Within the boundaries of politeness, I can only say that it does require a specific type of person to deal with someone like Asuka. You certainly do have to endure and wait out the initial hostility, but I've always considered endurance a virtue. Might also be a case of two leftovers finding some comfort in each other, I guess.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
Within the boundaries of politeness, I can only say that it does require a specific type of person to deal with someone like Asuka. You certainly do have to endure and wait out the initial hostility, but I've always considered endurance a virtue. Might also be a case of two leftovers finding some comfort in each other, I guess.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
Epilogue wrote:I am completely serious when I say that I knew someone like Asuka and cared a great deal about that person, and I mean triggered as in angered to the point of physical violence. I guess what really reminded me of personal memories was not just Asuka as a standalone character, but also how she interacted with Shinji, and their overall inability to voice affection. Watching NGE was actually like watching a replay of all the mistakes I made in how I interacted with the person I mentioned.
Well, the only advice I can give is to try and detach the criticism Asuka gets, be it reasonable or downright idiotic, from your personal feelings regarding this close friend of yours. Doesn't sound all that healthy my man.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
Epilogue wrote:Within the boundaries of politeness, I can only say that it does require a specific type of person to deal with someone like Asuka. You certainly do have to endure and wait out the initial hostility, but I've always considered endurance a virtue. Might also be a case of two leftovers finding some comfort in each other, I guess.
So you were like Shinji poo poo face and tolerated this abusive person enough to love him/her. That's unbelievable to me. I don't see how anyone could endure a butthole like Asuka in real life.:O I would probably attack them, throw things at them, push them, and drive them away.
Endurance is not always socially important. My mom has a sock or something called "Stay away from buttholes" lol.
I am autistic with trauma and can act up, too. Sometimes I don't understand people. You just got to explain things better to me so that I can understand.
Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
Redgirl01 wrote:So you were like Shinji poo poo face and tolerated this abusive person enough to love him/her. That's unbelievable to me. I don't see how anyone could endure a butthole like Asuka in real life.:O I would probably attack them, throw things at them, push them, and drive them away.
Endurance is not always socially important. My mom has a sock or something called "Stay away from buttholes" lol.
Well, I also have a hard time imagining that anyone above the age of eight would respond to every provocation thrown at them. It's all a matter of perspective, my friend. I do admit, though, that I let myself be pushed away in the end, but for reasons unrelated to our person in question. When I did let that person go, it was because I was basically letting go of every single person in my life aside from my mother and father.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
Epilogue wrote:Well, I also have a hard time imagining that anyone above the age of eight would respond to every provocation thrown at them. It's all a matter of perspective, my friend. I do admit, though, that I let myself be pushed away in the end, but for reasons unrelated to our person in question. When I did let that person go, it was because I was basically letting go of every single person in my life aside from my mother and father.
So how old was you and that person? Because there are people way older than 8 that would criticize other people for provoking them.
I feel sorry for you. You should get some therapy to know that you should not let people walk all over you. If they're bullying you, stand up to them and leave them alone. I don't know if you were in love with her or what but don't be around people who are always fighting with you. There's a lady I know that let's people walk over her too and she's getting therapy.
I am autistic with trauma and can act up, too. Sometimes I don't understand people. You just got to explain things better to me so that I can understand.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
I believe that forgiveness is considered a virtue in most of the world.
Asuka is unrealistic because she wants to be seen as an adult, no teenager has thought of that.
On the contrary, becoming an adult is the aim of childhood - how else is it going to happen? Much of the teen period is practice for the end result.
Redgirl01 wrote:around 13 or 14, I was starting to get over my trauma and become a better behaved person. So, that's why I disapprove of this show because these people had these traumas that occured ten years ago and still haven't gotten over them. Yes, they were really serious, but they still don't have the right to still be passive (Shinji), be a hot-headed histronic (Asuka), an emotionless girl who rarely reacts to anything (Rei), and a careless drunkard who doesn't have enough responsibilities for the kids (Misato).
People are different; people's traumas are different. You cannot simply say that someone has "no right" to respond differently to their own trauma then you did to yours. I'm sure that quite reasonably you wouldn't like another person telling you that you "should" have recovered even more quickly because they did.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
Redgirl01 wrote:I think Asuka is unrealistic and cliched because she is a tsundere and a spoiled brat, which are considered stock characters. Asuka is unrealistic because she wants to be seen as an adult, no teenager has thought of that. So with that, she is so interested in older men, she can't get along with boys her age.
