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"Mature Content!" |
| “ | I mustn't run away! | „ |
| ~ Shinji Ikari. |
Shinji Ikari is the main protagonist of the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise. He is the son of Gendo Ikari and Yui Ikari, and the pilot of EVA Unit-01, warding off numerous Angels from initiating Third Impact and attempting to emotionally bond with co-pilots Asuka Langley Sohryu and Rei Ayanami. He lives with his caretaker Misato Katsugari, being forced to balance school life with the tasks of saving the world, causing him to be driven increasingly insane with emotional trauma as a result.
Shinji is extremely mentally ill, shy and emotionally insecure, with much of his mental neuroses stemming from his abusive relationship with his father, who abandoned him when he was young, and the absence of his mother from his life as a result of her deliberately merging with EVA Unit-01. He is generally kind, courteous and empathetic, but his polite and kind exterior hides a noticeable selfish streak and desire to force others to be inflicted with and feel his suffering, with his mental problems and motivations being increasingly dissected over the course of the series.
In the Japanese version of the anime, he is voiced by Megumi Ogata.
In the original English dub by ADV Films, he was voiced by Spike Spencer. In the newer Netflix dub, he was voiced by Casey Mongillo.
His Good Ranking[]
What Makes Him Admirable?[]
- Protects humanity from annihilation by Angels that wish to annihilate mankind time after time.
- While desperate for his approval as a result of his severe emotional abuse, he still recognizes his father is an abusive monster and repeatedly condemns him and his actions.
- He is generally polite and convivial to others.
- In the first episode, he offers to pilot the EVA Unit instead of a heavily injured Rei. Shinji did not know that Gendo had created numerous other Rei clones that he could put her soul into, meaning that at the time Shinji was acting in order to save her life.
- Attempts to connect with the seemingly emotionless Rei numerous times, taking note of her apparent loneliness and asking her to smile after he saves her life in Episode 6.
- Manages to warm an initially cold Toji even after Toji punches him due to his sister being hospitalized as a result of accidental collateral damage when EVA Unit-01 went rogue.
- When Toji is enlisted by Gendo (who has been using Tokyo-3's school population as a testing field for EVA pilots), Shinji is horrified when Gendo is willing to kill him when his EVA unit is corrupted by an angel, and desperately tries to stop him to the point that Gendo forcibly takes away his controls and installs a Dummy Plug system to do the job.
- When Toji barely survives the experience and is severely hospitalized, Shinji is so horrified he nearly retires from piloting the EVA before reluctantly doing so again.
- He saved the main NERV members from Zeruel when the latter was about to kill them after entering into the NERV headquarters.
- Provides Kaworu with the first unmitigated interactions with another person that the former has ever experienced, as he had only been raised by SEELE operatives previously, which causes Kaworu to fall deeply in love with him.
- Grants Kaworu's wish to die in order to allow humanity to continue on, in spite of the extreme emotional toll that this leaves on Shinji.
- As a result of showing kindness to Rei, he motivates her to develop her own will as an independent person instead of Gendo's doll and to turn against Gendo for his cruelty towards him and allow Shinji to have the deciding factor in instrumentality.
- Rejects the comfortable lie of instrumentality in favor of living in an imperfect world, determining that he would prefer to see those that he was friends with again instead of existing in a false tranquil reality.
- Grants all life forms the ability to return to their physical bodies by manifesting themselves.
- Inherits his mother's anti-nihilist philosophy, deciding to continue existing for his own sake.
- Demonstrates very clear remorse for his actions and the will to amend for them, as the poster is confirmed to be canon and takes place after the final frame of him crying, instead having recovered and assumed a more confident stance.
- While he wasn't informed of their intentions in doing so and was manipulated by Gendo, he ultimately manages to fulfill his parent's intended goal of a reversible third impact that would go contrary to SEELE's goals.
- Essentially ends up serving as the lowest common denominator for the rest of humanity, as someone as dependent on other's approval and broken as him is able to re-manifest himself as an individual being, meaning that the vast majority of people likely will.
- In 3.0, he is deeply disappointed in Misato’s cold and hypocritical mistreatment of him, and at WILLE for passively allowing it.
- Even though he apologizes to Asuka for the Bardiel Incident, he doesn’t condone her using it to justify her complicity in Misato, and by extension, WILLE’s scapegoating him.
