Ascension/Characters

This page is for summarizing the characters in Ascension. Most of the original Eva characters were twisted and turned by the author beyond recognition, for better or worse. Spoilers are be present.

Kaworu Nagisa
"Yo, WAZZZZUUUUUP?!"

The main protagonist of the story, Kaworu's a fourteen year old orphan who grew up without family or emotional support of any kind; all leads he has from his past is a heavily damaged photo and a 19-character alphanumeric code tattooed onto his arm. As a result, he taught himself to be self-supportive and not hang onto anyone but unlike canon!Asuka, he doesn't shut himself off from everyone but simply avoids placing too much importance in his life on others. His personality was crafted by the author to be a hybrid between canon!Kaworu and Kamina, to... interesting results: he has a pessimistic worldview that the world is a crappy place powered by Asskicking Equals Authority where everyone takes what they need from those who can't defend themselves and no one tries to change things because Status Quo Is God. He wants to change this but seeing as most people simply think he's a Large Ham nutjob, it isn't like he means it, right?

He became a pilot when.


 * Action Survivor - it's not competence or Plot Armor that makes him survive Angel battles but pure, sheer luck. And a heaping help of improvisation.
 * Adaptational Badass
 * Badass Boast - he's pretty fond of this, even though most of the time it comes out as Narm
 * Badass Bystander - against Sachiel
 * Chaotic Good
 * Chaste Hero - he's essentially the Spear Counterpart to Innocent Fanservice Girl in this regard. Or to be more exact: he personally doesn't care if people are prancing around naked as long as they don't either
 * Cheshire Cat Grin
 * Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
 * Do Not Taunt Cthulhu - because he does it for you
 * Foreign Cuss Word - used to it's full potential in the author's native language, although he cuts back on it when he realizes the Evas understand it too
 * Gadgeteer Genius - as he says, he's "good with... stuff"
 * Heroic Albino
 * I Shall Taunt You
 * Leeroy Jenkins - he always rushes head-first into a fight, something his superiors don't especially like but let him do it anyway because it works
 * He's shown the error of his ways in the second season when Shephard has him
 * Manly Tears -
 * Messy Hair
 * Mysterious Past - not only he doesn't have any family, he's suffering from amnesia and doesn't remember anything from his childhood
 * Never Hurt an Innocent - this is his Berserk Button, in fact
 * Obfuscating Stupidity - he intentionally invokes this trope, doing his page quote yell to misdirect attention
 * Out of Character - very much
 * Parental Abandonment
 * Scannable Man - non-barcode variant, on his arm
 * Screw Destiny - he's an atheist precisely because he hates being controlled by a higher power. If only he knew about the G-Man...
 * Stone Wall - his task in the team is keeping the enemy's attention on himself. To that end, he's always kitted with melee weapons, usually the Lance of Longinus.
 * The Alcoholic - he's a heavy drinker and gets away with it because he Never Gets Drunk and Yui warned him to not even try Drinking on Duty
 * The McCoy
 * Unskilled but Strong
 * Unskilled but Strong

Rei Ikari
"Indeed."

Rei is Kaworu's classmate and Yui's daughter. People find her somewhat strange and that's not due to her author-induced Xenafication. The author's reasoning behind this is an experiment about how Rei would grow up if she would preserve her original personality without Gendo's influence. Mind you, she still has severe abandoment issues due to Yui rarely spending any time with her outside work. Just as her canon counterpart, she rarely interacts with others (though this time around, she does so because she honestly doesn't give a damn, not because she was told not to) and even admits that she's an existential nihilist.

Another of her traits unique to the fandom is the lots of weaponry she carries on her person, even firearms; she's a scarily good marksman. She's been working for the AEL for an unspecified length of time and it quickly becomes apparent that she's not your everyday schoolgirl even before. It becomes even more obvious when she starts performing superhuman feats of agility near the end of season 1.


 * Action Girl
 * Anti-Hero - type 4: according to Word of God, she has no moral qualms about killing and torturing people whatsoever though Yui doesn't know this
 * Badass Longcoat
 * Badass Biker
 * Badass Bookworm - she has an IQ of 164 but she rarely partakes in class work
 * Biker Babe - her introduction in the first chapter has her busting through the school's gates with her bike
 * Broken Bird -
 * Crazy Prepared - her Extended Disarming scene in S1CH22 has her procuring an absurd amount of weaponry from her trenchcoat including this
 * Creepy Child - according to some of her classmates
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Death Glare - she gets her kicks out of this
 * Dull Eyes of Unhappiness - when
 * Extraordinarily Empowered Girl - so far she demonstrated Telepathy, Super Strength, Ceiling Cling on a vertical surface, ...
 * Fascinating Eyebrow - she takes this to almost Teal'c-levels
 * Fingerless Gloves - black ones, she takes them off prior to deploying
 * Going Commando - implied in the first season
 * Hot Chick with a Sword
 * Improbable Aiming Skills - probably counts as this. As do headshotting someone standing behind her with a machine pistol from across the room without looking, using the target's reflection in someone else's eye to aim.
 * S2CH9 reveals that Rei can dismember opponents with medium-range sniper shots. In fog so thick you can't see further than twenty meters.
 * Innocent Fanservice Girl - Rei was already this in canon and the author saw it better not to change it. As a result, this Rei has no complaints about
 * Keigo - when conversing in Japanese with Tabris in S 1 CH 23, she uses the ultra-polite watakushi first-person pronoun
 * Knife Nut - see Crazy Prepared above
 * And her throwing skills are good enough to knife someone in the eye from beyond visual range in fog!
 * Knight Templar
 * Kuudere - she only opens up to Kaworu
 * Lady of War
 * Le Parkour - assisted by telekinesis. She can scale walls and run vertically upwards pretty much indefinitely.
 * Murderous Thighs - she can snap necks with them
 * Nietzsche Wannabe - she's pretty pessimistic in general and goes on an extended rant when
 * No Sense of Personal Space - towards Kaworu, drawing lots of attention
 * One Woman Army - she brutally kills over a dozen people in S2Ch9 with a mixture of sniping, ambushing and hit-and-run attacks
 * Religious Bruiser
 * Room Full of Crazy - the ceiling of her room is written chock full with all sorts of stuff, including the entire Book of Genesis
 * Small Girl, Big Gun - and a tank rifle at that
 * Spock Speak - implied that she uses it by choice as she fully understands slang and everyday euphemisms when others say them
 * Street Samurai - the author was aiming for this impression
 * Super Strength - in The Present, she kicks down a door. And by kicking down, we mean blowing it clean off it's hinges so hard it knocked the guy standing behind it to the ground. Oh, and did we mention she was nine at the time?
 * The Power of Rock - she's a confirmed fan of death metal and metalcore and actually invokes this trope in the battle against Israfel
 * The Quiet One - with the exception of her brief conversations with Kaworu, she never speaks unless spoken to
 * The Stoic
 * Thousand-Yard Stare - when
 * True Neutral
 * Unkempt Beauty
 * Walking Armory - a sword, a Barret M82A1, two Micro Uzis, two custom-modified Matebas, an AG36 grenade launcher and a shitload of knives.
 * Woman in Black - her most distinctive feature
 * Woman in Black - her most distinctive feature

