>>2847898Very true. I think that Asuka initiates intimacy with Shinji as a sad attempt to taste what a normal girl is going through at her age. She's a very girly kind of girl; she wants to try out dating, playing games with a friend, talking about her friends' love interests, wearing pretty smelling perfume, starting to look more like a woman in a bathing suit - teenaged girl junk. She doesn't have the luxury of those things, so she goes for the easiest and most tasteful option (obviously her BFF is in love with the jock, and the other reasonable candidate is an otaku) so the decent looking, sweet kid (that just so happens to live with her) is an easy get.
They're just kids, playing at a normal high school sort of life.
That's why I don't buy into any of the "it's a romance/love story" angles.
Rei is completely disinterested in, and probably unable to have a normal life. Her job is her life because it's the only thing she's ever known. She's hopelessly lost when it comes to human interaction, which is why the Rei x Shinji ship is even more out of the question, imho.
