28th October 2020
I've just rewatched the first episode of Neon Genesis: Evangelion and I'm completely blown away by the amount of parallels that can be drawn between its meaning and the thought of Jordan Peterson (and the Bible).
Thus, I will try to describe the meaning of each episode through a Petersonian/ Biblical/ Jungian lens. I hope you will like it.
In the first part I will introduce the most important elements of the literal structure of the story and in the second part I will write about the metaphorical meaning of the anime.
What there is
It's year 2050 AD. The world seems to have experienced a catastrophe; a flood or something even worse. An unknown monster approaches Tokyo-3, which is a city build after the destruction of the previous two Tokyos. All the countries seem to be united under the command of the UN. The world government controlled and symbolised by hyper-masculine generals doesn't even try to communicate with the Angel – they use technology, i.e. weaponised rationality to attack it. Nothing works, even the pinnacle of human technological achievement – an atom bomb. The monster seems to grow another head from the attack. It is resistant due to the possession of an AT field.
Having exhausted their military capacities, the generals turn to Gendo Ikari – a brilliant, although somewhat strange scientist, who seems to have an answer to the problem. Gendo is on the one hand very masculine – he never hesitates and is confident, but he also has a fanatical element in his character. He seems to have great faith that his son will be the saviour, although Shinji appears to be weak.
Shinji is thus called by his father to the NERV headquarters and told that he must take upon himself the burden of humanity's fate and confront the unknown monster. Shinji thinks that he's to weak and imperfect to be the saviour and he's also angry that his dad abandoned him and only made him come back, because he was needed.
Only after confronted with Rei's suffering and after the Eva responded to Shinji's movement (thus proving Shinji has a magical capacity within himself) does Shinji accept to get into the robot and bear the burden of humanity's fate.
Meanwhile, on the surface the Angel is making crucifix-shaped explosions, as if saying: I demand a sacrifice, I demand the crucifixion of someone.
The episode ends with Shinji confronting the Angel head-on.
What to do about it
First of all, the following is NOT an exhaustive analysis of the first episode. I've written down two pages of scribbles about the cabalistic symbolism, about Rei, Matsuki and Ritsuko and many more. In this article, I will try to focus solely on what I consider the main point of the episode.
Neon Genesis Evangelion means the Gospel for the New Century. What was the central point, central thesis of the old Gospel? According to Peterson, the point was for the individual to copy Jesus Christ and voluntarily take upon themselves the burden of suffering for the world and humanity. Peterson says, even though we're weak, sinful, chaotic, imperfect, murderous and treacherous, we have a capacity for heroism and sainthood. Actually, our weaknesses are the thing that make our sacrifices meaningful! After all, had we been perfect, there would be nothing special in being a good person.
It seems that the world needed a new Gospel, so Evangelion came into being. And Peterson.
The beginning of the episode seems like a retelling of the story of the tower of Babel (and it's also a description of the circumstances we're currently in). To sum it up shortly, the story of Babel says that if humans fall in love with their rational capabilities too much, nature will interfere and destroy their creation.
Nature needs balance. Yin needs Yang. We cannot go to far in either direction without a catastrophe.
Tokyo-3 seems to be the third identical tower of Babel humanity has built themselves. The previous two Tokyos were destroyed by cataclysms, but the world goverment didn't care. They focused on centralization of power and militarization.
God/ Nature/ the Universe cannot stand this imbalance, so it sends a monster to balance the human world out. Hyper-masculine humanity (the generals) don't even try to figure out what's going on. They simply use all their firepower to attack the monster. The attack fails miserably, because a spiritual creature cannot be destroyed by material means.
The parallel between the above and C2C's – Delta music video is stunning. It seems they've just copied the first episode and added an ending. Please refer to my other article if interested.
And here we come to Gendo and Shinji. Gendo is God the Father, but with an evil twist. He despises his son, he clearly has an agenda and he's willing to sacrifice everything just to follow it. Shinji is informed that he has to become the new Jesus Christ (please note that „Shin” might mean „new” in Japanese and „Ji” might be the abbreviation of Jesus) and take upon himself the burden of sacrifice for humanity. He has to be crucified on the cross that the Angel makes with the explosions.
Shinji thinks he's not worthy of that, because he's a coward, he's weak, unmanly, has no confidence and daddy issues. He is also bitter that his father only called for him when he was needed.
Well, if you were told that the fate of mankind depended on you, how would you react? „No way! I'm too broken, weak, shy, addicted to pornography, too introverted and so on. I'd rather resort to nihilism.” That is a possible reaction, so no wonder Shinji behaved like this.
However, seeing his connection with the Eva and the suffering of Rei, Shinji after all decides to take the fate of mankind upon himself and enter the robot.
This episode seems to be like a call to individuals to take responsibility upon themselves in light of the tragedy of existence.
Even though you're weak, broken and small. Even though you're not entirely sure that God the Father wants your good, Evangelion seems to be saying here the the answer should be taking the cross on your shoulders. Well, it would be weird if something called „Evangelion” said something else.
Please don't kill me if I missed some elements. There's too much of it, e.g. Shinji is the male element entering Eva – this is like a unification of Yin and Yang and also an inversion of Eve being made of Adam's rib. Like I said, it's possible to write an essay about each frame of the anime and I don't want to bore anyone to death.
The analysis of next episodes is coming soon. My temporary thesis will be that Evangelion will advocate the unification of Yin and Yang within our psyches. We will see if it holds up.
dd
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