this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
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I think people read too much into E24, honestly.
Anno in an interview once said it wasn't sexual between Kaworu and Shinji. Khara also re-translated the scene again for the Netflix release and chose "like" instead of "love," just as the original ADV translation did.
Even the original storyboard for E24 supports this, as Shinji didn't blush and Kaworu only touched Shinjis hand, he wasn't supposed to hold it. Anno interviewed the director for the episode, and in that interview the episode director admitted it was not the intention for the scene because they were out of time and he just approved whatever the artist had ready without really checking it.
I think people just see what they want to see in E24. Like Confirmation Bias, you know?
the kaworu episode being gay as fuck doesn't make it sexual... obviously there's a lot of nuance about how kaworu's the first and only character who's just interested in shinji without wanting something from him. compare to shinji's disgust at misato in e23 and his reaction to kissing asuka in e15. the point is to raise questions, not draw conclusions, so abruptly and right before the climax. the point isn't to say that shinji is or isn't gay. but it absolutely introduces queer themes to the show at the 11th hour and it's disingenuous to suggest that reading into them at all is somehow an act of willful overinterpretation.
Well my point is that E24 was never meant or intended to convey such themes, as confirmed by both Hideaki Anno and the episode director Masayuki Yamaguchi. Kaworu was just being a good friend to Shinji, and whether by unintentional/carelessly approved shots combined with cultural differences, or by other means, some people read into it as conveying themes or messages that it was not intended or supposed to convey. Like a person that barely knows a language saying the wrong words sometimes can lead to misunderstandings, E24 is kinda like that in some ways. There is nothing disingenuous about that, it is what the people that created the episode said about it.
at some point you have to stop relying on retrospectives and word of god for media analysis because a) the vast majority of people consuming the work have no idea what animation director c said in a hobbyist magazine interview 3 years after the series ended, and b) that's nice but it's not what they watched. hardline 'death of the author' is willful ignorance but if you have to do outside research to make a point, and that point is that the work didn't actually depict the work, you don't really have one in respect to the cultural perception of the work. respectfully i don't really give a shit if hideaki anno revealed he tripped and spilled ink that makes anime gay all over the animation cels, and i fully understand the implication of 好き in the original japanese. peddle this strange brand of 'i'm not gay for liking episode 24 a little too much' denialism elsewhere