I love Shinji Ikari. I actually fell in love with him. I was really against everything Eva in the beginning, especially Shinji. The show was just too popular, the protagonist seemed a little too screwed up, and I massively rejected the entire series. Well...I was wrong. So sue me. Oh, boy, was I wrong. Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most amazing, detailed, and powerful shows ever created. I'm still in awe of it. I will never, ever be able to write like that. But that's another story. My purpose here is the worship of my darling Shinji.

I can't pinpoint the moment when I truly fell in love with Shinji, but I can track its progression. Being an obsessive shônen ai fan, I definitely warmed up to Shinji once I discovered the stories and pictures of him and Kaworu. When I finally was able to see the show, I watched the dubbed version. Mon Dieu! It was god-awful! If you take one piece of knowledge away with you, let it be this:

It's atrocious. Shinji's voice actor (Spike Spencer, an obnoxious pig who refers to his character as "Shinji the Wuss") is horrendous, and his voice cracks on every other word. I don't even want to think about it.

I suppose it was when I finally saw the subtitled version of the show that my heart began to melt. Shinji's true voice (Megumi Ogata, an incredible woman who also does Kurama (YYH), Sailor Uranus (SM), and Emeraude-Hime (MKR)) is soft and sweet and insecure, much like the boy himself. I was completely taken in by the quiet voice, the sad, beautiful blue eyes, the thin, fragile body. I surrendered. Damn it, Gainax, I'm not made of stone! It wasn't long before I was thinking of him in class and dreaming about him at night. The more episodes I watched, the more hell my Shinji was put through, and it became incredibly difficult to continue with the series. You did NOT want to see me at the end of Episode 19. It wasn't pretty.

Maybe you think it's terribly silly to be so absorbed in a fictional character. Or maybe you understand me a little too well. Either way, I must continue what I started saying...

I do still think about him all the time. There's a dull, empty spot in my soul that longs for him, wanting desperately to run my fingers through his short brown hair, to just hold him. That's all, I just want to hold him, to curl up in bed with him in my arms, to wrap him in cotton so that nothing can ever hurt him again. I want to try to fix it, to make everything better. But I know that even if he were mine, I could never fix anything. I'm not worthy of him. I'm not Kaworu; I'm nothing. But it doesn't stop my arms from aching from the emptiness of him not being pressed against my body. It doesn't stop my dreams of him, my haunting dreams. It doesn't stop the tears. Yes, I love Shinji Ikari. I love him so completely that it frightens me.

I've probably said more than I wanted to. Quite possibly, I sound like a blithering idiot. But I had to say it! If you have a man of your own, either animated or actually alive, you understand me. Go ahead, love Shinji as I love him. Keep him always in your heart and mind, but remember one thing: in the end, he belongs only to me...and, of course, Kaworu.