From the "Shinji and Asuka had sex based on my extremely questionable interpretations of extremely flimsy evidence" thread:

Secondly the bedrolls...Everyone is aware Shinji and Asuka both have beds in their rooms right?

This just blew my mind. In some episodes, we see the characters sleeping on the floor, and we accept it because Japanese people sleep on the floor (or so we're told). In other episodes, we see people laying in bed, and we accept it because we are accustomed to people having beds and sometimes sleeping in them. And somehow, these two facts have remained perfectly compartmentalized in my brain for the past 20 years until today.

Now... what kind of timeline can we assemble from the beds and bedrolls that we're shown?

Shinji is given a bed literally as soon as he moves into Misato's apartment in episode 2. We can tell that this is a bed because we the the side of it in one shot, and it blocks the camera's view of a box in another shot:



In the same episode, Misato's room is shown lacking a bed:



However, Misato wasn't expecting to become Shinji's foster mom. That was a bit of a last-minute decision. So why did she have that bed? It's possible that she originally intended it to be her bed, and she gave it to Shinji because, for whatever reason, he is not accustomed to sleeping on the floor. Alternatively, she only recently moved in herself, and the bed may have simply come with the place.

By episode 3, Misato is still sleeping on the floor...



...and Shinji's room still has a bed, though he's not sleeping in it (or anywhere else in her apartment, for that matter):



Now we get to episode five and ANOTHER bombshell is dropped. Misato has a kitchen table... but she doesn't always use it for meals! She also has a much shorter table that she brings out sometimes. The kitchen table from episode 2, in case everyone forgot:



Now the shorter table in episode 5:



What significance does this have? We'll see in a bit.

The next time we see anyone's sleeping arrangements is in episode 9, and... oh hey! It's the short table again!



Also, how does Misato have a whole damn 7-Eleven in her apartment?!?



Wait, never mind. I'm not doing my own Fan-Geeks commentary with blackjack and hookers here. Back to the bedding issue. This shot never quite sank in for me, partly because it was so confusingly animated with the time-lapse and the changing lighting and the brief duration. But it's fascinating:



All three characters are sleeping on the floor, in the same room, together! And Misato is strategically positioned between them! Why? Shouldn't she be in her own room? She's not part of this sync nonsense. The obvious answer </sarcasm> is that it's the only way she can keep an eye on them and make sure they don't have sex. This is also the only time when we see Misato during the entire montage.

After said montage, as soon as Asuka confirms that she and Shinji will be alone that night, what does she do? She doesn't just go back into her room to sleep. She PICKS HER BEDROLL UP and TAKES IT into her room. Or at least a different room. Whatever room it is, it's the one with the double window:



At this point in the series, we haven't seen her sleeping in a bed, ever, nor have we seen a bed in her room. I am forced to conclude that, at this point in the series, she doesn't have a bed yet.

But interestingly, Shinji doesn't do the same. He stays sleeping on the floor in the TV room. Even AFTER Asuka "sleepwalks" back into the TV room and shoves her boobs in his face, he moves... to a different spot in the same room:



What the hell happened to his bed that we saw in episode 2? What happened to his room? Is it being used for storage space for all of Asuka's shit? Actually, now that I mention it, that makes a lot of sense. We DID see his room full of moving boxes at the beginning of the episode...



Anyway, fast-forward to episode 12, and Misato is still sleeping on the damn floor, though it seems that she has at least moved back to her own room:



By episode 15, Asuka has finally moved all of her shit out of Shinji's room so he can use his bed again, though it and the desk seem to have changed locations... or maybe he just moved to a different room?



Asuka herself lays down on the floor in the TV room. Never mind her own bed - does she even have her own room yet? Is she the only one still sleeping on the floor in the TV room?



Misato, still sleeping on the floor, in her own room:



Episode 16. We get a small shot of the room with the double window:



Okay, now I'm curious. Seriously, what room is that? Let's rewind the tape...



OH HELL IT'S Shinji'S OLD ROOM! Asuka kicked Shinji out of his room and made it her own! Or is it? Misato's room also has a double window:



Now I have to stop because this is seriously breaking my brain and it's become apparent that I can't do this in a train-of-thought, just-skim-the-series-one-more-time kind of way. There is a much larger and deeper puzzle here than I anticipated. And Asuka still doesn't even have her own bed yet.

EDIT: I just found this, and while I feel kind of stupid for not bothering to look for it earlier, and it answers some questions, it also raises new ones. Why would Asuka take her bedroll into Misato's room instead of her own in episode 9?

OMG. The bitch really did it. She stole his goddamn room and bed.

lol

This thread made me feel like I was losing my mind. I can't believe I've never noticed this in any conscious way.

The official plan of Misato's apartment interestingly omits beds from what furniture it does show

lmfao this is now my favorite topic outside of the rebuild subforum

Angel wrote:Also, how does Misato have a whole damn 7-Eleven in her apartment?!?

i believe they went Outside

Doesn’t Ep 8 (or is it 9? Whichever one where she moves into Misato’s apartment) specifically show Asuka taking over Shinji’s room, and him moving to a smaller room down the hall?

It wasn't just a smaller room, it was practically the storage closet.

ANYWAY... to answer the question, "Did Shinji and Asuka have sex on a futon in episode 15?", the timeline of sleeping arrangements tells us that it's extremely unlikely. Asuka, being German, strongly prefers beds, and I think she even complains about the Japanese practice of sleeping on the floor in episode 9. Shinji's new room and bed were 100% available by episode 15, so if Asuka had initiated sex with Shinji in episode 15, it almost certainly would have been on his bed, not on a futon.

I am glad we could finally put this 25-year-old mystery to rest.

Mr. Tines wrote:The official plan of Misato's apartment interestingly omits beds from what furniture it does show

More interestingly, the floor plan as it originally appeared in Newtype Magazine represented the state of things before Asuka moved in. English-language fans took it upon themselves to "correct" the room labels to represent the arrangement in the later episodes.

nerv bae wrote:i believe they went Outside

Yes, probably. The episode could have used an establishing shot of some building exteriors, or a shot of Asuka leaving the apartment's front door, sandwiched between the scene inside Misato's apartment and the one inside the convenience store. As it is, I prefer to imagine that Misato really does have an entire frozen foods aisle in her apartment for the sole purpose of storing beer

Archer wrote:Doesn’t Ep 8 (or is it 9? Whichever one where she moves into Misato’s apartment) specifically show Asuka taking over Shinji’s room, and him moving to a smaller room down the hall?

1) Episode 8 was he one with the aircraft carrier and the whale angel. Ep 9 is the one where she moves in.

2) I don't believe so. It shows lots and lots of moving boxes, some of which are in the guest bedroom, and it establishes that Asuka was under the impression that Shinji was moving out, but Misato corrected this misunderstanding on day one, and then everybody started sleeping on the floor in the living room. Given that neither Asuka nor Shinji moved to their own rooms when left alone that one night, I'm inclined to think that both the guest bedroom and the storage room were still too full of crap for anyone to sleep in. Misato clears her crap out of the storage room by ep 15 and the fate of the guest bedroom remains a mystery until episode 20, as far as I can tell.

Asuka has the right to take any room she wants.