Characters / Neon Genesis Evangelion – Asuka Langley Soryu

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The Children (Asuka Langley Soryu) | NERV Staff | GEHIRN Staff | Other Characters | Extracanonical Characters

Asuka Langley Soryu

Voiced by: Yuko Miyamura (Japanese); Tiffany Grant [ADV], Stephanie McKeon [VSI] (English)^note Other Languages: Norma Echevarría [Locomotion], Georgina Sánchez [Animax, VSI] (Latin American Spanish); Ana Pallejà [TV series, Death & Rebirth], Iris Lago [End of Evangelion], Vera Bosch [VSI] (European Spanish); Marjolaine Poulain (French TV dub); Ilaria Latini (original Italian dub); Sara Labidi (Italian Netflix dub); Julia Ziffer (original German dub); Johanna Dost (German Netflix dub); Fernanda Bullara (Brazilian Potuguese)

"I pilot [the Eva] because I want to be able to praise myself!"

"What are you, stupid?"

Asuka, the Second Child, is a conceited, abrasive German-Japanese girl with a short temper, who alternates between flirting with Shinji and brutalizing him both emotionally and physically. She is a Teen Genius who has a college degree at the age of thirteen, speaks at least three languages (German, Japanese, and since she holds American citizenship, English) fluently, and is very determined and athletic. She is obsessed with exuding a personal image of beauty, intelligence, and perfection, and doesn't suffer fools gladly (which in her view is, with a noted few exceptions, pretty much everyone around her). She pilots gleefully because she wants to become famous the world over for her intrepid exploits, and she revels in combat and lives for the praise it brings her.

She is infatuated with Ryōji Kaji, Misato Katsuragi's on-again/off-again boyfriend, and throws herself at him again and again in an aggressive manner that is, for cultural reasons, quite shocking to the Japanese (and still fairly obsessive and disturbing even in more demonstrative cultures). She initially offers to be friends with Rei because "it would be convenient", but quickly comes to loathe her because she perceives Rei as being akin to a doll or puppet, something Asuka harbors a deep hatred for. She is not the main focus of the program, so her thoughts and feelings are not displayed as much as Shinji's are, but she is shown to have strong feelings for Shinji... the problem (usually for him) is that whatever these feelings are, she is deeply conflicted over them and tends to express them in an aggressive (and sometimes violent) way that doesn't help her or Shinji. Word of God says that Asuka actually is attracted to Shinji, meekness and all, and is hurt by his shying away from her, never realizing that it's her dominant and hateful attitude that's pushing him away.

As the series goes on, she becomes more sympathetic when her own painful past is revealed. Her personality and attitude are revealed to be psychological defense mechanisms for a massive inferiority complex, leading her to abuse others partly out of a fear of intimacy and partly out of sheer anger at the world.

The manga version of Asuka is not much different; the main changes are to her background (she is a test-tube baby), her introduction (which establishes her as more of an outright badass than in the anime), and her traumatic past (an extra event is introduced which compounds the tragedy and which plays itself out again through Asuka).

