I think my soul just died. So props to you, since stories like this are about making you feel a way, and you really made me feel. You bastard. Just because I like tragic stuff doesn't mean you should write them so well and bum me out for the rest of the day.

Keep on trucking!

A well written and heartwrenching piece that takes the psychological torment and subtle dementia of the original and remakes it into something both compelling and new. This is the best Evangelion fic I've ever read and even beats out Children of an Elder God; if there was ever a true sequal to Evangelion this would be it.

Awesome portrayal of Kensuke and may I just say, that had to have taken balls what with the sexual interplay going on throughout the chapter. Very intune with the original.

"The Third Children. The Angel slayer. The berserker devil. The God killer.

Ikari Shinji.

To know him was to know the truth."

That's epic...

That my friend is what good writting is about, 14 words of awsome.

There is no author that's going to compete with that line.

I KNEW HIM WHEN: A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW

I Knew Him When holds the dubious distinction of being the most singularly ** depressing thing I’ve ever read. Beyond the fact that this is an after the end fiction wherein everyone who’s anyone is either dead or locked up in solitary confinement, that Shinji spends most of his time trying to commit suicide, that Asuka, Toji, et alii are deranged, violent and disfigured, and that the world has a perpetual red haze about it, we encounter a whole new level of sickeningly depressing. So, it turns out that Shinji spent the years before being locked up physically abusing and outright RAPING Asuka, that Asuka has as a result gone completely insane and doesn’t want her emotionally dead son, and that every member of the fan club takes turns dressing up like Shinji and ** each other in every orifice. Lovely, just lovely. That’s grade A material right there.

I read it perhaps a year and a half ago, based on some recommendation which I no longer recall, and I immediately loved the writing style. Honestly, you have an absolutely brilliant literary style. After half a week of slowly trudging through it, I polished it off with the worst depression I’ve ever had, one that lasted months. I absolutely hated you for ruining everything, for destroying beloved characters in such inordinately cruel ways. (also, I hate Mana, but that’s a story for another day) But then, something miraculous happened: Fridge Brilliance; I realized that, just like Eva, the story is allegorical in nature, (don’t ask how my train of thought veered through that junction, you’d be better off not knowing) and after some careful thought I came upon some dark and brooding themes under its generic darkfic façade.

In the End of Evangelion, it is stated with some degree of clarity and symbolic obfuscation that everyone must find their own meaning and purpose in life, regardless of the will of other, and that by doing so one may always have a chance to be happy. That using only the thoughts of others in shaping oneself results only in a false façade. Shinji must throw his infantile dependency on being a proxy for the desires and whims of others to the wind, recover from his post-Kaworu fit of nihilism, learn to trust in himself and act without explicit instruction, and only then will he be able to find happiness. Here, it is quite clear that he does none of the above; Asuka is implied to have been on her way to recovery just after Third Impact, having cast off her shell and taken the first tentative steps towards trusting others and herself, to allow others to help her and help them in return, only to be betrayed by Shinji, who is still too frightened to do anything himself, and shuns and slowly breaks down this changed Asuka in frustrated search of a person who doesn't exist anymore, blind to the fact that she has changed for the better. Asuka, perhaps, mistook -- as did many others in this story -- Shinji's escape from the Sea of Red for an act of bravery and defiance when it was motivated solely by the fear of death and the unknown. Thinking it safe to do so, she made that brave first step in breaking down her walls, only to find a coward where she thought she had seen a man.

Which of course brings us to the most brutally anvilicious and simultaneously subtle theme of this opus: Idolatry. With the exception of the utterly broken and destitute Asuka, every character entertains some false, absolutely perfect fantasy of another, and is unwilling to compromise or accept the reality they see before them, shunning the very person they so desperately desire because they don't measure up to their messianic expectations. Shinji, in his desperate clinging to an idealized image of a superhumanly strong-willed, utterly indomitable and unattainable Asuka, shuns and destroys a very real Asuka who was at one point entirely receptive. Mana, Kensuke, and dozens of others worship in the most explicit ways an idealized representation of Shinji the Slayer of Angels, a creature which never existed outside their increasingly twisted imaginations. Meeting him, they do not so much refuse to accept him and shun him as they ignore utterly everything that does fit in with their perfect vision. And of course Shinji still idolizes Kaworu as a man infinitely better than himself, and one who should not have had to sacrifice his life, tragically missing the point that it is BECAUSE he was the better man that he had to make the sacrifice, being the one who understands the consequences of his actions. Kaworu IS a better man than Shinji, a better human being, and it is because of this that he can judge the boy, and decide that he is worthy of life. Shinji willfully stays blind to the truth, clinging to some figment of his imagination when he has no right to contradict the real thing telling him that all is right.

I will be perfectly frank: I hate you; reading this story was the worst decision of my life. Yet at the same time, it is one of the most brilliant things I have ever read.
I abhor you, yet I worship you for the potential of your writing style.
The irony, it tastes like asphalt.

Good day to you, dear sir, and keep on writing (just so long as it’s less depressing than this XP)
Hopefully we’ll see a novel from you someday.

