Reviews Anime / Neon Genesis Evangelion

"when you get to the end of 'End Of', you'll just be looking at your screen agape and asking 'why?'"

Did you ever consider that that might be the point?

Also, who the hell is Kenji?

@porsche: Just because an author intended something, doesn't make it a good idea.

porsche:Sorry; I meant Kaji. But seriously, I don't have a problem with the end of a series making me ask 'why?' What I do have a problem with is not having anything to formulate an answer with. For example; why did Rei become a smiling, laughing giant? Why is everyone turning into ooze? Why are green swords/whatever's appearing over the Earth? How come the explanation they gave for the 'Angels' doesn't make a lot of sense? What exactly is SEES, what is it's agenda, and how did it come to be? In the end, there's not only no satisfactory answer for any of this of and more, but even more damning, no real threads with which we can come up with our own answers. Or rather, I could just come up with my own answers, but I doubt they'd be based off of anything I could find from the actual show. I'm actually trying to think of answers right now, as I type, but all I'm doing is hurting my head.

I also noticed you didn't question me about the depression and faux symbolism. Just pointing that out.

The ending is yours to take as you please :3 But I'd argue that it was all about human relationships. Basically, Instrumentality was a mind merge, and the primordial ooze that resulted came about due to everyone's AT Fields having disappeared (AT fields being the barriers humanity, as the 18th Angel, project that separate our souls from each other - aka our physical bodies and our sense of individuality). But that separation creates pain, fear as well as loneliness, and Shinji couldn't bear it, preferring to merge as one with everyone in the world in order to eliminate those feelings (and "complement" each others' flaws) - there would be "universal" understanding and no more ambiguities (demonstrated - his biggest problem with Asuka). But in the end, he realized that though there would no longer be any pain, there'd be no chance of love and happiness either, just oblivion, and so he rejected that falsity and restored the barriers of humanity, returning to the real world.

What don't you understand about the Angels?

(I think the "green swords" were more visual imagery for Instrumentation as it took place.)

SEELE were just a bunch of scared old men who felt that fear of loneliness (or alternately were trying to mould humanity into a God, depending on whether you take the games as canon.) Rei was Lilith's soul, so it makes sense that she would want to return to her "mother" in a sense, to become whole, and that the full manifestation of Lilith would take her form.

Idk, you could come across wiki articles/essays that would explain Evangelion much better than I could, but I hope this clears up a few things.

Shinji's extreme "depression" made him the most relatable fictional character I've ever encountered, tbh. He's not a conventional hero, and he's terribly flawed, but that's what I love about him.

The Angels: Honestly, my memory might be a bit fuzzy on that subject, so I headed over to Wikipedia for a refresher.

'The first two Angels, Adam and Lilith, are the progenitors of the other sixteen. While the first fifteen Angels are descendants of Adam, humans themselves descended from Lilith. Using the Biblical story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Angels are described as having eaten the "Fruit of Life", giving them immortality. At another point, it is stated that the Angels are merely different evolutionary paths that mankind could have taken.'

So then, I'm guessing that the origin Angels is supposed to be an 'Adam&Eve' kind of story, but even then, it's spotty.

• 1.If you're going to do an 'Adam&Eve' story, don't just give only one of your two progenitors one of the names. (In this case, Adam.)
• 2. We still don't get any explanation for as to how Adam and 'Lilith' came to be. If they were created by God, you'd think it would be 'Adam and Eve', not 'Adam and Lilith.'
• 3.All of this really just stems from the faux religious symbolism present in the show, and like the rest of it, it doesn't need to be there.
• 4.I honestly don't understand how humans could possibly have a chance of evolving into gargantuan beasts capable of taking out cities, and the show doesn't give me enough reason to believe it.
• 5.I shouldn't have to list off all of these points to begin with, and all of this is just a sympton of one of NGE's biggest failings; it's too needlessly convoluted. I'm not saying you can't have a detailed and complex plot, but everything needs to be properly explained. Normally, I'd be fine with just leaving the viewer enough to figure it out for themselves, but I'm realizing that in such a large, messy Sci-Fi story as this, you really need to just sit down and explain some of this to the viewer in detail. I don't know if you've ever played Muv-Luv Alternative, but like NGE, it takes place in a Post-Apocalyptic world (in this case, an AU,) which has been ravaged by monstrous beings calls the BETA; the only things that can really take them on are giant Mecha, and the plot is incredibly complex. What keeps it from being incredibly convoluted is that everything is explained with a LOT of exposition. At first, all of that exposition may seem a bit tiresome, but after a while, you realize that you're grateful for understanding what's going on clearly. NGE didn't have such exposition, and so the plot's really just convoluted instead of complex.

