It’s a really interesting way to define him, actually! I’m not 100% sure I agree with the art book but it depends on their definition, I think? 

First of all, I like the idea of Newt not being an angel even pre-possession. I like it a lot actually because there is this tendency to make good guy characters into people who can do no wrong, so any time the rough edges and realism are left on, I find the character more interesting. 

It’s the imperfections that I think are the reason people really attach to the character of Newt (and Hermann) – he’s a fan boy, he says awkward things in public, he doesn’t think before he speaks and he puts his foot in his mouth a lot, he can’t keep a secret (even if it’s CLASSIFIED, NEWT!) for five minutes in the face of a mob boss (!) because he decides he wants to be impressive to this guy (NEWT! NEWT NO!), he’s also brilliant and reckless and willing to put his life on the line to do a dangerous experiment that may help save the world but might also just fry him like an egg. But he’s also doing it a little out of spite and to show Hermann he was right. He Kaiju-splains Yamarashi to the guy who killed Yamarashi (NEWT NO!).

Most shocking to me of all on the re-watch was how he shoves his way through the crowd to get to the bomb shelter to hide from Otachi just like the bad guy in the Titanic, screaming that he’s a doctor so he should get to go first. Which…  might be true? We don’t know if one of his six degrees (SIX IS TOO MANY, NEWT!) is in medicine, as a biologist it could feasibly be the case, but clearly “being a doctor” has nothing to do with it, he’s trying to save his own life and he’s not pausing or helping or thinking about anyone else at all, a very non-heroic moment and even vaguely villainous (if understandable while running for one’s life from a KAIJU!) moment. It could be argued that in that moment, he as a person with the knowledge and skill in his head has a real possibility of saving the world, so he is legitimately, quantifiably more valuable than pretty much all the people around him in terms of the end goal of saving humanity as a whole. But again, that isn’t how he poses his entirely self-centered rush to the shelter. 

And yet, he also risks himself by Drifting again, he races back to the Shatterdome to give the warning, he dedicated years of his life to the cause. He went to protests, he clearly has civic-minded and heroic tendencies. He’s also a bit of an obnoxious twerp and selfish and self-centered and yeah, maybe shallow. In all of that I could see him as someone who judges others by what he sees on the surface, he’d clearly written off Raleigh as a meat-head Jaeger pilot the moment he met him and didn’t care much to find out if there was anything below the surface. He doesn’t seem to give a lot of deep thought or empathy to other people unless prompted (could be an autism or ADHD trait too though, or in addition) so yeah. Maybe the artbook is right in that respect, though we don’t see him doing “shallow” things much in the movie. I mean, I guess if we had a scene where he checks out a hot person and ignores their less attractive friend while flirting, that would be visual proof, depending on if that’s the definition they’re going for. He clearly thinks appearances are important, as evidenced by the work and care that went into his tattoos and his sense of style. He clearly wants to project a certain image.

Mostly I just think he’s a complicated, fascinating character who is sometimes a complete asshole, and isn’t always right, but who takes real, material steps to save the world, from protests to dedicating his life, to taking insane personal risks (even if spite and pride and “being a rock star” played in too) and honestly, him being a bit shallow kind of makes me like him as a character more. We’ve got enough perfect paladins and paragons on the good guy side, don’t we?