Evangelion is my Supervillain Origin Story
A couple nights ago I was reading this really interesting interview on the AV Club with two trans artists about the way anime helped form their identities and give them a safe space to explore their gender when I was struck by their mentioning a title that always fills me with dread and rage in just about equal measure: Neon Genesis Evangelion.
For those not aware, Evangelion is one of the most popular and influential anime, not just of the 90s, but of all time. It’s widely considered essential viewing for any anime fan, even ones who haven’t watched the other Mecha series it’s ostensibly deconstructing. It’s also a series whose appeal has stymied and eluded me for my entire life; even moreso, it’s a series that makes me upset, angry, and anxious deep down to my bones.
Back when I was 16 or 17 or so, I was drawn in not only by Evangelion’s fame, but by an admittedly appealing elevator pitch: with Earth under attack by mysterious, unstoppable beings known as Angels, humanity’s only hope for survival is three teens piloting giant feral-looking robots known as Evangelions (also, one of them has a pet penguin). Here’s the thing, though: while every word in that sentence is technically true, it’s not what the series is actually about. It’s a far more existential series about connection and isolation, about depression, about standing up for yourself, and, again, about a pet penguin who lives in a refrigerator.
And again, on paper I can see the appeal of that sort of series, and despite the fact that my initial experience with Evangelion was mired in a mild case of “baby’s first realization that not all anime is shonen1,” I think that even 16-year-old me could have found something to appreciate about that as well.
Yet, when I watched Evangelion, what I found instead was an unrelentingly bleak series about cruel bullies, one that actually seemed to side with said bullies against its depressed, tortured protagonist Shinji Ikari. Watching Evangelion often felt like watching a hate crime being committed right in front of me, over and over, and I don’t know if there’s ever been any other piece of fiction that has made me so uncharacteristically seethingly angry. The last time I tried to watch any version of Eva I was left trembling and shaking in anger, and that’s not an exaggeration.
So anyway, Wednesday night after that article decided to insert Evangelion into my brain, I spat out a Twitter thread about my feelings about Evangelion that I’m going to copy here as well, because for being a late night rant, I’m also pretty proud of it, and think it stands up.
I wanted to expound on this a bit.
First, there’s Asuka, who I think it legitimately the most repugnant character I’ve ever met in all of fiction.
She’s essentially Lucy from Peanuts if she was twice as cruel, fully aware of what she was doing, and all the humor was sucked out of the situation. As I said, I understand that the series eventually dives into Asuka’s past and helps to explain why she acts the way she does, but I reiterate, I do not care, not after a dozen episodes of watching Asuka being constantly, unrelentingly cruel to someone with no way to fight back and not only never being called out on it, but often being portrayed as being in the right for feeling that way. Maybe this is petty, but I’ve seen more than a few people I respected say they related to Asuka, and suddenly my respect was gone.
More important, though, is the idea of the narrative being stacked against Shinji in ways that are not only unrelentingly cruel, but that work against the story it’s trying to tell and the morals its trying to impart. Shinji isn’t just bullied by a few people at school; he’s bullied by classmates, “co-workers” (the other Eva pilots), and most intensely, his own father, who is also his boss, and who has absolute control over his life. Even the characters who aren’t actively cruel to Shinji (such as Misato) seem to regard him, at best, with pity and frustration. At least we’re clearly supposed to empathize with Shinji, but that makes for a daunting, utterly emotionally exhausting viewing experience; even then, there’s a sizable chunk of the fanbase who hate Shinji and side with his father Gendo, who they view as a real man compared to the supposedly weak and ineffectual Shinji, and I can’t even blame them for thinking this way, because Evangelion devotes the majority of its screentime to characters who hate Shinji tearing him down! It’s truly a series that is often at odds with its own narrative.
Probably the most famous scene in Evangelion is the moment when Shinji is coerced into piloting his Eva again after trying to quit because of a teammate being injured.
Thanks to memes, “get in the Eva, Shinji” has become the most-known aspect of the series, a moment that to many perfectly exemplifies Shinji’s weakness (even as we should feel sorry for a teenager being forced to fight for his life by people who hate him). A couple decades later, the Rebuild of Evangelion movies — which retell the series with new animation and small changes that quickly snowball into massive changes — put a new spin on this moment by having Shinji instead snap and insist on piloting the Eva even when told not to, an action that leads to the (temporary) victory of the Angels and the near extinction of mankind.
It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t for Shinji, and that moment is when my view of Evangelion shifted from a confused narrative that seemed to be undercutting its own messages to a narrative that seemed to actively be taking joy in torturing its characters and the viewers alike. It’s the moment I decided I could never watch Evangelion again in any way, shape, or form. Why would I do that to myself?
I can’t think of any other series that seems quite as bleak and cruel as Evangelion. The only thing that comes close is perhaps The Walking Dead, a series with no chance of any sort of happy ending — every single member of its cast will, eventually, be brutally murdered, there is no cure, no peace, no rest. Why even get invested in the characters? But at least it has a few characters you want to see survive, even if you know they won’t. When I watch Evangelion, I don’t want to see its version of humanity survive.
And yet. As much as I hate this series. As much as I think it’s pretty objectively awful. I still see so, so, so many people who swear by it, who see themselves in its characters, who say it’s changed their life, and I just, for the life of me, do not understand it. Can they really all be wrong? It must be me, right? I want to understand it, I want to like it just so that this all makes sense. Even a quick peruse of Eva’s Wikipedia entry while writing this piece intrigued me with its talk of Shinji’s arc being one of learning to accept love and affection from others, but it just doesn’t work, no matter how well it was set up, because why would Shinji want to accept love and affection when the entire cast surrounding him have been so singularly awful, have never had any love and affection to offer anyone? Who, exactly, should he be opening up to?
I don’t like the way Evangelion makes me feel and think. When I contemplate Shinji’s predicament, it feels hopeless. He’s powerless to stand up against anyone in his life even if he did have the will. The angels can’t be beaten, he can’t escape his job or his family, humanity is doomed and so is Shinji. I hate saying this and I apologize if this triggers anyone, but I’ve more than once come to the conclusion that the only “happy” ending for Shinji would be for him to just kill himself. What other way is there out of the hell of Evangelion?
AT LEAST THE THEME SONG SLAPS
BUT THAT’S ENOUGH TALK OF ANIME I DON’T LIKE
Let’s talk about one I like instead. A new chapter of One Piece releases tomorrow, and should hopefully continue the battle of the swordsman who fights with three blades (one in each hand and one in his mouth) and the cook who can ignite his leg with his passion vs. the BDSM swordsman pterodactyl and the flamboyant cyborg-brachiosaurus.
God, I love this series.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!
Shonen is a genre of manga and anime meant to appeal to boys aged 12 to 18, though its actual fanbase tends to be far more expansive. Most shonens are more defined by their pattern of focusing more on action and battle than anything else, using fight scenes to deliver character development, as well as themes of friendship, overcoming adversity, growing by facing adversity, and following your dreams. Popular shonens include the likes of Dragonball Z, One Piece, Naruto, My Hero Academia, One Punch Man, Hunter X Hunter, and Yuyu Hakusho. Shonen is possibly the most popular genre of anime, and was the best represented on American television in the early years of its first boom, leading to many a viewer to tune into a new anime only to be disappointed — or, perhaps, have their mind blown — by a series with very different, often far more lofty goals.