Anime is a Mistake

Kaworu, his ability to forgive and understand the kind of perpetual mess that is Shinji is pretty profound and all told is pretty overwhelming.

Also his reflections on the nature of Adam and Lilith struck me as some kind of conflict of civilization sort of deal... but with kind of a harmonious resolution.

I interpreted that final moment as essentially that Kaworu as an angel believed that humans were in a state of rebellion and determined to destroy them in a perpetual conflict, and that therefore the angels were destined to destroy humans and humanity (or the Lilim).

Therefore, drawing on the strength of Adam, they would destroy the progeny of Adam and so on, but at the final descent he realizes that they are drawing on the strength of Lillith, and therefore as Lillim.

So in essence, they weren't necessarily competition, but complementary, therefore the necessity of destruction was obviated, but given the crisis something or someone also had to die. So therefore, Kaworu also convinces Shinji "whether I live or die makes no great difference to me"

Anyway, all that coming off the fact that he was able to connect immediately and such with Shinji and leave such a large impact, it kind of revealed the nature of angels as powerful but also possibly benevolent beings.

To me she is sort of the cornerstone of just what the series was trying to represent beyond base symbolism. The whims of youth slowly being buried beneath age, duty and obligations. You can rebel against it, to an extent, complain and indulge in excess but at the end of the day, those responsibilities own you. This is irrelevant of social standing, material wealth or anything of that nature, because at some level you actually believe what you are doing to be right, and this is cast against self desire, morality and other factors.

While admittedly I did not grasp the intricacies of this character immediately, once I did I came to view her as perhaps the most complete character in the series, just the average adult. If she wasn't doing her job for NERV she would be in a lab somewhere, or a corporation, that regardless of the scenario she would be the burn out, the person weary with her life but yet incapable of doing anything else. She has her own traumas, desires and goals obviously but they are all but beneath her duty, something she laments even as she is dying, questioning whether or not what she did is right, or if she even led a fulfilling life.

Perhaps the most genuinely human character in the show. She has had suffering in past, done sordid and bad things, yet unlike other characters this is not so much a defining trait, her pain not overshadowing anything, but it like everything else building up to this rational construct that is the character. She comes across as alive, and despite suffering a few poor bits of writing here and there towards the end either format, I must say that its been a long time prior or after EVA that I ran into any character that just struck upon in just human, how real they were.