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There Is Always More to Say: Neon Genesis Evangelion
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There Is Always More to Say: Neon Genesis Evangelion
“Why do anime fans hate Shinji Ikari when he feels incredibly real to me?”
By Leah Thomas
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Published on October 16, 2025
Credit: Gainax/Toei Company
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Credit: Gainax/Toei Company
First Impact
I am a newborn, still closeted otaku, living with a roommate who hates me, when I begin sneaking off some Wednesday evenings to sit in the back row of the anime club. I am doing my best to become an otaku expert as expediently as possible, because this new trove of entertainment—a bounty I’d refused to look at for fear of being mocked in high school—has opened at before me like an Egyptian tomb, offering a new, deep obsession to fall into. It’s an obsession that will give and take and give and take and allow me, at least for the immediate future, to ignore my burgeoning mental illnesses and the infinite misery of attending a Big Ten school as a weirdo.
It is an unremarkable day in 2009 or something. I start watching Evangelion on the sunken sofa of our overpriced off-campus apartment. I have read online, more times than I can count, that Neon Genesis Evangelion is a masterpiece and required viewing for any would-be anime aficionado. Evangelion is homework, and I have always prided myself of being good at school.
But dozens of analyses of the show barrage me as I trawl anime forums. I cannot parse them. Philosophy? Freud? Biblical references? Shintoism? Depression? Giant-ass robots? An abusive dad, but that’s funny meme fodder, LOL? I cling instead to vague synopses that inform me of the following: In a post-apocalyptic vision of Tokyo, fifteen years have passed since some ambiguous cataclysmic event has decimated society, and a boy named Shinji Ikari is recruited by his bad-dad Genji to work for NERV, an organization that pits adolescent pilots in enormous brightly-hued mechas against alien attackers known as Angels.
My two takeaways during those first few episodes are as follows: 1. The backstory is so convoluted; 2. Why do anime fans hate this protagonist when he feels incredibly real to me?
Credit: Funimation
I love Shinji because he is a screaming mess. He is an actual teen placed under unfair, impossible pressure by a world and a parent that does not value him aside from his immediate usefulness. I, a chronically “misunderstood” aspiring author who traipses across campus with my iPod resolutely blaring Radiohead in my ears so that I do not have to think, strongly relate both to Shinji’s reliance on his walkman and his conviction that he is being hard done by. Of course, he really is. Petulant outbursts, impulsive choices, his tendency to shut down when overwhelmed? All of these things are fundamental aspects of being fourteen, and he never asked to be responsible for the future of humanity. Like Ender Wiggin of Ender’s Game, Shinji earns my immediate devotion and I will always defend his childish moments because he is a child. Many episodes later I, like Shinji, fall in doomed love with the character Kaworu, the first person to treat Shinji with unwarranted affection. For a character with a single episode of screentime, it is hard to overstate how powerful the inclusion of Kaworu is within the franchise. Kaworu is an Angel himself and, due to convoluted plot circumstances, learns he must die in order for humanity to survive. Does he show so much kindness to Shinji because he feels for the kid? Or is it another form of manipulation? By the end of the episode, Shinji is forced to kill this one, vital person. Kaworu smiles when Shinji’s mecha, Unit-01, decapitates him.
Yeah. For obvious reasons, my queer heart will always ache for this particular buried gay.
For all that happens in the final episodes—the dissolution into abstract imagery and Shinji angsting in a chair and the culminating dreamlike sequence during which every person he knows congratulates him for accepting his fate as both a tool for humanity but also his own individual person—it is Kaworu’s kindness and Shinji’s desperation that leave an impact on me, miserable on that sunken sofa.
Second Impact
“Dude. What if I cosplay as Ramiel?”
“Oh my god, that’s so good. You have to do it.”
