Today’s line The case against this line
“I mustn't run away.”
Shinji Ikari Neon Genesis Evangelion
Fandom prints it as a mantra of resolve, and as motivation it is overrated in a way the show itself keeps saying out loud. Listen to the scene: the line is recited, three and five times over, by a fourteen-year-old talking himself into a box of armor and pain, and the animation frames it as self-coercion rather than courage, a boy whipping the one animal he owns, himself. Nothing about it is aspirational.