Autism, Depression, Evangelion, and Me
Content Warning: Depression and Suicide
Autism is a spectrum, so naturally, no two people on it are exactly the same. That said, certain traits define the diagnosis, and one of them is a difficulty connecting with other people. There’s an element to this that I feel like a lot of neurotypical people don’t get. See, autistic and autistic-coded characters in media often perpetuate this idea that autistic people are simply okay with having a hard time reaching out to others– that they want to be alone. While this may be true for some autistic individuals, it’s not true for others among us. Some of us feel the need for friendships, sex, and a sense of belonging, even if reaching out for these things feels like it goes against our very nature. As such, having both autism and depression can be particularly rough, because they both feed into one another. You’re emotionally hurt because you don’t think you can reach out to other people, and you don’t think that you can reach out to other people because you’re emotionally hurt. It’s a very lonely experience.
Now, I’m going to go on a bit of a tangent here, but I promise that everything will connect back to itself. In late October of 2021, I moved to Florida. I had spent my entire life prior to that living in California, so this was a big deal. I was living with parents who were retiring and needed a cheaper place to live. I would’ve given everything to stay out on the West Coast, but not even “everything” could’ve covered the expenses of living out there on my own. I tried to put on a brave face for my mom and dad, but I kind of had a visceral loathing for this place. I tried to apply for jobs, but nothing panned out at first and I didn’t try harder after that.
For around a year, I was unemployed and mostly shut in my room, burning through my savings buying action figures and paying my parents a couple hundred dollars a month for “rent.” Money didn’t really matter to me, because losing it would be a problem for me in the future, and as far as I was concerned, I didn’t have a future. I felt trapped in this foreign place that I couldn’t escape. When I died (and I found myself hoping that would happen sooner rather than later) my grave was going to be in this hicktown on the opposite side of the country from anyone I would want visiting it. So, I submerged myself in all the video games, movies, and comics that I had always wanted to check out but could never find the time for. I laid around and listened to Nirvana’s “Nevermind” a million times. I did do some positive things, like starting to write for this website, but for the most part I was rejecting the real world and the difficulties of connecting with the people in it in favor of a sort of fantasy.
I don’t have the same relationship with anime that a lot of other people who grew up in the late Nineties and early Aughts have. I hadn’t been allowed to watch Pokémon or Dragon Ball as a kid, so without that gateway to Japanese animation, I spent most of my life writing it off as weird fanservicey shit. That all changed when a certain show with weird-looking robots dropped on Netflix and caught my eye back in 2020. Neon Genesis Evangelion was my introduction to anime (I’m not counting the X-Men Anime), and though I was impressed by the show during my first watchthrough, it didn’t initially have the importance to me then that it does now. No, that first started during my time in Florida when I finally started watching the Evangelion Rebuilds. After burning through all four films, I was compelled to watch the original series with fresh eyes.
I was very shocked at how much I related to Shinji Ikari during this rewatch, especially during the beginning and end of the series. This initially troubled me at first, because Shinji has a reputation of being cowardly- which I don’t think is deserved– and the things he does in End of Evangelion are outright disgusting (we’ll get to End of Evangelion later). The early episodes do an incredible job of capturing the anxiety and terror that Shinji feels piloting his Eva, a sort of mech that’s actually a monstrous organic being in armor that– well, the specifics aren’t important. All you need to know is that the Eva is a source of great trauma in Shinji’s life, and he’s one of the only people who can pilot it and stop apocalyptic beings known as “angels.” Shinji’s deadbeat dad, Gendo, and the clandestine organization he works for, NERV, regularly throw Shinji into massive, overwhelming situations that he doesn’t ask to be a part of, and as a result… he runs away a lot.
I used to run away a lot, too. For a lot of my youth, I’d often find myself unable to figure things out in school– important things. I’d struggle to communicate just how helpless this lack of understanding made me feel until it became overstimulating and I just had to get the hell away from my teachers and classmates. Often times there’d be an outburst before I rushed off, but as I got older my swift exits became less dramatic. I used to shout and hide, but later I just… left whenever I felt stupid or like I made everything worse. Years later, when I watched Shinji abandon all hope and responsibility running away from Tokyo-3 again and again… I was watching me. I was watching the kid that I used to be panic as he lost all sense of self-worth.
