Reception
As a promotion for its 10th Anniversary Special Edition of Evangelion, ADV Films published a humorous bumper sticker which reads "KAWORU DIED FOR YOUR SINS" (カヲルはあなたの罪のために死んだ, Kaoru wa anata no tsumi no tame ni shinda?). Mania Entertainment's Chris Beveridge described Kaworu's death in the anime as an "extremely powerful moment" due to the fact that after a minute without dialogue, his head's shadow appears touching the water.
Kaworu Nagisa was the second most popular male character in the 1997 Animage poll; 1998 ranked him the 6th best male character of the year. In a Newtype poll from March 2010, Kaworu was voted as the second most popular male anime character from the 1990s, after Shinji Ikari.
The bonus materials in volume nine of the English adaptation of the manga contain an article written by the editor Carl Gustav Horn which compares Kaworu to the character Satan in Mark Twain's novella, The Mysterious Stranger.
The possibly homosexual undertones of Kaworu's interactions with Shinji has been a persistent topic of debate among fans of Evangelion since the series' first run as discussed in the Patrick Drazen's book Anime Explosion! The What? Why? & Wow! Of Japanese Animation. Patrick Drazen's self-admittedly minority view is that Kaworu's offer of love for Shinji is a tactic that Kaworu as the last Angel used to disarm Shinji. Gainax is clearly aware that the audience associates Kaworu with bishōnen tropes, and have produced artworks such as splash pages for their website in reference to Kaworu's ambiguity and the audience's reaction to the character. However, whether Kaworu, an Angel, actually has any concept of sexuality as he is presented in the series is unclear. Mike Crandol regards Kaworu as being "representative of blind, total and unconditional love and acceptance, but like those things Kaoru turns out to not be real at all". The 1998 reviewer Kenneth Lee criticizes the character of Kaworu: "...the element of homosexuality is perhaps the most disturbing, gratuitous, and unnecessary aspect that presents itself in episode 24...Ultimately, the homosexuality issue seems nothing more than cheap shock value tactics to stun generation X " and considers the entire Shinji-Kaworu relationship "ludicrous and pathetically humorous".
Read more about this topic: Kaworu Nagisa
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)