Asuka Langley Soryu
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is a fictional character from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion movie. Her surname is romanized as Soryu in the English manga and Sohryu in the English version of the TV series, the English version of the anime movie and on GAINAX's website. Although her name would seem to be pronounced AH-soo-kuh, in the series and everything else it is pronounced AH-skuh because of the Japanese language.
Description
Asuka Langley Soryu, one of the main characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion, is designated as the Second Child ("Second Children" in the Japanese versions) of the Evangelion Project and pilots the bright red Eva Unit 02. Her ethnic background is three-quarters German, one-quarter Japanese, and is a native of Germany; she was raised there, but her nationality is American. She is a child prodigy and has a university degree as a teenager, though it is not specified what field her degree is in. She is characterized by her fiery red hair and equally fiery temper. She is NERV's most consistently competent pilot, a fact on which she prides herself greatly, though her skills are no match for Eva 01's berserker mode (Shinji, 01's pilot, is usually catatonic in this state, although it can be assumed that his mind partially merges with the EVA, as shown by his complete assimilation during the 400% incident battling Zeruel).
Family
Her mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, was the half-Japanese, half-German head scientist of NERV's German branch of the Evangelion Project, but went insane after a test and began to believe that Asuka's doll was her real daughter, even refusing to acknowledge the real Asuka, calling the poor four-year-old "That girl over there". She eventually hanged herself and the doll, which Asuka discovered when she went to tell Kyoko the good news that she had been chosen to become an Eva pilot. From that day on, Asuka promised herself that she would never cry again.
After Kyoko's suicide, Asuka's German father remarried a woman, a doctor by the name of Langley. While talking to Shinji about her she states that she doesn't hate her stepmother, but she feels as if she could never replace her real mother.
Character
Like the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu, her namesake, Asuka is proud, strong, and has a high opinion of herself, which could be characterized as a superiority complex. She is often violent and offensive of other people's space, especially Shinji's. Her feelings for him are violently suppressed by bossing him around and battering his ego, yet sexually teasing him at the same time. Despite the fact that she's only in her very early teens she seems very proud of her recently "busty" body. She seems to take pleasure in teasing Shinji with her breasts on more than one occasion in both the anime and manga. She also initiates what is probably Shinji's first kiss early on in the series.
Asuka acts in this manner because she needs to feed her voracious yet unstable ego. This is also her way of shutting others out of her life, often using her blustering character as an offensive AT Field. Her personality could also be characterized as a kind of identity reinforcement; she loudly boasts of who she is in the hope that no one will ever forget or confuse her for something she's not, a mistake which would effectively warp her identity (as was the case with her mother).
Her best friend is her classmate and class representative, Hikari Horaki. Asuka is also very openly infatuated with Kaji Ryoji, her former guardian after her mother passed away, though he politely turns her down on several occasions. For this reason she displays envy towards her and Shinji's guardian, Misato Katsuragi, as it becomes increasingly clear that Misato and Kaji are romantically involved. The Director's Cut of episode 24 also shows Asuka violently confronting Shinji and saying he's lying when he tells her that Kaji won't be coming back.
Asuka is an exceptional Evangelion pilot, and unlike Shinji, she is proud of her Eva status. She has a strong synchronisation score, although never exceeding the Berserk climax that Shinji's EVA-01 achieves. This is particularly true in The End of Evangelion, where she uselessly struggles with her EVA's powerless controls, hoping it would enter Berserker status. She does manage to briefly reactivate her EVA, but she is defeated after a long battle with the Mass EVA Series.
Asuka suffers a mental and emotional breakdown after she is forced to relive the painful memories of her past by the fifteenth Angel, Arael. She loses the will to live and is incapable of piloting EVA-02 again until The End of Evangelion. With EVA-02 bombarded by depth charges, Asuka realizes she does not want to die and, in a moment of clarity, realizes that her mother's soul is carried within the EVA and protects her. She regains her self-identity and enters into battle with the production series EVAs, units 05-13. During the battle,the extremely angry Asuka completely destroys all nine of these EVAs; however, they resurrect themselves just as EVA 02's internal batteries run out. They proceed to eviscerate and dismember EVA-02, and it appears as if Asuka is killed. She returns at the conclusion of the series when Shinji rejects Instrumentality.
