Is there anything that backs Asuka's Hype?

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Postby Bagheera » Sun Oct 19, 2014 1:06 pm

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:Yes they do. Why does she attend middle school of all things?


As I noted, it's to work on her Japanese. This is explained directly in ep. 10.
For my post-3I fic, go here.
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Yes, I know. You thought it would be something about Asuka. You're such idiots.

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Postby ElMariachi » Sun Oct 19, 2014 1:15 pm

View Original PostIronEvangelion wrote:I found it even more ridiculous in the rebuild when Asuka Langley Shikinami was revealed to be captain of the European Air Force. College graduate I can understand, but a high-ranking military officer at 13? Now you've lost me.

As Bags noted, it's probably a honorary rank, sometime civilians who have post of great importance can get honorary ranks.
And being an Eva pilot, protector of mankind, is a post of great importance. Although I have the feeling that this rank is actually completely hollow, a way to boost her ego and make her more compliant, I mean what does even "European Airforce" mean? Did the European Union fused into a giant federal state due to 2I? If so why it was never at least mentioned?
Besides she lacks all the composure, discipline and professionalism of a military, best example being when she talked back to Misato, her superior officer, when the later explained her plan to stop Sahaquiel, and the first thing you learn in the army is that you never talk back to you superior officer, especially not in front of the rest of the troops.

OTOH, by the time of Q I'm sure that her Captain rank is completely genuine. (even though she still has some big shortcomings)
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Postby Mr. Tines » Sun Oct 19, 2014 2:22 pm

Just googling "youngest graduate" might be enlightening to some in this thread and counter some of the blatant unsubstantiated assertions that have been made. For example a 12 year old graduating in 1982 would not have had any internet programs to attend.
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Postby Bagheera » Sun Oct 19, 2014 3:02 pm

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:Just googling "youngest graduate" might be enlightening to some in this thread and counter some of the blatant unsubstantiated assertions that have been made. For example a 12 year old graduating in 1982 would not have had any internet programs to attend.


Not really. Michael Kearney, for instance, got a Bachelor's at t he age of 10 in 1994, but if you check his history of schooling you'll see he skipped a lot. He was homeschooled, for instance, meaning he essentially got to skip all of elementary school, and he attended HS for a year and spent the normal four years in college. How do you need see shortcuts there? The claim is that it can't be done unless special accommodations are made, and . . . special accommodations were made.
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Postby Shamsiel-kun » Sun Oct 19, 2014 3:14 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:It's really not. There's a lot involved in getting a university education that has nothing to do with one's talent; graduating that early is functionally impossible unless shortcuts of some sort are involved (as I suspect they were in Asuka's case).


With certain specific intelligence profiles it is not impossible, depending on the kind of education she was getting. Some people are extremely good at learning things by heart in a short amount of time, others at understanding complex processes quickly.

In the first case, it helps if you can 'speed-read' (basically to be able to extract essential information from a text quickly while skipping the unimportant parts) - then you can easily read 300-400 pages of graduate-level text in about a day (not counting the night, in which you will sleep (8 hours or so)).

With the second option, an example would be the kind of visual thinking that some high-functioning autists are capable of. When you can visualise all kinds of 3-D (or more dimensions) stuff in your head, manipulate them at will, test various options, etc. etc. without ever actually touching the physical objects, that gives you a little advance over people who can't do that. This can be stretched to visualising things like chemical reactions or biological structures (including growth).

If you have access to both options at once it makes for some really interesting abilities. People with such capabilities do not need to be a genius, but can just be very good at one thing (and quite good at others, and suck at some things). However, they are likely to be of above average intelligence.

(Although it always has annoyed me that my photographic memory only includes the shape of objects; I can remember a page in a book, but can't read the text on that page while visualising it :facepalm: )

Now it depends on the person at what age they can do such things, while circumstances are also very important. So what makes it less likely she actually has a degree is her having serious mental issues, which tend to have (very) detrimental effects on performal intelligence. So I guess if she has a degree, it should be one in a subject that didn't interfere with her mental issues and allowed her to escape reality in a certain sense.