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A-D

• Abusive Parents: Asuka's father was neglectful and uncaring towards her even after Kyoko's suicide, leaving her to fend with her demons alone as he cavorted with his new mistress.
• Accent Adaptation: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Asuka is given a German accent to go along with her half-German heritage.
• Ace Pilot: Deconstructed. Asuka may seem like a very skilled Eva pilot with many years of training, in comparison to Shinji who basically depends on Beginner's Luck and even at his best is Unskilled, but Strong. However, Asuka's own expertise is tied to her need to prove herself to others to bolster her self-worth. As the series goes on, she finds herself increasingly unable to handle her defeats (whether at the hands of an Angel or by being shown-up as a pilot), which causes her synch rate to plummet and diminishes her piloting ability.
• Action Girl: Both in and outside an Eva. While her on-foot action is shown more in the manga, her anime portrayal is no less competent.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Asuka's hair is whatever the artist wants to draw at that moment in time, to put it simply. Her hair's been drawn as auburn, bright orange, medium-brown (mostly by fan artists), and occasionally even blonde (mostly in the manga). In the anime it seemed to be consistently auburn, and in Rebuild, it's consistently strawberry blonde (about as light as her hair can get while still being classified as "redhead"). The manga officially states her hair color as golden-red. Most of her merchandise suffers from this as well, even with her Rebuild incarnation where she has a more consistent on-screen hair color.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: A subtle case, but her interactions with Shinji and her treatment of him in the manga are a lot less mean-spirited than the anime. This is also partly because Shinji is more willing to talk back to her there, making it look less like one-sided bullying from Asuka's part and more like equal bickering.
• All Men Are Perverts: A firm believer of this, especially when it comes to boys, though she treats Kaji well, Asuka's views boys of is quite uncharitable to say the least. "Idiot" and "pervert" is her go-to insult for Shinji and any other boys. Of course, her locker being stuffed with love letters she got from the schoolboys early in the series doesn't paint a good picture.
• All Take and No Give: She expects others to do what she wants, yet she is unwilling to do anything in return. During Instrumentality, she even says that if Shinji won't be hers unconditionally, then she does not want anything from him.
• Alpha Bitch: In the anime, she quickly gets popular with her classmates because of her seemingly confident and sociable personality. She likes to pretend being nice around her classmates, but she mostly reserves her wrath for the boys, mostly Shinji, Kensuke, Toji and her school love letters' authors.
• Always Second Best: It is implied that Asuka has a bit of an issue with having been designated the "Second Child", and a part of her chip on her shoulder against Rei stems from her being the "First". In a more obvious sense, there is the fact that she starts out as the leading pilot in sync score (something which she is quick to remind everyone of at the slightest provocation), but she is eventually surpassed by Shinji, something which deals so severe a blow to her already very fragile self-confidence that her sync score remains on a downward trajectory for the rest of the series.
• Always Someone Better: She spent years firmly convinced she's the best Evangelion pilot ever, and she's indeed very skilled and arguably the one with the most training under her belt among the three recurring pilots. Yet she finds her status and sense of superiority challenged and then gradually and decisively destroyed:
  • She's shocked to learn that Shinji managed a surprisingly high synch score on his first try, despite having zero training or preparation.
  • Rei effortlessly aces the pilot synchronization training with Shinji in episode 9, which Asuka herself had failed to do until then (and which she had consistently blamed Shinji for).
  • She suffers several humiliating defeats at the hands of the last few Angels: Zeruel basically slaughtered her the same way he did with almost everything else, Arael raped her mind and she couldn't do anything; and against Armisael, she wasn't even able to move her Eva (let alone fight). Each time, it's either Shinji (vs. Zeruel) or Rei (vs. Arael and Armisael) that gets the kill. To rub salt in the wound, she has to be rescued from Arael by Rei of all people, whom she utterly despises for being essentially the antithesis of everything that Asuka had worked hard to be.
  • Gendo refused to allow Shinji to take to the field and pull Asuka out of Arael's Mind Rape range (due to it risking Unit-01 getting caught as well), only for him to send the boy out to save Rei when Armisael began to physically invade Unit-00 (even though it risked Unit-01 getting infected as well). This basically gives Asuka the impression that her life and well-being are worth less than those of a mechanical and doll-like person like Rei, despite the fact that Asuka is the better-skilled and generally better-performing pilot between the two.
  • And finally, in End of Evangelion, Asuka makes her long-overdue comeback by going up against the eight Mass-Produced Evas and doing quite well... only to get slaughtered and Eaten Alive anyway when the true power of their signature weapons is unveiled, the supposedly disabled ones rise up in spite of being in varying states of heavy damage, and all eight gang up on her. In the very end, it's Shinji (in whom the decision is left) and Rei (who more or less holds the key to the required power to do so) who are instrumental in averting Instrumentality.
• Ambiguous Situation: During Instrumentality, there is a vision where Asuka climbs on top of Shinji. It's not clear if she made an advance on Shinji, the vision is an illusion, or if the memory came from someone else's head.
• And I Must Scream: -ANIMA- has her get fused with Unit 02, resulting in Crimson A1, and her consciousness is trapped in it while Crimson does whatever she wants.
• Anti-Hero: As deeply flawed as Shinji and with similar issues, but in a more extroverted fashion. Though she is fighting against the Angels, what she is fighting for and who she is fighting for clearly shows she isn't a hero, nor is she heroic.
• Anti-Villain: Similar to how she is an Anti-Hero.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Deconstructed; Asuka's general attention-seeking behavior extends to trying to obtain sexual desire from at least some men. She feels that she would be validated as a desirable adult by Kaji expressing physical interest in her, and is upset by his persistent refusal to even consider it. She's also consistently disappointed that Shinji never even tries to do any of the things that she tells him not to attempt. But she's also shown to be extremely young and inexperienced, with only a vague idea of what any of this would actually entail, and when Shinji actually does take advantage of her, she reacts with horror and disgust.
• An Arm and a Leg: She gets two brutal instances. The first is during the fight with Zeruel, which slices her Eva's arms off before decapitating it. The second is in End of Evangelion, when one of the MP Evas' thrown Lance copies splits Unit-02's right arm down the middle, which splits Asuka's arm in the same way due to her extremely high synch rate.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Girl: She is a deconstructed female example. She's extremely cocky and aggressive, and takes great pride in her skills as an Ace Pilot. However, it's later revealed that she uses this attitude to obfuscate just how screwed up she is.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the -ANIMA- storyline, she mutates and fuses with Unit 02 to become what can best be described as a giant version of herself with biomechanical elements and a babylike personality.
• Attention Whore: Asuka is desperate for attention due to deeply ingrained insecurities caused by her mother's psychotic break, subsequent murder-suicide with the doll she called "Asuka", and her father's abandonment. She is pathologically afraid to be discarded and ignored if she isn't "good enough", and as such needs people to acknowledge her existence, because otherwise she feels worthless.
  Asuka: WHY WON'T YOU LOOK AT ME!?
• Ax-Crazy: If anyone or anything that isn't named "Kaji" or "Hikari" pushes her buttons. This effect is turned up if Shinji is the victim or if she is in Unit-02, and passes the horror threshold in End of Evangelion when she fights the MP Evas, dispatching them with brutality that is at times almost sickening.
• Back from the Dead: Asuka is killed in her battle with the MP Evas, but her soul is absorbed by Lilith and this enables her to return to life; indeed, she's the first human being (besides Shinji) who gets out of Instrumentality.
• Badass Adorable: She's as cute as a kitten and is also one of the most skilled EVA pilots upon her introduction, garnering her lots of admiration in-universe on both counts. Her competence (and adherence to this trope) fades as the story progresses, only to rebound spectacularly and tragically in End of Evangelion.
• Badass Decay: invoked Intended as a part of her character arc. As Asuka suffers from more and more failures and begins to be outclassed by Shinji, she gradually loses her self-confidence, eventually becoming a catatonic wreck after her Mind Rape by Arael.
• Bath Suicide: She's implied to have attempted this post Mind Rape. The scene is somewhat ambiguous as to whether this is what actually happened, but the fact that the character is found in a destroyed house, naked in a bathtub with water that appears stained red, with her clothes neatly folded beside the tub (including, of course, her shoes), and is too weak to resist being taken into custody by agents certainly suggests it.
• Beauty Is Bad: She may be the most stunning of the Eva pilots, but she is also quite abrasive, callous, and arrogant.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In End of Evangelion, Asuka says that if Shinji will not be all hers, than she doesn't want anything from him. At the end, Shinji's actions have ensured that, unless people reject Instrumentality, he doesn't have anyone but her to focus on.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Deconstructed. Asuka's extremely abrasive and domineering personality clashes with Shinji's passive and introverted disposition. Their mutual attraction only adds to their frustrations and feelings of inadequacy as they keep failing to understand and communicate with each other.
• Beneath the Mask: Her arrogance and bravado is her mask. Beneath it is an extremely lonely person with abandonment issues who is cripplingly afraid of being replaced and discarded if she isn't "good" enough.
• Betty and Veronica: Rei and Asuka have this dynamic going between them, though it goes two ways. In Japan, Rei is seen as the Betty because of her gentle disposition, reserved nature, and tendency to get horribly injured, whereas the Fiery Redhead foreigner Asuka is the cultural Veronica because her forceful and aggressive personality is just so strange to the generally reserved Japanese public. However, in the more demonstrative West, the more outgoing, more human, more badass, and more overtly in love Asuka is the familiar Betty, and the bizarre, cold, and strangely unsettling Rei is the exotic Veronica.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: She has a volatile temper and projects a massive superiority complex in order to compensate for the Parental Neglect she suffered at the hands of her mother, who spent her last days driven to such insanity that she did not recognize Asuka, and instead became convinced that one of Asuka's dolls was her daughter. A whole new level of trauma is heaped on her when she found her mother had hanged both herself and the "Asuka" doll on the very day that she became an Eva pilot.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Asuka puts up a "perfect good girl" act in front of the adults, but when they aren't around, she's a complete pain in the ass to kids of her same age. Asuka soon drops it when Misato encourages her to relax now that she isn't living with her foster family. This is a huge mistake, as it only results in Asuka going full-blown Jerk and Bitch towards others.
• Blood Knight: She appears to fall under this category at first, but she's actually a subversion. While she appears to enjoy the heat of battle against the Angels, she doesn't fight out of a true warrior spirit — rather, she's really trying to upstage and surpass everyone else to draw attention to her because she is frightened of being alone and ignored. Unfortunately, Shinji (unintentionally) starts to outshine her, which begins to gnaw at her resolve. Worse, she's only being used on the condition that she can pilot an Eva. If she falters, she's going to be tossed aside. Unfortunately, she suffers a horrific failure in battle that leaves her in turmoil... followed by a diabolical assault on her mind.
• Break the Haughty: Since her entire self-conception revolves around being the best Eva pilot, any failure is a major blow to her confidence.
