206-472: Shinji Ikari ( Japanese : 碇 シンジ , Hepburn : Ikari Shinji ) is a fictional character from the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise created by Gainax . He is the franchise's poster boy and protagonist . In the anime series of the same name, Shinji is a boy abandoned by his estranged father Gendo after the mysterious death of his mother Yui . Years later, Gendo asks him to pilot
412-444: A PlayStation video game, second, as a serialized web novel to be written by Yamaga, and third, as a manga adaptation to be done by the project's longtime concept artist, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto . The anime film itself would follow after the three stages; Yamaga cited a budget of two billion yen would be needed for extensive computer graphics , "mostly for 3-D backgrounds...The animation itself, its movement and design, will come out of
618-516: A mecha called Evangelion Unit-01 to protect the city of Tokyo-3 from Angels , creatures which threaten to destroy humanity. Shinji appears in the franchise's feature films and related media, video games , the manga Petit Eva: Evangelion@School , the Rebuild of Evangelion films, and the manga adaptation by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto . Director Hideaki Anno conceived Shinji as a representation of himself, reflecting his four-year depression after
824-464: A pilot film for Aoki Uru would be released in 2014; during his guest appearance in San Mateo, California at the 2013 Japan Expo USA , Sadamoto commented in an interview with Anime News Network , "I'd like it to become as great a movie as Honnêamise. The film's main staff may also work on a manga adaptation that will be different from the movie. We're currently looking for business partners for
1030-559: A pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has
1236-540: A tree of life . Shinji then has long dreamlike exchanges with Misato, Rei and Asuka about the pain of reality and his tensions with them. When he begs for Asuka's attention and she refuses him, arguing he only wants to use her as a crutch, Shinji begins Instrumentality and humanity's souls are united into one existence. After re-evaluating his position, he decides that he wants to live in a world where other people exist and returns to Earth, allowing other humans to return. Shinji, having placed grave markers in memory of most of
1442-636: A "good breast" that eventually saves Shinji during the battles with the Angels. In the twentieth episode, " Weaving a Story 2: oral stage ", Shinji is trapped in Eva-01, dissolving into its cockpit; in a stream of consciousness , he has visions linked with the Freudian oral stage , which include breastfeeding by Yui. With his mother's help, Shinji is symbolically reborn, finding the will to live and regaining his body. He also displays features linked with oralism,
1648-459: A 2015 return visit to FanimeCon , Yamaga detailed the state of Uru in Blue , as well as its changes over time and his perspective on its protracted development: "You could almost say the longest part of this process was me finding myself in order to produce this movie...While many people have told me 'you've taken way too long on this project,' I feel like I've put in the perfect amount of time to make
1854-716: A Nerv officer and his new guardian, and attends school in Tokyo-3; after his arrival he gradually changes and meets and befriends Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida. When the Angel Ramiel tries to destroy Nerv headquarters, Shinji and fellow pilot Rei Ayanami work together to destroy him. After Ramiel's defeat, a nuclear-powered machine intended to fight the Angels called Jet Alone runs amok, and he and Misato stop it; during this time, Shinji gradually starts to change his attitude, trying to be more open and spontaneous. He also meets Asuka Langley Soryu , an Eva pilot from Germany, and in
2060-503: A TV anime together, a proposal that would eventually be developed into the series Neon Genesis Evangelion . Takeda speculated, One of the key themes in Aoki Uru had been 'not running away.' In the story, the main character is faced with the daunting task of saving the heroine...He ran away from something in the past, so he decides that this time he will stand his ground. The same theme was carried over into Evangelion , but I think it
2266-429: A Time (2021), Ogata was involved more heavily in the plot's development. Anno felt he could no longer understand Shinji since his current self was closer to Gendo, so he needed Ogata's input. He also felt that the only people who could understand Shinji's feelings were Ogata herself and his assistant, Ikki Todoroki. Ogata also recounted that Anno had asked her what sort of ending she'd prefer "as Shinji". His adult self in
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#17327725161292472-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
2678-541: A bit difficult to explain. The 1997 discussion with Yamaga appeared in Animerica over a year later in the May 1998 issue; the interview was accompanied by an additional sidebar featuring Yamaga's comments on the current status of Blue Uru , described by the magazine as one of Gainax's "new projects...nearing launch readiness." Yamaga further detailed Blue Uru as a multimedia project to be done in successive stages: first as
2884-495: A brave character, since "Anno isn't that much of a hero". He stated that "Shinji was summoned by his father to ride a robot, Anno was summoned by Gainax to direct an animation". Like other male protagonists in Gainax series, Shinji was conceived with a weak and insecure personality. Gainax wanted to reflect the psychological state of animation fans and Japanese society, in which fathers are always at work and emotionally absent. Shinji
3090-535: A child and his ambivalent relationship with the mother during the oral stage. Shinji's Oedipus complex then resolves in the final episode, which ends with the captions "To my father, thank you" and "To my mother, goodbye", indicating his entry into adulthood. In the film The End of Evangelion , he also chooses to live with other human beings, rejecting Human Instrumentality and accepting other people. Shinji's character has been popular in Japan. The character's appreciation
3296-418: A close relationship with Rei in the manga and Kaji is more of a mentor to him. Shinji's relationship with Kaworu is troubled in the manga; he accuses Kaworu of being cynical and strange. His backstory is also modified, having an unnamed aunt, uncle and cousins, and memories of his childhood away from Gendo are shown. As well, a different Instrumentality is shown, with Shinji saving Asuka during her fight against
3502-472: A complete storyboard , a partial script, and a large collection of designs and pre-production art for the film; however, the project had been initiated without a secured budget, and its development occurred within a period of personal, financial, and managerial crises at Gainax that contributed to the indefinite suspension of work on Aoki Uru in July 1993. Aoki Uru co-producer Yasuhiro Takeda has argued that
3708-594: A complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
3914-419: A deliberate lack of ethnic features included in the character design of Japanese fictional characters which "allowed Japanese creations to be simultaneously Western and transnational". Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno was depressed for four years before the series began production. After the failure of Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise 's sequel Aoki Uru , Gainax began planning
4120-483: A different Instrumentality scenario, Shinji is 17 years old; he lets his hair grow and is a good friend of Rei and Asuka. He first pilots the Evangelion Unit-01 Type-F and, after the attack of Eva0.0 (Quatre) and the unification of his soul with Eva-01, pilots the mecha Super Evangelion and its upgrades. In addition to video games based on the original animated series, Shinji appears in media outside
4326-468: A different interpretation of the concept of heroism: "Rather than a reflection of a hero, sort of a refraction of a hero". At first, he tried to create a character "that would tap into the consciousness of today's anime fans". In one of Sadamoto's original proposals, Shinji had long hair, which would have covered his face or fluttered in the wind during the dramatic scenes. However, Sadamoto changed his mind, finding his original design "too wild". He tried for
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#17327725161294532-633: A different story from the previous episodes; in this parallel reality, Shinji lives with both his parents and is a normal middle-school student. He is also a protagonist in Shinji Ikari Raising Project and Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days , where he is portrayed as happier and more stable than his anime counterpart, characterization which is also found in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel 2nd . Some spin-offs and video games have
4738-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
