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Originally Posted by CorneredAngel
So, as I've been doing all along so far, another stab at deeper analysis.
Ultimately, Takeru's defining trait is that he does not want to grow up and assume the responsibilities of being an adult. In the beginning of the series, he can try to justify it by focusing on how the adult world he would enter is full of destruction and how little effect on anything he - or anyone else - can have. But the primary definition of growing up and becoming an adult is accepting your capacity to love (and on another level entirely, confirming that you are an adult via sex/physical affection). Hikari shows up, and by putting herself in front of Takeru, gives him a reason to consider growing up and accepting reality.
Except, as I just mentioned, this adult reality *is* one of destruction and individual irrelevance. By transforming, all he is doing is becoming the same kind of adult that have been fighting in wars for as long as there have been people. So it is a transformation that can only be viewed as positive if you accept that any change is better than no change, that destruction is better than impotence. This still leaves one question unanswered: does Hikari realize what she is doing? Is her goal to somehow harness Takeru's power, or is she there merely to make him realize that there don't need to be "reasons" why he has to grow up; it's an inherently illogical process but one he can't escape and shouldn't try to escape. In this way, incidentally, she would be very much like FLCL's Haruko. The other question that is yet to be addressed, of course, is why does Ryoh accept growing up so wholeheartedly, as evident when he kisses Akari without a moment's hesitation. It's almost as if he craves access to the same transformative power that Takeru has...Of course the final factor that needs to be considered is that Takeru's individual models of "adults" are highly negative: they come solely from the news, and from memories of his own parents who abandoned him. Therefore, he can't imagine the adult world to be in any way constructive; therefore, the only way he can enter it is through violence.
In any case, it's becoming clear that in the second half of the series, symbolism and subtext will become extremely important, especially since the rest of the series still sticks to fairly conventional images and plotlines. Which is to say that there is a distinct break between the ideas Gainax is trying to express and the visuals they are using to express them; perhaps this really would have worked better as a short story. Then again, nor is this anything new: five episodes of Gunbuster out of six, and easily a quarter of Evangelion are fluff...
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