• Breakout Character: While not as central to the story as Shinji, Rei or even Misato, Asuka is easily the most popular and iconic character in the series, even topping the aforementioned three, and is often cited as the archetypical Fiery Redhead Tsundere in anime. It's up to the point, where she and Rei are the most-marketed human characters in the Evangelion franchise, and possibly for Gainax as a whole. She’s even usurped Rei as the most popular Evangelion character in recent years, coming in first place in a huge NHK poll published in 2020 while Rei came in third (After Kaworu).
• Broken Ace: Eva pilot, intelligent, already has a university degree, the most popular girl in school...and packing childhood trauma equivalent to Shinji's.
• Broken Bird: She copes with her major childhood trauma and repressed emotional baggage by putting on an act of bravado so others don't realize how emotionally broken she really is.
• Broken Smile: 4-year-old Asuka after she walks in on what should be the happiest day of her life so far, with what she believes to be proof she is a worthy daughter, only to find that her mother has committed "murder"-suicide, hanging herself with a doll of Asuka.
• Broken Tears: Asuka cried during her Mind Rape due to being forced to remember her childhood traumas and face her deep-rooted insecurities, as well as in episode 23 after Hikari comforts her by telling her that she shouldn't hate herself, and that she thinks she's done well. She's even pictured in the trope's main page, just for good measure.
• Bungled Suicide: It's implied that she tried to cut her wrists in episode 24, when she's seen in a bathtub with water that looks like it's stained red, and may have been starving herself. Section 2 finds her and she's too weak to resist being taken into custody.
• But Not Too Foreign: She is occasionally drawn in promotional materials as a blonde instead of a redhead. The North American and Mexican dubs pad this out with dialogue that occasionally includes German expletives and exclamations. A handy conceit of the show is that Asuka is "part-Japanese", explaining her given name and family name being Japanese, but she's really only quarter Japanese because her mother was half Japanese and half German. Asuka was born and raised in Germany, speaks German as her native language, so she considers herself German and everyone else does too, though her nationality is actually American, like her father. Her actual ethnic makeup is 25% Japanese, 25% German, 50% "American"^note The only thing we know for sure about her father that could pertain to his ethnic ancestry is that 1) he's from the USA, and 2) he has white skin; while that makes "White American" as the most likely ethnicity for him, he could very well be of some other American ethnic group (or even Multiracial American!) who simply happens to pass for a White American.. Her mother's name was Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, while Langley is her father's last name.
• Byronic Heroine: She's selfish, impulsive, self-centered, rude, and borderline misanthropic. She's also lonely, heartbroken, wounded, and desperately searching for her place.
• Cannot Spit It Out: For extra fun, she has a hard time even admitting her feelings for Shinji to herself, let alone telling him. It probably doesn't help that on the occasions when she subtly or not-so-subtly flirts with him, it doesn't work at all.
• Catchphrase Insult: "Anta baka?", meaning either "What are you, stupid?" in the 1996 ADV dub or "Are you an idiot?" in the 2019 Netflix dub.
• Char Clone: She wears red, pilots a red EVA unit, is The Rival to Shinji Ikari, and serves as the show's resident Ace Pilot.
• Character Development:
  • Following her Mind Rape, she starts questioning who she is and nearly kills herself in the process. After returning from the LCL, she shows Shinji a sign of affection by caressing his face (though it's clear she's still mad at him).
  • Even more pronounced in the manga, where she survives her post-Mind Rape battle due to Shinji's intervention saving her.
• Chick Magnet: Female example. Many of the boys at school develop crushes on her and send her love letters.
• Child Prodigy: While she's technically a Teen Genius in the story proper, she says she graduated from university "last year" at the time she debuted, which is in 2015 — specifically, it can be deduced from several pieces of evidence that said debut happened in the middle of the year. Her official profile states her birthdate to be in December 4, 2001; that means she was at age 13 when she first showed up in the story. Logic dictates then that she must've started her university-level education a few years before then (2-3 years if we assume she was smart enough to do 4-5 years of university studies faster than the average young adult could), and thus in turn indicates that her intellectual giftedness had to have manifested while she was still in the middle of childhood, in order for her to have skipped all the way from elementary to senior high school.
• Clingy Jealous Girl
  • She's very possessive towards Kaji whenever it seems like he's paying attention to another woman; this makes his past flame Misato the main object of her jealousy.
  • She's also just as possessive towards Shinji, not that she would ever admit it. Even catching Shinji looking at Rei can trigger an outburst; then there's Episode 22, where in the midst of her Heroic BSoD she spots Shinji and Rei talking to each other. The next time she interacts with Rei, Asuka goes into a screaming meltdown and slaps her. This is often much more explicit in Alternate Continuity works; Mana Kirishima seems to really bring this out in her. She also plays this trope painfully straight while Shinji is viewing an alternate world in episode 26 where he was never an EVA pilot; she is instead his next door Childhood Friend, and doesn't like how much attention he seems to be giving to New Transfer Student Rei.
• Colorblind Casting: Portrayed in live action by her brunette, very Asian seiyuu Yuko Miyamura in the End of Evangelion alternate ending.
• Color-Coded Characters: Red is Asuka's signature color, matching her hair color and personality as well as the color of her Evangelion. It also contrasts with Rei, who has blue as her color.
• Compulsory School Age: Asuka already completed her college education, but still attends middle school with Shinji and Rei for no apparent reason other than her also being 14. Ironically, she gets bad grades there, as she hasn't mastered Japanese characters yet.
• Convenient Coma: The Mind Rape she gets from Arael completely destroys her psyche, leaving her in a comatose state until she regains consciousness in the middle of the attack of Seele on Nerv.
• Corrupted Character Copy: If Shinji Ikari is the Amuro Ray, then Asuka Langley Souryuu would be the Char Aznable (and she clearly takes cues from him), but whereas Char remained a consistent and tangible threat to the heroes even in spite of his the power gap with Amuro, Asuka is ultimately shown to be a jobber when compared to Shinji and even Rei. She's also shown to be a deeply fucked-up and emotionally-vulnerable girl beneath all her bravado and caustic attitude. Asuka acts as a cruel deconstruction of the Char Clone, having the Ace Pilot status but showing her rival dynamic to be toxic and debilitating for her, and also showing her to ultimately come up short.
• Creepy Child: Following her breakdown, she becomes a catatonic wreck. Her final battle in End of Evangelion shows a disturbing amount of hysterical brutality as well.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The way that Asuka checks out in End of Evangelion is definitely not for the faint of heart... or stomach. After reaching an extremely high level of synchronization with her Eva, all wounds her Eva receives happen to her. So, in order, her Eva, and thus her: get a replica Spear of Longinus through the eye, gets its intestines ripped out, gets its arm sliced in half longways, then gets peppered with more Spears. And that's what we see onscreen. Shortly after, the Eva gets torn to pieces with one of the MP Evas seen carrying its head. We can only hope that she was dead from all the Spears. The sight of it is enough to basically break Shinji completely.
• Debt Detester: She shows this in Episode 11 to repay Shinji, who saved her in the volcano (Episode 10). Asuka takes the full brunt of Matariel's acid, doing God knows what to her Eva, to give Shinji and Rei the time to kill the Angel.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Asuka's characterization tears apart the Tsundere character type often found in anime. A good argument can be made that in her case it qualifies as an Unbuilt Trope—the tsundere character archetype that would come to dominate Japanese pop culture in the late '90s to early 2000s and beyond had not quite solidified as a trope at the time Evangelion was originally released. Asuka herself is frequently counted as one of the earliest examples, if not one of the Trope Codifiers (and the case has even been made that she should actually be seen as an "almost-but-not-quite" example of the trope). Her harsh and aggressive behavior is the result of a very severe childhood trauma that completely destroyed her sense of self-worth at a young age, causing her to put on a haughty mask in self defense and seek validation from others. Because of her overly mean attitude and inability to be kind or honest, she fails to form a positive relationship with anyone else, like her relationship with Shinji where her actions only convince him that Asuka really hates him, and the conflict between their heavily flawed personalities just ends up driving them apart because they can't be a source of comfort for each other.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: There are tiny shades of this immediately following her introduction. She steadily becomes less and less of a jerk to Shinji until finally they have an awkward kiss scene. Unfortunately, then things went south when she interpreted his awkward reaction to the kiss as a rejection. Then her jealousy flares back up once he surpasses her as a pilot, and his relationship with Rei grows warmer. Then came the Mind Rape...
• Designer Baby: Asuka is a test-tube baby in the manga adaptation, apparently from a bank that was very particular about its donors. Her feeling of being "special" is partly tied to this, which makes her loss of confidence even more painful to her as the story progresses.
• Despair Event Horizon: She hits a major one after suffering a Mind Rape at the hands of Arael in episode 22, to the point that she decides to leave Misato's apartment and attempt suicide by the time of the next episode.
• Desperately Craves Affection: In spite of her narcissism, all Asuka really wants is admiration for her skills as a pilot, Kaji's respect, and Shinji's affection. Her struggle in getting them puts her in a downward spiral.
• Determinator: Even as horribly injured as she was by the time the MP Evas were done with Unit 02, she still had the will and anger to try to fight back.
  I'll kill you I'll kill you I'll kill you...
• Deuteragonist: Although Misato is definitely the deuteragonist of the series as a whole, she arguably takes the role during End of Evangelion specifically. The final catalyst for the Human Instrumentality Project is essentially Asuka's and Shinji's failed interactions with one another throughout the series, which in a sense makes Asuka the second most responsible for Instrumentality occurring as their mutual inability to form a relationship with one another is what drives Shinji to reject the world. Despite this, Shinji ultimately decides to embrace humanity and allow people to return to their corporeal state, and Asuka is the first person to come back to life after him.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In End of Evangelion, Asuka is gruesomely mangled during the battle against the Mass Production Evas. In the manga version, Shinji manages to save her before she is killed by the MP Evas. She still got turned into LCL during the Third Impact, though.
• Disney Death: In End of Evangelion. Asuka is brutally dismembered by the MP Evas in the middle of the movie thanks to her high synch rate with Unit 02, but is brought back from Instrumentality after Shinji decides to embrace humanity, even getting the final line in the movie.
• Does Not Like Men: Aside from her idolized crush on Kaji, Asuka is dismissive at best towards the boys in her social circle.
• Domestic Abuse: She's secretly attracted to Shinji (who secretly is attracted to her too), and yet she hurls a lot of verbal abuse towards him, sometimes on the slightest provocation. Occasionally during the "Action Arc", she becomes outright physically violent, but given the light tone of the arc in question, it's probably intended to come across as slapstick comedy rather than serious physical abuse.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Asuka hates the very thought of anyone feeling sorry for her, as she has a pathological fear that it means people have seen through her thunderous surface and therefore think she is weak and pathetic.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Played straight initially but gradually Subverted. Despite initial moments where Asuka smacks Shinji for some slapstick comedy, her overall harsh treatment of Shinji is often portrayed very seriously. It becomes clear that, despite having problems of her own, she still has no right to treat him like dirt.
• Driven to Suicide: Shortly after her mental breakdown and Mind Rape. It fails when she is found, but she falls into a coma.

