I’ve been hearing differing opinions about this. Some like it and say Shinji gave Asuka a normal life that she wanted and a happy ending. I personally didn’t like some things about it at first but after reading Meldon_Elraenhie’s comprehensive analysis, it made sense to me why it happened the way it did. Others don’t like it and say he ruined her life and made everything worse for her. What do you think of this?

Analysis & extrapolation reach a saturation point where they're doing the work for the material, and injecting more thought & life into it than what was there in the first place. She doesn't really have a coherent fleshed-out arc to me.

She's put into a fridge in the same film she's introduced in, absent for the climax. Her time with Shinji is incredibly condensed and reduced down to a montage the length of the one in NGE episode 9. We have to take it for granted that they slowly get to know each other, but each subsequent scene is a ramping up or change in their standing inbetween lengthy action sequences. From one scene to the next, they system update in standing a whole primary numeral (just meeting, hostile, beginning to bond, inkling of romance) until Asuka subverts things for the sake of subversion--it works to surprise the viewer already familiar with the way the old material went, but does it make sense on a character level? Or does it only make sense through the viewpoint of an author who wishes to modify his characters in ways that contrast to old creative decisions?

We don't see the progression of the resentment she harbors for the time-skip interim, and what reflection she does about it is vague and doesn't serve to explore her feelings, but instead introduce drama for the sake of Shinji's character arc. Then in Thrice she gets a whopping 1-minute of backstory and four or so lines to emote about her background tragedy. Her scene in Instrumentality rubs me the wrong way, as thoroughly discussed in the topic you mention, and then we don't see anything more from her. The idea of leaving an open question about what will happen with a character isn't new, but for it to be meaningful or functional the audience needs to have been given a sense of who the character is, or any reason to be curious about imagining what's next. The tone of Thrice is so unambiguously positive that there really is no open question in actuality. The only thing to think about is whether or not she remains in the reality of the farm or if that's her on the train station or if they're not mutually exclusive, but that's so abstract that she might as well not exist at all, and to me her character's actual arc is a fade into incoherence following thin characterization.

Axx°N N. wrote:Analysis & extrapolation reach a saturation point where they're doing the work for the material, and injecting more thought & life into it than what was there in the first place. She doesn't really have a coherent fleshed-out arc to me.

The only thing to think about is whether or not she remains in the reality of the farm or if that's her on the train station or if they're not mutually exclusive, but that's so abstract that she might as well not exist at all, and to me her character's actual arc is a fade into incoherence following thin characterization.

Seems your main issue is with pacing?
Also wouldn’t this thing about analysis and extrapolation also apply to EoE or all of their interactions in Eva for that matter?
Also also: I think that applies more to what Derantor was on about than what Meldon said
Also also also: we’re still trying to figure that last part out

Zer0_Stars_DS wrote:Seems your main issue is with pacing?
Also wouldn’t this thing about analysis and extrapolation also apply to EoE or all of their interactions in Eva for that matter?

Pretty much, yeah. I feel like with a lot of NTE I'm still in a state of anticipation similar to when Thrice was unreleased, because so much of it feels like concepts on paper but with many, many sentences or scenes missing. I can't say for sure, but if there was better pacing or just more time spent on everything, I might have more or less issue with certain things.

It can apply and imo has before, but the difference with NTE is it feels like there aren't enough words on the page to justify how many words are required to fill in those blanks. It feels less like theory and interpretation and feels more like widespread fix-fic.

Axx°N N. wrote:It feels less like theory and interpretation and feels more like widespread fix-fic.

I probably wouldn’t go that far. Although I suppose I just bought into what Meldon said because I didn’t want to accept that a ship that I loved, that was so precious to me, that gives me hope, that I draw strength and inspiration from is now outdated, invalid, and obsolete. But now I guess I just have to take it as it is.

Zer0_Stars_DS wrote:outdated, invalid, and obsolete.

I think it's just as relevant to the story NGE & EoE wanted to tell as it ever was. And I think people overblow Anno's ability to be a mastermind in terms of narrative structure, planning or intention. Many an interview state that he struggled initially to distinguish NTE from NGE&EoE, and that Mari was supposed to be the key to doing so, "destroying Eva." If anything, Asuka's sidelining in NTE emphasizes how important she and her relationship with Shinji were to what NGE & EoE fundamentally were about in the first place. Attempts to reposition and restore Asuka to a relevance in NTE she (imo) clearly doesn't have is a bit of a fool's errand to me. I think the more likely reality is that any further emphasis on her character would have made it impossible to branch into a different tone and story, and NTE is the result of the attempt to do so.