As for SEELE, the only thing I could get from them is not that they're scared old men, but that they're a bunch of ambitious old men who somehow know about the convoluted plot, and are attempting to take advantage of it to achieve their ambition, whatever that is.

And honestly, I shouldn't have to read articles or essays that explain Evangelion; everything I need to know to understand a story should be present within the story itself. Anything else is just bad storytelling.

I just noticed that my review has been flagged. I'm not really sure what that means, so if someone can explain to me just what 'flagging' is and why I might have been flagged, I'd be rather grateful.

The flag was for continuing the review in your first comment. We don't allow that, nor splitting a review into multiple parts. Making it fit in the 400 words is something that causes the kind of thinking that makes for a better review.

The thing about NGE is that it requires attention to details and watching the Director’s Cut (and EoE) to understand. It all ultimately makes sense, save a few parts that remain a bit of a mystery. I didn’t get it the first time I watched it, nor the second, but I did feel it should be, as has been said about the film adaptation of Paprika, more ‘experienced’ than ‘understood’. And the original ending felt like a potent catharsis every time.

I would by no means say it’s a bad series; in fact, it’s my favourite series ever (I’ve written quite a rave review about it here). However, I will say its ideal target audience is rather small (although larger than I’d thought, as I’ve recently discovered it’s Robin Williams’ favourite series).

Well, I generally don't like watching an entire series multiple times, but I do plan on both reading the manga and watching the new movies at some point. Maybe then, I'll have a better idea of what's going on.

The plot is a bit complicated, but most of it is revealed along the series. It’s somewhat hard to follow, given that little focus is given to key background plot points. But it goes basically like this:

There’s an ancient prophecy in the Dead Sea Scrolls that talk about the 17 Angels (mysterious creatures we learn gradually about in the course of the series, but they’re still a mystery) and a bunch of other stuff, such as a prophecy saying that once certain conditioned are met, including the destruction of angels 3-17, the 18th Angel, humans, both dead and alive, will merge into a single consciousness. Their contents are never revealed directly.

Now, in the early days of prehistory, There were two ‘Moons’ that hit Earth: a ‘White Moon’, containing an Angel named ‘Adam’, the ‘First Angel’, and a ‘Black Moon’, containing another, named ‘Lilith’, the ‘Second Angel’. Adam is the progenitor of all other Angels save Lilith, who created the 18th, humans. This event is known as the First Impact.

Some time before the year 2000, there’s a scientist named Dr. Katsuragi, whose wife left him with their daughter, Misato Katsuragi, who resents him deeply. The scientist is sent on an expedition to research Adam in Antarctica.

In 2000, an Angel causes a bunch of natural disasters, including melting Antarctica, tilting the Earth so that it’s always summer (at least in Japan), and, as a by-product, ruining the ecosystem (which is starting to recover during the show), wiping out half of the world population. The official story is that it was all caused by a huge meteor. This event is known as the Second Impact. The Angel is in fact the first Angel, Adam. He was awoken by Dr. Katsuragi’s team in an experiment gone awry, and was somehow contained and reduced to an embryo form, involving the use of the Longinus Spear, a mysterious artifact shaped as a giant two-pronged lance. During the disaster, Misato’s father sends her off in an escape pod, as a teenage girl, sacrificing his own life in the process; she is so badly traumatised she doesn’t say a word for years, after which she manages to recover somehow.

After that, a team of investigators found an organisation named Gehirn, meant to research the Angels and build the Evangelions (or Evas), the huge robots built around cloned Angels and powered by a human soul, or at least a simulator thereof to fight them; it is headed by headed by Gendou Ikari (né Rokubungi; he took his wife’s prestigious last name) and its members include Yui Ikari (Gendou’s wife), Dr. Kouzou Fuyutsuki (Yui’s professor), Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu, Dr. Naoko Akagi, and Ritsuko Akagi (Naoko’s daughter).