4944-452: A former military pilot who had abandoned the armed forces and gone into hiding. Once the lover of a princess of Honnêamise's royal family, her abduction leads him to join a rescue team of four other elite pilots, each equipped with VTOL fighter jets and with their own individual reasons for taking on the mission. Sadamoto related that the anime would attempt to emphasize a visual experience of speed and intense aerial action scenes. Aoki Uru
5150-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
5356-531: A good fit with the Ultraman ethic, so to make Aoki Uru compatible for Anno, Yamaga turned instead to the physical mode of the film's events, deciding to make Aoki Uru an aeronautic action story so that Anno could express his particular sensibility as an animator of objects at high speed and in mid-air. In December 1998, Gainax released a compact disc EP featuring mixes of an instrumental Aoki Uru theme by Joujouka , an electronic group consisting at
5562-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
5768-447: A look where one could see the forehead through the bangs, "the look of a boyish young girl", giving him girl's eyes. He modelled this version of him on the titular Nadia from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water , and his face was designed to be almost identical to Nadia's, but with a different hairstyle. Furthermore, writer Andrew C. McKevitt described Shinji's design, with his brown hair and blue eyes, as an example of mukokuseki ( 無国籍 ) ,
5974-616: A lot of time at home". Bartoli wrote that the last scene of the anime, in which the boy's glass prison shatters ending his psychoanalytic session, may allude to the shinjinrui ( 新人類 , lit. "new human race") , the Japanese generation born in the 1970s, which is also known as crystal-zoku ( クリスタル族 , lit. "crystal tribe") . Writer Andrea Fontana agreed, seeing him as a representation of otaku and their inability to relate to others. Fontana also saw in Shinji's character "an exhortation" by Anno to otaku , Japanese society, and young people "to break
6180-527: A major source of income for the company. Takeda noted the leadership conflict during this period continued even after Okada's departure, but now between Sawamura and Akai; Akai himself would resign in September 1994, a little over a year before the debut of Evangelion , although he would return to Gainax's board of directors in 2001. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto , whose role on Aoki Uru was to be both character designer and chief animation director, commented that
6386-479: A manga project, but to help meet his living expenses decided to join Gainax, who paid him a special retainer to reserve his services part-time to work on Aoki Uru . Kon recalled in 1999 that he had been told by those around him that he would be most unsuited to working at Gainax, but remarked that to his surprise he enjoyed working there. The 1998 CD-ROM release of the designs from the 1992–93 Aoki Uru project affirmed Takeda's later statement that work began before
Shinji Ikari - Misplaced Pages Continue
6592-504: A misfit, a young teenager who is more stubborn, rebellious, juvenile and apathetic than Hideaki Anno's insecure character. In the anime's fourth episode, " Hedgehog's Dilemma ", Shinji runs away from home because he is overwhelmed by responsibility; in the manga, he runs away because he realizes that Misato is spying on him and documenting his every move. After the battle against Bardiel, in which his friend Toji dies following an order from Commander Ikari, Shinji tries to punch his father. He has
6798-533: A mother and her grade school child "who'd barely finished his summer homework on the very last day of vacation." Takeda characterized a fundamental problem in that Aoki Uru was intended as a feature film on which Gainax had begun work without having yet secured the financing to actually finish it; even as they attempted to raise capital, Takeda was himself obliged to "take out a few poor man's loans " in order to cover staff salaries: "I went to I don't know how many loan sharks, and ended up securing some 8 million yen. As
7004-462: A new series. According to Gainax co-founder Yasuhiro Takeda , ideas from Aoki Uru were borrowed for the new project, including the concept of "not running away". For Takeda, the passage was "something more than just transposing one show's theme onto another... Anno inherited something from Aoki Uru — the determination not to run away from problems — and what we saw in Evangelion was maybe just
7210-416: A personality of dependent, weak individuals who see other people as tools to satisfy them. According to Freudian theory, oral personalities were not adequately fed during weaning. For Oguro, Shinji resolves his oral fixation with the vision of his mother's breast, becoming a more self-conscious individual. In the last two episodes, he also sees the good and bad sides of other people; Anno himself compared him to
7416-404: A point of argument between them in successive interviews with Animerica . The magazine's four-part discussion with Okada, conducted in 1995 at Otakon , concluded with an assertion that while still at Gainax, Okada had discussed and rejected the idea of making Yamaga's concept for Aoki Uru , on the grounds that "the story was almost exactly the same as [the 1984 film] Streets of Fire ...Yamaga
7622-434: A positive light, but as a sign of passivity. According to Michael House, who was a former member of Gainax and a translator, Anno tried to find a way to end the series with a smiling Shinji and with more positive and communicative characters, but he realized that "the characters he'd created weren't capable of whatever positive change" and reach the result that he had initially imagined, adjusting his original plans. Anno fixed
7828-430: A project that we fund, then we have more say over what's done with it, and then if the project generates new funds, we can use those to create a larger project, and again, have more say in it. In July 1998, Gainax released a CD-ROM entitled Aoki Uru Frozen Designs Collection containing the visual and script content created during the 1992–93 project, with a new commentary added as a QuickTime file. The commentary, in
8034-418: A reflection of Anno's mood; according to him, Anno "went through a serious bout of depression while making the show and like a true artist he poured all of that emotion and despair into his work". Isler also interpreted his characterization and his battles against the Angels as a metaphor for Anno's attempts "to defeat his own personal demons". Assistant director Tsurumaki gave a similar interpretation, working on
8240-401: A reflection of those feelings". According to Hiroki Satō, the head of Gainax's public relations office, the staff decided that the series would focus on "how Shinji deals with things going on inside himself". Anno reflected his depression in the series, conceiving a world "drenched in a vision of pessimism"; he also began production "with the wish that once the production complete, the world and
8446-464: A result of borrowing money, however, my day-to-day existence would end up becoming rather pathetic..." Aoki Uru was put on an indefinite production hold in July 1993. "We couldn't raise any more capital, and the staff just wasn't making any progress. Even Anno had lost his motivation. Anno, myself, and all the rest of the staff had worked so hard on this project, but we had nothing to show for it," recalled Takeda, who himself considered resigning over
Shinji Ikari - Misplaced Pages Continue
8652-552: A reviewer for the Anime Critic website, praised Neon Genesis Evangelion but criticized Shinji as ineffective and disappointing to watch. THEM Anime Reviews noticed the character's constant angst in the television series as a negative trait. Raphael See found Evangelion "a little cliche, or just plain irritating at times" and criticized Shinji's pessimism. Japanator listed him among "characters with no chance in reality", saying that "he really sucks as an Eva pilot and he has
8858-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
9064-459: A sequel to their 1988–89 anime Gunbuster , "Hiroyuki Yamaga's follow-up to The Wings of Honnêamise, Blue Uru, which has been in a state of limbo for 8 years now, seems set to be produced. Do not misunderstand, Gainax has not confirmed either of these sequels, but it would seem that they are seriously intent on producing them both." The Gunbuster sequel, Diebuster , would be released by Gainax three years later, in 2004. On March 20, 2013,
9270-426: A shell of his own making". Director Hideaki Anno similarly described him as a "cowardly young man" who has convinced himself that "he is a completely unnecessary person" after his father Gendo abandoned him. According to writer Gerald Alva Miller, Shinji craves acceptance and is concerned about how others perceive him, but "he also remains incapable of accepting love from others". His childhood trauma leads him to doubt
9476-402: A simple plotline, a guy rescuing a girl—from that baseline, you're allowed a lot of freedom. So the concept will probably remain in what I do, but it's not like it was based on any movie in particular." Affirming Sadamoto's 1993 description of a film with an emphasis on speed, Yamaga contrasted Aoki Uru with his earlier movie project: When I created [ Royal Space Force ], my goal was to make
