Neon Genesis Evangelion was probably one of the biggest evaluations anime as a medium had, so it's no wonder that many character archetypes are turned completely upside-down.
- Shinji is this for The Chosen One, Kid Hero, and The Hero. Shinji is not your typical handsome hero with Ideal Hero tendencies. In fact, he's very unstable, realistic and vulnerable, and only gets worse as the series progresses. First off, he's initially presented as a cliche anime stereotype before revealing that he's much more complex psychologically than that label. In fact, this stereotype is very harmful, since its expectation is dictated mainly by the stereotype. This could explain the fact that his character was so controversial for the time the anime was released. At the end, he's eventually revealed to be an extremely messed-up individual whose behavior is an endless source of troubles. In short, Shinji comes as a harsh rebuke.
- Shinji is also this for the No-Respect Guy. The guy fights dangerous monsters on the daily, risking his life and sanity, but at the end of the day he continues to get treated like crap: his Love Interest cares little for him, his father refuses to show him any affection, and he all around gets constantly belittled, insulted, and ignored. He's eventually convinced that no one loves him and if that's the case then the whole world should just disappear...
- He turns out to be this for the Clueless Chick-Magnet. He attracts multiple girls, but his reluctance to get close to anyone leads him to overlook signs that are put his way, and ensure he can't develop healthy, fulfilling relationships.
- In Rebuild of Evangelion, he becomes this for the idea of The Heavy. While he is ultimately responsible for causing Third Impact and wiping out most of humanity, and is the major force his former friends have to stop, it's made clear that he would never have caused so much damage if anyone had been around to tell him what his initial actions would bring about and if anybody had bothered to tell him his failsafe would be worse than useless. He's ultimately made to take the blame for every negative event so the other characters can have something to hate and ignore their own issues.
- Half of the series has its characters in general first presented as classic anime stereotypes of the Humongous Mecha genre (and in fact predates a few of them), but as the series progresses they are revealed to be extremely messed-up individuals whose behavior is an endless source of troubles. Think about it—a kid is abandoned by his father, who suddenly calls him back after years to jump into the cockpit of a robot he's never seen to fight a grotesque alien monster? Obviously a boy like that would start off as dysfunctional and only get worse from there. Most of the series involves exploring just what sort of mental issues such characters would develop:
- Doctor Ritsuko Akagi is very attractive and dedicated Replacement Goldfish but the attention she receives from Gendo ultimately doesn't satisfy her in the end because she is just a stand-in for Gendo's late wife. And Gendo, meanwhile, simply cannot bring himself to care for her as a person on any meaningful level, due to his Single-Target Sexuality.
- Misato Katsuragi is the Hard-Drinking Party Girl who chugs beer like a man and cracks jokes off duty (much to Shinji's discomfort), the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who owns a pet penguin, and the Team Mom for the Pilots. As the series progresses, it shows that the first two archetypes are just acts she puts up to keep people at a distance, and that her job as Major inhibits her attempts to be a mother figure to Shinji and Asuka, as she sends them into battle after battle to satisfy her desire for revenge against the Angels killing her father in Second Impact. As a result, both her charges end up pushing her away to the point where Asuka has a mental breakdown after suffering a massive defeat against an Angel Mind Raped her and was offered no support from her guardian after the fact, and attempts suicide. Meanwhile, Shinji is an adolescent boy who struggles to see Misato as his commanding officer and a mother figure while noticing how attractive she is, despite being much older than him. Misato tries to appeal to him as a woman instead in the movie, but it only confuses him further and doesn't do anything to lessen his Sanity Slippage. Rebuild of Evangelion takes this a step further when she drops the act entirely, falling into the He Who Fights Monsters trap of becoming a second Gendo in her ruthless quest for revenge.
- Rei Ayanami predates the stock Emotionless Girl archetype and in fact is the Trope Codifier for it. She's also the trope maker for Rei Ayanami Expy. However, the show itself tears both concepts to shreds. Rei isn't actually emotionless, only distant and stoic due to the extreme amounts of trauma she suffers due to being murdered, cloned, and Conditioned to Accept Horror by her commander. As Gendo's personal time bomb, she's an Apocalypse Maiden designed to end the world the moment he says so, and he has made her well aware of how expendable she is. Other continuities make it worse, implying he may have been abusing her further, due to her resemblance to his late wife.
- Asuka Langley Soryu is introduced as both The Ace and a stereotypical Tsundere. She's much more skilled at piloting than either Shinji or Rei, with a cocky, arrogant attitude that matches her skill, and she seemingly can't decide whether she likes or hates Shinji and spends her time mostly berating him for his weak personality, although they eventually develop a Like an Old Married Couple-type dynamic. However, as the series progresses and the drama unfolds, it’s revealed that underneath everything, she's just as broken as Shinji if not more so. She has a desperate need for personal validation which drives her attitude about being a pilot, and as circumstances increasingly overwhelm her, her effectiveness plummets to the point that she can't even budge her Eva. The resultant crumbling of her self-worth feeds into her feelings about Shinji, driving her more and more to want attention and affection from him but also feeding her anger when he can't or won't meet her expectations, which causes her abuse of him to become more harsh, which then only pushes Shinji further away. It doesn't help that he seems to more easily bond with Rei, who Asuka can't stand because her passive nature and seeming lack of personality push serious trauma buttons for Asuka related to the events in her childhood that made her into what she is.
- Gendo Ikari: It's a fairly common trope in the mecha genre for the protagonist's father to either have designed the robot that their kids pilot, or otherwise have another important role in fighting against the invading aliens or other big bads of the series. It is also fairly common for said father to have left the protagonist at a young age to give them something to angst about, but with the ultimate reveal that their father loved them all along, and they just did what they needed to do to save the world. Hideaki Anno asked: "what would a father who abandons his son for several years, only to reenter his life to effectively turn him into a child soldier to fight eldritch abominations actually be like?" In short, Gendo is a massive asshole and rivals Shou Tucker for the title of "worst father in all of anime." He's emotionally cold towards Shinji at best, manipulating Shinji by using his desire for even a sliver of parental affection to get him to do what he wants. Not that he treats anyone else much better. He shows more affection towards Rei, but that quickly turns creepy when you learn that she's a clone of his dead wife, Yui. Eventually, it's revealed that his reasons for abandoning Shinji and leading NERV are far from heroic: Gendo basically wants to bring about the biblical apocalypse in an attempt to reunite with Yui's soul. And his reason for abandoning Shinji in the first place? He believes that he'd be a terrible father and would only hurt Shinji more by being a part of his life. Well, you were certainly right about that, Gendo.
