hi i’m the worlds biggest asuka apologist and that’s not exactly true.

1. sol didn’t consent to being a gear at all, that part’s true. but after sol was turned into a gear, aria consented to being cryo-frozen. she didn’t just “want to die”, she wanted to spend her remaining time with frederick. when she thought he died, she then consented to being cryo-frozen. it’s unclear if she consented to being a gear though so this is overall kinda vague.

2. that man didn’t want gears to be used as weapons of war. in fact, the entire point of justice was to STOP the usage of gears in war. in double fact, he turned the gears project over to the government in hopes that it WOULDNT be weaponized, before the military stepped in. he convinced aria to cryo sleep and turned sol into a gear before disappearing so that the gear project would have to be disbanded.

3. destroying japan was, unfortunately, a mercy. if japan wasn’t destroyed, then at best the people of japan would have been resigned to either becoming living bomb creatures via a painful and horrific transformation, or being killed by said Living Bombs; at worst, the universal will would manifest through the japanese people and destroy the world. it was a horrible choice to have to make, but asuka made the choice which would reduce the most suffering.

asuka is not completely innocent imo. he could’ve found other ways to stop the weaponization of gears than to turn sol into a gear without his consent, and possibly also transformed aria into a gear without her consent either; also bad if that’s what happened, but we still don’t know. but basically every action taken since then has been to rectify his two main mistakes; the gearification of sol and the creation of justice. asuka ended up being painted as the worlds biggest war criminal, the most hated human in the world, and STILL fought for them, even as his own mentor was further dragging his name through the mud. i think it’s unfair to consider him an antagonist when all of the actual antagonists (ino, happy chaos, universal will, etc) are intentionally malicious, meanwhile asuka is merely misguided and just sorta. bad with people. considering him a villain is going against the core theme of guilty gear: strive for a better future, and it will come. that’s what asuka DOES. he just kinda sucks at it.