Is Shinji literally the dumbest hero off all time?

is Shinji literally the dumbest hero off all time?

No, Shinji is not a hero its a pussy

No, he's just bland and boring. His archetype has been done better and in less pretentious series. Without all the needless visual wankery which the creator admitted didn't even mean anything. Eva was so trash.

I don't know man, that's a lot of competition for that title.

No, he's just gay.

He's not stupid, but he is a coward, ruled by his own fear.

no he is best girl

>No, he's just bland and boring.

Agreed but if you think Shinji was bland just take a look at Rei.

Eva doesn't have characters, so much as forced archetypes

Yeah its kinda cringe. Misato is the only person in the show that shows some personality.

>He's not stupid, but he is a coward, ruled by his own fear.

he is fucking stupid. Hes the one that started 3rd impact twice in a row. his only worthwhile question is why he Pilots the Eva which he states is to please the dad that he hates.

Are you stupid? He doesn't hate his dad. If his dad stated giving him attention he would be happy, that or not know how to handle it.

The issue here is that the characters in the show actually act like real people, feeling and saying and doing all at the same time, which is too much for some of you to handle.

He's 14.

>the characters in the show actually act like real people
kek

>"creator admitted didn't even mean anything"
>actually thinking that matters

We can talk death of the author all day, but you can project meaning onto just about anything. If there's no intent, what makes a work special?

By that I don't mean that their actions themselves are realistic, but their way of going about them is.

Yeah, Shinji best girl!

>The issue here is that the characters in the show actually act like real people, feeling and saying and doing all at the same time

1) The only thing they said had no meaning, which is taken out of context and repeated to the point that it's also meaningless, was the religious imagery. It is not hard to project meaning onto religious imagery.

2) Outside of all that there was intent to write, animate, direct, etc, a show.

>act like real people
>in a show where only kids can pilot giant organic mechs to fight aliens
Nah. I ain't buying this realistic shit

>hero

See

>2) Outside of all that there was intent to write, animate, direct, etc, a show.

This is such useless thing to say, especially within the context of the conversation. Intended meaning is what we're talking about, and that's what you have to justify.

im pretty sure the creator didnt want to upset some people or be accused of blasphemy so he just let people decide what all of the imagery means. If i recall the show was suspended and almost pulled from air in Japan.

>He doesn't hate his dad
He says he hates his dad outright in the show.

And that's what I'm laughing at. No one in Eva acts like a real person would in that situation, and that's what it's always praised for. It's completely ridiculous. Go read about child soldiers to get a real taste for what the show should have been like.

how about what it means to you?

ya know, the whole point of art in our lives ?

Yeah, but if you bring up the "it's meaningless quote" the only thing that applies to is the religious stiff. Not, you know, anything else. So you can't use that as a jumping point to say "therefore the show is meaningless as a whole and has zero intent and isn't special."

Came into this thread expecting Subaru to be first. Good job Sup Forums.

Then you forfeit all rights to objective criticism. You can never justifiably critique anything, merely describe how it made you feel, which isn't useful to anyone else.

What do you think should have been different?

You're the one arguing that meaning exists. Burden of proof is on you.

I'm not saying they act like real people. I'm saying the manner in which their actions manifest is like real people. Take for example. He says he hates his sad. But he doesn't. He wants his dad to pay attention to him. What he says and what he feels aren't always the same, but they inform each other, and that's what's realistic about it.

not sure why people so vehemently stick to this stupid theory given by one of annos yesman in a jap interview hella years ago. its liike you're looking for an excuse to dismiss the show despite the fact it obviously meant something to a lot of people and is still discussed 20 years after its debut.

How do you know how people would act in those kind of situations if nothing comparable to those situations even exist in the real world?

That's a very low bar for realism

Nobody gives a fuck about a generic flavor of the month faggot like Subaru. Fuck off with that shit.

No, you made a claim that no meaning exists based on a quote you took out of context. That has been proven wrong, and there's no real evidence to suggest there wasn't meaning intended. I don't think there's any strong burden of proof required in either direction, I generally think its safe to assume that people who make art intend the viewer to take meaning from it, even if they don't explicitly state what meaning was intended.

