained in relation to the world, it is precisely because of the transient and painful nature of the world that he comes to realize he cannot ground himself with the approval of others. Self-love is gained in the struggle with reality and for the purpose of finally being able to accept and grapple with reality.
If the final scene symbolized his acceptance of instrumentality, the entire episode becomes a complete non sequitur and totally incoherent. This would be illogical thus we can safely assume that it is not the case if we are to give the author any charity as to the coherence of his own vision. The entire episode has all been about Shinji learning to accept himself, the last lines literally him shouting that he loves himself and wants to be himself.
Let us briefly be reminded what instrumentality is: The destruction of the self by its integration into a single greater soul. If you believe that any modicum of the self could survive instrumentality which is precisely the elimination of the barriers between the self and others, consult the Perfect freedom scene, which shows clearly and explicitly that the self cannot exist without the distance of others who are distinct. Instrumentality means the elimination of the self and this spelled out with total clarity. Secondly, consult also End of Eva, if you think it is valid to use information from it to interpret 25-26. Finally, Consult the “Mother is the first other” scene in which this is also spelled out. Instrumentality is entirely incompatible with self-affirmation. Those who believe that the “here” in Shinji’s final few sentences refers to instrumentality therefore believe that he contradicts himself within the space of a few sentences. He wants to exist, he wants to be himself. That is strictly incompatible with giving into instrumentality.
If the world he accepts was instrumentality, then he would not need self-love in the first place and the entire episode would be irrelevant. In a world without pain, disappointment and risk, there would be no need for self love, no need to be secure in one self, as there would be no others, no external world that might disappoint or hurt the subject. The reasons that Misato, Asuka and Rei give as to why he cannot completely find his worth in the world and in others (its transient, it changes, you might lose your worth because the world changes) are totally irrelevant to Instrumentality world where everything is great and nothing hurts because there is no longer a self to be hurt. Again, the episode is complete non sequitur if interpreted this way.
What of the final scene then? Well, given that he has reconciled himself with other people and defeated the twin spectres of inwardness and outwardness, he finally is able to love himself enough to bear the possibility of pain and accept reality and thus other people – we can conclude that the final scene is a symbolic representation of this – he is reconciled symbolically with all the people he cares about in his life, because now, having finally learned to love himself, he has finally opened the possibility of having true relations with them. As for the presence of the dead – this may symbolically represent his possible reconciliations with their death, in that he is now finally able to come to terms with it.
This is my interpretation. I believe it to fairly theoretically and systematically coherent in most respects. I think it integrates nearly all scenes of 25 and essentially every scene in 26 without much effort and thus provides the best explanation of what is going on in the episodes. I was content with my interpretation when one day while browsing an imageboard, I found this quote from the “Newtype Filmbook” which was apparently official supplementary material for the show.
The quote was this:
Amidst the many words of congratulations, a faint smile starts at the corners of Shinji's mouth (and spreads across his face). A happy face -- that is the figure of the Complemented Shinji. This conclusion is also one form, one possibility among many.
This implies, fairly straightforwardly that the last scene is Shinji giving into the human instrumentality project – which, if true – completely destroys my interpretation and makes, as far as I understand it, the entirety of the last two episodes incoherent.
This can imply a few possibilities.
1 – This quote is just incorrect, which is possible I suppose.
2 – I have completely misread the entirety of the last two episodes, and much of the straightforward self-affirmation stuff was instead a masterpiece of dramatic irony that completely fooled me.
3 – The authors themselves were incoherent and unsure of things.
And, the possibility that seems sort of plausible but also rather off-putting
4 – Instrumentality somehow DOESN’T imply the annihilation of the self, is somehow compatible with self-affirmation and I am guilty of reading EoE apocalyptic depiction backwards into the EoTV Instrumentality.
What do you think?
