Conception
She is 1/4 Japanese and 3/4 German, although her nationality is American. Asuka's surname comes from the Japanese World War II aircraft carrier Soryu, her German surname from the American World War II aircraft carrier Langley, and her Rebuild surname from the Japanese World War II destroyer Shikinami. Her first name comes from Asuka Saki (砂姫 明日香, Saki Asuka), who is the main character of the Japanese comic, SuperGirl Asuka (超少女明日香, Cho-Shojo Asuka?) written by Shinji Wada.
Character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto explained that he “first designed an Asuka-type girl as the lead character” but felt it might be too similar to previous anime that he and Anno had worked on, such as Gunbuster and Nadia. He suggested to Anno that they change the lead character to a boy, which would be more in keeping with the robot genre.
As he and Anno progressed with designing the series, Sadamoto came to believe that Asuka would occupy the position of an “'idol' in the Eva world". He also described his belief that the relationship between Asuka and Shinji would be similar to the relationship between Jean and Nadia in the earlier Nadia. Asuka's personality, as well of those for the other characters, was designed so as to be understood at a glance.
Yuko Miyamura, Asuka's Japanese voice actress, noted that "Asuka wasn't the most open-hearted character I've ever met...every time I tried to draw myself in closer synchronization, Asuka would never allow herself to sync with 'me'... One day, I figured out that there was a wall in Asuka's heart". Much later, she stated that work on the series was "very hard" and that at times she had "wanted to erase Evangelion."
Tiffany Grant, Asuka's English voice actress, felt that playing Asuka was "refreshing", as "she says the most horrible things to people, things that you'd like to say to people and can't get away with."
Read more about this topic: Asuka Langley Soryu
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