E-L

• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: A written version. Asuka fails her math exams at school. However, when Shinji is having trouble with a problem, she solves it in her head. When Shinji expresses his amazement at how she could possibly be failing math, she explains that she hasn't learned the kanji yet and just can't read the exam questions. Made more apparent by the fact that she has a university degree and is basically a child prodigy as well as an Evangelion pilot. It's likely that kanji is really the only reason she's in school at all while in Japan.
• Empty Shell: After willing herself back to life from Instrumentality in End, she's left in a broken, catatonic state due to the injuties she's sustained fom her fight with the Mass Production EVAs.
• Escapism: After her Mind Rape and before her suicide attempt, she briefly became obsessed with video games to cope with her horrible reality. Even Hikari was worried about her playing games all the time.
• Et Tu, Brute?: A wordless version. Asuka maintains an icy glare even after Shinji stops trying to strangle her in retaliation for all the abuse she put on him.
• Eye Scream: In End of Evangelion, because of her incredibly high sync rate with Unit-02, she is shown bleeding profusely from her left eye when a replica Spear of Longinus hits the EVA in the face. When she returns from Instrumentality, her left eye is bandaged over in the same manner as Rei's was at the start of the anime.
• Fembot: In -ANIMA-, she is unwittingly fused with Unit-02 and transforms into Crimson A1, a monstrous entity that resembles a giant armored Asuka.
• Fiery Redhead: She's even the page picture. In the anime, Asuka is always depicted with some shade of red hair, and is known for her arrogance, short temper, callousness, and very pronounced tsundere traits.
• Fille Fatale: A fundamental piece of Asuka's personality is that she wants to be seen as an independent adult. As such, she takes great pride in her physical appearance and flaunts it every chance she can get. Asuka is very flirtatious around her crush Kaji and when she isn't bullying Shinji, she tends to be aggressively sexual towards him.
• First Kiss: She pressures Shinji into kissing her in Episode 15. Between her grasping his nose and their mutual fear of rejection, it goes poorly.
• Foil: She serves as one to Shinji. Asuka is an outgoing, attention-seeking pilot with a higher-tech Eva and Shinji is an introverted, reluctant pilot of a lower-tech Eva, but they are both Child Soldiers used to fight Angels and have complicated relationships with their guardians. While their initial childhood traumas are near identical (watching their mothers die and having their fathers outright abandon them), they are raised afterwards in the polar opposite manner, thus resulting in the two of them responding in polar opposite ways. Shinji is "raised" by people who do their best to pretend he didn't exist, while Asuka is forced into Eva-piloting at age 4. Shinji is raised in Japan where "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down", meaning that anybody who stands out gets brutalized until they stop standing out, so that Shinji keeps his head down in response to everything, does as he's told, and becomes an Extreme Doormat until he's pushed far enough to become a conduit for an Unstoppable Rage. Asuka is raised in that continuity of Germany where your self-worth is tied directly to how well you can excel in combat, or so she's raised to believe; she becomes a Tyke Bomb for Nerv Berlin, while her father's mistress - her step-mother - sees fit to have sex with him, loudly, in the room right next to her mother's hospital bed, while she's there.
  • She is also a subtle foil to Rei as the two of them are tyke bombs for NERV since age 4, but while Rei becomes a Death Seeker waiting for the day where she can finally die and embrace sweet, sweet oblivion to free her from her pain, Asuka seeks to live forever, having her fame and glory burn her name across the heavens for all time. BOTH of them get their wishes horribly denied.
• Foreign Cuss Word: Asuka's American voice actresses can speak German, and pepper Asuka's speech with German profanity.
• Freudian Excuse: Pretty much all of the unpleasant aspects in her personality can be traced to childhood traumas, from her mother being driven insane enough to be convinced that a lifeless doll is really "Asuka" and that the real Asuka is a complete stranger, to said mother committing "murder"-suicide with said doll and Asuka discovering the corpse on the day she was hoping to bring the happy news that she was selected as a candidate for piloting Eva-02. Then there is her father's handling of the incident; that is, completely abandoning his wife to her insanity and starting a very public affair with her doctor, only served to re-enforce the twisted lesson Asuka learned from all of this namely: "If I am not good enough, I will be discarded and replaced."
• From Roommates to Romance: After arriving in Japan, Asuka moves into Misato's apartment where Shinji also resides and Asuka develops a budding attraction with him. However, the trope gets deconstructed since living together forces Asuka and Shinji to miscommunicate more often than it would normally happen, making their dynamic more complicated and conflicted than it already is.
• Girlish Pigtails: Wears true long tails tied up with her nerve clips. She might be the trope founder of the "Tsundere Tails". Taken further in the -ANIMA- light novels, where her usual hairstyle◊ is a set of full-fledged twintails (despite her no longer fitting the tsundere bill).
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She's a vain Alpha Bitch who in her off time, obsesses over boys (well, one older man to be precise; all other boys and men are just inadequate losers in her eyes), watches trashy romantic dramas, and her fashion sense (other than the mandatory plugsuit and school uniform) is rather cute and feminine, most notably with her iconic yellow sundress. But she's also a ferocious Hot-Blooded Action Girl who revels in her job as an Ace Pilot fighting alien Eldritch Abominations and has a rather aggressive fighting style, especially in End.
• The Glomp: Her standard way of greeting Kaji.
• Glory Seeker: Her Attention Whore issues lead to her striving to hog the spotlight (and, consequentially, the praise) when it comes to being an Evangelion pilot.
• Go-Getter Girl: Being the number one pilot is a cornerstone of her self-esteem, and she strives to always project an image of being the smartest and most beautiful person within her circle of peers. As such, Shinji seemingly undermining this as his piloting skill and sync ratios improve is enough to send her over the edge.
• Gorgeous Gaijin: She has German, Japanese and American heritage, and has rather large breasts for someone her age. Her foreigness is a source of sex appeal, as she is aggressive and straightforward sexually and otherwise due to being non-Japanese. This is part of her appeal as a romantic archetype and to Shinji, though his feelings towards her are complicated.
• Grade Skipper: She already has a college degree at merely 13 years old.
• Gratuitous German: Asuka's Japanese VA sadly does not speak German well, and Sadamoto's manga isn't any better at that either. It's a completely different matter with her English dub VAs, though.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Asuka becomes jealous of Shinji for his apparent skills at piloting, and of Rei for believing Shinji feels closer to her.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Some illustrations for the manga depict her with blonde-looking hair like some merchandise does, but she's stated to have golden-red hair.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Asuka's temperament is perpetually on thin ice, and she unloads almost as often as Shinji or Rei steps upon it.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Asuka is sent over the edge when Shinji's sync ratio exceeded hers even when she trained as a pilot for years. Then we found out why: it's revealed that Asuka figuratively "walling off" her heart from everyone (to avoid being hurt again) also caused her to shut out Unit-02 in all her attempts to synchronize with its resident soul, which just so happens to be that of her dead mother. While her managing to even get the highest sync ratio for any period of time is impressive, and has more practical skills compared to Shinji, the fact remains that Asuke was essentially piloting an Eva all wrong and her choice to wall off her heart made thing worse.
• Harmful to Minors: Finding the hanging corpse of your crazed mother is not good for the mental development of any child.
• Hates Being Touched: Although she doesn't say it outright, the trope is heavily implied to have taken effect after her Mind Rape by the fact that the first time we see her after said event, it's right after she's being declared under quarantine (symbolism, perhaps?), she's in a Troubled Fetal Position, she explodes in anger at Shinji's awkward attempt at comforting her while her body language makes her look like she's trying to draw herself in even further, and since the Mind Rape she never makes any sort of physical contact with anyone (not even Hikari, whom she made a point of staying with instead of with Shinji and Misato).
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": In the non-canon comedic radio drama Evangelion: After the End she pitches the idea of Shin Sentai Evangelion, a show wherein she is The Hero and The Leader, because she's wearing red, while her crew, consisting of Rei, Shinji, Toji, and Kaworu, are portrayed as weirdos and losers.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: Asuka's Inferiority Superiority Complex is the main thing that works against her. Her insecurities, temper, pride and choice to wall off her heart ends up directly leads to her sync ratio dropping, suffering a mental breakdown at the hands of Arael, losing almost everyone close to her along with the will to live.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Episode 22 starts with Asuka going into a mental breakdown that sends her sync ratio plummeting, then she gets Mind Raped. After that, she spends most of her time full of anger and grief, thinking that nobody loved her or would care for her now that she had been humiliated, and after losing her connection to Eva (which meant that she was now worthless to Nerv and would be replaced and discarded), she runs away and tries to commit suicide; she is found in time to save her life, but she falls into a coma.
  • Also, she pulls one the moment before her EVA receives a replica Spear of Longinus through the head in End of Evangelion.