9682-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
9888-426: A small company bunkroom . "For Anno," Takeda later wrote, "I think Aoki Uru being put on hiatus was a weight off his shoulders. I'm sure he'd been just as anxious about it as I was, tormented by the thought that as the director he needed to be doing something to fix things, even though he didn't know what to do." During this time, Anno agreed to a sudden offer from Toshimichi Otsuki of King Records to produce
10094-407: A stereotypical hero , particularly of the mecha genre , Shinji is more apathetic and reluctant than courageous. According to his voice actress, Megumi Ogata, "he didn't act like an anime character, but typically talked very quietly and sparingly, and it was like he was suddenly thrust into an anime world". Character designer Sadamoto conceived him as "the kind of character who would encase himself in
10300-404: A story in which the main characters try to build their stable identity , saying that Shinji and Asuka's communication problems are the reason why even years after the first airing younger Japanese viewers identify themselves with the characters. Critics interpreted Shinji as an alter ego of the series director, Hideaki Anno, and as an otaku . IGN 's Ramsey Isler interpreted his feelings as
10506-422: A twisted person puts on a "cool face" to hide their insanity, while Sadamoto perceived his approach as the opposite; Sadamoto described his characters as stoic and earnest but with a twisted outside, "just like a child". He also described his Shinji as a character that refuses to listen but "still makes the right decision". In a scene from the last episode of the series, an alternate universe is presented, which has
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#173277251612910712-462: A way to escape from that closure". Furthermore, according to Sadamoto, he is not as dark as perceived by fans; with the exception of The End of Evangelion , in which he is portrayed as "pretty dark and introspective", he stated that he never got the impression of a dark character in the original series. According to Ogata, at the end of the film Shinji grows up, naturally closing his path from childhood to adulthood. Writer Paul M. Malone compared him to
10918-497: A will to live with Asuka and Rei. With the two companions, he reaches a protected citadel called Village-3, which is inhabited by survivors of the various Impacts and is isolated from the outside world. Shinji meets his old classmates Toji, Kensuke, and Hikari Horaki , and, with help from Asuka and Rei, gradually regains the will to live. He then decides to leave with Asuka and the other members of Wille for Antarctica , where he boards Eva-01 to face his father Gendo and his Eva-13. As he
11124-473: A world completely changed by the Third Impact and Misato and the others treat him with hostility. They place an explosive device named DSS Choker on his neck, which they will activate if he comes close to starting another Impact. After learning from Misato that they are part of Wille, a new organization fighting Nerv, Shinji leaves when Rei appears. At the remnants of Nerv, he is approached by Kaworu Nagisa,
11330-452: A world: You're there. You're walking through it. See all the details...20 people spent two years of work creating details of a world that could exist. This time around, I want to concentrate on speed . I mean, to the point you're going to be dizzy from how fast things are moving... A rocket slowly climbed to the heavens, and there were all the details that were involved with that. This time, by contrast, things are going to be so fast...Speed
11536-625: A young girl "would pilot a robot". He eventually suggested a boy as the main character; his relationship with Asuka, who became another primary character, was modelled after Nadia's relationship with Jean. After accepting Sadamoto's proposals, Anno suggested a male protagonist after Ryū Murakami 's works featured two fellow female pilots. He also gave Shinji two male friends, Tōji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida , whose names were borrowed from Murakami's novel Ai to gensō no fascism . Anno named Shinji after two of his friends, including Neon Genesis Evangelion animator Shinji Higuchi . For his last name, he chose
11742-624: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
11948-487: Is "I must not run away", Sadamoto chose "being honest with themselves" as the main theme for the manga. This led Sadamoto to change Shinji's characterization and psychology. He wanted to reflect contemporary teenagers in the character and was influenced by the Gulf War , wondering how a 14-year-old would have behaved on a helicopter. Sadamoto also drew upon his own experiences as an adolescent, saying that his characterization
12154-522: Is a slow process and lack of money is a real problem. Anyway, although I can not say anything about it right now, even if the current director leaves the project, I will stay involved in it." In June 2017, following the loss by Gainax of a lawsuit for delayed royalties brought by Khara , a studio established by former Gainax director Hideaki Anno, Yamaga stated both that Gainax was undergoing restructuring, and that production work had begun on Uru in Blue . In July and August 2018, Gainax's Fukushima branch
12360-414: Is a very clever and talented man. But even he couldn't come up with an idea he was really interested in, so instead he proposes this parody film." Okada maintained that this was the reason he had advocated that Gainax not make another anime film "for at least two years," until they had "the right emotion" behind it. Okada suggested during the interview that Animerica "some day" ask Yamaga himself about
12566-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
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#173277251612912772-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
12978-413: Is an unproduced Japanese animated science fiction film project by Gainax intended as a sequel to their 1987 film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise . Aoki Uru was originally planned to be directed by Hideaki Anno and scripted by Hiroyuki Yamaga , with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto serving as its chief animation director and character designer. During 1992–93, the Aoki Uru creative team produced
13184-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
13390-701: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
13596-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
13802-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
14008-474: Is criticized for his insecurity and weaknesses. However, Shinji's characterization in the spin-offs and the Rebuild of Evangelion films has been received more positively because of his courageous and self-confident personality, especially in the second installment, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance . Shinji has placed highly in popularity polls and been the subject of scholarly studies. Merchandise based on
14214-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
14420-586: Is killed by the DSS Choker he took from Shinji to stop the Fourth Impact. Devastated by these events, Shinji loses his will to live. Asuka rescues him from his Entry Plug, berating him for acting "like a baby". The Rei clone appears and follows them, as they head to the ruins of Tokyo-3 to be rescued by Wille. In Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021), the last installment of the saga, Shinji, still distraught over Kaworu's death, wanders without
14626-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
14832-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
15038-509: Is presented as a childhood friend of Asuka and a distant cousin of Rei Ayanami. In Petit Eva: Evangelion@School , Shinji is portrayed as a boy "frightened by the idea of growing up" but popular amongst the students of Tokyo-3's Municipal Nerv High School. In Evangelion: Detective Shinji Ikari , Kaji and Kaworu are portrayed as private investigators whom Shinji asks for help and investigates a mysterious case. In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Anima , set three years after The End of Evangelion with
15244-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
15450-473: Is pretty serious as a matter of character, certainly—so he doesn't really think of compromising with the audiences. Therefore [ Royal Space Force ] wasn't a radical film from Yamaga's perspective. There's something like a sequel planned, but it's been stopped for now. Yamaga wants to make it 'the final anime of this century.' He wants to make it happen." Although Okada and Yamaga had worked closely together to make Royal Space Force , its unproduced sequel became
15656-567: Is prone to giving up and abandoning personal responsibilities because life is unfair and we think we should just be able to rely on other people to make everything better for us while ignoring the fact that those other people have their own problems. But at the same time as we dislike Shinji and what he reminds us of, we understand him entirely. – Nick Verboon, Unreality Magazine The character evoked mixed opinions, dividing anime critics. Some criticized Shinji's insecurities, his vulnerability, and his lack of temper and resoluteness. Pete Harcoff,