I know of such interviews. And this would imply that NTE and NGE/EoE clash. Besides, NTE basically answers NGE and EoE by ignoring it and offering a new better solution with a new girl for Shinji who’s better in every way. And a new guy for Asuka who again, better in every way. Even made it so that Asuka’s feelings for Shinji were manufactured in a lab. I COULD hold onto the Message of EoE but why bother at this point. Everyone else has taken the new better and easier solution that is NTE. A solution that gave more for less. The Asushin faction will lose hope and disperse. All this is my problem not yours. You win, you all win. All our strong points were disproven last year in the span of 2 hours and 35 minutes. “Shinji and Asuka are ideal for each other”. Nope. Mari is ideal for Shinji and Kensuke is ideal for Asuka. “They see themselves in each other”. Nope. Shinji was just some annoying brat to Asuka and Asuka was just a mistake Shinji had to fix.

We’ve just been in denial and Meldon delayed the inevitable. The truth is, Shinji goes with Mari, and Asuka goes with Kensuke and the two give up their feelings for each other because they’ve been apart for 14 years, Asuka has become an adult while Shinji stayed a child and grew up enough to give her closure and they move on to become better SEPARATE people. The End. (There. I said it). But thanks for indulging me anyway. It’s nice to talk to someone about it

I guess I can't relate since I'm not a shipper. I never viewed EoE's ending's significance as romantic in nature, but in terms of who Shinji & Asuka are as symbols and as humans.

To me, Mari as a solution for Shinji and Kensuke as a solution for Asuka don't matter because they're just not interesting characters, they're too free of blemishes, and Shinji at the end in appearance, attitude and what small glimpse we get of his personality is as unappealing to me as a typical shonen or harem protag. Similarly, Shinji already became uninteresting earlier on when he went god-like and had the perfect solutions to everything. What does it matter if you take these resolutions as final word of god if they simply aren't compelling in practice?

I think the best thing to do is take NGE & NTE as separate entities. There are some writers who worked on NGE that didn't return for NTE and I have no doubt they birthed integral parts of tone and character that simply aren't replicated in NTE and are, in fact, instead brought to life by a different arrangement of writers, directors, animators, etc.

Edit: I originally said 'sympathize' instead of 'relate'; I do sympathize!

Axx°N N. wrote:I think the best thing to do is take NGE & NTE as separate entities.

That has been true all along, and a large part of the more acrimonious discussion over the past few years has arisen from ignoring that fact.

I feel like Asuka was wasted in the rebuilds - although there are potentially interesting things in her arc it’s mostly lost in the time skip and not given enough time. Thus nothing in her arc really works without reference to NGE in the end, and it doesn’t survive that comparison.

I honestly feel like it would have been better if Mari had outright replaced Asuka by turning up in unit 2 in 2.0 - it might have given them a chance to give Mari the time she needed as well.

Asuka was so much more likable in NTE movies than NGE. She actually deserves her own movies and story arc. I'm pretty happy she didn't ship with Shinji, that she force fed him (awesome scene even though it was arguably assault), and then finally confirmed that Shinji could put into words why someone would lose respect for him for the inaction during the Dummy Plug angel battle (he could have at least tried to take the plug out like he did with Rei the 2nd battle).

I think Asuka living in the village is the real ending for her. Remember in the Evangelion universe, all humans used to be part of one being and even though they live separate lives, they communicate subconsciously through dream-states. I believe Asuka in the train station was just her soul projection, not the real person, of Asuka subconsciously communicating with Shinji while he lives his best life in the minus-universe or his own created universe or next universe or wherever.

My problem with Mari is that it's like she is saying/proving that any guy's long term penetrating deep-depression can be cured with some smiling ass and tits. You just got to spring it on them at the right moment, not too early like Misato in NGE. Literal Moral of this Story. Slap me in the face.

pwhodges wrote:That has been true all along, and a large part of the more acrimonious discussion over the past few years has arisen from ignoring that fact.

That'd be fine and dandy if only the movies themselves, and particularly TuaT, didn't lean so heavily onto NGE to fill in the blanks that NTE never bothered with. Given the nature of the thread the best example of this is Shinjis "confession" to Asuka. It just doesn't work if you only take NTE into consideration, there's just not enough basis there to make that scene have any real meaning without having seen NGE first. If the movies are going to do it then i'd say it's fair game for people to judge them with NGE in mind.

Now as far as Asuka arc, i don't think she actually has one. She revolves so much around Shinji that as soon as she stops being an obstacle for him to overcome in his journey she's unceremoniously dumped and forgotten.

