Evangelion: How Am I Supposed To Feel

Hey Lainons, So my gf and I watched Evangelion, the original series and the movies. I had never seen a single episode until then. She described to me that, in the very basic general sense, the show is all about the lengths someone will go to for the person they love. I really don't know how to feel about this description. I mean obviously there's a lot more that happens in the show, but I can't exactly tie it all together so easily like she can? Thoughts? Definitely going to rewatch in time.

>>35469 You should have posted this on >>>/vis/ I think its a good show, and not a romance / gynocentric show.

>>35469 >the show is all about the lengths someone will go to for the person they love. On the surface yeh. You should have posted this in /vis/ but whatever. There are a lot of ways to look at it. You can look at the surface where Shinji is learning to love others and learning to live/love himself (which explains the ending). EoE was like a dark version of this (supposedly it was also a fuarrrk you to people who said the congratulations ending was lame). The religious, philosophical and psychological explanations of Jung, Kant, Hegel, Freud and Kierkegaard are all important to understanding the story. I would recommend you read some of their works. Evangelion can be enjoyed as a surface level mecha for its surface level artistic composition, or in depth for its deep intellectual subjects. All of the characters have different motivations. >Shinji does not know who he is/isn't comfortable with himself. >Asuka wants to be loved. >Rei wants to belong. >Misato wants revenge. >Kaji wants knowledge and also to fugg misato >Shinji's father wants to be with his dead wife. >The pink cat girl is autistic and loves piloting EVA. A big part of the story is also how these conflicting values create tension between the characters. Nobody is wrong per se. At least understand ego death and what it means because it plays a huge role in the story. Overall the story has many different interpretations depending on who's paradigm you use.

>>35469 >in the very basic general sense, the show is all about the lengths someone will go to for the person they love your girlfriend is fuarrrking retarded(USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST, You should always elaborate on your opinions rather than just spilling the soykaf. Always argue in good faith and avoid using personal attacks.)

>>35475 Love is a complex emotion >Shinji had a love hate relationship with the characters and himself >Gendo wanted to end mankind because of his love for his lost wife >Rei was willing to die just because gendo told her to (also the episode when he rescues her she cherishes his broken glasses) >Asuka being a twat towards shinji despite the fact that there is blatant chemistry between them The motherly love berserk mode the EVAs have

>>35476 Yeah and insects fuarrrking is them loving each other, it doesn't mean it's that simple. Likewise, Eva most certainly isn't about love and/or happiness. It's about a little bitch not getting in the fuarrrking robot and the best dad in the world.

>>35469 Evangelion is multifaceted. That's one of the superficial threads. I wouldn't say it's about love. It's not about any of the characters directly, they were all born into and offered up as sacrifices to a matrix created by their parents. It's about everything. All you have to do is look at some of the album covers. Then consider the role of their mothers, and their fathers. Then look at how they've cast Lilith as the First Mother. Look at the types of groups that form, think about as above so below, that they're all parts of the same person. Or idealized internal versions of real people. Anno created Eva from a Hermetic and Kabbalistic perspective. Asuka and Rei are parts of the same person, it's also why Asuka is connected to Misato directly but Rei is off on her own, and why you merge their (inverted) eye and hair colors and you get purple (Misato). They're also the sun and the moon, among other things. So which Eva girl someone becomes fixated on either has to do with their own reflection (the Anima) or their mother combined with their relationship with their father. It's a coerced hypnotic regression to early childhood. It all takes place in a deconstructed symbolic space, which is key for Ericksonian hypnosis. Pictured here we see Asuka, after she woke up in the fetal position underwater, upside down in her eva, which is connected to NERV by an umbil!cal cord. She has a "rebirth" (called "false regeneration" on the sountrack). Look up the crowns of upper and lower egypt, white and red. Seele wears the upward triangle (masculine) NERV wears the downward triangle (feminine). NERV (represented by Asuka, red) is fighting with SEELE (upper egypt, represented by the white eva series) in front of a ruined pyramid (Anno's brutal cynicism, look at your monument now, built on top of a place that they just found to begin with). It ends with her destruction (the vultures she's felt circling her whole life descend and rip her to pieces), which prepares Shinji and Unit-01 as the sacrificial medium to create the unity of opposites. Hence why you see both the kabbalistic tree of life and Qlippoth, then all the penetration and transformation symbolism after Shinji / Unit-01 blasts out from under the pyramid. These are all mappings to core personality structures playing out early childhood roles in a symbolic space. It's a form of hypnosis. Lastly Evangelion is full of "occult" imagery, numerology, and split face / mirror shatter symbolism they flash for 1 frame. >>35476 You're confusing love and fear. Gendo was willing to end everything because he couldn't end himself. Rei was willing to die because self sacrifice is all that gave her value, it was a relief and better than seeing and living the truth as a real person. Asuka was a twat because she didn't want to connect and be tied down by someone else, as pain and detachment is strength. If you care about others and cannot hate them, suddenly you are restricted and your mind starts being really boxed in. It's interesting to see the interpretations from people with more normal psychology. I can't even human enough to form some overarching condensed narrative where "this character wanted X". I actually have to start on the base symbolic layers and build it up to that. I look at 3 people and see 1 person.

