Shin seiki evangerion (English title: Neon Genesis Evangelion) became massive phenomenon when it was originally aired in 1995, and is still an important fixture in Japanese pop culture nearly a quarter century later, with multiple spinoff manga, games, and movies, and another movie scheduled for release next year. The series famously problematizes the giant robot genre and features Shinji Ikari, a fourteen-year-old boy who must pilot a giant robot but is uncomfortable with this role and has trouble believing in his own self-worth. Many analyses have attributed this to his fragile adolescent psyche, but this paper argues that Shinji exhibits a kind of queer masculinity, and much of the despair he feels relates to his inability to conform to hegemonic masculinity.

As the series opens Shinji is immediately asked to perform masculinity; to do violence on behalf of society by piloting a giant robot. Unlike other mecha protagonists, Shinji is unsuited to this task and unwilling. When he refuses, he is upbraided by other characters for his failure to live up to normative, hegemonic masculine ideals with the phrase “otoko no ko desho?” (“aren’t you a boy?”). This foreshadows the rest of the series, in which Shinji is regularly pressured to perform normative masculinity, and is largely unsuccessful. Aside from his halfhearted robot piloting, he also proves unable to participate in male bonding through violence and objectification of women. Shinji internalizes hegemonic society’s scorn of his queer masculinity, causing him to devalue himself. He repeats a mantra of his failures to perform hegemonic masculinity, which justify his self-hatred: he is “cowardly, timid, sneaky, weak.” Evangelion, then, amidst confusing apocalyptic events, shows Shinji grappling with the violence of social gender policing and ultimately learning to accept his own queer masculinity.