On Rei Ayanami Being the Most Relatable Character in Evangelion

When becoming a new anime fan with Sailor Moon and The Adventures of Girl Genius Bulma Briefs (who tragically became overshadowed by her sidekick Goku) there were big anime people raved about. One was Evangelion. So I knew I needed to get around to it, and some video rental stores even carried it, so it would be easy to get. I misinterpreted Shinji as being a really butch girl, and ADV's always salacious box copy made it sound like the adventures of an alien slaying sci-fi girl team, like Sailor Moon with mechs. This would definitely be cool.

I watched the first two episodes and was largely bored. Now I love the first two episodes now, I think they're the best crafted first episodes probably ever, but to 14 year old me they were boring. There was some cool imagery with the monster Angels but there were a lot of talking heads. And worse yet Shinji was a boy. I didn't hate it, Misato was cool, and in the days when only 30 anime were available at all, you sometimes watched more of a thing even it wasn't immediately appealing.

And then episode three and four killed my interest in the show. Instead of giving more information about the mysterious Rei, two boring male characters were introduced. One was a military otaku and the other was a chivalry bro motivated by pride and the desire to take care of his sister. And so the dudes punched each other and had machismo crises and I checked out for a while. Maybe it was just a few weeks before I rented tape number three but in those days that might as well have been a year.

Tape number three introduced Rei, and even better she was naked. When you're socialized that the only reason to ever speak to a girl is because you want to have sex with her, I totally read this as interest rather than empathy. But with her story in there and especially the end of episode six I was sold, and soon eagerly awaited new episode releases! The entire series hadn't even been localized yet!

I eventually found points to relate to Shinji with and became kind of disenchanted with Rei. Her introspection was largely about being a lab grown homunculus, and like anime's other big obsession "are robots human? it seemed like a fake problem for scifi fans to intellectually masturbate about. I wasn't super media literate, and I knew sometimes things were metaphors for real things. The x men was about racism, for instance! But what was Rei Ayanami as a character trying to even DO?

I finally figured it out. She's a depersonalization metaphor.

Now if you've been depersonalized most of your life, you don't know that you are basically fake so of course it wouldn't stand out. But the signs are all there. Her implicit trust of authority figures. Her complete sexlessness. Her willingness to do what she's told if it makes other people happy. Her lack of agency, seemingly self imposed. Having no affect except anger and frustration. Her complete indifference to death.

I recognize all of these traits now. Perhaps I even recognized them then, subconsciously. This makes her immediately the most understandable character in the show when previously she seemed the weakest link.

Sorry, Rei.