I didn’t just physically distance myself from other people because, like Shinji, I kept away from them emotionally as well. People could hurt me or judge me or, even worse, they could be indifferent towards me. I could look to them for validation, and they might have nothing to offer. I think that’s still one of my biggest fears: that I’ll ask the world if I matter or if anyone will miss me when I die, and it’ll confirm my worst fears with its silence. But people can’t let you down if you don’t let them in, right?
The autism fed the depression, the depression fed the autism. I needed to connect with other people, but I couldn’t stand getting close enough to them to do so.
The third episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, “The Transfer” (titled “The Silent Phone” in Japanese), puts this feeling into words I wish I heard a long time ago. In the episode, Shinji’s guardian, Misato, dissects Shinji’s withdrawn behavior with her friend and co-worker, Ritsuko, by paraphrasing Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophical concept of the “Hedgehog’s Dilemma”:
“Even though a hedgehog may want to become close with another hedgehog, the closer they get the more they injure each other with their spines… It’s the same with some humans. The reason he seems so withdrawn is because he’s afraid of being hurt.”
I think I always knew I was like that, but I never really knew how to articulate it. I knew that I put way too much thought into how people perceived me, but I don’t really think that I fully identified that as the reason I didn’t have many friends. I always thought that was because other people chose not to accept me, but in reality it was because I never opened myself up to let them in.
The fourth episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, “The Hedgehog’s Dilemma” (titled “Rain, After Running Away” in Japanese), continues the themes of the third episode, with Shinji fleeing after a particularly traumatic battle. His loneliness is on full display as he wanders from place to place, like I used to. Eventually he’s found and brought back to NERV, where he formally quits. As Shinji is about to board a train and leave Tokyo-3 forever, two boys from his class catch him before his departure to say goodbye, and Shinji realizes that there actually were people who cared about him. He actually could’ve had friends, but he was too wrapped-up in his self-pity to let them into his life. Misato arrives to say goodbye, but the train starts to leave the station. As it pulls away, we see that Shinji didn’t step on board, and he declares that he’s home.
Prior to this, Shinji had succeeded in defeating a few angels in the Eva, but this moment where he chooses friendship and love in the face of uncertainty… that’s his first real victory. Things are about to get much more confusing and difficult for Shinji in the show, but he’s taken the first steps to working for his own happiness and embracing others.
Rewatching “The Hedgehog’s Dilemma” led to a lot of self-reflection. I thought about how often I got on that metaphorical train instead of staying at the station. I couldn’t help but wonder about the friends I could’ve had if I refused to run and accepted the difficulties of life. I didn’t want to be the person who fled to the comfort of solitude.
But the truth is, I kind of hate living in Florida. I still want to run away. I hate the humidity and the disgusting feeling of the air on my skin. I hate the dangerous roads and the overwhelming sense of isolation. I now understand Shinji’s weariness towards “unfamiliar ceilings” better than ever, but even on my best days, I don’t think that I can look at this place and say “I’m home.” I don’t think that I can find the courage to seek out some kind of friendship. Hell, I often doubt that I even have the strength to carry on a few more years. I weigh the continued cost of living and the price of a funeral, and one of these things is cheaper than the other. Sometimes I can feel the longing for companionship sour into something toxic: I look for someone else to give me meaning and purpose because I don’t think that I can do it on my own.
Shinji’s life doesn’t necessarily get easier after he tries to adopt a more positive outlook on his situation. Another Eva pilot, Asuka Langley Soryu, ends up living under the same roof as Shinji, and Shinji can’t really understand her impulsive and seemingly contradictory behavior. She’s the opposite of Shinji: brash, oppositional, confident, and above all, proud of being an Eva pilot. The thing about Shinji and Asuka is… they don’t really make an effort to get one another. Asuka becomes another person that Shinji craves validation from, but he never takes the initiative to find out what she wants or feels. He’s absolutely oblivious to the traumatic events that shaped her.
But slowly, Shinji adapts again and regains a sense of normalcy. He hasn’t completely found a sense of self-worth, but he’s able to cope. Then, the third and final part of Neon Genesis Evangelion hits, and Shinji goes through what is probably the worst time of his life. One of his friends from school, Toji, is chosen as a new Eva pilot, but when an angel possesses Toji’s Eva while he’s in it, Gendo orders Shinji to fight the angel. When Shinji refuses out of the fear that he could kill his friend, his father activates an experimental autopilot feature, which causes Shinji’s Eva to go berserk. It brutally destroys the angel-infected Eva and nearly kills Toji. Over the next few episodes, Shinji is temporarily absorbed by his Eva, his friend and fellow pilot Rei sacrifices herself to stop an angel, and everyone else in his life is seemingly too occupied with their own problems to help him.
