IDGAF WAR VETERAN

This makes the second ask I’ve gotten about asurei! @ asurei anon: You’re free to send me asks whenever!

Asurei is good. Asuka came the closest out of anybody to understanding Rei. Rewatch the elevator scene. Asuka understands that Rei’s life revolves around Gendo and his whims (You’d kill yourself if your commander told you to, wouldn’t you?), something that literally everyone else failed to understand. 

Asuka also made several attempts to befriend Rei, and Rei tries to return the favor in the elevator scene, but sadly in Asuka’s eyes it was too little too late. Rei understands what Asuka’s going through with Unit 02, because Rei has struggled with Unit 00 since the very beginning

Asuka and Rei are also inseparably intertwined symbolically, and not to sound like the Rick and Morty guy but you really can’t understand them separately; they were conceived with each other as their foils during development stages. They were deliberately designed to contrast each other. Asuka and Rei come in a set. 

People like to say that they hate each other and therefore asurei wouldn’t work. Well, of course it wouldn’t work in the direction the series went, but just imagine if Rei had said yes to Asuka’s request to be friends in Episode 9 or if Asuka had thanked Rei for her advice in Episode 22. Not to mention that kawoshin wouldn’t (and didn’t) work for similar reasons, yet that criticism is never levied towards kawoshin by the supposedly “woke” portion of the fanbase because of fandom misogyny. 

 People also like to say that Asuka was abusive to Rei when she wasn’t; Asuka wasn’t abusive to anybody. The slap at the end of the elevator scene was uncalled for, yes, but that single incident doesn’t count as abuse.