Shinji Ikari's Biggest Mistake! (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Young Depression, Young Depression: The Anime (x4)

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Readers, November will mark the 3-year anniversary of when I was introduced to the beloved emo mecha anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

/After an apocalyptic event called the Second Impact wiped out half the world’s population, giant monsters called Angels are attacking the Earth. So the organization NERV ran by Gendo Ikari constructed these giant mechs called EVAs to combat them, all while a shady organization called SEELE is trying to orchestrate a third and final impact in order to combine all of humanity into a singularity, while Gendo has his OWN reasons for doing the same thing./

As a fan of mecha anime -- more specifically the mecha franchises that spawned from Mobile Suit Gundam -- I was initially intrigued after learning a few things about the show leading up to my friend sitting me down to marathon the series for our anime podcast “The Weeb & The Normie.” I’ll let you figure out on your own whether I’m the weeb or the normie.

And when I actually saw it, I was, unsurprisingly, very engrossed in how psychological it was in the way it analyzed emotions, depression, sexuality and even queerness regarding how it handled its main character Shinji Ikari -- Gendo’s son -- and that of the supporting cast.

The latter, being what initially sparked my interest in wanting to watch the show for the first time. (pause) I know; who would’ve guessed

Fun fact, I actually KNEW about Evangelion 10 years before I first saw the anime in November of 2018 the same way I imagine a lot of lames discovered new anime they wanted to watch. AMV Hell comedy compilations

No, I’m not even doing this for a joke; I saw 2 different comedy anime music videos that had footage from Evangelion in it back when you could mostly get away with posting copyrighted music on YouTube and not have your channel deleted in the process.

The first contained footage of Shinji with his male love interest Kaworu to the song “Kiss” by Prince, as if to imply Kaworu was seducing him and ending the segment with the two lip-locking at the end of the chorus

Closeted La’Ron back in 2008 was intrigued to know what anime this came from. But, because this was closeted La’Ron, he didn’t outwardly inquire

Then 4 years later when another AMV Hell compilation came out, another Evangelion segment was attached to it with footage from the finale movie End of Evangelion, where the first verse of Adele’s Skyfall was the main song played over the illustrious images of the Third Impact. I was able to easily piece together that this was from the same anime from the one I watched years ago, finally asked where it came from and got my answer.

However, by the time I finally got around to watch the original anime for the first time, Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno was in the middle of rebooting the anime in the form of a series of feature-length anime movies called The Rebuild of Evangelion.

It takes the source material and tells an alternate universe take on the series and the finale movie End of Evangelion, and the first 3 of 4 movies were already out by the time I watched the original series for the first time.

/Those movies were Evangelion 1.0: You Are Not Alone, Evangelion 2.0: You Can Not Advance, and Evangelion 3.0: You Can Not Redo/

Then in 2021, the fourth and final installment of the Rebuild series was released, called Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time.

And while the very badly praised resub and redub of the OG Neon Genesis found a home on Netflix in its initiative to place more anime titles on its platform, the Rebuild movies -- both subbed and dub -- made their way to Amazon Prime

So I marathoned all four movies of the Rebuild saga when Thrice Upon A Time hit Amazon Prime with the rest of them in August of 2021, and WOW...is it different.

The first movie makes you feel like the series is definitely going to be a summary of the initial anime, but then act 2 of 2.0 just strays away from the sacred timeline.

Don’t get me wrong; the Rebuild series initially tells the same story of Neon Genesis despite the changes that the movies make in comparison to the anime

And in some cases, the changes allow the story to be a bit more understandable to a casual weeb or movie watcher that hasn’t boned up on their Jewish and Judeau-Christian mythology in a few years

/The end goal of Shinji realizing that life is worth living despite the hardship that comes from it as it currently is, is still just as prominent in the Rebuild movies as it was in the anime and End of Evangelion./

But that’s not the problem that I have with Rebuild.

/The problem that I have with Rebuild is what Shinji decides to do after receiving that breakthrough, and who he canonically decides to share life with in order to act on that breakthrough/

And I’m going to explain why, because I have VERY strong opinions about this series, and if I don’t get them out, I’m gonna go cause the Fourth Impact my GODDAMN SELF

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Now this goes without saying, but I’m morally obligated to say this anyway. This video is going to contain spoilers for not just the Rebuild of Evangelion series, but also Neon Genesis Evangelion and its finale movie The End of Evangelion.

So if you haven’t seen them and want to avoid spoilers, I suggest you NOT do what I did, which is dedicate an entire weekend...to watch EVERYTHING. Take about a week or so instead. Cool? Cool.

If Rebuild of Evangelion is to be looked at as the narrative successor to Neon Genesis and End of Evangelion, then Shinji shouldn’t have ended up with Mari at the end of Thrice Upon A Time.

