I have long read into many interpretations of allegories that exist within the plot of NGE, some being more reasonable than others. However with some recent revelations regarding films like the Matrix having apparently been an allegory for transgenderism it makes me wonder what kind of themes similarly may exist in the scope of the NGE plot.

Disclaimer: I'm a trans woman in her early 30's, this post is in no way meant to misinterpret gender roles/norms, it is merely an examination of things I have observed.

I'd like others to chime in, maybe someone with a lot more knowledge about the characters than myself. However there are a few particular episodes I recall that made me question whether or not Shinji was actually trans. Throughout NGE Shinji is presented to us as a "failed man". Someone who is not very masculine by nature, and prefers to be more passive when it comes to conflict. He enjoys taking on tasks that would normally be considered effeminate, like; cooking and cleaning.

In episode 17 Shinji visit's Rei's apartment. Upon seeing the state it is in, Shinji takes it upon himself (or herself?) to clean the apartment top to bottom, all the while Toji comments about his behaviour in doing so being not very "masculine". Was Anno trying to draw attention to these actions not being masculine for a reason?

In episode 4, Toji asks Shinji to punch him. Shinji being uncomfortable with this display of violence only manages to do so under the immense peer pressure of the more masculine males.

Is there any merit to Shinji actually being trans? If so I'd love to hear other examples that people have come across!

Personally I think that Shinji's character is simply meant to interrogate the sanctity of gender roles. Remember that scene where Kaji gives him his version of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Shinji and Kaji are lying back to back the entire time -- this is used to show that their viewpoints are in completely opposite directions, which is confirmed when Shinji dismisses the entire spiel with "I don't understand adults". While other characters give Shinji a hard time about not being masculine enough, Shinji never struck me as being uncomfortable with being male. One of the instances where "I'm fine; it's the rest of you who are making this a problem".

I think that Kaworu may represent a transgender character, though, as he can be interpreted as a female being (Adam) trapped inside a male body. This could bring us back to Kaji's speech, which talked about men and women standing on opposite shores of a river. Tokyo-3 doesn't have a river, but it does have a lake, and Shinji meets Kaworu at one of the shores of that lake. Kaworu's surname is also Nagisa, meaning "shore" or "beach". When they meet, Kaworu is sitting on the neck stub of a mysterious statue, which is later revealed to be a representation of both Adam and of the MP Evas. In both cases, Kaworu is the part that "completes" the headless statue -- the soul of Adam, and his personality patterns will helm the MP Evas. Interesting thing about this statue is that it possesses a pronounced pair of breasts, which in Eva are a symbol of the intersection between mother-child intimacy and sexual intimacy (i.e. between a woman and her partner). The relevance? Kaworu's true nature is that of a mother, Adam, but his maternal affections provoke sexual confusion in Shinji. But to bring this back to what Kaji said -- Shinji's instinct is proved correct, as he meets a secretly-female being on the "same side of the shore" as himself. The gulf between the sexes is not there. Interestingly, Shinji and Misato later convene at the same spot, as if to hammer the point home further. Even more interesting is that Kaworu is also a hybrid organism -- both Lilin and child of Adam. So this is also foreshadowing the reveal that "human vs. Angel" is just another arbitrary measure used to divide entities that are fundamentally all the same.

I need to write more about the potential transgender allegory aspect of Kaworu's character, but perhaps this will stimulate the imagination in the meantime. The fic linked in my signature also explores the idea; I've VERY close to writing the chapter where Kaworu's dysphoria will be completely revealed.

Smeljthe wrote:Is there any merit to Shinji actually being trans? If so I'd love to hear other examples that people have come across!

He is Nadia with a haircut, so...

A long while ago, one /a/non observed

The secret of Evangelion is that they took super robot pilots and reversed their genders
if Rei was male, he'd be the awesomely silent/cool/calm guy.
When he rushes that angel with an N2 mine under his arm sacrificing his life ... that is the scene where MANLY TEARS flow for A MAN'S WAY OF LIFE AND DEATH.
Asuka, if a man, would be an awesomely HOT BLOODED pilot. And pervy with his advances on Shinji, but a little tsundere.
And Shinji, as a weak little girl, as a girl, puts it into context. You'd be fapping furiously to Shinjiko every night because of her shy demeanour
And with girl Kaworu, Shinji x Kaworu would be amazingly hot.

