Even in the more direct parallels that the movies want to make between them both, it can't go beyond the most superficial level: they both physically looked alike at the same age, are bit of loners and like to listen to music. That's it, that's literally the only similarities between them, and when the movies portrays them when left to their own, they are nearly polar opposites:
That's not the case at all though. Those are relatively superficial parallels, sure, but you glossed over the most important ones by far. When Gendo lost Yui he had committed no crimes, nor did he have any bad intentions we know of. He was in a horrible mental state and perhaps hated people like many people who suffer from such mental issues do, but he wasn't a bad person, and was also much, much younger. It all happened when he lost Yui, when instead of grieving and eventually trying to stand up again to see what he can do better in the future, which is the mature behavior 3.0+1.0 actually preaches for, he raged out, rejected reality by trying to revive her through Rei and the Human Instrumentality Project (he wasn't even aware of its existence before this point!), and then closes himself up completely. And how does Shinji react to the (near) losses of Asuka, Rei II, and Kaworu? He does nothing but throw a destructive fit when Asuka is killed, he rejects the fate of the entire world and of his own self just and only to bring back Rei II, and then he completely gives up after Kaworu's death and closes himself up. Shinji and Gendo are similar down to the sequence in which they reacted to tragedies, at a point in their lives when they already were very similar and had both even made an effort to heal.
So yes, the parallels drawn between Shinji and Gendo are more than substantial and valid.
And it's the same thing with Kaworu really: the story want to depict him pushing his happiness to Shinji as being similar to Gendo who pushed his happiness to Yui, yet completely ignores all context around Kaworu. His life is basically to wake up everytime in SEELE's custody and being constantly monitored and probably terminated if he shows any sign of not being onboard with their plans, his only time of freedom being the few days between being sent at NERV and not being able to control his angelic nature pushing him to fuse with Adam or Lilith. And even with that, he's never seen manipulating or killing anyone in his objective to "make Shinji happy", by the little we saw of his time as Commander of NERV, he's even shown able to make great friends with Kaji.
Hmm okay I get where you're coming from with this one. Even though while Yui was alive the contexts are very similar, if you consider the rest of the story then yes the results of Gendo relying on another person completely for his own happiness are completely incomparable to Kaworu's wrongdoings while suffering from the same problem.
As for the content, okay, Shinji didn't had purely selfless intentions when he piloted at the end of 2.0, and I want to say: so what?
He acted more for personal reasons that resonated with him more than a general sense of duty? Congratulation, you just described 99.9% of humanity.
The story keep proling about maturity, but has an absolutist and frankly, kind of toxic view of what it means: Shinji must be perfect in his behavior and motivations, perfectly rational and decisive when pitted against the infected Eva where the girl he likes is trapped and his commanding officer's answer to him expressing his fear to hurt her being that he doesn't give a shit and should just kill her, perfectly ... when he resigned because he realized that his hierarchy was ready to throw their pilots under the bus and they successfully tested an automatic pilot that means that he doesn't have to put up with that bullshit anymore, perfectly selfless when he fought against the strongest Angel that obliterated everything and everyone protecting Lilith, perfectly trusting and understanding when the people of WILLE told him an insane story that 14 years have passed while Asuka is the same, that he didn't saved Rei while giving the proof that he did and that Rei in front of him is not Rei while they try their damnest to kill her, with their only argument being that they'll blow off his head if he moves, and finally perfectly calm and reasonable when handling the spears after the entire previous hour of the movie was Gendo and Fuyutsuki methodically gaslighting him to insanity and being put against an enraged Pitbull for whom the term "deescalation" is as swear word despite his repetitive attempts to explain to her what he's doing and his copilot deciding to not do anything while he repetitively screamed at him for back-up before telling him to give up just when he managed to fend off said Pitbull and get the only opening they would get.
And any failure or moment of weakness is punished with full force by the writers as if the character deliberately acted while knowing what would happen.
I'm sorry but I don't get your point. Are you arguing that every single one of Shinji's wrongdoings was just a little mishap that anyone would do and which don't say anything about him?
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't consider Shinji's genuine rejection of the entire world world and his own self as just "not purely selfless intentions" (hell, it's not even a selfish idea by definition). Nor would I consider his fundamental character trait of also being an escapist, which manifests itself in some way repeatedly, after each and every tragedy or difficulty he comes across, as just a simple "moment of weakness". Shinji's behavior, as you very accurately explained, is understandable in the context of what's happening around him and him being a traumatized kid. However, that doesn't change the the fact that many of his actions and thoughts are wrong and unhealthy (these two points aren't mutually exclusive of course), and that Shinji lives a major lie that will be challenged by the story as many times as it takes before he realizes the truth. The movie doesn't advocate for perfect people, after all Shinji's most mature reaction to tragedy ever in 3.0+1.0 has as its key element grief.
And in the end of Thrice he finally get up to the standards of "maturity" held by the story... and he's not mature, he's inhuman. Shinji serenely going through the whole Wunder, convincing everyone to let him pilot (despite Gendo having fucked off with Unit 01 ten minutes ago...) with a few choice words about how he "knows the smell of the earth" and giving Misato some closure letting her do in peace the lover's suicide she postponed for 14 years, making his father's resolve crumble and have him accept to give up his plan that he worked on for two decades and half with one phrase then rapid-firing giving life-changing life advice to everyone thanks to his newfound wisdom
Even though I have a problem with Shinji's excessive stoicism in a few moments towards the end of 3.0+1.0, he isn't inhuman, not at all. His growth is legitimate, and what happened at the Wunder was not as much the result of his own actions as it was the result of other characters individually getting over their own internal conflicts and realizing their circumstances. Such as Misato, in whose case this change of heart has been boiling since 3.0's first 20 minutes, who finally did the right thing, took some of the blame off Shinji's shoulders, and focused on the future as well as taking responsibility as a mother, not just a Captain. And then Midori and Sakura followed, who were affected by Misato, but mainly made their own self - realizations, the most important of which was pretty pragmatic in the sense that, there's nothing they can do about the past anymore, they're at the end of their rope, and so the only thing they can do is focus on the future by using their last option, even if that's Shinji.
