asuka, misato, & the yellow shirt

Asuka stole this shirt. This shirt isn’t Asuka’s — it’s Misato’s.



We see Asuka wear this shirt 3 times. (Asuka’s standard pajama set is a baby blue tank top/short combo, shown here). The first two times—Episode 9 and 15—there’s a slew of crazy commonalities. We have two establishing shots of Asuka emerging from a bathroom, asking where Misato is:

Shinji’s conventional response is that Misato’s working overnight (Episode 9) or she’s coming back amply late into the evening (Episode 15).

So basically, Asuka is stealing into Misato’s room when Misato’s gone and taking her shirt. It’s kind of funny to think this is all carefully calculated on Asuka’s part. But the parallels don’t stop there.

Both episodes involve Asuka attempting to make a ‘pass’ at Shinji with disappointing successes. I use the word “pass” loosely. These are Asuka’s thinly-veiled attempts at proving herself sexually desirable with all the trappings of adulthood:

Notice how big this shirt is on Asuka – it could almost pass for a dress. (Remember the yellow sundress Asuka premiered with, because it’ll become relevant soon.) In Episode 9, Asuka’s attempts at subtlety with the “Wall of Jericho” line. It goes painfully ignored. Even worse, Shinji attempts to kiss Asuka in her sleep–Asuka “gets” what she was purportedly fishing for (not), without her consent. This is an insidious instance of EoE foreshadowing.

So Asuka swaps subtlety for directness and goes for a kiss in Episode 15. In both scenes, Asuka leaves disappointed, and in both scenes, Asuka is wearing Misato’s yellow shirt – which should now unambiguously strike us as a symbol for womanhood.

Belaying her own words, Asuka wants to emulate Misato, subconsciously or maybe even deeper than that. Misato radiates sexual competency and desirability. And if Asuka were to possess these things, it naturally follows that she’s not a child anymore.

After Episode 15, we won’t see Asuka wear Misato’s shirt again, until that is, End of Evangelion.



When women’s bodies are split up into pieces, so we see sexualized images of a woman’s lips of hips or breasts, women’s bodies are not women’s whole selves. When women are valued for their sexual appeal to the neglect of their many capacities, it fragments them. It says that women are primarily for the sexualized parts of them, rather than for their whole selfhood. (x)



The implications are clear. Compare the above sequence to the yellow shirt’s debut, in Episode 2:

…where Misato makes several joking passes at Shinji in an effort to posture as a flirty, mellowed “older sister” type. Eva is a story that repeats! Notice also: Misato usually wears this shirt tucked into her shorts with the sleeves rolled up. While the shirt fits Misato better than it does Asuka, it’s still a baggy shirt and the “fit” is never quite right–Misato is, after all, a self-professed woman-child.

Here’s more examples of Misato wearing the shirt:

Here’s where we circle back to Asuka’s premiere. Misato and Asuka’s debuts see them donning yellow, sexuality through the guise of fanservice:

Color in Eva famously denotes symbolic opposition: Rei and Asuka’s hair/eye colors being blue/red and red/blue respectively, Misato and Ritsuko’s outfit colors inversing likewise. But that’s a separate conversation.

It’s not for kids.

Only when Asuka begins to appreciate herself as more than a sum of mere parts, does Shinji come barging in demanding her attentions. Asuka accuses Shinji of objectifying her: the specific word she uses is “side-dish”/おかず - a cultural euphemism for a girl that is the constant object of a boy’s violent masturbatory fantasies.

Asuka is evolving, gone are the desperate “Look at me, Shinji’s!” from Episode 9 and 15. Shinji doesn’t react well. At the end of the day, they’re still kids.