One of my greatest pet peeves as of late is when Touji & Kensuke get treated as basically annoying comic relief.
The most egregious examples must be those fics that write Shinji as considering them pesky annoyances.

Like in the show itself it's treated as a big, emotional deal when Shinji finally gets himself some friends; They're important to him, you see him at times talking over his recent experiences with them & getting some insight from their pov and when those relationships break down that's what sets him from a path of tentative growth to the beginning of the end.

No one involved here was perfect here of course, Kensuke dropped the ball pretty hard with the phonecall in ep 19 (I guess he must've been dealing with all this in his own way) & then Shinji is waaay too overwhelmed with the responsibility to ever face them again and to Kensuke & Hikari it must be like he dropped off the face of the earth, who knows what they heard from Asuka during the time he was dissolved, though it wasn't long till she stopped coming to school as well.

For all the hijinks and old-fashioned ideas, Touji is a pretty upstanding guy deep down (see how he dutifully keeps visiting Sakura in the hospital) & when it comes to Kensuke ppl unthinkingly refer to the "antisocial nerd" stereotype when in the actual show he gets numerous moments of being wise & insightful.

Like how long was it since you saw a fic where the three have, like a major moment? Or, since AsuShin is a popular ship for some reason, you'd think that your gf and your besties not getting along would be drama that needs to be resolved (especially for someone relatively conflict-averse like Shinji who wouldn't tend to take sides for fear of pissing ppl off); Like I don't think there's any awareness that it would be a huge problem if she's antagonistic to them (even if it involved said besties apologizing for juvenile hinjinks like the photo incident/understanding why it's innapropriate & Shinji enforcing that they don't talk bad about her either)

I don't get why Toji is left out because as you say he does have great qualities and I really enjoyed writing his aged up version just to show the kind of great guy he could become once the facade has slipped away and I agree he deserves way more fanfiction time.

Kensuke, I kind of do though as he takes creep shots without consent and sells them in the series which I get would put a lot of writers of and unless you're gonna unpack that issue and give him real personal growth (Which I've seen some writers do really well) he can come off very badly in writing like the writer is condoning his bad behaviour.

Also Kensuke does make for a good villain if you want to go there and imply his behaviour got worse and didn't improve as all the seeds are there that could turn him in to a bitter adult. These show up way more in the manga than the series in how he turns on Shinji and gets Hikari to do the same due to Toji vanishing along with his anger and jealousy over not being picked as a pilot.

Though if its the Rebuild settling this issue is not as much of a problem and it would be great to see more writers give Kensuke a chance.

silvermoonlight wrote:I don't get why Toji is left out because as you say he does have great qualities and I really enjoyed writing his aged up version just to show the kind of great guy he could become once the facade has slipped away

Same here - Touji's an important character in my fic.

Kensuke I only mention in passing at the end, though - he doesn't interest me.

I have plans in my ongoing fic of Toji eventually being Kaworu's right-hand man. Exact details are still up for grabs but one particular indicator of what kind of a person he is is that despite the setting having more advanced medical technology than in canon to the point where Sakura gets discharged from the hospital in pretty much perfect health after only a few weeks, near the end of the story Toji still volunteers to be an Eva pilot. Not because of anything NERV offers him, but because he wants to pull his weight and refuses to sit on his ass while the end of the world is coming and NERV is in desperate need of volunteers because they have more Evas than pilots and no time to properly train any. An attitude which also rubs off on Sakura down the line.

silvermoonlight wrote:Kensuke, I kind of do though as he takes creep shots without consent and sells them in the series which I get would put a lot of writers of and unless you're gonna unpack that issue and give him real personal growth (Which I've seen some writers do really well) he can come off very badly in writing like the writer is condoning his bad behaviour.

While I think up more ideas than I actually write, I did repeatedly have a scene idea where the topic comes up and Kensuke states that he's actually restricting himself to fully-clothed pics only for a reason. That is, sometime in the past he was asked by some upperclassmen if he could take some... less-clothed pics of certain girls, but he refused out of hand because morality aside, he's fully aware that snapping a photo of a half-naked teenage girl without her knowledge or consent would be within the legal boundaries of child pornography and he's nowhere near stupid or greedy enough to risk prison for a handful of yen.

What will definitely happen in my ongoing story, however, is that when NERV is desperately looking for volunteers to get into the newest Evas off the assembly line and Toji signs up, everyone expects Kensuke to come running... only for Kensuke to flat-out turn down his chance, explaining that as cool as it would be to pilot an Eva, he knows how desperate the situation is and doesn't want the privilege at the cost of risking everyone dying because he hogged the seat from someone more qualified to actually fight in an Eva.

Even as an adult, once there are more than enough Evas to spare him one, he never becomes a pilot, instead finding his calling as a logistics officer. I mean, being able to memorize all those little details about his military hobby means he probably has a good brain for remembering details. After all, even the best fighter pilots in history needed people on the ground to keep their ride in fighting condition and Kensuke found that the pride of being the roadie in this show feels better than the fantasy of being the lead singer.

And getting his act together like that also ended up scoring him . Turns out he's very much insecure about his unattractive appearance and personality and pretty much wrote himself off as ever getting into a relationship, hence why he's like what he's like: he's not even trying anymore. She's the one who pulls him out of that state of mind, for which he's pretty much kissing the very ground under her feet and is making active effort to be worthy of her... ironically enough, as

This last part is also a central motif of a Kensuke/Mayumi fic concept of mine that's been languishing on the backburner for years now: he seemingly acts like he doesn't care about girls but inwardly has convinced himself that he's got zero chance with them anyway to such an extent that when a girl timidly starts showing interest in him, he becomes hilariously and adorably awkward from a combination of having no idea what to do in this situation, self-delusion that she can't possibly be interested in him for real and will walk away soon, plus fear that even if she is interested for real, he's going to frak this up anyway and miss what could possibly be his last chance to not be a complete frakup. Throw in the fact that she's exactly the same when it comes to boys and we're in for one hell of a Twice Shy scenario of a crack pairing.

silvermoonlight wrote:These show up way more in the manga than the series in how he turns on Shinji and gets Hikari to do the same

That is not at all what I got from that scene at all; i dont think anyone's getting anyone to do anything there rather they are mutually in agreement that it would be super awkward to continue avting normally after such a huge traumatic event like Touji's death.

That is totally common thing for friend groups to slinter apart after something like this. (Which isnt to say that it couldnt have turned out different if Shinji had actually come back to school)


It doesnt take a special wickedness to not realize the seriousness in something that the wider society was kind of laughing off at that point & often treating as a joke in media; they were very young at the time. What was needed there was for a responsible adult to take them aside & explain to them that this is not funny/ a serious breach of privacy that could have serious consequences

Also Touji was involved in selling the pics as well so I don't see how he's more innocent