- In Thrice Upon a Time, he manages to help Gendo see the error of his ways, and triggers "Neon Genesis", which, while wiping Gendo, Yui, and all Evangelions out of existence, restores the world to a pre-Second Impact state. While this would have erased him as well, Gendo letting Shinji live through the process shows how he is finally aware of his responsibility for Shinji's mistakes in the grand scheme.
- He makes peace with Misato after the latter realized her errors, even though her mistreatments on him proved too repulsive and objectionable to be truly forgivable, let alone justified by her tragedies as detailed by her son Ryoji Kaji Jr. (although similar to Gendo did, the key difference was Misato unfairly perceived Shinji as her archenemy).
- He forgives Mari’s (implicitly pragmatic) allowance of Misato’s cruelty towards him when she takes responsibility for it by helping his effort in restoring the world to normal and removing the DSS choker from his neck in the final scene.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- His cripplingly low self-esteem is only matched by boundless ability for self-pity, that results in him emotionally isolating a lot of people and refusing to reach out to people who are clearly willing to help him. Granted, Gendo was responsible for starting the cycle of shame by abandoning Shinji in the first place.
- He maintains a great degree of repressed loathing towards other people, especially Asuka.
- Shinji wasn't motivated to pilot the EVA to save humanity, but instead did it because he desired emotional affection and affirmation from his father and later from other people.
- He threatened to destroy half of NERV's headquarters if his father didn't talk to him due to him being furious over Gendo almost causing Toji's death. However, Shinji’s outrage at NERV for accepting Gendo’s decision was completely understandable as they took zero responsibility for inciting this behavior from Shinji.
- He sexually assaults Asuka by masturbating to her unconscious naked body. To make matters worse, this was after she had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt, and the ending of the film implies that she now knows that he did this as a result of instrumentality.
- After emotionally withdrawing due to Kaworu’s death, he hides in a corner as he knows that innocent people that he’s come to know at the NERV staff are being slaughtered. This stands in contrast as everyone else in the situation except Gendo is openly attempting to stop SEELE’s invasion, including Asuka, who had just awoken from a coma. However he was too depressed at time at the time making it somewhat excusable.
- Slows Misato down as she attempts to rescue him, risking both her life and his own.
- When taken the Giant Naked Rei creature, he declares his hatred of humanity for their unwillingness to understand him, and declares his desire for both his own death and theirs, initiating instrumentality, which melds all lifeforms into a hive mind made of LCL that results in ego death. However, he is so severely, deeply psychologically broken at this point as a result of Kaworu's, Misato's and Asuka's deaths that his mental stability is essentially non-existent.
- Attempts to strangle Asuka while in instrumentality to get a response from her. When he doesn’t get any, this tips him off to reject instrumentality, but it still demonstrates the depths to which he’s sunk at this point.
- Upon seeing Asuka in the real world after managing to manifest, he begins strangling her as well, ignoring her choking and only relenting when she reaches out a hand to him, which causes him to break down crying.
- While Shinji changes his mind on instrumentality and returns to reality and allows other people to do so, redeeming himself, it’s very clear that it will take a very long time for humanity to recover, and the world will likely be thrown into chaos for multiple years, even more so when compared to the previous impact.
- Although Shinji causes the Near Third and Fourth Impacts in the Rebuild continuity, the former was done purely on accident, and the latter most likely would never have happened if Misato hadn’t alienated Shinji by acting so cruel to him in 3.0. Shinji does feel remorse for these incidents, and Misato even finally acknowledged her misguided role in the events surrounding both those Impacts in TUaT after her failure to stop Gendo.
Trivia[]
- Shinji Ikari is, so far, one of the two Inconsistently Admirables in Neon Genesis Evangelion, alongside Rei Ayanami.
- While Evangelion Unit-01 did appear in the Transformers x Evangelion crossover story Transformers Mode: EVA Shinji is absent in it and remains unclear if he piloted the mecha offscreen or remotely, even if the former was confirmed true, he wouldn't be Inconsistently Admirable in that continuity since he would fail the admirable standards to Optimus Prime and Misato who had more important roles in taking down Angel-Scream.
External Links[]
- Shinji Ikari on the Heroes Wiki
- Shinji Ikari on the Inconsistently Heinous Wiki
- Shinji Ikari on the Evangelion Wiki