• Hey, You!: Not once does Rei refer to her by name, only by "Pilot of Unit-02" (talking about her) or "You" (talking to her).
• Hot-Blooded: Especially compared to Rei and Shinji. She's prone to screaming her head off when piloting.
• Humiliation Conga: Her whole character arc is about someone who's convinced that they're the best-skilled pilot, only to suffer a string of humiliating defeats, one worse than the last, and they progressively demolish their ego. The conga culminates in her getting mind raped at by Arael.
• Hypocrite:
  • She always criticizes Shinji for being useless, even though her own stubbornness, pride, and need to be the best so she can feel validated cause her to increasingly mess up missions as the series progresses.
  • She blames Shinji for their botched first kiss, claiming that he is rejecting her. While he did freeze up, her signals were convoluted and mixed; she didn't help things by pinching his nose shut so his breath wouldn't tickle her, which just suffocated him.
  • She treats all the boys around her with contempt and considers them perverts, yet she very clearly has a crush on her guardian, Kaji, and behaves in clingy, inappropriate ways when she is around him. In addition, she makes sure to wear a new swimsuit around Shinji and pressures him into their First Kiss.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: She isn't wrong when she confronts Shinji in The End of Evangelion — he is interested in her as a vehicle for his own validation, and is only using her as a last resort because he is too scared of everyone else, even if her own hero complex and need for the affection of other people makes her a similar person to him and her abrasiveness is at least partially responsible for keeping him at a distance from her.
  Asuka: Anyone will do. You don't care who it is! You're afraid of Misato, and the First Child... you're afraid of your mother and father, too! So now you come running to me because that's the easiest way to keep from getting hurt! You never even loved yourself! You're all you have and you never even learned to like yourself!
• Iconic Outfit: Somewhat in contrast to Shinji and Rei (and, to a lesser degree, Kaworu) who are most commonly associated with their school uniforms, Asuka's most iconic piece of clothing is easily her casual yellow sundress, combined with the A10 Nerve Clips in her hair of course.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Asuka debuts in Episode 8, long after most of the other main cast, but she's one of the most iconic characters in the show.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Which she gives a number of cold stares with over the course of the series.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Due to Asuka's deep-seated insecurities, merely being "good enough" is simply not an option to her. She has to be outstanding and the best in her field. As a result, her self-worth comes from her Eva piloting skills, which she trained in for years. But when Shinji or Rei outclass her, combined with a series of humiiating defeats, it sends her into a mental downward spiral and causes her self-image to suffer.
• Image Song: Asuka has a few, including two adorable renditions of "Fly Me to the Moon" and trio versions of both that song and "Cruel Angel's Thesis" shared with Rei and Misato. One of the Sega Saturn games gives her "Get It On! Doppelganger ni Kuchizuke Wo" (which she sings in-universe for a school show accompanied by Shinji and his pals), and a Rebuild of Evangelion pachinko game gives her two more.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Spam Attacked to Gorn levels with her death in End of Evangelion, as the MP Evas send their replica Spears of Longinus into Unit 02.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Asuka's attitude and abrasiveness are a psychological coverup for her self-esteem issues.
• Informed Ability: Despite being a Teen Genius, she doesn't appear to be particularly more intelligent than any of the other children, and with frequency she only looks actually less mature. This is a case of Truth in Television, as people with unusually high intellect don't always stand out from their peers in most situations.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Inverted with her Netflix English voice actress Stephanie McKeon, who is a youthful-looking redhead in real life and often portrays red-haired characters in her live-action roles.
• Irony:
  • She grew up in Germany, lives in Japan during the events of the series, has German as her first language and speaks fluent Japanese, but has more American ancestry than either of those two nationalities (her father is fully American while her mother is half-German and half-Japanese)^note Then again, her father could be a German American for all we know..
  • Her entire personality in the present day is at its core driven by her mother falling into insanity after a Contact Experiment with Unit-02, such that she ignored Asuka in favor of a doll, with which she committed "murder"-suicide just before Asuka came in to happily inform her of her selection as an Eva pilot. Come End of Evangelion, Asuka would finally discover that her mother's soul had been inside Unit-02 all along, but as Rei had put it in one late episode, Asuka had been "shutting out" the Eva from her heart (as a side-effect of figuratively doing the same to everyone in her life), thus she couldn't even vaguely feel her mother's presence like Shinji did.
• Japanese Politeness: She's constantly annoyed by Shinji apologizing, and is also the most prominent foreigner on the show.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • She calls Rei out on her Extreme Doormat tendencies, and while she clearly wasn't being particularly kind about the matter, she wasn't exactly wrong either. Rei's third go-around may have taken Asuka's words to heart.
  • Despite it being delivered in her usual abrasive manner, Asuka is not wrong when she calls Misato out on showing Parental Favoritism towards Shinji.
• Jerkass to One: While Asuka generally doesn't get along with most people, Shinji is often the brunt of her aggression and callousness. It turns out she actually has feelings for him, but he understandably doesn't reciprocate, creating more friction between the two.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the manga, while Asuka is just as much of an angry and temperamental Tsundere, there are occasional moments where she tries to be compassionate to Shinji, following her initial appearance in volume 4. Unfortunately, he's just too secluded to open up to her, leading to many angry confrontations between the two over his cowardice and her arrogance. Her attempts to befriend Rei are also more genuine, but Asuka's abrasive nature and Rei's stoicism rub each other exactly the wrong way.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: She often avoids a slap on the wrist for her treatment of Shinji, but in The End, she receives a harsh strangling by Shinji himself when the latter reaches his Rage Breaking Point.
• Kick the Dog: Deconstructed. Her utter cruelty towards Shinji drives the latter away from her, culminating in his Rage Breaking Point by strangling her to near-death in The End.
• Kiddie Kid: She's 14 years old, but at the end of it all, she's more like a spoiled child younger than her, perhaps as a result of being severely emotionally upset by what happened earlier.
• Kill the Cutie: How the fight against the MP Evas ends.
• The Lancer: Shinji's polar opposite who is actually very similar to him beneath the surface. Their conflict with each other is a driving force throughout the series.
• Large Ham: Asuka chews the scenery every time she appears thanks to her Hot-Blooded attitude and overemotional reactions, especially compared to the down-to-earth Shinji and stoic Rei. Even more so in the ADV English dub, although in Japanese she gets to crank up the ham as well in Evangelion: After the End.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In End, her belittling, insulting, and mistreating Shinji at every opportunity culminates in him snapping and strangling the shit out of her in the dream world.
• Last Stand: Gets one of the greatest examples in anime history in End of Evangelion, ripping apart an entire division of the Japanese Army and then brutalizing nine Mass Production Evas with minimal damage. This being Evangelion, it ends with her brutal death, however.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Asuka often labels herself as the leader of the Children by default, and has a red color theme. In After The End, she quite literally positions herself as the red-colored leader of her sentai team.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Part of the series' Deconstruction of the Hot-Blooded Ace Pilot is Asuka's occasional tendency to be this. Her first attempt to work together with Shinji was a disaster, after which she got better as she learned to work together with her teammates before reverting back to this due to her mental breakdown.
• Leitmotif: Her theme, "Asuka Strikes", is a light-hearted piece which features an electric guitar and a fiddle.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The dark to Rei's and Hikari's light. Where Rei is a docile Shy Blue-Haired Girl and Hikari is a stern but compassionate Team Mom of sorts, Asuka is a belligerent and aggressive Fiery Redhead.
• Light Is Not Good: Most of her attire is light-colored, yet she is quite unpleasant and emotionally troubled, to say the least.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Her bickering with Shinji is lampshaded by Toji in class when he addresses them as the "newlyweds" making them both Luminescent Blush. Notably, this is at the point where she and Shinji are actually closest and have the most stability both individually and between them.
• Love Epiphany: Played for Drama. During her Mind Rape, she is able to briefly zero in on Shinji before flashing back through her past interactions with him. After spending most of her time both belittling and envying him, realizing how she actually feels about Shinji worsens her mental state.
• Loving Bully: Deconstructed with her feelings towards Shinji. She refuses to bring herself to express any positive feelings for him in any way and can only express negative emotions in the form of abuse and intimidation (both physically and verbally). She is also really vicious to Shinji at times, which, although implied to be the result of her actually being angry at herself for feeling attracted to him because she cannot understand why she feels that way about him, is very bad.

