The "God" of Evangelion

Gendo Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion is  incredibly enigmatic. There’s no actual one singular consensus on what he had planned  throughout the series. We know he wanted to reunite with Yui, but whether he wanted that by  merging all humans, or just putting himself in the eva, or putting humanity in the evas, is  more contentious.

However I do think there is one definitive answer and I want to establish that  before moving onto the deeper analysis. I’m 100% certain that he had Human Instrumentality planned.  He wanted to merge humanity into one singular being the way Shinji initially did.

We know this  because when he was trying to activate Third Impact he asked Rei to merge all souls into one,  and when Shinji activated Instrumentality he said that he finally got what he wanted. There’s also  the fact that in episode 25 of the tv series, he outright rejects the idea of Instrumentality being  nothingness and insists that it’s actually peace. Of course this begs the question, why did Gendo  and SEELE compete for control over Third Impact if they had the same end goal?

You could boil it down  to trust issues, but that’s kind of lame. I think a more simple explanation comes down to their  differing motives - Gendo wants to reunite with Yui. As such, he needs Unit-01 protected since it  contains her soul.

This is why Gendo throws away the Lance in episode 22. This makes SEELE want to  use Unit-01 as their Lilith substitute since they don’t have the Lance to control Lilith anymore.  Now that Gendo has made Unit-01 crucial to SEELE’s plans, they can ensure its protection.

Unit 00  and Unit 02 were both destroyed at some point, so clearly Unit 01 also had a decent chance of  being destroyed. This also explains why Gendo keeps opposing SEELE even after this point.  His control mechanism over Lilith is Rei, but SEELE wants to use the duplicate pseudo  Lances on Unit 01 the way they wanted to use the powerful real one on Lilith.

We can surmise  that if Unit 01 was actually lanced by SEELE, something would have happened to  Yui’s soul that Gendo wouldn’t want. This is why Gendo would rather do  Instrumentality his own way using Rei, since doing it SEELE’s way would involve  messing up his whole reason for doing this. So case closed, seems pretty cut-and-dry right? 

Gendo wanted to do Human Instrumentality. I think it is, but I also think the reason why  people have differing interpretations on this is because of two things. First of all,  there’s the video game which has a bunch of new lore.

Gendo has some other weird plan of  putting people into the Evas and then having them return after Third Impact. Personally though  I don’t place any stock in this game. I think the series should and can stand on its own, some of  the game’s lore is contradictory to the series despite Gainax advising it, and there’s no way  to know how much the game developers took their own liberties in crafting the lore.

So I think  it’s fine to set that aside. However the other reason why we see differing interpretations  in Gendo’s plan is because of this incredibly bizarre conversation between Gendo and SEELE  in End of Evangelion. Basically Gendo argues with SEELE and alludes to wanting to store  humanity in the Evas and use them as Arks, which we know from later in the movie  involves saving humanity from Third Impact.

This conversation is so confusing because it  contradicts every moment we see in the series which very clearly points to Gendo wanting to  merge all of humanity. In fact we know this isn’t some oversight by the creators because  just 20 minutes later we see Gendo asking Rei to merge everyone. Matter fact Gendo even says  “death produces nothing” in response to SEELE wanting Instrumentality.

This is incredibly out of  character considering in episode 12 of the series, Gendo speaks positively of the barren human-less  Antarctica and calls it a pure world free of sin. This matches perfectly with how Gendo in  episode 25 says Instrumentality is peace. So clearly he’s bluffing to SEELE, right? 

He’s claiming something that isn’t his plan, is his plan, and he’s talking to a group  of people he’s been lying to throughout the series. But the question is why? What does  he gain from lying and what is the narrative purpose of this scene?

Well first of all  I don’t think it’s fully a bluff. If you take a lot of what he says out of context they  match perfectly with his ideals. For example, he says death produces nothing.

In the context  of the conversation, this is a lie because he’s saying this to rebuke Instrumentality, but  it’s also true to some extent because of how he frames it differently from SEELE. He sees  death as a negative, and he simply does not view Instrumentality as death. That’s why he rejects  the idea of it being nothingness in episode 25.

