Asuka Langley Soryu

Template:Infobox Neon Genesis Evangelion character Asuka Langley Soryu (惣流・アスカ・ラングレー, Sōryū Asuka Rangurē) is a 14 year old 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.

Description

Asuka is designated as the Second Child ("Second Children" in the Japanese versions) of the Evangelion Project and pilots the Evangelion Unit 02. Her ethnic background is three-quarters German, one-quarter Japanese; although she is a native of Germany and was raised there, 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.

Family

Her mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, who was probably half-Japanese, half-German, was a scientist of GEHIRN's German branch of the Evangelion Project. She went insane after a "contact test" (in much the same manner as Yui Ikari's death) and began to believe that Asuka's doll was her real daughter while refusing to acknowledge the real Asuka, referring to her four-year-old daughter as "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.

After Kyoko's suicide, Asuka's German father remarried a doctor named Langley. This new mother is immediately repelled by Asuka's defensive nature, and finds herself unable to become attached to her. While talking to Shinji, Asuka states that she doesn't hate her stepmother, but she feels as if she could never replace her real mother.

Because her father quickly married again after Asuka's mother's death, Asuka gathered that her father's tears for her mother were false and an insult to her memory. From that day on, Asuka promised herself that she would never cry again. This causes her to repress a great deal of emotions, not to mention the emotional scarring that came from her mother, leaving her twisted and vulnerable towards the end of the series.

Character

Asuka is proud, strong, and has a very high opinion of both her appearance (particularly her recently "busty" body) and her skill as an Eva pilot, which could be characterized as a superiority complex. However, this personality is a front that protects a very vulnerable and insecure girl, a side which the viewer sees in her dreams or thoughts. She is often violent and intrusive of other people's space, especially Shinji's. She also has a strong need to be self-sufficient and not rely on anyone for help, and has a great deal of difficulty dealing with her self-perceived failure when she does need help; as her seiyuu Yuko Miyamura wrote of her experiences playing Asuka:

But every time I tried to draw myself in closer synchronization, Asuka would never allow herself to synch with me. Even in the end, she would never step across the line and draw closer to me. One day, I figured out that there was a well in Asuka's heart.

Thus her relationship with Shinji is one of the core aspects of the series, and affects both characters on multiple levels (see next section).

Her best friend is her class representative, Hikari Horaki. Although Asuka and classmate Toji Suzuhara constantly butt heads, she gives Hikari advice about pursuing Toji. Asuka is very openly infatuated with Ryoji Kaji, her former guardian after her mother passed away, and makes a number of advances toward him which he politely refuses. For this reason she envies her and Shinji's guardian, Misato Katsuragi, especially after Misato and Kaji rekindle their romantic relationship. The Director's Cut of episode 24 also shows Asuka violently confronting Shinji and saying he's lying when he tells her that Kaji is dead.

Asuka is an exceptional Eva pilot, with a high synchronization ratio, and unlike Shinji, she is proud of her Eva status. In battle, she is very aggressive and confident, which works both for and against her as the series progresses. After being defeated in battle by the Angel Zeruel, Asuka's self-confidence (and, correspondingly, her synch ratio and effectiveness as a pilot) begins to dwindle, culminating in 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 Unit 02 again until The End of Evangelion. With Unit 02 submerged in a lake and bombarded by depth charges, Asuka declares that she does not want to die and, in a moment of clarity, realizes that her mother's soul is carried within the Eva and has been protecting her all along. She regains her self-identity, engages and defeats the JSSDF forces, and is later confronted by the Mass Produced Evas, Units 05 through 13. During the battle, she successfully disables all nine opponents; however, Unit 02's power runs out, and the MP Evas' S² Engines allow them to remain functional even after being severely damaged and/or mutilated. They proceed to eviscerate and dismember Unit 02 using the Lance of Longinus replicas, thus causing Asuka's body to actually suffer the wounds inflicted to the machine and apparently killing her (this is debated, as the Entry Plug is never seen being destroyed). During this assault, Asuka is briefly able to reactivate Unit 02, but only enough for it to move its arm slightly, nowhere near the full "berserker" mode that Shinji is able to achieve. She returns at the conclusion of the movie, when Shinji rejects Instrumentality.

Asuka's interactions with Shinji

Throughout the series, Shinji carries out a deceptively straightforward love-hate relationship with Asuka, who is going through puberty and deeply confused and uncertain:

The thing I would like to say to the friend in my heart is, "Asuka, you're just a 14-year-old kid, aren't you?" 14 is a time of life when you are thrown against the wall of life. You are forced to learn. It's puberty, where you decide what kind of life you're going to live, right?"

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, likewise, is attracted to Shinji both sexually and romantically, and seems to enjoy flirting with and teasing him sexually at numerous points in the series. It is later revealed that these seeming "taunts" are actually a desperate attempt on her part to make Shinji be receptive to her. She simultaneously seems both allured to and repulsed by Shinji's meek and submissive, yet caring nature. Due to her own personality disorders, primarily her vehement denial of being dependent on anybody, she cannot allow herself to admit that she wants attention, and even affection from Shinji, and instead seeks it out by bullying him. Because of a number of reasons, not the least of which being his own inferiority complex, Shinji fails to recognize Asuka's harassment for its true intent, and only thinks worse of himself for being the subject of it, which in turn upsets Asuka even more, and confuses Shinji. She 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. Much of her resentment for Shinji is derived from the very fact that he is not receptive to her advances, or as she states (internally) in the Director's Cut of Episode 22, "You're worthless... You won't even hold me!" In Evangelion fanfiction, Asuka and Shinji are often paired as a couple, despite the conflicts their personality disorders cause. This pairing has also made its way to the manga versions of Girlfriend of Steel 2 and Shinji Ikari Raising Project.

