Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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[SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby LordThaeon » Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:04 pm

After watching the third Rebuild and remembering both the original series and the manga, I just really feel like Anno simply hates Shinji.

It's like Shinji Ikari is supposed to embody a boy who bullied Anno when he was 14, so he wrote Shinji's character as a way of getting vengeance on that kid.

The above most likely isn't even nearly true, but it does make you think. All this kid wants is a hug and all he ever gets is either cold rejection, being emotionally manipulated or being forced to witness/actually cause the deaths of the people who actually care about him with no strings attached.

Here, Anno has taken it to another level entirely! It's like Shinji's life is divinely designed to suck and any attempt that he makes to not make it suck only makes things worse.

1) The whole piloting situation

Option A) Pilot Eva to save the thousands/millions of people who live in Tokyo-3 and humanity in general. Even though he's being emotionally blackmailed by Gendo and Misato and it's all part of SEELE's plan to destroy the world anyway.

Option B) Refuse to pilot/Quit Nerv and be labeled a coward whose running away from his problems. Nevermind that the whole situation is a set-up by his absent/manipulative/emotionally abusive father whose grand plan involves killing off humanity to reunite with his wife!

2) The Zeruel Fight (Why did I get Bardiel mixed up with Zeruel?)
Option A) Kill Zeruel with Rei still inside and continue on completely lonely with his manipulative father still standing over his shoulders.

Option B) Grab Rei from within Zeruel which somehow sets off Third Impact and kills a lot of people.

3) The Rescue from the Wunder Ship

Option A) Stay with the crew of people who hate Shinji for reasons that they won't even explain to him including a cold and bitter Misato who just placed an explosive collar around his neck with the threat of killing him.

Option B) Go with Rei and meet someone who legitimately likes him for who he is. But get further manipulated into making a bad situation worst and watch the one person who cares about him get their head blown open.

Some will say that Shinji should've gone with A on all accounts anyway, but that's not the point.

I just don't see how anyone will have a happy ending with the status quo as it is by the end of 3.0. I don't even want to watch 4.0 after what all I say in 3.0.

In fact, I can't believe it...but I actually hate Rebuild Misato more than Gendo! Probably because I expect Gendo to be an evil bastard and I'm used to him manipulating things.

Misato may have been a hypocrite in the Original series and made a lot of bad mistakes herself, but at least she had the best of intentions. She was just a good person who was emotionally messed over into doing bad things and having an unhealthy outlook on life. I probably wouldn't be the most sane person either if at 14 I saw my father get vaporized into orange juice by a glowing white giant that grew wings out of it's back and destroyed Antarctica by roaring.

But...Rebuild Misato is really a bitch, in fact the only person who wasn't unreasonably cold to Shinji was Sakura Suzahara and I think that's only because Shinji was Touji's friend.

Even if you resent Shinji for nearly wiping out humanity, shouldn't you take some responsibility for your own helping hand in that situation? Did she just now realize that using 14 year old kids to pilot a bio-weapon of potential mass destruction was something that would come back to screw over humanity?

Is WILLIE just using Shinji as a scapegoat because they don't want to admit any legitimate responsibility for the world nearly ending? What exactly happened in the past fourteen years to make everyone hate Shinji so much that they'll put an explosive collar around his neck?

What was so hard about just telling Shinji about what's going on and then tell him that they don't want him to pilot eva because they don't want to risk another Impact?

Shinji did cause Third Impact on accident, but are you really going to hold a 14 year old as a war criminal when all he was trying to do was save one of the only few people in the world who actually cared about him?

Is it too much to ask for someone to apologize to Shinj's face for the way that they've treated him?

Am I the only one who wanted to punch Misato in the face after the stunts that she's pulled?

But whatever, I guess Shinji is supposed to be the Charlie Brown of anime right? No matter how much he deserves one, he's never gonna get a break because Anno hates him and he wants us to hate him too.

Too bad! I like Shinji Ikari and I hope he gets a legitimate, no strings attached happy ending like he's deserved since the original series!

But knowing Anno's track record...that's unlikely...

:fuyu_facepalm: :fuyu_facepalm:
Last edited by LordThaeon on Tue Jan 15, 2013 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby esselfortium » Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:32 pm

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:Am I the only one who wanted to punch Misato in the face after the stunts that she's pulled?

Um.. what stunts would those be, exactly?