He also says that the Eva series will advance  humanity to a new world, and again, Gendo does genuinely believe this. The Mass Production Evas  did end up being a key part of Instrumentality, and he also does see Instrumentality as achieving  godhood in episode 21. So while he is being disingenuous throughout this conversation  by trying to have SEELE think he wants to store humanity in the Arks, it’s moreso a  lie by omission rather than a straight-up fabrication.

It’s also worth noting that it’s  entirely plausible that Gendo and Fuyutsuki did plan on storing humanity in the arks at  one point. In episode 21’s flashback when he first shows Fuyutsuki the Eva, he says that  they’ll use the Evas to bring mankind to a new era. Further evidence is that we know their plan  here contradicts SEELE’s since we know SEELE was going after Yui.

Of course this is before Yui  puts her soul in the Eva, which causes Gendo to pivot to Human Instrumentality. So the fact  that Gendo and Fuyutsuki had once held the ark plan makes it the perfect bluff to SEELE since  SEELE likely already suspected that at one point. Now we’re still left with the question, what is  the purpose of Gendo trying to mislead SEELE here?

Well, consider that this is after Gendo made  his treason clear by sabotaging SEELE’s plan and throwing the lance so that they can become  reliant on Unit 01. He does not want them to know that he did that in order to protect Unit 01,  so the best thing to say at this point is that he simply wants to use Unit 01 and the other Evas  in order to store humanity in the arks. After all, if they learn that he did all that because he  wants the soul inside Unit 01 to be protected, then it’s entirely likely that they’ll try to  Lance Unit 01 as soon as possible so that Gendo’s plan can be nullified.

This lie is basically  just a minor safety measure he took so that SEELE doesn’t learn of his weakness. What’s  interesting though is that this lie seems to be more in-line with Fuyutsuki’s ideals. That’s  why his response to the whole thing is bringing up humanity’s persistence and how that persistence  is the reason why Yui stayed in the Eva.

In fact Fuyutsuki in general seems to embody Yui’s ideals,  specifically her life-affirming ideas concerning humanity finding paradise within hell. That’s why  in the Antarctica scene, Fuyutsuki disagrees with Gendo’s point of view that a barren land is pure,  instead opting for a more humanistic perspective where he prefers the presence of humans, even  if they have sin. Sounds very Yui-esque to me.

This goes even further when you consider that  Fuyutsuki was in on Yui’s plan the whole time. More specifically, her guiding the whole series  so that Shinji and humanity can learn from their mistakes and work to improve themselves and  she becomes humanity’s monument in space. This tracks perfectly with how negatively Fuyutsuki  talks about Instrumentality in End of Eva, describing it as devilish.

By contrast, Gendo  appears to have abandoned Yui’s ideals due to the trauma of losing her. He initially accepts  her more optimistic ideas by having the ark plan and by accepting her hopeful reasoning for  having Shinji, but it’s after losing her that he switches over to the Instrumentality plan.  This explains his disagreement with Fuyutsuki in the Antarctica scene.

It’s basically Gendo  disagreeing with a past version of himself. This divide in ideologies is made clearer  through Gendo’s attempts at godhood. He describes Instrumentality as godhood in episode  21, in the Antarctica scene Gendo arrogantly praises humanity’s scientific evolution which  caused the area to be so barren, and he also wants to be god on a literal level since his  plan involves fusing with Rei and Lilith.

Similarly, SEELE also seeks to attain godhood  through Human Instrumentality. They want humanity to fuse with God and become a higher life form.  The show as a whole condemns the attempt to reach godhood because it’s an attempt to be  inhuman.

It’s an attempt to separate yourself from the troubles of human connection and try  to rise above that. It’s just another form of escapism. This is why we see the same  action framed in so many different ways.

Gendo sees Instrumentality as peace, SEELE  sees it as evolution, and Shinji sees it as suicide. This differing framing is important to  Gendo’s conflict with SEELE, but it also shows how so many seemingly various motivations are  ultimately just rationalizing a more universal and fundamental desire to escape from it all.  As we know, Yui reprimands Gendo for this, including his abandonment of Shinji.

I personally  think Gendo felt guilty about this to some degree. That’s why he made Rei Shinji’s age, so that  he can vicariously sort of fix his mistake through parenting her instead of taking the more  difficult route. Of course he’s an awful father to her as well.