15862-748: Is sucked into a parallel universe by Leliel called the Dirac Sea, and within it he confronts the Angel and his inner self; he is freed from the Angel by Yui, whose soul is within the Eva. After Shinji is forced to fight Eva-03, controlled by the Angel Bardiel , with his classmate Toji Suzahara trapped inside, he decides to quit Nerv. Meanwhile, Angel Zeruel mutilates the other Evangelion units and defeats Rei and Asuka. After talking with his mentor and Misato's lover, Ryoji Kaji , Shinji returns to Nerv to protect
16068-534: Is the focus of Blue Uru. I want to express everything in language that's skirting the boundaries of logic, yet gets the story across. What I want to do in Blue Uru is to take made-up words, slang, and line them up in an almost haiku way. I want to test the boundaries, the possibilities, of the Japanese language. It's kind of like the stuff Quentin Tarantino would spew out...it's profound in its own way. It's
16274-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
16480-471: Is treated coldly by the rest of the cast, Ogata stated that she felt like him and experienced emotional pain. She first saw the scene in which Kaworu Nagisa reveals to Shinji the conditions of planet Earth in her home, when it was not yet animated. The recordings took place in March 2012, and she associated the destroyed landscape of the film with images of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , imagining that
16686-617: Is unable to defeat him with brute force, he decides to talk to him instead. Gendo apologizes to Shinji and embraces him, and Shinji finds himself in a reborn world. On a beach, he meets Mari Illustrious Makinami , saying goodbye to all the Evangelions. Shortly after, a visibly grown Shinji can be seen in a station; Mari comes to meet him, and the two of them walk together into a new world, holding hands. In Yoshiyuki Sadamoto 's Neon Genesis Evangelion manga adaptation, Shinji's characterization differs. Sadamoto tried to portray him as more of
16892-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
17098-480: Is voiced by Megumi Ogata in the original Japanese version as well as in the films, spin-offs, video games, and the Rebuild of Evangelion film series. Ogata's agent initially refused her participation in Evangelion , and she agreed due to her status as a newcomer, but Anno directly insisted with her. She also described Shinji as one of the "most memorable" roles of her career. His characterization required considerable physical and psychological effort. For example, in
17304-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
17510-506: The Aoki Uru concept did not commence until March 1992, the same month Okada, under continuing internal pressure, departed Gainax. Yamaga replaced Okada in his previous role within Gainax's co-presidency, now to be exercised between Yamaga and Takeshi Sawamura; in his memoir, Takeda characterized Yamaga's position as being the public face of the studio, while actual day-to-day operations were run by Sawamura, with final approval of projects controlled by Akai, whose Princess Maker had proved
17716-524: The Blue Uru plan as "to a certain extent" a financing tactic: In Japan—and I think this is true in a great many other countries as well, such as the United States—a great percentage of the rights to a project accrue to the people who are putting up the funds for it. So by funding the project at any level by ourselves, that helps us secure the general rights to the material. We think it's important for us to keep as many rights as we can. If we begin with
17922-822: The Evangelion franchise, such as Monster Strike , Tales of Zestiria , Puzzle & Dragons , The Battle Cats , and a crossover episode of Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion , in which he is voiced by Ogata and pilots a 500 Type Eva transformable train. For Shinkalion , Ogata voiced him as a more "level-headed" character. He is a playable character in the Super Robot Wars crossover video-game franchise, where he and other Evangelion characters work with characters from other mecha series. Shinji has crushes on other characters, such as Lynn Minmay , sparking jealousy in Asuka, who tries to recapture his attention. In other games, Eva Unit-01 goes berserk after fighting
18128-697: The Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from
18334-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
18540-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
18746-571: The Rebuild of Evangelion movies In Rebuild of Evangelion , Shinji returns as the central protagonist; in Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007), the first installment of the saga, his role is similar to that of the anime series. He is assigned to be the pilot of Unit-01, and works with Rei to defeat the Angel Ramiel. In the second instalment, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009), Shinji reluctantly continues his duties as
18952-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
19158-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
19364-448: The standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics ,
19570-553: The symbiotic relationship. Crandol described his entry into Eva-01 as a Freudian "return to the womb" and his struggle to be free of the Eva as his " rite of passage " into manhood. Anno also described Shinji as a boy with a strong Oedipus complex for his father, Gendo. The Oedipal triangle is completed by their common interest in Rei Ayanami, a genetic clone of Yui Ikari. According to him, Shinji symbolically "kills" his father "and steals his mother from him". Yūichirō Oguro ,
19776-398: The third film , a number of reviewers praised Shinji's interactions with Kaworu. Nicole MacLean of THEM Anime Reviews criticized their relationship, finding it "rushed", artificial and unclear. Comic Book Resources writer Daniel Kurland also praised his role in the final installment, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time , writing: "Shinji deserves happiness, and it makes Thrice Upon A Time
19982-413: The "greatest anime character" of all time, praising his originality and realistic characterization. Isler concluded, "He's a character that challenges the audience by not giving them a superficial, vicarious power fantasy like you'd get from so many other anime. He is pathetic, but that is what makes him great. That is what makes him a genuine work of art". Shinji's role in the Rebuild of Evangelion films
20188-563: The "strongest pilots" in Japanese animation. In April 2021, after the release of the final Rebuild film, he finished second most popular male character in a Newtype poll, placing at fifth place in May, and first place in June. [Shinji] is one of the most nuanced, popular, and relatable characters in anime history. Interestingly, he's also a punchable, sniveling little whiner. But you know what? We've all been there. We don't like Shinji because of what he represents in ourselves: that part of us that
20394-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
20600-558: The 1987 Star Quest event in Los Angeles; the idea involved a starship from the world of Royal Space Force —indicated by Okada to be in the Alpha Centauri system—that makes a journey to present-day Earth 100 years after the events of the first film. Gainax's next main anime projects, however, were Gunbuster (1988–89), Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–91), and Otaku no Video (1991); storyboarding work on
20806-428: The 1992 origins of the sequel project followed the collapse of plans for Olympia , an anime Takeda describes as a "phantom project" for which Akai was the main creator, with Hideaki Anno slated as director. Yamaga felt that the difficulties the staff had found in drawing together around Olympia necessitated a return to the world of the original project for which the studio had been founded, in order to rediscover in it
21012-456: The 370 color board total included two choices for each scene, one from each of Aoki Uru 's two art directors, Kikuchi and Sasaki, who approached the task as a competition between themselves. Takeda and Yamaga were listed as co-producers for Aoki Uru ; however, Yamaga would later state that it was his intention to begin the project, then "hand it over to Anno to direct and Yasuhiro Takeda to produce." "I didn't know how to act, and to tell
21218-465: The 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of
21424-584: The Eva to save those who are still alive, while Asuka is on the surface fighting the Mass Production Evas . However, he is unable to reach her in time, and when he learns about Asuka's defeat, the Evangelion moves on its own to let him reenter it. After seeing the mutilated corpse of Asuka's Unit-02, Shinji's intense emotions summon a spear called the Lance of Longinus to Earth and the Eva becomes
21630-457: The German jurist and writer Daniel Paul Schreber , noting "a surprising degree of intertextuality" with his Memoirs of My Nervous Illness , although he did not consider Evangelion to be based directly on his Memoirs . Malone, following Japanese critic and writer Kotani Mari, described Shinji as an effeminate and androgynous character. According to Mari, Shinji becomes effeminate in the course of
