A Defense of Shinji Ikari

Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most influential certainly one of the most successful and most important anime of the late 20th century. This is probably what led Netflix to obtain the rights to stream the anime internationally with a brand spanking new dub/subtitle translation. I imagine most people who read this blog are already aware that this new dub/translation has quite a few problems and there are some other related licenses Netflix didn't bother to obtain (notably the cover of "Fly Me to the Moon" that plays at the end of every episode). This essay is not about the new translation's problems those are well shared and known by this point, and while there are subtle nuances to the discussion that deserve a deeper dive, there is another Evangelion related topic that has been bothering me for far longer.