Neon Genesis Evangelion – Asuka Arrives In Japan / Asuka Strikes! [8]

As soon as I start to think writing these posts might take me less time, as soon as I start to think that the show will be repeating ground so I’ll have less to say they go and introduce a whole new important character to talk about. That’s right, this episode we come across the third human capable of saving the world: Asuka!

Mistato, Shinji and Shinji’s friend take a lovely trip on a helicopter to the navy on the sea. And when I say the navy I mean the ENTIRE navy! Shinji’s two friends are very focussed on appealing to Misato, one going so far as to buy a hat. This hat ends up serving to create a brilliant establishment shot for Asuka as soon as they land on the massive ship.

He loses his hat and it goes flying towards an unknown girl’s feet. This girl stomps on the hat and we immediately know a few things about her from this alone. The first is that she is confident and more sociable than the other two pilots. None of the others would have the experience or desire to damage a stranger’s property so it shows that my previous opinion of the personality of Eva pilots is wrong. This doesn’t tell us that she’s sociable, just more sociable than the other two. It’s her bold introduction and slap to that same boys face that establishes her as a more confident person straight away. She’s so confident she doesn’t even address the guy at first and instead talks to Misato!

Due to the fact that this show has Evangelion in the title I’m sure that she has something strange or mentally wrong about her character. It could be that she acts confident but is actually insecure or something like that. But that’s just speculation and I have no reason to believe that. What we know is that unlike the other two who react in very nervous and introverted ways Asuka knows how she is and is confident to display her… well confidence.

It was really funny when the boy dropped his trousers to apologise for looking up her skirt only to receive another slap again because Asuka didn’t want him too. This shows us she’s a bit reckless and violent, which could make her pretty good at piloting the Eva.

We get to see all of the new characters introduced eating together, along with a new addition called Keji who enjoys flirting with Misato. It’s heavily implied that they had a past relationship when Keji asks Shinji if she still rolls around at night madly. The fact that Misato is so embarrassed makes me almost certain of their relationship; she is just embarrassed so much. If it was a guy you barely knew you’d be more likely to be angry at him than anything else. It seems like Misato is trying to keep this a secret, maybe because she stopped going out with him or just that she doesn’t want Shinji talking about his own criticisms of her privately.

A little while later Asuka decides to show Shinji her Evangelion. What I like about this is that Asuka immediately wants to establish herself as a strong person and a leader amongst the pilots by talking about how great her Evangelion is. I get the impression that she’s competitive and wants to be more respected and used than any other based on her actions here. For example it’s made specifically for combat. Hmm… I wonder how it deals with being underwater.

It’s here that an angel appears to attack the characters. This has made me certain that the angels know and can detect where our main characters are, probably based on the Eva’s energy or something like that.

Now Asuka is a character that I like because she can take the initiative. As a way to prove herself she immediately starts getting ready to pilot the Eva, not really caring if Misato wouldn’t allow it. She has a strong belief that she can achieve her goal which is really nice. I wasn’t entirely sure if she was actually good at fighting or if she was just a bit stupid. I don’t even know if it was made clear whether or not she had even tried piloting it before!

Now Asuka is German but the show made it very clear that it was made by Japanese people. I just don’t think it’s realistic for her to know Japanese. I don’t think that’s racist against Germans; it’s just that statistically not that many people know Japanese, of these people most of them are Japanese and not German and out of all the Germans who know Japanese very few are 14 year old girls. I think, it would make sense. The only explanation I can think for this is that due to Japans emergence of great technology (Even though realistically they wouldn’t advance the fastest out of all the countries) more people need to know Japanese so that they can understand and work with the military.

Anyway Asuka tells the Eva to work in her native language and it doesn’t work. However when she switches to Japanese she understands her perfectly. It’s very strange that a person using their first language wouldn’t be understood yet understood with the second. The use of Asuka switching languages of her Eva is pretty badly done but it makes sense for the director to make the decision so that the audience can understand her better.

So Asuka gets in and Misato immediately approves! It’s a really great moment for Asuka to act. If she didn’t then a lot of damage would have been caused and it would have been too late before the navy gave her permission to move out.

Anyway Asuka is actually a brilliant pilot but unfortunately goes into the water after stabbing the angel. This is when we see what happens when the Eva submerges in water. Luckily they don’t get electrocuted (you know how well water and electricity mix) but they still can’t move which is actually a lot better than it should have been.

It’s at this point that Misato comes up with another brilliant plan. In this case the plan was quite good but something about the way she explains her plans really annoys me. She acts like she’s extremely clever for coming up with something basic and explains each simple plan as if it’s complicated. You may need to re-watch to see what I mean. Her plan is to use this hook that Asuka and Shinji (Shinji is in the cockpit with Asuka – don’t read that statement the wrong way) to reel the angel to the surface, have Asuka open its mouth all the way and then shoot missiles into it.

Maybe I can explain the thing that annoys me about her plan exposition better. Instead of shouting out the plan in a hectic panic to try and solve the situation in time she almost steps out of the moment focussing on her plan as if it’s a long-term event, waiting for approval from the person she’s explain it too. That’s what annoys me, she should have just said the plan giving orders and explained it as she went.

What was interesting about Shinji and Asuka in the cockpit was the way Shinji was able to take charge over Asuka and lean over her to pilot for her. It’s clear that the two are touching and it was nice to see that Shinji was confident about it and focusing on the task. Asuka who had more time to think due to lack of control mentioned it but Shinji didn’t even understand. I think that he might be breaking out of the shell he’s created around him and making a new one which is really nice!

The situation was solved and the episode ends with Keji giving Gendo “the first human being” but it doesn’t look human at all. I’m intrigued to see how this goes in the future.

We’ve already been going on for quite a long time but I really do need to address the ED again since my interpretation may have been correct. The singer of the ED has been changing and I’m very sure that Asuka was singing at the end of this one, it had a certain energy that only she really has. Since Asuka doesn’t seem to have any obvious problems I can either continue the interpretation and say that she’s just feeling like that on the inside or watch the show more and create a better idea later on when I know more about everyone!