Gendou and Yui have a child together, named Shinji. When he’s three or four, an experiment goes awry and Shinji witnesses his mother’s soul getting sucked into an Evangelion unit, Eva-01. Gendou is cleared of the murder charges, but he sends Shinji, who grows up knowing his mother is dead (although she’s actually in the Eva), to live with his teacher, and creates the first Rei, a rough clone of Yui, and starts an affair with Naoko; after Rei tells Naoko that Gendou actually has very little respect for her as a person, Naoko strangles her to death and shoots herself dead in horror over her actions, the organisation is disbanded and is re-created under the name Nerv. Misato Katsuragi, who had been under their care for years, befriends Ritsuko, joins Nerv, and dates Ryouji Kaji, with whom she eventually because he reminds her too much of her father. We later discover that Nerv has in its possession Lilith and the Longinus Spear, lodged into Lilith’s body and restraining her, although this is kept secret from most of the rest of Nerv.

Gendou and Dr. Fuyutsuki lead the new organisation, in coordination with another mysterious organisation named Seele, which aims to follow the prophecy in the Dead Sea Scrolls and merge all of mankind’s consciousnesses to end the suffering caused by interpersonal interaction (a.k.a. the ‘Human Instrumentality Project’). Gendou, on the other hand, plans to reunite with Yui and destroying the possibility to fuse all human consciousness again.

During that period, Asuka Langley Soryu, another teen meant to pilot another Eva, Unit 02, has her backstory happen. Her mother, Kyoko, goes insane after surviving an experiment similar to the one Yui went through, started mistaking some doll for her child and calling Asuka ‘that girl’ (leaving Asuka with a profound hatred for dolls), and trying to strangle Asuka to death in a murder-suicide at some point. Asuka discovers her mother’s dead body hanging shortly after discovering she was selected to pilot the Eva. Her father re-marries, and Asuka resolves to stay strong and never cry again, leading to profound emotional scarring. During her training to be a pilot, she develops a crush on her guardian, Kaji, which is unrequited.

In the year 2015, the Third Angel is trashing Tokyo 3 (it was established for reasons mostly irrelevant to the plot), and the UN and the JDF can’t stop it, leaving Nerv to take it on. Gendou has already called his son back to Tokyo 3 and demands that he pilot Unit 01. When he refuses, Gendou tries to send in another teenage pilot, the badly injured Rei (this is the second Rei, the next clone Gendou uses to pilot an earlier Eva, Unit 00), and Shinji decides to pilot it anyway, and, with the help of his mother’s spirit, destroys the Angel.

From that point on Shinji, Rei, and Asuka and later, briefly, Shinji’s friend Touji and his new friend (some say lover) Kaworu Nagisa, the 17th Angel work as Eva pilots, destroying the Angels, who are looking for Adam and want to destroy humanity (in what could become the dreaded ‘Third Impact’) and get their planet back, unaware that they’re heading in the wrong direction (towards Lilith instead of Adam, having been fooled by Gendou) through various creative means. Later on, Kaji, who has returned to work for Nerv while actually serving as a Seele spy while actually serving as a spy for the Japanese government, brings Adam to Gendou as an embryo; Gendou grafts the embryo to his hand as part of his plan to fuse with Yui. It’s weird.

The original finale is what happens when the Instrumentality works, delving into each character’s psyche, finally focusing on Shinji’s until he makes a massive breakthrough and his congratulated by the recurrent cast.

EoE is a bit weirder: Nerv manages to fight back Seele to a limited extent, but the Instrumentality is brought to completion, fusing everyone together into a primordial soup; Shinji and Asuka, however, refuse to fuse, and re-emerge therefrom, while the rest of humanity stays inside.

Hope I could help!

