otaku central
ASUKA
Seiyuu: Yuko Miyamura
Soryuu Asuka Langley , 14, First City Junior High School, Eight Grade, Class A. "Why so gloomy? This is the gorgeous Asuka greeting you! You should appreciate your good fortune. I'm the most popular girl in school!"
SECOND CHILDREN
Soryuu Asuka Langley is bold, brash, and arrogant. She is also highly capable, though she usually fails to get the job done and must rely on either Shinji or Rei to save her. She is proud to be an EVA pilot and doesn't understand why the other children are not.
She is the Second Child and the designated pilot of EVA 02, the first production model, assembled in Germany at Third Branch and tested in the Pacific against the Sixth Angel. Her unit was created for actual combat conditions and, in her words, "the first true EVA. The Final model." She was born in Japan, but raised in Germany. Her mother committed suicide when she was a little girl. Her father married again, but the new woman, who she calls mother and smiles to in feigned joy, means nothing to her. Early on, Misato Katsuragi was her Gehirn guardian. Asuka hated her then, perhaps because Misato was placed in a position of mother, just after her real mother's death. Later, Kaji became her NERV guardian for her highly eventful trip to Tokyo-3.
These days there's only one person she loves -- in purity and in lust -- and he loves another.
But there is a boy who she likes. Kind of. Her relationship with Shinji is difficult to define. They dance around the issue through competition, angry words, jealousy, and feigned disinterest.
Though she doesn't understand love, she has grasped on to a more adult view of love and relations. That's one reason why she focuses on Kaji instead of on boys her age. Kaji is kind and handsome and attentive, though in a big brotherly way.
She also uses Kaji to fill in for the missing father in her life. Though she tries to engage him as someone she could actually date, he refuses to connect with her on that level. She calls him and pretends she is being attacked to get his attention. She tries to entice him with a skimpy bathing suit. She kisses him and tries to force physical contact (new footage on LD), telling him that she's an adult. She hangs on his arm as they walk together. She walks into his office without announcing herself. She hugs him. She says she would prefer to live with him -- although she tells Misato that girls and boys above the age of seven should not live together. She wants him to look at her, look at her, look at her!
"Why are boys such perverted jerks? Why can't they be more like Kaji?"
Boys her age just don't know how to be, well, men. Shinji comes closest. He's an EVA. pilot. He's very capable once you get him to DO something. That's another problem. He's sometimes capable when she is not. And that is most definitely unforgivable. It's hard to like a guy who's so reserved you forget he's around. It's hard to like a guy who surpasses you as a pilot without even trying. It's really hard to like a guy who occasionally pays too much attention to the other pilot.
- All her neediness stems
from the loss of her mother and father. Her mother died in 2005. And though
her father is alive, she has long since ceased to live with him.
In Germany, Soryuu Kyoko Zeppelin and her husband worked for NERV as well. Asuka's father, Zeppelin, was probably a man much like Gendou Ikari, likely marrying Kyoko for what she could do for him. He used his wife in the same kind of experiment, which had "claimed" the life of Yui Ikari. Unlike Gendou, Zeppelin openly mourned her, but he married again not long after his first wife died. Asuka saw his false tears and refused to cry.
Kyoko: "Your papa hates your mama. He doesn't need me anymore. No, he didn't love me to begin with. He didn't need me at all. So, let's die together because Papa doesn't need us."
During the early stages of the E Project, Asuka's mother, who was a researcher, devoted all her time to work and not to her young daughter.
Then one day Kyoko, Yui Ikari, and Naoko Akagi made contact with Lilith for their separate entry plugs. That contact was known as the E Incident in the newspapers, because Yui came up missing and they needed to find fault with Gehirn. In truth, contact is exactly what the researchers and scientists on Project E were trying to bring about.
Contact meant a kind of pseudo-Complementation, because for a time their AT Fields were released and they were able to merge to different degrees with Lilith, a bit of which was contained within the EVA. entry plug.
"Dolls are made by humans in their own image. If God really exists, we might just be dolls to him."
But the loss of a human's AT Field means a loss of the barriers containing the mind and soul too. This would mean that regaining that barrier could cause mental instability for the untrained -- and truly on Lilith or something Lilith like could possibly understand the complete use of an AT Field.
