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Advice and Trust [NGE]

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NotYourParents said:
A Tsundere without a Dere is just an asshole.
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Jerk With a Heart of Jerk.

The point is that Asuka was presented as an outwardly Tsun Tsundere, but the show presented these insights into her character to explain WHY she was that way. It may have been hard to pick out those moments, both because Asuka was intended to deconstruct the archetype, and because her outward personality made it hard to TELL that her clumsy attempts to seek emotional contact weren't just a misperception. She openly CLAIMED she was unfeeling and uncaring, so it's natural to assume she was just playing with Shinji's feelings, even that that is clearly not the impression you are supposed to get. Of course, it took Arael and Instrumentality to clarify that.

You have to watch out for Flanderization as well. As Strypgia says, Asuka wasn't as physically violent as she is given credit for. She really only lashed out at "perversion", and as I've said previously, I think that was just because that's the outward image she wanted to project.
 
She also probably lashed out at perversion particularly due to what she could overhear her father doing a room over while her mother was alternating between not noticing and denigrating her followed by the suicide.
 
Yes, but the trouble is it was almost never true, and the show also shows that abuse as one reason she and Shinji never really bonded in canon.
 
cyberxiii said:
I bring that up to mention the elephant in the room: the idea that Asuka's got a hidden soft side. Does she really?

This has bothered me since the day A&T first started; it feels too much like whitewashing her to say yes. The whole point of her was to show how messed up in the head you'd have to be to act like the cliche tsundere in action. On the one hand, yeah, she kind of obviously wanted Shinji's attention (thermal expansion, anyone?) but on the other hand she spends most of the series literally kicking his face in. And no, that's not just slapstick, that had real consequences towards the end.

A&T's averted most of this because the premise is "Well, what if her feelings WERE genuine?" but still, it bothers me.
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Strypgia said:
The premise for A&T was not "What if her feelings WERE genuine?", but "What if Shinji gave her the sign she wanted that it was safe to lower her walls?" What I changed was opportunity, not motivation.
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While i agree with Stryp in that Asuka does have good spots, and is capable of love and all that vanilla stuff, it matters little if you bury it so deep the sun never hits it. If Shinji never slipped(or whatever he did during the kiss)? We'd get canon Asuka, and Shinji. Heck, even after they do get together Asuka can and was a massive female dog every now and then. So your both kind of right and wrong. She does have vanilla in her but it does her little good cause she doesn't really use it.
NotYourParents said:
And as stated, Asuka is a deconstruction of a Tsundere archetype. She literally wouldn't work as a Tsundere without a Dere.

A Tsundere without a Dere is just an asshole.
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Simon_Jester said:
I think the thesis here is that Asuka isn't showing how messed up in the head you have to be to act like the cliche tsundere. She's showing how messed up in the head you become because you acted like the cliche tsundere.

What's being deconstructed is that you can get your happy ending while caring about people AND being constantly obnoxious and distant and verbally or even physically abusive to them, as tsundere characters tend to do.
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Actually i think it's "how messed up in the head you become" and "how messed up you have to be" and every other way you can deconstruct a Tsundere. Asuka became a massive ass hole because of her past, she made things worse for herself by being a massive Tsundere, how much people hate being treated like crap, how exhausting it is to try to help a Tsundere, just to name the most obvious. Heck Eva does a much more thorough job of deconstructing a Tsundere then any thing else it deconstructs.
 
The point I was getting at was my dislike of how many ways people whitewash Asuka or pretend her backstory automatically makes her a good person.
 
Whilst I wouldn't say Asuka could be counted among the most pleasant of people, it's not like there isn't anything salvageable in there. I admire writers who portray her as not the nicest person around but develop her out of being a bit of a bitch (and if she can develop, see that she might have been wrong with how she acted, that probably means she's not a "horrible" person by any means) or those who rework her background to make her a bit less..."abrasive?"
 
Fate/Online said:
Actually i think it's "how messed up in the head you become" and "how messed up you have to be" and every other way you can deconstruct a Tsundere. Asuka became a massive ass hole because of her past, she made things worse for herself by being a massive Tsundere, how much people hate being treated like crap, how exhausting it is to try to help a Tsundere, just to name the most obvious. Heck Eva does a much more thorough job of deconstructing a Tsundere then any thing else it deconstructs.
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Keep in mind that Tsundere is not something you "become" as a goal, it's the inevitable conclusion of a normally sweet and eager to please child becoming a massive ass hole. The only difference in the "type" of Tsundere is how deeply that wounded child is buried, and how cut off it is from the outside world. It's a defense mechanism, and sadly, very much true to real life.

Sure, the archetype is popular, and it's used a lot in fiction (and not just Anime) because it leads to conflict, which drives the plot. (And postpones resolution of the romantic plot) So we're sort of starting from the final result. But you had to get there from the little girl who had to watch her mother be sacrificed to SEELE and their plans for World Domination.

