Character · Neon Genesis Evangelion
Shinji Ikari
Told to get in the robot, he says no, and the series takes that refusal more seriously than any show had before.
In Otakana the clue reads: Reluctant pilot told to get in the robot
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Letters
- 6 · Easy
Shinji Ikari is fourteen, plays the cello, and carries a cassette player he uses to stop hearing people. His father summoned him to Tokyo-3 after years of silence, showed him a wounded pilot on a stretcher, and asked whether he would rather she went out again. He climbs into Unit-01. The reason is not courage and the show is explicit about that.
What follows is a mecha series where the fighting is brief, ugly and frightening, and the long stretches between fights are about a boy working out whether being useful is the same as being wanted. He is praised once and reorganises his entire personality around it. Anno drew heavily on his own depression while making the show.
Audiences argued about him for decades, largely because he behaves like an actual frightened teenager rather than a protagonist. The 1995 series ran twenty-six episodes on TV Tokyo, the 1997 film gave the ending a second and harsher pass, and the Rebuild films finished in 2021 by finally letting him grow up.
Spelling SHINJI
SHINJI is six letters for three Japanese beats, shi-n-ji, and the SHI at the front spends three letters on one kana. There is no long vowel to lose here, which makes it easier than GENDO. Two I's, one near each end, and the N in the middle is a full beat in Japanese even though it looks like a passing consonant.