It is late 2013. I have just returned from living in Taiwan. I am doing my teaching internship year, living in a rundown, filthy rental house in Lansing with Beatrice and Ryu (not their real names), two people I met at anime club, as well as Ryu’s 18-year-old girlfriend Carrie. Living together is not going well. Our landlord is apparently a known local slumlord. There are insects in the house and the Michigan basement is damp and reeking. I am the only one who attempts to clean the kitchen. Ryu finds a stray cat and brings it home, and then my cat begins to spray the walls. We cannot park our cars in the street because someone comes around regularly to siphon the gas. Squalor-House is near Sparrow Hospital and the screech of sirens is almost incessant. One block from our broken yard, you can look left down East Michigan Avenue and see the Michigan State Capitol building.
We have lived there for only two months. I have just learned that neither Ryu nor his girlfriend has been paying rent, allowing Beatrice to foot the bill while they refuse to find work.
Turns out anime club friends may not be the best roommates.
But our one salvation, the salve that seems to heal these wounds and bind us neurodivergent dumpster fires together is our mutual love for Evangelion. Ryu follows the psychological and philosophical aspects of the show like a Bible. He can explain aspects of the story I never even thought to take literally. “Oh, no, you see, Kaworu had to die because he realized that humanity has survived because it is descended from Lillith, not Adam, but he’s partly Adam.”
“Wait, isn’t Lilith Shinji’s mom?
“No, Lilith birthed humanity. But Rei is partially Lilith, and she’s also a clone of Shinji’s mom.”
“Oh. Got it, that makes sense.” I do not have it, and it does not make sense, but I cling to this offering of camaraderie, a buoy in the sea of chaos that is Squalor-House.
We are both enamored with Shinji, but Ryu’s love for Evangelion feels somehow more profound. Ryu’s mother is no longer in his life and his father, a gruff New Yorker, refuses to stop deadnaming him. Ryu knows intimately what it’s like to have a dad who values the role he should play more than who he is as a person. In the fuzzy, convoluted Evangelion universe, the reasons given for why pilots must be 14 years old vary. Sure, it’s for merchandising, but within the story, it gets heavy. The abridged explanation? Effective pilots must synchronize with the organic EVA unit in order to control it. Fifteen years before the events of the series, NERV began fusing EVA units to cores containing the souls of prospective pilots’ dead mothers. When Shinji bonds with his robot, it isn’t because he’s a savant, or “the chosen one,” or special in some other, cosmic way. It’s because he is desperate for parental affection, and his father is cold, and his mother’s soul is part of the robot.
These are mechs that rely on systemic child neglect to function.
Credit: Gainax
I have begun to construct my Unit 01 costume in the late hours after grading papers, in the downstairs bathroom so I don’t have to hear Ryu and his girlfriend having noisy sex all the goddamn time. I hot-glue strips of craft foam to a corset and grit my teeth when the glue seeps through the fabric and singes the skin on my stomach. Beside me, Ryu’s feral tomcat shits in his box. I take a yellowing mirror selfie.
Yeah, this con is going be great.
Halloween Weekend typically coincides with Youmacon, the largest anime convention in Michigan, held annually at the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit. This will be my first year attending, and Beatrice managed to secure us a room in the hotel block. I am determined to leave my own impact on the con. At this time, though I have secured my first book deal, my short stories are not selling, and my internship is a hellscape composed of bitter rural 7th graders who have loud outbursts during my read-alouds of The City of Ember and don’t even give a shit when I tell them the tragic story of Laika. I do not want to be a teacher; I want to write full-time.
Youmacon has to be amazing, or else. And so, when I tell Ryu of my Unit-01 costume plans and Ryu suggests dressing up as the goofiest of Angels—a literal floating geodesic dome with lasers attached—it’s a welcome notion. We will be in this together.
“How will you make the costume?”
“I’ve seen a tutorial on DeviantArt. I’m gonna buy blue plastic wrap and a few cardboard moving boxes, and I’ll just wear black tights or leggings and black shoes.”
“I can help!”
“I’m probably just gonna put it together in the hotel room.”