Mari was created not by Hideaki Anno, but one of the producers of the Rebuild saga who felt that there needed to be another female love interest for Shinji.

/Even with the way the movie series diverged from the anime, it was incredibly difficult for Anno and his team to properly incorporate her into the story. The way they utilize her however, is to explain one of the new functions specifically in the Rebuild series, Beast Mode./

Outside of that, her interaction with Shinji over the course of the movie series -- and, if we’re being honest, her whole character -- is pretty much a blank canvas that never gets any paint on it.

Instead, the canvas is randomly placed in certain areas outside of situations one can naturally see herself in, as a way of alluding to familiarity or a higher purpose in the narrative that always comes short because there’s no proper explanation.

/Fuyutsuki finding her familiar and calling her Maria Iscariot is never explained. Her being the one to introduce Gendo to Yui when they were in college is never explained. Why she’s able to accompany Shinji to visit Asuka during his reconciliation tour in order to say goodbye to her is never explained./

Mari in Rebuild is a shiny new toy owned by a friend of yours that wants to play in the world you built, so they just do and insert themselves and their toy wherever they please because you can’t really find a good entrypoint for them.

And considering Rebuild of Evangelion -- and as a result all of Evangelion as a whole -- is Shinji’s journey of finding his own identity, seeing him be in a relationship with the brand new female character that was created by the producers to basically sell figures seems like an overall disservice to his growth

/So that leaves the question; who out of the OG cast of characters -- Rei, Asuka, and Kaworu specifically -- should’ve been on that platform with him instead of Mari?/

Well, in order for us to understand that, we first have to understand Shinji and the journey he takes in both Neon Genesis and Rebuild that would allow him to reach the state of enlightenment that he does by the end of Thrice Upon A Time.

Shinji is -- as both Neon Genesis and Rebuild has illustrated -- suffering from the combination of the hedgehog’s dilemma and a separation of self. He desires to be wanted and appreciated, but he’s afraid of getting hurt if he allows people in, and this is especially true when it comes to the relationship with his father Gendo.

/He hates Gendo for being so distant, cold and demanding, yet pilots the EVA because there’s a chance it’ll make him proud. And soon, that desire to gain self-worth through piloting unit 1 expands to individuals other than his father./

It’s because of his conflict between not letting anyone get too close to him while also willing to bend over backwards to gain the praise of others, he lacks his own identity.

/And when things get too rough to the point where either that’s not enough to satiate him or the demand is just too high, he tends to retreat within himself when he can’t convince himself not to run away from said problem./

And we see this play out over both Neon Genesis and Rebuild when this depressive state of Shinji reflects multiple aspects about himself, from personality to his sexuality. Which, I must mention, is teetering between certain identities under the Asexual and the Multisexual umbrellas

Reciprosexuality -- being attracted to individuals after finding out they’re attracted to you -- and pansexuality respectively and specifically. Maybe a reciproromantic pansexual if you take into consideration the events of both the anime and the movie series.

It’s because he lacks a sense of self that his interpersonal relationships with the people in his life at the time of Neon Genesis and Rebuild are so difficult to comprehend, especially when it comes to how he deals with the 3 original EVA pilots.

/However -- with the exception of Kaworu -- the others are kinda going through their own form of separation of self as well, making Shinji’s journey to realize life is worth living despite the despair one faces instead of just giving in to human singularity pretty difficult./

This is why when I first watched Neon Genesis and the End of Evangelion, I was initially against Shinji and Asuka becoming an item and mankind starting over again with them after the singularity of the Third Impact.

/It’s also the reason I’m against shipping Shinji with Asuka all-together./

Asuka’s separation of self is the brashest, aggressive and arguably the most self-destructive out of the original 3 pilots.

Like Shinji, she gains validation and appreciation when she’s piloting Unit 2.

However, instead of silently retreating like Shinji does when under the influence of the hedgehog dilemma, she lashes out as her way of keeping people away in order to avoid getting hurt, and the combination of that brashness and validation causes her to grow smug and arrogant.

/Which is a combination in Neon Genesis that constantly places her into a state of depression when a situation comes up showing her that her shit, does, in fact, stink./

I wouldn’t have had a problem with Shinji and Asuka becoming the item at the end of Rebuild however, if Rebuild actually dedicated more time to her breakthrough.

/Her declaration to Shinji regarding her crush on him not only happened far too late in my opinion, but she also never really decides that there’s a possibility of working through her disconnection in order to better herself./

However you put it, how Asuka chose to deal with her separation of self gets the job done TOO well.

