Neon Genesis Evangelion Episode 4 Reaction

Every time i watch this show, I know. Misato is the real and only family Shinji has. The one that cares.

Rewatching this series, years later, after growing up really hits so hard. Eva is so well crafted both aesthetically and in the writing and characters. In 2026, after years of experiencing more and more new anime/shows, I can't think of another anime (or even piece of art) that captures this specific atmosphere so well.

You finally get to meet my favorite character... The Cicadas

The cinematography of this episode!! Truly from a bygone era :(

Now that you are watching these old animes that changed the way people see animes i hope one day you will put on a poll in the future berserk the 97 one (the other anime adaptations suck). Many manga and animes wouldn’t exist without evangelion or berserk, like aot, chainsaw and vinland (i don’t wanna say which one is more related to the other bc i don’t wanna spoil)

Yeah for me this episode was the one that hooked me into the show. It was here that I understood the show will actually deeply explore Shinji's character as a consequence of the events he has to go through instead of just the typical pathway we see for protagonists.

Ging is now father of the year 😂

Ahhhh I’m so excited to see what they think of the rest of the show

im counting down the weeks until the movie

You mention the intro being wildly different, funny story the people who made the intro, Toshiyuki Ōmori, Neko Oikawa, and Yoko Takahashi, skimmed a summary of the first two episodes, I quote directly “had a half-hour half-assed meeting,” and just wrote whatever they felt like writing for the song. Which is why it’s so tonally different from the show.

I wasn't sure they would love the show, but I knew they'd have lots to talk about haha. So many shows have teenagers saving the world, this one does the best job of showing how badly that would mess up a kid.

This is why I feel you will love the most centric characters episodes… yes they might be depressing episodes but I feel like Milena said there is some beauty underneath all of it. Shinji is definitely more of a complex character for a kid.

I like seeing misatos perspective on shinji in this episode. she cares for him and wants whats best for him,but she also has the job of protecting the world and to do that she needs to put shinji in danger. She seems to be one of the only adults at nerv who actually cares for the pilots, which is why I love her character so much.

For me, Shinji Ikari is one of the most realistic and psychologically complex protagonists in anime. He is not a traditional shōnen hero, and that is one reason Evangelion works as a deconstruction of the mecha genre. Instead of turning the robot into a symbol of greatness, the series makes it a burden placed on a lonely 14yo exploited by the adults around him. Shinji is also one of the most unfairly hated protagonists by the anime fan community. There are a lot of memes and jokes about him being weak, cowardly, or useless, perhaps because he embodies traditional masculinity’s greatest fears. He is not confident or eager to embrace heroism. He is vulnerable, deeply insecure, emotionally exposed, and shaped by abandonment, especially by the father whose approval he desperately wants. His running away is not simple cowardice. It is the response of a child forced into a life-threatening role he never asked for NERV uses his body as a weapon, Gendo uses his obedience, humanity depends on his sacrifices, and even Misato, despite caring for him, shifts more household responsibilities onto him while avoiding her own. Everyone takes something from him, but almost no one gives him the emotional support he desperately needs in return. The episode also hints at one of Evangelion’s recurring existential themes, the search for meaning and purpose. It captures a strong sense of existential angst, a concept associated with existentialist philosophy that describes the anxiety that arises when confronting questions of identity, freedom, and one’s place in the world. Shinji struggles not only with his responsibilities as an Eva pilot but also with questions of self-worth and belonging. This sense of existential uncertainty becomes one of the series’ defining themes and contributes greatly to the episode’s introspective atmosphere. Another interesting piece of trivia is that the Marduk Institute mentioned here and also breifly in the first episode, the organization responsible for selecting EVA pilots, is named after the chief god of Babylonian mythology

This was the episode that made me really realize there was going to be so much more to this show than just mechas fighting monsters. The show gets an understandable reputation for being super bleak, but when I first watched it, it was really hope inducing and life-affirming to be told why life and other people are still worth it from a work that I could tell really understood what I was going through, instead of simply saying everything was OK and I should just cheer up

Soak yourself in that rain. Soak yourself in the sadness and isolation. Soak yourself fully with that walkman.

One of my fav episodes of NGE, can’t wait to see what they think. The use of still shots, even tho, they were on a tight deadline was such a great artistic choice, to let you sit with a scene And this episode is also called “Hedgehog Dilemma”

This episode is a masterpiece

It’s a depressing Monday so it fits