Copyright: I own nothing, moving on.

Reaper Indoctrination is an insidious means of corrupting organic minds, "reprogramming" the brain through physical and psychological conditioning using electromagnetic fields, infrasonic and ultrasonic noise, and other subliminal methods. The Reaper's resulting control over the limbic system leaves the victim highly susceptible to its suggestions.

Organics undergoing indoctrination may complain of headaches and buzzing or ringing in their ears. As time passes, they have feelings of "being watched" and hallucinations of "ghostly" presences. Ultimately, the Reaper gains the ability to use the victim's body to amplify its signals, manifesting as "alien" voices in the mind.

Indoctrination can create perfect deep cover agents. A Reaper's "suggestions" can manipulate victims into betraying friends, trusting enemies, or viewing the Reaper itself with superstitious awe. Should a Reaper subvert a well-placed political or military leader, the resulting chaos can bring down nations.

Long-term physical effects of the manipulation are unsustainable. Higher mental functioning decays, ultimately leaving the victim a gibbering animal. Rapid indoctrination is possible, but causes this decay in days or weeks. Slow, patient indoctrination allows the thrall to last for months or years.

- Mass Effect 2/3 Codex

INDOCTRINATION IN ANIMATION

Ever since playing the Mass Effect series and even diving into it's lore a lot, I've found a lot points within it's story that interest me. Amongst the most interesting however, are the main antagonists of the series: The Reapers.

Each Reaper is huge living dreadnought whose mind is formed from a combination of minds from millions of people that were broken down into genetic paste to create it. It's an uphill battle for a fleet to battle even a single reaper. Not just because of their armament and unmatched defense, but also because of their ability to indoctrinate or brainwash their enemies without them realizing what is happening.

The reaper's perfected indoctrination to such a degree that even attempting to reverse engineer their artifacts, weapons and technology to use against them garnered the risk of becoming an indoctrinated slave. Some have better luck than most under this state, specifically those whom the reapers actually need for a particular purpose, but once that purpose is fulfilled, the reapers leave the indoctrinated to starve to death. The very process leaves them unable to even fend for themselves and crushes the most basic of survival instincts.

Their numbers may be great and they are formidable to battle, but the reaper's greatest weapon is clearly their indoctrination ability. Garrus himself put it best, for each person whose indoctrinated, their enemy loses two people. "The one who is turned and his friend on the other side who can't pull the trigger." You'd think that they wouldn't even need it with their formidable might, but it's also one more way for the reapers to break the will and spirit of their enemy even as they harvest them and erase all trace of their civilization.

Which brings me to my point of discussion.

I believe that there are anime out there that contain implied or strong implications of either protagonists and antagonists who have somehow been altered in a way that can be explained as being indoctrinated or undergoing some kind of process of indoctrination. You don't have to call it indoctrination, but after reading through this evidence, I hope that you'll see at least why I would see them pointing in this direction.

Here's a few anime that I believe have the strongest cases for a form of indoctrination:

Neon Genesis Evangelion
- An alternate explanation on Shinji's lack of a backbone
- Everyone unfairly treating Shinji like crap
- The nature of the angel and their contact with the pilots
- The evas
- Yui's Agenda

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
- Simon's acceptance of Nia's bull$#it death
- LordGenome's Fall
- Simon giving up on spiral power and on life

Big O
- The nature of Roger's relationship with Angel, Rosewater and Schwartzbald.
- The true nature of Paradigm City
- The Bigs themselves

Gundam Wing
- Zero System and it's impact on the gundam pilots.

If anyone else has something that they'd like to offer as well, I'd love to hear it.

The next entry will cover evidence of possible indoctrination in Big O and then Evangelion.

Till later lovelies!

Author's Notes:

Introduction to a theory that I've always wanted to share.

Again I stress, this is a theory and it's possible that I'm completely wrong and all of the evidence is simply coincidental.

But feel free to offer a counter-point to something that you disagree with.

I welcome debates.