Why do people hate Shinji Ikari?

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Why do people hate this character? I know he can be whiny, but he's got a major reason to be a LITTLE damaged. He's human. I just don't get it. Any shinji haters that can explain, and shinji sympathizers who could explain? I just don't get how people despise this character.

He's a whiner. Isn't that enough? If it isn't, then Wikipedia is your friend ...

Fair enought. Still though, fpr all his falws, he still does have feelings. I just wish he would reach out for help.

But he is a f****d up person indeed, sadly.

What the f**k is a shinji?

People seem to have this natural aversion to negativity which Shinji has in spades. The problem is people keep saying he's weak and that he's a whiner without considering just how messed up his life is. This is a kid who was abandoned by his father, treated like a nobody afterwards, then retrieved by that same father simply to be used as a weapon. Shinji has more than enough reasons to be messed up.

He's actually one of the best examples of severe depression in anime and if you watch closely the few times he shakes it off he shows a personality just as determined and in some ways obsessive as Gendo. The thing is a good portion of the cast serves to simply drive him further into himself by either telling him to effectively suck it up or ignoring the massive issues he's already dealing with and just throwing more onto him.

I personally find Shinji very relatable (though not as relatable as Rei), I particularly recognize much of myself in his overarching theme of 'Hedgehog's Dilemma', the dilemma between getting close to people at risk of getting hurt and staying away from people at risk of growing insufferably lonely. In a way, such a dilemma still looms over me every day.

Most people in the viewing audience have never experienced social apprehension and anxiety on quite such a level, and don't understand why Shinji doesn't just 'get over it' and sustain and strengthen his friendships and relationships. But I think those people miss the point that Evangelion is all about socially broken characters; Rei as the ultimate introvert; Asuka as the boisterous braggart who just uses people to feel better about herself; Misato as the woman who never grew up; Ritsuko as the hyper-rational scientist who resents her mother; Gendo as self-centered user/abuser. All of these characters are broken or traumatized in some way or another, and that's what ultimately pushes along the original TV series.

On a super seperate note, who else thinks the rebuilds are actually sequels?

It's a theory that's been thrown around with the idea that the new character is actually the daughter of Shinji and Asuka from the original timeline but I don't buy it. Anno has frequently shown that he doesn't necessarily like why some people liked the original NGE and that it didn't fit his vision of how the show was supposed to be hence the original movies and now the rebirth movies.

I know a lot of people hate on the last two episodes of NGE but for me those are two of the best psychological episodes in any anime ever and they tied into a simple fact: At the end of the day NGE is not a mech series despite having mechs in it. It is a social commentary series that happens to have mechs as a main element. The main focus of the plot up to and including the whole Human Instrumentality project has everything to do with how humans do and don't relate to one another and each of the main characters reflects aspects of this theme. In those two episodes born from lack of budget and time Anno and his group managed to perfectly showcase how the characters tied into that overarching theme and it's really a shame that he seems to feel that they didn't measure up.

Because he won't get in the damn robot.

Beyond all the being moody, I thought that it felt like people are frustrated that he seems to ignore the risk to humanity and is caught up in his own problems. Fans like to imagine themselves into stories knowing full well the risks but they will fight against it and become a hero, while Shinji really does not follow that. I have only really seen the new movies, so maybe I am not all correct.

I don't know if it is entirely the best choice with the particular character in breaking convention. The main character of the recent Kuromukuro has shown some similar problems with getting in the robot, but it was grounded in normal fear of not killing, but still knew she had to do it.