But whatever, I guess Shinji is supposed to be the Charlie Brown of anime right? No matter how much he deserves one, he's never gonna get a break because Anno hates him and he wants us to hate him too.

There's your problem. He doesn't deserve one -- if 2.0 wasn't clear enough about it, Q made sure it was about impossible to miss.

You might be mistakenly conflating original-series Shinji with his Rebuild counterpart.

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Re: [SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby Legendary » Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:45 pm

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:Option A) Pilot Eva to save the thousands/millions of people who live in Tokyo-3 and humanity in general. Even though he's being emotionally blackmailed by Gendo and Misato and it's all part of SEELE's plan to destroy the world anyway.

Option B) Refuse to pilot/Quit Nerv and be labeled a coward whose running away from his problems. Nevermind that the whole situation is a set-up by his absent/manipulative/emotionally abusive father whose grand plan involves killing off humanity to reunite with his wife!


Anyone stupid enough to put themselves over HUMANITY is kind of a coward.

2) The Bardiel Fight
Option A) Kill Zeruel with Rei still inside and continue on completely lonely with his manipulative father still standing over his shoulders.

Option B) Grab Rei from within Zeruel which somehow sets off Third Impact and kills a lot of people.


That's the Zeruel fight. And pushing Eva beyond its means and screaming about not caring about the world while generally acting in a way to make humanity lose more Evas... Well, he kind of deserves it.

3) The Rescue from the Wunder Ship

Option A) Stay with the crew of people who hate Shinji for reasons that they won't even explain to him including a cold and bitter Misato who just placed an explosive collar around his neck with the threat of killing him.

Option B) Go with Rei and meet someone who legitimately likes him for who he is. But get further manipulated into making a bad situation worst and watch the one person who cares about him get their head blown open.


He didn't know he'd meet someone who'd legitimately like him for who he really is, but he did know he'd be meeting his father, who is kind of a putz. All the same, Option A isn't necessarily the best thing in the world, but he didn't have a winning game here.

Some will say that Shinji should've gone with A on all accounts anyway, but that's not the point.


Isn't it, though? Shinji consistently makes bad or insane choices and bad things happen. Shocking!

Misato may have been a hypocrite in the Original series and made a lot of bad mistakes herself, but at least she had the best of intentions. She was just a good person who was emotionally messed over into doing bad things and having an unhealthy outlook on life. I probably wouldn't be the most sane person either if at 14 I saw my father get vaporized into orange juice by a glowing white giant that grew wings out of it's back and destroyed Antarctica by roaring.


Imagine for a moment if Hitler reappeared in Germany in the 60s. That's kind of what Wille's dealing with here; someone who is responsible for the death of millions. Yes, Shinji and Hitler have a LOT of differences, but imagine it from the perspective of someone suffering for 14 years because of... well, because of Shinji. Even if you think it's TOTALLY NOT HIS FAULT, it's still the result of his (AND ONLY HIS) actions, and that blinds people.

Even if you resent Shinji for nearly wiping out humanity, shouldn't you take some responsibility for your own helping hand in that situation? Did she just now realize that using 14 year old kids to pilot a bio-weapon of potential mass destruction was something that would come back to screw over humanity?


Misato's never been one to know the extent of Eva's power. That's a thing about her. She also was very kind and supportive of him in 1.0 and 2.0. Gendo/Seele may have set Shinji on a path of nihilism, but if anything Misato tried to pull him off of it.

Is WILLIE just using Shinji as a scapegoat because they don't want to admit any legitimate responsibility for the world nearly ending? What exactly happened in the past fourteen years to make everyone hate Shinji so much that they'll put an explosive collar around his neck?


Did WILLE even EXIST 14 years ago? How much responsibility could they have?

What was so hard about just telling Shinji about what's going on and then tell him that they don't want him to pilot eva because they don't want to risk another Impact?


They were a little busy.

Shinji did cause Third Impact on accident, but are you really going to hold a 14 year old as a war criminal when all he was trying to do was save one of the only few people in the world who actually cared about him?


Were they holding him as a war criminal? They gave him clothes and a place to live, and only put a collar around him IF he lost control WHILE in an Eva. Hardly unreasonable.

But whatever, I guess Shinji is supposed to be the Charlie Brown of anime right? No matter how much he deserves one, he's never gonna get a break because Anno hates him and he wants us to hate him too.


