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.

Three-year-old Shinji, from Episode 21

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.

Shinji's Mental State at the End of the Story

Episode 25 and Episode 26 have Shinji feeling lost and begging for others to help him. Much of the TV ending is devoted to Shinji being taught by the other characters about the ability of individuals to make their own destiny by reshaping their viewpoint.

In Episode 26', Shinji chooses to reject Instrumentality for individual existence, even though it will be painful. He learned that he wanted real feelings even if he would be betrayed and hurt again, because fleeing from that reality brought him no happiness. This might suggest that, buried deep in Shinji, is the capacity for redemption and change.

In the final scene of The End of Evangelion, Shinji is surprised at seeing both Rei and Asuka alive before trying to strangle the latter. He had apparently been alone for some time before Asuka's return, and was nearly insane from isolation. The fact that he stopped strangling Asuka (and began sobbing at her caress), however, suggests that he's capable of returning to his true self.