21836-508: The Italian adaptation of the series, noticed that Shinji struggles to make friends and has a cold, reserved attitude in the third episode, " A Transfer ". Like the porcupines of Arthur Schopenhauer 's Parerga and Paralipomena , Shinji is afraid to be hurt and withdraws from human contact; he suffers, in fact, from the porcupine's dilemma . Shinji's relationship with Misato Katsuragi follows Schopenhauer's concept; Cannarsi also noticed that in
22042-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
22248-483: The Japanese sect Aum Shinrikyō , the Great Hanshin earthquake , and the bursting of the Japanese asset price bubble . After his arrival on Tokyo-3, Shinji repeats "I mustn't run away" in an attempt to face his responsibilities, and the sentence becomes a typical mantra of the character. In the twentieth episode he remembers escaping from the experimental site where his mother died, an event that generated in him
22454-439: The Japanese word Ikari ("anchor"), with the names of other characters in the series coming from nautical jargon or Japanese Imperial Navy warships. Shinji was first conceived with slightly different features, which were changed over time. Originally, he was more mature, robust, and less introverted than in the final version; he was also portrayed as a studious boy, a "quiet A-student". His scholastic conduct would not be seen in
22660-496: The Mass Production Evangelions. At the end, he is seen leading a normal life in a reformed world and sees Asuka while waiting for a train, although they only have a faint recollection of one another. Sadamoto decided to work on an Evangelion manga when he saw Shinji in the first episodes of the original series. He wondered "what the world looked like through Shinji's eyes". While in the anime Shinji's motto
22866-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
23072-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
23278-451: The TV anime series Mahoromatic and Abenobashi , stating, "Hiroyuki Yamaga, as our director, has lurked for 14 years since his last great work, The Wings of Honnêamise ." Two months later, however, a report on Gainax from the 40th annual national Japan Science Fiction Convention by Anime News Network indicated that in addition to Gainax having "all but confirmed" rumors at the event of
23484-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
23690-664: The airing of his previous work, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water . Shinji's insecurity and torment are explored through streams of consciousness and inner monologues, with episodes focusing on his introspection. Anno used psychoanalytical theories for his characterization, including the Freudian psychosexual development model. His design was created by Sadamoto. Shinji is voiced by Megumi Ogata in Japanese, and by Spike Spencer and Casey Mongillo in English. Shinji has received mixed responses from anime and manga publications. Although his complexity and realism has been praised, he
23896-453: The approval of others, particularly Gendo, rather than out of heroism or idealism. Despite this, assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki noted that Shinji acts in opposition to the conventional impression of him: "He is not cowardly and indecisive; he is obstinate and doesn't pay any mind to other people." Anno described him as "both an introvert and righteous" boy who tends to categorize things, the kind of character who tends to hide something, "like
24102-538: The best possible project," although the director also cited the success of Neon Genesis Evangelion as an explanation: "I would have liked to have started this project earlier, but the insane popularity of Evangelion spanning across two decades has kept delaying [it]." The director exhibited images from the "rebooted" version of the project; whereas the storyboards of the 1992–93 Aoki Uru proposal had been drawn by Sadamoto and Hideaki Anno, Yamaga displayed new storyboards drawn by himself, in addition to revised designs of
24308-402: The catastrophe was her fault. During the pre-score, the drawings for Kaworu's death scene were not clear in the animatic, and the staff animated the keyframes during the recording touch-ups. Ogata was shocked when she performed the scene and stated that her interpretation could reflect her emotional state, resulting "kind of traumatic". For the final installment, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon
24514-525: The character designs for Yamaga's 2002 Gainax TV series Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi . The task of drawing settei (design models) to guide the animators was to be assigned to Satoshi Kon , whose first work in the anime industry had been two years before as a background designer on 1991's Roujin-Z , directed by Royal Space Force veteran Hiroyuki Kitakubo ; Kon had also served as background and layout artist on Mamoru Oshii 's 1993 Patlabor 2 . Following Patlabor 2 , Kon had been sketching out
24720-515: The character is modeled upon contemporary professionals in the anime industry itself, who "sacrifice a lot in their youth and 20s. They break their bodies trying to make anime, and once they start hitting their 30s, they reconsider if it's really worth being paid such a pittance and committing their life's blood, if it's worth doing this for the rest of their life." At the 2015 Fanime panel, Yamaga had characterized traditional methods of anime funding as unprofessional and lacking in standards, and that
24926-431: The character, such as action figures and perfumes, has been marketed. Neon Genesis Evangelion character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto drew Shinji in an ordinary summer school uniform with a white shirt, making him "an average character". He wanted a "realistic and ordinary" boy, a character "that'll be hard for others to make". Since Shinji lacks the enthusiasm and courage of other robot-anime heroes, Sadamoto made him
25132-420: The character. Critics noticed that, since he lost his mother traumatically, Shinji seeks a substitute in the women around him and in Eva-01, which contains her soul. Academic Susan J. Napier also interpreted the Angels as "father figures, whom Shinji must annihilate". Anime News Network reviewer Mike Crandol noticed that Shinji depends on Unit 01 in the first part of the series, becoming negatively affected by
25338-550: The city. He merges with its unit and frees the Evangelion; however, he is trapped in its core for a month. Rei sacrifices herself in the battle against the Angel Armisael to save Shinji, and she is later revived through one of her clones. Asuka runs away and falls into a coma, and Toji and Kensuke flee Tokyo-3. These events cause Shinji to fall into depression. In the twenty-fourth episode, he meets Kaworu Nagisa , Asuka's substitute pilot, and they bond. Kaworu turns out to be
25544-483: The crystal cage in which they locked themselves up, looking confidently at their neighbor". Shinji's personality traits have been linked to psychiatric conditions, such as depressive disorder , anxiety , social phobia , and borderline personality . Walter Veit of Psychology Today linked his passive attitude in the first episodes to Jean-Paul Sartre 's existentialist concept of bad faith and Albert Camus 's " philosophical suicide ". Gualtiero Cannarsi, editor of
25750-417: The editor of supplemental materials included in the Japanese edition of the series, interpreted Neon Genesis Evangelion 's plot as an Oedipal story. Eva-01 can be seen as a motherly breast and a source of ambivalence for the character. To manage this ambivalence, Shinji " split the breast " into a good and a bad breast. Oguro described berserk Unit 01 as a "bad breast"; on the other part, he interpreted Yui as
25956-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
26162-441: The eighteenth episode Shinji cries and gasps during a fight; Ogata felt like her "whole body [was] aching". She stated that "Every time a new script arrived, every time I turned a new page I was torn apart by a new pain". While dubbing the film The End of Evangelion (1997), she tried to achieve "a higher synchronization rate with the general director than the TV series". The Rebuild of Evangelion dub also presented obstacles. On
26368-563: The eighth episode they defeat the Angel Gaghiel together. In the second third of the series, Shinji, Rei and Asuka face more Angels and Shinji begins bonding with his peers, especially Asuka, becoming more confident and assertive. When they are sent to fight the Angel Leliel , Shinji, receiving praise from Gendo and improving his synchronization scores, accepts his role as an Evangelion pilot. He decides to attack on his own, but
26574-565: The ensuing accident, his mother disappeared before his eyes; after the accident, Gendo left Shinji with a guardian for about ten years. After becoming commander of the Nerv special agency, he invites Shinji to the city of Tokyo-3 to pilot Evangelion Unit-01 and protect the city from creatures known as Angels . Shinji reluctantly agrees, and fights against the Angel Sachiel . After the Angel attack, Shinji starts to live with Misato Katsuragi ,