>cringe
Just leave.

its a cartoon

>He says he hates his sad. But he doesn't.
Yes he does hate him. You can want someone you hate to pay attention to you, dumbass.
Asuka for example hates a lot of people, but she still wants them to pay attention to her and validate her existence.

Likewise Shinji wants Gendo to validate his existence, but he still hates him for abandoning him and he says he hates him in the show. He's genuine about it.

That's a different point entirely. In most shows you get maybe one and a half of those dimensions, and never done well.

Damn son, you don't know shit about rhetoric. By stating that something exists, you take on the burden of proof.

plebbit detected

he's an absolute legend and maybe the best anime.

People saying and thinking different things is the main crux of the most low brow possible character drama. There's nothing special about the way people act in Eva.

>I generally think its safe to assume that people who make art intend the viewer to take meaning from it, even if they don't explicitly state what meaning was intended.

Unfortunately its hard for people with autism to comprehend this, but this is the truest statement made so far.

Asuka doesn't actually hate anyone, besides maybe herself.

>He says he hates his sad. But he doesn't. He wants his dad to pay attention to him

your putting the Chicken before the Egg m8

She hates almost everyone, especially herself.

Nothing is being definitively proven here. This conversation changes nothing. It doesn't matter if he can prove it to you or not.

The question is how much of the much vaunted symbolism has meaning, and how much is just to look cool. A lack of intention is one of the most common mistakes made by young creators.

Not necessarily. I think we have a special case here due to the somewhat nebulous nature of art and the fact that artists tend not to explicitly state their intention as part of art is teasing out what was meant from the work itself.

>Asuka doesn't actually hate anyone, besides maybe herself.

this. Asuka is the most insecure character even more then Shinji. Shinji is just introvert but she is extrovert

Yes, necessarily. We're not talking art, we're talking Rhetoric 101. If you assert a positive, you have to back it up with evidence.

Your not supposed to leave that space open newfriend.

Well obviously, in this case, it was not a mistake.

>t. my ass

what?

No he doesn't.

You are correct, he doesn't have to do anything. He can leave at any time without backing up any of his assertions

Well that's just your opinion.

Shinji, Asuka and misato were pretty good characters. Just because an archetype is there doesn't make them bad, actually judge the show on how it's used in the show.

And yours too, because we're still fucking sitting here talking about it.

Again, it doesn't matter. You don't need to know the inner workings of an artists mind or their detailed motivations for creating something to be able to draw from it your own meaning. You literally will never appreciate art until you accept this.

This is also the reason why you will never see a compendium pamphlet next to each painting of Picasso in the museum stating that "well this doesn't mean anything, i was just bored today lol! -PICASSO "

It's not an opinion to say that you can find the same level of character drama in low-grade shoujo as in Eva, it's demonstrable fact.

He really wasn't that young at the time. He was 36 when he made NGE and already had a pretty large portfolio.

Fine then, I'm not asserting a positive anyway. I'm really just saying it's not accurate to assume there was no intended meaning. There's nothing to suggest that.

I'm going to guess that you actually don't have any formal training in Art History or Literary Critique, because this isn't even a good argument for death of the author. It's just ignorance.

The difference is that one does it well, and the other doesn't.

I'm not talking about, "I love her, but I can't tell her, so I'll tell her to leave me alone."

Fair enough, as long as you aren't asserting that there is any meaning.

No, you're talking about, "I love him, but I can't tell him, so I'll tell him I hate him"

Amazing.

It's pretty ignorant to repeat a quote from years ago out of context too.

Demonstrate it then.

No, I can still assert that there is meaning, I simply can't prove that said meaning is intentionally put there by a creator, though there is evidence that that is the case.

If that was how simple any of the character relationships were, you'd have a point.

>No, I can still assert that there is meaning, I simply can't prove that said meaning is intentionally put there by a creator, though there is evidence that that is the case.
This sentence is a mess of self-contradiction

He can say his opinion is that there is meaning. This us unassailable.

He can't prove, and neither can you, what the original author intended.

There is evidence we can look at to guess, though.

I've never quoted that actually. I just come into these threads hoping to find people who can really defend Eva, but it's usually pretty rare. Daikon IV has much better defenders.

