A thought on Brats

[Valles]

So titled because, of course, Asuka really isn't.
Now, I was reading a bit of Evafic (Step Beyond the Abyss, by N. T. Martin - reccomended, BTW) and had a... hmm. Revelation? Epiphany? Whatever.
Each of the Eva pilots has certain problems with the way they interact with the rest of the universe, and the way they view themselves. It's interesting, and probably a comment on Anno's state of mind, that the 'internal' problem is much the same - a lack of self respect bordering on hatred. They differ from each other so widely because of the way their 'exterior' damage proceeds from the 'internal'.
Asuka's external problems aren't brattiness or anything... it's just that she only has one tool for dealing with other people - a hammer - so she turns all her problems into nails.
This doesn't mean that she's -happy- about it, but that displeasure over her own actions feeds back into her own self-loathing, which in turn boils over into more "Hammerbitch" and so on in a vicious cycle that she can't escape on her own.
Blessed be.
-n
(This is tangentially related to my biggest problem with Anno - his apparent conviction that personal growth is inherently destructive.)
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===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[classicdrogn]

But, seeing as everything good I have to say about Evangelion is present in Dual, RaXephon, and Dai-Guard, I've decided to kick Eva to the curb and ignore it as a bad job, except for NXE and DW6. SMD Anno-baka, all your character are belong to Gryphon and Bob, 'cuz they aren't going to set me up the depression.
- CD, dusting off his hands.

[Bob Schroeck]

Interesting analysis, Nathan; I think you might be right on the money. It's certainly something for me to keep in mind when I turn to actively writing DW6 (whenever that will be).

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Valles]

---

Interesting analysis, Nathan; I think you might be right on the money. It's certainly something for me to keep in mind when I turn to actively writing DW6 (whenever that will be).

---

*does a happy dance*
Nice to hear.
Blessed be.
-n
(grrr... *stalks off to try and beat his muse into submission... or at least productivity*)
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Valles]

I was thinking a little more, and realized that my above comments are wrong, or rather, incomplete.
Asuka -is- capable of reacting in a positive manner... as long as in doing so, she reinforces, -in her own mind-, her superiority.
Blessed be.
-n
(still hoping to spark some running character discussion.)
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Ace Dreamer]

> But, seeing as everything good I have to say about
> Evangelion is present in Dual, RaXephon, and Dai-Guard,
> I've decided to kick Eva to the curb and ignore it as a
> bad job, except for NXE and DW6. SMD Anno-baka, all your
> character are belong to Gryphon and Bob, 'cuz they
> aren't going to set me up the depression.
>
> - CD, dusting off his hands.
Tend to agree...
The tech is pretty in NGE, but I don't like how they handle the characters. I like to see some positive character development in an anime, and NGE didn't deliver for me.
I would agree that, Dual, for example, seemed to deliver everything that NGE promised, and had a broader splash of humour, that I liked.
If I come to buy DVDs, so as to watch again, Dual will be on my purchase list, and NGE wont.
Dai-Guard looked like fun as well, particularly the idea of an under-financed defense mecha project, and I would like to see more of it. Ditto Ra Xephon, though bits of that looked to be getting a bit cosmic for ready enjoyment.
All three of these are far more likely to be on my "buy" list than EVA, which in style reminds me a bit of "Grey"; everyone dies and everything is thoroughly messed-up.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Valles]

>All three of these are far more likely to be on my "buy" list
>than EVA, which in style reminds me a bit of "Grey";
>everyone dies and everything is thoroughly messed-up.
I'm pretty sure I've ranted about Anno and personal growth already. That said, if I had a choice, I probably wouldn't be an Eva fan either...
Alas, the characters are already well under my skin.
Fortunately, I do believe that the manga is still in progress, and at least so far it's shown none of the same kinds of, hmm... character stasis... that Anno's neuroses inflicted on Eva proper.
Blessed be.
-n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Ebony]

---

Fortunately, I do believe that the manga is still in progress, and at least so far it's shown none of the same kinds of, hmm... character stasis... that Anno's neuroses inflicted on Eva proper.

---

Hmm. Perhaps there's hope for it. By all means, keep us informed.
Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
www.lrgames.com
(who's only seen the first 5 episodes of Evangelion, and really doesn't feel the need to watch any more)
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[M Fnord]

---

Fortunately, I do believe that the manga is still in progress, and at least so far it's shown none of the same kinds of, hmm... character stasis... that Anno's neuroses inflicted on Eva proper.

---

The nice thing about the manga is that Anno's not writing it - both art and words are Sadamoto, and Sadamoto is far less fucked-up in general than Anno.
--Mr. F
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Valles]

LOL. Yeah, that's about what it amounts to.
Sadamoto has -hope-.
Blessed be.
-n
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===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Bob Schroeck]

You know, it sounds like I should start checking out the manga. I know my local Borders and B&N both have it. Next time I go book shopping, I'll look for it.
You gotta wonder, though, just what Sadamoto is going to do with D&R and EoE when/if he gets to them. (I suspect he'll just stick with the hallucinatory ending of the series and make it a bit more palatable.)