I think you need to speak to people who may have had abuse or neglect in there lives because Asuka is a perfect example of what that does to you and how it causes you to repress your emotions and lash out at others because they have happier lives than you and you get really jealous. Your also desperate for any form of attention even if this attention is bad or negative just so you don't feel invisible, unwanted or like your fading away in to the background.
Also a another symptom of this is that you want love even though you don't know how to love and you mistake people's simple kindness as them maybe being in love with you which is what is happening with Asuka and Kaji its the reasons her crush has become so toxic and she offers herself to him (In the directors cut and manga). Add to this you can mistake sex as being love when there not the same and you want to grow up fast because then you'll be away from the abuse because then you can run away and have your own life and be your own person. Abuse and neglect robs people of there childhood and makes them age well beyond your years and it can give people depression for years afterwards.
Last edited by silvermoonlight on Tue May 02, 2017 5:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
As a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to be an adult. Childhood was restrictive, and I was unhappy. During grade school, I would often be reprimanded for, dare I say, being a kid? It was a lot of "be quiet and do good in school, otherwise you're not going to have a future". Puberty is never all that enjoyable an experience either. I told myself constantly that adulthood would be better, and so I wasted my childhood anticipating the future, one in which I would be fully realized and independent. I spent so much time striving for independence, that I stopped connecting with other people on a personal level; every interaction became strictly business and slowly I began weeding out my social circle. I also started becoming judgemental of others who weren't taking their lives so seriously, an arrogant position of elitism. When I finally became an adult, I quickly got a job and quickly started working full time while going to school part time to full time as well, pushing myself to succeed at the expense of a social life. It's only been recently that I've begun addressing my depression and anxiety and trying to learn to enjoy life.
I had a lot in common with Asuka at that age, particularly the strong need to be independent and recognized for my ability. I don't find it unrealistic at all for a young teenager to want to be an adult, and I honestly feel that it's actually quite common for many. On this level, Asuka certainly earns my sympathy.
Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
I was a middle school teacher (the Pilots' age) and I have a master's degree in education.
Yes, teenagers actually act like that.
Yes, teenagers actually act like that.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
Redgirl01 wrote:So how old was you and that person? Because there are people way older than 8 that would criticize other people for provoking them.
I feel sorry for you. You should get some therapy to know that you should not let people walk all over you. If they're bullying you, stand up to them and leave them alone. I don't know if you were in love with her or what but don't be around people who are always fighting with you. There's a lady I know that let's people walk over her too and she's getting therapy.
Well, I hanged around that person through middle school and high school. And what this kind of people do really isn't as much bullying as it is their own inability of expression. There are probably way too many people in this world who have problems with voicing affection, and this is just one manifestation of it. There is a fundamental difference between letting malicious people "walk all over you", and being able to look past another person's shortcomings and understand their real intentions. If anything, being able to enjoy people like Asuka is possibly the only good quality left in me at this point, and I really don't think it warrants seeking any sort of help.
Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
silvermoonlight wrote:I think you need to speak to people who may have had abuse or neglect in there lives because Asuka is a perfect example of what that does to you and how it causes you to repress your emotions and lash out at others because they have happier lives than you and you get really jealous. Your also desperate for any form of attention even if this attention is bad or negative just so you don't feel invisible, unwanted or like your fading away in to the background.
Also a another symptom of this is that you want love even though you don't know how to love and you mistake people's simple kindness as them maybe being in love with you which is what is happening with Asuka and Kaji its the reasons her crush has become so toxic and she offers herself to him (In the directors cut and manga). Add to this you can mistake sex as being love when there not the same and you want to grow up fast because then you'll be away from the abuse because then you can run away and have your own life and be your own person. Abuse and neglect robs people of there childhood and makes them age well beyond your years and it can give people depression for years afterwards.
What sort of abuse are we talking about here?
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What do you think Asuka had learned during Instrumentality?
We never saw what she went through during the Human Instrumentality since it was all shown through Shinji's perspective. So we may never know exactly what Asuka had learned from her experience or weather or not she had actually improved, or planning on making some self improvements.
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Re: What do you think Asuka had learned during Instrumentality?
Well, for starters, she learned through Instrumentality about all of Shinji's little jerk-off fantasies over her. (Unless she overheard him in the hospital.)
...Unless we want to include Asuka's journey through EoTV, we might be stuck there.