This essay was linked here a long while ago -- Saving Humanity through Gender Reversal:A Feminist Interpretation of Shinseiki Evangelion

Plus this thread

https://forum.evageeks.org/thread/9435/Shinjiko-WHY-Part-II

"Shinji is Nadia" gets overplayed a bit. Asuka uses Nadia's character design the same way and one basically never hears about it. Nadia herself is "genben" in the first place, also, since Anno based her off himself.

The "genben" elements of Eva, which are part of the broader "we're not all so different" theme, have no direct relation to possible trans* allegories, in any case.

Reichu wrote:I think that Kaworu may represent a transgender character, though, as he can be interpreted as a female being (Adam) trapped inside a male body. This could bring us back to Kaji's speech, which talked about men and women standing on opposite shores of a river. Tokyo-3 doesn't have a river, but it does have a lake, and Shinji meets Kaworu at one of the shores of that lake. Kaworu's surname is also Nagisa, meaning "shore" or "beach". When they meet, Kaworu is sitting on the neck stub of a mysterious statue, which is later revealed to be a representation of both Adam and of the MP Evas. In both cases, Kaworu is the part that "completes" the headless statue -- the soul of Adam, and his personality patterns will helm the MP Evas. Interesting thing about this statue is that it possesses a pronounced pair of breasts, which in Eva are a symbol of the intersection between mother-child intimacy and sexual intimacy (i.e. between a woman and her partner). The relevance? Kaworu's true nature is that of a mother, Adam, but his maternal affections provoke sexual confusion in Shinji. But to bring this back to what Kaji said -- Shinji's instinct is proved correct, as he meets a secretly-female being on the "same side of the shore" as himself. The gulf between the sexes is not there. Interestingly, Shinji and Misato later convene at the same spot, as if to hammer the point home further. Even more interesting is that Kaworu is also a hybrid organism -- both Lilin and child of Adam. So this is also foreshadowing the reveal that "human vs. Angel" is just another arbitrary measure used to divide entities that are fundamentally all the same.

You know what...the more I think about this, the more I think that's right. If a transgender is a female being trapped inside a male body or a male being trapped inside a female body, Kaworu sure fits the bill.

Does Kaworu see herself as female due to her past life as Adam (A female being assigned a male name by Lilin?) or does he see himself as male because he's in a male Lilin body (FWIW, in EoE he says, "Mou, ii no kai?" with "kai" being a masculine form of "ka"- does having masculine speech matterns mean he self-identifies as male)? Or does ve identify as *both*? I do know that the scripts always identify Kaworu as a "beautiful boy" but they're pretty silent on what Kaworu self-identifies as.

If we heard Kaworu explicitly say "I'm a female being trapped in a male body", as opposed to, "I'm a male being in my lilin body but I was female in my past form", that'd be confirmation that Kaworu was trans, but alas, we're not likely to hear something like this.

Of course, there's the slim (read: not on your life) chance that Kaworu could have a full female reproductive system and masculine secondary sexual characteristics while possessing the soul of a female being (through a condition like Swyer Syndrome), in which case her gender identity goes from trans to a masculine-appearing cis-female.

Smeljthe wrote:Throughout NGE Shinji is presented to us as a "failed man". Someone who is not very masculine by nature, and prefers to be more passive when it comes to conflict. He enjoys taking on tasks that would normally be considered effeminate, like; cooking and cleaning.

While I can't speak either way on the possibility of Shinji being trans (because from what I've heard an individual may live out a substantial part of their adult lives under the gender identity assigned at birth before coming to realize that they don't identify with it at all), I really wouldn't go so far as to consider Shinji being presented as a "failed man", I'd actually put him down to being presented as a pretty straight criticism of traditional masculine and feminine roles. Call him a "feminine man", yes, but I wouldn't say "failed man", because that in turn begs the question "What really is a man?", and the definition of "man" has steadily been shifting to something that's so excessively "masculine" that it becomes inhuman.

A "failed man" is foremost a failure at masculinity in their own view, and Shinji shows no signs of thinking he's failed at being masculine for lacking self-confidence or showing overly macho traits - in fact, he doesn't seem to think of himself as masculine at all! For him to be plainly coded as a failed man, he'd have to show signs of doing traditionally masculine things and failing hard at it, or having his more "feminine" coded qualities being mocked or exaggerated and him suffering mockery for it. Yet again, none of his feminine traits are exaggerated or mocked - they're actually among Shinji's strongest qualities as a human being.

