Please don ' t die please don ' t die <| sep |> But I got my hair done every time so I look fabulous while getting beaten <| sep |> That ' s the thing I have no feelings for the other ladies around me , even though some of them are way more attractive . <| sep |> Too meta for it . <| sep |> Hate is a strong word , but give someone 20 years and they might . We often see that fans of fiction come to hate some characters in the fiction , even though they aren ' t outright villains . A lot of this hate doesn ' t come from watching or creating the fiction , it actually comes from interacting with other members of the audience some people take very poorly to the idea that not everyone else agrees with them in their preference . If two groups start competing with their views , they ' ll start hating each other soon enough . But in most cases I doubt it ' s as strong as hate . It ' s an apersonal , irrational hate , it ' s tribalistic hate . I believe Anno is in this category , and unfortunately there ' s no evidence to the opposite . Take what uBobisOnlyBob writes From what I understand she was supposed to be an unpleasant , intensely ' null ' version of the ' shy quiet girl ' archetype that was developing at the time of Evangelion ' s development , , Rei became the prime export model character for dozens of other series , a new kind of hyperpassive alien personality type that audiences in Japan just couldn ' t get enough of . which is a very often repeated concept . The base concept in each variation is that the audience made a mistake when they liked Rei ' s character . , which is precisely what one would expect to hear from someone who didn ' t like that Rei was the most popular . In other words , to cope with an unpleasant fact and to deal with cognitive dissonance , a person is likely to start rationalizing or explaining to themselves internally , what went wrong and why it isn ' t their fault but rather everyone elses . Person A A for Anno is confronted by the fact that the character who he personally prefers , devoted a lot of time to and inserted a lot of his personal preferences into , is far from being the most popular character . Not even within the story itself , as Rei is more than twice as popular as Asuka during and right after Evangelion . So what does person A do ? He explains this by blaming the audience because they can ' t deal with strong characters , or because they have stunted imagination , and starts dismissing the most popular character in what ways he can . These are large , sweeping and gross generalizations people . This sentiment is automatically shared by everyone in Person A ' s position , and it ' s going to propagate itself through these people even if what they claim is true or not . The specific variant uBobisOnlyBob has come up with makes the claim that Rei was supposed to be a deconstruction of an existing and popular archetype , it makes claims about the intent that there currently is no evidence for nor any logic to We won ' t find any interview or production note that corroborates his story . We can ' t reconcile the two ideas that Rei essentially popularized an archetype and that the archetype was already massively popular . Rather the most popular archetype of the time was more energetic , lively and social girls , which isn ' t something that has really changed . That ' s why Rei ' s introduction to the industry results in a paradigm shift in creating fictional characters . Having a look at anime before Evangelion and during , the normal when it comes to female main characters are exaggerated but cute reactions . Slapstick humor guy does something , female punishes him for it either verbally or physically . In Urusei Yatsura it ' s hilarious , and in other love comedy nurturing for imagining a troubled relationship . So despite this rationalization being very clearly wrong , why does it keep popping up ? uBobisOnlyBob may prove vital in explaining that . He has a very negative view of Rei . In his post , he manages to call the character a nothing , and empty shell whose only role is to be projected into , and also implies that liking Rei over other examples like Misato or Asuka says something about you . Then strangely he says he doubts Anno rejects Rei or hates the character , despite the above being precisely what rejection or hate looks like . This denial of hatred whilst simultaneously expressing it is characteristic of Person A , who may at most claim indifference . We have here again the tendency to only focus on hypothetical negative aspects of Rei while more or less ignoring the negative aspects of Misato or Asuka here . Instead of focusing on who Rei , Misato or Asuka are what they thought , did and achieved , he instead focuses on what you should think of these characters . A refusal to consider reality and instead rationalize and provide alternate and biased representations . Because if Anno or people such as uBobisOnlyBob focused on the reality of the situation which is that the characters as they are presented matter they ' d have to accept what they don ' t want to accept , the legitimacy of Rei as a more popular character . Pick a person who has no abnormal bias towards any of the characters before watching NGE . On average when considering a mass audience , that ' s what you ' ll get . When they watch Evangelion , they ' ll observe that Rei suffers , repeatedly sacrifices herself for others , is mostly on point and does her best , while also steadily improves on her own poor condition . They ' ll observe that Asuka is pompous , selfish and makes the lives of others more difficult whilst failing herself to become a better person , something she comes to suffer greatly for nearing the end . The most likely preference of this person then becomes obvious . Like any other normal regular person , they ' ll come to prefer the underdog the one that can be sympathized with the most easily , and the one with more heroic traits . In other words , Rei . People generally don ' t relate to the aggressors or abusers in fiction , why would NGE be different ? The harshness of e . g Asuka or the very specific charactertraits of Misato end up making people unable to sympathize . Ironically the more quintessentially human character becomes Rei , as she asks the mos fundamental question people ask what am I ? . Then isn ' t also selfimprovement , turning the other cheek versus the blatant escapism which Asuka represents directly contrary to any desirable trait ? Contrary to bob ' s suggestion , I don ' t see anything in EoE that insinuates that Anno dislikes Rei that much at this point , after all he did make her instrumental in creating , building and finishing the story . Not just that , but in an organic way that respects the character development since episode one , which emphasizes the characters agency . If anything , Misato and Asuka both got shorter sticks in EoE . EoE was perhaps the last time Anno would treat the story with any form of honesty .