❮❮prevnext❯❯

Shinji:
The real world might not be so bad. But I do hate myself.

Aoba:
It's your heart that perceives reality as being ugly and painful.

Maya:
How you see reality, how you interpret it...The slightest changes in those leads to huge changes in your heart.

Kaji:
There are as many truths as there are people.

Kensuke:
But there's only one truth for you. Built from a myopic worldview using information altered to protect yourself... It's a contrived truth.

Toji:
A worldview that one person can hold in their head don't amount to much.

Hikari:
But people can only measure things based on their own little yardstick.

Asuka:
People try to see the world using only truths that have been handed to them.

Misato:
Sunny days are cheerful.

Rei:
Rainy days are depressing.

Asuka:
You start to assume that's the case because others tell you so.

Ritsuko:
But fun things can also happen on rainy days.

Fuyutsuki:
A change in how one small detail is interpreted can transform everything. The truth within each of us is a fragile thing.

Kaji:
That's pretty much all that human truth amounts to. That's what drives us to seek out a deeper truth.

Finished the series Friday night. I was looking to find a transcription to save myself the typing which I found here but I think the line that really grabbed me was better given in the Netflix subtitles which I retyped above: Toji's "A worldview that one person can hold in their head don't amount to much." (Netflix subtitles by Dan Kanemitsu and David Fleming.)

The part I quoted is what resonated for me - the nature of objective reality and perception, though it also leads to a lesson for the main character Shinji, that he doesn't have to hate himself, and that he has a right to be here - I think that is closer to the heart of why this series meant so much for so many.

I watched the series with subtitles, which I guess is "more pure", but I dunno - there were sequences that were words flashing on screen with spoken text, and other times where there were non-animated or otherwise non-narrative images with narration by characters, and I think the difference in feeling in reading everything might not be worth what you get from the initial voice acting... but maybe the translation was better? Not sure.

---

A worldview that one person can hold in their head don't amount to much.

---

socially distant in the streets, emotionally distant in the sheets