>>35479 After EoE they find Shinji in space within a Black Cube if I recall. In 3.33.

>>35479 >What is love baby don't hurt me I am extremely far from normal, lmao. I like all of the esoteric stuff you pointed out, but I think on a more human level what you said about each of the characters is just an extension of what >>35474 said. Gendo wanted the instrumentality project because he believed it could bring back his dead wife. To that end, he was willing to use everything in his power to get the one thing he couldn't have himself. He does get called out on it throughout the series. Asuka tried to be strong and independent even though she was really immature (her crying for her mother), her being called immature really hurt her like when Kaji tells her he's not interested in young girls like her. Looking at the characters from a more clinical and less esoteric sense, all of them have rich but deeply traumatized personalities, mostly stemming from the loss of a family member. Shinji is actually not so bad off, seemingly not too affected by the lack of his mother, so watching those around him suffer introduces him to trauma. His biggest desire in many episodes is to get his dad to finally respect him. Shinji also has a hard time accepting things and ruminates on them. Love and hatred are very strong emotions and actually contradict and support each other throughout the series. His inability to move on from his perceived mistakes makes him hate himself. This is a very human trait that causes people to make catastrophic assumptions out of situations and fall into despair. There are a lot of flawed paradigms here where the characters fall into thinking traps under stress. In a way the series has a bunch of people with really soykafty stress coping put into end of the world life threatening situations. Pic related is how they act most of the time.

>>35487 By "more normal" I didn't mean you were a "norm!e" or some kind of surface layer airhead. I suppose I see everyone as normal compared to me. All of the characters are fundamentally incomplete beings, like Humpty Dumpty at every level. I agree with your analysis though. The only thing I'd say is the key isn't the presence of their maladaptive coping mechanisms or cognitive sinks, but their origin and the feedback loops that sustain them. Which the series does go into. Why Asuka says "baka Shinji". Why is alone and detached, and lives in an empty strictly utilitarian room, and has no conception of it being "wrong" nor has anyone that intervenes. The aspect I didn't mention which is more disturbing is if we consider it all to be, at least in part, a symbolic manifestation of Shinji's inner landscape, and we see Rei as a component of his Anima, the series basically his father only interacting with him and his world through his mother. His feminine aspect and the components of the core self which were both created by her and solidified by her loss.

>>35488 Also she was created by Gendo and Fuyutsuki to begin with, and then given to him. Implanted within him. He never knew his mother and was given their distorted replacement (which I assume has part of the soul of Lilith within it, and was fragmented further to animate Unit-00). He tried to connect with his "dead mother" through her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_mother_complex?useskin=vector Asuka was the domineering, judgemental, and rejecting aspects of a mother. Misato was the maternal figure that tried to be a friend. Of course all filtered through an indirect somewhat sexual lens.

