Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Shinji, from Evangelion.
He's 14. His mum is dead. His dad is a piece of shit and a manipulative bastard, who sees him as nothing but a pawn. "Emotionally traumatised" doesn't even start to describe him. He's pressured to pilot a mecha and if he fucks things up people will die, he knows that they will die, and that it'll be his fault.
And yet people expect him to be assertive or to not have meltdowns? Come the fucking on.
I think the biggest problem that people have with NGE is that it just isn't your typical shounen anime. All of the characters behave in a way because of their past experiences. Shinji being abandoned by his father, witnessing his mother's death without actually understanding or realising it, asuka being neglected by her mother and Rei being a clone. And all of them in their teens, in a broken world getting told to fight and probably die or humanity is doomed.
With how saturated anime are with flawed main characters that then use that flaw to their advantage to overcome their enemy, NGE just doesn't do that.
I think that viewers just expect this hero story when they watch it.
I mean. I had a similar impression when I first watched it a long long time ago and thought that shinji was a wuss. But that was after I watched the typical shounen, DB, DBZ, Naruto and bleach. Not to mention that I didn't understand what the fuck was going on. Only later after watching it a second time and digging into the background a bit, shinjis Oedipus complex, asukas hedgehog dilemma and the general motivation of each of the characters it made a lot more sense. Including the context of their situation made me appreciate the storytelling a lot more because it put everything into perspective.