“I wonder?…How would I feel?…if you had feelings for me.”
The Neon Genesis Evangelion manga adaptation may not be a big source of conversation compared to the anime series and movies, but Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s interpretation of the story made a beloved character seem more eccentric with regards to loving men. Kaworu Nagisa and Shinji Ikari’s friendship/relationship is arguably the most complex relationship in the whole series. Their interactions highlight how a man can love another man even if he is straight.
The manga version of Kaworu is similar to the anime version of Kaworu for the most part. Both are humans who are secretly Angels, the antagonists of the series. Both find the depressed loner that is Shinji intriguing. He infiltrates the organization, NERV, by joining them as the “Fifth Child.” Kaworu meets Shinji and gets his attention by playing a piano and killing a cat. He starts to make him uncomfortable as he breaks his personal boundaries with no sense of etiquette. This is the key difference that makes manga Kaworu a somewhat more chilling character. The two would fight each other for the fate of mankind. Shinji kills Kaworu, but he’s left wondering if he was attracted to him in the first place.
The one scene in the manga that drew attention to Kaworu’s behavior towards Shinji was a bedroom scene in Volume 10. Shinji was having breathing problems as he was depressed over Rei Ayanami’s self-sacrifice to defeat an Angel. Kaworu decides to help Shinji by giving him CPR, even though it looks like he kisses him. 
Shinji freaks out and Kaworu talks about how Rei’s feelings got to him emotionally. He explains that he wants to understand love by possibly getting close to Shinji. Shinji then yells “Guys don’t like guys!” and proclaims that Kaworu is too weird for him.
There are many instances of seeing straight people act really close to those of their respective gender. We see girls tease and touch each other intimately and that’s considered acceptable, but for men, they would be looked down upon with disgust. While bromances are used to describe close male/male friendships, their love of each other never goes sexual.
Or perhaps they are hidden because of social constructs. A therapist named Ed Terijan believes so. He argues that male-male sexual attraction is normal and it happens to every man out there. Ed once asked male students in a graduate class about their feelings towards men. He found out that a majority of them hid their thoughts to uphold the normal view of “masculinity.”
An interesting note about Shinji’s response during the Kaworu x Shinji scene was that some fans that shipped the pair in the anime did not like it. They felt that Sadamoto was lashing out towards them for thinking of such a relationship. However, Sadamoto makes a remark in the beginning of Volume 11 that while drawing Kaworu, he said that he started to have feelings for him.
Some men aren’t sure of their own desires and/or can be frustrated with the opposite sex, so they experiment. Besides, we live in an era of “man worship” that seems to be more prevalent. You see guys fawning over male professional athletes and willing to spend a lot of money to have anything related to them. Jerseys with athletes’ names are worn by them as admiration. Men are the ones with power and visual representations of strength, so of course, fellow men should idolize them. They’re not supposed to speak highly of their wives, mothers, sisters, aunts, etc.
Here’s a personal story that the Kaworu/Shinji dynamic brought out of me – I thought about what would it be like to be with another man. My sexual preference is women, but it seems like many of them want to have drama in their lives to gain meaning. Even my female friends said that they don’t trust many women these days either. Some prefer to talk to guys most of the time. When I was in my early 20s’, I started to think some guys were really cute.
I made suggestions about having the child of a hot male star. I’ve even seen gay porn clips and wasn’t disgusted. There was an episode of Family Guy where Stewie Griffin was talking to Brian Griffin about how he wanted a relationship with a man that’s similar to a male/female relationship. Some part of me makes me wonder if I wanted a guy to understand me since it was hard to talk to my father about my problems.
When Shinji said that guys didn’t like guys, it makes you think about his relationship with his father, Gendo Ikari. Gendo disliked Shinji since his birth. Being treated like crap by your father can cause a man to find some comfort with another man. He probably did like Kaworu, as evident when he fulfilled his request to be killed by him, but the past trauma of seeing his friends get killed/hurt got to him. Kaworu’s affection was probably something that Shinji always wanted from Gendo, but he was conditioned to reject it. Kaworu may have also felt the same (though he chose to be aggressive) as he was created by a group of old men, who you can say were his “fathers”, to do one job and die for it.
Sadamoto’s interpretation of Kaworu and Shinji’s relationship makes you think about connection and how we shouldn’t be afraid of it, even if it seems unusual. Kaworu was awkward and evil by nature, yes. But he showed more confidence in trying to make connections than most people ever do. Perhaps that confidence is what makes us fall in love with someone, regardless of whatever shape or form they take. It’s the kind of confidence that causes those who have irrational fears to shut it down for their own selfish reasons.
Who said short-term flings can’t be meaningful?
(c) Manga Therapy – Where Psychology & Manga Meet – Read entire story here.