Well, you certainly helped to streamline the narrative and make it easier to understand, but that just reinforces one of my major beefs with this show. There shouldn't be a need to write out any sort of 'guide' or whatever, or to look up information on Wiki's or anywhere else, in order to understand what's going on in a story. It should all be understandable enough within the story itself. I think the major problem was that it didn't bother to really elaborate on most of those points, with the big one being the angels. We never know what they really are or how they came to be, and that big gaping hole ripples throughout the entire show, turning it into a confusing mess. They didn't even need to spend that much time with it; just have a 10-minute flashback or Info Dump, giving us the lowdown on these things. Instead, all we get is some half-baked 'what humanity could have evolved into' excuse, and with the lack of information on that comes lack of information on most everything else. Why did Seele want to bring about the Instrumentality? Just what sort of experiment were Gendo and Co. possibly working on that could accidentally put somebody's soul into a giant robot? Why did the Dead Sea Scrolls have such information on the Instrumentality? And I could go on. (The only overlying answer I can think of is, 'God wanted to punish/enlighten humanity', which just smacks of pretentiousness.)

Evangilon is likes this colossal, needlessly complex mass. It tries to be complex, but in the end, it just adds all of this stuff in there without bothering to make sure it makes sense, and it also has quite a bit of needles faux religious symbolism. It makes you wonder if writers honestly knew all of the hows and whys when making the show; if you don't understand what's going on, that's one thing, but if you feel the authors didn't know, that's another. Honestly, I know you tried to help, and I appreciate it, but it seems to me that it just further highlights the problems with the show. I guess it's just not for me. (Or at least, not the TV show; I'll be trying the manga and new movies later.)

IMHO, just what exactly the Angels are and other technicalities doesn’t particularly matter; what matters here is the characters—their thoughts and feelings and everything their psyche goes through. It makes a lot more sense when you remember that Anno’s favourite film is Battle Of Okinawa, which portrays the American forces as almost entirely faceless masses, and watch Gunbuster, which basically has the same attitude: the enemies and their motivations and whatnot aren’t explained because it’s not about them. It might be more fitting for some viewers’ taste, and not for others’ (namely, people who are very fond of works far on the ‘Character’ end of the Sliding Scale Of Plot Versus Characters, like myself), but that doesn’t make it a bad series. But in case you’re interested, this Wiki helps clear up a lot of points, based on other material related to the series.

As for Seele, as I explained above, their motivation certainly is explained, more than once, particularly in EoE: to end human suffering caused by interpersonal interaction, the inevitable friction and mutual hurt caused thereby, by ending all actual ‘interaction’. They’re basically Well-Intentioned Extremists, and it’s implied most of humanity comes to agree with them after they succeed.

As for the manga, bear in mind that it’s a different canon. I don’t know how good it is, as I read it years and years ago, only up to vol. 10, and in English (I want to try and read it in the original, though).

As for the Rebuild, it’s not only very different canon, it’s not remotely as good and even more confusing. 3.3 in particular.

'IMHO, just what exactly the Angels are and other technicalities doesn’t particularly matter;'

Sorry, but it does to me. Character is important, but so is plot. If the plot doesn't make sense, then I just keep thinking about that, and it'll just bug the crap out of me.

'As for the Rebuild, it’s not only very different canon, it’s not remotely as good and even more confusing.'

I'll be the judge of that.

re: Lilith instead of Eve. The reference there is that Lilith was actually Adam's first wife, before Eve was created, but she refused to submit to him. She was cast out of Eden and became the mother of a race of demons.

So I guess that makes humans demons in this scenario.

OK, think of it as a fairy tale about a knight/prince rescuing a princess: you generally don’t have any particular interest in the dragon/evil witch holding the princess hostage, right? The princess and her rescuer are those who matter, generally. And first and foremost, if anyone gets some interesting backstory, you’d probably prefer that it be the prince/knight, as he’s the one doing the action.

Besides, it was pointed out by Kaworu that the Angel’s existence is somehow mutually exclusive with the humans’; their motivation is somewhat explained.

Judging by your impressions with the original series, you’d like Rebuild even less: much less is actually explained, somehow there is more technical bizarreness thrown in, the plot becomes really messy and hard (if not impossible) to follow by 3.3, and the characterisation, which needed over 8h30m to completely flesh out and become the psychological epic it was, was reduced to a poorly-handled mess of odds and ends. Keep your hopes low, mate.

OK, think of it as a fairy tale about a knight/prince rescuing a princess: you generally don’t have any particular interest in the dragon/evil witch holding the princess hostage, right? The princess and her rescuer are those who matter, generally. And first and foremost, if anyone gets some interesting backstory, you’d probably prefer that it be the prince/knight, as he’s the one doing the action.

