LONG HAIRED Rei IS NOW CANON CELEBRATION THREAD

[InstrumentalityOne]

that is all

[Blockio]

Yuuuup. Long hair Rei is a very nice aesthetic.

[Justacrazyguy]

The best thing to come out of the rebuilds, to be honest. With Asuka x Kensuke ship being a close second.

[ManureTruck]

Long-hair Rei is definitely my new thing for the time being as well, although she doesn't really replace the original Rei aesthetic.

With Asuka x Kensuke ship being a close second.

Not looking to start a fight (so don't take it as an insult) but that seemed almost entirely a platonic friendship of sorts with him acting as more of a minder and homemaker (when she's there) than anything else. She even says that she's only staying with him because his house is the only one away from the main village. She makes absolutely no inferences whatsoever that she likes him (or anyone else) and neither does any other writing or character. So I wouldn't read too much into it. The closest thing she says to anything like that is telling Shinji that she "probably used to like him" but that it's pointless because of all the time that passed. She never even comes close to saying anything like that to anyone else, or using body language to say it, or anything.

Here scenes with her doll are supposed to help illustrate that she has an self-enforced status of being by herself.

Ken coming out of her doll at the end does imply something, but nothing definitive (could be a platonic "I'm here for you because I care about you" kind of thing, like what I have for my nieces). It's that infuriating Japanese-style reserved emotional aesthetic that makes it impossible to tell, lol.

[InstrumentalityOne]

My reading of Kensuke was that Asuka lacked parents and Kensuke stepped in like the parental figure she desired and needed.
Asuka often belittles Shinji for being irresponsible and not as useful as Kensuke is.

This is further illustrated by Kensuke popping out of the doll that accompanied her throughout her lonely early years.
Haven't read anything romantic either in that living situation.

This is in stark contrast to the paternal figure NGE!Asuka wanted Kaji to be, but neither wanted or could fill for her.

[JoelcrNeto]

Long haired Rei is my new religion!
And I also see that Kenken is a paternal figure to Asuka, I couldn't relate any romantic moments between them. But i think this thread is not the correct place to discuss that.

[Justacrazyguy]

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply it's a definitive, extremely obvious romantic pairing (hell, I don't see the Shinji scenes with Mari as that, for example), it's just that I personally like the idea of her settling down with a more mature partner, so I'm sticking with it in my head.

In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Shinji ending up with Rei is still a possibility, and I think that's one of the beauties of this last movie, it just leaves this open ending and you can do with it whatever you want. The story is over, the fans can take over.

[Natalie the Cat]

I didn’t get any specific vibe from Asuka’s relationship with Kensuke, but she does hang out in his house naked and the bit with the video camera was very flirty, so I can see why people would think there are implications there.

[Raikyu]

Tbh, I got more vibes of a father-daughter relationship. But we're talking about EVA, and "there are as many truths as people"

[Tankred]

that is all

I knew in my gut you'd make this thread.

[FelipeFritschF]

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply it's a definitive, extremely obvious romantic pairing (hell, I don't see the Shinji scenes with Mari as that, for example), it's just that I personally like the idea of her settling down with a more mature partner, so I'm sticking with it in my head.

In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Shinji ending up with Rei is still a possibility, and I think that's one of the beauties of this last movie, it just leaves this open ending and you can do with it whatever you want. The story is over, the fans can take over.

This is an idea I had for years but I had envisioned it with Kaworu for some years and/or Touji later. NGE/EoE made a repeated point that Shinji was wrong to think that the world revolved around him. This was the base reason, for instance, for his rejection by Asuka in the coffee fight scene. Of course, NTE is not NGE, and it can have different themes. I still think this remained in NTE, though, but it feels somewhat poorly executed here, not at the least because NTE naturally is more Shinji-focused and this leaves less space for an exterior world to be developed. So Asuka, which I guess we can still treat as his primary love interest, having a whole life around him seems like a good way to make that point. Kaworu, too, who's "always thinking about" Shinji, except at the end you also have his additional backstory, so I suppose it makes him get out of that orbit somewhat.

It's just that Kensuke never crossed my mind, in a sense it almost feels like he's a leftover... not unlike how Kensuke used to be paired with Rei in the older Asuka/Shinji fanfics because they were both leftovers. If we take into account Maeda's early imageboards for 3.0 (and these might date as early as 2009), Asuka wouldn't even stay in Kensuke's house at all. It feels strangely executed, to say the least, and Khara staff's many subsequent statements on it have been interpreted by many as backpedalling. Likewise, Asuka herself is clearly still unhappy and lonely, just like she was in 2.0, and her "maturity" is debatable - you could argue she didn't have a chance or a motivator to really develop as a person besides piloting because that's all she did, but I strongly doubt she didn't have enough time during those 14 years. She clearly spends at least some days on the village regularly, and her isolation is at least partly self-imposed.

I don't particularly like the prequel manga, when you take it into account it further feels like Asuka's character stagnated or even went backwards, taking the film by itself you could reasonably interpret Asuka did get over Shinji, accepted he was gone but would hold him in her heart, or that she would still have feelings for him but, oh well that's life. The manga makes those feelings less... remote. I'm not even gonna get into the strangeness of the timeloop justification, not at the least when Shinji apparently is also mature now, of course that's an entirely separate discussion. So Asuka's, ahem, status being so inconclusive feels like the narrative isn't all that commited to itself. It'd have been more interesting to see a full relationship affecting her instead of this lukewarm stuff. Discussing this movie is another form of loop....