As for the reason she doesn't show that intelligence much, this may be simply due to it being for a very specific subject, or that showing it really disturbs other people - and by 'really' I mean it gives them the creeps up to a degree that you get alienated (this is frustrating like hell... :uhh: )

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Postby ChaddyManPrime » Sun Oct 19, 2014 3:46 pm

What about Adragon De Mello? No mention of him being home schooled. Only says his father mentored him.
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Postby Bagheera » Sun Oct 19, 2014 4:17 pm

View Original PostChaddyManPrime wrote:What about Adragon De Mello? No mention of him being home schooled. Only says his father mentored him.


That would be homeschooling. It doesn't look like he went to any sort of school before getting his degree, so his is an even weirder case than most.
For my post-3I fic, go here.
The law doesn't protect people. People protect the law. -- Akane Tsunemori, Psycho-Pass
People's deaths are to be mourned. The ability to save people should be celebrated. Life itself should be exalted. -- Volken Macmani, Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra
I hate myself. But maybe I can learn to love myself. Maybe it's okay for me to be here! That's right! I'm me, nothing more, nothing less! I'm me. I want to be me! I want to be here! And it's okay for me to be here! -- Shinji Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yes, I know. You thought it would be something about Asuka. You're such idiots.

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Postby Lavinius » Sun Oct 19, 2014 4:55 pm

I think there's a bit of confusion here, with most people (including myself, at first) reading Bagheera's "shortcuts" only as "cheating/having not actually earned it" to a far greater degree than is intended; he seems to actually mean "anything that differs from the usual school system".
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Postby Bagheera » Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:02 pm

View Original PostLavinius wrote:I think there's a bit of confusion here, with most people (including myself, at first) reading Bagheera's "shortcuts" only as "cheating/having not actually earned it" to a far greater degree than is intended; he seems to actually mean "anything that differs from the usual school system".


Pretty much. IOW you can't just skip grades and make it work, because the system doesn't work that way. You need to test out of some courses and get allowances for others and do all sorts of things outside the system and so on and so forth. And universities will recognize that and allow you to get your degree in an unconventional manner if you prove you have the chops to do it, but that's not you going through the system more rapidly so much as proving the system is meaningless to you given the way you learn the material.
For my post-3I fic, go here.
The law doesn't protect people. People protect the law. -- Akane Tsunemori, Psycho-Pass
People's deaths are to be mourned. The ability to save people should be celebrated. Life itself should be exalted. -- Volken Macmani, Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra
I hate myself. But maybe I can learn to love myself. Maybe it's okay for me to be here! That's right! I'm me, nothing more, nothing less! I'm me. I want to be me! I want to be here! And it's okay for me to be here! -- Shinji Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yes, I know. You thought it would be something about Asuka. You're such idiots.

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Postby Atropos » Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:46 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:As I noted, it's to work on her Japanese. This is explained directly in ep. 10.

Okay. I've seen this explanation before, and it makes no fucking sense. Her only purpose for being in Japan—and thus, her only purpose for learning Japanese—is because she has to fight Angels. She clearly has a good enough grasp on the language for her to understand orders from her commanding officers and to coordinate attacks with her fellow pilots. There is no need, in other words, for her to "work on her Japanese."

Also, the episode doesn't say what you think it says. Asuka says that her poor knowledge of Japanese is the reason she receives bad grades in school, not the reason she is going.

Oh, and thermal expansion? Seventh-grade physics, at least where I'm from. :lol:

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Postby amitakartok » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:00 pm

View Original PostAtropos wrote:Oh, and thermal expansion? Seventh-grade physics, at least where I'm from. :lol:


Japan has six-grade elementary schools. Junior high is grades 7-9.
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Postby Atropos » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:01 pm

View Original Postamitakartok wrote:Japan has six-grade elementary schools. Junior high is grades 7-9.

...I don't live in Japan?

But, for international posters, seventh grade in the US is age twelve.

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Postby amitakartok » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:03 pm

View Original PostAtropos wrote:...I don't live in Japan?


But Eva takes place in Japan and was intended for a Japanese audience. Why wouldn't they use the Japanese school system?