That analogy falls apart considering that the dragon's existence, origin, and motivations are generally not explicitly questioned in the sort of fairy tales you describe. Eva does explicitly question those things about the Angels, which implies, if not demands, that the answers are both important and present within the show itself.

'characterisation, which needed over 8h30m to completely flesh out and become the 'psychological epic it was '

And that's another problem I have with the show. Just because a character is believable doesn't mean they're likeable or all that interesting. Shinji was actually sort of likeable and interesting at first, but about mid-way through the series, any character development he went through was stripped away from him, and by the time Rebuild began, he wound up even worse than he began. Asuka is a fiery stubborn mess, Ritsuo has an unhealthily obsession with Gendo, any development Rei goes through is also undone, etc. As I said, the only character I really liked was Kaji, and he was the first major character to go. Just about everyone displays a rather unhealthily amount of depression but, at least to me, there just doesn't seem to be much point in it. As I said, it just seems like the creator wanted to create an outlet for his depression, and just let it loose without any real rhyme or reason. There is no need for all of this rampant depression, especially as unfocused as it is. That doesn't mean I don't like depression in a work of fiction at all; far from it. But I at least like there to be a real reason, thematic or otherwise, for that depression, and in Evangilon, I just didn't see it. Being depressing for the hell of it does not good fiction make. (And neither does riddling your story with so much faux religious symbolism.)

NGE just comes across to me as pretentious. I know it doesn't to you, and I can respect that. But it does to me. But at the least, I'm willing to give other versions of the story, such as the manga or the new movies, a fair shake. But I have seen the original show, and I just don't like it.

One thing is known: Anno was monumentally depressed at the time, and that is loud and clear. A second reason would be an Eldritch promise - the stuff they're dealing with is enough to make a sane person lose their marbles in a jiffy. And they would, but most come pre-broken. There's a reason why these kids are the pilots (or why the other "Children" seem to be parentless as well), and it ain't just that their mom's souls are in the biomechs.

Another thing I agree with: that the character's aren't "likeable." They fade in and out. Hey, Shinji's whining ass gets so annoying near the end of... uhh, End of Evangelion, I was screaming "STOP WHINING YOU ASSWIPE AND GET TO IT!" every single time. But that might be personal taste - I like characters whose traumas completely and utterly consume them. Batman, for instance. Noein/Yu from "No Ein" is another.

But. I get the impression that you don't think the characters have reasons to be unstable/depressed. Would that be correct?

No, it would not be correct. I DO think they have reasons to be unstable/depressed. But just because you have an understandable reason for being a whiny, spineless wimp who can hardly stand up for what he believes in and ends up turning his back on everything and everyone until the last minute, (*Cough*SHINJI!!!*Cough*) does not mean that you're a particularly likeable or interesting character. Heck, they don't even have to be likeable; if they're just interesting, then that's not bad either. But just not being likeable is one thing; being unlikeable is another, and many of the characters in the show were this. My favorite characters are, to me, both interesting and likeable, but most character in this show were either interesting, unlikeable, and both. And even if a character is both unlikeable and interesting, unless they're a villain, then I just can't get into them. If these are supposed to be protagonists or main characters, if they're unlikeable, then I can only think of those Eight Deadly Words: ' I don't care what happens to these people. '

And for the record, I liked Kaji. He was both interesting and likeable. And then they killed him off midway through the series. So much for him.

Ah, alright, gotcha.

And yeah, Kaji's pretty cool. Perhaps too cool to live.

Just to clarify something; thinking about it, there's actually a number of interesting characters that are unlikeable, persay. It's when they get detestable that I can't care about what happens to them. Unfortunately, I only remembered that that word existed just five minutes ago. :P But yeah, just to use an example, Shinji actually started off as kind of alright, but midway, all character development he went through was stripped away, and by the end of the series, he just sunk worse and worse until he was, well, detestable, for reasons that I've already stated. Or, to quote myself...

'...a whiny, spineless wimp who can hardly stand up for what he believes in and ends up turning his back on everything and everyone until the last minute...'

And there you go.

Shinji refuses to kill Touji and would rather die instead and threatens to destroy NERV and then quits when his will is overriden, and still comes back to fight when he sees everyone depends on him. Then, when he is dissolved into LCL for the first time inside the Eva, he rejects the Assimilation Plot, and does it again in EoE, when almost all of humanity didn’t. He chose to stay and struggle to find his place. Somehow this goes completely over most Western viewers’ heads and it’s pretty annoying.