Who said that? In Final, that happy ending may yet come, if he stops running around ignoring the people who tell him that he's dangerous and actually makes an effort to improve the world in a way that doesn't involve magicking away his problems but facing up to them.

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Re: [SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby Mr. Tines » Tue Jan 15, 2013 2:28 am

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:It's like Shinji Ikari is supposed to embody a boy who bullied Anno when he was 14, so he wrote Shinji's character as a way of getting vengeance on that kid.
Actually, he's Anno's self-insert.
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Re: [SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:23 am

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:Actually, he's Anno's self-insert.

Yep. Anno hates himself most of all. :devil:
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Re: [SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby Lance of LoL » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:05 am

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:1) The whole piloting situation

Option A) Pilot Eva to save the thousands/millions of people who live in Tokyo-3 and humanity in general. Even though he's being emotionally blackmailed by Gendo and Misato and it's all part of SEELE's plan to destroy the world anyway.

Option B) Refuse to pilot/Quit Nerv and be labeled a coward whose running away from his problems. Nevermind that the whole situation is a set-up by his absent/manipulative/emotionally abusive father whose grand plan involves killing off humanity to reunite with his wife!


While I agree Shinji has been dealt a shit hand by life, you can't use the vast manipulations of these groups as fuel when Shinji as a character is unaware of them. His position is save the world or run away, at which point running just makes him look like a twat. Though the entire decision to use emotionally unstable teenagers comes up from here.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:2) The Zeruel Fight (Why did I get Bardiel mixed up with Zeruel?)
Option A) Kill Zeruel with Rei still inside and continue on completely lonely with his manipulative father still standing over his shoulders.

Option B) Grab Rei from within Zeruel which somehow sets off Third Impact and kills a lot of people.


While he did yell about not caring about humanity, not caring about it and wanting to see it extinct are not the same, so I agree here that either killing Zeruel and being alone or retrieving Rei in a manner he could of no way predicted would cause an event he wasn't alive to see the first time kind of puts this one in Shinji's favour.

In his state there was no foreseeable reason he would be able to predict the outcome. It's like putting an person in a room with a big red button that they are unaware is connected to a nuke with a label saying "Press here to save friend."

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:3) The Rescue from the Wunder Ship

Option A) Stay with the crew of people who hate Shinji for reasons that they won't even explain to him including a cold and bitter Misato who just placed an explosive collar around his neck with the threat of killing him.

Option B) Go with Rei and meet someone who legitimately likes him for who he is. But get further manipulated into making a bad situation worst and watch the one person who cares about him get their head blown open.


While yes, Shinji had no idea he was going to meet Kaworu, he was however facing what he thought of at the time, as Rei, the person he was most fixated on, after the crew of the Wunder had basically given him the cold shoulder, treated him like crap, even from people he had become attached to and the one person who could maybe give him answers (Rei) was seemingly right in front of him. I don't blame Shinji for this decision.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:Some will say that Shinji should've gone with A on all accounts anyway, but that's not the point.


Only the first time, all others I can't deny his position.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:Is WILLIE just using Shinji as a scapegoat because they don't want to admit any legitimate responsibility for the world nearly ending? What exactly happened in the past fourteen years to make everyone hate Shinji so much that they'll put an explosive collar around his neck?


Yeah, I'll admit, I got kinda this feeling too, it's like blaming Hitler for the work of the entire Nazi party, yes he was at the head of it and caused N3I, but other, more informed people were in a position to orchestrate/stop this if they wanted. Still, over all, for a killer of thousands his punishment is considerably light, as the collar is only failsafe.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:What was so hard about just telling Shinji about what's going on and then tell him that they don't want him to pilot eva because they don't want to risk another Impact?


Plot.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:Shinji did cause Third Impact on accident, but are you really going to hold a 14 year old as a war criminal when all he was trying to do was save one of the only few people in the world who actually cared about him?


While I mostly agree, this sentence is a bad position. If I shoot twenty people to save a single one, I am still a monster. The only saving grace of this argument is that Shinji was unaware what using the Eva's power would do. See the above example.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:Is it too much to ask for someone to apologize to Shinj's face for the way that they've treated him?


Yes, cause we're dealing with a bunch of broken loonies, been that way from the start.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:Am I the only one who wanted to punch Misato in the face after the stunts that she's pulled?


She didn't kill him despite being in the perfect position and with reason to do so. Probably another bad decision on her part, but she didn't want to kill Shinji despite how coldly she treated him. She's not all bad yet.

