Postby Kendrix » Tue Dec 04, 2012 11:40 am
Well, to be fair, 25' didn't look like 26' would end with a technical "everybody lives".
So I wouldn't discount the possibility of a happy or at least moderately positive ending yet... I just don't know how they'll do it.
From Misato's and Gendo's comments at the end, all three factions are pretty much at a stalemate right now, the finale was mostly SEELE's work, but no one's plan went exactlly just as planned.
At this point, WILLE (who are still the closest we have to good guys, despite their horrific treatment of Shinji) defeating the rest of the lot doesn't see too unlikely, and while the planet's still ruined, it may still be recolonizable.
That may be a likely ending in tune with the message, the ocean's restored to be blue somehow (Just for the mirroring of the opening and ending shots) and the few remaining humans begin the rebuilding - It will be centuries till civilation is back to what it was, but at least we're not extinct and something like that.
But while the planet/humanity may have something of a chance, it's just Shinji's personal storyline that looks hopelessly bleak to the point of no return.
Ritsuko's dialogue suggests that he can apparently cause an impact by stepping in an EVA while getting all emotional. Does he deserve all this clusterfuck for having been a little pissed? Unjustly pissed, at worst.
Another thing I'd like to mention is, remember that freakin fountain of blood from when Zeruel skewered EVA 01? It tends to get glossed over (even I didn't really think about it until recently) because that particular bout of dramatic tension is relieved when he rises/triggers the awakening, but those massive internal injuries probably didn't magically disappear here.
Presumably, he would've dropped dead in Rei's arms if his attempt to save her hadn't involved tanging... which he didn't notice, anyway. That sheer level of... never mind the metaphorical skin burning off, he shrugged of mayor internal injuries. He didn't notice he freakin' liquified...
And again, he didn't gain shit from it. There WAS no retreat to happiland - NO headtrip at all, in stark contrast to episode 20. Look at him, he's supposed to be 28. He was supposed to have a job and a family by now. He was damaged by the incident, too.
Yeah, he lives, that's more than half the earth's population can say, but he really did pay with his life, 14 years of it and everything that could've made the rest worthwhile, and got nothing in return.
And in the next incident, he lost the only person who remotely gave a damn about him right now. He was tricked, but he's still gonna blame himself because even if the trap was meant for Kaworu, he's the one who fell into it.
It was irrational and not exactly the most mature thing to do, but not any more than him charging Shamschel, really.
It gets worse once you've heard about that scene where he apparently crawls up that mountain of skulls like Moses's staff is on top of it, crawling upwards in a way that seems to accentuate - not sure, thought, I just saw a scribble. So yeah, he was probably foolish in looking for salvation else where that he can only give himself, but not any more foolish than, well, a normal depressed person.
I don't think that Shinji's "selfishness", in either continuity or incarnation, goes beyond "realistic, not completely mature human being". He's a human teenager, not an asshole or an idiot.
I think he's, by all means, punished more than enough.
Another interesting detail is the parallelism there in 2.0, to the scene where Misato tels him that she probably doesn't really care that much about the big picture, but has personal motivations that are more "her own". Shinji's line is more of a callback to this, a sort of cardboard speechy- thing. "Yeah, it's right, I've come to realize that I'm not that big hero that stands for justice, but I do want to protect the people next to me and this truly my own wish."
(which is only realism because few human beings are the pope or mother theresa. Some would even say even so-called saints are just phony. I wouldn't be cynic enough to say that truly selfless people don't exist, but they're the exception, this is why they're noble, because they do more than can be expected of a normal person. Most of the "protagonists" we see are in the "noble" batch - that's why they're interesting, because they have a quality a normal person wouldn't have. I wouldn't say that Shinji is completely un-noble either, but its more nuanced with him, he's substantially closer to an average person who probably wouldn't lay down his life for a great, big cause/ideal, but very much for very few people close to him, like most normal people might do)
That's why Misato cheered him on, because she thought he got her words. "Yeah, we're not heroes, but that doesn't change that you and I..." are family, comerades, or whatever the she would've ended that sentence with.
Her schocked reaction at the end is mostly just that, shock at the general situation and less explicitly directed at Shinji - her "transformation" was probably a gradual thing, born of the many frustrations she had to bear in the aftermath, and just time. She no longer really had it present in her head, that he's... this person, this boy with short dark hair and big blue eyes, who likes stargazing and makes some awesome Miso soup. When it all surfaced, she couldn't pull the trigger.
You could almost parallel the actions of the two, they're both fundamentally trying to fix the world, but were driven to do less than rational things in their desperation, while still generally being good people.
She just happened to have the correct intel.
Kaworu: Let go of the spears!
Ritsuko: Blow the bastard up already!
...Sure, if either of them had been listened to, 4th impact could have been averted, but...
I wanted to try harvesting the rice
I wanted to hold Tsubame more
I wanted to stay together forever with the boy I like
Grub wrote:Now, that last thing in quotes.. I'm still not convinced Anno is going for that particular message. I think Anno like any good writer spills His Contents onto the page in really interesting, dramatic ways. Super compelling characters. Very emotionally centered material. The TV show was basically the 3rd Impact of the anime world. Any fan here knows how he reshaped the game. But the work's never had any big single meaning… Nothing really obvious.