That is, until a new Eva pilot, Kaworu, arrives and gives Shinji the affection that he’s been missing. Kaworu says that Shinji is worthy of his love, and that’s the first time that Shinji has heard anything like that. Things seem to be looking up for him for the first time in a long time, but then a terrible truth is revealed: Kaworu is actually an angel. Shinji is forced to kill him, and when Shinji is at his lowest with only two more episodes left in the series, the Human Instrumentality Project begins as Shinji surrenders the will to continue existing.
The Human Instrumentality Project is the endgame of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s antagonists, and it’s kind of purposely vague how it works. Basically, all you need to know is that it involves the minds and/or souls of all humans on Earth dissolving into one consciousness. The idea is that as a singular being, everyone will understand each other because all of our opinions, views, and ideas will be shared with one another. Looking at this as someone who’s autistic, I understand the appeal of something like that. My biggest frustration with other people is their refusal to share how they’re feeling. To me, it often feels like people don’t talk about what’s on their minds until it’s a big problem and it’s too late to stop it. But that wouldn’t happen if you just knew what was on someone else’s mind at all times. There wouldn’t be miscommunication if you were everyone and everyone was you.
Still, it doesn’t seem right, because Instrumentality is just another way of retreating from reality. It’s a fantasy, a convenient way to solve the division of humankind at the cost of our free will and identity. As the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion concludes, our relationships to other people are what define us. Our differences and struggles are an important part of being human, and we need them to grow and develop as individuals even though it puts us at risk of being hurt by others.
The last two episodes see Shinji, Asuka, and Rei (she’s back, it’s a long story) in a sort of psychic void where they’re psychoanalyzed by everyone they know. Personally, I think this reflection of everything that’s gone down is the perfect note for Neon Genesis Evangelion to go out on, though I guess audiences at the time were expecting action-packed Eva fights and global destruction rather than minimalist animation and emotional catharsis.
After going through so much trauma, Shinji initially doesn’t take what he hears about himself very well. He hates himself and feels like no one will reach out to help him, like everything he does is solely for the approval of others. His self-worth is at an all-time low in a way that’s concerningly relatable. He mostly just wants everything to stop, to retreat to the safety and singularity of Instrumentality so that no one can judge him or let him down again. He doesn’t want to exist any longer.
I frequently wish I didn’t exist anymore. People often mistake this for being suicidal, but while the desire to die and the desire to not exist occasionally align for me, they’re not mutually exclusive. Sometimes it’s just a deep longing for the impossible: to have never been born. Other times, I yearn for a kind of escape from myself that I couldn’t really describe until I watched Evangelion and saw the Human Instrumentality Project that tempted Shinji.
The show ends with Shinji realizing that he has to love himself and overcome his suspicions of how other people perceive him. He triumphantly declares:
“Maybe it’s okay for me to be here! That’s right! I’m me, nothing more, nothing less! I’m me. I want to be me! I want to be here! And it’s okay for me to be here!”
As Shinji finally learns self-acceptance and rejects Instrumentality, the world around him shatters, and he finds himself surrounded by everyone he knows. They clap and smile, congratulating him for making the hard choice of accepting himself, and by extension, the reality of sharing the world with other people. This got me all teary-eyed during that second watch-through because “It’s okay for me to be here” were the exact words that I needed to hear since my belief that I didn’t belong in this world was really fucking high.
I figured that if this sad little anime boy could rise above his paralyzing depression, maybe I could too. Sure, this small town in Florida was a shithole, but perhaps if I worked hard enough, I wouldn’t have to live there forever. I got a job at Lowe’s, and though it sucked, I persevered because I’d met someone online who made me feel wanted in a way I hadn’t before. Things were going better than they had been for a while, and I decided to start writing an article about how Evangelion helped me contextualize some things in my life: this article.
That was back in April of 2023.
Of course, the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion isn’t the only ending to Shinji’s story, and similarly, this moment of content wasn’t where things ended for me. Next time: Everything comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down with The End of Evangelion.