Whether Shinji's feminine interests are a sign that he actually gender-identifies as a female human being in a male body is another question altogether, and while it's possible to interpret his feminine interests as a sign that he gender-identifies himself as feminine, it also makes an assumption that masculine and feminine-coded interests and personality traits are directly linked to masculine and feminine gender identification. But anthropologically and historically, what interests or traits are coded as masculine and feminine change across culture and across time, as do proscribed behaviors for gender. So Shinji might not be nearly as feminine compared to the average Japanese male (as opposed to the average male anime character) as he'd appear in the west, and therefore may not tie his gender identity to his interests as much as might be expected in the west.

(Discussions of gender are usually out of my league, and I'm doing what I can to contribute to this discussion in as constructive and inoffensive a way as possible)

Reichu wrote:Remember that scene where Kaji gives him his version of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Shinji and Kaji are lying back to back the entire time -- this is used to show that their viewpoints are in completely opposite directions, which is confirmed when Shinji dismisses the entire spiel with "I don't understand adults".

But it's actually pretty weird that Kaji is the one giving that spiel, because Kaji himself very subtly is the opposite of the gender role he appears to be playing up on the surface. This old discussion post archives the relevant information since the tumblr page linked in the OP is now defunct.

The basic observations here are brilliant : Kaji comes off as James Bond, but behind his flirtatious exterior lies someone with traits that are more stereotypically coded as feminine : he's nurturing with Shinji, he has a sense of tidiness (he neatly arranges the coffee cans in the trash can in Episode 17 when nobody's looking, even though they're just trash), his hobby is growing watermelons, because he likes the idea of nurturing life; he's actually always deeply been in love with Misato and never gotten into a relationship with anyone else for all the years they had in the meantime. His macho male act is just an act, it's all a very dense smokescreen for a far deeper and more subtle personality.

He's not even looking at Shinji when he gives the spiel about there being a vast difference between men and women. Kaji's not comfortable really telling Shinji what he thinks about the matter so he's putting on his macho male act again and concocting a lot of poetic-sounding BS that boils down to very little; it's no wonder that Shinji doesn't understand Kaji. Kaji's talking past Shinji and isn't even putting on the pretense of being able to face him.

If the very similar expressions that Kaji and Kaworu have on their faces before their deaths in 21' and 24' are any indication, Kaji is very much on the "same side of the shore" as Shinji and Kaworu - he's really a man coded with feminine qualities, and in fact shares a lot of his own qualities with Shinji. Misato liking having Shinji tidy up? She likes it because he reminds her of Kaji's "tidy side". She doesn't bring it up explicitly because Shinji utterly lacks the "masculine" pretense that Kaji uses all the time to hide his real personality.

Reichu wrote:"Shinji is Nadia" gets overplayed a bit. Asuka uses Nadia's character design the same way and one basically never hears about it. Nadia herself is "genben" in the first place, also, since Anno based her off himself.

The "genben" elements of Eva, which are part of the broader "we're not all so different" theme, have no direct relation to possible trans* allegories, in any case.

She also uses Jean's character visually (a character that was himself a "softer" male) and we also don't hear about either one being trans... Dudesuka is an amusing idea but it ends up removing the dephts of Asuka's character struggling with the expectations built around her and the ones she builds for herself.

"Why do I need to go through this just because I'm a girl?"

Mr tines your link no longer works but I found it anyway
https://www.scribd.com/document/2936785 ... ieve-Petty

She also uses Jean's character visually (a character that was himself a "softer" male) and we also don't hear about either one being trans... Dudesuka is an amusing idea but it ends up removing the dephts of Asuka's character struggling with the expectations built around her and the ones she builds for herself.

"Why do I need to go through this just because I'm a girl?"

interesting point yet Asuka is the most "girly" of the pilots
I wouldn't mind reading a genderbend adaptation of evangelion it's a fun idea and I'm guessing it could work that said a male protagonist getting a harem is pretty much the norm in Japanese manga a female protagonist getting the equivalent not so much.

My take on Shinji neon genesis is vague enough that anyone could get his opinion I tought Shinji looked embaresed when he was wearing Asuka's plugsuit. Likewise, Rei being a women that does not bleed also bothers her enouh to include it in her poems. Rei has some very unfeminine traits as well.