Judging from their ages, the pilots are in the eighth-grade, which makes the "child soldiers" angle even worse for a Western audience, who were still in elementary school at that age.
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Postby Atropos » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:06 pm

View Original Postamitakartok wrote:But Eva takes place in Japan and was intended for a Japanese audience. Why wouldn't they use the Japanese school system?

What does that have to do with what I said? My point is that treating a fourteen-year-old like a genius for knowing that "higher temperature = greater volume" (gas LOLs) is incorrect, because in many parts of the world it isn't exceptional.

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Postby amitakartok » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:09 pm

Nobody's treating her as a genius. Only Asuka is treating herself as a genius.
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Postby ChaddyManPrime » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:10 pm

Oh my God :hitthetable: Someone should write fanfic where all the misunderstandings between Asuka and Shinji are due to the language barrier :rofl: She tries to pass it off as him being dense but in actuality he doesn't understand her broken Japanese and her pride won't allow her to admit she doesn't understand Japanese very well and seek help.
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Postby Gob Hobblin » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:28 pm

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Postby thewayneiac » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:28 pm

View Original PostAtropos wrote:Okay. I've seen this explanation before, and it makes no fucking sense. Her only purpose for being in Japan—and thus, her only purpose for learning Japanese—is because she has to fight Angels. She clearly has a good enough grasp on the language for her to understand orders from her commanding officers and to coordinate attacks with her fellow pilots. There is no need, in other words, for her to "work on her Japanese."

Also, the episode doesn't say what you think it says. Asuka says that her poor knowledge of Japanese is the reason she receives bad grades in school, not the reason she is going.

Oh, and thermal expansion? Seventh-grade physics, at least where I'm from. :lol:


If I remember right, it actually says she's there to work on reading and writing Japanese, not speaking it. She hasn't learned kanji.
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Postby Bagheera » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:30 pm

View Original PostAtropos wrote:Okay. I've seen this explanation before, and it makes no fucking sense. Her only purpose for being in Japan—and thus, her only purpose for learning Japanese—is because she has to fight Angels. She clearly has a good enough grasp on the language for her to understand orders from her commanding officers and to coordinate attacks with her fellow pilots. There is no need, in other words, for her to "work on her Japanese."


Er, yeah there is. It says right there in the episode that she did poorly on her tests because she couldn't read the kanji on them. That tells us unequivocally that her Japanese needs work.

Also, the episode doesn't say what you think it says. Asuka says that her poor knowledge of Japanese is the reason she receives bad grades in school, not the reason she is going.


I would say learning the language and keeping up appearances are perfectly fine reasons for her to attend school.

View Original PostAtropos wrote:What does that have to do with what I said? My point is that treating a fourteen-year-old like a genius for knowing that "higher temperature = greater volume" (gas LOLs) is incorrect, because in many parts of the world it isn't exceptional.


What you said is irrelevant, because the only standard that matters is Japanese.

And the point there is not that she understood the concept (which Shinji also understood perfectly well) but that the math was a snap for her. Being able to work through the equation and doing it in your head on the fly are two very different things.
For my post-3I fic, go here.
The law doesn't protect people. People protect the law. -- Akane Tsunemori, Psycho-Pass
People's deaths are to be mourned. The ability to save people should be celebrated. Life itself should be exalted. -- Volken Macmani, Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra
I hate myself. But maybe I can learn to love myself. Maybe it's okay for me to be here! That's right! I'm me, nothing more, nothing less! I'm me. I want to be me! I want to be here! And it's okay for me to be here! -- Shinji Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yes, I know. You thought it would be something about Asuka. You're such idiots.

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Postby Atropos » Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:39 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:Er, yeah there is. It says right there in the episode that she did poorly on her tests because she couldn't read the kanji on them. That tells us unequivocally that her Japanese needs work.

So she needs to go to school so she can work on her Japanese so she can go to school...

Her Japanese needs work...but that doesn't matter, because she already knows all the Japanese she needs in order to do what she needs to do, which is pilot the Eva.

She has a college degree. She has a job. Why does she need to learn a new language instead of just saying, "Okay, I'll live in Japan until this whole Angel situation is stabilized and then I'll move back to Germany"?

What you said is irrelevant, because the only standard that matters is Japanese.

But Asuka went to school in Germany, not Japan. (Not being from Germany I can't say what their standards are.)


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