My point is, Shinji didn't really do much here to sway them (he doesn't even say anything while almost all of the above is going on), except making progress at the Village which Misato found out about as shown in the scene in the Captain's quarters, which had a major role in catalyzing her change of heart at that specific point.
As for Gendo, again, Shinji really didn't do much. As it is the case with the next characters I'll talk about, it was mainly the environment of merged consciousness and his own individual realizations about how his extreme fixation on Yui resulted in him forgetting everything that matters in his life, and pushing everyone aside. Shinji ultimately just tries to do what no one except Yui has done for Gendo; he tried to understand him. Again, that was the catalyst, and it's this specific connection that mainly gets the message into Gendo's head, that he has been obsessively searching for his "Yui" for so long (his family, who loves and understands him) at the expense of everyone, even his own humanity, but has only found "Reis" instead (idyllic pre - programmed imitations with no soul of their own). And where did she finally find Yui? "Inside" Shinji, because Shinji also is that person he has been searching for, who he pushed to the side completely and tormented, all because of his sort - sighted obsession.
This extends to the other main characters' character conclusions too. Shinji didn't single - handedly solve anyone's problem. His very growth is also the result of the help he received from other people before him, and that's all he does in the end. He tries to help others, but the other characters are explicitly shown making the realizations by themselves, through sci - fi introspection Shinji simply enables, and mainly through discussions with other characters like Kensuke or Kaji.
and erasing the circumstances that formed these issues in the first place before ascending to godhood to restore the planet to its pristine state and erasing from reality all the Evas and technologies that let this happen (Neon Genesis ffs!) and leaving for another plane of existence where he even gets to fluster the super flirty all-knowing big boob girl is a fucking caricature of character development, akin to a half-assed "fixfic" where Shinji becomes super strong and singlehandedly save the day and solve every characters' issues.
For all its bleakness, End of Evangelion having Shinji still misstepping after Instrumentality showed that while he did changed, connecting with other will still be hard and there will still be missteps and failures, but now he has the courage to still try.
In a way, Anno, in his desire to give a farewell to his franchise and despite talking about escapism for decades, ultimately crafted the ultimate escapist ending, where the main character get to erase all of his mistakes as if nothing ever happened and didn't even had to deal with the aftermath as he leaves to another world with a cute big breasted girl in tow.
And the worst is that I'm not even sure that Anno realized this, because from the moment they get in the anti-universe it's clear that the remaining time is more about the author talking about his franchise through his two self-inserts (Gendo and Shinji) and giving the golden happy end to all the characters that he "tortured" through the years instead of making a thematically coherent ending.
One of the reasons why the 3.0+1.0 ending is in fact very thematically coherent with both Rebuild's and the original's messaging is because, by definition, it is not an escapist ending.
Intentions are what matter here, and Shinji, after spending almost an hour of runtime doing exactly the opposite of what an escapist would do already, has set his mind on sacrificing his own life so that everyone else can live in a better place. This is crucial. Shinji isn't "burning all the bridges he has" in the slightest; he's just trying to get everyone out of Unit 01 and Unit 13 and say his final goodbye to them because he knows he's going to permanently go down with these Evas when he makes his wish. A wish that by the way won't just "erase all his mistakes", but just the Evas from that point onwards, a symbol of escapism, and not the deaths that did not directly happen due to the Ikpacts (or arguably any death at all depending on your specific interpretation of the ending).
So, the fact that Yui and Gendo stepped in at the last moment to take Shinji's place in the sacrifice was, as shown, a completely unexpected event. Shinji did not plan beyond this point, so calling this "escapism" when everything that happened after this point wasn't planned or in his control is utterly nonsensical. He didn't decide where to end up, or with whom (which alone invalidate the "escapism" argument), and again, depending on your specific interpretation of the ending, he may not have ended up in another universe and his relationship with Mari in the end is not romantic in nature.
If the goal was to portray the scene non-romantically, then they did a very bad job on it, because even in Japan a good half of the fandom are of the opinion that they are a couple: we have a man and a woman talking about each other's nice smell and big boobs and the man calling the woman "as cute as ever" to fluster her before leaving hand in hand, in public, in Japan.
I'm pretty sure that if you show that scene to anyone who didn't saw Evangelion and the Rebuild, their conclusion will be that they're a couple.
I agree. If their intention was to make the nature of their relationship clear, they certainly failed. Nonetheless though, if you look into it, this scene can easily be interpreted as a non - romantic one, even if we interpret the final scene as taking place after a significant time skip during which these two characters had time to bond.
Interestingly, it's implied that he actually does have a hobby in astronomy: he mentions to Kaworu in 3.0 that he liked gazing at the stars since he was a child, and IIRC you can see astronomy books and posters of constellations in his room in 2.0.
We can only guess why he doesn't mention it to Kaji when he asks him if he has any hobby, my guess is that he doesn't say anything by fear of being judged and/or because he doesn't know him well enough to open himself on his hobbies.
Good catch, but I'm pretty sure Kaji was referring to what Shinji wants to do in the future, mainly professionally. Him seemingly being interested to an extent in astronomy wouldn't be that relevant here imo.