Shinji Ikari is one of my favorite anime characters. He is emotionally bruised and psychologically unstable. His unfortunate upbringing, losing his mother and earning the spite of his father for being weak, make for awkward social interaction with his fellow members of NERV.
I bring him up because I find parts of myself in his story and struggle. The need to be wanted; the fear of being perceived as weak; the ambition to make others happy. I have at one point or another felt same way about these themes.
In the series ending, viewers turned into see Shinji conversing with his different 'selves'. The different selves that everyone(Asuka, Rei, Gendo and Misato) sees, the self that he knows, the self that he wants to be, etc. In these I can see a commonality in the different 'selves' I see, some of which are metaphysical manifestations of the different types of intelligences as proposed by Dr. Gardner (HA! Take that Human Development, I learned something!!!) The one that I seem to have the most problems out of is the emotional self. Always wanting to be wanted, the emotional self has foolishly fell into the media imposed construct of how to behave when courting another.I have learned how to cleverly decieve this self into sumbission through hedgemonic means. The oppressing self in most of these cases is the hedonistic self. But each time I deceive the emo self, he grows more resentful of his treatment and colludes with the rational self to be set free. On the whim that he is released from his shackles, he is quick to make a scene of things.
I was told that the hedonistic self is the cause for my anguish at present, but I beg to differ. The emotional self sometimes seeps his chakra into the hedonistic self and causes greater harm than if the emotional self acted alone. The symbiotic relationship between the two confuse the logical/rational self as I attach feelings to my personal conquest, the proverbial notches in the headboard. I am then left with emotional scars on every self, which the emotional self sadistically enjoys.
Until I am prepared to deal with all the ramifications of the actions of the emotional self, I must imprison him.....
Within me all reside, all free save for one.
