Evangelion, a show where everyone has completely healthy relationships

I can relate to that loser in many ways, but I think the biggest hurdle that prevented me from fully taking the show seriously or it having any impact on me was the scale of the larger problem.
Like yeah, he was depressed, lonely, and abused, but at the same time… there are also literal demons about to the end the world. Yes, yes I know they’re metaphors for whatever. But come on. You cannot make the problem so grand, so earth shattering, and expect me to care about his depression. It’s the equivalent of feeling sorry for Jesus because he got nailed to a cross - suck it up, or else we all suffer.
Unironically, get in the fucking robot.
Though I guess this circles back to the problem of Omelas. Hmm
. I looked this up to see if anyone had made more coherent analysis comparing the show and story, but surprisingly, not many.
- "I would like to end the world because my father is a dick"
  Get in the robot Shinji. This is literally the fate of all mankind, including yourself. Your options are to let everyone die and then you die 3 minutes later or get in the robot, be scared, and possibly live.
  
  if we have to conscript child soldiers and we choose to conscript child soldiers maybe all mankind should fuck off
- Unironically, get in the fucking robot.
  You mean, "get in your fucking mother"
- I think that's part of it? Like I haven't seen it but Shinji's choices are objectively wrong but also make sense because he's a flawed human. So you're supposed to disagree with him but also sympathize but also disagree with him.
  
  I definitely agree. I can understand why people relate with him now that I think about other morally gray characters I can empathize with. For example, Joel from the TLOU. He basically doomed mankind, but if I was in his situation I would’ve done the same exact thing, even if I had the knowledge of what the consequences would be.
- I can relate to that loser in many ways,
  the fucking shooter whaaaaaaat?
  I think the biggest hurdle that prevented me from fully taking the show seriously
  oh
- So people making the objectively wrong choice and putting everyone and themselves at risk is too unrealistic too you?
  
  No, it’s not unrealistic. But I feel like something high stakes like this would resort in extreme measures. Mr. Robot is basically Hacker Evangelion, and I think it shows a tad bit more realistic situation - the protagonist and his colleagues are constantly tortured, harassed, manipulated, etc. to do something because the stakes are high. Similar things happen in Evangelion but I don’t know, maybe i expected humanity to treat their teenage saviors like Jesus.

🖐️
I’m so fucked up

I wanna make a show called Evangelion Proto-Revelation, where Shinji REALLY WANTS to pilot a giant robot but his loving father won't let him cuz it's too dangerous. Also he has a healthy relationship with his red headed roommate despite the mild sexual tension between them.
- That's a pretty normal sounding anime
  
  Exactly
- You might enjoy Gunbuster
  
  The more I think about it, this really does check out.

ASUKA HELP ME PLEASE ASUKA HELP ME YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HELP ME (SINCE I DON'T KNOW WHERE REI IS)
- They've got sales right now!

But does he condemn hamas?
- Asuka condemns Hamas, but only because Asuka condemns everyone who isn't herself.

This is the parkland shooter interrogation, the kid was a fucking piece of shit. I believe in restorative justice, not for him. I dont care about what led him there.

I often can't believe some Japanese guy thought of this and was ok with making it. Like, really dude?
Then I think of some American guy who wrote the book "It".
- [CW: child SA]
  
  American author being interviewed about writing that scene: "I wrote that? Jesus I need to quit cocaine!"
  
  pls cw
  
  Do people argue that that scene in It is necessary? Cuz I've never seen it included in any adaptation or reference (thank god)
  
  Does that really happen in the anime? I watched the anime series (no movies) and I don't remember it at all thankfully.
- I think cocaine wrote more of "It" than Stephen King did.
- The explanation I've always heard was that it was his response to otakus jerking off to anime characters. I.e. women who can't hurt you with rejection. This is who he sees them as.
  From an article in which he is interviewed:
  Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape born of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. “Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.” The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces.
  Anno pauses for a moment, and gives a dark-browed stare out the window. “I don’t see any adults here in Japan,” he says, with a shrug. “The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children.”
  
  Holy SHIT that is a reactionary ass take.
  "Waaa we can't murder and kill people for our fascist country and that's why people read Dragon Ball in the subway." grow the fuck up dude, not a single functional adult cares about someone reading Dragon Ball in the subway.
  I mean, most functional adults care about people reading pornography in the subway, but the misogynistic norms that imperial Japan ~~probably I don't know history that well~~ reproduced had a lot more to do with that being a thing than any vague non-materialistic idea that not being able to have a standing army magically lead to people acting like children.
  Also who cares if they're "children", ffs. Not a remotely materially relevant thing. Just a vague distaste for someone's vibes.
  
  “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains
  They lost it to China and the Soviet Union. But maybe losing the inter-imperialist rivalry hit them different.
- Tbf the whole point of that movie is that Shinji is a horrible person who ends up totally broken due to his inability to even try and confront any of his demons.
  
  That movie was an anime series with a few repeat like filler movies made afterwards, but yeah.
  
