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walw6pK4Alo
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 5428
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 Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 10:54 pm |
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| Chagen46 wrote: | I really have no idea why everyone thinks Shinji was a whiny bitch.
Like you wouldn't be depressed/angsty if your dad who you despise forces you to fight lovecraftian horrors to save the world in a giant robot which has the soul of your dead mother that may or may not be powered by your own mental problems.
Well, Shinji did f*ck the entirety of humanity over in the end of the series, but oh well.
Shinji actually has reasonable things to bitch about. From what I've heard, Shu doesn't. |
Yeah, I think people do give Shinji too much shit; you have to view that world not as a Go Nagai super robot saving the day set-up, but more of one where the sanity of the cast members hangs on by a thread, and Shinji is clearly mentally immature. Anno unknowingly crafted a story with a Lovecraft protagonist, as in they often cower in fear before forces that they cannot understand and have no chance of defeating. I wish more anime would have the utter defeatist attitude towards invaders from space, sometimes it's just nice to see all of humanity perish in fiction. I wish it had happened Transformers, Battle: Los Angeles, and I'm probably going to feel the same when I see Battleship. But maybe that's also because I abhor the idea of conventional weaponry being at all effective against space invaders, which goes well with the idea of being humanity and the Earth being so insignificant, any Great Old One could extinguish it within an instant, and probably not even realize it or care.
I think people just fail to realize how powerful the angels really are, mostly because the only things that can stop them are equally powerful monstrosities. Shu, on the other hand, can still defeat his enemies with swords and guns just fine. And it's not humanity in total that's threatened throughout most of the series, just poor wittle Japanese.[/spoiler] |
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UtenaAnthy
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Posts: 686
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 5:14 am |
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| walw6pK4Alo wrote: | | ...And it's not humanity in total that's threatened throughout most of the series, just poor wittle Japanese.[/spoiler] |
I agree with most of what you said (while I'm not a huge fan of NGE TV as a whole, I could identify with Shinji as I suffer from severe anxiety which is like depression in terms of how terrible you feel about yourself but with more energy (not that I didn't stay in bed sometimes, and maybe I have depression as well, but compared to what I've heard other people say about their depression, I wasn't quite as... slumped, I guess? Though I would guess depression affects different people differently). I just felt really sorry for him, because really he should have been being taken care of (I DO NOT mean institutionalised) and on disability benefits, not forced to save humanity.
Whoops, forgot to say the thing I meant to say about your quote: I'd be pretty afraid if there was a species of aliens who wanted to wipe out one specific nationality or race of people. That would be like... alien Hitler (who might look like that guy from Green Lantern who basically looks like Hitler crossed with the devil... that wasn't very subtle. Though his friend who's a good guy looks similar, so maybe they're just an unfortunate species). |
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jl07045
Joined: 30 Aug 2011
Posts: 708
Location: Riga, Latvia
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 5:58 am |
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| Anime tends to be overdramatic. So many characters have wars, parricides, genocides and whatnot to justify their charcterization that I think we as anime fans get desensitized to simpler things. It doesn't really take that much in childhood to mess a person up for good. Shinji's already a pretty strong case, but sometimes it only takes parents who were at work too much. I think Shu was simply not written well enough to be very sympathetic. |
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Myaow
Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 889
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 7:01 am |
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The ANN interview with the creators of Guilty Crown actually brought up the Shinji comparison:
| Quote: | As for Ikari Shinji, that's a show from 1995, and Shinji is more passive. They're both in their own world and they don't come out from that world. So Shu is kind of a 2011 version of Shinji: he has more of a--
[the group breaks into laughter]
He has friends, but he doesn't have connections with them yet. The relationships are skin-deep. That's more of a 2011 type, nowadays, of a 17-year-old boy. So that's the difference between Shu and Shinji. |
I think this was probably not the best thing to say, since it invites viewers to put Shu and Shinji side-by-side and compare them, which can hardly reflect well on Shu. Shinji is just such a realistic, meticulously-written character that even Shu, one of the better-realized figures in GC, looks flat in comparison. Extending the parallels to include Rei and Inori is only more unflattering to GC.
