I don’t see a lot of people talking about this scene. Maybe it’s the tendency to refer to Misato as The Mama Bear™ over the Eva kids, conveniently failing to mention that by Eva kids, we really mean Shinji Ikari. Asuka never gets Mama Bear treatment from Misato, and this scene is in many ways emblematic of the real dynamic between the two: which is marked by a whole lot of indifference, neglect, and a latent sense of casual disdain – mostly on Misato’s end. Granted, Misato never actually comes out and says “Asuka, I care about Shinji a lot more than I care about you,” but after watching this scene I don’t think she even needs to.
Here’s Asuka having a very thinly-veiled, very public, very loud breakdown in Misato’s own washroom, complete with a heated display of water-basin flinging. The most Misato does is, well, nothing, if you disregard the glaring – which is exactly the point. Misato’s recent share of shitty life experiences aside, it doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to figure that she would’ve made an effort to reach out to Shinji if he were in Asuka’s place, just as she did in Episode 23, propelled by little more than a hunch that Shinji would be troubled after Rei II’s death.
Once you peel away all the pleasant pretenses and platitudes behind a lot of their initial conversations, this scene makes a lot of sense. Asuka has always framed Misato as both a rival and an exemplary in all its counter-intuitive glory. For Misato, Shinji’s been the pilot whom she feels most comfortable flexing her quasi-maternal muscles, precisely because Shinji is a boy, and Misato thinks she knows exactly what he needs from her, by virtue of Misato being a woman. Asuka is the problem, the conundrum, the puzzle Misato never really bothers to work through, up until the very end.
We can even see shades of this dynamic play out in Evangelion 3.0 (which is more or less an answer to Episodes 22-24 in NGE), where it looks like Asuka has now graduated to overt dislike of Q!Misato and her modus operandi (fuck your Eva, the mission is your top priority… you get the point.)