>>35489 >>35488 That's a really interesting observation. I think another aspect of the series that supports your perspective is the music. https://genius.com/Arianne-schreiber-everything-youve-ever-dreamed-lyrics https://genius.com/Loren-and-mash-thanatos-if-i-cant-be-yours-lyrics https://genius.com/Arianne-schreiber-komm-susser-tod-lyrics The mother complex and maternal symbology are pretty much a constant undertone. On the theological side, the light/dark-yin/yang-male/female attributions of Adam and Lilith/eve also show up a lot. I think that there is also an interesting contrast in Eva (German name for "eve") and Lilith, who depending on which theological train of thought is used was Adam's first wife, and in other stories a demon of the night. EVA was created of/by man while Lilith is eternal and primordial. The scene where Misato kisses Shinji in the elevator also intrigued me. What was your interpretation of that?

>>35469 If by how far a person can go for love she means Rei willing to die for Gendo. Then may be. If she is willing to die for you, you are lucky to have her. I want a girlfriend like that as well.

>>35491 The elevator scene is hard to put into words, it's multiple things at once. It was an act of sacrifice and submission, giving up, but not in a negative sense. Submission to her feminity, acceptance that she couldn't be a mother to Shinji, acceptance of her resentment towards and loss of her father and attempt to find him through Kaji. She finally fully took on the role of an adult, or at least tried to. It was also a merging, or disambiguating, of the three primary roles: Mother, lover, friend which she oscillates between anyway (Asuka often being sister as much as love interest, Rei being stranger). She tried to free him from his self hatred (quasi-maternal) and connect the only way she knew how. When he sees the blood it's of course just another loss. He can't accept it, or the version of himself she tried to show him. It was the natural conclusion (and reconciliation almost) of her trying to touch his hand (and he rejects it) after Kaji dies (iirc). So she was reconciling the roles, and making him a man by coming to him as a woman, rather than a sort of friend sort of guardian / mother to him and Asuka. I still haven't quite decided. Her last words being "Kaji, did I do the right thing?" I think says it all. I can feel what's going on, but can't fully condense it into words.

>>35493 Really reminds me of the counterpoint to Kaji. Watering his watermelons while the whole world is falling apart around him, being the father that shinji never had but also like an older brother. Kajis death was a little ambiguous too. I think that it's important that the characters aren't substitutes for what they were trying to be. The whole ending dialog about internal vs external perception and the characters trying to reconcile their actions with the way others would expect them to act fuels a lot of their negative thoughts. I interpreted the elevator scene a little differently. In a final act of love (like you said a merging) she wants shinji to carry on as a man, both for her sake, and to atone for her past. Almost like if she could save just shinji and he could live on, then maybe her life was worth it after all.

I think that description makes sense when it comes to Gendo and the actual plot of the show. Everything only played out as it did due to Gendo's obsession with his late wife and how much he wanted to be able to meet her again. Yui's motivation however was much more selfish although she was the one who sacrificed herself (I believe? Don't remember what exactly happened to her anymore) to create the Eva

>>35475 I was going to post this.

This scene (the circular way the NERV surface was blown open) always made it look like they were on the moon, looking up at the Earth. The first volley of missiles is 57, second is 63. Difference of 6. Add them together you get 120, 15th triangular number. 12 becomes important and is gradually associated with Asuka leading up to her death (Evangelion uses 4 as a death number as well, but Asuka's ritual death was a special case). Triangular numbers are important in Evangelion.

>>36004 Here we see Asuka's "02" drawn as "12" instead. 33 vetebrae leading to 12 cranial nerves. Christ lives to 33, leaves 12 apostles. 12 Annunaki. Lilith has 6 wings on each side with her in the center making 13. 616. 7 vertebra protruding from the Lilith as she forms with a septagon in the background, 4+3 eyes on SEELE's mask. etc

>>36004 4 is a death number in asian languages because it sounds like death. Numerology is important to many asians.

