Best Pair: What Eva Characters Do You Ship?

[Evil Eye]

ReiShin for me. It's cute! Also AsuKen because the idea of the two going from hating each other to being a couple is funny and also kind of adorable (was very smug to see it semi-canonized by 3.0 + 1.0).

[Kendrix]

ReiShin for me. It's cute!

I see you have chosen correctly.

Also AsuKen because the idea of the two going from hating each other to being a couple is funny and also kind of adorable (was very smug to see it semi-canonized by 3.0 + 1.0).

I personally never thought about it before TuaT & kinda tended to dislike the tendency of ppl to pair up the 'leftover' girl with Kensuke because I actually like his character & that's kind of making him the thrashbag or turning him into a joke, so I initially didn't like that in the Sadamoto manga or Iron Maiden 2 game.

But then after the movie I thought about it & realized that it actually makes a lot of sense as a serious option & that I actually kind of like it. Asuka was always a bit of a closet nerd (liking video games though it seems at odds with her 'popular girl' persona, and in one joke audio drama she was shown to like sentai shows) and I think a positive development for her would be to be more at ease with showing 'uncool' traits rather than always trying to have a perfect image.
Plus there's something beautiful about the person who always wanted to be seen getting with the resident photography/amateur film buff.
It's easy to think of romantic scenarious where he films her or takes pictures of her to make her feel loved & wanted.

I always thought that Asuka's ideal match would need to be someone who is insightful enough to see past her bristly behavior & easygoing so that he doesn't get easily offended. (so the opposite of Shinji who is easily hurt & socially awkward) I never thought of Kensuke in particular there, but all things considered he does fit the bill. He's always had fairly good insight into people (like giving a very good analysis of Rei in ep 14, explaining Misato's behavior to Shinji in ep 7, knowing just what to say to get Shinji to open up in ep 4) and has a way of nudging people in a non-confrontational way, like how he calls out Touji's behavior.

(for about the same reasons, Mari would be a good match if you want it to be yuri. Either way she's a great friend for Asuka. I found myself liking Asuka a bunch more after actually seeing her in some positive, non-bully relationships.)

Though I think a big part of it is that it wouldn't necessarily have worked out for their younger selves, they had to grow up, gain more experience and get to their 20s for it to work. Young Asuka would have been too image obsessed to consider an "ordinary" boy, and young Kensuke would have been too unserious & not really considering the implications of things. (Despite his general wisdom, he still has plenty of very juvenile moments like his big episode 19 foot in mouth moment with Shinji, or doing stupid shit selling pics in ep 9)

Before TuaT even came out I considered the idea that they should give Asuka a boyfriend (which would have been an entirely new character) to make the passage more felt & make it feel like the timeskip really happened, and show someone having a kid for like reasons . (I was even thinking of having it be Misato)
(I considered doing it in a fanfic but never got around to it which I now regret because it would have been way cool if i had called it ahead of time.), though I would have done it way angstier way, like have Misato's kid hate Shinji for making him live in a ruined world, and of course I assumed Touji, Hikari & co were dead. I was totally blindsided by TuaT's ending.
I used to be of the camp that was super against the Rebuilds having a happy ending cause I hate the idea that all tragic endings need to be fixed but in the end I let in slide because after Q it was more surprising then the opposite and Id seen these blorbos suffer more than enough. I really thought there could be no hope after Q and that I'd celebrate if Rei gets screentime/ character development at all and if Shinji avoids a fate worse than death.
I definitely cried a little bit when Misato & Shinji hugged/reconciled, and of course Rei basically got her best ending from the Eva 2 video game... and then some. And then she comes back in the end. I didn't think Anno had any mercy left in him XD

It also makes me think about how in the brainstorming sessions it was considered to make the relationship between Shinji & Asuka like Jean and Nadia, but in the end it didn't turn out like that at all. Asuka is a bit like Nadia in how she's somewhat abrasive & difficult and unwilling to trust ppl due to a harsh upbringing, but Shinji isn't anything like Jean - who was an optimistic, friendly if somewhat naive character who always wanted to contribute and easily gave positive affirmation. (and also a big nerd) The character most like Jean in the EVA cast is definitely Kensuke, even their designs are similar (brown hair, freckles, glasses, roundish nose)

I always thought it was sort of deliberate, Kensuke and Touji have the personalities of more traditional shonen protagonists but Kensuke doesn't get chosen and Touji doesn't get heroic beginners luck, so the burden falls to their shy unassuming friend who would in any other show be the NPC best friend character.

Adult Kensuke is even more like jean since he is a tech guy with a DIY house (being a steampunk inventor wouldn't fit EVA's serious tone but it's as close as it gets). So I guess Asuka got her Jean equivalent eventually XD

Though there is something kind of funny about how she's now ended up with each of the baka trio in at least one parallel universe. ( if you consider angelic days and the ill-fated fling with Touji in the alt life action scene)

I'm just glad there is finally some semi-canonical option for her that isn't Shinji, that really doesn't do it for me for many many reasons ranging from my interpretation of EoE (it's very important that she is the person who tells Shinji "no" and that he has has to learn to accept & live with rejection, and that the last scene is the return of rejection, misunderstanding and interpersonal pain to the world) to personal taste (i loathe the tropes of opposites attract, couple that constantly insults each other, "the introvert needs to be brought of their shell by a loud person" and dont like those tropes in any other fandom either) to personal emotional hangups (I feel very strongly about bullying so I could never ship someone with their bully. No AsuRei for the same reasons.), but at the same time I do think she deserves to be happy & not be left out & while I think her bullying & her own contributions to her situation should be taken more seriously (to the same degree that Shinji's are), I definitely don't agree with the people who think she should be demonized as some irreedemable "bitch" or "abuser", she's simply young, desperate and lacked guidance.
It's not even so much about pairing her up with someone else as having an option that actually comes with a positive, caring & supportive dynamic. (its not like id be fine with just any replacement that was just as toxic)

