Music, as Reviewed from Playlists Made for Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion
Kawoshin, Doomer Shinji, and traumacore in the Evangelion fandom
Shinji, from legedendary anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, is an ordinary teen: sorta soft, sorta bold, sorta depressed, sorta psychotic — and of course, very horny. Because of his iconic fragility, he has become prime playlist material for anime fans everywhere.
I honestly wasn’t sold on the show until around episode 12. There is a scene where Shinji explains to Misato how his father’s approval makes him feel. The camera lingers on a still and despondent Misato, a mouthful of noodles hanging from her mouth as she endures Shinji’s rambles. I can’t describe why that shot affected me, but at that moment I finally understood exactly what the show is doing. Everything clicked into place.
Since finishing the show, I’ve been fascinated by the show’s legacy. In particular, I’ve found it fascinating that, despite the original series being only 26 episodes, it still finds ways, nearly three decades later, to stretch out in time. This happens in two dimensions: from the creators, with the creation of alternate timeline films such as End of Evangelion, extra manga, and the Rebuild of Evangelion series. The other dimension, and the focus of this post, is in the fandom, stretching out the time of the show through memes, shipping, and mood playlists.
SHINJI THE DOOMER
Shinji’s “depression playlists,” such as this one and this one, share a lot of overlap. There is the frequent use of Mitski, an artist who has an uncanny ability to blend into any mood playlist due to her songs being simultaneously bright and dark, retro and contemporary, doomer-ish yet upbeat. Both playlists feature her song “Nobody,” which, if it was sung in Japanese, could easily be an opening or closing song in an anime. I also love the inclusion of Radiohead’s Creep, which is a hilarious match to the memetic shot above, a perfect combination of comical self-loathing. Beach House’s Space Song is also included in both these playlists. Like Mitski, Space Song has the gift of blending into any space — I’ve heard it in restaurants and even grocery stores, not to mention endless mood playlists.
The second playlist is a kinnie playlist, which has a lot of crossover with the doomer playlist (especially in the case of Shinji) but in general can be more loose with its moods. The secret to making an anime character with a large kinnie culture is to give them a rich, mysterious inner life in which the viewer can implant their own interiority. One of the best ways to do this visually is to have many scenes of the character listening to their CD/cassette player, especially while looking out the window, or in the case of Shinji, staring at his bedroom ceiling or burying his head in his pillow. This leaves the listener with two ambiguities: What, or who, are they thinking about? And, what are they listening to? The kinnie’s own life, and their mood playlists, fill these two ambiguities respectively.
KAWOSHIN
In the third to last episode of the original series, after twenty-three episodes of being psychologically bullied and sexually taunted by the women around him, not to mention being neglected by his father and mourning his dead mother — a new boy comes into Shinji’s life. This boy, named Kaworu, hums the tunes of Beethoven, teaches Shinji how to love himself, and tells Shinji that he was born to meet him. They even shower together, briefly hold hands, and in one of the episode’s first drafts, they kiss. Then it is revealed that Kaworu is actually an angel, the villains of the series. He is the first angel to have human form, as the previous angels were “biblically accurate.” Kaworu allows himself to be killed as a sacrifice to save humanity. His last words to Shinji are, “I am glad to have known you.” Shinji, armed in his mecha suit, decapitates him, and Kaworu’s head plops into the water below.
Despite only having maybe 10 or 15 minutes of screentime together in total, the Kaworu-Shinji (Kawoshin) relationship has become one of the most notable ships in anime history. While the male weeb culture around this show revolves around debating which of the girls is the ideal waifu (frequently delving into perverted territory with the sexualization of underaged Rei and Azuka) the female culture around the show often centers on the Christ-like Kaworu and his homoerotic, yet unresolved (this is the essential word) relationship with Shinji. This lack of resolution is the catalyst of all the culture around it, expressed in the wholesome and endless fan-art around the two, imagining what their life would be if Kaworu never died, if he was a human boy just like Shinji, if maybe, in a utopian alternate timeline like that shown in the final episode, they were a couple.
