At its surface, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a story about children in robots. Dig a bit deeper, it is a story littered with religious iconography and isolation. And at its core, it is a tale about adolescence, specifically losing it. Many people watch NGE and jump straight into the Freudian-ness of it all. I won’t argue, Evangelion is filled with psychosexuality, psychotherapy, and death drives. But, I feel that people get lost in its complexity and fail to recognize how accurately it depicts such a simple phenomenon, forcing a child to be an adult. 

I had noticed this only in my first watch of the show. I watched the weight of expectations crush Shinji into pits of isolation, and inversely how it had fueled Asuka with a false sense of superiority and pride. The actions of Shinji and Asuka are real and visceral in a way that is representative of how most children cope with early adulthood. 

The term “subjective age” describes self-perceptions of one’s age, and how old someone feels compared to others of the same chronological age or the age group in which one identifies. Subjective age is often distorted when children experience trauma. How subjective age is represented can be seen in how the children establish their identity. In Asuka’s case, she comes off as arrogant and confident. She uses the EVA as an outlet to solidify her sense of identity and seek the approval she denies herself. Another indicator of Asukas increased subjective age is how she seeks approval from older men (Ryoji Kaji) which is common among young women. Traumatized by her mother’s suicide and graduating college at 14, Asuka was raised to be older than she is. 

With Shinji’s subjective age, we watch things play out differently. Unlike Asuka, Shinji starts the show as a child. But, the requirements of the EVA are so demanding and abrupt that Shinji gets little to no time to adjust. The childhood that Shinji clings to gets ripped away, and he is left confused and isolated. To others, Shinji is quiet, timid, and depressed. And yes, he is those things but he is also contemplative. Shinji contemplates his identity and his masculinity. While this is normal for fourteen-year-old boys to do, Shinji confronts it in a more burdensome way.  Shinji’s subjective age is accelerated by how he is forced to approach natural things about himself and although Shinji had not directly lost his adolescence, he has lost a formative time in his life to the demands of the EVA and “Human Instrumentality Project.” 

There are many anime, especially in the shōnen genre, where children are placed in life-threatening positions. So what makes “Neon Genesis Evangelion” different? Neon Genesis Evangelion is different because its characters are not given special powers. The creators make them so human that the viewers are manipulated to contemplate whether they are “good” or not. Trust me, I have seen articles titled “Why I Hate Shinji Ikari” or “In defense of Shinji Ikari.” Neon Genesis Evangelion does what an anime like Hunter X Hunter can not do.They make humans observe humans. 

~Nirvika Dhanasri

Clip from Neon Genesis Evangelion.