Evangelion is strange , we follow Shinji Ikari , who kept running away and coming back again and then learning the same thing over and over again but could never truly be happy , we kept laughing at him for being a “Baka” , but we often saw too much of ourselves in him , and in some ways he’s also way more triumphant than us , and perhaps it is that Anno wanted to use him as both a mirror and inspiration in this distorted coming-of-age story

Unlike most of the fanbase , I never really had any “romantic” affections for Rei and Asuka , as time went by , I realised it’s because they were literally two sides of me , it’s creepy how two-faced I could be , sometimes I would be silent and just standing there without signs of emotion , sometimes I would find pleasure in saying everything that I want without caring about anyone’s feelings , putting down others , and it’s perhaps in Hideaki Anno’s primary focus on Shinji instead that told us how we were all the same lonely individual who face self-loathing , for example in Evangelion first half , we particularly see Asuka as a comic relief whose like a sunshine compared to Shinji and Rei , only for that to slowly be shattered as the series developed to the point where she reached her breaking point and screamed in her mind 

“You just stand there . You won’t help me ! You won’t hold me ! Nobody does ! So please , look at me…”

That hit me right into the soul , the boy could pierce an extraterrestrial being with one gunshot , but could never see through the girl’s traumatised heart . It hit me because Asuka was me , I wished people could understand me , but I also had trouble in understanding others , there’s times where I was silent like Rei , to listen on my friends’ feelings about each of their parental or social or academic or self issues , but I also was incapable of truly understanding how to communicate with others , ending up like how Rei objectified herself and Asuka using a facade to feel better people . Rei learnt to show more emotions and finally got a sense of identity until it’s reverted to level one again , I shedded tears because that’s what I am facing now , but somewhere out there , there’s a boy that just looked at the destruction of his brief happiness by his own action , and he’s like a friend , whose the same depressed individual like me … and hey he learnt to love himself in the end , maybe we can try too !

I watched this back in December , I then wrote a bunch of letters in the form of Christmas cards for my friends , finally telling them how much they meant to me and also comforting them about their struggles and weaknesses , thank you , Evangelion…