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Murmur the Fallen]

You know, it sounds like I should start checking out the manga. I know my local Borders and B&N both have it. Next time I go book shopping, I'll look for it.
You gotta wonder, though, just what Sadamoto is going to do with D&R and EoE when/if he gets to them. (I suspect he'll just stick with the hallucinatory ending of the series and make it a bit more palatable.)
-- Bob
[Did I like the ending of Eva? It . . . grew on me. It wasn't a happy ending, but i don't think that it's supposed to be happy nor was a happy ending "earned" (a favorite word by my playwrighting prof. every scene and payoff and ending has to be "earned") by the series. Every time someone got up, they got kicked back down.
Given that, I think that the ending was as happy as could be.
Further, since Anno was the driving force and it's his baby, I suppose if he wants to strangle it, that's his perogative. To say that he "ruined" it is to say that it took something that existed before him and tained it somehow--kind of like how you could say that, uhh, NBC ruined West Wing by getting rid of Aaron Sorkin but not that Dick Wolf ruined Law and Order.
Having said all that, it was still a pretty messed up ending, man. Yikes. Anno did not communicate what the meaning of his work was all that well. And art is supposed to be about communication.
But back to the original topic of this thread, which was Asuka's personality: I think that a big part of her personality is that while she's proud of her figure, she hates the fact that she has periods--i.e. motherhood. She is, I believe, utterly terrified of having anything about mother "touch" her, which is probably why she's so hostile towards Misato and to Shinji. She doesn't want children. Her emotional abandonment and then symbolic murder/suicide by her mother f**cked up her pretty good on that score.
Asuka's aversion to being "puppet" also ties into this, because of her issues with control. She wants absolute freedom, which to her means controlling everybody around her.
-murmur the fallen

[Bob Schroeck]

Hm. That seems like a very cogent analysis of her character, Murmur. Consider those last couple paragraphs snipped and dropped into my working file for DW6, as a reminder. Thanks!

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Valles]

---

Did I like the ending of Eva? It . . . grew on me. It wasn't a happy ending, but i don't think that it's supposed to be happy nor was a happy ending "earned" ( a favorite word by my playwrighting prof. every scene and payoff and ending has to be "earned" ) by the series. Every time someone got up, they got kicked back down.
Given that, I think that the ending was as happy as could be.

---

You've just helped me figure out one of the things that had been bugging me about Eva. A real tragedy, a well executed one, has the characters tripping over their own flaws and falling from grace because of their own weaknesses - or sometimes, strengths.
Eva has massively flawed characters rising -above- those flaws on their own strengths alone... then lurks up behind them and BLUDGEONS THEM INTO A BLOODY PULP!!
That's not art. Which is sad, since it had all the ingredients and potential to be so much more.

---

Further, since Anno was the driving force and it's his baby, I suppose if he wants to strangle it, that's his perogative. To say that he "ruined" it is to say that it took something that existed before him and tained it somehow--kind of like how you could say that, uhh, NBC ruined West Wing by getting rid of Aaron Sorkin but not that Dick Wolf ruined Law and Order.
Having said all that, it was still a pretty messed up ending, man. Yikes. Anno did not communicate what the meaning of his work was all that well. And art is supposed to be about communication.

---

Nod nod nod. You're right on both these counts. Anno didn't ruin Eva; he -wasted- it.

---

But back to the original topic of this thread, which was Asuka's personality: I think that a big part of her personality is that while she's proud of her figure, she hates the fact that she has periods--i.e. motherhood. She is, I believe, utterly terrified of having anything about mother "touch" her, which is probably why she's so hostile towards Misato and to Shinji. She doesn't want children. Her emotional abandonment and then symbolic murder/suicide by her mother f**cked up her pretty good on that score.

---

Ah? How, then, do you explain her reaction to the realization that her mother is still around in Unit 02? It's been a while, but she seemed... happy. Relieved.
What I got out of that was that one of the things that she had been looking for was to be 'worthy' enough for her mother to love her again... since, obviously, the reason Mommy abandoned her for that doll was that she wasn't good enough. And if she can be replaced by a rag doll, of all things, that must mean she's now worth anything at all.
I'm not quite sure what she made of the 'suicide' part, but by that point it probably fed back into the idea that she wasn't good enough for Mommy to take with her when she 'left'.
In this version, then, her horror at the idea of becoming a mother herself could have to do with the fact that she's Not Good Enough to try and fill the same role as the mother she reveres and loves.
Of course, all or most of this is unconcious, or at least unacknowledged, hidden under the 'Perfect Asuka' facade she's built up over the intervening years.

---

Asuka's aversion to being "puppet" also ties into this, because of her issues with control. She wants absolute freedom, which to her means controlling everybody around her.