>>36008 44. Pink square earrings. They later orient the shot with Shinji in the sandbox to match the orientation of Ritsuko's earrings.

>>35469 The series is about the importance of human connections; not necessarily about love (although that is a part of it).

>>36010 Humans can only connect to that which they can love.

>>36011 Someone who is everyone and no one cannot connect with anyone. They may neither love nor truly be loved by anyone.

Bein alone all the time is like kicking dead whales down the beach. But being next to others all the time also is like kicking dead whales down the beach. There's a balance one must find right in the middle.

I was just thinking of the posts I'd made *somewhere* the last few days, then this thread got bumped. That's where they were. Just going to copy a thread I made recently on /a/. Only two sets of footprints, never noticed this before. Rei (the Anima / Schizoid core / connection to Lilith in all beings) doesn't actually exist. She has no reflection in the world, she looks behind her and there are no footprints. In the world, not of the world. Lilith is a symbol of the primordial maternal, a layer over the unconscious mind and base reality. Eve / Rei is sensory reality and a bridge (Anima component pretending to be Eve, along with Lilith. This why Eve is made from part of Adam, Eve is a dream world). Adam is the conscious mind, the primary vessel for the base awareness and intention (the I). Shinji letting Rei go is like his second separation-individuation, she is a blending his mother and the "first mother" (the material world, sensory reality). It's about waking up, and "growing up", on every level. People can say 2deep4u and so on, but it fills me with a sort of terror and then just a sort unbearable sadness. It's haunting, the past is dead, and so your memories are also dead. The only thing that brings them to life is you. So there is nothing other than being alone, in that sense. [blog] When I finally got around to watching 3.0 + 1.0 I had actually regressed into what I just call "robot child alters", I didn't even realize it. I was working at a farm at the time, had been for a while. So seeing the end of Rei after she works gardening, the symbolism of the removal of the suit / externally programmed role and directives, Shinji sitting in the ruins of Nerv, Unit 01 long gone. Quite a parallel, mirror world. Still don't know what to make of Evangelion if I try to put its psychological effect into positive and negative terms. I think its inflation of intimacy terror and refusal to change or grow, to almost cosmic, existential, ontological proportions, may be counterproductive. In the immediate sense. Either way with the fate of the charatcers (as aspects of one person) they got my psychology right. That's how it happened. Scripted lives. The other way to see it is that Rei and Lilith are the real main characters in the as above so below, as within so without, fractal decomposition psychological allegory. The story is just told through the transient ego, ie Shinji. I think this album cover pretty much tells the entire story of Evangelion in a single image.

>>40187 Ah, Guess not. That's unfortunate. The soyjak attack apparent led to msot of this thread being wiped. There was a ton of discussion here. What the fuarrrk dude. I'm sick of this soykaf planet. Everything always is like kicking dead whales down the beach. It's not just decay and transience, just fuarrrkin'... bullshit. Every time. fuarrrking is like kicking dead whales down the beach. wtf man

>>40186 The sonic the hedgehog dilemma >>40187 3+1 seemed like a bit of a fever dream. In some ways, I felt like the entire atmosphere was trying to put all the bad things behind you and move on (death & rebirth). There is a strong religious sense of reforming oneself after experiencing ego death. the empty vessels and shells of our past give birth to the future - but only if we are willing to let them go. Not make them disappear, but rather look at the past as objects of the past. Even the ending seems to attest for this. Many esoteric systems deal with destroying or forgetting the self to create the "true" self. What you call the transient ego. In some ways, interpreting Rei as the main character, or even an observer in a post instrumentality world makes more sense. I had a hard time figuring out if Rei even existed partially through the series. I thought it was implied that Rei actually died, and her soul could not be returned to an earth bound vessel after all the clones were destroyed. Once instrumentality happens, and she in theory has the ability to restore the human boundaries that shinji wanted to keep, her body was restored, but only as a transient memory, because the world was restored by the limited memories/collective unconscious.

>>35475 It was a subtle reference to how she stays with someone who has no ability to form opinions of their own.