Now, in A&T we're seeing Asuka turn into the other type of Tsundere, who still has that core of steel, but the sweet side is her default. The point is that both are Asuka, it's just this Asuka got the opportunity to heal, and the other didn't. In fact, it can be said that every time that other Asuka even got the chance to lower her walls and risk reaching out to someone, she was slapped back HARD, eventually being disemboweled in what should have been her finest moment. Sure, a lot of it was her own fault, but she literally had circumstances working against her in order to force her to a breakdown.

cyberxiii said:
The point I was getting at was my dislike of how many ways people whitewash Asuka or pretend her backstory automatically makes her a good person.
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Gryphon said:
To be fair, though, the amount of stories that claim to stick closer to canon and demonize her for no real good reason are a dime a dozen, too.
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I think this is the inherent problem with trying to pass judgement on a fictional character. You have to remember that this character is that way because the author made them so.
 
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Asuka had the misfortune of also getting negative responses when she actually tried to be better.

She tried to open up to Misato who just tells her to bury her past and leave it at that. She tries to befriend Rei and fumbles it and essentially gets told to fuck off hard. After that she made sure they went to a place with vegetarian dishes and make sure Rei comes along for the celebration dinner and Rei doesn't try to reach back.

There were reasons for these, but they weren't helping.

Also, can we stop calling the extremely traumatized 13 year old a bitch? She's overblown in her aggression in fanon anyway. Plus its kinda cringey.

After she actually got mean instead of a mix of teasing fails and freak outs she was mostly just passive aggressive and self isolating more than anything and never hit Shinji after that point.

Anyways, please look up borderline personality disorder. It'll give some insight.
 
AlanMidnight said:
Keep in mind that Tsundere is not something you "become" as a goal, it's the inevitable conclusion of a normally sweet and eager to please child becoming a massive ass hole. The only difference in the "type" of Tsundere is how deeply that wounded child is buried, and how cut off it is from the outside world. It's a defense mechanism, and sadly, very much true to real life.

Sure, the archetype is popular, and it's used a lot in fiction (and not just Anime) because it leads to conflict, which drives the plot. (And postpones resolution of the romantic plot) So we're sort of starting from the final result. But you had to get there from the little girl who had to watch her mother be sacrificed to SEELE and their plans for World Domination.

Now, in A&T we're seeing Asuka turn into the other type of Tsundere, who still has that core of steel, but the sweet side is her default. The point is that both are Asuka, it's just this Asuka got the opportunity to heal, and the other didn't. In fact, it can be said that every time that other Asuka even got the chance to lower her walls and risk reaching out to someone, she was slapped back HARD, eventually being disemboweled in what should have been her finest moment. Sure, a lot of it was her own fault, but she literally had circumstances working against her in order to force her to a breakdown.
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I never meant it as a goal.
More like just post pone plot. I can't talk about anything except anime/manga but Evangelion uses the Tsundere as anything other then a cheap gimmick.

That's the thing though. Outside of comedies like Love Hina, most Tsunderes aren't anywhere near as bad as Asuka. And it wasn't circumstances, it was always Asuka herself. Everytime Shinji, arguably the only one who'd actually like to help her/get to know her(outside of Kaji, who was busy doing other things), had a chance to do so he slammed that door shut herself.
And it's not a "core of steel", but a deploy-able wall that's meant to protect. A "steel core is very different from a Tsundere, and i ain't talking about a Yamato Nadeshiko either. ...Well not just that.
 
cyberxiii said:
The point I was getting at was my dislike of how many ways people whitewash Asuka or pretend her backstory automatically makes her a good person.
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I'm trying not to do that too much, and keep showing some signs that while Asuka has managed to change course away from who she'd be in canon thanks to Shinji, she's still got a lot of traits leftover from then. She's still quite happy to rub it in the faces of her rivals at school that she has the boyfriend they wanted, and they don't, she barely tolerates Ritsuko solely because Rei asked her to, and she isn't shy about her opinions on Commander Ikari.

She's a much happier and better person than she was at this point in canon, but she's very much still a bratty, egotistical teenage girl who is more than a little arrogant about the fact she's a certifiable genius, really good looking, and an elite Pilot vital to the protection of the world. She can be quite sharp to people outside her in-group, though she's improving as time goes on, not least because she is well aware Shinji doesn't like it when she's that aggressive to others for no good reason.

So overall, yes, she's still got bad behavioral habits, but she's mature enough to be aware of them, and is trying to change them. Reproachful looks from Shinji and Rei have serious effects on her, since she wants the people she loves to be happy, and knows when she's like that they're not. She's still less than a year removed from the isolated and lonely girl who was terrified that she was worthless and unlovable, but she's on an upward course now. By the time she's 25, Asuka will hopefully be able to look back and frankly admit 'Oh yeah, I was a utter idiot when I was a teenager, because, well... teenager. It's kind of what they do.'