I spend all free hours before Halloween on my costume and finally take the Friday off from my unpaid “job” so that I can enjoy all three days of the con. Beatrice works at a lab and also at the cafeteria on campus between her classes, given she’s paying rent for three, and she has to work then. She will ferry Ryu and Carrie to the hotel after her shift, because neither of them has gas money. This is good, actually, because Ryu has yet to buy his costume pieces and neither of them has packed because they have been playing Persona 4 all week. I arrive at the convention center in time for check-in and walk around the con, visiting artist alley and the merch hall. It is after 9 pm when they call.
“Hey, can you help us bring stuff up to the room?”
“Sure!”
The convention high is upon me. I hurry down to meet them in the attached parking garage. When I get to their car, it is a wreck as always, but now the Monster cans and tortilla chip bags in the trunk are interspersed with random items of clothing, wigs, and makeup bags. Packing seems to have meant throwing everything in the trunk. They have a variety of tote bags but no suitcase, and there’s no way we four can carry everything. Carrie comes up with a solution that saves them from having to make multiple trips to the car. She and Ryu lay down a comforter on the damp floor of the parking garage, toss all their totes and shoes and snacks on it, and bundle up the corners into the largest, lumpiest bindle.
Walking beside Ryu and Carrie as they drag the filthy blanket across the convention center to the hotel, we receive more stares than any of the late-night cosplayers. Objects fall out along the way and Beatrice and I, laden like camels with more of their stuff, struggle to pick them up. My face burns with humiliation.
In the hotel room, I reset. Ryu has actually brought the materials for the last-minute Ramiel costume, and somehow we pull it off before 2 am. We build a pyramid from cardboard and plastic wrap. We fuck up a little – the real Ramiel is a floating blue pyramid with four sides, but ours has only three. But the effect is comical, and the costume is, somehow, a success.
Photo credit: Leah Thomas
The next morning Ryu and I enjoy our weird-ass meme poses in downtown Detroit, lounging beside the Detroit River, joking about how, actually, a place like D-Town works well as an apocalyptic backdrop. Every time we walk between the convention center and the hotel, we pass by a strung-out woman whose reluctant kids are selling candy bars for a “school trip,” just five dollars a pop.
One picture of us doing action poses at the Evangelion cosplay meetup goes a little viral on Tumblr, in no small part because Ryu’s black-clad ass pokes out under the entrance to the pointy costume. “Do Ramiel got a booty? He dooooo!” says the internet.
The weekend is not a total disaster. We have fun. But then we go home and I am faced once more with the reality of Squalor-House, its stinking litter boxes and grainy surfaces and ramen-crusted counters, and the prospect of returning to the rural school in the morning. November’s rent is due, and somehow two people who had money to spare on plushies and fan art at the con do not have money for rent.
I sit on my floor futon in my dingy room, far too close to the threadbare, gritty carpet. I have covered the room in books, but decades of holes in drywall, the residue of a thousand university student parties, watch me like eyes. I hold my cat close and cry into her fur. I really need a shower.
Three or four weeks later, during Thanksgiving weekend, I follow through with my threats to move out. A fellow teaching intern has become a dear friend, and during our daily carpools, she has listened in horror as I describe the inner workings of Squalor-House. She has found a Craigslist ad for a nearby duplex whose occupants, though extremely Christian (while I am religious), are tidy and seeking a basement roommate.
Unlike Ryu and Shinji, I do not have an absent father. My dad never wanted me to move into Squalor-House. He comes to help me pack up my stuff and stands between me and Carrie when she appears in the doorway. She is wearing dirty celestial-patterned pajamas. Tears run down her cheeks, snot drips onto her nose ring.
“Don’t do this to us, Leah. Please don’t move out. Please.”
“I can’t keep living this way. I told you guys.”
“I know, but please.” She really looks like a kid. She’s alone in the house at the moment; she has no family to return to. Beatrice has gone home to eat turkey with her family, and Ryu has found a part-time job.
“It’s already done. I’m sorry.”