@UrsusArctos: I get the feeling that Anno was deliberately invoking the concept of the "hermaphroditic Adam", but instead of Adam starting out androgynous and getting the female component constituted into a separate person, Adam starts out female and acquires a male element (from Misato's dad, or whomever). I guess it's a little like how Kaworu's origins flip the conception of Christ on its head (female God getting impregnated by male mortal instead of the other way around).

As for whether Kaworu is "actually" trans or not, I guess that's up to individual interpretation or preference. There's not much to go on, so we'll never know for sure.

Regarding points like speech patterns and so on: first, gendered speech patterns aren't absolute; they can be subverted without it being any kind of statement about the character wanting to literally be that gender. Consider Utena, for instance, that famous bokukko. She doesn't want to be a boy -- what she wants is to not have her possibilities for self-expression limited just because she's a girl. She doesn't need to change; the world needs to change to "accommodate" her (and all that means is "letting her exist without giving her a hard time").

The Seeds have a habit of using the "a form you're comfortable with" trope when communicating with Shinji. Yui is a good example of this, always appearing to him as she appeared pre-Eva, but she's been transformed inside Eva-01 and is no longer that person. (In the moments leading up to Gendo's death, her Lilin avatar transitions into Eva-01, interestingly. He got to see her as she now "truly is"?) I suppose Kaworu appearing AS Kaworu before Gendo and not just Shinji might suggest that Adam simply just sees herself as Kaworu now, but I wonder if, still, that form wasn't used just for ease of communication.

I've suggested in the past that both Adam and Gendo will be accompanying Yui on her journey, and in Gendo's scene, he's framed between Kaworu's spread legs. I didn't really think about it "that way" until the Shin trailer came out, but once it did the connection was obvious. Will Gendo be reborn through Adam? Is that why he's framed between Kaworu's legs like a baby animal freshly born from its mother? Maybe it's "just symbolic" of something else, but Anno likes to be sneaky and include multiple possible meanings anyway... Another thing that possibly supplements the idea that Adam will become a mother again is that Yui has the souls of the Angels (if you buy into my arguments, anyway). Will Gendo be reborn as one of them?

Perhaps more to the point here is the possibility that Adam leaves with Yui and goes to a new planet to be reconstituted. In other words, "Kaworu" is not the end of the line -- Adam will continue to exist as something else. What will that something be, though? Up to one's imagination, I guess. But obviously if the "transgender" interpretation is correct, then Adam has a chance here to go back to the way she was before Lilin started to impose things upon her soul.

If Kaworu's existence is viewed as a series of impositions intended to shackle Adam's soul, then IMO a lot of things add up. One narrative that comes up a lot while studying mythology, regardless of how historically accurate it is, is that of the powerful female being who is subverted through revisionism to serve the needs of a patriarchal society. Lilith herself taps into this narrative; Tiamat is another great example. Sometimes goddesses are brought under the patriarchy's heel by rebranding them as males -- for example, Astarte was turned into the male demon Asteroth.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Seele symbolically claim Adam's power for themselves by naming the matriarch of another humanity after the Biblical patriarch of our own species. Worse, they masculinize Adam by forcefully incarnating her as her own son, which deprives Adam of a female body and distances her from her true nature.

Compare, I suppose, to the situation with Lilith. She gets a feminine name. When incarnated, she gets a female body. Gendo gives Rei a pretty raw deal, but he's also fundamentally different from Seele in that he venerates a woman. Female power is not merely something to control for male interests -- he himself is a servant of a greater female power (Yui).

Now compare the two situations. Kaworu gives up and begs Shinji for death. Rei rejects Gendo and becomes Lilith again. If you wanted to, it would be possible to frame this in terms of Adam being completely broken by patriarchal control, while Lilith breaks free of it. When denied the opportunity to "transition" (as by merging with Eva-02, or whatever), Kaworu decides to just die on the spot, and he's internalized so much self-hatred that he gleefully justifies this as a wonderful thing.

Wow! Thank you so much everyone for your replies! I’ve been spending a lot of time at work between customers (working at a sandwich shop atm lol) just reading and really taking it all in.