View Original PostLordThaeon wrote:But whatever, I guess Shinji is supposed to be the Charlie Brown of anime right? No matter how much he deserves one, he's never gonna get a break because Anno hates him and he wants us to hate him too.


Charlie Brown was a pessimist who was faced with a football that was constantly yanked out from under him. He put himself in the position to hope and got hurt for it. I find this a suitable simile for Shinji... On the other hand, Asuka lost an eye, Rei was eaten, Kaworu's head exploded, ReiQ has identity issues and Mari is insane. In the grand scheme of bad shit people have done to the punishment they receive in return, Shinji has pulled a Karma Houdini, having nearly ended the world twice and the bad shit in his life keeps happening to OTHER PEOPLE!
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Postby Seele00TextOnly » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:24 am

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:35 am

View Original PostSeele00TextOnly wrote:Furthermore I'd say no, Anno doesn't hate his characters. He hates you. He hates the audience and the audience's real life problems, the wide swath of otaku, the adult children, the people coming to him clamoring for a happy ending, clamoring for Shinji to grow balls, clamoring for everything to be explained in nice little packages.

My guess would be that Anno disdains in others what he also hates and fears in himself the most. When he is "preaching" to the audience, he is also working out his own inner conflicts. And he's his own worst critic (cf. his infamy as a perfectionist, and how long it took him to admit that NGE "really is interesting" XD ). Probably all, or at least most, of the digs at the audience are digs at himself, as well.

And remember, not only Shinji is Anno's stand-in, we know that all of the original NGE cast represent aspects of his psyche.
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Postby Seele00TextOnly » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:37 am

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Re: [SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby amitakartok » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:40 am

View Original PostLegendary wrote:Anyone stupid enough to put themselves over HUMANITY is kind of a coward.


No, they're not. You can't force someone to sacrifice themselves for the good of the many. Or rather, doing so is supposed to be morally wrong.

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Re: [SPOILERS] Does Anno just hate Shinji Ikari?

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Postby esselfortium » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:50 am

View Original Postamitakartok wrote:No, they're not. You can't force someone to sacrifice themselves for the good of the many. Or rather, doing so is supposed to be morally wrong.

Yes, but it was inverted here, and sacrificing humanity for the good of yourself is far worse.

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Postby Darkwing » Tue Jan 15, 2013 11:31 am

I think Anno may just have overdone it with Shinji's fucking up. As you can see some posters seem to straight up consider him a miserable usless piece of shit, and hate him. I doubt anything they could do in Final will ever give them any sympathy for him or redeem him in their eyes. And I do not see the divide between opinions on Rebuild Shinji ever going away.

If Anno was trying to get Otaku to get lives, maybe he shouldn't have used Anime to do it. Or to paraphrase Obadiah Stane- "Ironic isn't it Anno? In trying to rid the world of Otaku you gave them their best series to be Otaku about yet!"

Honestly I hope he's not actually trying to preach with Eva. If I wanted to be preached at I'd go to church.

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Postby Seele00TextOnly » Tue Jan 15, 2013 11:35 am

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Postby Darkwing » Tue Jan 15, 2013 11:44 am

Deleted the first part because it's not pertenent to the thread.

Lets face it, would Eva have been half as memorable, or talked about half as much if it wasn't so divisive?
I'm not sure what I feel about Eva anymore, but I'm pretty sure I don't actually enjoy the series anymore.

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Postby Mr. Tines » Tue Jan 15, 2013 12:45 pm

View Original PostDarkwing wrote:If Anno was trying to get Otaku to get lives, maybe he shouldn't have used Anime to do it. Or to paraphrase Obadiah Stane- "Ironic isn't it Anno? In trying to rid the world of Otaku you gave them their best series to be Otaku about yet!"
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Postby Lance of LoL » Tue Jan 15, 2013 1:27 pm

Honestly I had always heard of Eva from the point of view that is it basically its creator's descent into depression and madness and we're just along for the ride. So I guess from an objective perspective it is basically self-loathing that causes Shinji and the others to bare the brunt of the worst situations. To try and be good, to be noticed and acknowledged only to get shit on for it. In that respect Shinji is just a pitiful cry for love that goes unanswered except when he's giving something in return.

Still, this type of pseudo-psycho analysis is best left to character analysis I suppose. Gonna drop on out of this one, said my piece in reply to the first post anyhow. See yas later.

