“Aggh! You're thinking in Japanese, aren't you? If you must think, do it in German!”
Asuka Langley Soryu Quotes
3 quotes from Neon Genesis Evangelion, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
The only child in the cast who was trained for the job and chose it, which is the opposite of the boy the series opens on. Everything that reads as arrogance turns out to be a line drawn against one specific room.
Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“Mama? No, mama, please don't kill me! No, I'm not mama's doll, I'll think for myself and I'll live for myself!”
Everything the character has built is stated here as its own negation. The self-reliance that reads as arrogance for twenty episodes turns out to be a line drawn against a specific memory: a mother whose illness replaced her daughter with a doll, and who tried to take the daughter with her. The German, the rank, the refusal to be helped, all of it is the argument she has been having with that room since she was four.
Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“Why are you there, damn you?! You don't do anything! You won't help me! You won't even hold me! You're no one! No one! No one!”
Screamed at an Eva that has stopped responding, by the pilot whose entire worth is measured in synchronisation scores. The series charges her precisely where she banked: the machine is the only relationship she has agreed to have, so when it goes quiet there is nothing else in the account. The scene is a nervous breakdown filmed as a technical failure, and it is the most honest thing the show does with her.
Read Asuka Langley Soryu's story from the start
Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.
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Her introduction is an argument about which language a pilot should think in, and it is doing setup work rather than comedy. Asuka arrives as the only child in the cast who was trained for this, who chose it, and who has a nationality and a rank to be proud of, which is the exact opposite of the boy the series has spent seven episodes on. The competence is real. The reason she needs it to be visible is the plot.