- [Michael] This video is brought to you by Morning Brew.
(upbeat music)
What's up, guys. Michael here.
Nine years after the previous film
and over twenty years since the show first aired,
the story of Neon Genesis Evangelion
seems to have finally come to an end.
For real this time.
Thrice Upon A Time rounds out
the Rebuild of the Evangelion saga
and apparently brings Shinji's long story to a close.
After taking part in countless giant robot battles,
merging with the spiritual essence of his mother,
and watching the whole of humanity
get reduced to primordial soup only to be spat back up again
it's safe to say
that this kid's been put through the wringer.
But what did it all mean?
No matter which version of Neon Genesis Evangelion
you're most familiar with,
you'll find that it's less about giant robots
or apocalyptic angels,
and more about the struggles
of a lonely, damaged teenage boy.
So, to understand the show, we have to understand Shinji.
And to understand Shinji,
we have to learn about
one of history's most revered sad boys, Soren Kierkegaard.
We'll explain why in this Wisecrack Edition
on Neon Genesis Evangelion.
And spoilers ahead for the whole Evangelion canon.
But before we get into it,
I wanted to give a shout out to this week's sponsor,
Morning Brew.
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Now, back to the show.
And now, a quick recap.
Both the original Evangelion and the subsequent "Rebuild"
follow a pretty similar plotline.
Young Shinji is recruited by a shadowy organization
run by his father to pilot an Eva,
i.e. an enormous robot,
in order to fend off the Angels,
i.e. some apocalypse-inducing monsters
threatening what remains of the world.
Shinji and his fellow Eva pilots, Asuka and Rei,
work together to protect their world from these monsters.
Their confrontations with the angels escalate,
and that's where the Rebuild diverges.
That and swapping out the greatest theme song ever with,
(upbeat music)
with whatever this is.
(soft music)
See, mid-fight,
Shinji accidentally causes an almost-apocalypse,
and then almost does it again,
though this time his friends stop him.
The latest film, Thrice Upon A Time,
opens with a catatonic Shinji
whom nobody really wants to deal with.
Shinji's friends try to stop his dad
from fulfilling his evil plan, which we'll get to later,
but they all lose.
So Shinji rallies, takes on his dad,
and after a major therapy session, proves victorious.
Now, throughout the Evangelion show
and its various cinematic iterations,
Shinji is going through it.
Particularly in the fourth film of the Rebuild,
where he's almost comatose with despair.
And, much like me in seventh grade,
he doesn't really wanna exist anymore.
Seriously, fuck seventh grade.
It's the worst.
And here's where the influence of Danish philosopher,
Soren Kierkegaard crops up.
Fun fact, one of the show's original episodes
is even named after his text, "The Sickness Unto Death."
Now it may be a story
involving skyscraper sized sniper rifles
and penguins named Pen Pen,
but the Evangelion extended universe
really gets right to the heart
of some of Kierkegaard's greatest concerns.
Primarily, it investigates his idea
that the main source of our existential angst
is the fact that we are inherently fractured individuals.
That is to say, we're always caught
between who we are and who we want to be,
between the feeling of freedom and the force of necessity.
We're ephemeral minds inside meat and bone bodies.
That's really gross.
And worst of all, we're finite, limited beings
with the capacity to contemplate the infinite.
And all of this leaves us feeling miserable and hopeless.
In short, we're kind of a mess.
And this is certainly true for Shinji,
an individual who is forced to continually connect
and disconnect from a giant metal body
that both is and isn't his own.
And it doesn't get better when he's in the outside world.
He lacks a real identity,
and is constantly conflicted by the various whims
of those around him.
Throughout the story creator Hideaki Anno has spun,
Shinji seems to prefer taking orders from others
rather than making choices for himself.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Michael] He's torn between two impulses,
to shut up and do his job,
(speaks in foreign language)
or to simply run away from this (beep) existence.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Michael] In response, he shrinks into himself,
minimizing his existence as much as possible.
With no solid grasp on who he is,
he ends up wishing not to be at all.
- Only reason why I wanna be around anymore.
- Throughout Evangelion, we see other characters
dealing with the same sort of separation from self.
Shinji's fellow pilot Rei
is the most literal embodiment of this crisis.
She's a clone within a series of clones,
created from someone else's memory
and to serve someone else's purpose.
In response,
she also tries to remove any sense of her own individuality,
emotionlessly following the orders she is given.
Asuka, on the other hand, goes on the offensive.
Aggressive in all areas of her life,
(speaks in foreign language)
she tries to run from the damage
of her own sense of disconnect
by asserting herself onto the world
as forcefully as possible.
But in some ways,
the most dangerous form of disconnect we see
comes from Shinji's father, Gendo.
Because even though he's a grownup,
he is every bit as disjointed,
still unable to fully accept the loss of his wife.
Rather than working to cope with his grief,
he works with the very creepy organization SEELE
to execute an objectively bonkers plan,
The Human Instrumentality Project,
which will attempt to combine all human beings
into a single entity.
