Postby Pen-Pen02 » Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:24 pm
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I dare say that Anno got tired of Asuka somehow and he didn't know how to "get rid" of her anymore without Asuka's fan base getting mad at him. I mean, the Rebuild movies could just have worked very well without her, because with Mari it was enough to fight angels or Nerv, even EVA02 synchronized very well with her, so no one would miss Asuka. If Asuka had been omitted, then in reality very little would have changed the general story (in 2.0, Asuka didn't interact almost at all with Shinji and her sacrifice didn't make much difference, as did Rei 2 and in 3.0 film Asuka only comes out fighting and that Mari could well have done it alone).
Rebuild from the beginning was Rei and Shinji's story and this was understandable (I was even surprised that she didn't stay with Shinji, but that's another topic to be discussed). Rei was always very popular in Japan and, for years, Rei's character deserved to be explored much better and I liked the ending they gave to Rei Q, because she finally found her humanity without depending on someone to tell her what to do ( Gendou, Shinji). That kind of evolution I expected in Asuka, I wanted see her better and no longer as the tsundere girl who only reacted with violence and bitterness, but until the end the time that has elapsed has not been enough for her.
I think Anno over time felt "ashamed" of having considered Asuka as his favorite character, that is, a young tsundere with violent attitudes that, nowadays, many animes take as a fetish for their stories. There are as many tsunderes as there are anime stories and, in many cases, the tsunderes are the protagonists of them and the ones that usually stay with the protagonist, somehow normalizing that mistreatment is okay, because tsunderes are "adorable" for many fans. In truth, Asuka Sohryu was cloned, but not in the Shikinami series, but in all those other protagonists of all those stories who have wanted to emulate her.
We are living in a time of politically correct affairs, in defense of non-violence and to make Asuka stay with Shinji would have been a kind of "prize" to a character with many internal emotional problems and who mistreated the protagonist during the old history of EVA. Instead, Anno brought us a "likeable" character, carefree, with perhaps better fighting qualities than Asuka and a more striking body so that EVA fans could turn their eyes to her and gain favoritism from them ( someone who is supposed to be original, but who in the end is another flirty cliche neko character). I think that, despite this, Mari could have functioned much better if she had had another role within EVA and not be Asuka's "replacement" in this story, as many fans already expected the best outcome for their favorite characters and not another character added. Many fans I think they took Mari as a support character for Asuka and they took a liking to her precisely because of it, but in the end she ended up being that character that displaces her in every way and I don't know if Asuka fans will continue to keep that initial affection for Mari, although I don't think Anno will be too concerned about that.
On the other hand, doing the replacement exercise but in reverse, if we omit Mari and totally give her role to Asuka, then Mari would not have been necessary at all. And it's that Anno deep down loves Asuka and at the same time not. It seems like that divorced man after a long marriage who now wants to rebuild his life and is looking for a woman similar to the one he has left, but without the defects of the previous one and he did with Mari.
Now, from all the spoilers I've read, many fans consider Kensuke to be like a relative to Asuka. I haven't seen the movie but I think Kensuke is more than that. I think he was Asuka's partner at one point but not anymore. I mean, Asuka managed to save herself and maybe it took her a few months to recover. She had enough time to meet Kensuke, get to know him more, take refuge in him, and have an affair together at some point, for example, she might look like a 14-year-old but Kensuke would be 15, then 16, and 17, so physical appearance and age difference still wouldn't be a problem to be together in that time. However, it is obvious that EVA's curse then separates them, but that is not an impediment to later being good friends. They may even have repressed their feelings due to Asuka's problem, but I think that remained, since until now they have been frequenting each other. That end of Asuka, being fired by Shinji and finding herself free of that "curse" at last, without the angel possessing her and with her adult body, makes her free to look for Kensuke again and maybe resume that romance that they left on hiatus for a long time. Therefore, as soon as she saw herself change, Asuka is expelled from the EVA and seeks to live her own life. At least that feeling is what is perceived.
I just wanna a happy end for Asuka
I only speak Spanish. Sorry for grammatical mistakes in my posts...