Role in Shinji's character development
Throughout the series, Shinji carries out a deceivingly straight-forward love-hate relationship with Asuka. Shinji is attracted to Asuka, but is unable to truly express his feelings for her. For the most part, he is friendly but also meek and submissive when around her, although he occasionally confronts her when her attitude becomes too much to bear. Asuka usually treats Shinji very rudely, often referring to him as "stupid", and bullying and acting spiteful toward him. However, she also seems to enjoy teasing Shinji and flirting with him, especially in the episodes just after her introduction, and expresses some frustration when Shinji doesn't take the bait. She also initiates her and Shinji's kiss, and although she acts disgusted afterward, the Director's Cut of episode 22 shows both that the kiss meant more to her than she let on and that she was frustrated with Shinji's failure to be emotionally receptive to her. She also seems to be very jealous of Shinji and Rei's relationship, which deepens her disgust toward Rei and fuels her venom toward Shinji, especially in the later episodes of the series.
In The End of Evangelion, Asuka and Shinji's relationship comes to the forefront. Almost surprisingly, her influence on Shinji in the final instance of Instrumentality during Third Impact is more important than Shinji's own mother's, whose absence had until then been his primary psychological trauma, along with the emotional absence of his father, Gendo Ikari. At the start of the movie, Shinji is shown with Asuka in her hospital room, begging her for help and trying to rouse her from unconsciousness. As Instrumentality begins, Shinji enters a mental state in which he and Asuka are back in Misato's apartment. Again, he begs Asuka for help, claiming to be afraid of Misato and Rei. Asuka denies his pleas, however, attacking (in her view) the selfish nature of his plea. Shinji loses control and strangles her.
However, in the film's finale, entitled "ONE MORE TIME: I need you," as Shinji learns to accept himself and embraces humanity in spite of the pain that inevitably comes from human interaction, essentially stopping Third Impact, he appears on a beach with none other than Asuka. He tries to strangle her again (this time in person as opposed to just within his mind), until she lifts her hand to stroke his face, coincidentally as Yui had done just minutes before. The exact meaning of the symbolism in this scene is unclear, and heavily debated. As the series ends there, the specifics of her subsequent life are left up to the audience. One theory is that she and Shinji assume the roles of the new Eve and Adam, but this is not necessarily true, since it is revealed earlier that all of humanity has the chance to return to physical form if they choose to do so.
One point of debate regarding the final scene is whether or not Asuka is actually Asuka, as she is drawn with brown eyes rather than blue, and her left eye and right arm are bandaged, a mirror image of the bandages that Rei had when Shinji first met her. This has led some to argue that the Asuka that is with Shinji is an amalgam of Asuka, Rei, and Misato. Others believe that these resemblances are merely figurative or coincidental, since souls can't combine with Third Impact ended. This argument posits that Asuka's eyes are still blue, only appearing brown like Misato's because of the altered lighting, and that the bandages simply coincide with the injuries she suffered while battling the mass produceds Evas.
Manga version
In the manga, Asuka is portrayed as somewhat tamer than her anime counterpart. Though still overbearing and egoistic at times, she's on slightly better terms with Shinji. She first appears in volume 4 of the series.There were many changes to the sequence of events concerning her. In the anime, her first fight with an Angel took up an entire episode. In the manga, it was only briefly mentioned in a video clip about her shown by Dr. Akagi Ritsuko to Katsuragi Misato, Rei, and Shinji.
Shinji's first actual meeting with Asuka also is depicted differently. In the anime, their first meeting is aboard the naval carrier Over the Rainbow, and Asuka allows Shinji into the cockpit of EVA-02 while she fights the Angel. In the manga, Shinji, Toji and Kensuke first encounter Asuka at an arcade, where she loses her temper when she is unable to grab the toy she wants while playing one of the machines. Subsequently, she accidentally bumps into a thug in the arcade and is threatened by his gang, and then proceeds to single-handedly take on - and defeat - the entire gang (Shinji was punched in the face during the melee). Not until Shinji arrives at NERV headquarters does he learn that the girl he has just met is in fact Asuka, an EVA pilot.