She cries like a baby. My Dad and I pack up my cat and my books and move me into that refurbished basement. The walls are white, and everyone pays the rent. It is chilly down there, but clean. A three-legged black cat named Story lives upstairs with one of the roomies who is a vet-tech. He hops downstairs to visit us regularly, and though my cat doesn’t much like him, I do.
Things get a little better.
Credit: Gainax/Toei Company
Famously, director and franchise creator Hideaki Anno created Evangelion during a descent into depression. A lot of the series’ abstract imagery, as well as the existential pondering and subversive glimpses into characters’ psyches, are attributed to the creator’s own struggles with selfhood. The visceral screams of Evangelion’scharacters come from someplace organic.
Anno understood that sometimes the true apocalypse is internal.
Third Impact
I see Ryu, Beatrice, and Carrie exactly one more time. It is January, two months since I moved out, and limited US theaters are screening Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, the third film in the Rebuild of Evangelion franchise reboot. Anno finally has the budget and reputation and, presumably, the mental fortitude to retell his iconic story as a series of intricately animated feature films. He can’t seem to leave Evangelion alone—a sentiment that resonates with fans.
The preceding film, Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance, received almost unanimous praise from newcomers and old-heads alike, but this new entry has divided fans. The division is two-fold, perhaps: 3.0 deviates from the original series plot and dives right into abstraction, and it also depicts, far more blatantly, the homoerotic tension between Kaworu and Shinji. For me, neither of these things are a downside, and I think it’s a good film. It features a long, pensive piano sequence for which, as Ryu said, “There is no heterosexual explanation.” A bougie suburban theater an hour from Detroit is encouraging costumes at their one-night screening. I start packing the torn and weathered patches of my foam Eva suit into an Ikea bag and feel a pang in my chest. I do not want to go alone.
I reach out, hesitantly, to Ryu, Beatrice, and Carrie. Do you guys want to go see Evangelion together? I can drive.
Oh man we really want to but we can’t afford to go to the movies right now, Ryu tells me, and I do not ask for details. Instead I say, “I can pay for you guys.” I do not have extra money to spend. My internship is unpaid. But I feel I owe this strange, guilty favor to my former friends.
Can you bring that necklace I lent you at Youmacon? Ryu asks. It’s important to me.
Yes, I’ll bring it!
I did not wear it as part of a costume, but to one of the late-night anime comedy panels and the con rave. We had all dressed in bright wigs and kawaii fashion and Carrie wore a fox tail on her belt. Ryu had strung the little pastel stars of the necklace over my crown like a tiara.
I pick them up at the end of Squalor-House’s snow-covered driveway. The trip to the cinema is awkward. Carrie and Ryu sit in the backseat speaking only to each other. Beatrice sits in the passenger seat on her phone: she is obsessed with Tumblr, and cannot rest until she sees every post made by every account she follows. She follows a lot of accounts.
It is Michigan and snowing and my car is old (just weeks from the brakes giving out, though I do not know that). Finally, we make it to the parking lot with twenty minutes to spare. “I wonder if I should put my costume on,” I say, but I don’t see anyone else in costume in the parking lot, and my passengers say nothing, and I chicken out. We get inside, and I pay for the tickets. Ryu and Carrie buy giant buckets of popcorn. I feel like a mom who has taken kids out before a slumber party.
Credit: Gainax/Funimation
When I notice a few people are indeed in costume, I decide I want to put at least the top part of my Unit-01 get-up on. “Hey, Ryu, can you come to the car with me? I need help carrying the suit.”
Ryu recoils and begins whispering to Carrie.
“It’s okay, Ryu, I can go with her instead.”
Ryu steels himself and whispers that he’ll be fine. He can brave the parking lot.
Shame condenses in my chest. Ryu does not want to be alone with me. He acts like a dog that has been kicked. It is apparent that, in their world, I am a villain. I left them alone with the rent. I am the friend who should be decapitated.
We go to the car and I grab the bag holding my costume, and we do not talk until we get back inside the warm lobby.