It's left somewhat open whether it's to be read as friendship or romance (i think that like with the kaworu situation, ppl are supposed to project onto there what they would personally desire), but the one thing we're shown in no uncertain terms is that he accepts her as she is ("Asuka is Asuka") That's the most important thing a relationship needs to have. Acceptance & respectfulness is my crack as far as ships go, something very important to me in RL relationships as well. (that's kinda also why I like Reishin) - For all that Miyamura is very strongly in the platonic interpretation camp, even she said that Shinji probably wouldn't have said "Asuka is Asuka". (the objection sseems based purely an optics problem (lack of imagination imho. It's a metaphor for feeling stuck in life.) that no longer exists by the end of the movie anyway as Asuka has been un-cursed. fuck defensive writing, art has to be weird, bizzare & messy to be genuine to the messyness of human emotions. you cant stop ppl from reading potentially offensive things into your work because they will always do it no matter what. If anything she rebuilds could have used more weird, a lot of interesting stuff was left in the drafts.
I would have loved to see that human belly angel design, the more organic Wunder, Kaworu's animated corpse, the more fleshy beast mode rather than the giant panther we got, the Rei clone masked workers, the hedgehog mindrape/ "the happy me is scary" scene, or the bodyhorror reishin kiss, the bit from that alternate cut where Asuka complains about how she can't fuck (in addition to how she can't eat - let her be frustrated war veteran in undignified ways.) and in some of the old drafts reichu recently translated the idea of showing Rei physically falling apart was already considered for the but it was much more "body horror y" than the effect in the rebuilds where her hand simply shows a spot that looks like the core effect)

Knowing you're popular & ppl have expectations can negatively impact creativity imho even for the best ppl.
the "less body horror, more laser show" aesthetic decision worked exactly twice (for sahaquiel and ascended EVA 02) but otherwise it was mostly a detriment imho. gimme more biology. ppl loved that shit in eoe

i love the rebuilds and i like that they tried to have it offer a different, complimetary type of catharsis rather than repeating what they had previously done (which they couldn't have anyway because that was lightning in a bottle) but you wouldn't see me complaining about more freaky weird gross thought-provoking art stuff. like i know that draft shit exist cause im a hardcore nerd who reads all the stuff, but the average person doesnt and thats a shame.

[Ringworm128]

Don't really consider myself a shipper, but I like the idea of NGE Asuka and Shinji getting together and helping each other work through their problems.

[C.T.1290]

Don't really consider myself a shipper, but I like the idea of NGE Asuka and Shinji getting together and helping each other work through their problems.

There’s been plenty of post Third Impact fan fictions out there, although we’re not so certain which of them are more true to their characters, but I guess any of them could be plausible.

[OneShotPunch]

There’s been plenty of post Third Impact fan fictions out there, although we’re not so certain which of them are more true to their characters, but I guess any of them could be plausible.

I'm not too keen on Post-Third Impact fics because I haven't come across one that felt in any way convincing. Shinji caused so much destruction and harm that the idea of Asuka or anyone from before forgiving him feels like a massive stretch. If I'm going to read a SxA fic, and I wouldn't, I'd rather it be an obvious alternate universe story.

Edit: How come no one uses the TV ending as a starting point for a Post-Third impact fanfic? That's a separate ending and Shinji didn't cause the Impact in that one.

[ephemeral]

The best ship is definitely Mari x Asuka

SPOILER: Show

that's why I started r/marisuka

[C.T.1290]

The best ship is definitely Mari x Asuka

SPOILER: Show

that's why I started r/marisuka

Aren’t they like…related or something?

[OneShotPunch]

Wouldn't Mari x Asuka run into the same problem as Mari x Shinji, that she's old enough to be their parent?

[Kendrix]

I'm pretty sure the woman in the flashbacks is Mari's 'original', not the same person.

We're explicitly told that in Rebuild all the pilots are artificial, she has a last name similar to the other two clone series...

[MsenjaKagami]

I'm pretty sure the woman in the flashbacks is Mari's 'original', not the same person.

We're explicitly told that in Rebuild all the pilots are artificial, she has a last name similar to the other two clone series...

All? I mean I get Rei, Kaworu, and Asuka obviously, and I'm on board with the idea that Mari is an artificial human as well. And I'm not even necessarily against Shinji being one as well especially if he's an artificial human specifically based on Gendo or something, cause that means that people can get off my ass about being an LRS fan to bring it back to the thread topic, but where/when does it say that that's what he is?

[Kendrix]

Shinji is the most ambiguous since we do see him as a regular baby in Gendo's flashback (still, Mari's lookalike is present at his birth, wearing a labcoat) but Asuka speaks of "us eva pilots" in general when explaining it to Rei, & when she makes Shinji swallow the food she says something like "you're still a pseudo Lillin, so before your body stops changing you better appreciate how gross this food is" - which suggests that she at least thinks he's like the other pilots.

Yui & Gendo could've made a regular embryo from their sperm & egg, genetically engineered it & then had Yui carry it to term.