...Unless we want to include Asuka's journey through EoTV, we might be stuck there.
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Re: Is Asuka really deserving of sympathy?
On an individual level, especially from the pOv of a fellow teenager like her classmates, No.
"Bohoo she had a sad past" doesn't cut it, and neither do the "similarities" with other characters (that comprise their bad experiences & universal human challenged, not their personalities, reactions to or even perceptions of these experiences. ) that takes all the agency out of her hands. There's no one in this show who didn't have a sad past in some shape or form - and, say, Misato and Shinji showed themselves capable of mistakes or even uglyness under great stress, but Asuka is a bully who's awful to live with even under normal circumstances. Having a sad past and taking it out on others are 2 pairs of shoes, there's plenty of people with sad pasts who don't. Otherwise no one could ever be held responsible for anything because everyone has a motivation.
Besides, even if her actions are understandable, she has multiple REALLY callous moments (such as being gleefully flippant when misfortune befalls her fellow pilots) and her bad treatment of others does have an effect on them.
But once you look at it from a broader, bird's eye/ "adult" perspective though, you can't escape the fact that she's a child who got stuck in this situation & state of effed-up ness without ever asking for any of it, and is basically used by a larger scope organization as a tool until she breaks from the wear and tear, it might be different if she were older but she isn't. She's turned out awful but that's within the statistically normal/expected range for someone who was trained all their life to be a weapon, so there's tragedy potential in how she could have turned out different under other circumstances - also, in her ignorance about just how counterproductive her actions are.
WILLE!Asuka, though an adult, has a context too and that context is that she's been fighting a hopeless war for 14 years, in a cruel world that lost all time to bother with feelings or human cost, or at least it's easy to see how one would arrive at that. She IS technically fighting to protect humanity here - that doesn't make her awful treatment of Shinji okay (nor does the fact that she doesn't full on kill him, thats just "less worse than it could be"), but, she can't be judged by the standards of a cushy 1st world country, she basically lives in a warzone/jungle.
Like don't think one HAS but it's not surprsing that people do especially if they relate to her challenges, ultimately her character is a criticism of fucked up tendencies within our superficial, success-crazed and sexist society and at her age she's a product of it more than she's a perpetrator.
Also, lol at the idea that being an overly precocious teen is the unrealistic thing about her. It's literally the single most realistic thing. She's a 14 year old with a college degree & military experience who is somehow also model-levels of conventionally attractive, a good enough social player to archieve insta-popularity, and the backstory elements are a bit of a contrived pileup of what on their own may have been semi-realistic elements, not to mention the mad jumping skills and unrealistically effective assertiveness that everyone just plays along with.
Of course, that's besides the point, they're all stylized because they're fictional characters that are supposed to be metaphors. that underline/ highlight RL concerns so they're more visible and driven to catharsis.
But that's no more or less true that for, say, Rei, who despite the crazy sci-fi horror explanation behind her, is only a mild exxageration of the whole "socially inept shoolgirl" experience with very lifelike dialogue in places. (ovsly not minding being nekkind and using the word "orders" in those contexts is all symbolic/ beyond the realistic. Honestly, Gendo acts more stoic than her. )
In the end sympathy is to a degree a subjective feeling/response that is either triggered or not and it's not like there's a finite amount of it such that giving it to Asuka means someone else wouldn't get it.
"Bohoo she had a sad past" doesn't cut it, and neither do the "similarities" with other characters (that comprise their bad experiences & universal human challenged, not their personalities, reactions to or even perceptions of these experiences. ) that takes all the agency out of her hands. There's no one in this show who didn't have a sad past in some shape or form - and, say, Misato and Shinji showed themselves capable of mistakes or even uglyness under great stress, but Asuka is a bully who's awful to live with even under normal circumstances. Having a sad past and taking it out on others are 2 pairs of shoes, there's plenty of people with sad pasts who don't. Otherwise no one could ever be held responsible for anything because everyone has a motivation.
Besides, even if her actions are understandable, she has multiple REALLY callous moments (such as being gleefully flippant when misfortune befalls her fellow pilots) and her bad treatment of others does have an effect on them.
But once you look at it from a broader, bird's eye/ "adult" perspective though, you can't escape the fact that she's a child who got stuck in this situation & state of effed-up ness without ever asking for any of it, and is basically used by a larger scope organization as a tool until she breaks from the wear and tear, it might be different if she were older but she isn't. She's turned out awful but that's within the statistically normal/expected range for someone who was trained all their life to be a weapon, so there's tragedy potential in how she could have turned out different under other circumstances - also, in her ignorance about just how counterproductive her actions are.
