- Joined
- Aug 24, 2023
He's a bit more than a monster of the week. He shows Shinji "unconditional love" - which is quite toxic, especially to Shinji. Of course it's just to manipulate him, and then he forces Shinji to kill him, which drives Shinji's mental state in EOE. Kaworu really fucks Shinji up.At the risk of sounding heretical, I think that the overfocus on Kaworu in 3.0 was one of the many problems with the film, especially given how little he actually mattered in the last film after having an entire movie to himself.
Honestly, the only reason he got so much focus was for no other reason other than that he’s appealing to the fans. From a story perspective in the original show, he was pretty much just a monster of the week, albeit with more focus and symbolism come EOE.
I agree that he didn't deserve an entire movie, but there are a lot of girls who like boy love, and a lot of suppressed gay guys, who love the idea of Shinji and Kaworu together. I think there is more official merchandise with Shinji/Kaworu than Shinji/Asuka.
I understand a bit of why Anno wrote himself into a corner when making 3.0. Shinji is in space, presumably we don't see any kind of Rei at all, so two of the main characters are completely gone from the story. So you've got Asuka, Mari (who the writers had a terrible time with according to the wiki, and she's too similar to Asuka in many ways)... and the adults of course.
If Anno had just said "screw it" and gotten his staff to do a few shorts like -46h or even -120m (which isn't even animated, it's just manga with a voiceover) explaining what the fuck happened, that would have been an improvement. But that would require him to figure out what happened and that takes work.
There's some speculation based on the trailer that we'll either see new characters, a reimagining with the same characters, or the missing 2.5. In other words nobody knows what's coming.
Anyway back to best girl.