But it’s ironic that Yui is the one  reprimanding Gendo when she also seeks to escape. Her plan to become a monument for humanity within  Unit 01 is also an attempt to chase godhood. She even says herself that it’ll be lonely which  really demonstrates how much this plan avoids the difficulty of human interaction.

In fact  she straight up rejects returning back to Earth, instead preferring to stay in the Eva. She  lowkey abandons Shinji the way Gendo does. This might be hard to believe because her  plan here goes against her anti-escapist, life-affirming messages.

But her desire to  be a monument is still antithetical to the story’s themes. In fact in her conversation with  Fuyutsuki she says that the Evas were humanity’s attempts at playing god, yet her plan hinges on  the Evas. She herself is trying to be god here, and I don’t know if she realizes this.

It’s  also important to consider what would happen if her plan succeeded. Humanity would be gone,  the solar system would be wiped out, the sun and moon would disappear. But she would remain. 

Stuck in the void. What does that remind you of? Personally, it reminds me of episode 26.

When  Shinji is in the void, feels free but feels weird, and has it explained to him that he needs  other things on Earth to ground him and limit his freedom in order to properly exist. That  there needs to be other people so that he can be relative to something. We see a manifestation  of this in the very final scene.

Shinji is alone on the beach in a way that visually parallels  him being in the void, meaning Asuka’s presence metaphorically gives him another thing, another  person, for him to be relative to and thus affirm his identity. Not only does this parallel  reinforce the idea that Yui’s plan here is being condemned since it’s the opposite of what the  series portrays as good, ie Asuka’s return, but it shows the hollowness of her plan as well. Even if  she does succeed, she would just be left floating as a figurative mass of nothingness with no sense  of self and nothing to be relative to.

Kaworu even says suicide is the ultimate act of freedom, which  shows a connection between committing suicide and Shinji’s freedom in the void in episode 26. In  other words, Yui is essentially chasing suicide here. This hones in on how similar her plan is  to Human Instrumentality on a thematic level.

However I don’t think we can fully understand  Yui without also understanding Rei’s place in the whole thing. Unit-01 and Rei are opposites.  Unit-01 has Lilith’s body and Yui’s soul, whereas Rei has Lilith’s soul and Yui’s body. 

Remember that Lilith is the mother of humanity, so both of these entities serve as both Shinji’s  mother as well as humanity’s mother. This shows us that Shinji is supposed to represent humanity.  This idea is expressed throughout the show.

Kaworu has Adam’s soul, meaning he’s the ultimate  father figure, so it makes sense that Shinji, the guy with parental issues, becomes attracted  to Kaworu. Shinji’s connection with Kaworu is also what motivates Kaworu to try to preserve  humanity. This idea comes to a head when Shinji activates Human Instrumentality.

He now represents  humanity on a very literal level because his decisions and feelings are now shaping the fate  of everyone. I think this resolves once he ends Instrumentality and leaves it up to everyone  whether to stay or return to Earth. He is now letting everyone make their own decisions. 

He is no longer humanity’s representative. I’m lowkey reaching here, but I think Shinji  representing humanity was a very meta way to express the audience self-inserting into Shinji  and relating to him. Once Shinji leaves it up to humanity, Anno is now leaving it up to us to  learn from the series and work to improve our lives.

This goes to show just how short-sighted  Yui’s whole endeavor is. Shinji already stops being humanity’s representative, the series wants  to leave it up to us, yet Yui persists in wanting to represent humanity and be everyone’s sole  monument. This provides a huge contrast between Unit-01 and Rei.

Throughout the show Rei has  a whole arc about learning how to be human, how to be like her offspring, but ultimately  her nature as a deity catches up to her and she becomes a god by the end of the series.  Within this godhood she still tries to be as human as she possibly can. She helps  Shinji because of the connections she made, and as she disperses across time and space  she chooses to remain in her school uniform, almost like she’s attached to it because it  represents when she learned how to be human.

Her exercising her humanity as a god just  underlines the tragedy of her arc. Despite her clear desire to be human, despite her  having a whole arc learning how to be human, she has to become some weird quantum  entity with no sign of her returning back to Earth as a person. While Rei does  not want to be a god but still becomes one, Unit 01 tries to become a god but fails to become  one.