WILLE!Asuka, though an adult, has a context too and that context is that she's been fighting a hopeless war for 14 years, in a cruel world that lost all time to bother with feelings or human cost, or at least it's easy to see how one would arrive at that. She IS technically fighting to protect humanity here - that doesn't make her awful treatment of Shinji okay (nor does the fact that she doesn't full on kill him, thats just "less worse than it could be"), but, she can't be judged by the standards of a cushy 1st world country, she basically lives in a warzone/jungle.
Like don't think one HAS but it's not surprsing that people do especially if they relate to her challenges, ultimately her character is a criticism of fucked up tendencies within our superficial, success-crazed and sexist society and at her age she's a product of it more than she's a perpetrator.
Also, lol at the idea that being an overly precocious teen is the unrealistic thing about her. It's literally the single most realistic thing. She's a 14 year old with a college degree & military experience who is somehow also model-levels of conventionally attractive, a good enough social player to archieve insta-popularity, and the backstory elements are a bit of a contrived pileup of what on their own may have been semi-realistic elements, not to mention the mad jumping skills and unrealistically effective assertiveness that everyone just plays along with.
Of course, that's besides the point, they're all stylized because they're fictional characters that are supposed to be metaphors. that underline/ highlight RL concerns so they're more visible and driven to catharsis.
But that's no more or less true that for, say, Rei, who despite the crazy sci-fi horror explanation behind her, is only a mild exxageration of the whole "socially inept shoolgirl" experience with very lifelike dialogue in places. (ovsly not minding being nekkind and using the word "orders" in those contexts is all symbolic/ beyond the realistic. Honestly, Gendo acts more stoic than her. )
In the end sympathy is to a degree a subjective feeling/response that is either triggered or not and it's not like there's a finite amount of it such that giving it to Asuka means someone else wouldn't get it.
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Re: What do you think Asuka had learned during Instrumentality?
Well, for starters, she learned through Instrumentality about all of Shinji's little jerk-off fantasies over her. (Unless she overheard him in the hospital.)
I think it's been implied in the film that she knew about Shinji's jerk-off fantasy about her before Instrumentality. What we saw was what was going on inside his head(similar to him being trapped in the 12th angel and in Unit 01) before Third Impact became initiated, which started Instrumentality, as per SEELE's plan.
...Unless we want to include Asuka's journey through EoTV, we might be stuck there.
Hmm. I thought she would have learned something major from all this, like try to be nicer people or that she has value outside the EVA. If her caressing of Shinji's face isn't some implication that she had changed (like many people had believed), I don't know what is.
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Re: What do you think Asuka had learned during Instrumentality?
That pre-HIP sequence definitely wasn't in Shinji's head. Biggest giveaway is him being shown one of Misato's memories, when she and Kaji were college students and spent a whole week boning. Ritsuko references this event in episode 21, but there's no way Shinji could have known about it.
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Re: What do you think Asuka had learned during Instrumentality?
Reichu wrote:That pre-HIP sequence definitely wasn't in Shinji's head. Biggest giveaway is him being shown one of Misato's memories, when she and Kaji were college students and spent a whole week boning. Ritsuko references this event in episode 21, but there's no way Shinji could have known about it.
Oh, my bad.
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What are some of the good traits you can say about Asuka?
I know back on some of my earlier threads, I have been saying some pretty negative things about Asuka. To be honest, I've been a bit skeptical about her. And because of that, I fail to see more goodness in her, believing her to be incapable of having any positive traits.
Speaking of which, I now take this opportunity to ask you guys about some of Asuka's more positive traits for you to name.
For me, I think she is an exceptional EVA pilot, who had some prior training that Shinji did not have. But I think we know that already.
So what are some of the positive things you can say about her?
Speaking of which, I now take this opportunity to ask you guys about some of Asuka's more positive traits for you to name.
For me, I think she is an exceptional EVA pilot, who had some prior training that Shinji did not have. But I think we know that already.
So what are some of the positive things you can say about her?
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Re: What are some of the good traits you can say about Asuka?
Remember the episode Asuka come home early from her date? She found Shinji practicing his cello and complimented on his playing. This was also the episode they later kissed. I believe this is the one episode were they connected the closest.
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