Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 failed Shinji as a queer character
I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time in late 2016. All I really knew of the show was there were cool mecha, and an opening that absolutely slaps. What I ended up finding in Evangelion was an incredibly contemplative show, and one that was surprisingly queer. Evangelion is also a rather divisive show, and it contains narrative beats that I wish didn’t exist, but I can’t deny the impact it had on coming to understand myself as a person.
But there were changes in the 2019 version of the show, which received a completely new sub and dub, that present a, to some degree, a different version of events, – particularly episode 24 of the show.
That episode, The Final Messenger, to put it bluntly, is very gay. Throughout the show, protagonist Shinji struggles to connect with most other people he meets. He has a terrible father, he didn’t really know his mother, and every woman he gets close to he has a somewhat complicated relationship with. And then in episode 24, along comes Kaworu Nagisa.
Romantic is not a word I would use to describe most of Evangelion, but it is the most apt one for this particular episode. Typically in Japan, for someone you aren’t particularly close with, you’ll use their family name. In their first meeting though, Kaworu says Shinji can use his first name, which causes the latter to blush. The romanticism continues later when the two bathe together, the more confident Kaworu holding hands with Shinji, the latter blushing once more. This all results in Kaworu telling Shinji he loves him.
The problem is, the declaration of love between the two boys only happens in the original 90s sub.
In 2019, the anime arrived on Netflix, and with it a new translation. In the same bath scene, rather than Kaworu saying he loves Shinji, he says that Shinji is worthy of his affection. Worse still, is how the end of the episode is changed. After a serious confrontation between the two Eva pilots, Shinji eventually sits with this guardian figure Misato. He admits to her that Kaworu was the first person that ever loved him, and that he in turn loved Kaworu back.
Yet in the new translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion, this is altered to simply be ‘liked.’ I can admit that my reading of Shinji and Kaworu’s relationship as queer is nothing but my own (and many others) interpretation. While to any LGBTQ+ person the atmosphere is perfectly clear, nothing technically happens between the two.
Nevertheless, it still removes a great deal of weight from the episode. Shinji not feeling loved by anyone, even paternal or maternal love, is a big deal, and to reduce it to friendship is disingenuous. This ultimately comes down to an argument over the meaning behind the Japanese word 大好き (daisuki), which can be translated as something like ‘I like you so much’ or ‘I love you’, but is mostly dependent on context. It’s this context that this new translation seems to ignore. And more than that, it ignores the show’s own history.
A companion book that featured interviews with the creator, Hideaki Anno, literally refers to Kaworu as a same-sex partner of Shinji, which Vox referenced in their coverage of the backlash back when the series arrived on Netflix. While it isn’t clear if these are Anno’s own words, it is clear that the queer reading of Kaworu and Shinji is an entirely valid one.
There are, of course, the remakes to think about – films in which events differ from the original anime. And yet even still, Shinji and Kaworu have clearly romantic interactions with one another. There’s a scene in Evangelion 3.0 where they play piano together, in a room mostly void of anything other than a small tree, sunlight, and themselves. The film is mostly about their relationship, and Shinji once again finding something in Kaworu he can’t find in anyone else. That film, the third in the Rebuild films which sought to retell the events of the original show with some new twists, came out over a decade ago now. With Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0, the Rebuild films finally saw their conclusion. And it failed Shinji as a queer character.
The plot of the Rebuild films past the first is almost completely different. There are some similar beats that it hits, but for the most part, the actual events are different. One big change is a character who, in the three films she’s a part of, hardly does anything: Mari Makinami Illustrious.
After every episode would wrap up in the original release of the show, it would show a teaser of the following episode, always promising more fan service. That phrase, ‘fan service’, is ultimately what Mari is reduced to. Unnecessarily buoyant breasts, close-up shots of her butt, all of which is too much for a character who is presumed to be a teenager. And for some reason, this character who Shinji hardly spends any screen time with, is the one that Shinji seems to end up with right at the end of the final film, Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0.
Please don’t get me wrong. The last film had me in tears, because of how Shinji was finally able to confront so much of his trauma, providing both himself and myself as an audience member a strong sense of catharsis. But its final moments pair him off with Maki, and I can’t help but feel like it’s wrong.
Throughout the series’ history, the only character he felt truly comfortable around was Kaworu, because Kaworu actually gave a damn about him. The significance of this can’t be understated, as Kaworu literally only appears in one episode of the original series. To me, it reads as that moment where something finally clicks: that one person that makes you realise ‘huh, I think I might not be straight.’ Not seeing that realised in what might be the final ‘canon’ presentation of Evangelion isn’t surprising, but it is frustrating.
Shinji’s sexuality doesn’t matter. It’s fine if he is bisexual, it’s fine if he’s gay. But the final film doesn’t let him explore any of this. It resolves so many other threads the Rebuild films wove, but there’s no meaningful conclusion to Shinji’s exploration of his queerness. It just says ‘yeah, the only person he has left at the end of it all is this overly-sexualised white piece of paper of a character.’ And it’s not good enough.
In 2017, I realised I was non-binary. I think, even with all of its problems, Evangelion somehow helped me realise that. I had so many hopes for the final film, some of which were met. But one of my biggest was that Shinji would get that same closure and understanding of self that I got. Instead, we got a film that implies any amount of queer exploration was ultimately just be stepping stones towards heterosexuality, and that just isn’t the lived experiences of myself and many other queer people.
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