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I wasn't too fond of her bullying of Shinji at first, but as her story unfolded, she became one of my favorite Evangelion characters. Asuka's very nature is contradictory, as are her needs and wants. This stems from her traumatic childhood. Asuka's mother neglected her in favor of her work, and that work turned her mind unstable. Her mother began carrying around and speaking to a doll, believing that it was her daughter. Her father paid little attention to her, and later left their mother for another woman, who would soon become Asuka's stepmother. As Asuka's biological mother took her own life, Asuka would find her mother's body hanging. Throughout her whole life, Asuka wasn't ever noticed or frankly even seen by her parents, and her mother specifically. And she craved her mother's attention. When no one wants you or sees you, you begin to blame yourself, you begin to hate yourself. Just like Asuka did. So Asuka wants to be seen. As she gets older, that desire turns into wanting to be embraced and loved. It's why she kisses Shinji when she's bored, to see if you'll hold her, if you'll touch her. It's the only reason she pilots the Eva, so that she can feel important, needed and seen. Believing that Eva is the only thing that gives her a sense of identity. She isn't anything but a pilot and she must succeed. Asuka has no friends, no family, no one who has shown any attention or love to her, and she feels like she isn't worthy of their love in addition. She believes piloting the Eva will give her that. When she is a world famous pilot, people will have no choice but to pay attention to her and to see her. But at the same time, without anyone in her life, she's had to depend only on herself. The young pilot believes that she needs to do everything alone, as she's been self-dependent her whole life. More than that, as soon as you are forced to listen to someone and to answer to their requests, you become a doll. Asuka craves that autonomy, and that false sense of maturity that she has bleeds into the way she views her own appearance. As she's had to grow up quickly, she feels older, like an adult. And because she needs to be loved, Asuka looks towards Kaji to affirm those feelings, who of course rejects the teenager. Asuka's personality is everything that Shinji is not. Passionate, energetic, boastful, and stubborn. Asuka's second line in the series was her boasting her appearance. And at the very first chance she got, she gloated about her Eva unit being better than Shinji's. That fiery personality and confidence is a facade for her wavering self-esteem. But Shinji and Asuka are very alike. They are both broken kids with traumatic childhoods, who are piloting Eva's to find a sense of self-worth. They both hate themselves. Asuka berates and disrespects Shinji's sensitivity and masculinity. She ridicules Rey for being a doll, all to hide her own imperfections. She hates everyone because she's in so much pain as a result of her childhood. And to cope, she believes that she has to compete with everyone. Competing with Shinji and Rey to become the best Eva pilot to appease her worth and with Misado for Kaji's attention. And Asuka keeps on losing. Thinking back to how she flaunted her Eva unit when she was first introduced, Asuka isn't the most important Eva unit. In fact, she is the least, because of Shinji's prowess and Rey's capability to be replaced. As she constantly gets upstage and embarrassed by Shinji and Rey who even had to save her, Asuka's self-worth and confidence that she carries begins to waver, heavily, causing her to lose her sinking abilities with her Eva unit. And without her Eva, she would fall deeper and deeper into depression and into nothingness. Asuka already hates herself for her childhood and without her Eva she has no identity. Asuka becomes no one. And in those seven days she spent alone, Asuka's cheekbones were sunken and she looked so lifeless. The fact that it took seven days to track her would in a sense prove her importance or lack thereof to nerve. Asuka is one of my favorites because she is so human. The way she handles her pain is very human. I know a few people who are once just like her, who put on the confident and boastful mask but when it came time to be alone they broke, just like her. You can only trick your brain into appearing confident for so long. And Asuka's needs are pretty human as well. We all need to be seen and to be loved by someone. Asuka has these moments where she is a soft, almost grounded teenager. Where she's kind and even willing to open up to Shinji. But before she does, she always pushes him and others away to protect herself. Which brings us back to that contradiction that she carries. Asuka wants to be alone but can't handle the loneliness she faces. She wants love but rejects any advances towards the real her. She wants to be protected and cared for but puts on this facade that phases so many. Asuka feels all of this at once, until one ultimately overtakes the other. To me, Asuka's regression in Evangelion is what Shinji could have become. However in the end of Evangelion we see an Asuka who discovered that the Eva that she treated like a machine contained the soul of her own mother. And she found out that she was in fact never alone. And Asuka would accept the idea that she was in fact seen not only by her Eva but by those around her, especially Shinji. And she expresses that with a caressing hand at the end of the film. She expresses that by rejecting human instrumentality. She accepted that she pushed him away every time he tried to get to know her. This was in Asuka who realized she was deserving of love and that she was capable of healing. But I think that initial version of Asuka, the one who wanted nothing more than to be seen and to be loved but ultimately failed, resonated so much with me. She's a 14 year old who's made to believe that piloting an Eva will give her life meaning. And without it, she was no one. It was tragic and heartbreaking. And it's a story that I came to appreciate so much more because of her failure.