fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1765 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1765 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Cassie & Jude]

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[Joss Whedon]

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[Young Justice]

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[FFX]

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[Topsy Turvy]

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[Harry Potter]

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[Pokemon]

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[AssCastle/LAMEZONE.NET]

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[Lost Girl]

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[M*A*S*H]

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[TBBT, Wil Wheaton]

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[Resident Evil]

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[Star Trek]

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[Neverland the Miniseries]

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[Homestuck]

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[Gallagher Girls]

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[Macross Frontier]

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[Keeping Up Appearances]

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[Bleach]

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[Hetalia]

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[Mortal Kombat]

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[Homestuck]

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[Six Feet Under]

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[X-Men, Thor]

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[Homestuck]

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[IT Crowd]

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[China, IL]

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[Atop The Fourth Wall]

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[The Hour]

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[Supernatural]

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[IT Crowd]

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[Downton Abbey]

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[Evangelion]

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[Steps]

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[Batman]

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[Dead Island]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 100 secrets from Secret Submission Post #252.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How many main characters like Shinji existed before Eva came out? I'm hard-pressed to think of any. Especially in the mecha genre since pretty much all of them were either in the BADASS category or the "I whined for a few episodes, but then I MANNED THE FUCK UP" category (even the female pilots TBH)

Absolutely ALL the main characters of stories where "through contrived plot twist, introverted boy with not much of a life gets to live in a mansion full of sexy women / has a gorgeous goddess / video girl / sexy not-so-evil female demon come living with them".

Not much seen in the mecha genre, though, but EVA wasn't aiming to be mecha. It was aiming to be pretentious, I believe.

If you refer to harem shows, there weren't too many prior to 1995 tbh

"Loser" protags have always been a popular archetype in all genres but I'd say Shinji is much too complex to be called just that.

Not necessarily harem shows, no.

Maison Ikkoku : 1980
Kimagure orange road : 1984
Ah My Goddess : 1988
Video Girl Ai : 1992

And that's for the most famous ones.
All of them feature a sensitive, indecise male lead, not quite as cringe-worthy as Hikaru, but I would call his anti-hero personality a definite archetype in anime, yes. The innocent lamb thrown into a situation that might require a hero, and a bunch of pretty girls.
Probably a wishful projection of a similarly shy, indecise writer (though Maison Ikkoku was written by a woman, so that's more of a comedic pattern there).

I'm not sure Shinji is more complex than the well-written versions of it.
But then, to me Evangelion always looked more like something that tried to look deep by being vague and cryptic, but was just overblown.

Those characters are nothing like Shinji, they are all older than Shinji (two of them are college students FFS) and those are the kinds of series that lend themselves to having a sensitive, timid male protagonist (ie. romance and harem)

You are really, really grasping at straws here. We get it, you hate Evangelion, it doesn't make the show any less of a success or any less innovative just because you don't like it.

We get it, you love Evangelion, it doesn't make the show any more of a success or any more innovative just because you like it.

YMMV.

I dunno, though -- the introverted boy in those series is usually fawned over by all the other characters (or at least the female ones) despite having few attractive qualities. Also, he's usually the "reasonable" or "dependable" one; everyone else is just so wacky-crazy-shenanigans-full that he gets caught up in it, and then everyone's there to back him up or apologize for their hijinkery or whatever. iirc (it's been a while), Shinji was pretty much told constantly by everyone how much they despised him or his actions, and he's depicted as emotionally unstable, with few people willing to listen to or try to understand him.

I do tend to agree on the pretentiousness; while I think EVA had interesting ideas rattling around in it, especially for the mecha genre, they were often poorly handled or not entirely thought through. And slapping on Christian names and symbolism doesn't help at all.

I always thought that Evangelion borrowed more heavily from Jewish than Christian mythology (not that most people can tell the difference, just judging from comments people usually make about Eva). That's not to say there wasn't Christian shit thrown in there, though (and the Christian names and symbolism did seem rather slapped on), but c'mon, Lilith is from Jewish mythology, the Sepiroth is from Jewish mythology, Jewish legends portray angels as massive monstrous beings, etc. etc. None of that shit is Christian at all.

My mistake, then; should have said "non-Japanese religions" (since, upon re-looking up some of the other references, realized that some side props must be given to the Babylonians as well). tbh, the crucified angel and the Lance of Longinus were the first things that came to mind when I was trying to remember the out-of-place symbolism, because I was more familiar with those as religious symbols back when I saw what I did of EVA. Didn't mean to overlook or downplay Lilith, the Sephiroth, et al., or to conflate the two religions.

No, Evangelion was at its heart a deconstruction of the mecha genre. It's doesn't really matter if you liked it or not, it's a mecha series. It pretty much follows all the same tropes that were established back in the seventies -- giant robots piloted by kids, saving the world from monsters that want to destroy the world.

Also, aside from the last few episodes and the movie, I don't get how it was pretentious at all. It was pretty damn straightforward if you ask me. Not to mention that the portrayal of angels was refreshing (I get really sick of the whole "male models with wings" cliché in fiction and it's nice to see angels portrayed like monsters when they are described as such in religious text all the damn time, yet hardly anyone goes that route in fiction)

Edited 2011-11-03 23:05 (UTC)

[ SECRET POST #1765 ]

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