Zombies Ruin Everything

If you’re looking to have your senses and mind wipe the mental floor like a mop, drenched out, hung to dry, and then dunked again, look no further than Neon Genesis Evangelion.

If you’re looking for an INFP protagonist, look no further than Shinji, the cry baby who will save us all (hopefully).

Never one to be the traditional hero, the INFP Shinji seems to spend most of the series crying, whining, or doing everything he can to stay out the scenarios most protagonists are running into.

But when your life is as screwed up as Shinji’s is, he can hardly be blamed. Especially for his type to be given such cold and callous orders as he is. INFPs as we know, display dominant Introverted Feeling, which is something like centered emotions; knowing why you feel what you feel, not just going with the feeling.

“What did I do to Asuka? Just a momentary lapse in judgement is all! Hee hee!”

This isn’t to say that anyone with INFPs can always put a finger on their emotions, but their principles and beliefs are strong within them as opposed to trying to make others feel comfortable.

Shinji doesn’t want to fight for all of humanity, and he definitely doesn’t want to do it in a massive, living machine. He’s a kid and what he really wants to do is make his dad proud. But much of his problems stem from the fact that he really can’t please his dad. And this is bound to screw up anybody looking for approval from someone who won’t give it to them.

But an INFP looking to do this and inevitably failing is bound to give us someone as screwed up as Shinji. Another type may give up or not have cared in the first place, but any task the INFP undertakes becomes a personal and emotional mission to complete, so help them God.

Here’s to really hoping he wants to save us all…

Notice how many times others have to speak to him to the point of abusing him, verbally or physically, to get him to get him going. Like a true INFP, getting them to do something they don’t really believe in is worse than pulling teeth. It’s not until Shinji is actually shown what the world is like when everyone is one with no separate thoughts or emotions that he understands the joys of humanity.

And this is core to Shinji’s character. While the depressed INFJ can revert inward so much so that they refuse to act at all, the INFP’s attitude in that same situation says “Ah, F*%# IT! What’s the difference, everybody can just die!” It’s not their strong point to make the cold, “rational” decisions but rather chase a never-ending goal that helps people along the way. So Shiji is basically being forced to do the exact opposite of what comes natural for him throughout the entire series.

Plus he’s got to control THIS mofo.

At one point, Shinji is allowing himself to be strangled rather than fight his opponent because hurting someone else is against his principles. Why? He himself hates being hurt, according to the director of the series, Hideaki Anno, puts it. And though this is more likely meant in an emotional sense, being strangled and refusing to fight back has got to say something about Shinji’s character.

It takes seeing the entire world ending for him to realize that he actually wants to live. Think about that sentence for a second. It takes every single soul on planet earth being harvested into a giant space egg for him to realize that “Life can be pretty bad, but it’s pretty fun too.” That’s the depth of the INFP.

This entry was posted on 06/04/2014 at 3:00 am and is filed under MBTI Idealists, MBTI Stuff with tags anime, infp, mbti in fiction, neon genesis evangelion, shinji ikari. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.