In the fight against Israfel, instead of staying in Misato's apartment, she was put in a special room with Shinji, which was monitered using a camera by Misato. Also, in the manga, her background is changed such that she's actually a test-tube baby. Her mother, being unable to have a child with her husband (who divorced her in the end), decided to buy a sperm and get herself impregnated. The result is Asuka. Her biological father is not mentioned at all, though Asuka claims that her biological father was a renowned scientist and said that the sperm bank is part of a eugenics program. However, despite her knowledge of her father's achievements, Asuka still suffers from an inferiority complex. In her mind, the circumstances of her conception mean that she is nothing more than spare parts or that she is artificial in nature (although she puts another spin on this while talking about it with Shinji, telling him, "I was born through the combination of an elite sperm and an elite egg. ... I was a chosen being, a special person."). The feelings of inferiority that accompany these opinions are what drive her to overachieve and overcompensate.
Miscellaneous
- In Evangelion fanfiction, Asuka and Shinji are often paired as a couple, despite her generally regarding him with restrained contempt and him regarding her with wariness and trepidation. Some fans claim that this very mutual repulsion and antagonism evidences a latent romantic attraction; hints dropped throughout the series seem to support this claim, especially (in Asuka's case) in the Director's Cut of episode 22.
- In artwork done by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Asuka is typically drawn with strawberry blonde hair, not the brown-red featured in the anime.
- As mentioned above, Asuka's surname comes from the Japanese WWII aircraft carrier Soryu. Her middle name comes from the American aircraft carrier Langley, also from WWII, while her mother's name refers to the almost finished German aircraft carrier Zeppelin. Her firstname comes from Asuka Saki(砂姫明日香), who is the maincharacter of a Japanese comic "SuperGirl Asuka(超少女明日香)" written by Shinji Wada(和田慎二). Her mother's firstname "Kyoko" also comes from the comic's character Kyoko Aoi(葵今日子). "Asu 明日" means "tomorrow" and "Kyo 今日" means "today" in Japanese.
- Despite the fact that Asuka's birthdate is generally given as December 4, 2001 (see Neon Genesis Evangelion timeline), her age is usually given as 14 in the anime and manga. If the character was in fact born on December 4, 2001, her actual age throughout the bulk of the series (which takes place during 2015) would be 13; since Third Impact is supposed to occur on or about January 1, 2016, she would only be 14 for about the last 'month' of the series.
| Neon Genesis Evangelion by Hideaki Anno |
|---|
| TV Series: Neon Genesis Evangelion |
| Films: [[Evangelion: Death and Rebirth>Death and Rebirth]] | The End of Evangelion | Revival of Evangelion | Live action film |
| List of characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion>Characters: Asuka | Gendo | Kaworu | Misato | Rei | Ritsuko | Kaji | Shinji | Toji | Yui |
| Evangelion (mecha)>Eva Units: Pre-Unit 00 | Unit 00 (Zerogouki) | Unit 01 (Shogouki) | Unit 02 (Nigouki) | Unit 03 (Sangouki) | Unit 04 (Yongouki) | Unit 05 | Mass Production Evangelions |
| Angel (Neon Genesis Evangelion)>Angels: Adam | Lilith | Sachiel | Shamshel | Ramiel | Gaghiel | Israfel | Sandalphon | Matariel | Sahaqiel | Iruel | Leliel | Bardiel | Zeruel | Arael | Armisael | Tabris | Lilim |
| Video Games: Girlfriend of Steel > Girlfriend of Steel 2 | Evangelion 64 | Shinji Ikari Raising Project | Shinji and Good Friends |
| Misc: "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" > Expanded Universe | Glossary | Human Instrumentality Project | Media | Red Cross Book | Timeline | Topics | [[Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days|Angelic Days Manga]] |
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