Asuka

neon genesis evangelion

Asuka is a talented young woman who values ​​her autonomy and longs to be recognized as an adult. However, it is evident that she has difficulties expressing her true feelings to others, and she is aggressive, conceited and stubborn on many occasions. Her aggressive personality is a facade that protects a very vulnerable and insecure girl, this being a facet that the viewer only sees in the young woman's dreams. It is important to highlight that Asuka seeks to forget her past. The fateful events of her childhood marked her, and she therefore tries to forget them. However, she frequently dreams of such events. During training to combat Israfel, Asuka argued that everything was going wrong because of Shinji. Then, Misato Katsuragi proposes putting Rei in her place, and to everyone's surprise, Ayanami quickly obtains better results, which makes it visible that the problem lay with Asuka. Her revelation leaves her shocked, and she doesn't accept the idea of ​​Rei taking her place. From all of the above, she has a strong need to be self-sufficient, but she exhibits great difficulty in dealing with her self-perceived failure. Asuka is also very talkative, outgoing and charismatic, which allowed her to be very popular at school. She has no shame and does the first thing that comes into her head, like asking Shinji for a kiss simply because she gets bored of her.

Her personality could be marked as a kind of "identity reinforcement": she constantly boasts that her EVA is better, that she is NERV's hope and that no one will forget her or mistake her for something she is not, which would be interpreted as her way of making sure she does not go through what she experienced in her childhood again and of justifying her own existence. Asuka's seiyuu

From her first appearance, it is clear that Asuka has a crush on Ryoji Kaji. She does not know the details of his past, but she seems to be in love with him due to his maturity and physical attractiveness. Furthermore, this attraction is closely related to her desire to leave childhood behind and become an adult. Asuka wants to escape her childish condition and seeks to find in Kaji the qualities that represent the maturity she so yearns for. For these reasons, Kaji is attractive to her, while Shinji generates a certain aversion to her. Unwittingly, Shinji reminds her of the childish and insecure characteristics that she wishes to avoid. Despite this, on numerous occasions it is seen that Asuka has hidden feelings for the young Ikari. She represses her feelings for Shinji and nullifies him in front of other people. In episode 09, Asuka moves her futon to another room. She then stands at the door and tells Shinji: This is the impenetrable Wall of Jericho. If you dare to invade it, I will kill you. During this scene, Asuka flirts with Shinji, but he does not notice. It's not clear if Asuka just wants some attention, or if she wants something more than that. What is clear is that she hinted at him, implying that she wanted Shinji to cross "the Wall." But the young man didn't get the hint, and took Asuka's words literally: "If you dare invade it, I'll kill you." The funny thing is that Asuka then goes to sleep with Shinji on her own, and it's not clear if she was sleepwalking (and got into the wrong bed) or had other intentions.

On the other hand, her love for Kaji causes deep jealousy towards Misato Katsuragi to arise in her heart, which turns out to be a negative thing, since it prevents both of them from building bonds of trust. Asuka is a very intelligent young girl, and graduated from university at a young age. She is also an exceptional pilot. Because of this, she always shows off and is proud of having been selected. She possesses a high level of synchronization, surpassing Shinji's until episode 16. In episode 17, Toji Suzuhara is selected to be the Fourth Child chosen to pilot an Evangelion Unit. When Asuka finds out, she becomes very enraged, thinking that Toji is not worthy. Asuka suffers a severe mental breakdown after being forced by the angel Arael to relive painful memories from her past. Because of this, she loses her will to live and becomes unable to pilot EVA-02 again until The End of Evangelion, where she battles against the Mass Production EVAs. In that fight, Asuka had the battle almost won. However, an enemy unit launched a replica of the Longinus Spear at her, which pierced her AT field. Seconds later, EVA-02 ran out of power and was annihilated along with Asuka (although the destruction of the Entry Plug is never expressly shown); however, she reappears when Shinji rejects the Human Complementation Project.