Anonymous
Evangelion 04/03/26(Fri)00:27:40 No.287206821

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Evangelion Anonymous 04/03/26(Fri)00:27:40 No.287206821

the thing about understanding Eva is that Shinji is, beneath all the mewling and self-loathing, a very cruel and violent person that is only interested in others insofar as he can sort them into a neat little box of what kind of soothing they can offer to his emotional turmoil. unconditional love, paternal validation, sexual gratification, feeling desired, needing rescuing so he can feel heroic and strong, punishing him or forgiving him when he feels ashamed so he can experience catharsis.
He shuts his eyes and ears whenever someone else exhibits having their own rich inner own with its own motivations and contradictions and pains that yearn to be soothed.
and its in these respects that he is just like his father.
and its for these reasonswhy Kaworu, the embodiment of inhumanly unconditionally love must always die at his hands
and its for these reasons that Anno felt compelled to have the Rebuilds go the way they did.
Gendo thought that by 'giving' Shinji Rei III and then taking her away, Shinji would double down, harden his hard, and become a professional user of people. That he would try to use Gendo and Gendo could try to use him and they could be bad people together. Instead Shinji finally gets it. Rei III was not his love interest. She was not his therapist. She was not 'for' him at all. She was a person that went about living her own life when he wasn't looking and the tragedy of her short lifespan wasn't that it made him feel bad but that her own life was over. He experienced genuine sonder for the first time in his life and understood intuitively that other people are people too and not just talking objects in his path to be assessed as either assets or obstacles. The exact opposite of EoE Shinji's lowest point of declaring 'I feel really really bad about a lot of things and nobody likes me so everyone and myself should just die'