Studly Hungwell

Let's talk about boys.

A popular notion on social media is that "Shinji being a horny teenager is load-bearing for the plot" of Eva. I specifically say, "on social media" because if I recall correctly, this wasn't as much of a thing on forums and imageboards back in the day¹. In the same way that adherents to this view will often fall back onto cinematography to support their view; the medium is the message, I have reason to suspect that this view has gained traction specifically because, social media as a medium rewards being a) concise and b) funny, or, c), arguing by means of images in the case of something like the YouTube video essay², and people optimize.

The other reason for this, I suspect, is that it lends an air of dignity to that "unedifying aspect": Fanservice. The camera is an extension of Shinji's gaze, that's why it's constantly up girls' asses, and that's why it's okay for me to be watching this, you see. And you really need to argue it this way, because we could just follow Shinji, the character's, actual gaze and take inventory:

Category A: Looking past

Toji and Kensuke are our contrast characters here. They're working themselves up checking out the assets ("boobs", "thighs" and, oddly enough, "calves"), but Shinji doesn't care. He's interested in, bear with me, Rei Ayanami, the person. Toji and Kensuke will repeatedly tell Shinji how jealous they are of him for living with Misato, and he repeatedly tells them that, actually, it's mostly about doing household chores because she can't be arsed to. Shinji was on The Way of the House-Husband twenty years before that manga was written, take note. Disinterest is Shinji's default mode. Misato's polaroid (Ep. 01)? Nothing. Ritsuko wearing nothing but a one-piece under her labcoat (Ibid.)? Nothing. Asuka's breasts hanging straight down (Ep. 09)? Nothing. Okay, something, but only after she falls asleep.

Not the last time, either. Wonder if that means anything. He stays receptive to Asuka's advances for a little while longer after Ep. 09, yes, but, the adults did just smush them together like dolls for a week. He should be: That was the point of that exercise. They're literally in sync.

Category B: Embarrassment

This should probably be split into two: Seeing (B1) and being seen (B2). B1 is something like Shinji seeing Misato's underwear (Ep. 02) ...

... but B2 is really the main thing here:

More than anything, Shinji hates being seen as a person that could be sexual. There's any number of reasons why this might be the case: The discovery of sexuality marks the passage from child- to adulthood. In terms of the women in his life; Shinji is mostly hung up on the one that's gone: His mother. He's not ready to be an adult, he wants to remain a child, preferably an infant, forever. He feels comfortable inside Shogoki, to the extent that he does, because he perceives being back in the womb. He's comfortable around Rei, to the extent that he is, because she reminds him of his mother.

He's only comfortable around Asuka when she's asleep, because it's the only time in his life after she enters his life when she's not judging him. When Asuka reminds Shinji that she's a person by whispering in her sleep, the spell instantly breaks.

Adulthood means: The passage of time, the foreclosure of possibilities, the necessity of making irreversible decisions, the inevitability of hurting people and being hurt, taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions, and perhaps more relevantly, our inactions: Shinji doesn't want any of this, and he thinks that, if he just isolates himself hard enough, he'll never have to face any of it.

Sexual attraction intrudes on this, which is why Misato never manages to actually become a surrogate maternal figure, but Rei does: Genealogically speaking, after all, she's half Lilith, half Yui: The mother of mankind, the mother of Shinji Ikari, God-in-becoming. Being seen naked, being seen as a potential sexual object does not faze Rei at all, but being seen as a maternal, a domestic figure? That's poka poka:

Category C: Disgust

Shinji watching Misato and Kaji have sex in Antediluvian Introspection Space was one of the few things that was translated from the TV anime to End of, so, presumably, it must be pretty important. What do we think is being expressed here? Jealousy? That's one possibility, but it'd be the first and last time Shinji is jealous — of Kaji: He's jealous of his father because Rei smiles at his father and not him. That's Freudian. But moreover, being jealous regarding Kaji is Asuka's thing.

Shinji is disgusted. This alone stands testament to how, or rather, how little³, Shinji actually thinks about sex: His introduction to Misato was as a sexual object. His introduction to Kaji was as a shameless flirt. He knows they used to be a couple. If he was really as horny, as hung up on this as people like to claim he is, you'd think it would have occurred to him that such a thing has happened. And yet, when he's confronted with it, he doesn't enjoy, he doesn't recoil, he judges: Death to this, death to mankind.

Category D: Kaworu

Shinji is not gay, he likes Kaworu because Kaworu doesn't expect anything from him whatsoever. Kaworu scoops Shinji up when he's almost at rock bottom socially and emotionally and is nice to him. It's in this way that Kaworu and Rei are "the same": Shinji's relationship to Rei, at least Rei II., is safe because until the very end, Rei lacks sufficient personhood to formulate her wants, and when she does, her want is to make Shinji happy.

Shinji's day-long freakout about having seen, having touched Rei naked (Ep. 05) is not about him getting horny, it's about him being ashamed to have, potentially, been seen as expressing sexual attraction. That would change the nature of their relationship: Away from something Shinji can expect unconditional love from, which is the thing he really wants, to something that comes with mutual expectations. But those, a) are difficult to decipher, and, b) would limit his ability to act or not act however he wants at a given moment. When Shinji is confronted with Kaworu's one wish, he immediately slides back into despondency.

Becoming okay with the inevitability of bad things happening because that is the price to pay for the possibility of anything good happening was the point of the finale. The TV anime represents that conclusion as having come from everywhere and nowhere, End of cuts that circle down to the sole sources of unconditional love in Shinji's life:

Sitting in his throne of souls, capable of reshaping the world any way he wants, Shinji doesn't wish himself to be isekai'd into a different genre of anime, something more "slice of life", "healing-type" or "harem". What he wishes himself is to be loved, and actually feel it. Just this once.

¹ The hospital scene at the beginning of End of reached its memetic status specifically because the forums posters of old still had the capacity to correctly identify it as the shocking turn out of left field that it is.

²After all, it used to be way more of a pain in the ass to upload images anywhere.