  Shinji is a horrible person who ends up totally broken due to his inability to even try and confront any of his demons.
  Or he's a very traumatized child who has been thrust into an extremely unhealthy environment, and manipulated every step of the way, and that eventually breaks him. I'm not saying he's a great person, but it's pretty clear that he never stood a chance from the get-go. He still chose to do what he did in that scene, but it's not done in isolation with everything else he's been through.
- The difference is that Evangelion is actually good unlike anything King ever wrote
  
  King is hit or miss but by sheer quantity he has more great books than many writers in their whole catalogue
  
  The Dark Tower series is fantastic. Also, you're in a definite minority. Steven King is well known as one of the greatest authors alive. He's wrote duds but much of his work is regarded as great, like Pet Cemtary, Christine, and Salems Lot.
  
  Stephen King struggle session! Stephen King struggle session!
  I’m not going to defend that part of It, of course. And he’s written a ton of crap that tends to follow along with when he got sober (good for him, but bad for his writing). But I gotta say, books like The Stand, ’Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and the first 4 Dark Tower books especially 1 and 4…. more than any other books I’ve read, I was unable to put them down. Like, I would try and find time on the toilet or waiting around some to find out what happens next. He absolutely knew how to tell an engaging story. And as someone else said, like him or not he defined the modern horror genre.
- I don’t think the show ever sympathized with Shinji. Well, at least I don’t sympathize with him and I didn’t interpret the show that way.
  
  Nah. Shinji was definitely not someone to be sympathized with.

Kids nowadays know everything about evangelion but nothing about John the evangelist 🙏
- AKA John Wick to the zoomers 🙏

The Shinji pose is so funny and I've seen so many cosplays of that one specific pose

It's a great show. Modern anime sucks. Prove me wrong!
- One Piece good
  FMA good
  Mob Psycho 100 good
  Other stuff probably also good, I haven't seen it
  Hellsing cool. Pure vibes.
  Castlevania was also good.
  Anybody got some good non-shonen to recommend? When I say good I mean good and not "yeah it's good for an anime".
  
  mostly drawing a blank but i really enjoyed bloom into you, gay romance rocks
- Define "modern anime"
- prove me wrong
  Promised Neverland and Made in Abyss
  I'm not sure why people are obsessed with Evangelion, what happened to make it some sort of "meme anime"? I never found it to be remotely popular while growing up, or even in the early 2010s when I did a lot of anime watching
  
  honestly, I've found revolutionary girl utena did everything evangelion was trying to do better. but it was aimed at girls so no one talks about it.
  
  even in the early 2010s when I did a lot of anime watching
  I think it was because it was accessible in the early-mid 00s, had great animation, and was edgy enough for the time. It's a great series, but it's definitely derivative of a lot of Tomino stuff.
  
  I think what made it the "meme anime" was that Evangelion was the first anime to really go all-out on merchandising. You could get evangelion curry. With sonic that's kinda funny, but when the anime is some weird spiritual allegorical thing, you get kind of a whiplash. Going from watching Shinji "god I'm so fucked up" to seeing them all smiling on a pack of oreos is jarring and kinda funny. It made people on the early net post the merch and share pictures of it, which led to making memes about the merch, which led to memes about the show itself.
  But that's just a theory
  
  A show called made in abyss about exploring a maiden's abyss is not as god a pun as it seemed years ago
- On top of all the ones mentioned, shoutout to Vinland Saga, that slaps
- studio trigger has some bangers. kill la kill and promare stand out as amazing leftist anime that directly call for revolution.
  one piece is also leftist and clearly calling for revolution but it's long and will take a couple more years to wrap up.
  
  Would not call Kill la Kill ‘leftist’. Heard that before and tried watching with a girlfriend and had to shut it off because it’s WAY too horny for seemingly underaged girls.
  Read a bit about it afterwards and something said the writer liked how Fashion and Fashism sounded similar and so the show is maybe against fascism but the horny talking sentient 400 year old clothes that occupy a teen girl and give her powers is creepy and we noped out.
  Can’t imagine there’s any sort of actual leftism in the show, and if there is it shouldn’t be bundled with sex pest demon clothing.
- Bocchi!
- Steel Ball Run
  I guess there's nothing more modern than anime that is going to get adapted in god knows how many years into the future.
- Golden Kamuy is excellent. Made for a mostly adult audience iirc, but not in a horny way.
  
  Don't listen to this guy, if you're into bara it is for you.

Remember seeing that as an 8 year old and thinking it was sweat lmao I only found out after reading a summary ten years later.

jfc

I still don't understand the ending
- Which one?
- Tbh it felt to me like tons of symbolism to hide a lack of actual depth
  
  AFAIK it was more like tons of symbolism to hide a lack of budget and time. It got janky and weird because they literally weren't given the resources to finish it properly. But then they were also trying to be weird and obtuse in general as an aesthetic, to the point where there really couldn't be a satisfying and comprehensible ending because you can't explain what was going on because that ruins the whole baffling mysticism feel and you can't just sort of resolve the tangible material conflicts without addressing all the weird mystic shit either, so instead they just went off the deep end and made completely incomprehensible nonsense with a shoestring budget and became iconic for it, so they just leaned into it even harder when they were given the resources to do more.
  
  they named a TV trope after it

This is really good.

Gonna plug this weird proto-punk song I found a few days ago Malewife: Get in the robot, Shinji