>>12591237This is so wrong anyone who posts this should be banned for life. Rei is clearly the mother archetype, and Asuka is the sexual other. The debate over who's better relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamic between Shinji and the two. Shinji feels attracted to Rei's quiet, comforting, demure, nature because he lacks a relationship with his mother, so he feels something in Rei which pulls him to her. Asuka, on the other hand, is precocious sexuality, the girl who can feel burgeoning adulthood just coming into her grasp and wants to exert all the power that sexuality brings her, but Shinji is naive, young, lacks any kind of male figure in his life (besides the calm masculinity of Kaji, who of course naturally becomes another object of Asuka's desires), so when Asuka tries pushing him around again and again, flirting with him and hoping he'll understand and just fucking do something, all he sees is her being "mean" even though he kind of likes it although yet again, he doesn't quite know why. So at this point the sexually immature weebs often think "well Rei is better, because she's nice and Asuka's a bitch!" because they themselves also fail to know what to do with any girl like Asuka.
And on the other hand, the Asukafags who do like the pre-sexual push and pull of Asuka's personality think "well Rei is boring, there's nothing to her," because they take for granted all the wordless kindness that Rei is capable of giving that Asuka generally can't do because she is too desperate for emotional excitement. They're the ones who need someone to fight with them, need someone emotionally dangerous in just the right way so they can break through the prickly tsun-tsun hedgehog exterior to the soft, caring dere-dere inside and thus feel like they're worthy of love. Both miss the point that what Shinji wants is both the madonna of Rei, and the whore of Asuka, and his immaturity and emotional instability is why there's always this tension between the two.
