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Evangelion Ideas Thread: You Can (Not) Rebuild

*cough* SEELE are terrible, and deserve to encounter just consequences for their actions, but Rule 2 is a thing.
 
Susano said:
Wait. Doesn't "Shinji", the name, literally mean truth? I think I remember something like that.
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As others said, it depends on the kanji, but 'Shinji' can also be 'faith' or belief'. 'Gendo' can be 'anger'. And 'Ikari' can be 'limited'. In canon they used the kanji for 'Anchor', and spelled out Shinji and Gendo with katakana, to make it even more indeterminate what their names meant, but their names still do 'rhyme' with 'Limited Anger' and 'Limited Faith'.
 
Ars Poetica said:
Honestly, the Sohryu/Shikinami difference is still baffling to me. Is this a manga thing?
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No.
Soryu is in series and manga
Shikinami is in Rebuild.

And Shikinami is quite blatantly a different character. She plays with a doll (cue Soryu freak-out), and she has to be basically forced by Misato to go out with Kaji (to that aquarium). Soryu is a narcist extrovert who wants to finally get attention, and who lives out her superiority/inferiority complex among other people, always wanting to be first, always wanting to be lauded by people. Meanwhile, Shikinami is a bitter introvert, who doesn't give a fuck about people or social contacts and just wants to be left alone. It's actually quite funny how Rebuild turned the one extrovert pilot... into another introvert.

I'd say Shinji has stayed the same. Depressed, low self-worth, always blaming himself, withdrawn - wishing to establish contacts to people, but fundamentally unable to. That is the same whether in series or Rebuild. But it are in fact two different Asukas. Anno has even said that the name was changed explicitly as a sign that we can't make assumptions about Shikinami. So we can't even tell if Shikinami has the same background story as Soryu - and considering she played with a doll, probably not.
 
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TBH Shikinami, like the rest of the Rebuild characters, feels like a continuation of Asuka's arc after EOE. Their histories have changed but they've moved on from where they were, in positive ways (such as Asuka's much easier time attempting to connect with shinji in 2.0) and negative ways (Gendo's doubling down on being The Worst Dad). But they still keep important elements from the originals, such as Asuka's desire to be seen as an adult and Shinji's desperate desire for affection and approval.
 
Susano said:
Soryu is a narcist extrovert
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Was she really an extrovert?

She gets out barely more than Shinji. Her outings that don't involve Shinji were running to Hikari's and then to an abandoned house to die, the Kaji shopping trip, and that date she didn't even make it halfway through before bailing on.

I always read her as an introvert who has a good mask for public stuff she can use when need be. The kind of person who can do public things just fine but then needs to re-charge a fair amount. I'm like that actually, so it might be projection.

She wants praise and attention from other people which requires interacting, but 90% of the time we see her not at work or school is her laying around the apartment watching TV with a bag of chips in comfy clothes.
 
trob030490 said:
Was she really an extrovert?
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Well, I think those terms relate to how people interact with other people. And the way Asuka acted at school and NERV, yes, I would say she acted extroverted. Which makes her an extrovert, as far as I'm concerned. The mask is the definition here. Of course, part of the problem is that we only ever see three classmates of them, so we really don't have all that many examples of their typical bearing in school. So I'd say that episode where Asuka first shows up in school is meant to be indicative about how she generally acts in school.
 
Susano said:
Well, I think those terms relate to how people interact with other people. And the way Asuka acted at school and NERV, yes, I would say she acted extroverted. Which makes her an extrovert, as far as I'm concerned. The mask is the definition here. Of course, part of the problem is that we only ever see three classmates of them, so we really don't have all that many examples of their typical bearing in school. So I'd say that episode where Asuka first shows up in school is meant to be indicative about how she generally acts in school.
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After her initial big splash she makes a grand total of one friend and she's the only one she meaningfully interacts with at school outside of Shinji from that point on.

She did the social thing once to set her status in the school on day 1, then settled into something comfortable with one person who reached out to her and stayed there where it was safe instead of ever reaching out to other people, like an introvert.

Not unlike how we can take it that Shinji only really interacts with her, Rei, Kensuke, and Toji.

Edit: If that was how she generally acts you'd think they'd show it extending past day one instead of settling into a tiny comfy social circle.

Edit2: I've often seen the terms used as one is energized by socializing and the other is ultimately exhausted by it rather than if a person can ever be socially bombastic even for a short period of time or not.
 
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As far as I understand Asuka Langley Soryu she is a very febble thing at core (as we see numerous times in the series) that is quite normal and maybe a tad introvert. However above that she normally wears her rude, extrovert mask as an shield against others. Her problem is that she maybe cannot longer really keep those two apart. The instance she has to deal with things she doesn't like the mask is used. When she then tries to put her down the mask has become such a habit that she no longer can think of another way to react.
In school the mask is constantly worn to seems super independent and strong with not even an real emphasis on making friends. Her friendship with Hikari on the other side is a result of the person behind the mask.

Shinji is similar but not the same. He also tries to use a mask however the image he true to project is as riddled with holes as Quicksilver from the Second Avenger movie.
He let's a lot more through than Asuka, but is still able to differentiate between himself and the mask.
 
