Neon Genesis Evangelion

You know, at the risk of bringing hell upon me, I've always found Asuka to be a rather overrated character, both by the fanbase and her creator.

Yes, she went through a really tough and tragic past, and I can sort of see why that made her the way she is. However, many of the other characters also had tragic upbringings and went through tough times, yet they never took it out on others. Shinji lost his mother and was abandoned by his father, yet he still does his best to look out of his allies and help whenever possible. Misato lost her father during Second Impact, and still does her dang hardest to console and support Shinji, even if she's not all that good at it. Rei was raised by Gendo, who couldn't give two rips about her, was constantly reminded of her status as an unfeeling and completely subservient Half-Human Hybrid, but still didn't lash out at the others aside from that instance where she slapped Shinji, and was fully willing to give her life to save the latter, even going so far as to give control of Third Impact to him because she cared for him.

Obviously, the reasons for their actions and the like could be seen as questionable (Shinji wants to be seen as worth something, Misato is trying to mature, and Rei doesn't have any reason to care for her existence), but even so, they still do their best, and don't try to hoist their problems onto others. What's Asuka's excuse for being all nasty towards others?

"Oh boo hoo, my mother committed suicide in front of me and completely forgot about my existence." I know that comes across as extremely mean, but nearly everyone in this series has severe parent issues. That's no excuse for being a fricken b-word.

I personally don't think it's a valid excuse for being a bitch, but I do consider it an extenuating circumstance that should be counted as a majorly mitigating factor in any assessment of her character, especially since she's still in early adolescence (and thus under the full force of puberty's hormones, i.e. significantly more prone to irrationality and impulsiveness over rationality and cool-headedness) by the time the worst of her manifests.

Also, the nature of her trauma is quite different from, say, Rei's own issues. Hell, I don't think we can legitimately say that Rei has any actual psychological traumas to speak of; she has serious issues, yes, but none that are genuinely traumatic. There's also the differences in base personality; Asuka strikes me as having always been a passionate person, while Rei seems to have always been quiet and contemplative even as a (biological) child; the former kind of person is far more likely to "explosively" and/or "violently" (for a given definition of these words) lash out in response to psychological trauma. And that doesn't even begin to touch the possibility that two people with seemingly similar or even identical personalities might in fact have vastly different levels of tolerance/resilience towards certain kinds of trauma that nobody could ever realize exist before they suffer that kind of trauma and react accordingly.

TL;DR the human mind is very complicated and often unpredictable, and it's not really fair nor reasonable to make such judgements as you are making.

Besides, most of the other similarly traumatized characters are already well into adulthood (and thus have already "worked" off the worst of their impulsiveness before the shit hit the fan for everyone).

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 24th 2018 at 7:11:24 PM

All of the children have some way of preventing people from getting close to them. Hers is just the most abrasive.

I think it is also important to notice that Asuka has a second layer to her trauma that Shinji simply doesn't have. Namely, that whole "Mommy made me promise that I would die alongside her" business.

Asuka was simply too younger and desperate when she made that promise to fully comprehend the gravity of it, but she later came to understand the meaning of it. The lesson she drew from this realisation was basically "If I allow myself to depend on another person, it will literally kill me."

Man, that sure is rough. Though really, what she needs imo is less someone like Shinji and more someone like Yondu.

I would love it if someone gave her a speech like the above somewhere in FINAL. Because it really would be something she needs to hear, at least imo.

Does Rebuild Asuka need to hear it, though? She honestly seems like she's grown up past a whole bunch of her issues (mentally, at least, not physically). I mean, Christ, she managed to deliver an insightful and effective mini-therapy session while in Beast Mode. Come to think of it, her entire fighting style in 3.33 was this pretty cool mix of outward lunacy and inward control, letting her prioritise mission objectives and work effectively as part of a team while tearing into her enemies like a rabid monkey.

Brace yourselves for Third Impact, because the original series (yes, you read that right) is coming to Netflix worldwide next Spring!

And apparently, it’s a huge deal because unless you got yourself out-of-print DVD’s or attempted other dodgy methods, there wasn’t any legal way to watch NGE until now...

