“I Am Not Your Doll”: Ayanami Rei, Anime Girls, and the Paradox of Emptiness

Joshua Adams
Otaku Tribune
Published in
5 min readAug 12, 2021

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Ayanami Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion

You can read the first essay in this series here. This essay will be reworked into a book I’m writing about EVA.

Ayanami Rei from the series Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most iconic characters in anime history. Scholars of anime and Japanese culture argue that NGE and the fandom surrounding Rei in the 1990s was a key moment…

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Joshua Adams
Otaku Tribune

Joshua Adams is a writer from Chicago. UVA & USC. Assistant Professor at Columbia College Chicago. Twitter: @ProfJoshuaA