I really like how Reichu brings up Kaworu, whom upon reflection is a really good representation of a trans person. I felt that I could relate a lot more towards Shinji in respects to what my experiences growing up were like, pre-transition. However I can totally see what you mean by Kaworu having the nature mostly associated with mothers (women in general), that being nurturing. Something I also never really connected was:

“I think that Kaworu may represent a transgender character, though, as he can be interpreted as a female being (Adam) trapped inside a male body. This could bring us back to Kaji's speech, which talked about men and women standing on opposite shores of a river. Tokyo-3 doesn't have a river, but it does have a lake, and Shinji meets Kaworu at one of the shores of that lake. Kaworu's surname is also Nagisa, meaning "shore" or "beach". When they meet, Kaworu is sitting on the neck stub of a mysterious statue, which is later revealed to be a representation of both Adam and of the MP Evas.”

That really is interesting! This is particularly why I thought it would be a good idea to ask the question! There seem to be a lot of subtle and not so subtle nods to these kinds of topics of discussion in the anime that on my first several watch through I never really noticed.

UrsusArctos really drives home some points about my original comments regarding Shinji, and I’m really glad you commented! I think I should have worded things a bit better, but the gist I was going for regarding Shinji possibly being trans has to do with my own personal experiences, which I understand now that anecdotes aren’t everything. When I was younger, I grew up around mostly females with no real male presence in my life, this led to me developing interests primarily in cooking, cleaning, gardening, shopping, and generally anything my mother/sister found interesting. In my community these things though were seen as very “unmanly” and I got a lot of ridicule, as did my family for allowing me to participate in “womanly” duties. It made me wonder if this was a common thing, and that maybe Anno was trying to portray Shinji as your typical “egg”.

“When denied the opportunity to "transition" (as by merging with Eva-02, or whatever), Kaworu decides to just die on the spot, and he's internalized so much self-hatred that he gleefully justifies this as a wonderful thing. “

Why does that feel so relatable?

Is there any possibility that Netflix casted a transgender voice actor for Shinji’s role because they wanted to suggest that Shinji was trans? This might seem far fetched but I figured with the awesome answers I’ve gotten so far maybe someone would know!

Sorry if this post seemed rambly, I just have so many things to think about now...

Smeljthe wrote:Is there any possibility that Netflix casted a transgender voice actor for Shinji’s role because they wanted to suggest that Shinji was trans?

Netflix didn't make the show. The recast was done by Khara, the people who did create it, through blind auditions. That is to say, they didn't even know if they were trans or even their name. They simply wanted him to sound closer to the Japanese original. In that case, Shinji is voiced by a woman (Megumi Ogata) but that's commonly used when you want younger males with a higher, prebuscent voice (since most VAs are gonna be adults, naturally). Naruto, for instance, is another popular example of this happening in anime and I don't think anyone would argue he's even un-masculine.

If you're curious about authoral intent however, I can tell you there's no indication or mention of any of this. Veeeery simply put it's mostly around Shinji growing up, feeling conflicted with the expectations around him, etc. There are tons of sources you can find on the wiki. In keeping with the common interpretation of Eva through the lens of a shounen/mecha deconstruction (not exactly accurate but an useful analogy nonetheless), you can also see how Shinji not being a macho man all the time is also something that doesn't match the usual stereotype of a shounen protagonist. He's hesitant, doubtful, cowardly even but largely because he's traumatised, insecure and still a child. On the other hand, you have boastful, loudly Asuka, with insecurities of her own that mirror Shinji and she also deals with her own femininity - compare that to say Shinji in episode 16 or in other times he decides to act manly, or characters like Misato that have "male" behaviours insofar as she's resolute, dedicated and (largely) mature, yet she's also very much a woman. I don't think Eva is really advocating for Shinji to act male or female so much at it is advocating for him to act mature.

Reichu wrote:Now compare the two situations. Kaworu gives up and begs Shinji for death. Rei rejects Gendo and becomes Lilith again. If you wanted to, it would be possible to frame this in terms of Adam being completely broken by patriarchal control, while Lilith breaks free of it. When denied the opportunity to "transition" (as by merging with Eva-02, or whatever), Kaworu decides to just die on the spot, and he's internalized so much self-hatred that he gleefully justifies this as a wonderful thing.

That's a fascinating take on Adam and makes things all the more depressing.

