Neon Genesis Evangelion

Part of it comes from that and her conversation with Fuyutski shown in EOE (which are more or less the same, I suppose, although it puts her and Gendo's relationships with Fuyutski in a new light.) and also the fact that in EOE, she waits until Asuka is dead before letting Shinji into Unit 01, where as in the manga, she answers Shinji's call immediately and they save Asuka from the MP Evas.

Of course, there is the possibility that even with Unit 01 having its own S2 Engine, Yui's awareness of the physical environment outside the Eva is quite limited (as opposed to extrasensorily sensing and thusly responding to Shinji's emotional anguish), and thus she may have simply been completely unaware of Asuka's plight until she Shinji's emotions hit a sufficiently critical high that Yui managed to feel it (who knows if she even knew he was there in the first place before then), and deduced from it that it's time to throw off the charade and start wrecking shit.

That makes a lot of sense.

You know, I was thinking back to the whole shipping elements of this series (I know, a repetitive topic), and I think I realize why both its fans and then show itself seems to favor having Shinji with Asuka.

Apparently, it's because being with her equates accepting reality, and choosing to be with Rei is rejecting it or something. While Asuka has a lot of negative qualities about her, the fact, like reality, she is hard to be with but has softer sides makes it worthwhile. Rei on the other hand, in spite of being much calmer and the like, represents running away from reality because she's a half-human hybrid and isn't really human.

Basically, if you have to choose between the girl who is emotionally unstable and abusive but has a softer side, or the girl who is far more accepting and respectful of you, but has genetics that aren't all human, go with the former, as that it how reality truly is, and if you just deal with it, you will eventually get to the nicer parts of the real world.

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Anyone else call bullcrap on this "message"?

edited 12th Jul '15 1:17:06 PM by LDragon2

Ballooney!

Rei is genetically more human than anyone other than Unit 01 and Lilith herself. Asuka is 98% Chimp.

edited 12th Jul '15 12:38:40 PM by TheAirman

Because a series about giant robots against alien monsters and being gifted godlike power by your dead mother's partial clone is really encouraging you to accept reality.

Bull.

edited 12th Jul '15 1:04:45 PM by amitakartok

Well apparently, piloting the Eva is akin to returning to the womb (what with the whole "mother's soul powering the organism" and the entry plug being filled with amniotic fluid), and in order to mature and face reality, one must move past that and the desire to be protected by a mother and connect to others beyond just piloting Eva.

Or something like that.

edited 12th Jul '15 1:14:26 PM by LDragon2

the whole mother womb subtext is remarkably transparent, yeah.

i think that was part of the implication in the series' tv ending. it's been a while but i think shinji basically accepted himself on some level and was willing to at least try and move forward?

to be honest the one thing that sticks out in my mind more than anything else was the whole slice-of-life romcom thing which was so bizarre and out-of-left-field that I was honestly in disbelief.

edited 12th Jul '15 2:25:30 PM by wehrmacht

Basically, if you have to choose between the girl who is emotionally unstable and abusive but has a softer side, or the girl who is far more accepting and respectful of you, but has genetics that aren't all human, go with the former, as that it how reality truly is, and if you just deal with it, you will eventually get to the nicer parts of the real world.

But you're strawmanning for the sake of shipping here.

Rei's problems aren't limited to her genetics, be the part where those genes make her non-human, or where those genes make her 'related' to Shinji. Those are ultimately secondary after the fact Rei is not really 'emotionally stable' either. She gives that impression in that she acts coolly and doesn't burst out the way Asuka does, but an emotionally stable people doesn't need to define herself, first from Gendou, and then from Shinji, by others, while lacking a developed persona of her own.

Rei does have a developing persona of her own, but still nowhere close to having one in a 'stable' and healthy way either. Rei II is just starting that road, and had she continued living, it'd probably have taken her years, under the best possible conditions that are all but impossible to ever find in EVA, to achieve the proper end of that road. She probably needs Shinji, the person who actually cares as an individual (and not as a shadow of someone else) the most as an emotional crutch during that period, but the thing is, during the series proper, which is what we can gauge here, she isn't using Shinji-as-a-crutch to actually improve herself, just to shift her lack of self-definition from Gendou unto him.

