Hey, Happy Father's Day, and going through the geek list of the morning I found the worst father of the day who is from, not surprisingly, anime!
Warning: If you have any intention of watching this anime, you probably won't want to read any further. Got it? You've been warned!!!
And the winner is:
Gendo Ikari
Neon Genesis Evangelion
In Gendo Ikari we have an emotionally distant father who eventually realizes how much he has completely failed his son… but by the time he figures that out, it’s far, far too late: he’s sacrificed Shinji’s sanity in a failed attempt to become God and bring his wife back to life.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is screwed up.
It’s unclear at what point Gendo Ikari formed his plans to turn the ongoing apocalypse to his own ends, but when his wife died in the testing of an experimental mecha unit capable of defending Earth from the frequent attacks of Angels, he threw himself into it, sending his only son, Shinji, to live with a tutor. Shinji, already naturally shy, mildly suicidal , and with the self esteem of used, wet, paper towel, desperately wants his father to simply acknowledge his existence (sounds like a person we used to role play with!), but Gendo doesn’t call for him until he realizes that Shinji is the only person in the world who can pilot Eva Unit 01, the machine that killed his mother. This is because Shinji’s mother’s soul is imprisoned in the eternal torment of the mecha’s form. Previous attempts to make the Unit perform with other pilots had been disastrous, but Gendo is perfectly willing to throw his untrained child into the cockpit. He’s not willing to, you know, talk to the boy or anything, and even when they’re in the same city makes him live alone (he is taken in by one of Gendo’s coworkers). In fact, he seems to care much more about Rei, a teenage girl that Shinji has never met before, than he does about his son.
This is because Rei is one of a large number of teenage clones of Yui Ikari, Shinji’s mother, that Gendo created. Shinji does feel strangely drawn to Rei… in a school boy crush sort of way that he is incapable of acting on because of how emotionally stunted he is. No, Gendo does not tell him that Rei is a clone of his mother. Yes, Gendo privately treats Rei as his wife and partner. The idea is that once the final event of the Apocalypse happens, Gendo will become God, rejoin his resurrected wife, and together they will make a better future for humanity. Needless to say, his plans don’t work out and he repents, just before death, but only to himself, that he left his son’s psyche a smoking ruin in order to do it.
Evangelion is super screwed up.
Warning: If you have any intention of watching this anime, you probably won't want to read any further. Got it? You've been warned!!!
And the winner is:
Gendo Ikari
Neon Genesis Evangelion
In Gendo Ikari we have an emotionally distant father who eventually realizes how much he has completely failed his son… but by the time he figures that out, it’s far, far too late: he’s sacrificed Shinji’s sanity in a failed attempt to become God and bring his wife back to life.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is screwed up.
It’s unclear at what point Gendo Ikari formed his plans to turn the ongoing apocalypse to his own ends, but when his wife died in the testing of an experimental mecha unit capable of defending Earth from the frequent attacks of Angels, he threw himself into it, sending his only son, Shinji, to live with a tutor. Shinji, already naturally shy, mildly suicidal , and with the self esteem of used, wet, paper towel, desperately wants his father to simply acknowledge his existence (sounds like a person we used to role play with!), but Gendo doesn’t call for him until he realizes that Shinji is the only person in the world who can pilot Eva Unit 01, the machine that killed his mother. This is because Shinji’s mother’s soul is imprisoned in the eternal torment of the mecha’s form. Previous attempts to make the Unit perform with other pilots had been disastrous, but Gendo is perfectly willing to throw his untrained child into the cockpit. He’s not willing to, you know, talk to the boy or anything, and even when they’re in the same city makes him live alone (he is taken in by one of Gendo’s coworkers). In fact, he seems to care much more about Rei, a teenage girl that Shinji has never met before, than he does about his son.
This is because Rei is one of a large number of teenage clones of Yui Ikari, Shinji’s mother, that Gendo created. Shinji does feel strangely drawn to Rei… in a school boy crush sort of way that he is incapable of acting on because of how emotionally stunted he is. No, Gendo does not tell him that Rei is a clone of his mother. Yes, Gendo privately treats Rei as his wife and partner. The idea is that once the final event of the Apocalypse happens, Gendo will become God, rejoin his resurrected wife, and together they will make a better future for humanity. Needless to say, his plans don’t work out and he repents, just before death, but only to himself, that he left his son’s psyche a smoking ruin in order to do it.
Evangelion is super screwed up.