Also, he makes a lot of progress—making friends, getting along with Misato, learning to like his role as a pilot—until Asuka comes along and starts emotionally abusing him left and right. His deterioration is somewhat understood, in light of other things but certainly in light of this. Seriously, have you seen Film/Tangled? That’s an unnervingly realistic depiction of what emotional abuse is like.

Yeah, I've seen Tangled, but at least the main characters were likeable. Yeah, sure, Shinji rejected the Instrumentality Project, but let's recap, shall we? When confronted by a certain Angel who brought him back down to where he was at the start of the show, he, instead of resisting the Angel, facing his problems, and beginning to overcome them, just gets worse, and continues to do so until, by the time SEAL attacks NERVE, Shinji is sulking and doing nothing. It takes Misato getting shot and killed for him to finally fight back. I'd like Shinji a lot more if he was someone that could overcome his problems 'before the very last minute, and who didn't need someone to die to spur him to action. As is, he's just a spineless, psychological mess; not really someone I can get behind. It'd be one thing if he was just some side character, but as a protagonist? I'm sorry, but that was just a bad move.

Anyone who calls Shinji spineless should probably rewatch the series.

^Indeed, because Shinji can actually be pretty badass. That is, Shinji can actually be pretty badass in Super Robot Wars. There, Captain Bright from Gundam slaps Shinji and tells him to man the hell up, and he does, which is what he needed to do in NGE. Because in NGE, he is a spineless wimp, so much so that he needed outside influence to not be a spineless wimp.

Shinji didn't know Misato was dying. She was hiding the fact that she was even wounded. It was her Rousing Speech that made him go fight. Also, remember how he just had to kill the one person he loved just a single episode beforehand, and saw Asuka in a coma? And yes, in a moment of profound weakness he acted Squickily on his unfulfilled attraction to her, and you know what? That was disguising and unjustified, but it definitely justifies further his self-loathing. Also, treating Kaworu as just another Angel Shinji has to face is somewhat of a dick move. Would you react this calmly if the one person you loved (after you'd been abused all your life) turned out to be a, say, North Korean spy? I doubt your reaction would be Angst? What Angst?, and you seem to forget that Shinji actually fought and killed Kaworu.

Look, I'm not saying that Shinji is blameless and all his faults stem from someone else. Hell, that scene featuring him having A Date with Rosie Palms makes it pretty obvious. But a whole lot of his issues do, and all in all he's a fairly realistic character who goes through some horrible crises and finds the strength to fight his way back, and I find that admirable and definitely protagonist-worthy.

If anything, it was Asuka who was really, really annoying, not Shinji, but her presence was essentially an integral, essential dissonance the show needed to go where it went in exploring mental crises and overcoming them, an essential theme in Anno's work (compare Love & Pop and Shiki-jitsu).

Ultimately, I think your point should be ‘a deeply flawed protagonist doesn't work for everyone, though it probably would for you if you like shows on the far end of the Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters’ rather than ‘he's a total wimp and his breakdowns aren't justified and it doesn't work period’.

Okay, look, I admit, there were a few things I forgot about Shinji, and I thank you for bringing them up. But you're right; he is deeply flawed, to the point where I just can't get behind him. (And not in that way. A character should have some flaws, but not that many, at least IMO. And I do like shows on 'the far end of the Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters'. Just because your character isn't deeply flawed doesn't mean they don't have enough flaws to make for some compelling character driven work.

Honestly, I might give a different opinion of the show if I were to watch it again. I'm just not sure if I want to put myself through that.

The beauty of Shinji is that while he is deeply flawed, he's showing an earnest desire to pull through. Come to think of it, so do Rei, who stands up to Gendou twice―first when she refuses to fight the Angel-possessed Eva because Touji is inside, then at the finale when she refuses to cooperate with his plans (‘I'm not your puppet’), Asuka, who ultimately finds her strength again, fights the Mass-produced Evas valiantly, and finally rejects the Instrumentality along with Shinji, and Misato, who carries on Kaji's legacy to discover the truth about the Angels and later keeps her chin up and puts on a brave face for Shinji long enough to give him a Rousing Speech, all while hiding that she was just shot to death.

