I’ve been reading what a lot of what people think of the Evangelion series .while I re-watched it for the review and one thing stood out to me. I feel like Shinji Ikari gets a bad rap as a character. Everyone from the reviewers, the diehard fans, and even the voice actor that plays Shinji seem to hate this character. They hate the character for the same specific set of reasons. I have to say that a lot of this hatred, has been a bit undue.
People see Shinji’s lack of willingness to pilot the Eva as annoying and childlike. People seem to lament at each one of his bad decisions. Let us not forget that Shinji is a child, in general children make bad choices. Let’s not even really talk about the fact that Shinji is for all intents and purposes an orphan. Instead of enjoying the formative years of adolescence Shinji is forced to murder repeatedly. For everyone saying that he didn’t murder anyone. Let us not forget that the Angels have souls, and the show goes through great lengths to show that humans and angels are fundamentally the same. This kid has quite a few deaths on his hand, and no one on the show seems to want to deal with the fact that this kid needs counseling. It’s made clear from very early on that Shinji doesn’t like to pilot his Eva, he doesn’t seem to enjoy killing angels in any way. The only thing that seems to motivate Shinji to pilot the Eva is the fact that if he doesn’t his friends will get killed and humanity destroyed.
The biggest things that damaged Shinji’s image happened in The End of Evangelion. Don’t get me wrong Shinji’s actions were terrible in that movie, but I think the thing we have to consider is that Shinji progressively got worse though out the series. If you look back too after the first few episodes Shinji actually seemed to be enjoying his new life piloting the Eva and navigating the twists and turns of his massive love triangle. In fact I think its undeniable that though the first fifteen episodes, Shinji was improving.He was getting closer to his lover interest, he was enjoying piloting the Eva and Shinji was solving all the problems that he encountered fighting Angels despite the fact that quite a few of the missions had low odds of success; essentially equating to suicide missions. I honestly think Shinji was doing a dam good job of keeping it together, all things considered, though the first fifteen episodes.
Now episode sixteen is where everything begins to fall apart for our protagonist. His likability and his character growth start going the opposite direction. This isn’t random. Let’s look at what was going on in the show at that point. The Eva’s were getting increasingly smarter, human-like, and physiological in nature. In episode sixteen Shinji gets transported to another dimension where he slowly starts to suffocate while hallucinating. In his next fight in episode eighteen he is forced to “kill” his best friend Ikari by his father. In Shinji’s next fight he has to fight a Eva which seemed to suck in Rei’s consciousness and mind attack you. This is only stopped when Shinji watches Rei(who is also technically Shinji’s mom) kill herself in a suicide attack. Still fresh of the last two tragedies the next fight Shinji kills Kaworu, who is unmistakably human. Shinji has to face the fact that angels are human and he has to kill someone he cares about. Let’s be honest here, he probably wanted to bang him a bit too.
Shinji didn’t start in the best of states and the more he piloted the Eva the shitter his life became. So I argue we need to cut Shinji some slack here. When we look at the landscape of anime Shiji stands out as a character, to begin with Shinji is a very mortal character. He doesn’t just take the strait path of the standard hero’s journey. Shinji is the antithesis of a character like Amuro from Mobile Suit Gundam. Instead of being a cold psychopathic killer who is ready at all times to murder whoever he comes into contact with. Shinji actually shows signs of remorse, regret, and sorrow over not only his decisions, but also the role he played in events as they happened. I think that’s why it’s important to have a protagonist like Shinji and the character probably deserves more respect considering most the people saying Shinji needs to man up would shit their pants in life threatening situation. Don’t tell me things like “he should just get used to it because he has done so many missions already.” If you look at real troops they rotate the front line soldiers. Do you want to know why? It’s because they go crazy when they have to be on the front line of for too long. When I hear people talking shit about Shinji it kind of feels like you’re walking up to a Vietnam vet living under a bridge somewhere, throwing dirt into his face and telling him to man up. I know some people are into that sort of thing but for fucks sake. Before you guys try to crucify me about being an Evangelion fan boy I do acknowledge that the series has a laundry list of flaws that hold it back from being a perfect series, if you will. I just feel like Shinji shouldn’t be one of them because as much as people love to hate this character his negative growth pattern made him one of the best protagonist ever to come to life.
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