I don’t end up putting on any piece of the costume apart from the corset, and I carry the helmet, and when the hosts ask people at the end of the credits to show off their costumes, I stay in my seat with my coat zipped up.
It is almost midnight by the time we return to Squalor-House.
“Did you remember to bring my necklace?” Ryu asks, when he gets out of the car.
I smack my forehead. “I left it on my desk. I’m so sorry. Next time!”
There is no next time. For more than seven years, that pastel-star necklace remains in my cosmetic bag until I finally throw it during the pandemic. It took me that long to come to terms with an upsetting truth: no matter how empathetic I have been to fictional Shinji Ikaris, throughout my life, I have struggled to grant challenging human beings the same compassion.
Fourth Impact
Twelve years have passed since I saw Shinji and Kaworu play the piano on the big screen. I have since lived in San Diego, Las Vegas, and Fujisawa, Japan. I now live in Yonago, Tottori, near the Sea of Japan. It is a beautiful city, one I hope to make my home.
I learn that my manager, Michiko, and her husband are both old-school Evangelion fans. She’s a decade older than me and has fond memories of watching the series as it aired in the early ’90s. “I love Rei so much,” she tells me. At work, she is a wonderful manager, kind to a fault. Outside of work, she is a dear friend. In 2023, I filed a power-harassment claim with the company ethics board, and we all underwent interviews about the extensive abuse we endured courtesy of a horrendous regional manager who bullied Michiko mercilessly. Now the investigation has resulted in something glorious and a little surprising: we have been vindicated. The harasser is being demoted (though not fired—this is Japan) and transferred to a different area.
Michiko gives me a present, a keychain covered in Pokémon that includes my name in Hiragana characters. “I want to take you out to thank you for helping us all.”
We go to the karaoke lounge. Her husband does an epic rendition of “What Does the Fox Say?” Michiko begins adding Evangelion tracks to the playlist. When “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” begins, she hands me a mic and I do my best. In her flawless Japanese and my broken attempt, we sing the iconic opening anthem. She knows every damn word. And she knows every word to every other song ever featured in the franchise, too, though I do not. I support her wholeheartedly as she belts them out, reliving her teen years. I bang my tambourine against the pleather sofa.
A few months later, Michiko and I are invited to Kyoto to take part in a ceremony celebrating branch schools that have achieved company goals. The day before the ceremony we have free rein to do whatever we like in Kyoto.
It is early December of 2024, and thanks to climate change, the leaves are only now changing. First, we go to Sanjusangendo, a famous temple whose main attraction is a hall displaying a thousand Kannon statues. Kannon is Japan’s interpretation of the Buddhist goddess of mercy. Michiko tells me, “This was always my aunt’s favorite temple, so I want to say a prayer for her here.” Her aunt, who was a second mother to her, died of cancer earlier in the year; the company did not give Michiko time off to attend the funeral in Fukuoka prefecture. Like NERV, our company tends to prioritize their goals over the wellbeing of their employees.
Outside, the maple leaves burn a glorious, fiery red.
Photo credit: Leah Thomas
After the temple, we visit Toei Kyoto Studio Park. I had hoped to see the Yokai Parade, but got the timing wrong and we have to attend a company dinner when the ghosts begin their evening march. Still, Michiko and I have a whale of a time exploring the park’s Evangelion Base attraction. We pose beside a towering statue of Unit 01 and line up to ascend the robot and sit in the pilot’s chair. The experience scans us, and a machine determines our sync rates. We learn that our AT fields are not compatible with piloting an EVA unit. At first, I feel a little disappointed, but Michiko laughs. “I don’t want to be a pilot; it seems very stressful!” She’s right. We are being spared a lot of pain. And though her aunt has passed and my parents are three thousand miles away, we are functional adults. This rejection is great news, really.
At the gift shop, I buy Taisho-era-inspired postcards of Shinji and Kaworu, and I get a Rei one for Michiko. Michiko buys a set of clear files to use at work.
It is a beautiful day to get in the damn robot.
