@DarkObsidian
I can understand that. I always found Asuka irritating, though–she is hyper-competitive, pugilistic, too aggressive for her own good (reminds me of Rainbow Dash, actually), and not a waifu, nor even a good match for Shinji–I always ‘shipped Shinji with Misato, Partially because Misato was close to being the hot older woman I always wanted when I was a lonely depressed teenager, partially because her own mental problems and trauma make her more childlike, less mature. I sensed some mutual feelings of affection from them too, and he was definitely attracted to her, though I can’t say there’s any unambiguous evidence she’s attracted to him.
At the same time I realize that in real life there are numerous very good reasons thirty year old women don’t hook up with teenage boys very often. But it’s a fantasy, they’re fictional characters, and each of them is broken in a way that makes them fit together in a way that’s sadly beautiful.
And this is part of a larger theme. No one in Evangelion is who they appear to be at first. Shinji isn’t the typical shonen anime protagonist. Misato isn’t really the flirtatious “cool big sister.” Ritsuko isn’t really as detached as she seems. Asuka isn’t as skilled or tough as she believes, and Rei isn’t as detached as she seems either. Gendou Ikari isn’t nearly as in control as he appears. The Evangelions aren’t really giant robotic machines. And on and on.
The show itself is created to resemble, superficially, the 1970s and 1980s shonen mecha anime that were considered classics thirty years ago when Hideaki Anno began writing it. But it’s not a shonen show at all, it just looks like one until you watch a few episodes and examine it closely. It’s a seinen show, a brutal psychological deconstruction of the “classic” mecha shows like Mazinger Z and Gigantor. It takes all the original ideas and carries them through to realistically plausible conclusions. What would a sane, rational fourteen-year-old boy do if you brought him to a city that was under siege by horrible monstrosities, kaiju designed by H. R. Giger, and told him “get into the cockpit of this giant war robot you’ve never seen before and go fight for us?” He’d not act like Koji Kabuto. He’d say “you people are all insane, get me out of here.” Gendou Ikari is just the sort of man who’d abandon his family to head an organization that builds giant war robots, and Ritsuko Akagi and Misato Katsuragi are just the sort of women who’d work for him.
It’s not a giant robot war story. Not really. It’s a story about damaged, traumatized people being crushed slowly under immense psychological pressure until they break. This is why I love the characters, even if the plot is a dog’s breakfast–why do the alien invaders attack one at a time, like ninja mooks in a silly 1970s martial arts movie, instead of all at once? What kind of alien beasts are these, that can’t be killed with nuclear weapons, but die when a giant robot punches them in the face? But the characters are amazing, and I still read Evangelion fanfiction.
…and I still waifu Ritsuko, even though I know she’s not, at heart, a good person. No one in the show is. All are imperfect, damaged, traumatized, seeking impossible things they can never have, know it, and are yet unwilling to try either new tactics or switch to a more reasonable goal. Also, she’s very pretty.
