#shinji ikari
ikari shinji kyun
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eva kiddos that i doodled over the course of the day
they seem to be very good friends
aahnime
“The first conversation with Shinji was really massive to me. Up until now, Kaworu has just been one-sidedly expressing his feelings, bit by bit, about Rebuild’s seize-the-moment Ikari Shinji. And finally, he gets to talk to him in person… I’m sure Kaworu was anxiously awaiting that moment… Yeah… I guess that’s what a face-to-face meeting is all about after all. It’s more important to him to spend time talking to him in the flesh than it is to support him, secretly from the shadows. It reminded me how central of a theme communication like that is in Evangelion. When you look at it like that, once Shinji’s been estranged from everyone and has no one to lean on, that’s when he meets Kaworu. The fact that they manage to have a conversation at that point is incredibly significant.”
- an excerpt from Akira Ishida’sinterviewonKaworu Nagisa from Evangelion 3.0
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Fly me to the moon
After doing some research, and also malding along some of my theater buddies from japan (lol) I feel like I can talk briefly about this situation. There’s been a lot of screaming about “heterosexual marriage!!” within the eva fandom lately, so what’s all that about?
If you saw my previous posts,
or were around twitter when any or both of these big fandom events happened (the theatrical release of the movie, and then the extra doujinshi offered with the revised movie version), then you know that things got messy extremely quickly. People harassing fanartists for just existing, calling them insults, homophobic slurs. Especially the fujoshi, who were the first to call out the homophobic implications in the movie’s themes, were the ones who were chewed the hardest (fujoshi have a bad rep in the west but in truth a lot of them are either queer themselves, or straight LGBT allies). June 12 devolved into absolute chaos and all because of one single contribution within the doujin illustrations.
(They might be already buried but if you search the jpn Kawoshin/Kaworei tags you could probably still find some of the discourse tweets).
To us it might not seem that bad, but to them it may even feel suffocating. The picture is not canon to the movie? True! But it’s likely that the higher percentile that attended the runs are not involved too deeply with the franchise and will interpret them as a married couple per the ending scene. At first glance, this is a family. That’s the interpretation a LOT (if not most) people are running along with too, shippers of X thing or not. Anyway, this illustration in particular is not the main offender! Kaworu and Rei’s relationship in the Neon Genesis (*coughs*) is canonically unknown to the audience. Are they lovers? Are they relatives? Leaving it up to the viewer’s “interpretation” hasn’t been much favorable in this case, either. That’s probably how we wound up like this to begin with.
What’s wrong with Kaworu being happy, even if it’s with a woman and not a man? Well, Kaworu’s circle of male japanese fans is quite large, and just as large is the Kawoshin circle. To a lot of these men, who happen to be male-attracted males, Kaworu’s openness about his love for Shinji was something that helped them come to terms with their own sexualities growing up in the ever-loving homophobic 90’s. Kaworu was largely recognized as one of the sole and most iconic male-attracted characters in the history of anime. So much that he’s even been featured in LGBT sections of jpn mags. And Evangelion has never been unpopular nor obscure media either, It was so HUGE (it wasn’t labeled a social phenomenon for nothin) in fact, that it even became a household series in japan. This is destroying the character for all that it’s worth, and taking away what his character meant to these men who were following and supporting the series up until this point. For the female fans (or fujoshi, if you will) it was something that could’ve made them acknowledge/be accepting of same-sex love, and/or their own attraction to other genders too. To THEM this reads as denial or negation of his sexuality, plain and simple. No “he’s bisexual”, but “he settled down and married a woman to start a family with like an exemplary japanese adult”. You should know that Japan is a very conservative country where folks are still to this day, either largely in the dark about LGBT topics (and the existence of), or simply dismiss it as a “phase of the youth”. You know, one of the reasons the government is holding off on legalizing gay marriage is because they believe it would decrease japan’s birthrate even more, and if they negate gay’s people’s right to get married they will eventually give up on it, marry off to the opposite sex and procreate….yeah.
And of course this is not only homophobic, but also sexist. Women in japan are pressured to get married almost as soon as they hit their 20’s, they’re pressured to become housewives to men , and to pump out babies. It’s not only about fighting for survival and the preservation of the human species in the post-apocalyptic world, childbirth and marriage (with the opposite sex) are glorified and presented as being part of a ~fulfilled~ and ~happy~ adult life. The presence of Showa era characteristics in the movie also correspond to these ideals.
So Where in The Subtext are we presumably being fisted with these old-timer values? The most obvious cues are:
- Both Hikari and Misato have had children, Hikari no longer has any personality beyond being a “domestic wife”.
- A random-ass preggo cat.
- Baby-crazy Rei.
- The rando pregnant lady at the village and a bunch of young children.
- Shinji/Mari, Asuka/Kensuke, Kaworu/Rei. There’s no hint of same-sex love anywhere (besides Kaworu’s “I was attracted to you blah blah”). Kawoshin’s relationship was blurred within the audience with the father/son interpretation thanks to Khara’s staff, and AsuMari is purely yuri fanservice so that ain’t count for anything. Maya’s admiration for Ritsuko long forgotten in the 90’s movie.
- And of course, Anno gloating about his own marriage via Shinji/Mari because it just so happened that his wife (Moyoco) was his main source of support during his depressive episode.
Tl;dr Shit’s fucked, Kaworu discourse will never end, I’m not looking forward to the western reaction to this movie.
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Here’s another wave of fresh meltdown for the “stop pressing western stances to japanese media/jpn fandoms only care about shipping, actually” crowd. Well
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Sad that Kawoshin has gone from “They’re 100% canon” to “Aww hehe they might not be canon but I’ll still ship them!” unironically shippers are the first in line to defend deplorable or downright harmful renderings of mlm/wlw relationships in order to keep enjoying their ships without any guilty baggage. I don’t think most of its fanbase is aware of Kawoshin’s influence (As is the case with NGE in general) on anime/manga/other japanese media, either.
If anything this is greenlighting to other studios that they can rope in fujoshi/fudanshi/allies/etc with gay subtext, and then pull the rug once it’s good and done because the majority will not give a shit about them getting straightwashed or dismiss it as “it could’ve been worse” or “It was just bait and it’s your fault for falling for it” and keep profiting off merch/collab sales. It’s so frustrating. I’m not saying that ppl shouldn’t like/ship/whatever them anymore, I’m just asking folks to be more conscientious and critical about the media they consume and indulge in
