Postby Kendrix » Sun Mar 15, 2026 9:56 am
Shinji isn't choosing to actively disregard/ burn the world, though - he didn't even know that could happen & is shocked to learn that it did.
He's just being honest about his primary motivation/reason being personal - that he's not doing it FOR the world. (& shifted it from Gendo to someone who actually gives a damn), which is why it's treated as a step forward that Misato cheers for. (& why in interviews Rebuild Shinji is consistently described as reaching a point where he's "a little stronger")
It's a step forward from disawoving responsibility & claiming he's doing what he does because others tell him to & he has no choice.
It's also a callback to their dialogue when he leaves the appartment where she herself admits that she had personal reasons & didn't really believe in all this big, noble talk.
I don't think the show presents the thesis that you should be an altruistic do-gooder but rather doesn't really seem to believe perfect "unselfishness" exists.
No one is really like that & held up as a grand example for it;
Markedly even Kaworu, initially presented as the ultimate altruistic sacrifice/ do-gooder character, is shown to actually have a more personal motivation deep down. (He only looked like a martyr to Shinji because he put him on a pedestal due to his inferiority complex, & that's actually an impediment/obstacle to their relationship.)
What happens next is not a "punishment", it's a further test, where he has to confront the fear that made him hide behind what others tell him to & fake altruistic reasonings in the first place: The fear that if he makes his own choices he'll be hated.
If the characters make 1 positive decision & suddenly everything works out and all is perfect that would just be unrealistic bullshit.
It's imho just a realistic depiction of how often when you give up your cope (especially a cope that gave you "secondary gains") you now go from the frying pan to the fire where you have to work through that which the cope was protecting you from.
There's a whole conspiracy against the characters that they were previously ignorant of. That won't just instantly stop mattering because our heroes learn a few life lessons; Q really gets into exploring the horror of that, or of the EVAs essentially being apocalypse machines (in the original series their going out of control always ended conveniently for the characters despite of how much we're being told it's supposed to be scary) or of Rei's plight of having been used as a disposable artificial soldier.
It NEEDS to be dark first so the ending feels earned & like it isn't happy-peppy platitude bullshit.
The point where Shinji fucked up/ could have prevented the debacle (& is explicitly told to think about it, made to eat a humble pie & apologize over) was during Bardiel when he wouldn't take responsibility/ make a call. That's what the story puts the emphasis on, has Asuka repeatedly rag on until Shinji does an apology dance explaining what he did wrong & then gets praised by the wise Mari-sensei for it.
Yeah he didn't want to hurt Asuka, but he also didn't want to be the one who hurt her / be responsible for it, so he just panicked & did nothing. Rather than making a choice to either try to save her or put her down, & take responsibility for/ own whatever result comes of that choice.
He's fully vindicated for the Zeruel thing ("If you hadn't done what you did we would all have died") & we see eventually that he did save Rei & that she IS a human being worth saving who CAN find somewhere outside of NERV to belong.
But you have to allow a moment of doubt, questioning, ambiguity & exploration in between so that the conclusion feels earned & not just like being told some reassuring BS.
It sounds like OP is complaining that the validation/vindication wasn't instant, that there was a moment of darkness where the worst outcome was weighed & considered. WAS it the right decision under the circumstances/limited knowledge? IS Rei a human being? Let's explore that first.
How are you supposed to examine & move past a fear if you won't even voice it or name it or allow yourself to think of it without demanding instant immediate validation that it's not the case?
It sounds a bit like the ppl who complained that the finale of Steven Universe "reinforces that traumatized people are monsters".
It ends with everybody telling him he's not a monster & that it's just his fear, but yeah there's a sequence of him transforming into a giant pink godzilla that expresses his fear.
How can it ever be proven to him that it's wrong if the fear is not expressed & stated?
If you won't even voice & adress a fear (like Shinji's fear that making his own decisions will get him hated, or Rei's fear that she's not a real person & there's no place for her in the world), how can you ever adress, process & get over with?
If you can't suffer to even hear the fear spoken or explored as a possibility, & need instant validation/soothing to the contrary rather than being able to dwell in that dark space for a moment, you'll always be controlled by the fear, through your avoidance of it.
To prove any thesis or notion wrong you need to think about what if it's true, otherwise you're just asserting it's false based on fear & wishful thinking, & then you will never truly be reassured because you're just avoiding it & can't even bear thinking about it.
I wanted to try harvesting the rice
I wanted to hold Tsubame more
I wanted to stay together forever with the boy I like