Update done, betas liked. Will post in 9-10 hours when I can get to my own computer with the art.
 
Is their a PDF version of this so I can get WAFF when I have no internet?
 
Fate/Online said:
I can't talk about anything except anime/manga but Evangelion uses the Tsundere as anything other then a cheap gimmick.
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(Assuming I am not misinterpreting the meaning of this line)

I don't think it is a cheap gimmick. First of all, Asuka isn't the only character in this story who is tragically flawed. You have Gendo, Ritsuko, and SEELE, who have stepped well beyond the Moral Event Horizon. Then there is Misato, Kaji, and the other various adults, who are absolutely atrocious role models. You have the teenagers, who are actually pretty good kids beyond being perverts and/or social climbers. (i.e. typical teenagers) And of course we have Rei, who is... Rei.

And our so-called protagonist is probably the MOST screwed up character in the cast. No one escapes being broken, it is a fact of life in the NGE world.

Second of all, the whole point Anno was trying to make is that people DON'T talk to each other. We all know that he was depressed during the writing of the series, and that he to an extent brought into it his own experiences with relationships. So I don't think he was trying to say, "Look how awful these women are, poor Shinji is so mistreated." I think he was trying to show that they, too had problems communicating, because ultimately "the fault lies not with our stars, but with ourselves". The Tsundere archetype was chosen for the same reason he decided to make the show a Giant Robot anime, it was just a simple shortcut to get people to understand the character. But he had bigger plans for Asuka than to just make her another robot jock.

I think it's a mistake to assume that ANY character in NGE is a gimmick or an unnecessary character. Well, maybe except for a certain Mary Sue in Rebuild, but actually if Rebuild is a deconstruction of the NGE fandom...

Strypgia said:
She can be quite sharp to people outside her in-group, though she's improving as time goes on, not least because she is well aware Shinji doesn't like it when she's that aggressive to others for no good reason.
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I think she is still quite closed off to the outside world, but she is becoming more and more open and affectionate with those in her inner circle that she trusts, entirely due to the progress she has made with Shinji. But you've got to become part of that "family" first.
 
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AlanMidnight said:
(Assuming I am not misinterpreting the meaning of this line)

I don't think it is a cheap gimmick.
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Sorry, that was a grammar error. Dam auto correct spell check and using a moble device. I meant to write every anime/manga outside of Evangelion uses Tsundere as a cheap gimmick. Like you said they usually just exist to postpone plot, and are the one the guy usually gets with in the end, or just used for cheap comedy, which stops being funny after a while.
 
Fate/Online said:
Sorry, that was a grammar error. Dam auto correct spell check and using a moble device. I meant to write every anime/manga outside of Evangelion uses Tsundere as a cheap gimmick. Like you said they usually just exist to postpone plot, and are the one the guy usually gets with in the end, or just used for cheap comedy, which stops being funny after a while.
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I could point out another, but I don't think that's necessary. :D

But yeah, the Tsundere archetype usually IS one dimensional. And you're right, the violent side without the sweet side to balance it out gets tedious after a while. Asuka is an extreme example because, as I said, NGE is an extreme environment. And she is mellowed a great deal in Rebuild, from what I understand.

I don't mind that I misunderstood since I'd wanted to make the point about Anno's personal experiences. :D Not that I think there was an Asuka or a Rei in his life, but they are archetypes that would fit with his story.
 
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AlanMidnight said:
I could point out another, but I don't think that's necessary. :D

But yeah, the Tsundere archetype usually IS one dimensional. And you're right, the violent side without the sweet side to balance it out gets tedious after a while. Asuka is an extreme example because, as I said, NGE is an extreme environment. And she is mellowed a great deal in Rebuild, from what I understand.
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Actually it isn't even cause Eva is an extreme environment. Even at her least Tsun she's still a pretty good deconstruction, though very inconsequential when compared to the rest of the Eva plot. The same for Rebuild. ...On the other hand Eva's plot can be summed up as deconstructing everything anime/manga, including character archetypes(Misato, Rei, Shinji, Gendo, and Kaji, all are meant to deconstruct a character type) so that's like having a T-bone steak without meat on on the T-Bone.
 
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AlanMidnight said:
But yeah, the Tsundere archetype usually IS one dimensional. And you're right, the violent side without the sweet side to balance it out gets tedious after a while. Asuka is an extreme example because, as I said, NGE is an extreme environment. And she is mellowed a great deal in Rebuild, from what I understand.
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Asuka basically got reduced to a side character in Rebuild, for 2.0 at least.
 
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