This would obliterate the entire concept of personhood.
We'd thus avoid the pain of dealing with other people,
and nobody would ever feel lonely again.
Cool plan, but I'll stick with therapy.
Anyway, here, Gendo is trying to avoid
what Kirkegaard believed
to be the greatest pain of human existence,
dealing with having a self,
which he characterized as a state of despair,
AKA The Sickness Unto Death.
And this state of despair
doesn't just keep us from understanding ourselves,
but also from relating to others.
Which, for Kierkegaard, makes organized society
kind of a bummer.
We see this reality manifest
throughout both the original series and the rebuild.
Shinji is plagued by intense social anxiety.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Michael] Indeed, he'll often retreat
from the world entirely,
rather than reach out for the care and compassion
he so desperately desires.
Similar to our guy Kierkegaard,
who would spend days alone inside his Copenhagen apartment
furiously writing and drinking way too much coffee.
He even broke off an engagement with a woman he loved
simply because he thought he wouldn't be able
to live up to her expectations.
Similarly, Rei numbs herself
to the entire idea of emotional contact,
while Asuka variously tries to take command
of her relationships, or eschews them entirely.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Michael] Because they can't reconcile
their own identities,
trying to forge any kind of connection with others
is a messy and potentially painful process.
Two fractured individuals
aren't the best match for a healthy friendship.
Evangelion literalizes this conflict
by invoking German philosopher Arthur Schopenhaeur's term,
The Hedgehog's Dilemma."
(speaks in foreign language)
- Schopenhaeur described human relationships
as being akin to a bunch of hedgehogs
trying to huddle together for warmth,
we desperately long for the comforts of intimacy,
but when we get too close,
we prick each other with our dumb quills.
Fearing the pain of human connection,
the characters all find different ways
of closing themselves off from others,
whether they're entering Evas, hiding in their rooms,
or listening to their Walkmans.
And in the most recent installment,
we find characters still grappling with these issues.
Shinji is, as always, unable to express himself
or comfortably interact with others.
Meanwhile, Rei has to be taught
even the most basic of human interactions.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Michael] And of course, Asuka remains as condescending
and antagonistic as ever.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Michael] Healthy relationships
seem to be in short supply for our animated friends.
So the big question that Evangelion,
and especially the Rebuild poses is,
how do we overcome this crushing sense of isolation,
both from ourselves and those around us?
The answer, according to both Kierkegaard
and 70s rock phenomenon Journey, is simple,
♪ Don't stop believing ♪
- [Michael] Indeed, Kierkegaard argued
that the only way to combat the despair of being human
is simply, to have faith.
That is, choose to fully believe in something
that you can't necessarily prove through logic
with any mathematical certainty.
His top pick for thing to have faith in was God,
but he also thought people could find meaning
by having faith in more human type stuff too,
like love or art.
Faith, he said, was the only way
to ever come to a meaningful understanding of the world
or our own place within it.
And more importantly,
it's the only way out of the cycle of despair
that we see so many of our characters caught in.
To this end, Kierkegaard cautioned against relying
on cold, hard logic,
which, while it can produce loads
of useful, practical information
about math and physics and stuff,
will never lead us to any greater existential truth
about ourselves.
That's because we're not logical propositions,
we're weird animals that get excited
about 'Appy Hour at our local Applebee's.
And Evangelion is, in some ways,
a dystopian testament to that idea.
While humanity has used its empirical know-how
to craft towering super weapons
and do battle with huge kaiju,
the only place any of it leads is towards annihilation.
Science and technology has not made for a happy world,
rather one filled with empty streets, lonely children,
broken homes and shattered infrastructure.
In fact the closest thing we get to a real community
is the refugee town in Thrice Upon a Time,
a place with far less technological power
than any other setting in the series.
The limitations of science
is exemplified in the character of Gendo,
who, rather than coping with the pain of losing his wife,
attempts to science-himself out of that pain.
And this is one of Kierkegaard's main concerns,
namely, that an emphasis on rationality,
which was all the rage in 19th century European philosophy,
ends up slowly destroying our own individual humanity.
Trying to solve existential human problems
like grieving for a dead spouse with rational logic
is a bit like trying to fix the carburetor
on your '72 Camaro with poems.
And this is why for Kierkegaard,
human despair can't be solved with reason,
but rather, with faith.
Now, for most of the latest film,
and indeed, most of the series,
Shinji is not what you would call a believer.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Michael] He seems conflicted about the basics of morality
and is in a state of constant doubt.
And this pretty much remains his whole-ass deal
until the the climax of the final battle
in Thrice Upon a Time.
With Asuka out of commission and Mari overwhelmed,
Shinji finally does what Kiekegaard wants us all to do,
he takes a leap of faith.
(speaks foreign language)
- Kierkegaard loves to talk about
leaps and moments of decision
because these aren't logical deliberations,
they're acts of freedom in which one takes a risk.
