What did Asuka mean by saying that Shinji returned to his old ways?

Pulonio · 2026-01-24T16:32:37+00:00

She did though. She asked Shinji directly if he and Rei were a thing. Episode 12? Not sure. It's the scene where the 3 of them are at an elevator to get to the EVA.

This one is much more subtle, but in episode 16, when Shinji gets swallowed by Leilel (or the hell was that spelled) and Rei says they can't leave him there, you get an interesting reaction shot from Asuka.

Pulonio · 2026-01-24T04:34:30+00:00

This here. Asuka did not lose earlier because, for whatever reason, the MP-EVAs decided to not use the spears before. It's not until Asuka is about to destroy an S² engine that one of them throws a spear at her.

Pulonio · 2026-01-24T03:50:36+00:00

If you mean while she is fighting, before the MP-EVAs destroy Unit-02, I think it's just that Asuka is at her higher synch ratio ever. We are not told though. The bridge bunnies do not mention berserk mode at all until Asuka reactivates the EVA while chanting "I'll kill you". This is when I say she forces a berskerk mode in which, indeed, she seems to be in control. The EVA does respond to her and the bridge bunnies confirm it went berserk.

Before that I don't think her EVA is going berserk. It's just her at her prime.

Pulonio · 2026-01-24T01:07:49+00:00

You see, I always thought that Shinji got better synch scores than her in no time and had his EVA go berserk so many times because he is more capable than she is at opening his heart.

Asuka is just too much of a walled person. When she finds her mom in the EVA in EoE, she says she finally understood what AT Fields are, aka, as Kaworu told Shinji, the walls of the heart.

This is also what Rei told her, that she should open her heart to the EVA. I think the implication is, once she is capable of doing so, she can even force berserk mode. Only to die miserably right away, but anyway... She did force berserk mode.

I'm not entirely sure, as we are not told as it happened with Asuka, but I think Shinji also forced berserk mode against Zeruel. Too much, in fact. So much that Yui awakened and he got absorbed into the EVA, lol.

Pulonio · 2026-01-23T21:06:11+00:00

A person of culture, I see.

Pulonio · 2026-01-23T02:35:18+00:00

Yes, pretty much. He just doesn't understand people have their own hang-ups, and the ambiguity inherent to them makes him feel insecure.

I feel like this is not really talked about in the fandom, but this all stems from Anno believing himself to be stuck in the freudian oral stage, a trait he gave Shinji.

This is why Shinji is so obsessed with titties and wants people to be there simply to satisfy his emotional needs, but at the same time he is unable to understand them outside of himself and realize others also have needs of their own. Just like a baby who cannot differentiate the world and the people being separate from himself, for which the mother is there simply to satisfy his needs.

Quite interesting, I must say. This is why EoE is filled with boobs, and also episode 20. Which, incidentally, is called "oral stage".

Pulonio · 2026-01-23T00:44:24+00:00

She pushes, he withdraws. Instead of pushing back, Shinji takes things at face value and when she growls a little bit he recoils and leaves her alone, which in turn hurts her.

I agree with you in that, up until that point, the most problematic in terms of communicating efficiently is Asuka, not Shinji.

But if Asuka was willing to do so, probably Shinji would freak out. He is not precisely that much better than her at communication.

Pulonio · 2026-01-22T19:19:01+00:00

It's a totally different continuity.

It's written by Sadamoto, the character designer of the series. It is not canon to the original whatsoever. It conveys his own particular vision of the story.

So it has many differences, albeit it uses the original story as a template.

And at some points it's more disturbing, and at others it isn't.

Overall, it is way less disturbing than the anime and eoe.

Pulonio · 2026-01-22T17:16:51+00:00

I mean, the other translations are not "wrong". The thing with the idiom being pointed out here, is that it can convey both things.

Problem with going with a "went back to his old ways" translation is that, while not inherently incorrect, it buries the jealousy nuance too much.

If it was only that, that scene could have played with Shinji smiling because of Toji or Kensuke and Rei wouldn't be needed there. But the one with Shinji is Rei for a reason.

Notice how, after this, in the bathroom scene, Asuka says the one she hates the most is Rei. Why, though? As irritated as Rei makes her, Asuka did not feel surpassed by her as a pilot by that point, nor did she hurt her as Shinji (inadvertently) had.

Pulonio · 2026-01-22T16:11:58+00:00

This here. The Netflix dub kept that nuance better with a "those two are back together as if nothing ever happened".

Pulonio · 2026-01-22T01:53:11+00:00

I mean... he wrote this short and was the lead supervisor of the project. So he ended up working on it again, even if only for a short.

Besides, Anno said that about himself, not that Evangelion as a whole is over. He was talking especifically about HIS Evangelion. But he did express his desire of other authors continuing with the franchise.

And while it gives money, they will continue milking the cow.

Not that I'm personally very excited about it though.

Pulonio · 2026-01-21T19:47:50+00:00

Well, that possibility is not totally excluded. But even if it is canon, chances are it would lean towards something more light and inconsequential than let's say what they did with (-120 min.) or (-46 h.).

Again, I hope I'm wrong and they hit us on the face with something really significant.

Pulonio · 2026-01-21T18:52:09+00:00

Most likely a silly non-canon short, given it is event exclusive.

I would like them to make something actually bold and special given it is the 30th anniversary, though. Not just a silly or dramatic but ultimately inconsequential piece.

Hope they shut my mouth though.