Smeljthe wrote:UrsusArctos really drives home some points about my original comments regarding Shinji, and I’m really glad you commented! I think I should have worded things a bit better, but the gist I was going for regarding Shinji possibly being trans has to do with my own personal experiences, which I understand now that anecdotes aren’t everything. When I was younger, I grew up around mostly females with no real male presence in my life, this led to me developing interests primarily in cooking, cleaning, gardening, shopping, and generally anything my mother/sister found interesting. In my community these things though were seen as very “unmanly” and I got a lot of ridicule, as did my family for allowing me to participate in “womanly” duties. It made me wonder if this was a common thing, and that maybe Anno was trying to portray Shinji as your typical “egg”.

I'm sorry to hear you were ridiculed for it - that kind of thing really hurts

I think that most boys do in fact pay attention to what their mothers and sisters do and seek to imitate them during their childhood, because kids can and will imitate adults or older kids around them. Part of the whole socialization of boys and girls into gender categories involves a certain degree of shaming and ridiculing them into following their "expected" interests and duties, which is painful. And the shame and ridicule makes boys who have expressed interest in feminine activities (I think most of them) suppress those interests and desires and either bury them deep down within, or make them active objects of hatred and ridicule themselves.

Regarding Shinji, a lot of Japanese men are expected to be more polite and more submissive in a lot of social situations - more "feminine" by western standards because it's what expected in Japanese culture and society which are much more hierarchical - and they transfer that submissiveness onto women by expecting women to be even more submissive and lower status in society. It's sadly one of the reasons why Japanese women are lagging behind Europe and North America in terms of gender parity. (Toji's reaction to Shinji is interesting - while Toji may overtly disapprove of Shinji's tidiness and desire to clean things up as "unmanly", Toji's actually much kinder and more sensitive than he lets on, and seems to genuinely respect Shinji for what he does.)

It's all part of a sort of permanent masculine status anxiety, where men on top of the food chain decide what's "manly" and the men who are unsure of themselves and their own manliness try to prove their status by beating down people who aren't "manly" enough. In a way, it's not all that different for women, except the shame and ridicule are less physical and more verbal, and the "feminine" ideal now appears to be "purity" or "the girl who rises above the system" or some combination of the two, and the girl who's not "pure" enough gets socially ostracized.

When the next set of boys comes along who are interested in feminine things, men and older boys perpetrate the cycle of shame and ridicule and make them conform to "manly" ideals because they're not able to reflect on their own experiences and say "I've been hurt and shamed for this so I'm not going to inflict the same hurt and shame on them" (similar for women, again, but around different ideals and in a different way). To go past the shame that someone has inflicted on you for not fitting a particular idea of "manliness" and deciding you'll be a different person, and go on doing what you like, requires a lot of moral courage.

Your experiences make it sound like your community has a very limited view of what it takes to be "masculine" or "a man". A whole lot of professional gardeners/landscapers and hardcore sanitation/decontamination experts (experts in cleaning), nurses, and above all, chefs, are male! (It's odd and also unfair but when a macho man does a traditionally "feminine" job as a professional, they're usually treated with a lot of respect and rise to the top of that profession)

Smeljthe wrote:Is there any merit to Shinji actually being trans? If so I'd love to hear other examples that people have come across!

Both the Rebuilds and NGE/EOE never elude to the idea that Shinji is trans.

Shinji is not a failed man; he's simply an underage kid, he is still growing both as a person and as a male and you should not conflate the aforementioned fact with him rejecting masculinity. He is simply an immature individual; both NGE/Rebuilds worked hard to convey this notion.

Been few days without net! Dang! Lot's of replies still that I got to read through, and wow thanks again everyone for taking the time to give me your perspectives

Your experiences make it sound like your community has a very limited view of what it takes to be "masculine" or "a man". A whole lot of professional gardeners/landscapers and hardcore sanitation/decontamination experts (experts in cleaning), nurses, and above all, chefs, are male! (It's odd and also unfair but when a macho man does a traditionally "feminine" job as a professional, they're usually treated with a lot of respect and rise to the top of that profession)

Yeah totally, I grew up with the simplest of things resulting in bullying. If you even remotely thought hopscotch or drawing with chalk was fun as a kid then you were shit on by people. Even my teachers took opportunities to make remarks about my person because I was more interested in hanging out with my female classmates. Stupid remarks like, "you really should be hanging around other boys!", "wouldn't it be more fun to talk to billy about trucks??". Right now I'm a sandwich engineer (lol) and I work with some pretty liberal people so I've begun to really feel more accepted for my differences.

Both the Rebuilds and NGE/EOE never elude to the idea that Shinji is trans.