When Rei III, whose full personal agency compared to Rei II's development is somewhat foggy to say the least, offers the fate of mankind to Shinji, she is not being stable, she is not being reasonable, she is not being even HUMAN. Because offering the fate of the world to a proved also unstable and emotionally damaged single individual during the midle of an emotional crisis is not a show of stability, maturity, or even just plain humanity. She is just continuing her motif of defining herself by others, which is not charming or actually noble, is just plain misguided and rather creepy. She is not being any more of a stable human being, she's just being Shinji's personal attachement but in a cosmic scale now. Ironically, after rejecting what Gendou became, Rei becomes Gendou, with Shinji as her Yui. And god knows, under the facade, Gendou is probably the EVA character with the greatest level of emotional stuntment.

Asuka and Rei's 'paths', I'd say, are just as equally damaged and troubled, just in different ways.

Very good point.

Apparently, Anno says that if you have to choose between two emotional damaged girls, go for the more abrasive one, cause if you don't, then you're just a shallow wimp who can't handle people with a stronger personality and would rather be with a submissive sex-doll.

Ignoring the fact that Rei is anything but a sex-doll.

Bottom line, in Evangelion, anyone with more than ten spoken lines (and I'm being generous here) doesn't really have the right to boast any superior stability over the others.

speaking from personal experience as someone with mental problems similar to Shinji, going for the abrasive, attention-seeking and self-destructive one is an exceptionally bad idea either way because it turns into a horrible Destructive Romance and Masochism Tango. that's part of eva's thing, most of the characters are unable to have healthy relationships with one another.

edited 12th Jul '15 2:43:52 PM by wehrmacht

I have to say it wouldn't surprise me if Anno saw Rei exactly that way: as the comfortable fantasy girl, the one who is easy to accept compared to Asuka, who is combative, who makes it painful to spend time with at some points, and so on. Anno is all about pushing shut-in people to embrace the pain of reality for greater benefits.

I don't think Rei necessarily must be seen this way, but that's because Anno kinda underutilizes Rei in the series to begin with. Or at the last, he doesn't seem that interested in focusing on Rei's eventual break with Gendo, on her finding independence from him.

I'm not sure if I said it here or somewhere else, but I think Rei could easily have been used in a more prominent manner as a love interest, and in a way that plays toward Anno's message of trying to get shut-in otaku to go out into the world and discard their fantasies. But it would involve Shinji treating her like a fantasy and then having hard reality smack him in the face, which...probably would go worse than EoE.

Still, I think how Anno used the character poses a little false dichotomy, for Shinji doesn't really use Rei in an unhealthy or fantasy-indulging manner. She just fits the archetype, at least on the surface.

Part of me wants to think that Anno having both of these girls different, but equally emotionally withdrawn, he was showing how it was not good for one to define themselves by the people they are with, but to to define themselves by themselves, and not being held back (emotionally) by these people and rise up and become a better person

It is importantt ot note that Anno doesn't otaku but he feels that he needs to reach out somehow to them.

I suspect by now he's just reaching for the otakus' money.

They all are. The anime industry is based on squeezing maximum money out of relatively small portion of the population.

You just love coming up with obscure characters to nominate as "Best Girl", don't you?

Urusei Yatsura isn't terribly obscure.

True, but not everyone actually bothered to read or watch the whole thing. About the only characters that I would recognize on sight are Ataru, Lum, Lum's family, Shinobu, Sakurako and her ugly Buddhist monk of a father Sakuranbou, Mendou, Ryuunosuke, and Inaba. And maybe Ran's fat fiancee.

Sakura, not Sakurako, and Sakuranbou is her uncle.

Marq: In fairness... NDC had a good idea for who was the Best Code Geass Girl.

See? I'm so out of touch with UY, I got those two things wrong.

I think it was Milly Ashford, right?