TyroLuuki wrote:For those curious, this is the newest Newtype character poll released this month:
Rei Ayanami ranked in 5th place for females
Shinji Ikari ranked in 3rd place for males
Kaworu Nagisa ranked in 10th place for males
No other Eva characters ranked.
Best girl is back in her rightful place
Also it's always heartening to see how Shinji is actually beloved in Japan.
Though there's really 2 ways to interpret it, depending on a second number - how many ppl are involved EVA fans.
You could indeed conclude that Asuka is more popular with hardcore audiences (if that poll had a lot more EVA fans responding than usual), or, on the other hand, if the higher placing of all EVA characters was temporary hype right after the movie, then those would actually be the temporary hype following the anticipation/release, & it's the long term fans that always vote Rei in every poll
Without additional data, that's hard to determine.
In any case, whoever recently got screentime always gets a temporary boost & Rei got to be pretty cute in TuaT.
I've seen a bunch of comments by ppl who never liked her but finally looked at her in a different light there.
There's that wannabe pseudo feminist contingent that was int on dismissing her as "meant to teach dudes a lesson" as long as she existed vaguely in a love interesty role (& mysteriously not applying the same to Asuka or Misato - probably because it's a rightheous-sounding rationalization for either their ship preferences or dislike/misunderstanding of introverts or task oriented personalities), but here she is having basically the same plot she always has (among other things, experiencing & seeing a broader range of human existence after living a very limited, overfocussed life & philosophizing about it, making other characters & the audience maybe reevaluate or break it down to its essentials because the presence of an outsider PoV forces you to actually examine things everyone takes for granted & underlying its simple, basic value - like when she says thank you to Shinji & then realizes she's never said it to anyone before, it makes you think about what gratitude even is, why it would apply in some situations and not others, why you express it... ), but rather than having just this one or at most two friends (if you count og series Touji as a second one from their brief interactions), here's a whole community's worth of ppl that she's interacting with that they couldn't write off from that lens.
It's not actually so different in the Rebuilds, they're only just for the first time seeing Rei with their own eyes as her own character instead of prefabricated opinions off the internet.
Or well, the difference is of course that she got a break in the sense that she actually had the chance to be part of a community, which her upbringing & circumstances had previously made difficult.
She could have gone & talked to her classmates more, but she'd have this preconceived notions that "my purpose is piloting & this doesnt serve it" or that it all wont matter in the end.
But this version of her that didn't remember anything was more able to be shaped. Like getting to have a second childhood, or all the stuff she missed out on from never being a toddler.
This is probably going to be reflected in how she'll act after she returns - she's got, if not the memories, then at least some 'soul impression' of it, judging from the doll in the instrumentality sequence.
She doesn't "only talk to Shinji" cause she's obsessed with him or "being a doormat" or otherwise making a deliberate choice, but because he's the only one that bothered; Before that she made do with Gendo's distant, only half-sincere presence cause that's all she had.
And to be fair to everyone else, Rei wasn't even conciously aware that she wants more contact, or that what she feels even matters, so she's not doing anything to actively seek it out or make herself available/accessible.
In psychology there's this concept of 'mirroring' & how a child learns to identify & deal with their feelings through the way the parents react to it & reflect it back to them. Parental neglect can interfere with this happening properly, trauma can mess with it, & some personality structures are just more suceptible to the inevitable momentary misses that even good parents make. It's pretty clear that regardless of what her base temperament may be, Rei has been very much neglected & traumatized - & the only one who interacted with her on a personal enough level for her to copy them is the famously emotionally constipated Commander Ikari, who did not do a good job of it.
OG Rei is not really too far from what you'd get from certain personality types and/or neglect or trauma; The version from Q is more like a full-on feral child except that, through Sci Fi means, she can talk and understand instructions, cause Gendo needed her to be able to follow orders - to explore, throuh this device, what such a person may say if they could talk or experience the emotional component of that basic toddler-level learning while already having speech & advanced reason (and also confuse the hell out of poor Shinji cause the plot required it)
So perhaps in some ways she's more like someone who fled a cult, or north korea, than a baby. A traumatized or cult-raised teen would have to catch up to the experiences they didn't get, & remold the bad or missing patterns through new experiences, though they'd probably not be as receptive to it
However, you see Hikari and the village ladies very much doing 'mirroring' throughout the sequence, responding to her & explaining/modelling things, until Rei starts being able to point it out herself ("Ah, this is being embarassed")
See also when she's seeing the old ladies talking with relief about how that pregnant villager had a safe delivery, & then Rei spots that cat she's been visiting with healthy kittens, and probably makes the connection that she's happy & relieved just like the old ladies, & that's the first time she smiles in the village.
Hence why she says in the end not only "I like it here", but "I'm glad that I
know that I like it" (which is a callback to that first exchange in Q, but not JUST that)
Eh... I think I veered of topic.
Bottom line is: The more people appreciate teh Rei the better.