Insecure people tend to hate others more than confident people, you idiot.

That sounds like a fucking terrible hobby. What is there to defend against in the case of the latter?

No, I get what he's saying. The problem is saying that he can't prove intentional meaning, and following that up by saying there's proof of intentional meaning. It's contradictory, and clearly both of you believe that you can prove intentional meaning. Which I'd be glad to see.

They're pretty fucking basic, m8.

>Then you forfeit all rights to objective criticism.

Even assuming that objective criticism actually exists, what's so bad in relating how you resonated with a work, and why would that cause you to forfeit rights to criticism? You can justify how it made you feel and the why of that sentiment is valuable in the larger context of the overall progression of art. Debating authorial intent on the other hand is pointless; understanding the blue prints of a work may make it seem more or less impressive, but to place quality as a priority of that over your own feelings is to be disingenuous with your opinions.

There's proof that leads him to believe there's intentional meaning. Just because he's saying something doesn't mean he's positing it as undeniable fact or warrant you coming in and saying "prove it" to every opinion.

That it's pure style and no substance, relying entirely on references for the love it gets.

I don't see how any of that could possibly be construed as a negative thing in this context.

If you're not willing to back it up, what's the point of saying it? Go hang in a comfy waifu thread if you want to get by with that lackluster level of posting.

"Assert" might be the wrong word, perhaps suggest is better. But you're asking me to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is meaning, and that is simply impossible. But that isn't evidence that the opposite, that there is no meaning, is true. You're going through a rhetorical roundabout that ultimately doesn't matter because we aren't dealing in hard proofs or distinct facts. We're just guessing and throwing out ideas, and trying to figure out which ones seem more reasonable.

It tends to be easier to defend a music video/promotion than a 26 episode series.

Which would explain why tons of people who've never seen the works it references love it so much.

No one believes that their favorite piece of revolutionary animation is devoid of meaning, and they will always get mad at you for saying it is.

see

You're asking for a standard of proof that is impossible to breach.

>We're just guessing and throwing out ideas, and trying to figure out which ones seem more reasonable.
Sure, but you're not presenting evidence at all, just saying that it exists as though that's a given.

I've set no standard of proof at all. Nothing has been offered up as proof that Eva has any deeper meaning whatsoever. The one person in this thread who has bothered to give evidence for why it is good praised its character relationships.

I'm not angry, I just don't understand what you want or why you want it. Do you only enjoy art that comes with a handbook or notations from the author explaining everything that was intended by the creator?

Just because his (or anyone else's) opinion doesn't hinge on your approval doesn't mean he shouldn't say them, especially in a thread asking for that very opinion. I'm not saying these topics shouldn't be up for conversation, but pointing out the literary techniques people are using in lieu of an actually argument is just as pointless as anything.

No evidence is required. If your next line is, "then where's the conversation!" start a better fucking one than this.

Yeah, that's because you wrapped me into this dumb rhetorical argument. If you just want to know why I like the show, I can try to explain that easily enough. But if that's what you want just be clear about it, don't get wrapped up in this idiocy.

How old are you? Seriously your an idiot, there is a huge difference in a child soldier and a kid rased in a good city that was forced to go fight giant aliens. Have you honestly ever talked or met real people? Guess what people in reality break easily and freak out turning and turn selfish. If i went to a grown ass aldult right now and said, "hey your going to war now" and then sent him to war with no training, he'd shit himself. Shinji accepted the situation he was in, misato is the one that told him to leave.

You absolutely cannot understand a piece of art without understanding its context, historically, and, for the creator, personally. If you don't know why medieval paintings often lack perspective, then you've completely lost the deeper intended meaning. Did cubism come about in a vacuum? Of course not, it's has intended meaning. No man is an island, and the same holds true for art.

If you don't want to deal with it, you can always just not reply to demands for evidence. It's that easy.

All you have to do is ask nicely.

>we have no historical evidence for what happens when adults and/or children are drafted into a war

m9 pls

Eva is unrealistic in more ways than one.

If there's anything I've learned from years on Sup Forums, it's that being contentious significantly increases the odds of getting replies.