This was very good and I like it when you consume some media and you feel a need to research perspectives on the ideas or, back when this was possible, talk about the ideas raised with others. Luckily, this is the kind media people are still discussing, 30 years later.

A big element of this story seems to be how people define themselves. There is a lot of talk about characters defining themselves through their jobs, their responsibilities, or their relationships with others. It seems like a core idea is that one cannot have an identity without the knowledge of others, both as observers of them but also in terms of how those people have their own complexities, thus being "not you".

This is, of course, the original ending. I think that the "End of Evangelion" follow-up movie (which acts as an alternate ending, replacing the last 2 episodes) is in that third rental, which I will need to go pick up in a few days. It looks like, beyond this series, it is hard to find some of the media that came after that without going through one of the modern media super-monopolies, so that isn't happening.

I really miss this point of discussion from much media, especially anime, from the 90s and early aughts. Similar ideas are touched on in both Ghost in the Shell and Serial Experiments Lain, albeit from different perspectives (and those were asking the question more in terms of changes in online culture and the possibility of AI or human augmentation).

I find it upsetting that this was a big idea back then and completely disappeared sometime between 2005 and 2010. Of course, this is one of the modern problems I blame on social media, but I am not sure there was anything else which could have happened, knowing humans.

Still, in this era where real friendship has been mostly exterminated, private conversations don't exist, community is now just a marketing term, true interpersonal trust and understanding is so rare as to be practically extinct, economics is becoming less stable, and centralized control is becoming less avoidable, I think that this question could really help us.

Still, with me, my sense of identity has always closely touched on my work. I suspect that this is why I feel so directionless and unhappy, these days (well, the biggest reason, at least).