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Postby Kendrix » Tue Jan 15, 2013 2:05 pm

People.

While Anno's intention with this work was to criticize certain aspects of society, it's not correct to say that he went, looked out to the world, listed the things he didn't like and compressed some of them into characters to rant about them.

The thought behind creating Shinji wasn't "I'm gonna cram all the things I don't like about you people in one character and show you exactly why you suck" it was "So, here's my journey, wrapped in metaphors for you to observe, some of it made of things I realized recently, some of it displayed live from the very moment I was writing this, I hope you learn from it and don't make my mistakes."
If you look at the 2.0 CR, you'll see that Anno still very much canalized many of his own thoughts into writing Shinji, even his own feeligs about making these movies themselves, and it's unlikely that this changed on such short notice.

He probably thinks more amongst the lines of putting Shinji through tests to reveal certain things about him, or make him learn certain lessons as he himself once did, and as he hopes we will.

Don't forget that initial statement of his, where he discribes the essence of this frachise like this:
"It is a story where the main character witnesses many horrors with his own eyes, but still tries to stand up again.
It is a story of will; a story of moving forward, if only just a little.
It is a story of fear, where someone who must face indefinite solitude fears reaching out to others, but still wants to try."


This is meant to be an imperfect person with many flaws and limitations, but still someone who, despite those limitations, generally tries to help.
And that's what I saw in Q, more than ever, even, no, especially in the finale. He pulled himself together a lot there.
Yeah, it wasn't enough, and the world only cares about the end result, not his circumstances. Asuka certainly doesn't give a crap about those.
But we know. At least we know.
And I think there's where I finaly found the beauty in this movie that eluded me for so long, in those minute improvements, the few points where he positively surprised me ("Hey, lemme help!", "No, I'm going my opwn path, I want to DO something and you don't need me anyway", focussing on "Rei's dead" instead of "I hugged WHAT?, "Tell me the truth!", etc...) despite the overwhelming, heavy darkness.

To quote one of the most epic "in the next episode..." narrations ever, That small light of self-purification that honestly wanted to shine wasn't enough to conquer the dephts of his personal darkness.
But it was there. But it was beautiful.

It's more a question of "sometimes you have to break an egg to see what's inside of it", both the ugly and the beautiful things, and there's a big, colorful pi~nata-filling of both inside Shinji Ikari.

(Even if he definitely IS the designated cosmic pi~nata here. No argument there. Honestly, ppl. If no one had ever grabbed him and stuffed him into a mecha, he wouldn't have harmed a soul in his life. He shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place. The traps he fell into were tailored to him. It could have been just about anyone else... Yeah, it was him and he ended up staining his hands, but... C'mon, look at him. )
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Postby Darkwing » Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:08 pm

View Original PostKendrix wrote:
He probably thinks more amongst the lines of putting Shinji through tests to reveal certain things about him, or make him learn certain lessons as he himself once did, and as he hopes we will.



Granted I don't think Anno's screw ups ever caused nearly as much damage as Shinji's. Or lets put it this way, couldn't Shinji have learned these lessons in ways that didn't cost Asuka an eye, get Rei nommed, Cause 3I, Make Kaworu lose his head, etc? :lol:

Okay I've figured it out. Since all the charecters except Mari are based on parts of Anno's psyche, we can use them as a measure of his feelings about Shinji. So if at the end of Final a majority of the cast mostly hates Shinji, then Anno mostly hates him too.
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Postby esselfortium » Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:11 pm

View Original PostDarkwing wrote:Granted I don't think Anno's screw ups ever caused nearly as much damage as Shinji's. Or lets put it this way, couldn't Shinji have learned these lessons in ways that didn't cost Asuka an eye, get Rei nommed, Cause 3I, Make Kaworu lose his head, etc? :lol:

Frustratingly, based on his actions and trajectory I still don't think he's learned a single one of those lessons yet. Right now the biggest question about Final is "How much more suffering is Shinji going to have to cause the people around him before he wises up?"

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Postby Reichu » Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:25 pm

View Original PostDarkwing wrote:Okay I've figured it out. Since all the charecters except Mari are based on parts of Anno's psyche, we can use them as a measure of his feelings about Shinji.

I suppose Shinji would represent the parts of himself that he hates the most but needs to accept and reconcile in order to move forward, and (most of) the other characters represent (among other things) his capacity for self-forgiveness.
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