26780-566: The film is voiced by Ryūnosuke Kamiki , while Spike Spencer and Casey Mongillo voiced him in the ADV and Netflix English dub, respectively. Shinji is the only child of Gendo Rokubungi and Yui Ikari , a student at Kyoto University who became a researcher. When he was three years old, Yui brought Shinji to the Gehirn research center in Hakone to see Evangelion 01 's first activation test. But in
26986-767: The film." In May 2014, during the Cannes Film Festival , Gainax promoted the film under the English-language title Uru in Blue , as an exhibitor at the Japan External Trade Organization booth. The following December at the Anime Festival Asia event in Singapore, Yamaga indicated that the pilot film, to be called "Overture," would be released in 2015 rather than 2014 as previously announced, and that
27192-411: The final Angel, and Shinji is forced to kill him. After Kaworu's death, Instrumentality begins and the souls of the entire humanity unite in a single collective consciousness. Shinji confronts his traumas and why he acts the way he does. After talking with most of the Evangelion cast and seeing a version of himself in a world where he leads a normal life, Shinji becomes aware of his potential and realizes
27398-406: The first movie's Kingdom of Honnêamise. Yamaga described a "core concept" of Uru in Blue being that its main characters "are not noble knights, they're ruffians and thugs that come from pretty poor backgrounds" who conduct duels on behalf of gambling syndicates using fighter jets acquired as military surplus . The protagonist of the film is a 32 year-old professional duelist; Yamaga related that
27604-543: The form of a conversation between Yamaga and one of the intended technical directors of the earlier version of Aoki Uru , Kenji Tsuruta , expanded on Yamaga's reasoning behind the original film concept; as he had created a hero that suited Takeda as producer, he wished to have the film also suit Anno as director. Yamaga believed that Anno's personal template for a hero was Ultraman ; in 1983 the two had made an amateur Ultraman movie together while at Daicon Film . However, Yamaga also viewed Takeda's "cool hero" approach as not
27810-433: The fourth Angel and he fights Kouji Kabuto and Mazinger Z . He later rejoins the battle against the Angels with Rei Ayanami. Shinji is a dependent and introverted boy with few friends, reluctant and unable to communicate with other people. He tends to be apologetic and passive in his relationships, and he is frightened by contact with strangers. He also avoids choosing his clothes, wearing clothes provided by others. Unlike
28016-478: The fourth episode, " Hedgehog's Dilemma ", the characters get closer without hurting each other. Schopenhauer originally named his concept after the porcupine , or Hystricidae ( Stachelschweine in German ), but staff chose an alternative translation for the title of the installment, since they wanted to portray Shinji as a hedgehog , an animal with smaller, blunter spines than a porcupine, suggesting more delicacy for
28222-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
28428-491: The heroes would change". He originally proposed a character similar to Asuka Langley Soryu as the protagonist, following Gainax's tradition of a female protagonist like in Gunbuster and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water . Sadamoto objected to a new female protagonist, saying that "a robot should be piloted by a trained person, and if that person just happens to be a girl then that is fine". However, he did not understand why
28634-490: The idea of "not running away", which an official pamphlet describes as " compulsive ". In an interview Anno said that, contrary to the interpretation by fans, the theme of the series is not about "not having to run way", but "It's ok to run away"; according to him, "it's perfectly fine" to run away sometimes and that "There are things that you gain and things that you lose running away, after all. Although, if you don't pick something, then there are times when you get neither. That's
28840-473: The importance of his thoughts, and he is congratulated by the rest of the cast. The 1997 film The End of Evangelion continues Shinji's story, portraying his downward spiral into depression and him losing his will to live. Shinji visits a comatose Asuka in the hospital, and when his pleas for attention go unanswered, he masturbates over her body. He remains catatonic while all Nerv personnel, including Misato, are killed during an attack. He then decides to pilot
29046-569: The impositions of the school system and he eventually "returned" to the mother figure. Hashimoto compared Shinji's final choice, in which he rejects the Instrumentality Project desired by the authoritarian father Gendo, to the concept of liberalism , which prescribes respect for any individual identity. Other critics associated the character with the youth and climate of 1990s Japan, shaken by the Tokyo subway sarin attack operated by
29252-460: The inability of Uru in Blue to find financing in Japan had prompted him to seek it in Singapore, as announced there in 2014. During a 2016 appearance at FicZone in Spain, Sadamoto acknowledged that the 2015 release date for Uru 's "Overture" pilot film had already passed: "As I said before, it's something that depends on money. In this case, I'm really committed to the movie, I just love it. It
29458-465: The issue; the magazine did so two years later during a talk conducted with Yamaga at FanimeCon in 1997. Yamaga characterized Okada's view of Aoki Uru (translated in the interview as Blue Uru ) as a misinterpretation: "As an otaku, he's the type of person who tries to get as much information as he can. He tries to find the minute details of a thing, and based on those details, he makes assumptions. That's where his mistakes come out." Streets of Fire
29664-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
29870-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
30076-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
30282-450: The last day of recording for the film Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009), Ogata was forced to scream; she collapsed on the studio floor, and Anno sat on the floor with her. He praised her work and shook her hand, thanking her for "keeping the character's feelings unchanged" and for adding her thirteen years of experience "to the current Shinji". In the following film, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012), in which Shinji
30488-432: The list. In March 2010, a new Newtype survey decreed him the most popular male character of the nineties. In 2014, foreigners living in Japan were asked: "Which character do you aspire to look like?". Amid a wide variety of answers, Shinji finished seventh. In 2012, Fuji TV asked about 14,000 fans to name the "best anime hero", and Shinji finished twentieth. In 2016, he finished thirteenth in an Anime News Network poll of
30694-467: The main character drawn by Sadamoto; Yamaga remarked that this protagonist had "changed dramatically since the original conception back in 1992." The original Aoki Uru concept was intended to have no characters from Royal Space Force; Yamaga however suggested the possibility of their making cameos in Uru in Blue 's future setting, although the film would be set in an "entirely different nation" from
30900-484: The more powerful conclusion that it finally allows Shinji to reach this point and not leave him in existential dread". Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within
31106-493: The most relatable male anime characters. IGN editor Chris Mackenzie ranked him the twenty-fifth best anime character of all time. Anime Invasion magazine Jen Contino similarly praised Shinji's characterization and rated him the ninth-best anime character of all time. In 2013, Anime News Network editor Lynzee Lam ranked him in the first place of seven "crybaby heroes" in Japanese animation, but praised his motivation and psychological realism. IGN ' s Ramsey Isler called him
31312-425: The nineties. Psychiatrist Kōji Mizobe indicated him as a dependent boy unable to communicate, but also argued that the fundamental characteristic of Shinji is sociability, describing him as a "sympathetic person" who accepts and imitates others. Mizobe interpreted a scene from the ninth episode , in which he synchronizes with Asuka's movements during a train, as proof of this ability. He also interpreted Evangelion as
31518-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
31724-468: The opening day of that year's Tokyo International Anime Fair , Gainax displayed a teaser poster for the Aoki Uru film listing Hiroyuki Yamaga as director and screenwriter and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto as character designer. Joined by artist Range Murata , Yamaga and Sadamoto discussed the project during a talk that evening hosted by Osamu Kobayashi at the event space Asagaya Loft A. The following September, Gainax announced on their Facebook page that