In The End of Evangelion, Asuka and Shinji's relationship comes catastrophically 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. He accidentally pulls loose her vital sign monitors, exposing her breasts; he masturbates to this sight, but is horrified and disgusted with himself for doing so. His guilt and increased self-loathing add to his previous traumas and cause him to become so uncaring of his own existence that he does not attempt to resist when soldiers try to kill him. This forces Misato to save him and to try to rouse him from this state so that he can escape the GeoFront in Unit 01. As Instrumentality begins, Shinji enters a mental fugue 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, while also revealing his true feelings for Asuka ("I want to stay with you, Asuka, and be with you... forever.") Asuka denies his pleas, attacking (in her view) the selfish nature of his plea. Shinji loses control and strangles her. The depiction of Asuka in this scene is very likely Shinji's perception of her, rather than Asuka herself.

However, in the film's finale, 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). She does not physically resist him, but instead lifts her hand to stroke his face - incidentally, as Yui had done just moments before. At this he collapses, weeping, onto her chest, and as the film ends she finally utters her (in)famously ambiguous line, "気持ち悪い。" ("Kimochi warui", translated into English in the dub as "How disgusting", and as "I feel sick" in the subtitles). The exact meaning of the symbolism in this scene, as well as the intended meaning of Asuka's final words, are 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. The box art for the DVD release of The End of Evangelion depicts Shinji and Asuka, side by side, looking out over the ruins of their world. It is implied that this occurs very soon after the final scene.

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 now that the Third Impact has ended. This argument posits that Asuka's eyes are still blue, only appearing brown like Misato's because of the notably red lighting of the environment, and that the bandages simply coincide with the injuries she suffered while battling the mass produced Evas. This argument is backed up by color analysis of the cel of that scene, which was later published as a card.

Manga version

Adaptation by Sadamoto

File:199999713197.jpg

Asuka on the cover of Volume 4

In the manga adaptation by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Asuka is somewhat tamer than her anime counterpart. Though still overbearing, egoistic and even physically violent at times (seemingly even more so than in the anime), she's on slightly better terms with Shinji. She first appears in volume 4 of the series. In both the cover artwork for the manga and other color works by Sadamoto, Asuka is drawn with strawberry blonde hair, rather than the brown-red of the anime.

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 this manga, it was only briefly mentioned in a video clip about her shown by Dr. Akagi Ritsuko to Misato Katsuragi, 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 Unit 02 while she fights the Angel. In this manga, Shinji, Toji and Kensuke first encounter Asuka at an arcade, where she is unable to grab the toy she wants from the machine she is playing and furiously begins to kick the machine. Asuka then notices the boys staring at her and demands a "viewing fee" from them for seeing her panties (although in the manga, she demands a small monetary fee, as opposed to the anime in which Toji's "viewing fee" is a slap across the face). She and Toji begin to quarrel, and then Asuka accidentally bumps into a thug and is threatened by his gang. Asuka then proceeds to single-handedly take on - and defeat - the entire gang. Shinji is punched in the face by one of the thugs during the melee, and not until he arrives at NERV headquarters does he learn that the girl he has just met is in fact Asuka.

In the fight against Israfel, instead of staying in Misato's apartment, she was put in a special room with Shinji, which was monitored using a camera by Misato. Also, in this 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.

Shinji Ikari Raising Project

In this manga version, Asuka is a childhood friend of Shinji's. Although she still makes fun of him, she's also shown to have romantic feelings for him. As such, she was jealous when Rei joined them in school. Here, she shares some similarities with Love Hina's Narusegawa Naru. Like Naru, Asuka's been peeped at by Shinji. (On one occasion where she wore a kimono, she unwisely allowed Shinji to rest his head on her lap. For the "accident", she gave the boy a slap.).

In a flashback sequence, she is shown comforting Shinji when they were little kids.

Trivia

• 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 nearly completed Nazi aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Her first name comes from Asuka Saki (砂姫明日香, Saki Asuka), who is the main character of a Japanese comic "SuperGirl Asuka (超少女明日香, Cho-Shojo Asuka)" written by Shinji Wada (和田慎二, Wada Shinji). Her mother's first name, "Kyoko", also comes from the comic's character Kyoko Aoi (葵今日子, Aoi Kyoko). "明日 Asu" means "tomorrow" and "今日 Kyo" means "today" in Japanese.
• In the Super Robot Wars series of games, Asuka often butts heads with equally hot-headed and intelligent Kouji Kabuto, the pilot of Mazinger Z and Mazinkaiser. She is also implied to have developed crushes on famous heroes, such as Char Aznable (in the guise of Quattro Bageena) and Amuro Ray. However, the writers of the Super Robot Wars are evidently believers in Asuka and Shinji's suppressed feelings for each other. For example, in Super Robot Wars Alpha, Asuka jealously seizes a bouquet of roses Shinji meant for Lynn Minmei. In Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, she snaps Shinji out of his depressed state during the battle with the Eva-05 series by declaring that she could not be with someone who'd simply lie down and die.