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alilaro · 10 months

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I have some Thoughts on Evangelion, and I'm hyperfixating right now, so here's a massive info-dump on it. Thank you and I'm sorry.

(trigger warnings for: child abuse, child death, gore mention, pedophilia, mental health, depression, suicide, and potentially more.)

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So, my take on the End Of Evangelion is like a 'Worst Timeline AU.' So what would've happened if Shinji had given into the crippling (justified) trauma and deepest depression of an abused, manipulated, and unfathomably damaged child soldier.

The way Misato constantly screams at him throughout the entire series to 'be a man' and pressures him to get into the EVA and fight literal biblical, kaiju-like angels.

The pressure of trying and failing to get a crumb of praise or approval from his neglectful and spiteful father.

The way people (and fans, tbh) get upset with him for constantly changing his mind. How if he doesn't pilot the EVA, either he or his friends could die. The pressure every adult puts on him. Or again, the absolute cosmic terror of just seeing—let alone having to murder these angels.

Of course, he quits all the time, he's 14. He's a child. An average adult with all the combat training in the world would easily do the same.

Yet he comes back again and again, because of the guilt, the self-loathing, the manipulation of the adults around him—

(who can have all the greatest intentions in the world, "the greater good", etc etc, and it doesn't change a goddamn thing that they are putting these children into death machines and treating it like if they dont do it they are selfish and worthless)

—that if he doesn't do it, his friends will do it and either they or others will die if it's not him.

Like, the point isn't that he can't make up his mind: it's the fact that even if he "gives up", he still keeps coming back, and putting himself before others, despite the grief, despite the pain, despite the trauma

A fourteen-year-old child refuses to stop getting up and trying. Which I feel is symbolic of the whole shows entire meaning, no matter how dark things are, how much you hurt, how much others hurt you, how you feel like nothing, and you want it all to just stop—the pain, the memories, the guilt, the crushing weight of complete utter depression—even as the darkest envelops you and holds you tight, you feel like you can never escape: there is ALWAYS a way out of it.

It's fucking hard, you will lose yourself in it, you will hurt so, so much—but eventually you can find your way out. Through time, through loved ones, through therapy, and more. It's never too late or someone is too far gone in their own despair that they can't be saved and brought back.

And that's not even mentioning the other children. Fans enjoy Asuka more than Shinji because she's got that quick, snappy, high-energy personality. She's overly proud and stubborn, and she loves to fight in her EVA. And Rei, she's the shy quiet girl (a Kuudere, even (didnt like writing that)) designed to be mysterious, and to speculate over. Who is she? Why is she so calm? Does she have a personality behind that demeanor?

But, just like Shinji, they are all child soldiers, and like him, they are products of trauma and manipulation by adults.

Rei, was made in a fool-hearted attempt to bring back Shinji's mother, Yui Ikari, by combining her remains with Lilith. What they got was Rei. An assimilation of Yui, Lilith, Eva, all combining into Rei Ayanami.

Her creators obviously had attachments to her, both having loved Yui before her death, and Gendo Ikari almost took her on as a daughter-like figure (Rei being the name he would've given to his child Shinji, if he had been born a girl,) and revoltingly even more than that.

But as the theme of the series goes, good intentions from adults mean very little, and often act as nothing more than an excuse for creating/doing inconceivably monstrous acts.

She is of course used as an EVA pilot, being able to manipulate her form into a 14-year-old. She is used as a tool. She is replaceable. She knows this. She has no desires because no one has ever cared enough about Rei as her own person to let her think for herself, asked her what she wants, her likes, her dreams, her fears.

Rei's entire existence at this point is to serve, and in an eerie way, the only thing she wants is to serve Gendo, because he's shown her the only breadcrumbs of "compassion" she's ever known.

And then Shinji comes along. Shinji has no idea what she is, only that she is another EVA pilot like himself. He speaks to her as he would anyone else. He cares about her, and her well-being as another person. Actual true compassion.

In episode 06, when Rei is hurt and thought to have died by Shinji, he pries open the hatch to her EVA, ignoring the scalding heat that burns his hands to do so. He finds her alive and cries, and she smiles for him.

This scene is an exact parallel that takes place before with Rei and Gendo (Shinji's father.) He pries open the hatch, scalding his hands too, and finds her alive inside. It's identical except for one thing: Compassion.

Shinji fights to free and help Rei, and when he sees her alive, he is overcome with relief that she, Rei, is alive. He is in tears, he tells her she isn't nothing, implying her life is worth something and people care about her.