When Naoko was put back together she seemed fine. (Isn't that what Rippley says in Aliens when the face-hugger is removed from Kane's face?) But in reality, she was not as mentally sound as she had been. Her obsession with Gendou Ikari proves that. Besides the fact that she killed a child and then herself.
Yui chose to stay within the entry plug completely, thereby keeping her mind and soul in tact. Thereby assuring Mankind a future.
Kyoko quickly degenerated, believing Asuka to be the doll she cradled in her arms. She died a year after the E Incident. She ripped the head from the doll she called Asuka, asking her daughter to die with her. And then she hanged herself.
Asuka: "Then my mama was hanging from the ceiling. She looked so happy. But I hared how she looked. I don't want to die. I don't want to disappear. I hate boys! I hate my papa and my mama! I hate everyone! Nobody care about me. Nobody stays with me! I don't want to depend on anybody! But I hate it all the same! It's a pain! I don't want to be alone."
Because her mother went insane and rejected her by killing herself, because her father became indifferent to her, because her stepmother could not love her, Asuka needs to be loved. She comes to believe that if people are paying attention to her, then she is loved.
As Shinji requires the praise of others to know he is alive, Asuka needs the attention of others, their admiration and adoration.
She believes that people will love her because she pilots EVA. She seeks more attention by becoming an excellent pilot and she explodes when Shinji or Rei Ayanami do better at piloting. When she can no longer connect with her unit, she loses herself.
She cannot fight anymore, so she feels worthless, that she is garbage, and that no one needs her. She seeks her self-worth through the eyes of others.
She fears being alone. She loses who she is if no one is around to see her. That's why she pilots EVA., for the attention, the praise, the external validation.
Stepmother: "I'm sorry, I just don't like her."
Asuka's father: "What happened to you, the capable doctor."
Stepmother: "I told you, I'm a human being before I'm a doctor."
Father: "But how can a trained professional like you --."
Stepmother: "She acts too much like an adult and she rejects me absolutely.
Sometimes she even scares me. Haven't you felt it too?"
Father: "No, and in any case, you are now Asuka's mother."
Stepmother: "That may be true, but I'm your wife first."
Father: "Both duties are concurrent."
Stepmother: "In from a social perspective, yes. I can quit being her mother at anytime. But you can never quit being her father."
Father: "Well, I guess so."
Like the other motherless children, she is insecure and in need of something. That need is most pronounced when (in the new footage) she tries to seduce Kaji. Ripping open the bodice of her dress to display her breasts, she yells in his face, begging him to look at her.
Asuka is a smart girl. Though she has trouble reading the kanji, she is multilingual, conversant in Japanese and German with some knowledge of spoken English. She graduated from college in 2014. She cares nothing for the staid education of the normal eighth-grader.
But then First City Junior High School is not simply a venue for middle school education. If it were, then likely someone like Asuka, who has already completed college would not be there.
Once she learns all the kanji, she could be operating NERV. Junior high school gives her one thing she absolutely needs to survive, constant attention. Her best friend is the class rep, Hikari Horaki, who's modest, kindhearted, and responsible.
Asuka's good-looks don't reveal her personality, masking her arrogance, her immaturity, her insecurity, and her pain. She's fashioned herself to be the best at everything, to be an adult, to be seemingly flawless in aspect and performance. Each moment is an opportunity to display her superior skills.
"A fight should be clean and elegant, without waste."
But her chances to showoff her skill often lead to the pain of failure. Both Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami protect her at the times when her recklessness and bravado result in the impairment of her unit. For their skill, she calls the latter a mindless doll and the other Mr. Big Shot.
In truth, Asuka is a most excellent pilot and in the END, her skill and determination will delay the inevitable for a short while. She is truly poetry in motion when she fights the mass production model EVAs to the Bach's Air. Her battery cable is shot before the encounter with the angelic-looking EVAs reaches her. She has exactly three minutes to defeat the nine X2 types, giving her 20 seconds for each one. That she is not successful does not detract from how hard she fights or how much she wants to win.
It is during this great battle when she finally realizes that her mother's presence is faintly within her EVA. Unit. When EVA. 02 runs out of battery power and is speared by nine fake Lances of Longinus, it still manages to move because of Kyoko's desire to protect her daughter.
Kyoko within the entry plug: "I won't let you die yet. Let's die together."
Asuka: "Mama, you were here. Now I understand the meaning of AT Field. You were protecting me. You were watching me. You were with me. Mama!"
