EVA: The Wall Between Hearts
EVA 1.0
I grew up in the 90s as a Chinese kid. When it comes to anime, my generation could not take our eyes off Neon Genesis Evangelion. Whenever the opening theme song is played, my thoughts would flow back to the moment I sat in front of the TV holding my bowl of rice with my heads up, stared at the screen and been taken away to that wasted land. I think me as a kid never really understood what this anime was fully about as it encompasses so many aspects, life, religion, philosophy and etc.
The long-waited new EVA film Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 has been postponed to June 2020 due to COIVD-19. So I decided to watch again the whole series(1995) and End of Evangelion film (1997). After the review, I would say still up to today, it is truly a masterpiece and went way ahead of its time. Approaching the end of the shadow line of my youth, I could still relate so much to the shōnens(juvenile) in EVA. I had to ask myself "did I ever grow up ? or did that shōnen forever stay in me since young ?
EVA 2.0
I could not help but impersonate Shinji while watching the series. He is just like me in life who always tries to escape from everything when things went bad, is afraid of stepping out my comfort zone due to the potential risk of getting hurt and ironically always covers ear with music to shut myself from the world. To some extent, he represents the weak side of me - cowardly, fickle, deflated self-worth. When an incident happened, often times people would cheer me up and encourage me to bounce back stronger and I appreciate all of that; however, I identify more with the shivering perplexed Shinji hiding at the corner of the stairs when everything is out of control. Sometimes, I am not that strong and I can't man up.
How I wish I could be just like Asuka. She also had a destructive childhood as Shinji but she chose to shield up to protect the very self from falling apart. I still remember Asuka was my favourite character when I was a kid because of her optimism and courage to overcome the weakness to fight till the very end. Just like the colour red she represents passionate, infectious and determined. Desire is a relation of being to lack. I suppose those are the qualities I would never be able to possess.
EVA 3.0
To me, one of the major topics EVA touches is the relationship with others. Shinji, Asuka and Rei, each has asked themselves the exact same question - who am I ? To some extent, this question can be rephrased as how to define me in a world that is full of others. I am never just myself rather by nature a social animal. What exactly defines me? The self in others' eyes and the self who responds to others. The boundary of self has infused into the sea of others and this self is never stable nor solid. That is why Shinji and Asuka have opted for two paths - escaping the reality and confronting with courage to protect the self.
The current society did not provide us with a way to exist independently; so we have no choice but to agree to a common contract to live and share with others for the common good. The saddest part of this contract to me is that there are walls between our hearts. That is to say we can never ever fully understand a person including ourselves. There are many things that are lost and buried in those walls. But how is this contract going to work then? From my personal experience, I sometimes might look down to a homeless person on the street and think it is because of the laziness made them end up this way. That is my initial thought and I am not ashamed of that. But there is always another voice saying he is just an unfortunate person who needs help and the society needs to help them. That voice is coming from the virtual contract I signed and I identify with that and I would agree to throw away my initial thought. Though I agree that the initial thought is constructed by the ideology of the society in an invisible way.
EVA 4.0
The ideal situation is that everybody abides to the contract and care for others. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. People hate each other all the time and some "privileged" people would even think they have power over the other group, just like what happened for George Floyd. In the film End of Evangelion, Shinji chose to awaken Lilith and turned everybody in the world into orange juice; by doing that, he knocked down the walls between hearts; thus, man for the first time combined as a single being. Shinji doesn't believe in humanity and he is tired of holding onto his self in the existence of the others. So do I. In the light of what's going on in my life and in the world, I'd like to quote Asuka to end this post, " (The world), it is disgusting."