Wow. Damn. I mean, **, guy. You hurt my brain like...well, like Hideaki Anno. I mean, damn.

The only complaint I had is that, at times, it was rather wordy. However, it ** me off just added to the terrible drudgery of the story...which was, I felt, the point. So.

I'd tell you to go write actual novels and stuff and make more money than Stephen King, but I think you'd just creep people the hell out and ruin their appetites.

On that note, I really did love the story. Keep it up!

No offense meant by this, but I believe that anyone who thought that Shinji would be an idealistic role model after the third impact is a fool in my opinion. The way that they show all of those crazy scenes in Shinji's mind at the end of the anime just goes to show that his sanity really was broken at that point.

So as I said I feel no dissapointment in Shinji but rather a sense of satisfaction in what I feel might very well be a realistic scenario of post-third impact.

I can see how someone living in that timeline might be disapointed but it leads to a rather large curiosity that I cannot deny as to the scenario.

Wow, I'm a little surprised at all the backlash this has gotten. I found it really impressive, personally... I hope you don't mind if I give you a lot of really worthless flattery now, do you?

I feel that you were really able to capture the feel of EVA. It's creative, artistic and wonderfully depressing. The way that you characterized the cast was quite pleasantly surprising, too (especially Shinji!), and I very much liked the initial chapters' interview style.

The "cult of Shinji" was an idea that I found very jarring and intruiging, in a kind of feel-good creepy way. I thought it was handled really well and I appreciated its presence in the story.

The development of Mana, I thought, was also very good. It was very sad to read, but the ultimate result, with her "becoming Shinji", I thought was so interesting! It brought about just the right ending note for the story. (Albeit a depressing one...) I admit that as an optomistic person at heart I would have liked to see Mana and Shinji be able to connect and be at least a little happy for a while, but it probably wouldn't have fit very well in the story. Ah, well.

Perhaps it's because of my deep-weddedness to the pie-in-the-sky, too, but the only thing that I was really ever disappointed by in this fic was the handling of Kensuke towards the beginning of the end. (Um...) It's just that, well, at the beginning, his interview was the one that really showed the most hope and determination and in-sync-with-the-readersness, it was a little sad to see him go the way he did... how sad. Still, I think that it fit the story very well. The lurking sense of disappointment was sort of what made the story what it was.

Anyway, thank you so much for the wonderful read! I look forward to your future works.

I have very mixed feelings about this... very well written, like a book you can't put down. Unfortunatly, i REALLY wanted to put this 'book' down, the story was horrible. Irrefutably compelling, but still horribe.

To be honest, i wasn't sure that you would allow Shinji to did, that seemed to be a bit too nice, but if it was, i knew it would be ignoble. Still, stray bullet seems a little far-fetched... stastical probility, and all that jazz (though i can't think of a more likely story... maybe he's shot when they are closer to the fight)?

In the end... I hated/kinda liked this one, but i will not read any of your other works. peroid... im one of those annoying fluffy optimistic people, that like happy stories.

Still, this is the kind of thing that probaly strike chords with some people... just not me, so keep writing, who knows, some unhappy person may be uplifted by the fact that they can cry for other people, and can feel superior to these damaged 'people'


p.s. I think that this should maybe be Agnst/Drama (It switched more to agnst at the end chapters)

This last chapter was perfect, and I don´t think an epilogue is needed for the fic. We can easily guess who was the informant, and it doesn´t really matter who hired Kensuke.

I laughed when Mana thought "what the **?!" to herself. For some reason I always see her so straight-laced in a professional, well-adjusted way, so that when she sys something like that it's funny.

I think this was a good ending, not just because of the action you put to it but also because it was the logical conclusion. Shinji dies and Mana takes his place, so that although she may not understand him, she'll certainly be able to relate to the prison he suffered under military supervision.

I always like that about your stories. No easy answers, no compromise, no convenient deus ex. Nothing but the truth. And people having their world crushed in the back of a "don't talk to strangers" van. Mana should've just said no and told a grownup.

Dear Adam,

...** it's over...damn it. Well Adam what can we say, the story is done, yes it was mostly talk...I still see Shinji as a person, not as a mindless monster though even despite how in detail you went over everything he did. Huh, makes me one of those cult worshipers I guess. Damn it I'm a nutter and it took YOU to tell me that. This ladies and gentlemen is what we in the biz like to call sad.

So what now, the stories over, you ended it well, almost exactly how I thought it should end.


Sincerely,

Konous the Grey

Well...

That had to be among the most depressing stories I've ever read. Seriously. You've murdered my hope and buried it in your backyard. I'm gonna go walk into traffic now.

Good story tho.

-Cy

The man has issues. Writes okay, but.

Painful, but interesting. Now I need to read some happy fluff!

god, why do you hate shinji so much,

raped three imr once by his father and by angel boy(yaoi=rape)
used by mana twice
paralyzed
shot
instmentalized- the closest you have writen shinji to being happy
and other bad stuff

honsty there are plenty of good dark-eva-fics that just leave shinji to his natural personal hells
oh, hell just do your do. someone else can screw over the rest o the cast