In fact, I've heard many people say that Guilty Crown is a copy of Code Geass, but really I was struck by how the series tried to xerox plot points and characters from Evangelion. Somehow it failed to convey any of the emotional depth of that series despite going through all the motions-- I think that the reason lies in the Araki "misanthropy" described in this review. Evangelion is brutal, but in the end the series never completely loses its faith in humanity or its respect for individual lives. Guilty Crown legitimately seems to hate its characters, or at least feel indifferent towards them-- hence the lack of any meaningful development, hence the weird depictions of savagery and spite.
It's actually really sad. |
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walw6pK4Alo
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 5428
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 1:09 pm |
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| jl07045 wrote: | | Anime tends to be overdramatic. So many characters have wars, parricides, genocides and whatnot to justify their charcterization that I think we as anime fans get desensitized to simpler things. It doesn't really take that much in childhood to mess a person up for good. Shinji's already a pretty strong case, but sometimes it only takes parents who were at work too much. I think Shu was simply not written well enough to be very sympathetic. |
My view on Shinji is that Evangelion tends to be most people's first exposure to mecha maybe outside of a little Gundam, maybe Macross/Robotech, and now TTGL. So they expect the protagonists to act a certain a way, and I'm thankful he doesn't. Teenage pilots acting as the heroes by piloting their father's robots was already 30 years old before Eva, and that show is such a breath of fresh air for not doing the same tired schtick. It doesn't necessarily mean we need more messed up protagonists, but Shinji's world and woes were built up and referred enough to really drive the point home. I don't have much sympathy for Shu, dude's lived mostly a decent life and has a really kickass apartment. |
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UtenaAnthy
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Posts: 686
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 2:10 pm |
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| walw6pK4Alo wrote: | | My view on Shinji is that Evangelion tends to be most people's first exposure to mecha maybe outside of a little Gundam, maybe Macross/Robotech, and now TTGL. So they expect the protagonists to act a certain a way, and I'm thankful he doesn't. Teenage pilots acting as the heroes by piloting their father's robots was already 30 years old before Eva, and that show is such a breath of fresh air for not doing the same tired schtick. |
In defence of TTGL, I don't seem to remember the robot Simon piloted being one that his father was the pilot/creator of, though I agree with your general point. Again, it's odd for me because I had similar issues when I first saw Eva so I could really identify with Shinji, I think a lot of people just don't know what severe depression/anxiety is like and assume that all that's needed is some exercise or diet changes when it's really not that simple. |
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jl07045
Joined: 30 Aug 2011
Posts: 708
Location: Riga, Latvia
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 3:08 pm |
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| walw6pK4Alo wrote: | | I don't have much sympathy for Shu, dude's lived mostly a decent life and has a really kickass apartment. |
He also has dead parents and a quite distant and very busy stepmom. If a child is introverted and has a decent living but gets emotionally neglected, you'll have a Shu. |
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Polycell
Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 2114
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:57 pm |
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| That's even worse: he has all these issues and he keeps whining about the little ones. He can take PTSD "like a man" but can't keep his trap shut about how his "friends" don't "really" know him! |
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kazume
Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Posts: 86
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| Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 3:36 pm |
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The best part about this entire show was episodes 12 through just before the last 5 minutes of episode 17.
I even tell people with a serious straight face that you can easily jump into the show at episode 13 and not miss anything important. Yeah, those exact words, because episodes 1-12 established nothing, trhe show is ENTIRELY watchable from 13 onward without missing a damn thing necessary to drive a story (yes so much that I had to state it twice and with slightly different words. If that seems a bit redundant, then I'm glad im posting it in the right place: A Guilty Crown Forum post...) |
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