

This comes to a head in episode 22, when Arael appears and Asuka, burdened by increasingly poor results in synchronization tests, is infuriated by being ordered to serve as backup to Rei. After first being defeated in battle by Zeruel, Asuka's self-confidence (and, correspondingly, her synch ratio and effectiveness as a pilot) begins to dwindle. Asuka proves to be a child prodigy, earning a university degree in an unspecified field while still a teenager and becoming fluent in Japanese (though she has difficulty reading and writing kanji ).įirst introduced in episode 8, with the arrival of Eva Unit 02 and the battle with the Angel Gaghiel, Asuka is shown as maintaining a high synchronization ratio and exceptional skills as an Eva pilot, being very aggressive and confident in battle.

Her Japanese-American father quickly remarries Kyoko's doctor, with whom he had been having an affair, though Asuka's defensiveness quickly repels her new stepmother and the two learn to tolerate one another while maintaining a cheerful facade of a normal family. After being institutionalized, Kyoko commits suicide by hanging herself Asuka finding her body when running to tell her that she has been selected to be an Eva pilot. Though she physically survives the test, Kyoko emerges mentally unstable, believing a doll she cares for to be an infant Asuka while only referring to her actual daughter as "that girl over there" and even going so far as to attempt to strangle Asuka so that she could "die with me!" (this is implied in the anime, while explicitly shown in Sadamoto's manga). Her mother, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, is a scientist of Gehirn's German branch of the Evangelion Project and, when Asuka is four years old, participates in a contact experiment with Unit 02 (similar to the experiment performed by Yui Ikari with Unit 01). 3.4 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gakuen Datenrokuīorn and raised in Germany, Asuka is shown as being of both German and Japanese descent, as from her Japanese name and European appearance.