M-S

• Madness Mantra: "Kill you ... Kill you ... I'll kill you ... I'll kill you ... kill you ... kill you ..." It also doubles as a Survival Mantra but it fails. Grandly.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Masculine Girl to Shinji's Feminine Boy. Shinji's lack of masculinity is partly why Asuka has such a hard time expressing her feelings towards him; consciously she believes that he should be too weak to be worthy of her admiration, but subconsciously she cannot help but feel a budding attraction to him.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Towards Shinji, alternating between mocking him and trying to hit on him. Justified in that she clearly does want his attention, but she's already been rejected by Kaji and fears getting the same result with Shinji, so she wants to leave an out that she can use to at least save face. Unfortunately for her, this ends up ruining all of her chances with Shinji.
• Mauve Shirt: Ironically, Asuka, who believes that she is the hero of the story, is actually much closer to this trope when it comes to her in-universe importance for the plans of the various masterminds. In both Gendo and SEELE's plans, her role is for all intents and purposes nominal at best, as she and Unit-02 are essentially Cannon Fodder meant to even the odds against the Angels (and more covertly, a way for Gendo to even his odds against SEELE), and in Yui's plan it appears that she is effectively a non-factor, easily making her the most expendable pilot in-universe. Of note, neither Gendo, SEELE, or Yui ever mentions her by name, and the first only ever (barely) acknowledges her existence in the capacity of her post as Unit-02's pilot. This is in contrast to Shinji and Rei who have both been chosen from the beginning to play central parts in the end-game and all parties therefore have some degrees of vested interests in keeping alive.
• Maybe Ever After:
  • In The End of Evangelion, as Hideako Anno himself stated, it's open to the watcher's mind which fate awaits Asuka and Shinji. At least, it seems they have progressed to a point where they are more honest with each other.
  • In the manga, Asuka is eventually reborn in the new world where Angels don't exist, and meets Shinji again. Even though nothing in the ending insinuates they'll get romantically involved soon, the sole fact that they're both alive in a more peaceful world ends their relationship on a hopeful note.
• The McCoy: The emotional, hot-tempered and unpredictable part of the main trio.
• Meaningful Name: She is one of only four Evangelion characters named after a ship whose ship-based name uses entirely different kanji from their namesake (the others being her mother and the two Akagis); the kanji of Asuka's surname Sôryū are 惣流, while the IJN Sôryū's kanji are 蒼龍. This superficiality of her name's allusion seems to foreshadow the fact that her self-confident persona is a façade concealing the truth that she has no self-confidence at all; it may also allude to the fact that her namesake, despite being one of the best IJN carriers of her class at the time, was eventually destroyed by an aerial attack that she was unable to defend against due to the limitations imposed upon her design by the London Naval Treaty, mirroring Asuka's own limits as a girl still in early adolescence being thrust into a war against an alien threat while still suffering from a shitton of psychological issues. Add to that the fact that the IJN Sôryū, like all purpose-built Japanese carriers, was named after a sacred creature of Japanese myth (in her case, the Blue Dragon), and it's easy to interpret Asuka's name as representing how she attempts to claim great glory and status but ultimately falls short.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Asuka is an isolated and arrogant narcissist whose sanity reaches a nadir following her Mind Rape.
• Mind Rape: The Trope Namer. Arael's mental contact with her causes her to relive all of her traumatic childhood experiences at once, overwhelming her mind and crushing her self-image. The "rape" metaphor is disturbingly strong in this case, since she screams things like "No!" and "It hurts!" while it happens, says she feels like she's been "defiled" when it's over, and afterwards she refuses to let anyone touch her.
• Mirror Character: It becomes increasingly evident towards the end of the series that Asuka has quite a lot in common with Shinji, such as a similar past and psychological issues, and, most importantly, a pathological need for affirmation from other people, and that is the reason for much of their conflict. Especially Episodes 25 and 26 and The End of Evangelion spends some time hammering this point home.
  Shinji: Right now, the Eva is all I have.
  Rei: Because otherwise, you can't maintain your identity.
  Misato: It's true, Eva Unit-01 is a part of who you are.
  Ritsuko: But if you keep clinging to the Eva, the Eva itself will become you.
  Kaji: The Eva itself will become all you are.
  Misato: The real you will cease to exist.
  Shinji: I don't care! I never had anything to begin with anyway! Even the cello lessons I used to take all came to nothing.
  Asuka: That's because you never took the initiative to make something of it!
  Shinji: But I can pilot the Eva now!
  Asuka: And eventually, you won't be able to do anything without the Eva... Like me.
  • Shinji himself notices it during End:
    Asuka: Even just the sight of you gets on my nerves!
    Shinji: Because I'm just like you?
• Ms. Fanservice: Her significant number of fanservice scenes makes her a contender for the position with Misato and Rei. However, it's somewhat downplayed and deconstructed as the few times she invokes this trope, it's usually to get attention (either from Kaji or Shinji) as another coping mechanism. Her bare chest is explicitly shown once^noteThe bath scene in the DC version of 22 doesn't count as, while she is naked, you never really see anything explicit, and that instance is very very unsexy^note The scene is question is in The End of Evangelion, where Shinki visits her when she is comatose in hospital.
• My Greatest Failure: When her mother started turning suicidal, she asked Asuka to die with her. Asuka, desperate to have her mother acknowledge her again and too young to truly understand what it meant, promised her that she would do it. The full horrible implications of what she had promised eventually dawned upon the young Asuka sometime after discovering her mother's body and the hanged doll. It is evident that the promise is perhaps the single most shameful and traumatic moment of Asuka's overall very difficult life; it represents the moment she felt so utterly powerless that she would have killed herself without a second thought because of another person. It is the main thing that drives Asuka's fierce independence streak and trust issues; on some subconcious level, she believes relying in any capacity on another person can only lead to her death.
• Narcissist: Played straight in the original anime where she is consistently portrayed as vain, self-absorbed, and obsessed with being the center of everyone's attention and admiration. Her immense pride in her beauty and piloting skills are all-encompassing to the point that she treats everyone around her with undisguised contempt and feels entitled to adulation and praise from everyone she meets. Despite demanding unconditional devotion and praise from others, Asuka conversely feels no obligation to treat others with respect unless doing so will keep them under her thrall or otherwise advance her interests in some way. Towards the end of the series, it is revealed that her megalomania is a maladaptive coping mechanism for her self-hatred, loneliness, and deep-rooted fear that no one will ever love her despite all she has achieved.
• Never Be Hurt Again: The extremely traumatic circumstances surrounding her mother's death have instilled the belief in Asuka that relying on another person can only ever lead to bad outcomes. Her resulting fear of getting emotionally close to anyone else is what is at the core of most of her issues.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: In her backstory, Asuka was never able to say goodbye to Kyoko before she committed suicide. Several years later, Asuka is still haunted by the last memories of that time to the point where she suffers a mental breakdown at the end of episode 22.
• Never My Fault:
  • Asuka refuses to accept the possibility that she's the one that's off from Shinji during the dance training in ep. 8; she doesn't take it well when Rei matches up with Shinji perfectly on the first try.
  • She also resents Shinji for not noticing her advances and keeping his distance from her, unable to realize (or perhaps just unwilling to accept) that her bullying behavior towards him is the very thing pushing him away.
  • She resents Shinji and blames him for their botched First Kiss and claims that he rejected her, refusing to even consider that it was her own fault for goading him into kissing her with convoluted and mixed signals, as well as making the situation even more unromantic by holding Shinji's nose and almost suffocating him, and that she was the one who actually rejected him.
• New Transfer Student: She's immediately transferred to Shinji's class after her arrival at Japan.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Her inability to show Shinji any form of compassion and empathy is what ultimately drives him to commence the Third Impact at the end of the series.
  • Asuka is having one in Episode 22. She's not the least bit pleased about it, and Ritsuko brushes off Misato's mention that it might be the reason for her low synch rate.
  • This pops up earlier in the manga when Asuka, describing herself as "one giant cramp", tries to get Shinji to deliver a note to Kaji instead of giving it to him herself.
• No Indoor Voice: She is constantly screaming on the top of her lungs, whether it be lashing out at people (Shinji in particular) or just throwing her weight around.
• Nominal Hero: She is technically one of the main heroes, yet she is very arrogant, hostile, and vicious towards those around her.
• No Social Skills: Asuka is quite self-centred and ill-tempered, and tends to be very direct in her manners, making no attempt to hide it when she happens to dislike something or someone. While part of it could possibly be explained by her status as a foreigner — she voices her disapproval of the custom of Japanese Politeness on more than one occasion — most of it of it can be chalked up to cynicism rooted in her various traumas.
• Not Good with Rejection: Asuka misinterprets Shinji's awkward and passive reaction to their kiss in Episode 15 as a rejection, becoming even more spiteful toward him afterward.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: In the bathtub scene in Episode 23, Asuka is severely underweight, implying that she was starving herself, wanting to die but not having the will to kill herself before. However, she's found by NERV before she could pass on.^note Despite popular belief, she didn’t slit her wrists here; the water in the tub is shown to more of a rust orange than red, more clearly illustrated in the Director's Cut version. Additionally, when she’s shown to be hospitalized in Episode 25', she has no bandages around her wrists that would indicate she cut them.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: While her final battle against the Mass-Produced Evas initially seems to be a Curb-Stomp Battle in her favor, because she failed to destroy any of their cores they each recover from their injuries and proceed to give her a Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Numerological Motif: Is strongly associated with the number two, being the Second Child and the pilot of Unit-02. It fits into her inferiority complex and troubles with being Always Second Best.
