cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4787748
I am terrible at media criticism. I do not understand the media that I watch at all and I heavily rely on others explaining it to me.
I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion because I really like mechs. It’s been a long while so my memory is fuzzy. As it started, I noticed that the overall tone of the anime was more sober and grim than I had anticipated.
In the beginning, I liked it when new Angels revealed themselves. The fights were not the best but I still liked them. I really love the concept of an incomprehensible foe whose secrets are slowly unraveled.
As the show went on though I ended up extremely confused. I realised that the mechs are sort of a side-aspect of the whole thing which was a bit of a bummer. It seemed more about the difficulties of an ill-adjusted Shinji being forced into the role of being humanity’s child soldier. Other child soldiers had issues of their own which I did not fully grasp. Even the adult lady whose home Shinji lives in had boy troubles of her own which I did not grasp at all as to how it fit in with the whole theme.
I watched the last few episodes extremely high and was completely lost. You cannot imagine my face when that scene where Shinji fantasises about sex (I think that’s what he was doing) came on.
So can someone tell me what the general theme of the show is? If you wanna link to other articles or videos on thiz topic that would be swell as well. I cam understand not wanting to type out about an anime that has been analysed probably more than any other.
I agree with most of what you said but I think them being child soldiers is a major reason why they are unable to form meaningful connections. Shinji did have a troubled childhood to begin with but him being a child solder exacerbates the problem because it is a major roadblock in the creation of friendship with for example his classmates. As a child soldier, he and his classmates are unable to be proper peers. With Asuka it is also evident how being a child soldier separates her from what would have been her peers were she a normal child in the classroom.
I agree with what you said, but I think more of their problems stem from their childhoods rather than their present. Asuka herself is already alienated from her peers since I think she mentioned once that she was some kind of genius and had already graduated, and she only did poorly in school because she couldn’t read Japanese. Thus even if she weren’t an eva pilot she wouldn’t have been able to really view her classmates as peers. Plus, she watched her mom hang herself, and even when we first meet her it’s clear she has a hard time integrating herself into society. Even though fighting the angels kind of destroys her psyche later on, it still stems from herself, as iirc she’s increasingly angry that despite looking down on Shinji for being a weak and passive idiot she still can’t defeat an angel alone, a problem which arguably stems from her own insecurity.
I’d also say Shinji being an eva pilot doesn’t really interfere with him connecting to his classmates----Toji and Kensuke are definitely his friends, and they truly support him. It’s more that he can’t find it in himself to connect to them, in part because of his relationship to his father, which has basically broke him emotionally. And them going away later when Tokyo-3 is evacuated only fucks him up even more, because the people who are pretty much the only ones who ever care about him are gone. Then Rei, Asuka, Kowaru etc dying are only more nails in the coffin. I guess it could be argued that this was the result of him having to pilot the evas, but even if her was not a soldier, losing people like this would still be similarly devastating to him, since it’s very clear he’s never really had friends like this before. If anything, becoming a pilot was actually a good thing for him, at least for a little while, since he got to have friends for a short period of time.
As a counterexample Mari or whatever her name is in the rebuilds is also a pilot, but in contrast to the rest of them she’s pretty mentally stable, because she lacks the mental baggage that Shinji and Asuka are carrying even before they learn about the evas.
On a more meta level I’m pretty sure the creator struggled with depression around the time he created this, and he was trying to sort out his feelings with creating this work. The theme of using children as pilots is probably a throwback to his earlier work, gunbuster, which is also about kids flying giant robots (not sure if they have depression though)
(sorry for these super long comments I’m really into evangelion)