---

I doubt it; I'm more inclined to think that her motivation is the classic bully syndrome - making herself feel better, more superior, by putting down those around her.
This isn't to say that she's not well-enough adjusted to -realize- what's going on, just that the alternative is for her to allow even the possibility of someone else so much as -contemplating- that they're superior... which would mean that they'd have a chance of realizing and demonstrating how worthless she really is. And if -that- comes out, Nerv might take away the one thing that gives her worth - Eva.
Blessed be.
-n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Bob Schroeck]

Hm.
You're both making very good points. I don't suppose we can resolve this by saying "Anno wasn't terribly consistent about Asuka", now, can we?
I'm putting both these arguments in my reference file... maybe I can come up with some useful synthesis.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Disruptor]

Vales said:
>I'm pretty sure I've ranted about Anno and personal growth
> already. That said, if I had a choice, I probably wouldn't be
> an Eva fan either...
> Alas, the characters are already well under my skin.
> Fortunately, I do believe that the manga is still in progress,
> and at least so far it's shown none of the same kinds of,
> hmm... character stasis... that Anno's neuroses inflicted on > Eva proper.
Me? I'm going with what I'm picking up out of my copy of the Art of Neon Genesis Iron Maiden 2nd
A human Rei-pictures of her blushing, laughing, smiling, daydreaming, afraid, getting into an argument with Asuka on who Shinji's girlfriend is.
Shinji being the focus of three people's attention: Rei, Asuka, Kaworu(Kaworu being human)
Gendo being a nicer person.
The Angels don't attack one by one. They attack en masse(10 of them) And there are 5 Evas deployed to stop them
--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor

[Herr Bad Moon]

I saw the tagline, and briefly wondered what bratwurst had to do with Eva. Then I mentally cringed and decided I should really start getting something to eat when I get hungry before I transform words like "the" into "buntcake."---------------
"A billion robot lives are about to be extinguished. Oh the Jedi are gonna feel this one."
-Professor Farnsworth
---
Jon
"And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!"

[Berk]

I've long wondered what exactly it was that always left me feeling unsatisfied about Evangelion. It's not as if I'm not unaccustomed to the idea of a 'heads I win, tails you lose' ending. There was just some aspect of the whole thing that felt rushed and incomplete, some issue that had not been resolved, in the act of the storytelling, that was left by the wayside to further the plot.
I admit. The series itself, when you look back at it, had the seeds of impending doom from the very beginning, if only because Anno makes Shinji into the lodestone of the series. Other characters evolve, transform, grown and decay around him.. but at his core, Shinji remains the same.
In the end it's his own deathwish that finishes the series off. The theorised reaction force in the mind to the animal's survival instinct...
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Logan Darklighter]

One of the things I noticed about NGE once was that the biblical concept goes much deeper than just what's on the surface. Now, I'm not religious, by any stretch of the imagination , but it seemed to me that Anno was trying to get across the idea that Gendo Ikari had to perform three sacrifices to end the war with the angels.
Shinji lost his innocence. He'd watched his own Eva kill his best friend (or almost), lost Rei (and if you've ever seen the deleted scene during her death, you'd understand *why* he was so screwed up afterward. Let's just say Rei's suppressed desire came out just before she pulled the plug, and it manifested through the invading Angel), and basically lost Asuka. And that doesn't even count having to kill his newest best friend who turned out to be the last Angel.
Asuka lost her mind. The effect of a Deity smashing its consciousness down on her like a hammer stripped away the thin veneer over her problems that she'd erected, and forced her down into the depths of them all. She wasn't able to deal with them, and in the end, became self-destructive. (I understand she recovers slightly in EoE before dying, but I refuse to watch it. I hated what Anno did to Rei anyway, and after watching him make a dog's breakfast of the series, I refuse to watch the hunk of snot he calls a movie.)
Rei lost her life. I don't count the first time, since she was murdered by Ritsuko's mother (can't remember her name). I also thought it looked kind of like Rei was sleeping with Gendo (icky, icky, icky!), which might explain why Ritsuko's mother went off the deep end when she realized this. But when Rei 2 died (and I hated Anno for that, as I mentioned above), she had been just coming out of her shell and becoming human. She was therefore a proper sacrifice. Rei 3 was *much* less human and much more Lilith, and it showed afterward.
I don't know if that's what Anno was trying to do, but it looked like three sacrifices were necessary for the war to end. Then, once the war was ended, in EoE, Gendo tries to engineer the rebirth of the human race as gods, and screws up massively because he never understood the creature in NERV's basement was in fact Lilith all along, and not Adam.
(Which makes the EVA's all Lilith's children, and thus falls under Gabriel's promise that he would kill her children until she relented and returned to heaven. Since the Pilots were also tainted by Lilith's DNA, they were targets too. The series as a result is a triumph of human stupidity and pride over tremendous achievement. I'm just not sure if it's Gendo's stupidity and pride, or *Anno's*....

[Berk]

Never underestimate the ability of someone to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead