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Ambiguously Evil: At the beginning it is unclear whether he does care about Shinji or is just an evil jackass.Adjusting Your Glasses: Gendo's other characteristic physical tic (see Finger-Tenting for his more famous one), he uses the "by the bridge" technique to show that he's got a few gambits up his sleeves.Shinji Ikari Raising Project outright portrays him as a well-intentioned but somewhat awkward Bumbling Dad. This can partially be attributed to his wife still being around, and like the rest of the cast, being much less depressive. Adaptational Nice Guy: In several spin-off manga, other than Sadamoto's, he often is seen in a much better light, complete with smiles and laughter with his son.
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However, he ultimately does have a Heel Realization and Death Equals Redemption. He is also more verbally abusive towards Shinji and shows no regrets for mistreating him as he does in the anime, and in his last scene with his son he gives a him a combined Breaking Speech and Motive Rant that paints him as a borderline Straw Nihilist with a god complex, during which he admits up front that he outright hates Shinji for taking Yui's attention and affection.
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What the story doesn't reveal until End of Evangelion is just how similar Gendo and Shinji really are under all their differences. He is Shinji's twisted and sinister mirror image, and it's obvious that on some level there is an Oedipal conflict taking place. He is merciless where Shinji is kind, confident where Shinji is fearful, calculating where Shinji is hopelessly naive. Indeed, Gendō and Shinji spend as much time opposing each other as they do fighting the Angels. Gendo's abandonment of Shinji shortly after Yui's death is one of the key factors behind Shinji's emotional problems, and over the course of the series, Gendo does little to bridge that gap. He also has a brief and thin friendship with Rei, which is a sore point with Ritsuko he shows more concern for Rei than he does for his actual son, but to Ritsuko (and the audience) the whole thing seems to have some unpleasant. After Yui's death, he took Naoko Akagi as a lover, then her daughter Ritsuko after her death, although in both cases it's revealed that these trysts were solely to use them for their knowledge. First, Yui fell in love with him, and he with Yui.
#EVANGELION SHINJI IKARI OPENING SMILE SERIES#
Everything that he does in the series is just step after step toward seeing this plan to completion.įor some, Gendō appears to be quite the ladies' man. After Yui's contact experiment with Unit 01, Gendo became focused on a plan to reunite himself and Yui through a modified version of SEELE's plans for Third Impact that would involve the Angel Adam and the Evangelion which now held Yui's soul. In college, he met and fell in love with Yui Ikari while it's possible that he had ulterior motives for approaching her initially, his love for her was genuine, so much so that he took her surname when they married. Yet, for all of this, the series gradually makes clear that Gendo's primary motivation for all of his bastardry is, in fact, love.