Asuka Langley Soryu

Asuka Langley Soryu is the Second Children, designated pilot of Evangelion Unit-02. She is 1/4 Japanese and 1/4 German (from her mother Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu's side), although her nationality is American, as is, apparently, her father's, where she met Misato Katsuragi and Ryoji Kaji. After traveling to Japan with Kaji, Asuka moved in with Misato Katsuragi and Shinji Ikari and became one of the major characters in the series.

She is voiced by Yuko Miyamura in the original Japanese version and Tiffany Grant in the English version.

Personality
Asuka is a very proud individual, especially in her piloting, and comes across to others as proud and strong, with a very high opinion of both her appearance and her skill as an Eva pilot. She is stubborn and having difficulties in express her true feelings to others. She does not like being looked down upon or told what to do as she wants to be viewed as an adult. Not only that, she is aggressive and can be very opinionated.

However, this personality is a front that protects a very vulnerable and insecure girl: As abruptly revealed by Arael whom tearing her mind apart, due to contact experiment on Eva Unit-02, Asuka's mother have her soul torn into two and one of the half ended up entered the Eva's core while the rest still on her body. Unfortunately, this causes her went insane and almost killed Asuka before finally commit suicide, traumatizing her. Asuka is often violent and intrusive of other people's space, especially Shinji's. She also has a strong need to be self-sufficient, and has a great deal of difficulty dealing with her self-perceived failure when she does need help.

Thus her relationship with Shinji is one of the core aspects of the series, and affects both characters on multiple levels.

Her best (and seemingly her only close) friend is her class representative, Hikari Horaki. Although Asuka and classmate Toji Suzuhara constantly argue, she gives Hikari advice about pursuing Toji. Asuka is openly infatuated with Ryoji Kaji, her former guardian after her mother died, and makes a number of advances toward him which he politely refuses. For this reason she envies her and Shinji's guardian, Misato Katsuragi, especially after Misato and Kaji rekindle their romantic relationship. The "Director's Cut" of Episode 24 also shows Asuka violently confronting Shinji and saying he's lying when he tells her that Kaji is dead.

When Asuka is introduced to the show, she brims with confidence. As a foreign girl in Japan, and a hot redhead at that, she gets a lot of attention from the boys in her class. She takes great pride in being a genius prodigy and makes fun of Shinji for being stupid. Her greatest pride is her Evangelion unit number 02.

She seems to hate Japan, making loud, rude comments about how there is no privacy because of screen doors, sleeping on the floor is strange to her, and complains about the lack of space. She thinks of Rei's coldness as weird, and thinks Shinji is a wuss. Initially, Asuka and Rei don't get along well, symbolized by the fact that Rei is a vegetarian and Asuka thinks that it's stupid to be vegetarian because animals eat other animals. So from day one, she projects this air of smug superiority to almost everyone she interacts with. And from day one, her personality is contrasted starkly to that of Rei.

But her pride takes a few serious blows later down the road, and we see her mental state come gradually unglued. In one episode, she fails to launch a synchronized strike on an angel because she cannot work well with Shinji. In that episode, we see her becoming very jealous of Rei Ayanami. Rei could probably do what Asuka is training for better, but Asuka refuses to let Rei take on the mission. She wants to train to do the attack, but just isn't good at coordinating her movements with other people. She spends a lot of time bitching and arguing and not a lot of time doing the work an Eva pilot is tasked with. (Why do you make adolescents do important things all the time, anime, why?) She might be intelligent, but she lacks the maturity necessary to work with people.

And then it gets even worse, when an angel is able to make Asuka confront repressed memories of her traumatic past. Apparently, her mother committed suicide, and her step-mother (who had been her father's mistress) didn't want a damn thing to do with Asuka as a child. So lacking a stable mother figure, Asuka wanted to be strong and independent. But that explains why she has such a hard time socially and why she bullies others. She's actually deeply insecure, and projects confidence to hide her fears. She's basically the female version of a guy projecting a macho tough-guy image to hide his insecurity.