I'm a big fan of Gainax Studios - that damn animation studio set up by anime fans and for anime fans. A big fan, but not an Otaku. I don't know who started it, comforted by the knowledge that the info is safe on Wikipedia's servers. And despite my prancing around as knowing everything, I don't really want to know Gainax all that well, personally. Sometimes, it is best to keep a fan's distance to enjoy their stuff, and I have been enjoying their work for the past 20 years or so.
Three of Gainax's best work ranks high on my top 10 anime of all time - the sublime FLCL (or FuriKuri or FoolyCooly), the romantic Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (His and Her Circumstances) and the pop-culture defining Panty and Stocking (sometimes with Garter Belt). And yet one of the most intriguing characters in anime is from perhaps the most well-known of all Gainax creations - Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion (or Eva for short).
Shinji was a revolution in anime as much as the mecha designs in Eva and the highly philosophical and religious themes. The mecha designs of Eva moved from the manly Super Robot of the Go Nagai era in the '70s to the science-based samurai armour-inspired Real Robot era with Gundam and Macross to its signature concept - organic and feminine.
Shinji, meanwhile, deconstructed the typical mecha anime character - from the brash hot-blooded, death before dishonour of Ryouma and Kouji, the nihilist pragmatism of Hayato, to the cowardly, introverted, effete Shinji.
Shinji is a coward who runs away from everything. He ran away from his father's almost criminal negligence and reckless endangerment, he shuts himself from the world and other people by means of a Sony Walkman and more tellingly, hides literally in the womb of Eva-01 (the pilots are inserted via plugs into the belly of the semi-organic monster) which is later revealed to be carrying his mother's spirit or something. For all intents and purposes, Shinji ran away into his mother's uterus and sometimes gets reabsorbed.
It is a very graphic representation of wanting to have never been born.
As a young man, I sympathised with Shinji. I did not and do not want to crawl back into my mother's womb, but there were times in my life I would have prefered to have been aborted as a fetus.
I was a runner. And I also let other people run roughshod over me.
Around five years ago, I decided to turn around and tuck my chin to my chest and headbutted everything and everyone into submission. With varying degrees of success.
But success is not the point. The point is to stop taking bullshit and beat everything into submission. Especially if I encounter another Shinji who blames everyone and everything but does not take accountability for himself.
We all have a moral obligation to take care of ourselves. It's not a choice; it's a responsibility. I loathe to talk about responsibility because people who usually talk of responsibility are usually irresponsible. People who incessantly talk of honour are dishonourable. We are all walking paradoxes.
I just wanted to share this because I'm feeling combative. Itching for a fight. But I know enough to choose my battles. It is simple profit/loss. Even if I win, even if everyone agrees that I am right - and again, I do not need people to tell me I'm right; I KNOW I'm right - there is nothing at the end of it but stupidity and waste.
These days, I hardly fight. I just step aside and allow the laws of entropy to decay and destroy everything - to strip away the unwanted evil.
However, surging forward, I do feel the need to climb into a Pilder and dock with Mazinkaiser. Shinji and Eva might very well define the psychological, philosophical and religious aspects of '90s mecha, but my heart, my soul, burns with Fire Blaster.
