Shinji (Profile)
Profile
At the age of three, Shinji lost his mother to the Eva-01 Contact Experiment. He was there to witness this, causing a trauma that had lingering effects upon him.
Shinji initially appears somewhat passive, most content when he was living with his ‘‘sensei’’ and not feeling like he had to do anything but exist. And at first, when put to Eva piloting, he does it because the others tell him to.
But Shinji is far from indifferent to the people around him. He yearns for the praise of others and that is his primary motivation for Eva piloting: to be noticed and treated well. Despite the cynicism he sometimes expresses about his father, Shinji wants Gendo's love as well. But because Shinji cannot find a reason to pilot for himself, he subsumes his entire identity in the act.
Shinji is also afraid of pain, and of being hated or left behind. This might stem from being "abandoned" at a young age by both of his parents (though his mother, in truth, hadn’t gone far), and his blaming himself for not being good enough to make his father stick around.
Perhaps because he has had little meaningful contact with others, Shinji has difficulty controlling his emotions and seeing nuance in them. In Episode 18 he fixates on saving the life of a single pilot when Bardiel could destroy many more people, and at certain points in End of Evangelion he shows a considerable anger and indifference, even wishing that everyone in the world would die.
Yet Shinji is also aware of his own faults, and can appear gentle and compassionate. He is the only one who tries to find a reason to fight the Angels, and sometimes his justification for fleeing from piloting is to avoid hurting others. Shinji is also usually very polite.
Shinji has a nervous tic in which he often twitches or flexes his right hand when being thoughtful, nervous, or anticipating something. In early episodes he can often be seen plugged into his SDAT music player to shut out the world, though in Episode 25' he ignores its dead battery, a sign of his increased apathy. In Episode 15, Shinji mentions that he's been playing the cello since he was 5 years old, because "No one told me to stop". Despite his lack of enthusiasm, he apparently has some talent at it, according to Asuka.[1]
References
- ↑ Shinji seems to be downplaying his talent. Despite his downplaying in Episode 15, he can play Bach's Suite No. 1 Prelude in G major, BWV 1007, which is not a beginner level piece. "They represent an enormous body of work, taking over three hours to play in one sitting. They also represent a huge and never ending challenge for any cellist. Like so much of Bach's solo works for any instrument, the easier movements can be begun at an early stage, but some movements will be a source of stress for the rest of your life." and "Anyway, all this makes Bach's venture quite an audacious one: I can only assume that there was a specific virtuoso for whom Bach wrote this set of suites. Either that, or he had the good fortune to have a pool of talented cellists, in spite of the humble nature of his station." (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1372154)
- Shinji is also seen playing the aforementioned piece in Evangelion Death, though it is an alternate universe Shinji playing this piece, not the same Shinji of the series.
