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The new Eva Unit 03, piloted by Shinji's friend Toji, mutates during its initial test and becomes an Angel. When Shinji realizes another human being is inside the menace, he refuses to attack it. Using an override circuit, Shinji's father takes control of his Eva and rips the 03 apart. Horrified and disgusted at this brutality, Shinji quits as an Eva pilot--until a new and more powerful Angel strikes at NERV headquarters. Seeing his friends Asuka and Rei overcome, Shinji returns to defeat the deadly new foe. But his Eva goes berserk, attacking and devouring the Angel. As it grows in power, the Eva partially absorbs its pilot. Drifting through semiconsciousness, Shinji confronts memories that recur in variations, like an aria by Philip Glass. Characters in other, popular mecha series never confront these moral dilemmas. The youthful pilots in Gundam Wing adhere to a warrior code that extols heroism; they have few qualms about slaughtering their foes. Shinji knows that warfare is not a noble calling, and that causing the death of a human being is a horrifying prospect. His ambivalence about his role as a pilot forces him to analyze his troubled relationship with his remote and brutal father and how that relationship has warped his self-perception. Episodes: 18. "The Judgment of Life," 19. "A Man's Fight," 20. "Form of the Mind, Form of the Man." Not rated; suitable for ages 14 and up for robot versus robot violence, nudity, minor profanity, and sexual situations. --Charles Solomon
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