[EVA] Gendou - man or monster?

[Carl Gustav Horn]

>
>>> IKARI: I've been waiting for this moment. I can finally see you,   
>>> Yui. If I stayed with him, I'd only hurt Shinji. So, it'd be  
>>> better to do nothing.
>>>
>>> YUI: You were afraid of Shinji, weren't you?
>>>
>>> IKARI: I didn't believe that someone could love me. I don't  
>>> deserve  it, either.
>
>> When you become a father (or mother), you have responsibility  for  
>> your child. How can Gendo make the excuse that he didn't believe   
>> "someone" could love him?
>
> I wouldn't call Gendo's little confession in EoE an "excuse" per  
> se, because it doesn't justify anything. Rather, he's merely  
> stating the *reason* for his (in)action. "This is why -- although  
> it doesn't necessarily make logical sense..."
>
> Gendo is clearly a deeply damaged person and probably ended up the  
> way he is largely through a dysfunctional upbringing together with  
> a natural proclivity towards social awkwardness. Now, emotional  
> pathologies aren't rational, nor are the standard coping methods.  
> (That's why they're pathologies, after all.) In keeping with the  
> overarching theme of this show -- "getting serious help for one's  
> mental woes is flat out" -- he's never taken care of himself. As a  
> result, the "common sense" of the masses is not intuitive at all,  
> and he uses illogical methods to shelter his fragile psyche --  
> without regard to how it hurts others. Why? He doesn't know any  
> other way of getting by. It's pathetic, yeah, but if Gendo had been  
> at any point somebody who went see a psychotherapist on a regular  
> basis, say bye-bye to the story and whatever Anno was trying to  
> convey with Gendo's severe emotional problems.


The problem with this is that Anno gives us characters like Misato  
and Kaji, whose childhoods were interrupted by the greatest disaster  
in human history. Misato was gravely wounded both physically and  
emotionally; one doesn't have to apply the manga backstory to the  
anime Kaji, but it's safe to say there was no school trip that year  
for him ^_^  But both of them turned out to have a fairly clear sense  
of right and wrong, whereas Ritsuko, say, did not.

The point is that If everyone in the show was shown as doomed by  
childhood trauma to be a bastard or unable to relate to people, that  
would be one thing. But why must one assume a fictional character's  
backstory must consist only of immutable personality traits, with no  
role for personal decisions? The very fact Anno chose to make Eva,  
rather than merely stay in the state he'd been, suggests he was  
trying to show not only the importance of reflection and analysis,  
but choice and initiative.

Bear in mind Gendo was a grown man in his early thirties when he met  
Yui and Fuyutsuki, and when Shinji was born. That's a bit late in  
life to still be playing the antisocial punk, whom people simply  
don't seem to like, and just expect others to nod okay (Fuyutsuki  
doesn't). At that age you have to start asking yourself what you're  
doing that makes people dislike you. It could be because you act like  
an asshole, and don't care about anything but what makes you happy.  
Psychology is a much-discussed issue in Evangelion, but not as  
something that has left no role for good and evil...the knowledge of  
which some of its characters would like to deny they have when  
convenient, as reflected symbolically in NERV's logo.

Gendo loved Yui. That forgives nothing, unless you see them as the  
only worthwhile people on the series. Yui loved Gendo; that doesn't  
make Gendo a good person to anyone but her (and many a wife has sung  
the praises of an asshole husband, and meant it sincerely). But the  
series itself makes a martyr out of Kaji, who cared about human  
beings as something more than children in a cosmic evolution scheme,  
and a heroine out of Misato, who is a badass, but who also often  
questions what she's doing and how it affects others. Evangelion is a  
novel, not a Bible; you are not required to accept what happens  
within as being right. If even the canonicity of its events is open  
to debate, how can there be a canon for its moral interpretation?

--C.