• Parent with New Paramour: After Kyoko's death, Asuka's father got Remarried to the Mistress (who also happened to be Kyoko's doctor)… with him having started his affair with said mistress soon after his wife was institutionalized. And the two had the gall to have sex (and rather noisily at that) in the hospital room right next to Kyoko's at least once. It's little wonder that Asuka finds herself unable to become attached to her stepmother; that being said, she states that she doesn't hate the woman, but merely feels as if she could never replace her real mother.
• Parental Neglect: One of Asuka's father's lines implies that already before she went insane, she would regularly neglect Asuka in favor of her research work. Whether he was telling the truth, exaggerating things, or just lying out of his ass is unknown, but the trope is definitely played straight after Kyoko is driven insane by a Contact Experiment gone wrong, causing her to mistake one of Asuka's dolls for her daughter, whom she no longer recognizes.
• Patient Childhood Love Interest: In the anime's Alternate Universe scenes and the Angelic Days manga, Asuka is Shinji's childhood friend with a crush on him that he seems oblivious of.
• The Perfectionist: Asuka will not accept anything less of herself than being the best among the Evangelion pilots, because the integrity of her incredibly low self-esteem depends on it. The idea of Shinji surpassing her starts her breakdown.
• Pet the Dog: She has a few moments even in the original series where she displays a heart under all that anger:
  • After defeating one of the Angels, Misato offers a steak dinner to celebrate with all the pilots. Asuka's first instinct is take a moment to flip through a resturant guidebook, hoping to find the most expensive steak place, but she then finds out Rei is a vegetarian, and so instead loudly demands they have ramen instead to include Rei in the festivities rather than leave her out as usual. She also knows about Misato's meager financial means, and so makes sure to pick a ramen cart serving modestly priced meals.
  • In The End, as Shinji is strangling her to near death in a self-loathing emotional breakdown, Asuka, instead of lashing out at him like always, gently pats him on the head and lets him process the rest of his feelings, even if she is still disgusted by his actions.
• Pitbull Dates Puppy: Deconstructed. At heart, Shinji and Asuka truly care about and are attracted to each other, but Shinji's extreme passivity and Asuka's similarly over-the-top aggressiveness prevent them from forming a real relationship during the series.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Downplayed. Just like Misato, Asuka is a competent character who nonetheless provides quite a bit of levity due to her personality (in her case, over-the-top histrionics and Large Ham tendencies), to the point that the mood of the series becomes quite a bit sillier upon her introduction. She even has a wacky, lighthearted leitmotif like Misato does. However, this gets thrown out the window as the series goes into darker territory, and Asuka becomes a more tragic, troubled and serious character all the way to the end of End of Evangelion.
• Plucky Girl: Though her pluckiness is presented in a rather negative light.
• Poirot Speak:
  • In the English dub, Tiffany Grant and Stephanie McKeon occasionally pepper Asuka's speech with German exclamations.
  • The Latin Spanish dub does the same, but takes it further by giving Asuka a German accent.
• Precocious Crush: Deconstructed. At 14 years old, Asuka is crushing hard on the much older Kaji. However, Asuka really pursues Kaji because getting an older, handsome guy to show interest in her would make her feel special, which she desperately wants. Kaji rebuffing her advances both because of her age and his lingering feelings for Misato feeds into Asuka's fears that she's unlovable.
• Pride: This is her Fatal Flaw. She is practically defined by pride in herself — even more than being the series' Tsundere. This is both a strength and a weakness; as the art book Eve states, "Asuka's pride is a double-edged Sword of Damocles", and it's stated that her pride is a defense to her crippling low self-esteem due to a Freudian Excuse. It's essentially a false coping mechanism, as her determination to prove herself makes her overconfident at times and unable to handle criticism.
• Psychological Projection:
  • It is quite obvious that she has a lot of this going with Rei.
    Asuka: (in a private moment to Shinji) This First Child is scary! She's the type who will do anything to accomplish her objectives. In other words, a self-righteous bitch.
  • In (the director's cut of) episode 22, Asuka tells Kaji that she dislikes Misato because she feels like she's always putting up a front, even though Asuka's abrasiveness and jerkish behavior used to cover up her own insecurities.
  • As the series progresses, becomes increasingly evident that she also has quite a bit of this going on with Shinji, as it turns out that the two of them are similar. Especially her belittling and insulting him whenever she thinks he acts "weak", is not so much down to his own behavior, as it is a result of her seeing her own inner fragility reflected back at her whenever she looks at him and hating what she sees.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: In -ANIMA- she ends up getting fused into her EVA Unit and becomes Crimson A1, a being that has the mentality of a baby and causes destruction merely through curiosity.
• Redheads Are Ravishing: Asuka is a redheaded German-Japanese girl who is portrayed as a Gorgeous Gaijin and Ms. Fanservice. She's considered highly attractive in-universe and is very popular with boys of her school (something that Kensuke and Toji take advantage of by selling photographs of her). She can act very flirtatious and wants to be seen as a mature woman by her much older crush.
• Red Is Heroic: Asuka is the only protagonist to have a consistent color scheme via her hair, her plugsuit and her Eva. However, unlike most other red-themed heroes, she's more of an Anti-Hero; in her case, the red emphasizes her anger and, being the color of her Eva unit, how closely her identity is tied to her piloting skills. Heck, in the Anime she's even a villain or villainous at times, subverting this trope altogether.
• Red Is Violent: Once again, red is the primary color for this highly aggressive young girl.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red Oni to Rei's blue. She's hot-blooded and loud-mouthed, whereas Rei is quiet and emotionless.
• Rescue Romance: Deconstructed. It is all but outright stated that what truly made her develop feelings for Shinji was him coming to her rescue in Unit-01 without any hesitation, as she thought she was certainly about to die in the aftermath of the Sandalphon fight. The fact that Shinji afterwards always ends up falling short of something similar again, either through circumstance or his own fears and inadequacies getting the better of him, is also what fuels her growing resentment towards him.
• Rule of Symbolism: Notice how her EVA Unit bleeds purple and her limbs get mutilated during her final fight in the End of Evangelion. Reflects the color and punishment of the Deadly Sin of Pride, which she embodies.
• Sanity Slippage: Her mental health degrades over the course of her Trauma Conga Line, with her interactions with practically everyone around her becoming more and more dominated by hostility and irrationality; Episode 23 delivers the final straw that pushes Asuka past the Despair Event Horizon, and the next time we see Asuka finds her in a run-down apartment after what is heavily implied to be an ultimately failed suicide attempt, with her falling into a coma from that point and until around midway through the first half of End of Evangelion.
• Series Mascot: Asuka is a very heavily marketed franchise icon similar to Rei, but has traditionally played "second fiddle" to her (which was lampshaded in Evangelion: After the End). Despite this, she enjoys very similar popularity and iconic status to Rei (even possibly surpassing her in the West), and is widely considered to be the franchise's secondary mascot.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: After the attack of Arael. She doesn't get any better until End of Evangelion.
• She's Back: After spending the last few episodes and first half of End of Evangelion in complete catatonia, she finally recovers and pilots Unit 02 against the JSSDF, completely decimating them, and is able to tear apart the Mass Production Evas with little trouble. Unfortunately for her, the Evas reactivate at the exact moment she runs out of power, leading to an agonizingly drawn out death for her and her Eva.
• Signature Headgear: She usually wears her nerve clips even when not piloting an EVA, which keep her Girlish Pigtails in place. The fact that she still wears the clips even when she's off the clock shows how closely tied her identity and self-worth are to being an EVA pilot. They're so strongly associated with her that she'll still be drawn with them in various Alternate Universe spin-offs.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: Whenever Kaji is around, Asuka is clinging onto him and trying to get his attention.
• Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Implied. Much of her Pride is tied up in a firmly held belief that she should be admired by everyone. Whenever that doesn't seem to be the case, all of her personal insecurities immediately start flaring up. She takes it very personally when Rei reacts to her attempt at grandstandedly introducing herself with annoyed indifference (the way Rei reacts to pretty much everyone), and it marks the beginning of her (very much one-sided) feud with her. Later in the series, when she feels rejected by Kaji and Shinji, her sanity outright starts to erode.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Her abrasiveness is essentially an emotional armor she wears to cover up her loneliness and depression. Due to severe childhood trauma, she has a hard time trusting people and uses her harsh side like a mask to push them and keep them away because she is frightened of opening up.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Zig-zagged with the manga: Shinji does save her from the Mass Produced EVAs and defeats them, leaving her alive to see Third Impact first hand. However, instrumentality causes her and the rest of humanity to dissolve into primordial goo.
• Stepford Smiler: Despite her haughty and hard-nosed go-getter attitude, she is very lonely and miserable under this surface and is also very bad at dealing with slights; both real and imagined. With the mounting stress and mental pressure she experiences up over the series, due to feeling rejected by Kaji (and Shinji), and eventually being surpassed by Shinji in sync scores, she struggles to maintain this surface, despite the cracks in it becoming increasingly apparent.
• Stock Shōnen Rival: While she doesn't really have an actual rival (she perceives Shinji and Rei as such at times, but that's all in her head), Asuka's character in general bears all the hallmarks of a classic Shonen Rival character. She's a Child Prodigy and Arrogant Kung-Fu Girl who is introduced as cooler and more elite than the main character. She has a similar backstory to the main hero, but her different reaction leads to contrasting personalities between the two of them. Early on, she has a strong aversion to teamwork. She belittles the protagonist as beneath her, and then takes it very badly when he catches up to and eventually overtakes her. She displays Lancer-like dynamics with the main hero as she presents an alternate set of values. She's extremely competitive and obsessed with 'winning'. The only abnormality is that Shinji is so passive and non-competitive that all of Asuka's attempts at instigating a rivalry fail instantly.
• Survival Mantra: After waking out of a catatonic state and being placed inside her EVA, underwater, with hundreds of special ops soldiers - who are packing tanks, attack helicopters, mortars, and Mass-Producing EVA machines — specifically hunting her with murderous intent, she whispers — then screams — this simple desire:
  "...Don't want to die. Don't want to die. Don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die..."