Pre-Instrumentality
I quit the company and leave Yonago for Tokyo. Michiko and I cry as my train pulls away from the station. The decision is necessary but painful, more bitter than sweet. There will be no forever home for me near the stratovolcano and the sea. My cat mews on my lap all the way to Tokyo, and vomits twice in her carrier.
Three weeks later, I am teaching English at an international school in central Tokyo. One of my six-year-old students approaches me. He wants to show me a drawing, and clearly, he is very proud of it.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks. I see what looks like an explosion, a nest of red lines. “It’s the Fourth Impact. From Evangelion.”
“Wait, Evangelion?” I ask. “Do you like Evangelion?”
“Yeah, I love Evangelion so much! My brother too!” He tells me a few random snippets about the fourth impact and the final film, which I have not seen. I have never bothered to really comprehend the “plot” of Evangelion, the backstory, and symbolism. Knowing the minutiae has never been a necessary part of the experience for me. Seele’s Conspiracy, melting humanity into soup so people can finally get along, humans descended from a crash-landed alien or something? In truth, I do not know that I will ever understand Evangelion. I understand only that this often incomprehensible, fraught anime about so many difficult things has left an incomprehensible series of impacts on my life. My love for Evangelion is one I always find equally impossible to express. I suspect many others in the goo of humanity have felt the same, and that is one reason the show is considered a masterpiece. I’ve waited a long time to write anything about Evangelion not because there is nothing to say about it, but because others have said it better.
So what could my contribution be?
“Did you see the Evangelion McDonald’s collaboration?” I ask my student.
Credit: McDonald’s
I am referring to the latest in a long line of bizarre, comical collaborations between Evangelion and the most random of products. There are Sanrio collabs that depict Shinji wearing Cinnamoroll ears. This year I bought an embroidered satchel from Graniph that depicts Kaworu levitating between a battling Unit 01 and Unit 02. There is an EVA fashion label. There are very few merchandising opportunities missed by Evangelion. But the collab we are discussing is a true gem that inspired some epic advertising: a set of three transforming mechas, each disguised as part of a McDonald’s meal. Unit 01 is the burger, and 02 is the fries, and some other robot I don’t care about—Unit 04?—is the milkshake.
“Yeah, my brother wanted to get the burger one, but it was sold out everywhere!”
“I know, they did a lottery for the set. I couldn’t get it, either! But guess what?”
My student dutifully says, “What?”
“I found them at Hobby Off and bought them secondhand, so I have them now!”
His eyes go big. “Can I see them?”
“Sure. I’ll bring them in the next time we do Show and Tell.”
“Can I have one?”
I snort. “No, you cannot have one. They are mine.”
“I have to go tell my brother,” he says, and off he goes.
This student tells his older brother everything. At his age, he thinks his older brother is an otherworldly badass who pukes gold. His older brother can do everything, like make paper-chain dragons and read chapter books and draw the Fourth Impact so much better than he can.
As a teacher, I don’t get the hype. His big brother is notorious for shoving and hitting his kid brother. He delights in causing the little guy grief and denies him all possible forms of positive acknowledgement, but their parents seem to think big brother is SEELE’s gift to mankind. He is the sort of big brother who would happily kick this doting kid into a robot just to shut him up.
When I bring in the second-hand Happy Meal toys I paid more than double the initial price for, I will let the little brother play with them. But the older brother will have to ask, very politely, just to see them. I am determined to reward the child who is bullied and overshadowed.
Is it petty? I don’t care. Is it my place? Debatable. But I am at an age, now, where I take my own impact on this world more seriously. The most vital moments in life make landfall not during huge mecha battles in the mountains of Hakone, but during quiet moments between individuals struggling with their place in the universe. My contribution to the endless discussion on Evangelion is not new or particularly insightful, but I do think I have finally taken one lesson to heart.
Despite all my shortcomings, whenever possible? I stand in defense of Shinji.[end-mark]
The post There Is Always More to Say: <i>Neon Genesis Evangelion</i> appeared first on Reactor.
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