[EVA] Gendou - man or monster?

[Dorian Gray]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 2:17 AM, Carl Gustav Horn <once at ix.netcom.com>
wrote:

> By mentored I meant that he seems to have been involved in her training, as
> he was not with Shinji. Admittedly that's an inference on my part from the
> scenes you mention, but Ritsuko states Rei grew up in NERV, and the pattern
> of Gendo's behavior since we first see Rei I suggests a desire to be close,
> more than a feeling. In the flashback to the accident, with Unit-00, Gendo
> panics when he thinks Rei is danger, racing down to rescue her and calling
> out her name repeatedly (whereas he tends to refer to Shinji as "the
> pilot"); it seems like the behavior of someone who's already established a
> relationship.
>

Rei's also not been liked by anyone in her class, by Ritsuko or (likely) any
other of her coworkers, no wonder she's kind of happy when Gendo shows up
being sort of nice to her. Yet she still lives with only a few scraps of
this 'nice' from Gendo, still lives in a run down old apartment, etc. Gendo
might be nice to her in some things we see, but that doesn't mean he's nice
total.

As for Gendo, remember that
1) Rei's currently the closest thing he has to his wife,
2) she's his meal ticket (his way to beat SEELE to instrumentality and
getting Yui back), sure he's going to panic when that's threatened.

If Gendo's a true conniving bastard, as you say, we need to accept the
second reason for his activity.