Settie wrote:That'd be fine and dandy if only the movies themselves, and particularly TuaT, didn't lean so heavily onto NGE to fill in the blanks that NTE never bothered with. Given the nature of the thread the best example of this is Shinjis "confession" to Asuka. It just doesn't work if you only take NTE into consideration, there's just not enough basis there to make that scene have any real meaning without having seen NGE first. If the movies are going to do it then i'd say it's fair game for people to judge them with NGE in mind.

I don't think we need to see NGE to understand NTE. In fact, many things are so different that you couldn't really use NGE to fill NTE.

The last part of 3.0+1.0 has many nods to NGE, but it's still pretty independent as story. At most, NGE could be considered a nebulous background (and even that is up for debate).


I agree that Shinji's "confession" to Asuka doesn't have a lot of sense even if you consider NGE, since Shikinami is considered a different character from Soryu.

pathstrider wrote:I feel like Asuka was wasted in the rebuilds - although there are potentially interesting things in her arc it’s mostly lost in the time skip and not given enough time. Thus nothing in her arc really works without reference to NGE in the end, and it doesn’t survive that comparison.

This is extremely succinctly put and I agree entirely.

pathstrider wrote:I honestly feel like it would have been better if Mari had outright replaced Asuka by turning up in unit 2 in 2.0 - it might have given them a chance to give Mari the time she needed as well.

You're saying this with knowledge of the fact this almost happened, right?

I agree, Mari ended up only partially replacing Asuka's role in certain events and functions, but it left them both underdeveloped. If Asuka best exemplifies NGE and Mari best exemplifies NTE, they should have had a more compelling contrast or schism, or Asuka should have just been absent entirely and maybe NTE could have distinguished itself more fully. But, the marketing wouldn't have it that there's one less girl to sell.

I can't say that I dislike the way Asuka's arc was handled because there's barely an arc to begin with. Her character is all over the place and accomplishes very little. It's hard to believe that we're talking about a version of Asuka here (one of the most human, relatable and grounded characters of NGE).
I think that the last movie does a better job at showing us who Shikinami actually is. I mean, the second movie was all about her boring one sided rivalry with Ayanami and the incident with Unit 03 (which is important, but barely holds any emotional weight, as Shinji and Asuka didn't interact that much to justify it). In the third movie, Asuka's role was to scream and fight. Her interactions with Shinji are more meaningful (as she and Misato represents rejection to him, the opposite to Kaworu's acceptance and different from Ayanami's initial indifference). That's about it, though. Q is all about Shinji.
Then Shin comes along. It tries to do many things, but it was too little too late, in my opinion. The EVA Curse is a neat concept, but I can barely see how it affects Asuka, aside from some scenes. The same goes to her friendship with Kensuke. What happens is that we're left with a character who developed off screen and that's not engaging in any way. We know that she grew up. How? We know that she got over Shinji. How? We saw all of her problems being shoved into a two minute clip. I didn't get to see why she had that eureka moment. I just saw it.
I think that the last movie did a decent job at integrating her to the story. She does have a couple of important scenes. However, the other two films didn't prepare the ground for it at all. Imagine having Asuka go through EOE, but without showing us episodes such as 9, 15, 22' and 23'. It's pretty much the same thing. Too much talk and too little show.

BernardoCairo wrote:Imagine having Asuka go through EOE, but without showing us episodes such as 9, 15, 22' and 23'. It's pretty much the same thing. Too much talk and too little show.

Wow, I just read this after struggling in vain to voice this exact feeling in a different thread. This analogy is spot-on.

in a discussion in desarchive I think. They mention that Asuka Shikinami was specifically distilled to be a character who was a movie-type heroine, which is why she is more likeable than Asuka Soryu. basically shikinami took away all the negatives from soryu.

* She no longer has the obsession of being the best eva pilot and a pride so great that she would have her own gravitational field. instead it is replaced with the fact that she only wants to pilot the eva and do it alone because she basically sees the other pilots not as a competition for being the best but as a literal threat to her existence because shikinami fought in a battle royale against other clones of herself in order to have the right to live. which is why her binding to EVA 02 ceases to be important as long as she can only pilot another EVA.

* lost her connection with Kaji because it was rare to see a 13/14 year old girl wanting to get into a grown man's pants. This removed the parallel she had with Shinji and Misato. now it is mari who is connected to Kaji and is his subordinate.

* the battles where Asuka soryu was defeated and that were the causes of her spiral downward into a coma, partly due to her own mistakes and circumstances now it is changed to that Asuka decided to do something good for Rei and Shinji and the movie basically She is punished by falling into a coma and being infected by an angel.

