>>15791812>muh abused 14 years old is not strong and powerful leader who serves as an apologist for adults who practice child abuse and child neglect and actually acts like a child who was neglectedAnime sponsors child neglect and child abuse. See Naruto, where a kid who was a victim of an entire village grows up to be the toughest and healthiest guy around instead of demonstrating the scars of social exclusion. His entire plot is about excusing the adults who abused him and neglected him, much like Harry Potter is all about.
Shinji is an effective character because he is a realistic portrayal of what an abandoned child behaves like when faced with stress, depression and indifference. He is not your stoic hero who is there to show victims of child neglect that 'they are just weak fags for not walking it off', that is why he is realistic and connects with the audience in a personal level.
Through therapy, I came to the conclusion that I hated Shinji and Asuka in my younger years because of how these characters expose the horrible effects that parenting can have on children. My rejection of these characters was mainly to protect my own parents from responsibility for how my siblings and I turned out.
>tl;dr: people who hate Shinji do it because they are simps for their abusive parents and don't like thinking that bad parenting has consequences>even Anno himself betrayed his fans and his own experience by ultimately forgiving Gendo (the abusive father), which is the great change from the rebuilds in comparison to the original series 