31930-488: The option of pairing Shinji romantically with Asuka Langley Soryu , Rei Ayanami , Kaworu and other characters, including his classmate Hikari Horaki and original characters such as Mana Kirishima , an extrovert transfer student first introduced in the video game Neon Genesis Evangelion: Girlfriend of Steel , and Mayumi Yamagishi , an introverted girl in the video game Neon Genesis Evangelion: 2nd Impression . In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Shinji Ikari Raising Project , he
32136-545: The other characters, awakens some time later, with Asuka lying next to him. He suddenly tries to strangle her, but stops and breaks down when she regains consciousness and caresses his face. [ Eva ] is a story where the main character witnesses many horrors with his own eyes, but still tries to stand up again. It is a story of will; a story of moving forward, if only just a little. It is a story of fear, where someone who must face indefinite solitude fears reaching out to others, but still wants to try. – Hideaki Anno, announcing
32342-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
32548-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
32754-532: The periodical's annual popularity rankings, usually among the top ten. He placed 77th in a 2002 TV Asahi poll ranking the most popular anime characters of all time, and 25th in a 2007 list of most popular male heroes. Shinji also topped Newtype magazine's popularity charts, finishing third and first in August and September 2009. He finished third in October, becoming the most popular Evangelion male character on
32960-405: The pilot of Eva-13 who befriends him. He becomes despondent after Kaworu tells him that humanity holds him responsible for initiating the Third Impact. After Shinji realizes that he failed to save Rei and the new Rei is a clone, Nagisa convinces him to pilot Eva-13 with him. While confronting Asuka and Mari, Shinji begins a Fourth Impact; Eva-13 eats the twelfth Angel and ascends to divinity. Kaworu
33166-591: The pilot of Unit-01. After the battle with the Angel Bardiel, when his father forces his Unit-01 to critically injure Asuka, Shinji retires from his duties and leaves Nerv. When the Angel Zeruel consumes Rei, Shinji returns and defeats the Angel; however, his decisions trigger the Third Impact. Shinji apparently saves Rei by fusing with the Evangelion. In the third film, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012), set fourteen years later, Shinji awakens to
33372-594: The project was seeking to partner with possible production companies in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and the Middle East as well as Japan. Yamaga further related that Uru in Blue would not use the production committee system common to anime, but would instead pursue investors through a limited liability partnership based in Singapore; a budget of US$ 40 million was projected for the film, on which Yasuhiro Takeda would return to his original role as producer. During
33578-519: The project, including a multimedia proposal in the late 1990s, and the formal announcement of an English name for the film, Uru in Blue , at the 2013 Tokyo Anime Fair . In 2018, the Uru in Blue project was transferred from Gainax to Gaina , a different corporate entity and subsidiary of the Kinoshita Group, with the aim of a worldwide release of the film in 2022; an essay published at the end of 2022 described Yamaga as currently working on
33784-411: The project. Aoki Uru , a film proposal envisioned as a sequel to Royal Space Force , was first developed during a difficult period of transition for Gainax between 1991's Otaku no Video and the debut of Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995; Hideaki Anno described this time in his life as being that of "a broken man who could do nothing for four years; a man who ran away for four years, one who
33990-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
34196-449: The protagonist at "age fourteen", since he considered it the age when "independence of mind starts manifesting". Shinji's character was conceived to reflect Anno's personality "both in conscious and unconscious part". He was therefore represented as "a melancholic oral-dependent type" caught "in [an] oral stage ", as Anno considered himself. Seeing Shinji as a reflection of Anno, assistant director Kazuya Tsurumaki avoided depicting him as
34402-426: The protagonist of Shakespeare 's tragedy of the same name . For the Japanese sociologist Tsutomu Hashimoto, Shinji could be seen as an heir of the Japanese society of the seventies and eighties, engaged in the search for freedom from social constraints and the figures of authoritarian family fathers; the sociologist cited the musician Yutaka Ozaki as a symbol of this search for freedom, since he tried to escape from
34608-754: The protagonists of the works by director Yoshiyuki Tomino , especially to Amuro Ray , the main character in Mobile Suit Gundam . Artist Takashi Murakami interpreted Shinji's interior drama as "the endpoint of the postwar lineage of otaku favorites", such as Godzilla , the series of the Ultra franchise, Space Battleship Yamato or Gundam , in which hero-figures increasingly question and agonize over their missions to defend Earth and humanity. According to Toshio Okada , former president of Gainax and an acquaintance of Hideaki Anno, Evangelion and Gundam are completely different; for Okada, one thrust of
34814-403: The qualities they wished to carry forward into a new generation of Gainax anime. Aoki Uru was to be set 50 years after Royal Space Force , on the reasoning that avoiding recurring characters or storylines from the original film would make the pitch easier for investors to understand. In a description by Sadamoto of the plot published in 1993, "Uru" was to be the name of the anime's protagonist,
35020-471: The same as with dying". Hiroki Azuma , a Japanese philosopher and cultural critic, speaking of his motto "I mustn't run away", described Evangelion as a story that depicts "anxiety without a cause", linking this feeling to the repercussions after the Aum Shinrikyō attack. Azuma also described Shinji and other characters in the series as "stereotypical characters" through which Anno succeeded to describe
35226-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
35432-597: The same team of art directors as Gunbuster , Masanori Kikuchi and Hiroshi Sasaki; the later Aoki Uru Frozen Designs Collection contained a listing of staff who had been confirmed to work on Aoki Uru as of the end of 1992, including Kazuya Tsurumaki and Takeshi Honda as animation directors working under Sadamoto, while Aoki Uru 's four technical directors included two of the three assistant directors of Royal Space Force (Shoichi Masuo and Shinji Higuchi ), Otaku no Video director Takeshi Mori , and manga artist and illustrator Kenji Tsuruta , who would later make
35638-458: The script was completed. The storyboard was created through a process that involved all the main staff going on a training retreat, where, in a series of meetings, they worked out a sequence of scenes for the entire film, from which Sadamoto then drew the complete storyboard. The exception to the process were the film's aerial action scenes, which were choreographed and then drawn for the storyboard by Anno. "Full-scale production work" on Aoki Uru
35844-456: The series with the idea that Shinji's emotions are a reflection of Anno's feelings: "That's why in the scenario planning sessions I was always saying something like, 'Isn't that a little too hero-like for Shinji to say? Hideaki Anno isn't that much of a hero'". Tsurumaki also thought that Shinji could only be understood by "Japanese fans of this generation". Critics analyzed the conflictual relationship between him and his father, comparing him with
36050-487: The situation, but was dissuaded by Sawamura. The financial crisis associated with the halt on Aoki Uru led to what Takeda described as a "mass exodus" of staff from Gainax after Sawamura announced to employees that in the near-term future he could not guarantee meeting their payroll ; during this period Takeda's own salary was cut to the point where he could no longer afford an apartment, sending his wife, SF author Hiroe Suga , back to live with her parents while he slept in
36256-518: The spine of a jellyfish". Comic Book Resources also criticized Shinji as a stereotypical talented male protagonist with a harem . Other critics praised the character's realism. For Anime News Network 's Nick Creamer, "every element of Shinji's emotional journey is conveyed with clear sympathy and brutal specificity". According to Susan J. Napier , Shinji "still wins the championship for most psychologically complex (or just plain neurotic) male character ever created". Critics also described him as one of
36462-405: The staff of the 1992–93 anime project, as well as new ones contributed by artists including Neon Genesis Evangelion mecha designer Ikuto Yamashita , as well as Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo and Maschinen Krieger creator Kow Yokoyama. The year following the release of the Aoki Uru add-ons for Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator , Gainax announced that Yamaga's next projects would be
36668-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