(Oh, and we're also getting Evangelion: Death (True)2 Death & Rebirth and End of Evangelion as well. Hope you like questioning your own existence! )

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Nov 26th 2018 at 11:19:38 AM

I first watched this series via renting the DV Ds from Netflix incidentally. I was never the same person since.

I stayed up when I wasn't supposed to and watched it on Adult Swim.

Here's some more appropriate music.

You know, I wonder what's the big deal of this "waifu" war between Rei and Asuka. Apparently, everyone on Twitter is either dreading it or writing big essays about it since the announcement on Netflix.

Has this happen before? I am only familiar with the latest Rebuild series, not the actual original TV series (except the manga which I enjoy reading from time to time).

Edited by Shadao on Nov 29th 2018 at 12:24:13 PM

EVA was the most overanalyzed piece of animation in history for at least a decade. Even taken away from its considerable merits as a show and as a psychological study it is astounding just how deeply the show has been analyzed and how deep people think it is.

The who is better, Rei or Asuka (with Misato getting a look in now and then and EVA-01 as the Joke character) has been going strong in Eva fandom since it started, and is still going strong in Japan well enough to be a plot point in last spring's Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku. As that argument has been going strong for 24 years by the time of the netflix release, the slightly tongue-in-cheek reponse is that it will still be going on in another quarter century, thanks to the Netflix release

Edited by ScrewySqrl on Nov 29th 2018 at 10:27:45 AM

I'm more concerned about all the people expecting the Fandom Rivalry between Eva and Voltron to go nuclear.

Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Nov 30th 2018 at 11:11:55 AM

Voltron is a dead franchise at this point. People upset about a pairing aside, by the time EVA does air it will be a distant memory.

What exactly was the story behind the Voltron ship war? I've heard go it but I don't really understand how it began.

Amanda Winn-Lee, the original VA for Rei and the ADR of the original dub, confirmed the rumor that NGE will be getting a completely new dub for Netflix.

Shit. What's the odds they didn't bother getting the rights for "Cruel Angel's Thesis" or "Fly Me To The Moon" either? They've pulled shit like that before; just ask the Inuyasha fandom.

Well. I wasn't expecting them to go for a brand new, made-from-scratch cast. I guess the ADV dub is either too dated, too pricey, or too hard to find to use here. Or something.

That new cast is gonna have some big shoes to fill...

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Nov 30th 2018 at 7:45:16 AM

The dub may also not work with modern audio quality - I remember one property that had to be redubbed because it turned out that the original cast had left the windows open while recording.

Asuka's English VA Tiffany Grant has started a campaign to have the original cast come back for the Netflix dub. Though I’m not sure how much traction it’ll get...

On a related note, remember how Amanda Winn Lee was bummed about the impending Evangelion redub?

Apparently, she’s met with the dub director and has since said the anime’s "in good hands."

Winn Lee doesn’t say who's directing the Netflix dub (probably an NDA thing), but does referred to the director as "she."

Anyone got any ideas who that director could be? Only ones I can think of are Wendee Lee and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn...

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Dec 5th 2018 at 7:36:05 AM

Anyone know if the giants from Nausicaa were an influence on the Angels? I think I recall reading this but I'm not sure. They seem very similar in any case.

Well, Anno did animate the God Warriors, sooo...

Complete random comment here. You know what Anno was thinking when he first made the series, right? Something about a warning against the isolated otaku and wanted to sort of push them out of their comfort zone, may or may not have backfired.

With that in mind suppose there was a real Rei Ayanami in the world today. There's some eighteen year old Rei who is not a clone, hadn't had the traumatic experience as her anime version. To her Second Impact is 9/11, she has the same personality as she had from the show, minus the medical experiments or being trained to be a child soldier. With what Anno was angling for in mind, just what would a real and modern day Rei make of the world today?

Rei's personality is pretty much entirely based around being a purpose-built, disposable tool. Remove her backstory, you remove her personality. She's not a reflection of the audience, she's a reflection of their fantasies. I mean, Christ, she's literally a clone of the protagonist's mother.

Edited by Iaculus on Dec 30th 2018 at 3:40:18 PM