Games - Asuka Langley Soryu

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	Games - Asuka Langley Soryu

Asuka Langley Soryu (惣流・アスカ・ラングレー Sōryū Asuka Rangurē) is a fictional character from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion
and The End of Evangelion movie. Her surname is romanized as Soryu in the English manga and Sohryu in the English version of the TV series, the English version of the anime movie and on GAINAX's website.

Description

Asuka Langley Soryu, one of the main characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion, is designated as the Second Child ("Second Children" in the Japanese versions) of the Evangelion Project and pilots the red Eva Unit 02. Her genetic background is three-quarters German, one-quarter Japanese, and is a native of Germany; she was raised there. She is a child prodigy and has a university degree as a teenager, though it is not specified what field her degree is in. She is characterized by her fiery red hair and equally fiery temper. She is NERV's most consistently competent pilot, a fact on which she prides herself greatly, though her skills are no match for Eva 01's berserker mode (Shinji, 01's pilot, is usually catatonic in this state).

Family

Her mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, was the half-Japanese, half-German head scientist of NERV Germany's Evangelion Project, but went insane after a test and began to believe that Asuka's doll was her real daughter, even refusing to acknowledge the real Asuka. She eventually hanged herself and the doll, which Asuka discovered when she went to tell Kyoko the good news that Asuka had been chosen to become an Eva pilot. From that day, Asuka promised herself that she would never cry again.

Asuka's German father remarried a woman who was a doctor after Kyoko's suicide, a woman by the name of Langley. Asuka feels no affection towards her step-mother whatsoever.

Character

Like the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu, her namesake, Asuka is proud, strong, and has a high opinion of herself, which could be characterized as a superiority complex. She is often violent and offensive of other people's space, especially Shinji's. Her feelings for him are violently suppressed by bossing him around and battering his ego, yet sexually teasing him at the same time. She initiates what is probably Shinji's first kiss.

Asuka acts in this manner because she needs to feed her voracious yet unstable ego. This is also her way of shutting others out of her life, often using her blustering character as an offensive AT Field. Her personality could also be characterized as a kind of identity reinforcement; she loudly boasts of who she is in the hope that no one will ever forget or confuse her for something she's not, a mistake which would effectively warp her identity (as was the case with her mother).

Her best friend is her classmate and class representative, Hikari Horaki. Asuka also has a huge crush on Kaji.

Asuka is an exceptional Evangelion pilot, and unlike Shinji, she is proud of her Eva status. She has a strong synchronisation score, although never exceeding the Berserk climax that Shinji's EVA-01 achieves.

Asuka suffers a nervous breakdown after she is forced to relive the painful memories of her past by the fifteenth Angel, Arael. She loses the will to live and is incapable of piloting EVA-02 again until The End of Evangelion, in which she fights against the production model Evas. During the battle, EVA-02 is annihilated and it appears as if she has died. She returns at the conclusion of the series when Shinji rejects Instrumentality.

Role in Shinji's character development

Throughout the series, Shinji carries out a deceivingly straight-forward love / hate relationship with her. If Misato Katsuragi represents grown womanhood and all its difficulties and Rei Ayanami represents his relationship with his long-dead mother (as well as being a demi-goddess in The End of Evangelion), then Asuka plays the role of the primary female figure in the story, and eventually inherits most of the instances of sexual tension between Shinji and women (with the exception of his first intrusion into Rei's house, which is quickly resolved, and his later rejection of contact with Misato). This position is maintained throughout the entire series, but in the controversial movie The End of Evangelion, their relationship comes to the forefront. Almost surprisingly, her influence on Shinji in the final instance of Instrumentality during Third Impact is more important than Shinji's own mother's, whose absence had until then been his primary psychological trauma, along with the emotional absence of his father, Gendo Ikari. Here, he begs Asuka for help repeatedly; because he says that he is afraid of Misato and Rei, this cry is responded to by Asuka, who finally crushes his resolve with an attack on the selfish nature of his plea.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Asuka Langley Soryu ]

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