I always had a certain read of something in Eva and I was wondering if anyone else was of the same idea.

So, it took Asuka months to get the Eva to move at all and years to work up to her current sync rate. Shinji however could immediately get 40something% and had a super high rate of growth following that that overtook her.

Now, there is that trope in anime where you have a super competent female character who is overtaken by the new guy protagonist because he's the chosen one or just a super talented wunderkind somehow and ends up as a love interest damsel. I hate that trope. I really do.


That trope, the one being made fun of here.

Anyways, I might think it's just that thing, but Asuka seems like she actually sees that bullshit coming and it absolutely disgust her. So, in a show that was apparently aware of that what was going on? Was Shinji just a contrived wunderkind anyway, or was it something else? Was she right when she thought the world was fucking her over compared to Shinji?

Well, I think she was.

I've seen Asuka bashing fics that seemed to think she just wasn't very good at this. But, do you all think the difference in sync rates was actually due to one of them involving syncing to a complete person with an agenda that required that high sync actively working from their end to sync and the other instead being one person trying to sync up with a soul split in half that was completely contradictory even to itself?

Was it the usual sexist trope that reduces cool female characters to weak dependents, or was it actually the female character actually had something working against her outside of herself that she had to overcome to get the same result in the system and it destroying her in the process? I think it might be that, or at least like to think it was that. I might be giving it way too much credit, but I'd like to think so anyways, and it'd fit with how Shinji gets praise for his increases while Asuka doesn't get a response and when she does start to drop instead of any concern or care Misato is just like "stop messing around and do your job, we don't have all day."

Is the system and the people in it actually supposed to be taken as unfair regardless of individual merit?

Edit: This wouldn't mean that Shinji doesn't work hard himself.

Just as in the job market, even if he's working really hard and has his own troubles, it doesn't mean someone else isn't trying to do the same and has even more things working against them in the system regardless of their own efforts and merit.
 
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trob030490 said:
Was it the usual sexist trope that reduces cool female characters to weak dependents, or was it actually the female character actually had something working against her outside of herself that she had to overcome to get the same result in the system and it destroying her in the process?
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I think what was working against her was her own insecurities as much as anything else. Asuka's often so desperate to prove herself that it ends up working against her, and she absolutely could not cope with the idea that she wasn't as good a pilot as she thought she was because her entire self-image revolved around it.
 
I might be going into fanon territory here, but I think Asuka's attitude with respect to synchronizing also works against her. She seems to think the pilot has to assert their will over the Eva, while she gets the best results in EoE when she realizes Unit-02 is inhabited by Kyoko's soul and opens herself up to her completely.

Either that's a wrong idea she came up with on her own and nobody bothered to correct it or somebody fed her that lie, but it's clear Shinji's attitude is rather different, and it gets results.

That she got to the point she did even with that handicap is a testament to her skill.
 
trob030490 said:
Was Shinji just a contrived wunderkind anyway, or was it something else?
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Shinji's mom was completely absorbed by Eva-01. Asuka's mom was a partial absorption, moreover, even though it's implied that Asuka's mom still fully ended up in Unit-02, her connection was kind of fractured. Of note, is when Asuka's mom is telling her to live at the end of EOE, you can still hear Kyoko still say "Die with me, Asuka."
 
Na7eY said:
Shinji's mom was completely absorbed by Eva-01. Asuka's mom was a partial absorption, moreover, even though it's implied that Asuka's mom still fully ended up in Unit-02, her connection was kind of fractured. Of note, is when Asuka's mom is telling her to live at the end of EOE, you can still hear Kyoko still say "Die with me, Asuka."
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It's been suggested that Kyoko ended up with what amounts to Dissociative Identity Disorder as a result of that.
 
trob030490 said:
I've seen Asuka bashing fics that seemed to think she just wasn't very good at this. But, do you all think the difference in sync rates was actually due to one of them involving syncing to a complete person with an agenda that required that high sync actively working from their end to sync and the other instead being one person trying to sync up with a soul split in half that was completely contradictory even to itself?
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Jake said:
I think what was working against her was her own insecurities as much as anything else. Asuka's often so desperate to prove herself that it ends up working against her, and she absolutely could not cope with the idea that she wasn't as good a pilot as she thought she was because her entire self-image revolved around it.
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It feels like both. Asuka is trying to synch with her mother's soul, which is broken in two and insane. Both parts seem to still love her, but one half wants Asuka to join her in death, which can't be helping.

At the same time, Asuka herself is trying to force the Eva to obey her, not opening herself up to it. It's like pushing a car when the parking brake is on: It can work, with huge amounts of effort, but it's the wrong way to do it.

And then Asuka's insecurities pile on: She's so desperately dependent on being the best, being the one people have to look at, that defeat is death, and even frustration and stagnation is unbearable. So the moment she stops 'winning', she gets worried and desperate, which only makes the problem worse, and it leads right into a negative feedback spiral.