T-W

• Tantrum Throwing: Though it does not occur on-screen, the occasional shot of her room in the latter half of the show, when her mood and psychological state is at its most unstable, shows that is it filled with broken pieces of teacups, fashion magazines with several pages either torn out or filled with furious scribbles, and pillows with their stuffing partly ripped out, points towards the fact that she evidently often vents her anger this way when in private.
• Tareme Eyes: Despite being a Fiery Redhead with a harsh and extremely mean attitude, Asuka has downward-slanting blue eyes. This is meant to show that despite her outside attitude, inside she's just as hurt, fragile and insecure as Shinji.
• Team Prima Donna: Although she is a very good pilot when not in the middle of a mental breakdown.
• The Tease: In the manga's take on Asuka and Shinji having to room together to synch themselves for the battle with Israfel, she teases Shinji after coming out of the shower (apparently) wearing only a towel, giving him a good look at what of her bust isn't covered and then making a show of taking off the towel. Turns out she was dressed under it, and she laughs herself silly at Shinji's freaking out at her boldness.
• Teen Genius: A college graduate at 13 (what degree she got, however, is never stated)... except that it doesn't count for much; see Worthless Foreign Degree below.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomboy to Hikari Horaki's Girly Girl, which is the most stable relationship Asuka has in the entire series. Though Asuka isn't that much of a Tomboy, being a Hot-Blooded Tsundere, she's still more masculine then Hikari Horaki.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Wears one infrequently in extracanonical material. Most notably, she wears her hair in a very long ponytail◊ when in her plugsuit in the -ANIMA- light novels.
• Took a Level in Badass: Okay, so in the end she got beaten in a rather horrifying manner by the MP Evas in End. That doesn't change the fact that when she breaks out of her Heroic BSoD she kicks some serious ass for a few glorious minutes. This being NGE, naturally it is immediately undone in a horrifying fashion.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • In the manga, where, following the events of Volume 4, she's much more Jerk with a Heart of Gold than a full-on jerk.
  • Even more so in -ANIMA- where she's mellowed out considerably and has a personality similar to Shinji, until she mutates and fuses with Unit 02.
  • In her campaign in the PS2 and DS versions of Ayanami Raising Project, Asuka is considerably nicer than usual (especially towards the player character) and mostly shows her harsher side via the anime-based events, although her character can evolve in different ways.
• Trauma Conga Line: Has it just as bad, if not worse, than Shinji stemming from Parental Neglect, and culminating in Asuka being Driven to Suicide.
  • In episode 15, at a time when she feels rejected and ignored by her crush Kaji, she makes an ill-devised attempt at getting some affection from Shinji by goading him into kissing her, only for it to disastrously fail due to a combination of Asuka's convoluted and mixed signals, Shinji's own abysmal self-esteem making it that much harder for him to pick up any cues at all, and holding Shinji's nose to prevent his breathing from tickling her which suffocates him. Later in the episode, she realizes that Kaji has gotten back together with his former flame Misato, rubbing salt in the still-fresh wound.
  • Then come episodes 18 and 19, where she makes abysmal showings against Bardiel and Zeruel due to a moment's distraction in the former's case and the latter's extreme durability and overwhelming power, dealing a heavy blow to her pride as the self-proclaimed #1 Eva pilot; her defeat at the latter's hands is made worse by how Shinji, her supposed inferior, fared much better against the Angel and would have probably defeated him single-handedly had Unit 01 not run out of power... which was rendered moot when the Eva went berserk soon after and proceed to kill and devour Zeruel, in the process recording an unprecedented synch rate of over 400% by Shinji that Asuka would never be able to reach.
  • By Episode 22, her synch ratio has significantly worsened due to her increasing emotional turmoil, which gets accentuated when Arael mind-rapes her by exhuming all the memories of her childhood traumas as well as her recent humiliations and forcing her conscious mind to confront them all at once, sending her into a full-fledged freak-out as she can no longer deny the harsh reality; that Rei, the "windup doll", is the one who ends up saving her only added insult to injury, as not only does she hate Rei, but knowing Rei was ordered to save her instead of Shinji saving her at his own free will as well as Gendo's refusal to sortie Unit 01 to help her gives off the impression that Asuka's well-being is both "inconsequential" and "expendable" compared to the safety of said Eva. In the aftermath, Asuka rejects Shinji's attempt at consoling her, and by episode 23, has run away from Misato's apartment and takes refuge in Hikari's home, skipping school and spending all her waking time playing video games in a desperate attempt at escapism; when Hikari vainly tries to cheer her up at night, Asuka feels too ashamed of herself to do anything but face away from her and cry. She's later sortied to help Rei against Armisael, only for her to be unable to even move Unit 02 due to her synch rate having hit rock-bottom in the wake of her mental violation by Arael. At this point, Gendou sees fit to lift the freeze on mobilizing Unit 01 when he refused to do the same for Asuka against the 15th Angel.
  • The final straw that broke what little remained of Asuka's sanity is when she's finally told of Kaji's death by Shinji. As Evangelion Chronicle establishes, during Arael's attack she is crushed when the Angel makes her face the fact that Shinji shares the same space in her heart as Kaji. That makes it even harder to listen from Shinji's lips about Kaji's fate.
• Troubled Abuser: Deconstructed. As much as she treats others like dirt (Shinji in particular), Asuka is a very troubled young woman who deals with severely low self-esteem and trust issues with others as a result of a dysfunctional background. However, this still doesn't justify her behavior, which not only drives away the people she wants to connect with but also leads to Shinji becoming insecure enough to initiate the Third Impact.
• Troubled, but Cute: She's a dysfunctional, extremely troubled loner and easily one of the cutest characters in the series along with Rei.
• Tsundere:
  • Deconstructed and later subverted in the anime. She mostly pretends to be gentle around most people, but her anger, haughtiness, and combative attitude come out full force around Shinji. She does have some feelings for him, but neither of them are open people and are very bad at communicating their true feelings. Due to her refusal to form a real emotional bond with Shinji, as well as her continuing to blame him and others for her own bad behavior and inability to control her own actions, her harsh treatment of Shinji only gets worse the more time they spend together.
  • It's more played straight in the manga, where Asuka is shown to be capable of being genuinely nice to Shinji, albeit very brief and in rare moments.
• Ungrateful Bitch: She usually shows no gratitude to those who help her. Her response to Rei rescuing her from her Mind Rape near the end of the series is by saying she would prefer to die instead.
• Unknown Rival:
  • Her relationship with Rei has elements of this in the original show. Asuka is very vocal about her dislike of Rei, while Rei barely acknowledges Asuka's existence. While much of this is fueled by their contrasting personalities, Asuka's dislike markedly increases as Rei develops an interest in Shinji.
  • Some of Rei's internal dialogue indicates that she actually does view Asuka as a rival for Shinji's attention, but this being Rei, she never treats Asuka as such or even realizes that she does secretly view Asuka as such (yes, Rei's mindset is that screwed up). The manga takes this further, especially during Rei's mental confrontation with Armisael.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Shinji. They're attracted to each other, but their mismatched personalities and coping mechanisms make them essentially incompatible, causing them to fail to convey their feelings for each other.
• Unstoppable Rage: In her battle with the Mass-Production Eva Series in End of Evangelion, she's so hopped up on a combination of joy from discovering that her mother's soul had been in her Eva and watching over her all along and sheer fury that she essentially goes into a battle lust, tearing through her enemies one by one. It works out for her... until she finds out the hard way that the weapons they were wielding are replicas of the Spear of Longinus, which retain its property to punch through otherwise nigh-impregnable A.T. field barriers like a hot knife through butter.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: According to her flashbacks, she was rather sweet compared to her current teenage self.
• Villainous Breakdown: Her whole character arc is a slow-acting one where she increasingly loses her patience and sanity as she gets defeated more and more in battle and her self-confidence gets shattered, including her worsening attitude and abusive behavior towards Shinji. If her entry on Tantrum Throwing is anything to go by, she's had several catastrophic meltdowns. By End of Evangelion, she straight-up loses it completely and reverts to her base instincts upon waking up from her Angst Coma; a berserk, shrieking madwoman who just wants everyone and everything around her to die horribly. By the end of it all, after having been gruesomely killed by the MP EVAs and willing herself back to life, Asuka is left bedridden on the outside and dead on the inside, reduced to a catatonic, blank slate.
• Waif-Fu: Her first appearance in the manga involves gratuitous handsprings during a fight scene.
• Weakness Turns Her On: In a sense. Asuka is drawn to Shinji not just because of his mild-mannered, meek, and sheepish demeanor and need for approval, but also, perhaps mostly, because he is completely authentic in this behavior. Shinji is essentially mirroring a side of her that she does her damnest to hide from others, but he is completely open about it, and it is indicated that Asuka on some (maybe subconscious) level admires him for having the courage to show the vulnerability that she herself is unable to. But true to her conflicted nature, it is also what makes her so frustrated with him, because he reminds her of everything she considers weak and pathetic in herself.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!:
  • It is clear that at least some of her meanness towards Shinji stems from her wanting him to be more assertive and be able to stand up for himself while viewing his apologetic and withdrawn behavior as an undesirable trait, and her belief that Misato's acceptance of this behavior only serves to enable it. She embodies the trope completely during the episode 26 fantasy sequence where she is his childhood friend.
  • With its changes in their personalities, the manga makes this the default state of the Asuka/Shinji dynamic since the conflicted romantic angle doesn't really come into play. She can be a major brat to him and he's not afraid to turn it around on her. However, when things are on an even keel they seem to be more comfortable around each other than in the anime.
• What Is This, X?: Her catchphrase, "Anta baka?!", is translated as "What are you, stupid?" in the ADV dub.
• Wife Husbandry: Inverted and subverted. Asuka is the closest thing Kaji has to a daughter; Asuka desires Kaji obsessively, but despite Asuka's continued advances the most Kaji ever does is let her down gently.
• Wolverine Publicity: Aside from the usual, copious amount of marketing she and Rei get, Asuka was extensively marketed for Evangelion 1.0 despite not even appearing in the movie except for a couple of seconds in the after-credits preview. She was even marketed as one of the main characters of the movie's official video game, with her original series Unit-02 and all (despite the fact that the preview showed an early version of Unit-02's Rebuild design). Asuka would make her actual debut in the following movie (with her last name changed to "Shikinami").
• The Worf Effect: Despite starting out with the highest sync rate and being described as a very talented and competent pilot, she is also the one who suffers the most defeats on the battlefield, which eventually severely worsens her confidence and erodes her psychological stability, causing her sync rate to drop drastically.
• Worthless Foreign Degree: Despite her Teen Genius status, when she moves to Japan her college degree is worthless (much to her chagrin) and she ends up back in high school where, due to the language barrier, she barely breaks even.

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