This frame is really powerful to me because it’s like the unwilling god is staring at the  failed god. It shows how Yui is misguided and ungrateful in trying to become what is actually  a miserable outcome, unbeknownst to her. Yui’s egocentrism and desire to seek god is likely a  way to demythologize motherhood.

Evangelion is largely about rejecting the comfort of the  womb and growing up. Episode 20 has Shinji rejecting his return to his mother in favor of  facing the real world, Kaworu is a fatherly / motherly figure who provides unconditional love  to Shinji but has to be eliminated, and the end of the series has Shinji separating from Yui,  refusing the solace of instrumentality in order to embrace the challenges of human connection.  Asuka strokes Shinji and gives him affection the exact same way his mother did, but this time it  was done through a series’ worth of hardship and work.

He won’t be getting easy unconditional love  from his mom anymore. So to have his mom actually be really weird and crazy and try to become god  not only deglorifies her love on a thematic level, but on a literal level, the resulting  separation forces Shinji out of the nest. At this point I think it’s quite clear that Yui  has a major internal conflict within herself.

On the one hand she’s very altruistic and  anti-escapist, on the other hand she’s egoistic and pro-escapist. I said earlier in the  video that Fuyutsuki represents Yui’s ideals, whereas Gendo is opposed to Yui’s ideals, and  that was somewhat of a lie. Because it’s more like they embody different sides of Yui.

Fuyutsuki  embodies the optimistic side, while Gendo embodies the escapist god-seeking side. It’s ironic because  Fuyutsuki was more exposed to her god-seeking side since she explained his plan to him, whereas Gendo  was more exposed to her optimistic side when she explained to him that Shinji can find paradise  within hell. Despite this, they both eventually ended up with different takeaways and adopted the  opposite side of her.

For Gendo this is because of his trauma of losing Yui, which is cool because  her attempt to be god unknowingly made him want to be god. For Fuyutsuki it’s because of his  more optimistic disposition. After all, he said that Yui’s faith in humanity was  why she decided to stay inside the Eva.

While this is true, it’s only half the story.  She stayed in it for both altruistic and egoistic reasons. In fact her plan to be god would  not work if she was not genuinely optimistic, because if she was wrong about humanity being  able to find hope, then Shinji would not have reversed instrumentality and she would’ve  been stuck and unable to go back to the Eva.

It’s funky because her life-affirming  ideology ends up servicing her god-seeking ideology despite both of these ideas not meshing  well together. She is incredibly torn, and yet Fuyutsuki focuses more on her altruistic reasons  for staying in the Eva rather than her god-seeking ones. It shows that he chooses to follow her  because of how her plans benefit humanity, rather than because he’s interested in her plan to  be a monument.

Her separation did not traumatize Fuyutsuki and set him on an egotistical path the  way it did for Gendo. Both Gendo and Fuyutsuki were similar in that both of them used to be quite  aloof, with Gendo picking fights and Fuyutsuki prioritizing his work over socializing. Yui makes  somewhat of a change in both of these people, with Gendo finally being able to connect  with someone, and Fuyutsuki socializing more.

It makes sense that Yui’s separation would cause  Gendo to relapse and double down on how he used to be, whereas Fuyutsuki stays sane because he was  not dependent on her the way Gendo was. Gendo is a mirror of Shinji at the end of the day. Fuyutsuki  consistently focused on academia more than human relationships, so it stands to reason that when  he’s able to bond with someone through academia, he has better exposure than before to the various  ways human relationships can manifest and fulfill someone.

Fuyutsuki’s friendship with Yui gives  him more of an appreciation for humanity, but this appreciation is not contingent on their  relationship. This is the whole reason why she was able to trust Fuyutsuki with her plan but couldn’t  trust Gendo, as he was the kind of person who’d fall off the deep end after she fuses with the  Eva. Even though Yui was foolish in trying to represent humanity, she still kind of does in a  more symbolic way.

While Shinji and Asuka show us the duality in human relationships and how  they can foster both cruelty and compassion, Yui demonstrates the two opposite sides of  humanity. The arrogant over-intellectualizing side that wants to become god, and the side  that carries unconditional hope, fights for something bigger than ourselves, and is able to  see the light in the dark. Thanks for watching.