[EVA] Asuka's "death" in _End of Evangelion_?

[V V]

Maya sees Asuka's vital signs flatline, and reacts accordingly.  Case closed.

--- On Fri, 2/19/10, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Subject: [EVA] Asuka's "death" in _End of Evangelion_?
To: "The english-language evangelion mailing list." <evangelion at eva.onegeek.org>
Date: Friday, February 19, 2010, 2:33 AM

Reading through the old archives (a miserable experience since so much
of the discussion is *stupid* and trivial beyond belief), I noticed
many people kept assuming Asuka dies at the hands of the harpies in
EoE.

There are arguments both ways, of course, rehashed again and again in
the innumerable threads since '97:

1. We never see the harpies attack the entry plug - only organs, the
torso/spinal area seems fairly intact when the harpies airlift 02 away
(and why would they do that if they ate everything & killed Asuka?),
her physical damage is cartoonishly unrealistic (her arm is pure
muscle and no bone?), Asuka comes back at the end, and comes back in
Last A with 'I'd never let you kill me' (strange if she's already been
killed), Touji got away with just some limb injuries even when the
entry plug was specifically attacked & crushed, the TV ending seems to
not set up the Harpy fight at all (no depth-bombing, no maternal
epiphany), etc.

2. But then, we don't see Asuka liquefy like we seem to for every
other living character, Shinji had a cross up for her as well as
Misato and presumably he could've known whether her soul was in 3I or
not, the harpy attack was *very* brutal so the lack of explicit plug
destruction may not mean anything & the analogy to Touji fail, the
mental link may mean killing 02 kills Asuka,  we see Rei at the end
too though she (or Lilith) should be dead, the Kaibunsho claims Asuka
was intended to die after the mind-rape, ep 18 Fuyutsuki thinks a high
synch ratio with a dying Eva may kill the pilot, the Last B ending
omits Asuka & implies she's dead, _Rebuild_ freely kills her off***,
etc.

But I notice a striking lack of any official source commenting on the
actual movie and not some other version or the TV series, even from
otherwise-useful sources one would think would cover it, like the
Cardass cards**; nor did my own excerpts* reveal anything interesting.
Am I wrong about this lack? Have I missed any official statements?

* I made sure to check thoroughly this time. :)
** I looked through the ZIP of scans & translations, but not very
carefully so I may have missed something.
*** Or so I have been given to understand

-- 
gwern
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