In this alternate timeline, of course, is music. Lots of it. Expressed in tastefully curated YouTube playlists.
This one is great. It’s a perfect mix of TikTok meme music (George Michael’s Careless Whisper) and earnest love songs (Coldplay’s Yellow). I also like the inclusion of Hot Freaks’ Puppy Princess, a disco-ball indie pop bop from ten years ago that randomly become popular on TikTok last year. It is strange to hear a song from 2012 (the year I graduated high school) exist in the same nostalgia-space as something like Careless Whisper.
There’s also this one. This one isn’t just about the two characters, but also adds the “depression” signifier. I love Radiohead’s No Surprises on a Shinji playlist, because the song is depressive, but also innocent and childlike with its glockenspiels and chimey guitars, which matches Shinji’s child face perfectly. Mac DeMarco also always works on these Shinji playlists, for its warbled moodiness as well as the potent daddy issues latent in Mac’s recent lyrics. Other picks on this playlist are a head-scratcher though. Green Day has no place on any doomer/depression playlist of any kind. Cults’ Always Forever is great, but belongs on the other playlist, the one about Kawoshin’s love, unfettered by the depressive precepts of the NGE world.
BONUS: SHINJI AS TRAUMACORE ICON
This playlist doesn’t have many views, but it caught my eye because of the description:
“i didn't know most of the songs in the second part of the playlist are considered weirdcore/traumacore so heads up !”
For those who don’t know what traumacore is, it’s basically the weirdcore / liminal spaces aesthetic with an additional photoshopped layer of therapeutic cuteness and disturbing text. Here is a great example from the subreddit:
We have the low-res image of the liminal staircase as our foundation, something photographed in the real world, but made to feel like a childhood fever dream. It evokes an eerie nostalgia. Overlaid is a gushing of textual trauma from what seems to be FtM gender dysphoria, expressed by the primordial cthonics of the female menstrual cycle. In the traumacore community, these are aesthetic, but not art pour l’art the same way many Tumblr aesthetics are. They are made as a practical therapeutic practice, a method of self-soothing.
Shinji, of course, is known for his trauma. His Wikipedia lists a myriad of hypothetical psychiatric diagnoses, none of which exist as canon in the show. He is cold, depressed, sexually maladjusted and resistant to affection. He was abandoned by his father, and lost his mother at a young age. Does he need therapy? Or, as this Kawoshin meme shows, just a bit of love? Either way, his status as a teen trauma-icon is a no-brainer.
But back to the playlist.
The interesting thing about traumacore music is that it is quite flexible in terms of its contents. It’s the sheen that distinguishes it — low-pass filters making the mixes dark, in addition to ample reverb and vibrato. But unlike vaporwave and vaporwave-adjacent genres, there is a clarity and bold angst that makes traumacore music stand out in the speakers. “Hey Kids” by Molina is a staple on these playlists, its opening lyrics perfectly describing the features of the morute characters often featuring in the thumbnails of traumacore playlists — “Hey kids / Into dust together / Hey kids / Eyelids / Heavy as leather”. It is innocence wounded, but not lost.
The following song on the playlist, “Pretty Cvnt” by Sewerslvt, is more disturbing than the post-Beach House gothic dream pop of Molina. It is a washed-out gushing of despair, with an almost J-pop nightcore beat, and what seems to be a death metal growl sampled and warbled on a loop, as if it’s the recurring nightmare or demon of the anguished female singer.
I have to give this playlist huge props for the feature of “These Chains” by Mid-Air Thief, from their 2018 album Crumbling, one of my favorite records of the 2010’s. I don’t see exactly how it’s traumacore, but it’s amazing. I like to imagine it as something Shinji would make if he grew up to be an auteur-musician, his turbulent adolescence settling into mature art. Listen to Crumbling if you haven’t already!!!