And let's not forget that they acted like professionals all along. They defeated all of the Angels and never let internal squabbling get the better of them. Asuka, who got upstaged by Shinji in the volcano, used it as a motivator to take on a riskier role when fighting another Angel to ‘get even’. When Rei and Shinji did refuse to fight it wasn't for petty reasons―they were requested to put a close friend's life in danger. They're all way more Badass than given credit for. Also, Nerv fucking beat off an invasion of the JSSDF in a gun fight (Misato charged in head-first and killed a bunch of soldiers single-handedly, even if she was shot to death in the process). What more could you want?

First of all, why is overcoming problems the only valid form of character development rather than succumbing to them? Shinji doesn't stop "growing" as a character because he doesn't get an easy resolution to his problems. Furthermore, he makes great leaps in dealing with his mental state in both endings.

Secondly, isn't an author using a work of fiction as a means for catharsis for their mental issues the single most meaningful expression of depression? If not that, then what do you consider "meaningful" depression? What is the problem there?

^I've thought about it, and I've realized something. I can understand that some people, for whatever reason, appreciate characters succumbing to their problems in a work of fiction. Doing so can be 'realistic'; it's supposed to teach us about our own lives, our own reality; I get it. But here's the thing. I already know that people can succumb to their problems. If happens in real life more times than any of us would like to admit. I already get that succumbing to one's own problems is a distinct possibility. This is why, in a work of fiction, I want my protagonists to overcome their problems, or at least begin to. To show that it's possible to do so. I've come a long way in overcoming my own problems, and so I like stories that show that doing so is possible. You don't have to succumb; you can improve yourself, you can be better. But when I see Shinji, all I see is a sadsack that didn't even start to overcome his problems until it was too late; until a giant naked wideeyed Rei started smiling and laughing and dropping green swords all over the world and turned everyone into primordial ooze. Maybe he isn't as pathetic as I think, but that's just how I remember him, and the only way to change that would be to watch the whole show again; not exactly something I really want to do. But even then, even a character who doesn't overcome their problems can be interesting if done right; just look at Hamlet. That's because he actually has some likeable traits, though it's same traits that bring them down. Shinji is just too much of a sadsack in my mind be likeable or interesting, and nothing you can say or do can convince me otherwise. Plenty of arguments as to Shinji's worth have already been made to me, but I'm just not convinced. Again, I'd have to watch the show again; that's really the only way for my opinion on Shinji to change, at this point.

(Also, if a Protagonist clearly isn't supposed to be likable, or to not be someone we're supposed to root for, (like Macbeth,) then I'm fine with them succumbing to their problems. But I don't get the feeling Shinji was supposed to be designed that way.

That’s not true. He does make huge steps to overcome his problems, it’s just that they keep coming. First, dealing with having to fight monsters all of a sudden, and face his father, and move in with someone new and start his life anew (), then getting used to that abusive bitch Asuka, then getting swallowed by an Angel and later by an Eva, then having to almost kill his friend, then losing all of his friends who move out of Tokyo-3, then losing the one person who loved him, then the whole Instrumentality thing. And what happens? He gets the hang of fighting quickly, makes friends, gets along with Misato to the point she thinks of him as family, and even starts to bridge the gap with his father (he goes to Yui’s grave with him, gets praised by him, and even works up the courage to invite him to a PTA meeting and later stands up to him aggressively, which, I should point out, indicates how far he’s come since he just decided to bail without notice), gets along as well as possible with Asuka (given her own fuck-ups), comes out of the Angel despite its attempt to Mind Rape him, rejects Instrumentality inside the Eva, kills Kaworu as his mission was with fairly little hesitation, and reject Instrumentality again.

Maybe you should watch it subbed instead of dubbed. I’m beginning to think Spike Spencer’s delivery made him sound much more spineless than Megumi Ogata’s.

'I’m beginning to think Spike Spencer’s delivery made him sound much more spineless than Megumi Ogata’s.'

That might have been part of it. (But not all of it.) I'll think about it, but if I watch the show again, I doubt it'll be any time soon. Maybe someday, though.

Yeah. I really don't understand how anyone could find Shinji spineless. I personally think he actually stands out as incredibly brave, considering.