Alright people, in case you don’t already know, I fuckin’ love Neon Genesis Evangelion, so much so that I don’t even know where to begin. After I first watched the VCR rips off of a friend’s collection of 13 burned CDs back in high school, I spent a couple of months lurking around on Evangleion forums and imageboards looking for answers. The series is a undoubtedly flawed, especially from a storytelling point of view, yet there’s just something so compelling about it that I willingly dug through the most obscure and bullshit retconned information in order to piece together some semblance of coherence into the plot. Of course, all of that religious symbolism and convoluted sci-fi clusterfuck is simply fluff, as what makes Evangelion an enduring classic are the characters and the beautiful ways they crash into each other.
My favourite of the cast is Soryu Asuka Langley. Her relationship with Shinji encapsulates the Hedgehog’s dilemma — the rifts between individuals in which the pains of intimacy and isolation swirl about. Through the course of the series, their relationship ebbs and flows. From jealousy and rivalry sprouted the seed of cooperation, trust and perhaps even attraction, yet their unfortunate circumstances ultimately drives both of them into the lowest points of their young lives. I understand why people like Rei, and I’ve always preferred her in the looks department, but to me, Asuka is a lot more integral to Evangelion‘s story, and thus she’ll always be #1.
By the way, I really don’t care for Asuka in Rebuild 2.0 — due to the reduced screen time, her character development was taken to the back shed by an axe murderer and reduced to a pile of misaligned chunks. I hated how the gradual revelation of her inner psyche was replaced by shoehorned scenes and plot developments like her retarded hand puppet and her rivalry against Rei for Shinji’s attention. Both of these could have worked if she was given more time to develop, but when she’s in a three-way deathmatch against two other female protagonists, it just came off as flat and ineffective in the eyes of this Asuka fanboy.
I had wanted a figure of Asuka for a very long time, but even though the character has received a lot of figures, there really hasn’t been a PVC scaled figure that I really liked. They’re either hilariously out-of-character, ridiculously overpriced, and/or of underwhelming quality. I thought the Rebuild films would usher in a new wave of Asuka figures, but much to my irritation, most of the attention has been diverted to the shiny new test plug suit. Both Alter and Max Factory decided to go down that route, leaving me with a serious case of figure blue balls.
When I first saw the Plug Suit Style version of Asuka from Kotobukiya, I was a little disappointed. I really liked the Plug Suit Style Rei, which does a very good job at capturing the character’s distant air. On the other hand, the sight of Asuka smiling sweetly on the ground seems a lot less fitting. Asuka does have a mischievous side, sure, but it’s melancholic and determined sides of her personality that makes her special to me. As I was hurting for money at the time, I skipped on the pre-order.
Fast-forward to a year later: Hamstercorp decided to buy something off Timelords, and since he was going to visit my place in May, he asked me if I wanted anything to combine shipping. A quick scroll through their inventory revealed a “second-hand” Plug Suit Style Asuka for Â¥3,000 and I thought to myself “meh, why not?” It was a textbook impulse buy, and I have to admit that I did not have as much anticipation for her arrival as most other purchases. Does this mean I regret getting her? Read on!