/She fears being alone, but she utilizes the hedgehog’s dilemma in a way that causes her to do everything under the sun to properly drive those who COULD want to be around her away, including Shinji./

And, once again, I can’t even count Mari’s attempt at being her “Kaworu” in this situation.

/Because while the movie IMPLIES that she tries to be Asuka’s way of showing her that the singularity isn’t worth it, we literally do not see ANY of that or the aftermath of the 15 year gap between the events of 2.0 and 3.0/

The only real purpose Asuka’s declaration of her feelings for Shinji proved in Thrice Upon A Time is to help reaffirm Shinji hovering over that of reciprosexuality-slash-recipro romanticism when he was saying goodbye to that version of Asuka, before pressing the reset button on humanity...

/Not realizing that he had feelings for her until she admitted her feelings for him first./

/But those of us who are fans of the Shinji and Kaworu relationship already knew that about Shinji./

Originally, Kaworu was a mixed bag for me, because both depictions of himself and his relationship with Shinji I depicted were both equally enjoyable and problematic.

Don’t get me wrong; both Neon Genesis and Rebuild’s depictions of Kaworu help establish Shinji’s potential queer awakening, whether he’s reciprosexual or somewhere else on the spectrum.

He also was the first character to actually HELP Shinji on his path of learning that life is worth living, making him a more ideal candidate to be with Shinji at the end of Rebuild. But the anime does it in a way that feeds into tired tropes while the movie series tries to tone down the subtext that the anime originally presented.

/I’m not going to go into incredible detail about Kaworu’s role in SEELE’s plans regarding initiating the Third Impact, because understanding the plot and the lore of Evangelion 100% is something only Hideaki Anno is capable of, and I’m not doing that to myself anymore./

What I will say is that when I first watched Neon Genesis back in 2018 after 10 years of being interested in seeing their relationship thanks to AMV Hell compilations, I was a bit disappointed at the time.

The reason WHY I was disappointed, is because within those 10 years, I saw PLENTY of anime that utilized out queer characters -- specifically male queer characters -- and depicted them as perverted villains out to corrupt the protagonist with THE GAY.

And as an individual who had watched episodes of Descendants of Darkness during its run on the Sci Fi channel, where one of the antagonists was a queer man with white hair making moves on the main protagonist voiced by Yugi Moto every opportunity he got thanks to his attraction to him, I started to see that take place when I finally got to episode 24 of Neon Genesis.

In my first watch, the way I initially translated Kaworu’s actions was that of a villain; a stereotypical queer white-haired bishounen anime villain who was taking advantage of Shinji at his lowest in order to infiltrate NERV by the order of SEELE to initiate the Third Impact.

/While he may have had an attraction to Shinji, the delivery of certain lines by Kaworu’s english voice actor implied mysteriousness, seduction, and that grossly implied feeling of manipulation that most out queer male villain characters in anime at the time gave off told me that he was using Shinji’s mental state of just wanting to be wanted and appreciated to his advantage./

Nowadays, I’m a bit wiser and have more knowledge about how the character was INTENDED to be depicted, as well as a broader knowledge of the queer spectrum.

Back then, I thought Shinji’s desire to be wanted and appreciated was the driving force in why he saw Kaworu the way he did in both the original anime and when his form was taken in End of Evangelion; that his desire to be wanted and loved by ANYONE was so high that he would do ANYTHING to make someone happy, which is a real, dangerous and concerning thing that Shinji mentally struggles with over both Neon Genesis and Rebuild.

However, that was before I knew about reciprosexuality. Hell, that was even before I knew about DEMIsexuality.

And that was ALSO before I learned that not only was Kaworu’s attraction to Shinji real and not intended to be a manipulation tactic for him to infiltrate NERV, but Shinji actually DID return Kaworu’s attraction in a way that was both common with reciprosexuals discovering same-sex attraction for the first time and in a way that was actually healthy.

Don’t believe me? Read the manga. Yes, there’s a manga. No, it didn’t come first.

/Which is why I’m both thankful and slightly disappointed in the changes they made when Anno revisited Shinji and Kaworu’s relationship in Rebuid’s “You Can (not) Redo”/

The feeling of Kaworu being the manipulative queer villain out to corrupt Shinji’s protag purity at his weakest and most impressionable state is gone.

/Instead, that job is given to Shinji’s father Gendo, who actually uses Kaworu’s attraction and Shinji’s recipro romanticism fueled by his desire to be wanted to his advantage, and tricks the two into almost starting the Fourth Impact and is responsible for Kaworu’s death this time around./

The attraction between the two is a bit clearer, and Kaworu’s Rebuild voice actor has very little to no hints of malicious ulterior motives in his tone and delivery.

