could you comprehensively tell me how Show Shinji and Rebuild Shinji differ
I sure could! Alrighty so essentially the main differences between original Shinji & rebuild Shinji fall into the two main categories of personality & behavior. Rebuild Shinji is somehow simultaneously more respectful as well as less passive. He doesn’t ogle at Rei or Asuka. As a matter of fact he looks away more than anything else when anything along the lines of revealing is put in his gaze. He doesn’t say half as many snide remarks. But he DOES refuse to let Rei (his first legitimate friend) be taken away from him even by presumed death. Yes it does cause near third impact but honest to god good for him for deciding to not give up on her even in the face of a thousand things he cannot control. On top of this, after the dummy system finally releases unit 01 he does get to stomp on nerv hq which is another “good for him for telling his father and a group of scientists treating his and his friends lives as a weapon to fuck off.” And when it comes down to Kaworu’s death he DOES try to legitimately (albeit desperately and to no avail) fight against the will of forces he can’t control (ie the collar’s activation and the impenetrable wall between the two of them) despite Kaworu’s acceptance of their own death for the nth time. And Kaworu’s death leaves a mark on Shinji that Shinji cannot even attempt to gloss over with anything along the lines of “they had to die they were an angel” because Shinji’s in such a state of disrepair over the loss of them as well as didn’t have his opinion of them changed at all by the revelation of angelhood. On top of this his and Kaworu’s romance in the rebuilds isn’t just Shinji opening his heart to Kaworu: it’s him purposely learning to communicate with Kaworu through the piano. It’s him showing them a side of him by explaining his connection to the night sky. He wakes up early just to play with them. He grows as a person for them. Besides this, he also is genuinely happy to see Asuka again despite her (more than understandable) cold demeanor towards him. He tries to reach out to Rei Q via the books original Rei liked. While Shinji still runs and cuts himself from others, he doesn’t so much blame it on others in the rebuilds. Unless it’s well deserved (ie Gendo). Rebuild Shinji tends to see people more as people and less what they can provide to him. This is long and messy and I haven’t seen 1.0 or 2.0 in a few months but basically I like rebuild Shinji way more than his original counterpart.