Konja7 wrote:It's difficult for me to think the Asuka sees Kensuke as a father when they have the same age. Asuka was physically 14 years old while Kensuke is 28 years old, but they know each other since both were 14 years. Not to mention that both are 28 years old at the end of the story.
I've understand the scene in the Intrumentality as Kensuke being family for Asuka. If the relationship is platonic or romantic, I think this is left to interpretation.
I mean the culmination of Asuka's Instrumentality is her in a child form crying about how much she wanted to have a normal childhood and parents to "pat her in the head" (ie to love her), then suddenly Kensuke appears and do just that, the meaning is pretty clear that it's supposed to be seen as a parental relationship.
As for the age, I didn't got the feeling that the pilots' actual age really entered into account in the story: see Asuka mentally 28 but acting like a super-angry (and depressed) teenager most of the time, Shinji who's physically and mentally 14 but is expected to have the maturity of those who lived through those past 14 years and suddenly having a 28 years old body when he does that, and Mari who outright rejects such mortal concept as "age" and always acts like a manic teenager despite technically already being adult even in the second movie and also appearing in a body in its twenties in the end despite logically being in her forties. (even if we take the theory that she's a clone, she still has the memories of the "Mary" Gendo and Co met back in the 20th century)
But again, we don't know what will happen now that Asuka is also 28 in body and that Shinji seemingly disappeared from her life, maybe she'll try to hook up with Kensuke, and as I said that wouldn't even be the weirdest romantic relationship from an Anno work, far from it.
AsuQa_PsyOp_Langley wrote:Asuka reciting love poems ? Sounds out of character but maybe the manga pulls it off !
In the first two pages of the manga, Asuka is alone in the rocket launching platform and reciting a poem speaking of the Moon. Some people identified this poem as a from a old book of poetry (the oldest recorded one in Japan even) and that in this work the poems with the Moon had a theme of longing for a loved one, and since just after we have Mari appearing and teasing Asuka on her feelings for Shinji and this is just before the operation to retrieve Unit 01 from space, it's not hard to guess who was Asuka thinking about when she recited that poem.
AsuQa_PsyOp_Langley wrote:I think it's a little revealing that in 3.33 Q intro Asuka does call for him to do something when she's getting a rough time from that reflecting panels Neo-Nerv Chimera. It's been 14 years and for all they know Shinji was dissolved all along. Ritsuko and co might have learned a thing or two in the meantime, "Curse of the Eva" for instance, but the whole "get in a state of Tang" is probably pretty mysterious (they don't have anything to say about Rei II) still. Likewise Ritsuko doesn't consider a firm link between Asuka shouting for the Unit to do something and Eva 01 activating for 12 seconds (IIRC) but readily accepts that Shinji is no longer in sync.
Regardless of shipping (the greatest Heh of our time), I think it's more a matter of characterising Asuka being unable to move on and literally in arrested development.
It's said in the manga that they though that Shinji was gone for good and they genuinely didn't expected him to be restored by Unit 01 once it came back to Earth.
Only Mari thought that he could come back, and even argued to Asuka that he might hear her and come back if she's the one making direct contact with the Tesseract (which ends up being exactly what happened, but as revealed in Thrice, Mari already knows all the secrets of the Evas and probably counted on this scenario happening), which might had subconsciously pushed Asuka to call Shinji for help.
Ritsuko also admits that Shinji shouldn't be able to sync with EVA-01, but since despite that he still subconsciously briefly awoke it to save Asuka, they decided to put a DSS Choker on him as precaution. (besides, that choker half for that, and half to punish him for Near Third Impact, again by Ritsuko's own admission)
As for Asuka's longing for Shinji as a metaphor of her "stuck" in her development and unable to move on, that is an interpretation that comes often. The detractors of this theory notes that unlike with Gendo and Yui, Asuka's longing for Shinji is never shown in a negative line (and even continuously encouraged by Mari) and that, again unlike Yui, Shinji does come back. (there's also the apparent contradiction that her "moving on" is imposed on her by Shinji when he gives her an adult body and sends her to Kensuke without letting her the time to talk before disappearing from her life, if that 's how you interpret the last scene)
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