To be honest, it's hard to believe that there will be any kind of "love feelings" between the two as their relationship in Rebuild is far from that mutual feelings towards themselves, similar suffering pasts and present, it simply doesn't have the depth it had on TV series. It's even more plausible to speculate on a relation between Asuka and Mari based on the time skip events yet to be explained than Asuka/Shinji (not saying it could exist, but some people would really love something like this).

Saying Asuka still feels something for Shinji based on just on her jealousness of his relationship with Rei, her "admiration" for his shyncro rate, and a kid's kind of question "do you like him?" after 14 years would be shallow even for a kid.

Although I'd like that them get together for a reason, as long it's a good one. Will have to wait for the last movie for that.

vinicius0712 wrote:To be honest, it's hard to believe that there will be any kind of "love feelings" between the two as their relationship in Rebuild is far from that mutual feelings towards themselves, similar suffering pasts and present, it simply doesn't have the depth it had on TV series. It's even more plausible to speculate on a relation between Asuka and Mari based on the time skip events yet to be explained than Asuka/Shinji (not saying it could exist, but some people would really love something like this).

I wouldn't go as far as saying that a yuri relationship between Mari and Asuka is more likely than an Asuka/Shinji one (maybe a friendship, but judging from the preview it didn't really seem like Mari cared that much about her).

I agree that if something romantic is going to happen between A/S, it's going to need to be justified (mainly) by events in the fourth movie, without relying on (14 years old) unresolved feeling.

LinNervling04 wrote:I'll bet Anno's wishing he would have just done 26 new episodes now. He has too many questions unanswered and characters to be fleshed out, to give us a fulfilling ending with only one movie left...

It definitely seems something difficult to do in one movie (maybe he's going to split the last one in two parts...).

LinNervling04 wrote:That's something that makes me mad at Asuka and the others; they needed to explain to him what has happened and actually answer his questions. You can't just wake a coma patient, after 14 years, tell him almost nothing(besides his girlfriend being dead), and expect him to feel sympathy for you.

Its like in EoE, Asuka complained that Shinji doesn't even know her, to have Shinji finally say, "You never talk about yourself, yet you expect me to know you?! That's impossible!"

Yeah, it seems like all the pressure and blame is always on Shinji to open up to the world, accept responsibility for how his actions affect others, etc. But it seems like the world and others don't have as much responsibilty to do the same for Shinji.

Merior wrote: It definitely seems something difficult to do in one movie (maybe he's going to split the last one in two parts...).

Which seems to be happening quite a lot nowadays with the final movies, like Harry Potter or Twilight. I don't care to wait, but Asuka's really need some more background, specially regarding Shinji, Mari and the timeskip. The problem is that some more characters still need this background also, which really seems to much for just one movie.

At least there are scenes and hints in 3.0 that she's is not completely oblivious about Shinji, their last scene being the most important and obvious. (Note that I saying this based on other topics images, plot analysis and dialogue transcriptions, I haven't seen the movie yet.)

Darkwing wrote:Yeah, it seems like all the pressure and blame is always on Shinji to open up to the world, accept responsibility for how his actions affect others, etc. But it seems like the world and others don't have as much responsibilty to do the same for Shinji.

This. So much this. The world does not take responsibility, society does not take responsibility. Responsibility is taught to be something that only individuals have and the collective do not have responsibility, so if anything goes wrong or bad it is always the fault of the individual and not the collective, ie. the world. In this case, the world blames all of its problems on Shinji. This hatred and distaste for Shinji that pretty much everyone has is one of the many things that pisses me off about 3.0. No wonder he joined Nerv, Will-e (or is it Wille without the hyphen?) is a bunch of self-righteous dicks.

It's the "worthless adults" theme. How do you expect Shinji to grow up to be anything but worthless when the adults around him he should be learning from, are themselves failures as adults?

If they shoehorn Shinji and Asuka togethr after all the Shinji/Rei build, I'll be a little miffed. Again.

