## Metadata - Author: [[Laura Montero Plata]] - Full Title:: The Crisis of the Self in Neon Genesis Evangelion - Category:: #🗞️Articles - URL:: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/405371735 - Read date:: [[2026-01-06]] ## Highlights > focused on the crisis of the self: of his own self , within his social circles, and chiefly, of the unknown “enemy” - a self about whom he knows not if it has come from the outside or if it belongs to his own world. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke87te6th0y839wz7gjht48r)) > “existential paralysis” mentioned by Murakami Takashi in the Little Boy exhibition, in which he establishes a parallel between Shinji –the series' protagonist- and Japan. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke87v7pmvgag89862vrpte9b)) > Japan lost the war to the Americans. Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like. […] I don’t see any adults here in Japan. The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke87x8yyp8faepa6fdfrdr67)) > Hideaki Anno started to produce the series after suffering from a deep depression that kept him out of work for four years (Lamarre, 2009: 180). His recovery was not complete and throughout Evangelion there can be seen many doubts and inner conflicts which Anno poured into his characters, especially into Shinji, with whom he really identified. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke8800w9j5etnxm4jm1hp47p)) > hikikomori ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke8823nkdv94bvejyf014zxy)) > The description fits perfectly the psychology of Shinji: he is distressed by his inability to relate; rejects the outside world and is given to compulsive behavior – in the anime this is represented by his obsessive repeated listening to tracks 25 and 26 of his walkman in order to be isolated from the outside world, to reject it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke882bjrdhzsyc3ekb5rkee8)) > the spectre of World War II can clearly be seen in Evangelion. On one hand, the names of many of the characters refer to warships that took part in the war-Langley, Akagi, Ayanami, Katsuragi ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke888zddmrv4a3zhsdcevp00)) > the agencies in charge of developing the EVA's and hunting down the angels with not very ethical methods, are baptized with German names - Seele (soul), Nerv (nerve), Gehirn (brain) - referring to the ghost of the war again, alluding to the German axis of evil. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke889hvkvdn84p016x3et0wj)) > Susan Napier points to not only the recession, but to other reasons including the ambivalent attitude the Japanese have towards technology, placing its origin in the sarin gas incident. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke88ev41gbpmht7drp0q34nh)) > This example of promising young people who are manipulated could be analogous to the main characters of the series: Rei would be the devotee, Shinji the shy one, while Asuka is the gifted teenager – she is a university graduate at only fourteen. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke88ez2mt4bsbjsn9pe16ytr)) > The transition to the post-American epoch is subtly encoded in the original Japanese title of the series, “Shinseiki Evangelion”, which literally means, “Gospel of the New Century.” Although Anno quotes from a wide variety of mystical, religious and theological texts, symbols and icons in the course of the series, ranging from Shintoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and several varieties of mysticism, Anno has a decidedly secular purpose in mind here. The gospel in question is not a religion per se, but a globespanning belief system which has certain characteristics of an organized religion, but which is primarily concerned with the control of technology and human labor-powe ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke88j9zz4r7zbv818a85tt5g)) > According to Redmond, this gospel is less a critique of globalization than an attack on the neoliberalism taking over in the country, using angels as a symbol of this assault and the EVA´s as the resistance against Neoliberal expansion. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke88jndm5btde53p77h3q8p9)) > In his post-apocalyptical world, governments have become mere puppets and the United Nations is now the organization in charge of the world order. It is important to point out that in 1992 Japan approved its army forces taking part in the UN peace missions, so this reference is not accidental. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke88px9rc7t6xvn2rw3e2jwk)) ## New highlights added [[2026-01-06]] > Interestingly, the rebuilding of the saga that Anno has begun in the form of four films, seems to have partially reconciled him with the trajectory of Japanese society: the geopolitical structure of the post-apocalyptic world has a more solid foundation, the secrecy of Nerv operations is greatly simplified, Shinji's existential paralysis breaks, which allows the character to be able to act and evolve. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke88w4sdjdjd0knvr7fw0jxw))