/Kaworu genuinely cares for Shinji and wants to help him reach his breakthrough state that he eventually reaches in “Thrice Upon A Time,” and Shinji begins to care for him as a result as the two befriend and grow close to each other/

And instead of being manipulated by someone he had feelings for being the core reasoning that his hedgehog dilemma-induced depression kicks into overdrive by the end of the movie...

It’s seeing that his father took advantage of his state of mind in order to get him to do what he wanted at the cost of Kaworu’s life.

/He finally found another hedgehog that wanted to be close to him, and felt comfortable enough in his declaration that Shinji allowed him to do so. But Gendo found a way to exploit that vulnerability in Shinji’s separation of self in a way that benefited him, and caused Kaworu to die by Shinji’s own quills in the process./

/And this makes the catatonic state he’s in at the end of “You Can (Not) Redo” and the first act of “Thrice Upon A Time” more of a proper way of depicting his current mental state than the anime./

However, that all came at the cost of cutting out 95% of the homoeroticism implied in the original anime, and trying to downplay the queer vibes the two of them clearly had in the third movie to try and make it palpable for all audiences...

/Under the guise of getting Kaworu to understand that his own happiness shouldn’t be tied to one specific person./

To which I say, “BOOOOO!”

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

But La’Ron, what about Rei? Don’t you think SHE should’ve been with Shinji at the end of Thrice Upon A Time?

...No (long pause) ...NO.

One: She’s a clone created by Gendo to reflect that of Yui; his wife and Shinji’s mom.

Not only is that weird in its own right, but it’s pretty much the basis of why Shinji feels drawn to her and vice versa, as we’ve seen in both Neon Genesis and Rebuild.

Plus, her own separation of self -- especially the second version of Rei in “You Can (Not) Redo” and “Thrice Upon A Time” -- is so centered around having little to no agency regarding her own sense of individuality that following the orders of others thanks to her being soulless is literally the ONLY way she can find a way to solve her own hedgehog’s dilemma.

/Pairing that up with the way Shinji is built before his breakthrough not only isn’t healthy for a relationship to thrive, but they’d just be stuck in a never ending cycle because of how similar their dissociation with life and their willingness to be open is./

So, yes. Ideally, I’d say that the individual who DESERVES to be on the platform with grown Shinji at the end of Thrice Upon A Time isn’t Mari, but Kaworu.

However, considering the movie series did everything in its power to “no homo” their relationship this time around and considering everything he took away from the final battle with his father, Shinji shouldn’t be with...ANYONE. He should be by himself.

While Shinji was able to help Asuka, Rei, and Kaworu find closure upon realizing that living is worth it despite the pinpricks of the hedgehogs you allow to get close to you, there are aspects about himself now that he finally got a look at the life and mentality of his father that reflect his own journey and who he wants to become.

The takeaway of Shinji’s breakthrough considering everything Evangelion has to offer -- both Neon Genesis AND Rebuild -- is that before you can learn to understand others, you first have to understand YOURSELF

/And despite how Thrice Upon A Time ended, and ESPECIALLY despite how End of Evangelion ended, that’s the next step Shinji has to figure out about himself now that he’s willing to realize that singularity isn’t what he wants./

He has to put in the work to see the world as more than just his current perception of it, just like he has to put in the work to see that there’s beauty in the Shinji he originally thought he hated.

/After all Rei says it best in the final episode of Neon Genesis/ (One who truly hates himself cannot love. He cannot place his trust in another)

Shinji restarting the world doesn’t mean that he immediately restarts his own perception of himself. He still has to work on not hating himself, not perceiving himself in ways that are negative.

And it’s that Shinji that should be the one we see at the train station to symbolize that there’s still work to do. Now that the selfish desire to want everyone to exist in one being as the easy way out of depression and loneliness is eliminated, all that’s left in order for one to understand oneself now that you no longer feel that separation is to ESTABLISH that self.

/In Shinji’s case, he needs to do that first and foremost before he can properly love and place trust in another. If he does it too soon, there won’t be any form of self for him to call his own. Instead, it’ll be a hybrid of those he establishes those connections with, which could possibly lead him right back where he started./

So ideally, Shinji SHOULDN'T be with anyone on that platform. Not Mari, not Rei, not Asuka, not even Kaworu.

/It should be Shinji, and Shinji alone. Ready to discover why life is truly worth living here./

But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:

Write in the comment section what YOU thought of the Rebuild of Evangelion movie series if you’ve seen it.

Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, another anime you’d recommend I watch and analyze featuring men with incredibly idiosyncratic and convoluted stories with blatant albeit unexamined queer subtext (pause). Because if THIS analysis has told you anything, it’s that I LIVE for this shit.

Regardless of which question you answer, I’d LOVE to know your thoughts.