Mr. Tines wrote:The minimum requirement? That he be a pilot, an insider, one of the elite like herself, so there can be any hope of having common ground between them.
Well, Kaji isn't a pilot. I'm not sure if you meant that exactly as I read it, but if you did, you just defeated your own argument.
Between her childhood as a NERV insider, and being precocious enough to have graduated about a decade earlier than the norm, the typical schoolkid is going to be in a different world to her, socially and intellectually; even before we get onto the disconnects due to differences in cultural background. They might be useful to her if she were after a bit of rough, but no more.
Maybe, maybe not. It's emotional maturity that is the most important, not intellectual maturity, and Asuka has no more of that than your average 14-year-old, and possibly just a little less.
Asuka:
You really think you understand me!? You think that you can help me?
That is so ARROGANT! You couldn't possibly understand me!!
- even Instrumentality cannot fashion a true meeting of minds here.
I'm sure I've said things like that to those who love me the best. And much, much worse, too. I don't need to know you well to be certain that you have, also. The human experience does not vary quite that much. We've all been hurt bad, and said things we didn't mean.
Cite? her complaints about him in Instrumentality, such as the above, give an idea of what she had been hoping for.
As the audience, we have privileged information that she doesn't (until Complementation) about what makes Shinji tick - which of the various Shinjis do you take as the fundamental one here? The "try not to cause any offense", "Hai!" and "Gomen." persona that gets Asuka all
Revelation 3:16 on his case? That one
is his lack of self-confidence personified.
The other Shinjis we see aren't nearly as nice.
I don't think it's ever safe to trust that what a person complains about when they are angry is what they are really upset about. She isn't old enough, savvy enough, or mature enough to be able to say what she really means. My opinion is that what she really means is "Shinji, you need to love yourself if you want to love me, or to be loved back."
Ep 15, she accepted an invitation from a medical student - a friend of Hikari's older sister and by implication, someone quite a few years older than herself, though not as old as Kaji. And she realised early on that that was a mistake.
My interpretation of that scene was that she realised it was a mistake because he was not the one her heart was really pining for.
Mr Tines wrote:Quote: Originally Posted by Lastie Evangelion is a window into your soul ...
That's a much more succinct way of putting it, I guess.
Part of its fascination is that you can end up accepting ownership of the various traumata suffered by the cast, and their effects. I guess that Anno's agenda was that he could do this for himself through the series; and in doing so, he pretty much toured the darker side of the human condition to more lasting effect for the on-going audience. And as a side effect, set things up so that which pilots and relationship the viewer supports is likely to depend crucially on exactly what it was that troubled ver particular childhood.
I agree. I am only trying to lay out my own particular views on the Shinji/Asuka relatinship here, not to lay out a dogma which all should follow without question.
Originally posted on: 14-May-2005, 23:07 GMT
Hooray for multiple opinions.