Like @Turing Decidable said, it's really a testament to Asuka's skill and willpower that she managed to do as well as she did, despite things being stacked against her. Shinji's low-ego approach and the fact he was synching to an intact soul gave him a lot of advantages he had no idea about. Neither did Asuka, and her insecurities automatically lead her to thinking 'I'm losing to someone I should be better than... I'm worthless, useless, and everyone will abandon me, of course'.

In A&T, I've kind of unspooled some of that without it quite being explicitly intentional: Asuka knows what she's doing with trying to synch with her mother a lot more, and despite Kyoko still being in two pieces, Asuka has climbed to far greater heights in synch rate thanks to that, plus her insecurities being greatly assuaged by her relationship with Shinji. At the same time, Shinji's score is down some, because he's now uncomfortably aware his mother was a member of SEELE, and at the least partially implicit in Second Impact. Asuka is now easily ahead on synch rate and 'being the best Pilot', but has reached a point where she doesn't depend on that anymore for her psychological well-being, ironically because of that.
 
amitakartok said:
Strypgia, what do you think Asuka would be like if she would've been raised by loving parents?
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Well, if Yui's "no EVA vision" for Shinji during Instrumentality is anything to go by... not much different :V

But really, considering that the divergence would happen at age 4... in fact probably an earlier divergence needed to make Langley not a complete ass... me, I'd say it's impossible to determine. You'd basically end up with a completely different character.
 
amitakartok said:
Strypgia, what do you think Asuka would be like if she would've been raised by loving parents?
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Susano said:
Well, if Yui's "no EVA vision" for Shinji during Instrumentality is anything to go by... not much different :V

But really, considering that the divergence would happen at age 4... in fact probably an earlier divergence needed to make Langley not a complete ass... me, I'd say it's impossible to determine. You'd basically end up with a completely different character.
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I'd say at least some of the 'alt-world' Asuka still being a giant tsundere who can't spit it out is just Yui or Shinji not being able to imagine her any other way. :p

It's hard to say, since to be an Eva Pilot kind of requires losing your mother at some point just to qualify. And as Susano said, pretty much all we know about Mr. Langley is that he was a giant asshole who had no problem cheating on and abandoning Kyoko in an amazing hurry, which doesn't say a lot of good about his paternal behavior even if Kyoko hadn't had her accident.

It may sound a bit silly, but an Asuka raised by parents who loved her would possibly end up more like the girl we see in the Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga: still a bit tsundere (because telling your childhood friend you might love them is scary), but a lot softer and more social, without the crippling terror that she's unloveable and worthless driving her to create a mask of arrogance and bristling defenses.

Like Susano said, you'd even up with someone very different, because you're changing something that had a really deep effect on them. Just look at how different all the various 'canon' Asukas are already: Series, Manga, Rebuild, SIRP, Campus Apocalypse, Series Alt-World, A&T, DIRTT, Nobody Dies, and so on.
 
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Strypgia said:
you'd even up with someone very different, because you're changing something that had a really deep effect on them
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Yeah, I'm aware of that.

I was asking for insight due to something SCE-related I've been thinking of. Namely, SCE!Asuka is already markedly different from canon!Asuka in that her ego is actually real, earned and deserved, rather than a fake mask to hide a scared girl. But I was wondering what she would be like in an alternate timeline where she didn't lost Kyoko.
[...] I don't know how this timeline's Asuka would be anything other than an arrogant brat. I mean, in the primary timeline, she can back her attitude up with competence, which is because of all the training she went through, which is because of her wanting to join the military and track down Kyoko's killers. But since Kyoko didn't die in this timeline and consequently Asuka wasn't raised by a single father who had to leave her alone at home often due to the nature of his job and didn't have to move all over human-settled space and consequently not being able to make lasting friendships... how would Asuka's personality develop?
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Asuka is an extrovert; she likes attention, she likes showing off in front of people, she likes to flaunting her looks about. But extroversion doesn't mean healthy. Like seriously, you can be introverted and healthy, because what is a healthy amount of social interaction and connection varies per person, and you can be extrovert and still have problems.

Asuka has huge problems creating and maintaining meaningful relationships; She tries to seduce Kaji constantly, attempts to elicit Shinji for sex at least twice, deliberately makes a spectacle of herself in front of the school and generally acts like an attention seeking teenager who is neglected by her parents.

But an introvert? Not even close.
 
amitakartok said:
I was asking for insight due to something SCE-related I've been thinking of. Namely, SCE!Asuka is already markedly different from canon!Asuka in that her ego is actually real, earned and deserved, rather than a fake mask to hide a scared girl. But I was wondering what she would be like in an alternate timeline where she didn't lost Kyoko.
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Something like the SIRP!Asuka, I'd think. That Asuka knows she's loved, because SIRP!Kyoko dotes on her. So the root of her insecurities is removed. She might or might not still be as outwardly extroverted as Series canon, but it wouldn't be from a desperate need to validate her existence.

Overall, the answer is so wide open, it's mostly 'what does the story need?'
 
I'll add in that part of Asuka's problem might be her desire to be independent and live for herself. She didn't reach her maximum potential until she gave up on all that and just cried out to be saved. At least in the series, you don't seem to get to tap the Eva's true power unless you're willing to be a lost little child who needs their mommy.
 
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