Merior wrote:I wouldn't go as far as saying that a yuri relationship between Mari and Asuka is more likely than an Asuka/Shinji one (maybe a friendship, but judging from the preview it didn't really seem like Mari cared that much about her)

I wouldn't necessarily say that the preview shows us Mari and Asuka don't really like each other. Asuka was just being angry and contentious like she always is while piloting. Unlike Shinji and Rei, however, Mari's actually willing to engage in a bit of verbal sparring with Asuka for fun. Additionally, she does apologize and takes great pains to bow (kicks off half her reentry shielding!) as she loses orbit.

I'm not saying that there's proof of yuri, but Asuka and Mari do seem to be friends. They just express it in their own unique way.

Darkwing wrote:It's the "worthless adults" theme. How do you expect Shinji to grow up to be anything but worthless when the adults around him he should be learning from, are themselves failures as adults?

If they shoehorn Shinji and Asuka togethr after all the Shinji/Rei build, I'll be a little miffed. Again.

Yes, when Gendo tells him to "grow up" in 2.0, how can he when the man who was supposed to teach him how, ran away himself? I think with Misato hating Shin now, Asuka will be our new EoE Misato.

And they won't have them together. The way things are going, we all know Shinji will probably get Rei back from Unit-01 at the last second in 4.0. At least I hope(losing Rei even after he saved her? Dick move Anno, dick move...). Meanwhile, Mari, Asuka, and others will be on the beach with him. Happy enough ending.

Here's your tangent if you want to read it. I'm not even going to try splitting and merging that ungodly mess someplace else.

Next time this happens, I drag the bulletin out of the Graveyard and start issuing bans again. And second-time offenders will get a week off. Honestly, think before you do shit that derails threads, and think twice before you make an ongoing tangent bigger.

Oh... Uh sorry.

Anyways, Asuka's dynamic is so much different in Rebuild. Shikinami has a lot of differences from Sohryu. Part of that was the need to streamline for the movies, I suppose. But it seems that even right from the get go she was less damaged emotionally than in the original. Now that she's had 14 years to grow and cope, who knows. We'll see if she plays a more major role than piloting an eva, mild bickering with Mari, and occasionally bereating Shinji in Final or not.

Moving aside the romantic discussion; there is one thing that Rebuild lacks, which is Asuka's better characterization, something that I would like to know if it is intentional or simply because there's no space to go deeper and deeper into every character psyche; which I think it's the second option. Even at 3.0 end, there's not much we know about her to determine her actions, feelings and thoughts.

Her last line in 2.0 was that she was ready to change and start to relate better with people in general (not just Shinji, she was doing that for herself) before the angel disaster, something that already turns Shikinami into a totally different person than Soryu. As 3.0 is very Kaworu/Shinji centered, we are still clueless about her motives. She executes Willie's demands without questioning (even sacrificing EVA-02, which would be unthinkable for Soryu), seeming like she's very sure of herself and what's need to be accomplished (maybe the 14 years had a great importance here).

Until now she only had a support role in a plot where the main thing is Shinji being a key to start a new impact if his mind says it is the right thing to do. Asuka is very far behind Rei II in Rebuild (even not making a single appearance on 3.0, what happened in 2.0 still means much more), be it as Shinji potential love interest or regarding a new impact, at least by the end of 3.0.

In my opinion, the main reason the Asuka/Shinji relation and their feelings about each other are constantly brought up is because it is the only way for Asuka to have any kind of influence in Shinji's future decisions (as Ayanami had at the end of 2.0) and would also influence her role in 4.0, not only because some people wants to see some kissing. Maybe she could put some reason in his head as we saw that only people that mean something to Shinji are the ones that influence his actions. Actually, they don't need to be have a potential couple or anything for that to happen, but would be easier for sure.

If not, she only would be able to try to stop him by using brute force, but anyone could try to do that, something that would be lowering her plot importance in 4.0 just to an EVA pilot in Shinji's way. Once he gets EVA-01 back (something that is certainly happen), nobody will be able to stop him by that way. As the Rebuild series are even more focused on Shinji than the TV series, anyone who doesn't get closer to him in any form will be just support characters and since he "slept for 14 years", things of the past are the only way.

vinicius0712 wrote:If not, she only would be able to try to stop him by using brute force, but anyone could try to do that

I like this approach, without the part only Asuka can play she just becomes replacable by any other character.
I think at this point its unlikely to happen that she will not have some sort of emotional influence on Shinji in one way or another.
We cant know for sure ofcourse but degrading asukas role so much wouldnt even Anno do.

