NEON GENESIS EVANGELION

The gospel of a new genesis or the Neon Genesys Evangelion, is a series from Manga or Japanese comics that describes a post-apocalyptic society in the futuristic city Tokyo-3, where the hope of the survival of humanity is given to three teenagers aged 14 years that command giant robots the Evas. These three drivers are Shinji, Rey and Asuka, Eva 01, 00 and 02 respectively.

The plot of the story is based on the personality development of the three young teenagers and the way they struggle with their traumas. It is no wonder that the last chapters of history refer us to Jung and Freud and Camus's existentialism.

In 2015, fifteen years after a global cataclysm known as the Second Impact, teenager Shinji Ikari is summoned to the futuristic city of Tokyo-3 by his estranged father Gendo Ikari, director of the special paramilitary force Nerv. Shinji witnesses United Nations forces battling an Angel, one of a race of giant monstrous beings whose awakening was foretold by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because of the Angels' near-impenetrable force-fields, Nerv's giant Evangelion bio-machines, synchronized to the nervous systems of their pilots and possessing their own force-fields, are the only weapons capable of keeping the Angels from annihilating humanity.

Nerv officer Misato Katsuragi escorts Shinji into the Nerv complex beneath the city, where his father pressures him into piloting the Evangelion Unit-01 against the Angel. Without training, Shinji is quickly overwhelmed in the battle, causing the Evangelion to go berserk and savagely kill the Angel on its own.

Following hospitalization, Shinji moves in with Misato and settles into life in Tokyo-3. In his second battle, Shinji destroys an Angel but runs away afterwards, distraught. Misato confronts Shinji and he decides to remain a pilot. The Nerv crew and Shinji must then battle and defeat the remaining 14 Angels to prevent the Third Impact, a global cataclysm that would destroy the world. Evangelion Unit-00 is repaired shortly afterwards. Shinji tries to befriend its pilot, the mysterious, socially isolated teenage girl Rei Ayanami. With Rei's help, Shinji defeats another Angel.

They are then joined by the pilot of Evangelion Unit-02, the multitalented, but insufferable teenager Asuka Langley Sōryu, who is German-Japanese-American. Together, the three of them manage to defeat several Angels. As Shinji adjusts to his new role as a pilot, he gradually becomes more confident and self-assured. Asuka moves in with Shinji, and they begin to develop confusing feelings for one another, kissing at her provocation.

After being absorbed by an Angel, Shinji breaks free thanks to the Eva acting on its own. He is later forced to fight an infected Evangelion Unit-03 and watches its pilot, his friend and classmate Toji Suzuhara, incapacitated and presumably permanently disabled. Asuka loses her self-confidence following a defeat and spirals into depression. This is worsened by her next fight, against an Angel which attacks her mind and forces her to relive her worst fears and childhood trauma, resulting in a mental breakdown. In the next battle, Rei self-destructs Unit-00 and dies to save Shinji's life.

Misato and Shinji visit the hospital where they find Rei alive but claiming she is "the third Rei". Misato forces scientist Ritsuko Akagi to reveal the dark secrets of Nerv, the Evangelion boneyard and the dummy plug system which operates using clones of Rei, who was herself created with the DNA of Shinji's mother, Yui Ikari.

This succession of events leaves Shinji emotionally scarred and alienated from the rest of the characters. Kaworu Nagisa replaces the catatonic Asuka as pilot of Unit-02. Kaworu, who initially befriends Shinji and gains his trust, is in truth the final foretold Angel, Tabris. Kaworu fights Shinji, then realizes that he must die if humanity is to survive and asks Shinji to kill him. Shinji hesitates but eventually kills Kaworu, causing Shinji to be overridden with guilt.

After the final Angel is defeated, Seele, the mysterious cabal overseeing the events of the series, triggers the "Human Instrumentality Project", a forced evolution of humanity in which the souls of all mankind are merged for benevolent purposes, believing that if unified, humanity could finally overcome the loneliness and alienation that has eternally plagued mankind.

Shinji's soul grapples with the reason for his existence and reaches an epiphany that he needs others to thrive, enabling him to destroy the wall of negative emotions that torment him and reunite with the others, who congratulate him.

Hideaki Anno attempted to create characters that reflected parts of his own personality. The characters of Evangelion struggle with their interpersonal relationships, their personal problems, and traumatic events in their past. The human qualities of the characters have enabled some viewers of the show to identify with the characters on a personal level, while others interpret them as historical, religious, or philosophical symbols.