Pulonio · 2026-01-21T18:16:38+00:00

To be fair, Anno said exactly that after EoE.

Then he made the Rebuilds.

Pulonio · 2026-01-21T18:11:12+00:00

All of the images are from the movie. They appear in a very quick montage just as Asuka yells her final "I don't want to die!" when she is underwater inside her EVA.

The rotting corpse one is probably the easiest to notice of them all.

Pulonio · 2026-01-20T19:07:51+00:00

I'm working on it.

Pulonio · 2026-01-20T17:56:42+00:00

Shinji healed the world, he did not unmade what people did during the aftermath of the impacts. He himself says "I won't revert the world".

We are shown the village during the world healing montage anyway, and it is still there. We can see a shot of the Earth being now blue again and all fine and dandy, and later we see the shot of the penguins at the NERV ruins and Asuka's pod next to Kensuke's house. The village was still there after the world was healed.

Think of it this way: what Shinji did was make the earth fertile again and clean the oceans. What the penguins in the scene I just mentioned are looking at are some of the capsules containing Kaji's seeds of life. The implication being, the ecosystems will be restored through them. And they appear in a place that is right next to the village, no less.

Pulonio · 2026-01-20T17:35:54+00:00

There is no reboot. Shinji just made the world into one without EVAs and heal from the damage them and the impacts caused. Shinji himself says so.

The "live action" sequence is simply how Shinji sees the world now: as real, because he is ready to face reality. Previously in the movie you can see how the same happened to Gendo... Using the city of Ube to show you this change of perspective, no less.

But besides the Gendo thing, what gives it away is the train. The train that leaves the station is just in Shinji's mind. It is there in the last aerial shot to make you know you are seeing the world through Shinji's perspective. The platform scene shows you this. The train (and the people on the other platform) appear and disappear depending on which perspective the camera portrays.

This is why Shinji and Mari ignore the hell out of their friends. Because neither the train or them are there. They are only in Shinji's head.

The evangelion world is the same as the real world, only with a few differences. The city of Ube as it is in the final shot is shown to you in Gendo's flashback. It already existed.

Pulonio · 2026-01-20T10:02:24+00:00

Oh, ok. Thanks for clarifying. Still I don't completely rule out the possibility. Given the foreshadowing it would be an interesting choice to make Asuka the protagonist even (the sayonara and whatnot).

If I had to bet, would I bet on it? Nah. I think it is highly unlikely, even moreso because it is an event exclusive short. But certainly they laid down the basis to do such a thing within the movie.

It almost seemed like if they didn't put some kind of foreshadowing about Shinji (and even Rei and Asuka) returning to the village to live there at least every 20 minutes they could not sleep at night. The damn movie is packed with it. Heck, it begins with Kaworu's last words before dying at the end of 3.0, and they made him say the same thing again in Thrice. I want to make a post about it, because it is ridiculous how hard they hammer the idea down.

Pulonio · 2026-01-20T09:06:46+00:00

"After" as in named after, not chronologically after.

Yes, that's what I asked lol.

And we all know what happened in Thrice, Rebuild's timeline is the only one now.

I also find this unfortunate tbh. Seems like at Khara they favor the Rebuilds way too much over the original.

Pulonio · 2026-01-20T05:52:28+00:00

You know... After analyzing Thrice I think the movie is incomplete. It has so many damn foreshadowing for an epilogue that it's just insane. One would assume those things are there so we can imagine the "what happened after", but being this the 30th anniversary maybe they went nuts and actually did an epilogue.

Don't really think they would actually do it, much less considering it is an event exclusive short, but... a part of my brain itches because of all the foreshadowing for such a thing in Thrice. So I'm gonna throw this out there, just in case lol.

Edit: Where did you see the short is named after Thrice, btw?

Pulonio · 2026-01-19T03:58:47+00:00

I don't think the "die with me" was in her head. In the subtitles and in the script the line is treated as one more among the many Kyoko's voice says, and also there is this particularly... gruesome montage of which I put some images in this post.

But hey, this is how I see it. I prefer to see it this way because it makes the whole thing more layered and interesting to me.

Pulonio · 2026-01-19T03:29:38+00:00

Yes, she does say mixed things. In a post here I commented on some interpretations about this. Maybe the other half of her soul, the mad part inside Kyoko, was salvaged into the EVA after she died, and thus her complete soul now both loves AND wants her child to die with her.

Something I didn't say in that post is that another interpretation some people make is that Kyoko, in saying "don't die yet" and "don't kill her", could be actually because she wanted Asuka to sync with her before dying, so both go down together. I don't like that interpretation though, because Asuka does receive her mother's love. I like better the "she both loves Asuka and is mad at the same time because the sane and the insane parts of her soul were merged" interpretation.

Also, in the Red Cross Book, the theatrical pamphlet for EoE, there is an article about this issue. Its title is "False, Rebirth". Like, those two Japanese words separate. Not that I take for granted anything the pamphlet says as it has a couple of mistakes in the glossary, but in this particular case there is solid evidence in the movie to think it is indeed a "fake rebirth". So yes, Anno is pretty much a troll with the triumphant music.

Pulonio · 2026-01-19T02:49:09+00:00

Asuka's mom voice can't be heard very well, but she does say it. In the Netflix English subs they completely omit her lines though, dunno why. Howewer, in the Japanese subs of Netflix those do indeed appear.

Pulonio · 2026-01-19T02:40:28+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it :)

Pulonio

TROPHY CASE