And these decisive actions
help us break the cycle of despair,
because rather than keeping us at our desks
rationally reflecting on our lives,
they force us to get our asses out of the door
and actually live them.
After spending most of the third and fourth movies
in passive despair,
Shinji finally decides to believe in himself,
and more importantly, to believe in the people around him.
See, for a long time, Shinji has ignored flashing neon signs
that his friends give a shit about him
and think he's capable.
It is only when he actually believes what they're saying,
that he can live up to the monumental tasks before him.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Michael] And that's when he steps up
and chooses to pilot Eva Number One for a final time.
This evokes philosopher Alain Badiou,
who builds off Kierkegaard
to argue for a type of collective subjectivity.
That's the idea that when people rally together
around a shared cause, they necessarily form deep bonds
and can achieve things which previously seemed impossible.
Think the peasants who started the French Revolution,
or the Mighty Ducks winning that hockey tournament.
And like Kierkegaard,
this happens when people have the faith
to commit to an idea or cause.
At its most extreme, Badiou argues,
we can become immortal as we relate to others
through an idea or cause.
In doing so, we can participate
in something bigger than ourselves and our own measly lives.
It's fitting that Shinji's come to Jesus moment
disproves the hedgehog effect,
finding that being close to and caring for others
actually makes your life less painful and more meaningful,
though it does not, to be clear,
mean you should go hug a hedgehog.
Of course, this all leads up to the final confrontation
between father and son.
When they first collide, they're evenly matched,
in identical armor, wielding identical weapons,
even making identical fight moves.
It isn't until a newly, socially, intelligent Shinji
breaks the cycle of combat
and tries to connect with his father
that they make any progress.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Michael] Here, Shinji finally understands
the motivations behind his dad's extremely ambitious
and impractical plan,
that is, the pain of losing his wife, Shinji's mom.
The pain caused by this emotional fracture
leads Gendo to try and annihilate
something that's essentially human,
his selfhood and that of every other human on earth.
Rather than taking a note from Kierkegaard
and bravely accepting his internal fractures
and trying to live a meaningful life,
he's simply trying to kill that difference.
It's both kind of rational
and also completely (beep).
And ultimately, it's not the ambition of his project
that stops Gendo,
it's finally connecting with another human.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Michael] Ironically, the man who was fighting
to artificially connect all of humanity
really just needed to go to therapy with his emo son.
After connecting with Shinji and achieving closure,
he can finally die and rejoin Shinji's mom
in some weird ether world.
And what about Shinji?
He's confronted his internal demons
and defeated/ freed his dad,
so, what more could a whiny teenage boy ask for?
A girlfriend, obviously.
After Mari appears to rescue him
we jump into a future where Shinji, for the first time ever,
is an adult.
Not only an adult
but one who can talk and even flirt with Mari,
his apparent partner.
Here, he's done what Kierkegaard never could,
namely, finding happiness, and of course, a girlfriend.
Once Shinji took the leap of faith
and found a truth he could care about,
he grew up and moved on to the next stage of his life.
Which brings us to one last element of this story.
You might have noticed there's an Eva pilot
we haven't mentioned yet, Kaworu.
He plays many roles in the story,
helping Shinji start to learn to be confident,
introducing him to music,
functioning as a homoerotic love interest,
and accidentally almost bringing about the end of the world,
this happens a lot.
But for us, his most important moment in the new movies
is this line.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Michael] See, at the end of The Rebuild
it is revealed that there have been many Kaworu's
and, it is heavily implied, many Shinjis, Reis and Asukas.
It looks like everyone's been stuck
in a good old-fashioned time loop.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Michael] However, at the end of Thrice Upon A Time,
Shinji has clearly moved onto a whole new world with Mari,
one free of Evas.
So, what are we to make of this?
Well, there's a lot of ways to look at it,
but we think there's something meta going on here.
Hideaki Anno has long talked
about how the ending of Evangelion wasn't satisfying to him,
after the show and subsequent movies ran out of money.
Not only that but since the release of the original series,
he's been largely known as the guy who did Evangelion.
That's in part because it was a great artistic achievement,
but also because it was a deeply personal piece of work
through which Anno worked through his own feelings
of depression and isolation.
Like a modern version of a certain sad Dane.
With both Shinji and Gendo each breaking through the loop
at the end of this film,
we can interpret this as Anno
finally putting the series to bed
and being ready, just like them,
to move on to something new.
That's also why it's fitting that,
as Mari and Shinji run out of the train station,
the movie concludes with some straight-up live-action shots
of the very town where Anno grew up.
Much like how Shinji finally escaped
from the spirals of teenage depression,
it seems that Anno can finally move on
from the magnificent project
that was Neon Genesis Evangelion.
But what do you guys think?
Is Shinji a Kierekegaardian hero?
Is loving people just like hugging a hedgehog?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
Smash that like button like you're preventing a third,
fourth, seventh, fifty ninth, sixty, I don't know,
however many impact, we're not sure,
and don't forget to ring that bell.
And as always, thanks for watching, later.
(upbeat music)