I think I get what's going on thematically, but what is literally going on towards the end of episode 25 of evangelion

I think I get what's going on thematically, but what is literally going on towards the end of episode 25 of evangelion.

Throughout the episode they're dissecting these characters as their minds in some way bounce off each other in instrumentality. I get that. You can basically show anything and its explained as just a representation of their psychological problems.

However towards the end Shinji is in that empty theatre which I take it is a metaphor for isolating himself into his own little asocial world, where so to speak the show is over because he alienated and rejected other people; the actors on the stage of his world.

But the thing is, this scene is not just presented as an externalisation of Shinji's mind. The subs I was reading felt super ambiguous and confusing, but seemingly this is not just to illustrate what's wrong with Shinji. This metaphor is also meant to represent what instrumentality is; instrumentality is basically what Shinji wanted and results in a state analagous to the real existence he was in the process of cultivating.

This doesn't make much sense to me. I thought instrumentality was everyone coming together into a singular being, not something akin to being alone or dead. And if you want to say that the end of your independent existence and your ego being dissolved is a form of death, that still doesn't seem to work because that's a very different state of affairs from the realistic scenario of self isolation Shinji is being confronted with, and the desire for conventional death it is purported to amount to. Instrumentality seems to me to be a way of embracing others in a pain-free way, rather than the hard work and pain of doing so as an individual. It is a process of moving towards and embracing others, just in a fantastical way that is too easy and antithetical to your humanity. Having it as a metaphor for Shinji rejecting others in the name of petty comfort and pain avoidance just doesn't seem to make sense. It's the reverse.

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didn't read + L + ratio

I always took Instrumentality for Shinji to mean rejecting who he was as a person, killing himself in a way, as the parts of him that caused him pain when attempting to connect to others were the same parts that made him who he was.

You're being a really autistic attention seeker about finding anime discussion on the anime discussion board

malding

Fpbp

>This doesn't make much sense to me.
Anno set out to do that. He's a cunt.

Lol

>This doesn't make much sense to me
I won't pretend that I've read the whole thing, but anime originals almost always try to conceal their bad writing with "deep", philosophical themes, and it's no wonder they all feel alike. Instrumentality is just a meaningless concept that is introduced to the plot because of the writers' inability to create not only compelling characters with reasonable motivation (instead of a villain who longs to destroy/unify the world for example) or a plot that evolves in a healthy manner and has a discreet conclusion (and not 'it all comes tumbling down'), but something new period. That's why it is so over-used across numerous anime series,.

>It is a process of moving towards and embracing others, just in a fantastical way that is too easy
how can it be embracing others if self and others cease to exist as empirical possibilities