When Gendo does it, he does it like a man trying to save a valuable asset. He sees she's okay, and mutters 'I see', and that's the end of it.

Again, in episode 23, when Rei actually dies and is replaced; she is confronted by herself (the Meta Rei, the Rei in her purest, most godly self. A combination of all her sense of beings,) and realizes that she is feeling, she is lonely, she is suffering, and for the first time she cries, and asks herself if this just for her love of Gendo, before sacrificing herself in death to save everyone—specifically shinji.

She is replaced by her many clones, but this time she regains some of her memories, her feelings, her anger, and she is more human now, less vessel, more soul. She is Rei.

In the End of Evangelion, we see the depths of Gendo's depravity. He wants his wife, Yui, back as she was, of course. But in the meanwhile, there's Rei. Rei who is part Yui—a substitute. He touches her breast, an attempt to merge with her, and moves his hand down further to rest between her hips, inside her.

Rei is as much his daughter figure and a child, as she is a part of his own wife, and arises from this: an Oedipus Complex. Gendo treats her as a disposable tool, yet holds Yui at his highest priority. She is his to do with as she likes. How many times has he used her like this? How many times has he committed these atrocities with this child behind closed doors?

Amongst everything else Rei is, she is also a victim of pedophilia.

And in her final moments, while he attempts to merge with Rei in a delusional attempt to bring back Yui, Rei becomes her own being. Rei puts her foot down and says no. She's had enough.

"I will not be a puppet for you to control."

She takes the hand of Adam, fully merges with Lilith, and becomes a God.

And what does she do with all that power? She takes it all, and gives it to Shinji. The one person that ever consistently showed her care and compassion, showed her love. Made her realize she is her own person, gives her the strength to realize her worth and refuse Gendo Ikari, and choose her own path.

Her choice can be argued as good or bad, both. But in the end it was REI's choice, and no one elses.

Asuka uses her anger and her fighting as a means to cope with a barbaric childhood. Her mother, Kyoko, underwent a Contact Experiment when Asuka would have been ~5 years old.

Kyoko survived, but lost her mind completely, thinking her real daughter was actually a doll, and leaving Asuka completely neglected by her mother, all whilst begging and trying to convince her that SHE was her real daughter, not some doll she clung to.

Meanwhile, her father was completely unaffected by this, and even had moved on with another woman (An affair that had been going on before Kyoko fell apart completely, the woman being Kyoto's doctor, that she knew about, and took place in their own home while both mother and daughter were present.) Throwing himself back into his own life with this new woman, and job, Asuka was left with nothing.

Asuka's mother finally snaps and plans her own suicide. She invites Asuka, and with nothing else and wanting nothing more than to be acknowledged by anyone, agrees to take their lives together.

As if all of this isn't bad enough, as a final blow, Asuka's mother takes her own life without Asuka, leaving a five-year-old CHILD to find her mother hanging lifelessly, betrayed and alone again.

Her entire personality isn't because she's 'cool' or 'bossy', its an unfathomably traumatized child, constantly in pain and unable to trust anyone, because she has been taught as an infant that she can not rely on the people meant to care for her, because her parents taught her that in the most brutal and disturbing way possible.

There's even reference to her trying to repeat her mother's suicide after disappearing from the fight, only to be found gravely injured and withering away in a bathtub.

She fights so hard to be independent because she refuses to let herself be hurt and abandoned again.

At the End of Evangelion, even when she is screaming and crying, bleeding to death after being speared through the eye, losing power, and being cannibalized alive in her EVA, she is still so desperate, so angry, that she refuses to die, swearing vengeance on her enemies through dying rattled breaths, and it isn't until she is bombarded with blades that she finally succumbs. And at the hands of NERV.

Again, she, and every single EVA pilot, is only 14 years old.

tldr: The series is about child trauma, children being turned into soldiers, the failings of adults around them, and the tragically brutal and real aftermath of the wreaks of havoc that would have on a child.

#I had to get this out of me because the loud fanbase for this show is fucking putrid #and also im hyperfixating and needed to get that out of my system LMAO #evangelion #neon genesis evangelion #eva #end of evangelion #evangelion shinji #evangelion asuka #evangelion rei #shinji ikari #asuka langley sōryū #rei ayanami #kyoko zeppelin sōryū #saiyū langley #gendo ikari #yui ikari

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