36874-451: The story of Gundam is "the main character's desire to be recognized by others", since in mecha anime the characters generally try to change the world, while Evangelion "complicated the whole thing, raising issues", since no one can save the world. According to Italian researcher Fabio Bartoli, Shinji is a "perfect representative" of the otaku generation. He described him as "a young man with relationship difficulties, accustomed to spending
37080-472: The story, and she described him as a "female savior". Other critics described him as a messianic figure and likened to Jesus Christ , who in Japanese is known by the epithet of shinjin ( 神人 ) , " God-man ". He has also been likened to Oedipus . Writer and animation critic Patrick Drazen similarly compared the dilemma faced by Shinji in the twenty-fourth episode against the Angel Tabris to Hamlet ,
37286-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
37492-406: The themes and circumstances surrounding the film project influenced the creation of Anno's TV anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion , the planning for which began in the same month that Aoki Uru was put on hold. In the years following 1993, Gainax has made occasional announcements regarding a revival of the Aoki Uru concept, this time to be directed by Yamaga, with Sadamoto remaining attached to
37698-606: The time of DJ Tsuyoshi (Tsuyoshi Suzuki), Takeshi Isogai, and Minoru Tsunoda. Yamaga, a fan of Tsuyoshi's Goa trance music style, felt that it had the ideal "sense of speed and rapturousness" for the planned Aoki Uru PlayStation game, and traveled to London to recruit the artist, who was then DJing at the club Return to the Source . In February and September 2000, Gainax released a first and second Aoki Uru Combat Flight Simulator Plane And Mission Module add-on for Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator utilizing plane designs from
37904-624: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Aoki Uru Uru in Blue ( Japanese : 蒼きウル , Hepburn : Aoki Uru ) , also known as Blue Uru ,
38110-411: The traditional anime industry. I plan to preserve the traditional look of anime in the film." Yamaga maintained his goal was not to make an anime that looked 3-D , but rather to use the approach for "emphasizing a sense of depth in a two-dimensional format," mentioning that he was researching the programs PowerAnimator and LightWave 3D to develop Blue Uru . Yamaga characterized the staged nature of
38316-408: The truth, Aoki Uru had become something of a burden. I lacked motivation..." Takeda recalled. "I was just doing as I was told. Overall, I think I found producing Aoki Uru to be more of a chore than anything." The lack of progress on the project led Akai to threaten Takeda with severing "all ties with me, public and private," which led to a burst of effort toward satsfying Akai that Takeda compared to
38522-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
38728-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
38934-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
39140-424: The value of his existence, to be disheartened, and to seek a raison d'être ; he also insistently wonders about why he pilots Eva-01 in the latter part of the series. In a stream of consciousness from the last two episodes, which focus on his path and psyche, he admits being afraid of himself and of his father. Despite the tension between him and his father, however, Shinji yearns to trust him. He also pilots Eva-01 for
39346-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
39552-438: The voice-actor rankings for three years. Shinji also appeared in the magazine's monthly surveys, remaining in the top 20 in 1996, 1997 and 1998. In 1998, Animage ranked him 21st among the 100 most popular anime characters and 55th in 1999. In 1998, Shinji emerged in first place among the best "dark characters" in a survey by Animedia magazine, and the magazine itself praised its complexity. For several years he also appeared in
39758-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
39964-508: Was acquired by the Kinoshita Group, a conglomerate known largely for its housing and real estate business, but which currently manages the festival Tokyo Filmex , and whose distribution arm, Kino Films, releases around 15 movies yearly. Renamed Gaina , the anime division of the former Fukushima Gainax was relocated to Koganei in Tokyo. The following September, Gaina announced that it would take over production on Uru in Blue , "aiming for
40170-453: Was "more like a flunk-out" than Anno's version. He conceived Shinji with a "clean image that a woman tends to project" in his mind, portraying him as a "cold, unambitious" character, "the type who would commit suicide, but can't bring himself to do it" and trying to design a character from the more stoic part of himself. He stated that "It was my intention to create a wistful character who had given up on life". According to Anno's thought process,
40376-449: Was Gainax's involvement with anime that gave it its foothold in the gaming industry. Takeda related an occurrence where Hiroyuki Yamaga had stormed out of a planning session on the studio's future after Okada arrived at the meeting to announce he would not resign, saying, "I can't even talk with him in the same room." In a 1995 interview, Okada recalled having discussed with Yamaga a different sequel concept from Aoki Uru while attending
40582-436: Was also reflected in popularity polls, even years after the anime's first airing. After the series' first run, Shinji ranked second among "most popular male characters of the moment" in an Animage magazine Grand Prix poll . In the following two years' rankings, he rose to first place. In the 1997 Anime Grand Prix, Shinji received about 1,200 votes, more than double those of the second character. Megumi Ogata finished second in
40788-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
40994-590: Was better received, with reviewers praising its more open character. Martin Theron of Anime News Network, reviewing Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone , praised Shinji's realism. Theron called the scene in Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance where Shinji saves Rei the "Best Scene" in the website's "Best (and Most Notable) of 2011": "This is the first time in the entire franchise that he whole-heartedly goes after something because he wants it, rather than because he's expected to or has no choice." Despite criticizing
41200-652: Was described as having begun in January 1993; by the end of the next six months Gainax had created over a thousand pieces of design art. In addition to the 338 images made for the film's storyboard, 50 pages of drawings were produced for the film's characters, 120 on its mecha, 30 on its "props" (small devices), 90 on its "art settings" (line drawings of an anime's "set designs" from which the actual background paintings are made), 21 "image boards" of concept art , and 370 "color boards," paintings representing concepts for how scenes should be colored. The CD-ROM introduction noted that
41406-500: Was described by Yamaga as a conceptual inspiration for Aoki Uru , based on Takeda's fondness for the American movie and Yamaga's desire to motivate him as a producer, but only in the basic terms, said Yamaga, of "a cool hero goes to rescue the girl he loves...that was something Anno and Takeda were going to do. But now things have changed, and I'm doing Blue Uru , and that idea has been sort of swept away. From all that, I realize that
41612-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
41818-402: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
42024-575: Was simply not dead." Although original company president Toshio Okada 's involvement with his studio's creators stretched back more than a decade, as co-founder of both Gainax and its associated merchandising company General Products, as well as having personally provided the startup funding for Gainax predecessor Daicon Film , Yasuhiro Takeda described him as by 1991 having become a "hindrance" to Gainax creating "new and better anime." Okada had suggested that Gainax stop making anime in favor of its profitable PC games , whereas Takami Akai argued that it
42230-529: Was something more than just transposing one show's theme onto another. I really think Anno inherited something from Aoki Uru —the determination not to run away from problems—and what we saw in Evangelion was maybe just a reflection of those feelings. In the years since the initial attempt to make Aoki Uru , Gainax has made periodic efforts to relaunch the project. Visiting the United States for Anime Expo 1996 shortly after Evangelion first aired on Japanese television, Hideaki Anno remarked, "Hiroyuki Yamaga
42436-402: Was to be directed by Anno and written by Yamaga, who had completed the first of the planned four acts in the script; its primary mecha designs were drawn by Shirow Masamune , creator of Ghost in the Shell , and Kazutaka Miyatake of Studio Nue ; although well known for his work on Macross , Miyatake had also designed several of the space battleships in Gunbuster . Aoki Uru was to use
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