Shinji is not a failed man; he's simply an underage kid, he is still growing both as a person and as a male and you should not conflate the aforementioned fact with him rejecting masculinity. He is simply an immature individual; both NGE/Rebuilds worked hard to convey this notion.

Maybe I was reading too hard into things that weren't there! I agree that I used poor wording when I compared him to being a failed male.

Shinji definitely challenges gender roles, so anyone who also challenges gender roles (including trans people) would certainly find him a tad more relatable than the many characters in media who don't. Honestly, there are a lot of things cis-guys need to be doing anyway that they don't because it's "unmanly." Like, as a bachelor myself, I hate visiting some other dude's house and seeing a messy bathroom. People tend to say "Oh, well, they just need to find a woman to take care of them." No, they don't! Men need to take care of themselves. I should't have to rely on someone else for my house being clean, just like I wouldn't rely on someone else to change my tire or do other "conventionally manly" things.

Shinji is a good cook and a bid of a neat freak. These aren't particulairy unmanly. Still if you want to see that in the character why not. Personaly the tought of certain toys or activities making you gay gives le a headache.

Rei for example is the opposite she is a slob and cant cook and no one would suggest she is particulairy manly. Even tough she also has short punk like hair and appears to have some form of autisme like behaviour that seem more commen in men. (yes it is probably her real hair color but it's blue and doesn't match her eyebrows so first impressions and all also autisme doesn't realy explains Rei's behaviour).
At the end when she is in her giant naked Rei phase she has switches bodies with Kaworu for a time you know

So if you are looking from trans imagenairy I think I would go for this
PS couldn't find a image that worked so I got this hag image instead

I'm surprised nobody has brought up Unit 01 and it's relationship to Yui in here. The majority of the time, Unit 01 is referred to with object pronouns, as an it, especially by those who think she's just some armored giant, and ESPECIALLY by those who think she's a robot. However, there are a few times [in the English dub] I remember Unit 01 being referred to as female. This could be a nod to ships and other machines being referred to as female, Anno is big into ships, but it could also be read as a transgender allegory. Unit 01 has no reproductive system, and thus no genitals. It's physically sexless, but is given female pronouns, because it has a female soul inside it, Yui's soul.
Anno's always been pretty progressive, with choosing female main characters in a lot of his directed works, and the aforementioned pilots breaking down gender norms by being genderbent versions of mecha story tropes. Plus there's also Maya Ibuki being well written as a homosexual, written as a person first with her sexual preference simply being a part of who she is, and never once exploited for fanservice or even confirmed until End of Evangelion. So considering all that, it wouldn't surprise me if he meant it as both an homage to ship naming conventions, and to sneak a bit of tran acknowledgement into a 90s series in a country that's still pretty homo/transphobic for the most part, based on my limited understanding as a white piggu.

orcot wrote:Shinji is a good cook and a bid of a neat freak. These aren't particulairy unmanly. Still if you want to see that in the character why not. Personaly the tought of certain toys or activities making you gay gives le a headache.

Rei for example is the opposite she is a slob and cant cook and no one would suggest she is particulairy manly. Even tough she also has short punk like hair and appears to have some form of autisme like behaviour that seem more commen in men. (yes it is probably her real hair color but it's blue and doesn't match her eyebrows so first impressions and all also autisme doesn't realy explains Rei's behaviour).
At the end when she is in her giant naked Rei phase she has switches bodies with Kaworu for a time you know

So if you are looking from trans imagenairy I think I would go for this
PS couldn't find a image that worked so I got this hag image instead

In my humble opinion, the author of the gag chose the wrong movie. Not the best example....




For me, EOE confirmed Kaworu & Rei & "guardian angels" who trascend genres. But it was obvious from the beginning : Kaworu (being Adam) is a being without "real genre". His idea of "love" goes beyond sexuallity, that is the point of him as "Jesuchrist"

Relating it to cooking is kind of an insult to people who genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria, you know.

Jäeger wrote:

Wish granted

pwhodges wrote:Relating it to cooking is kind of an insult to people who genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria, you know.

I'm not sure you got what I meant but if I insulted you or some community I apologize Cooking is mostly seen as a female intrest where I'm from that said most of the chef cooks around the world are actualy male. I'm more surpised with me mentioning toys? I ran it trough a spellchecker maybe I ment Joys/ hobbies. It definitly came out mangled