You said it better than I could. The religious imagery in Eva is a mask. It’s not about that at all. It’s about people at different stages in life with different pesonalities facing different issues that most of us can relate to or at least understand. It’s very simple.
Some of the things they explored were death and suicide; different stages in relationships, from Shinji’s first kiss to Misato’s unmarried-at-30 status and everything in between; Shinji’s personality complex, which a lot of young boys share, including myself to an extent; and of course war, but from an angle that doesn’t glorify it like the Gundam series do. kills three colonies in one shot with gun that projects supernovae while hypocritically wondering aloud when the slaughter will ever end
What’s shinji’s personality complex? I know he’s a fuck job, that’s for sure. I heard he was autistic. That kind of explains why he was dicking around with Rei’s glasses.
It’s pretty stupid he “blossomed” and became more social. Does that have to happen in every anime?
In Patlobor OVA they said “this isn’t a super robot show with an autistic main character”. In the Eva handbook they said super robot shows have big strong men with booming vocies as main characters
Shinji has a bit of every teenager complex ever seen. He’s afraid to open up to people, desperately needs affection from his mother, his mother is dead, desperately needs affection from his father, he hates his father, his father doesn’t give two shits about anyone, he is autistic, is terrified by the prospect of becoming related to someone, desperately wants to be related to someone and since he’s Japanese, probably has a small dick. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Thankfully, Asuka and Rei are easier to crack down. One is still traumatized by her mother’s suicide/attempt to kill her and is obsessed with being useful so as not to be discarded, and the other one just wants someone’s affection in order to have a reason to live.
Gundam glorifies war by pretending to be philosophical about it, then ending every conflict in a massacre.
Seeing Epyon fly over fifty giant robots and slice them in half while Rhythm Emotion plays in the background is cool, but to say it doesn’t glorify war is just a lie, especially since it’s done in a nation of pacifists.
Seeing Heero blow to smitherines a plane filled with peace diplomats says a lot about the show. The fact that he didn’t know doesn’t matter. The fact is, without pilots killing other pilots, you don’t have a premise and the series ends.
Most of my examples are from Wing because that’s the one I’m most familliar with, but as others have pointed out, certain themes carry over.
The only time I’ve seen any exploration of real peace was in Endless Waltz when Zechs and Noin aim for limbs and weapons specifically, to immobilize their opponents instead of killing them. When Zechs realizes they’re losing, he explains that he’d have won a long time ago if his goal was merely to destroy mobile suits.
The difference is that people did care about that one. And it was prevented.
My favorite was Quatre burninating a whole colony with the Wing Zero and then later still having the balls to play the peacemaker feminoid.
Off topic, but did anyone notice how many times the Gundams were “destroyed for good” in that show? Just how many times do they need to blow those things up before they can finally be considered scrap?
I had a friend who tried to get my to watch Gundam. Three different series. I never got more than a half-dozen episodes into any of them. Each time I thought, “I don’t care about any of these characters. Screw this.”
Basara, can you justify calling Shinji a “horny teenager” with anything other than the time in End of Eva when he gets off seeing Asuka naked?
I’m going to use Gundam as an example simply because it’s been referred to repeatedly in this thread: Would you call the Gundam Wing pilots “horny teenagers” simply for being teenagers despite the fact that none of them, save maybe for Duo, had any sort of recognizable sex drive and in the case of Heero/Wufei/Freaky Haircut Dude, were mostly devoid of human emotions?
They had to be born the year Second Impact occurred. Why? I don’t care because, again, the plot doesn’t matter.
I call that “Stuff that revolves around teenagers”.
And by the way, Pierson has already told you this on the Tsukihime thread: You are just making crap on the go simply to not say “you are right” and only making yourself look even more stupid than before. As for me, this is the last reply I’m giving you in this thread.