* by removing from her the trauma of her with her mother and replacing it with the past of being a child / super-soldier clone. they eliminate any parallels and contrasts with Shinji.

And this is where the shikinami story arc has problems. because there is no time to develop it when the movies revolve around Shinji and because Asuka basically no longer has a connection or parallels with Shinji outside of piloting the eva, this leaves her without a plot arc that can be developed correctly because shikinami She is not Asuka soryu but someone who shares part of Soryu's name, appearance and personality. and since she is her "own" character now she must develop differently from soryu but in the end they did not have time.

what makes soryu's arc possible in NGE no longer exists in rebuild and is replaced but is not explored because rebuilds are a story that revolves around Shinji and Asuka lost all connection except piloting the eva with him. which makes me wonder how things would have been if shikinami had been replaced by mari entirely as already mentioned. because in 2.0 they introduce two new pilot characters to mari and "Asuka".

Ironically, the pilot who really contrasts Shinji in rebuild is Mari, since she likes to pilot the Eva, she works for Kaji, knows more about the Evas, works in Proto-Wille and wonders why someone would torture themselves thinking about why they should pilot and has no problems.

It is also entirely possible that Asuka's story arc was partially completed in the original 3.0 movie that we never saw and whose events are canon of rebuild.

I don't really think much time was spent on Asuka in the rebuilds, by design, and any heroics that still could have been left for her were instead handed off to Mari.

I'm not really satisfied, but it was obvious long before Thrice that she wasn't going to be the primary focus of the rebuilds, and that's okay. It's a different story for a different generation. That said...I'll never like that train station segment.

Yeah, Asuka didn't have a lot of screentime in the NTE, I found interesting her new backstory, but for some reason it didn't make me have the same feelings I had when I saw her NGE backstory. I think they didn't know how to handle some of the characters throughout the 3rd and 4th movie, with a lot of things happening and Shinji being the main focus of this story. I would have liked if they made more scenes with Asuka and her interactions with Mari in the third film since it was the shortest one and they had space to add a little more on her development and an explanation as to why she acted the way she did towards Shinji (I know they tried explaining that in TUAT but still). There's also the interrogant of what happened to the original Shikinami who kidnapped our Shikinami from New Eva 02, since she was a different person from yhe Shikinami we knew in the movies. I mean, was she on SEELE/Nerv's side all along? How did she ended trapped inside unit 13. Did she had the chance to live a normal life like Shikinami clone or was she obliterated along with unit 13. what was the actual background of original Shikinami? Was she a cooperative person in the cloning scheme? Anyway, there's still a lot of questions regarding both Shikinamis ans their screentime didn't develop enough of their characters, at least for me.

Zer0_Stars_DS wrote:You win, you all win. All our strong points were disproven last year in the span of 2 hours and 35 minutes. “Shinji and Asuka are ideal for each other”. Nope. Mari is ideal for Shinji and Kensuke is ideal for Asuka.

For whatever it's worth, I don't think NGE or NTE present any relationship as ideal.

AsukaShikinami10 wrote:There's also the interrogant of what happened to the original Shikinami who kidnapped our Shikinami from New Eva 02, since she was a different person from yhe Shikinami we knew in the movies. I mean, was she on SEELE/Nerv's side all along? How did she ended trapped inside unit 13. Did she had the chance to live a normal life like Shikinami clone or was she obliterated along with unit 13. what was the actual background of original Shikinami? Was she a cooperative person in the cloning scheme? Anyway, there's still a lot of questions regarding both Shikinamis ans their screentime didn't develop enough of their characters, at least for me.

My fanwank from another topic:

nerv bae wrote:You're right to question how "our" Asuka gets to have the real memory of toddler Shinji. The instrumentality picture wall shows us that only Shikinami Type 0278 and 0313* survive, and I think one of these must be the original because otherwise we would have three Asukas to keep track of rather than two. Call 0278 the original (whether born naturally or in a test tube) because she is kept center-frame during the picture wall zoom out. Then, either the memory with toddler Shinji is 0278's, pre-cloning, later transferred to 0313 (and presumably also to the hundreds of other clones), or the memory with toddler Shinji is 0313's, post-cloning, and original Asuka 0278 never experienced it. Either way "our" Asuka 0313 has the memory and gets to look back on it during instrumentality.

*Staring at the picture wall a bit, I think there are 555 total Shikinami Types, in 15 rows of 37, so that 0278 is dead-center.

Expanding on my fanwank today: Our Asuka 0313 is ejected to daddy Kenken and Original Asuka 0278 is seen on the opposite platform sitting apart from Rei and Kaworu. There, done; I've solved Evangelion.