Make no mistake—Sugiyama is no fan of the comics. He said he did not watch them, but would defend what he called the rights of those who did. He went so far as to compare people who like such manga with suppressed minority groups such as LGBTQ people in Japan, and blamed the “rise of feminism” in the country for the growing pressure to ban the content.
The number of otaku creeps that completely fucking missed the point of Evangelion so badly that Anno burned the franchise down and had Shinji
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rub one out to an unconscious body
just to make it clear how disgusted he was with the
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weebs that drooled over child soldiers, especially Rei because of their craving for infinite purity virgin-respawn clones that wouldn't develop too much assertiveness or talk back before being killed and replaced
:libertarian-alert: and they still didn't get it and sifted through the tea leaves for decades afterward trying to find deeper subtextual meaning is too damn high.
:rat-salute-2:
(Also, I had always wondered a bit about that scene. I got that the extremely uncomfortable vibes were intentional but didn't know the authorial intent behind it.)
He openly and directly told Japanese press his intent afterward, yet because animoo was mysterious and magical to western weebs, that was ignored or downplayed in favor of vague nebulous deeper meaning pretenses.
He was presenting a "dog caught the car" situation. "There. This is what you wanted, you creeps. You like it now? YOU LIKE IT NOW?"