Shinji Ikari is the series protagonist and the designated pilot of Evangelion Unit-01. After witnessing his mother Yui Ikari's death as a child, Shinji was abandoned by his father, Gendo Ikari. He is emotionally hypersensitive and sometimes does as expected out of fear of rejection, but he has often rebelled and refused to pilot the Eva because of the extremely excruciating harm that has been done to him or to his friends.

Throughout the series, he says to himself "I mustn't run away" as a means of encouraging himself to face the threats of the day, and this sometimes actually gives him bravery in battle, but he has a lingering habit of withdrawing in response to traumatic events. Anno has described Shinji as a boy who "shrinks from human contact" and has "convinced himself that he is a completely unnecessary person".

Far from being a cartoon for children, this animated Animé or Manga is a work of deep psychoanalysis, where we can see and understand the development of narcissistic personality from childhood traumas and the problematic relationship with the father, here in the figures of the pilot Shinji Ikari and General Genko Ikari.

Equally noticeable is the boderline disorder present in Rey, who does not remember the past and who has a dysfunctional relationship with the mother who does not exist, since her memory has been completely erased and Asuka has a bipolar disorder, noticeable by her completely disproportionate and contradictory.

The essential lesson to be learned from the porcupine dilemma is a metaphor created by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) to illustrate the problem of human coexistence. Schopenhauer exposed this concept in the form of a parable in his work Parerga und Paralipomena, published in 1851, where he collected several of his controversial philosophical notes.

The porcupine dilemma is just a paragraph that appears in Volume II of this work, however, it has become a folktale cited even by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.

In the book Schopenhauer and the wildest years of philosophy, by Rüdiger Safranski, the author suggests that Schopenhauer was inspired by an escalation that occurred when the philosopher was only 16: Finally, on July 30, 1804 - when the great journey is nearing its end - the Schneekopp [Snow Peak] climbs to Silesia, then German, today in Poland. The journey takes two days. Arthur spent the night with his guide in a hut built on an intermediate plateau, at the foot of the highest mountain summit. “We entered a single room full of intoxicated pastors. […] It was unbearable; his animalistic warmth […] produced a burning heat ”. The “animal warmth” of men huddled in that small space - it was here that Schopenhauer took his later metaphor from the hedgehogs that pushed against each other to defend themselves from the cold and fear. (SAFRANSKI, 211, p. 99)

A number of hedgehogs huddled for warmth on a cold winter day; but when they started to hurt themselves with their thorns, they were forced to move away. However, the cold caused them to meet again, but they moved away again. After several attempts, they realized that they could keep some distance from each other without dispersing.

Likewise, social needs, loneliness and monotony drive “porcupine men” to get together, only to repel themselves due to the countless thorny and unpleasant characteristics of their natures. The moderate distance that men finally discover is the necessary condition for coexistence to be tolerated; is the code of courtesy and good manners. Those who violate this code are harshly warned, as they say in England: keep your distance! With this arrangement, the mutual need for heat is only partially satisfied, but at least they are not hurt.

A man who has some heat in himself prefers to stay away, so he does not need to hurt other people and he is not hurt either. This is precisely how those with personality disorders act, only being able to get out of this dilemma and this apparent prison, developing love for themselves.

In Shinji, we find the path that he develops, realizing that the love that others have for him remains within himself, so that he has the strength to fulfill his mission and only at that moment when starting from the love and admiration for himself he finds the forces to rise and with him his Eva 01, the defender of Humanity in its moment of greatest agony, transcending, the boy becomes legend, finally awakening from his cradle to humanity, as in the letter of the generic.

Self-love ends up allied to the sense of duty, since the three friends are essentially soldiers, becoming what allows them to transcend their own nature and fulfill the one who is ultimately their duty, to defend humanity from the angels that such as in a new garden of Eden they were sent to destroy humanity.

Inevitably, the love triangle ends with Asuka's death, who after trying to force the relationship with Shinji, assuming her narcissistic role, ends up going into depression when not knowing how to deal with her feelings. With this death more spiritual than physical, she disappears when sacrificing for Shinji but it is this sacrifice that makes him understand his and Rey's greatest mission.

The tragic end of Eva 02, accelerates the search for others Eva´s unites even more Shinji and Rey, and causes Shinji to finally end his war of emancipation from father Genko.