Even if Asuka is doing the Misato-kiss-job or something alike it would serve her presence in 4.0 i guess.

Hyper Shinchan wrote:You can (not) turn Eva into Rahshitphon.

Ewww, mixing that name with evangelion.

ohnasti wrote:Ewww, mixing that name with evangelion.

Why not? It's a fine show that makes for interesting comparisons with NGE (and NTE even moreso). I don't think the romantic relationships are the best example, though, since the setup is so different in Rah's case (i.e. it's meant to be a love story, while Eva has very different goals).

There is one thing about Asuka's past I'd like to find out. How Kyoko died this time. I've wondered if all the differences in Shikinami's personality from Sohryu's could be explained by this. If Kyoko died quickly, and didn't linger in insanity, then Asuka wouldn't have had the trauma from having to deal with her crazy mother rejecting her for a doll. And the whole hanging the doll thing too. Even as a little girl Asuka is plenty smart enough to figure that out.

Darkwing wrote:There is one thing about Asuka's past I'd like to find out. How Kyoko died this time. I've wondered if all the differences in Shikinami's personality from Sohryu's could be explained by this. If Kyoko died quickly, and didn't linger in insanity, then Asuka wouldn't have had the trauma from having to deal with her crazy mother rejecting her for a doll. And the whole hanging the doll thing too. Even as a little girl Asuka is plenty smart enough to figure that out.

The doll still apears tho in 2.0.

Makes me wonder what the story behind is.
Before i knew what happened in 3.0 i totally assumed a similar approach as in NGE but now with Q and 0 intel on Asukas Backstory i dont think this thing will be brought ever up again, even less the circumstances of her Mothers death, if that even happened in NME, who knows how all the other Evas work, we only know that Yui is the controlsystem of Eva-01.

I noticed a weird thing yesterday when i listened to the audio rip along with the translation.

When Asuka inputs code 777 and transforms, there are 2 lines and some weird sounds going on that made me think about the whole corruption thing

01:21:53 Mode change!
01:21:55 Code 777 (Triple Seven)!
01:22:04 Who's there?
01:22:05 Who the hell are YOU?!

After she says Code 777 there is this diabolical laughter and then i think i heard the "who is this" line.

Can someone who viewed this confirm ?

Shakabutt wrote:I noticed a weird thing yesterday when i listened to the audio rip along with the translation.

When Asuka inputs code 777 and transforms, there are 2 lines and some weird sounds going on that made me think about the whole corruption thing

01:21:53 Mode change!
01:21:55 Code 777 (Triple Seven)!
01:22:04 Who's there?
01:22:05 Who the hell are YOU?!

After she says Code 777 there is this diabolical laughter and then i think i heard the "who is this" line.

Can someone who viewed this confirm ?

Its moment like these where i see that seeing the movie with a full translation until making any judgments about the plot is oh so crucial...

So just under the pretense this is true:
What could this mean?
Someone else inside Asuka, or someone else inside the eva?
Implications, implications..

Ramiel² wrote:The doll still apears tho in 2.0.

That's exactly the proof the Shikinami is not the same as Soryu. Soryu would have never "played" with a doll (she pretends/wants to be mature in NGE and if i'm not mistaken there's a scene in which she tramples on a doll).

I agree with Darkwing about Shiki's past. Her mother probably died quickly without becoming insane and that prevented Shikinami from closing her heart (to her mother and mother figures in general) completely and hating herself as much as Soryu (it would also explain why Shikinami managed to connect to Misato in 2.0 whereas Soryu was never able to, even before jealousy kicked in and made her hate Misato in NGE).

The doll was probably used by Asuka's mother to play with her daughter, probably by talking to her through the doll (as opposed to talking to the doll as if the doll itself was Asuka). When Shikinami feels lonely she talks to herself with the doll to be reminded of happier times. That's my personal guess.

Shakabutt wrote:I noticed a weird thing yesterday when i listened to the audio rip along with the translation.

In all likelihood, the weird sounds are coming from the Eva. This is an alternate Beast Mode, after all.

Nothing too deep about "Who's there?", far as I know. It's just Tentative Rei inside Mark.09.