Lord ikari Shinji wrote:but I will say that as human we all(subjectively) are selfish beings and put our wants above the desires others, its what makes us as people so ambitious.
That's true, even for the other characters of Eva : Fuyutsuki seems to only continue following Gendo for the chance to be reunited with Yui, Misato joined NERV mainly to get close to her late father and have her revenge against the Angels and by her own admission didn't really cared about mankind, Asuka piloted for the glory and status of being an Eva pilot, and Shinji came back to fight Zeruel for Rei's sake and not for mankind...
But what differentiate people like Misato, Asuka and Shinji from Gendo and Fuyutsuki is that when the formers' wishes comes to the detriment of others, they tend to back down and change their ways, unlike Gendo/Fuyu who continues no matter what.
Yes even Shinji : he refused to pilot again after Ramiel almost roasted him alive, Misato showed him Lilith and why they need him to fight, and he accepted to come back by his own volition; he said that he didn't cared about the world, but when he discovered that his Eva
does have the power to destroy the world, he was
horrified...
Lord ikari Shinji wrote:Gendo, I my opinion, is the embodiment human selfishness and ambition{mainly} and I think Sadamoto/ Anno did great job creating/ bring to life that spec of human behavior. To me, Gendo is a masterpiece, not a villain but a loss man looking for his love/ redemption.
I quite agree : more than a villain, Gendo is the embodiment of human selfishness, to the point that it becomes toxic for everyone around him, even Fuyutsuki is implied to barely stands him anymore by Q.
Reichu wrote:NGE basically explained Gendo's motivations and fatal character flaws at the final hour. The final chapter of NTE has not yet been released. It would not be out of the question for Anno to completely surprise us about this version of Gendo. Unambiguously bad people as main cast members isn't really his style, anyway.
Personally, I think that Gendo in 1.0 and 2.0 was more "humane" thanks to Rei, who acted as a morality pet for him. It's shown by how he rescued her after EVA-00's accident and smiled while talking to her in 1.0, and how he looked after her during her baths of LCL, the dinners they shared and him accepting to participate in her dinner party in 2.0. The fact it's revealed in 3.0 that Yui's maiden name was Ayanami only reinforces how Gendo sees Rei as a potential surrogate daughter.
And it shows even with Shinji on a certain extend : the scene with Bardiel was modified so it doesn't looks like Gendo is just enjoying seeing his son indirectly mauling a friend, but more like extremely pragmatic man who didn't had an other choice(which is true : this time Shinji was the only available pilot against Bardiel, and if he died the Angel would go to Lilith without much problems)
And it's even possible to see Gendo's plan to trap Rei and Shinji inside EVA-01 during its awakening as his way to put them both in safety alongside Yui, for the time the final part of his plan is accomplished, which is when things with SEELE will start to become
really heated(contrasting with the "cold war" of successive sabotaging they waged thorough 2.0).
But them
something happened after 2.0, which led to Misato and co. splitting from NERV, EVA-01 shot into orbit, the world destroyed, SEELE squatting the now ruins of his base, and having to wait more than a decade to launch the B-Plan. All of this forced Gendo to become more and more radical and ruthless in his plans, and without Rei acting as a morality pet, he let his worst tendencies take over, transforming him into someone with an almost machine-like train of thoughts, pragmatic to the point that he's ready to use more clones of Rei as spare tools for Mark.09 and completely break mentally his son to further his plans.
In short, he's the extreme example of what happens when you cut yourself from everyone and goes exclusively solo, Shinji made the same bitter experience when he tried to go solo with Kaworu and later all on his own with EVA-13.
TL;DR : Gendo isn't the stereotypical evil overlord making everyone's life miserable for the hell of it, but an human being who let his flaws rot him to the point that his actions are no better than if he was an evil overlord.
He doesn't let morality get in the way of his actions anymore(not like he had much morality left before the time skip), he doesn't define himself as good or evil, only as someone who does what must be done to achieve his plans... which makes him a villain from the rest of the world's point of view.
