I think Shinji has some good reasons for being how he is in the series. I mean his mother's been dead since he was a child, his father abandoned him until Shinji's trauma becomes useful for him, and he's forced into a fight which he wants no part in and sees his loved ones put through the wringer. It's not like Shinji's coming from a Spoiled Rotten background only to turn up his nose when the world needs him most, he's dragged into a bad situation by the man who abandoned him and only re-establishes contact when he wants something.
"Shinji is, intentionally, a narcissistic Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist who doesn't even have the saving grace of being funny, except on very rare occasions."
You're either being sarcastic or you completely missed the point of the character. Like the person above me said, there's valid reasons why Shiji is like that: People who have traumatic things happen to them tend to suffer emotional problems as a result, and having a parent deliberately abandon you is one of the worst things that can happen to a child.
My guess is she never even bothered to watch it. ‘Narcissistic’? Shinji? Really?
Narcissistic doesn't, in and of itself, mean "self-aggrandizing douchebag" so much as "so self-absorbed so as to be completely indifferent to the suffering and problems of others."
Finally, someone else who doesn't like the show! Of course, I can't agree with WHY you dislike it, but still, I'm just glad there's someone else who sees the show for what is is: a trainwreck. It tries to be this great big thing, but it wallows too much in it's own despair, most of the characters become unlikeable, and the story becomes confusing to the point of being incomprehensible. It's just not a good show.
Shinji is not narcissistic in any way. He’s selfless to the point of being an Extreme Doormat, or at least he becomes that when Asuka becomes so emotionally abusive he tries to tiptoe around her, until he snaps every now and then. He is very deeply concerned with the suffering of others and was willing to sacrifice his own life to avoid killing his friend. He was driven to tears when he managed to save Rei, and once again when he found out Misato gave her life for him. If you say Shinji was narcissistic it’s because you either haven’t watched NGE, slept through half of it, or you’re trolling us. There is no way in hell you could just be stupid because seeing a person CRYING AND SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS when someone else is hurt is something you cannot, CANNOT be stupid or emotionally inept enough to think of as narcissism. You can’t.
‘A laundry list of First World Problems’? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s a series about EVERONE’S problems. What, do you think poor people have no interpersonal relationship problems? No concerns about their own role in their own life and environment? What, you think poor people are elves who are Too Good for This Sinful Earth or something?
Oh, and you know what? The series actually does deal with Third World Problems in ep. 7, when NERV’s methods and funding are questioned—it’s explicitly mentioned that the US doesn’t want to increase its budget for fear of unemployment, and Japan has to deal with people dying of starvation to fund an organisation that gets exempted from a whole lot of laws and regulations of the Japanese government (to the point that their ministry of interior uses Kaji as a spy and they ultimately send the JSSDF to GUN THEM DOWN). Touji has to join them to pay for his sister’s medical care. There, non-‘First World Problems’-y enough for you?
‘The actual sympathetic characters have the little good they have in their lives systematically taken away from them for our entertainment.’ Are you fucking kidding me. HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO MISS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE SERIES LIKE THAT. The whole concept is simple: ‘Life is a bitch, and you have a choice about how to handle it. Even in the hardest of trials, you have control over your own attitude.’ It’s not ‘for our entertainment’, it’s TO ILLUSTRATE A POINT. Not only that: IT’S NOT EVEN WHAT THE MAJORITY OF THE SERIES IS LIKE. NOT IN THE LEAST.
You know what? Maybe it was ‘someone else’s therapy transcript’. But you know what? OTHER PEOPLE FACE THE SAME ISSUES. As a matter of fact, WE ALL DO. That’s why, if you write a bullshit psych evaluations that mention something along the lines of ‘you care about what other people think and you’re worried about not being accepted’ and whatnot, MOST PEOPLE THINK IT’S ACCURATE. For many people these are issues that don’t really impede their day-to-day function, so the series might accentuate those issues too much for them, but it’s still there. That, in fact is THE ENTIRE POINT OF END OF EVANGELION.
Jesus fuck, if your younger self could meet you, she’d probably Dope Slap the shit out of you.
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If you like NGE, Hideaki Anno hates you and everything you stand for
As a teenager, I thought NGE was mindblowing. "Finally, someone understands what I'm going through!" Using giant robots fighting against an incomprehensible alien enemy as a metaphor for growing up? Brilliant!
...then I actually did grow up.
NGE is, effectively, someone else's therapy transcript. (Hideaki Anno's, to be precise; he was seeing a psychiatrist during most of NGE's runs and suffered a nervous breakdown late in the series.) It pretends to ask the big questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything, but what it actually turns out to be is a laundry list of First World Problems: "Nobody understands me! Why won't they accept me for who I am? What's the point of living if I can't get what I want?" And the answer it comes to? "Fuck you! I'm gonna live for me, because I'm worth it!"
There's a very narrow window in which NGE has its appeal—and it's not supposed to, not even then. Shinji is, intentionally, a narcissistic Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist who doesn't even have the saving grace of being funny, except on very rare occasions. The actual sympathetic characters have the little good they have in their lives systematically taken away from them for our entertainment. And in the end, everyone's efforts come to nothing, there's no Power of Whatever to save the day—even if enough people decide that life is worth living and emerge from the sea of Instrumentality, the world is still fucked.
It's very telling that the last line of End of Evangelion is "kimochi ga warui" or, loosely, "this is the pits". Anno, using Asuka as the mouthpiece, is casting judgment on the new status quo. And it sucks.