Asuka Langley
"What an idiot..."

The newest member of Kaworu's class, Asuka instantly develops animosity with Kaworu, seeing him as a Wide-Eyed Idealist who needs to have his eyes opened before he falls flat on his face. She never spent lots of time in any of her previous schools as she moved around a lot. Unknown to everyone in the class, Asuka is a highly proficient battleframe pilot and hand-to-hand fighter with ambitions of following her father's footsteps and entering the military with her coming of age; her expertise is what got her recruited by Yui. Also, Asuka is the youngest member of the cast.

Her backstory was revealed late in the first season:


 * Ace Pilot - a mixture of Steamroller and Plugger. Her exact role in the team is to execute repeated flanking attacks from range.
 * Badass Long Hair - you don't say...
 * Badass Normal - so far she's the only pilot who appears completely ordinary
 * Bayonet Ya - she's pretty skilled in this
 * Bi the Way
 * Child Soldier - she started her combat training before she even began puberty
 * Counter Attack - her favorite tactic if forced into close combat: invoke The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort to cause the enemy to tire itself out and make a mistake she can exploit then hit back hard
 * Covert Pervert - she's repeatedly shown gleefully peeping at a naked Rei with implications that
 * Good Bad Girl - she dated several guys before but never went all the way. On the other hand, she's bisexual and is a Covert Pervert.
 * In-Series Nickname - the stooges nicknamed her "the Blonde Cyclone"
 * Lethal Chef - outright stated by her father
 * Meganekko - subverted: she only wears glasses at home (she uses contacts everywhere else). She has mild hyperopia and doesn't actually need glasses per se but wears them anyway to keep her eyesight from deteriorating further.
 * Military Brat
 * Tomboyish Ponytail
 * Tragic Keepsake -
 * Tsundere - come on, Asuka isn't Asuka without this!

Yui Ikari
"I have work to do so if you'd be so kind..."

The current chairman of the Artificial Evolution Laboratory and mother of one child. Due to differences in Evangelion technology, she didn't have to undergo a contact experiment to get the Evas operational. However,. Despite this setback, Yui took control of the AEL with an iron hand and built it up into the highly successful biotech firm some people call "the modern Black Mesa".

As the chairman of a huge company, Yui never had the time to take care of Rei who, as a result, grew up as an independent and withdrawn girl. Instead, Yui poured all of her time and attention into creating the Evangelions and doing it so good that no one outside the AEL had any idea about their or the Geofront's existence.


 * Arbitrary Skepticism - she works with Evas on a daily basis yet she has a hard time believing the Dead Sea Scrolls
 * Badass Bureaucrat
 * Brainy Brunette
 * Hot Scientist - she DOES have a degree in biotechnology
 * Iron Lady - and Rei appears to be heading towards this as well
 * Married to the Job - pretty much. Not pulling an all-nighter is the exception for her.
 * Power Hair
 * Reasonable Authority Figure
 * The Reveal - she knows and for some reason it scares the crap out of her
 * The Spock

Adrian Shephard
"Riiight..."

Being snatched from the G-Man by Vortigaunts shortly after the Uprising, Shephard joined the Confederate army to make sure something like Black Mesa never happens again. In a few years, he managed to climb to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel while carefully hiding his involvement with HECU. After, he left Earth with the intention of not returning; the Sachiel incident however prompted the army to dispatch someone to snoop around and shed some light on what the AEL is up to. Due to Shephard being considered by his superiors as somewhat of a loose cannon, he was assigned to the task with Asuka accompanying him.

He's a pretty fun guy despite the fact that he's technically in his sixties due to the G-Man's stasis putting him out of commission for 20 years.


 * Colonel Badass
 * Cool Old Guy
 * Expy - of Jack O'Neill
 * Military Maverick - he only follows the rules while he's being watched
 * OC Stand In - there is absolutely no canon information available about him so the author took some liberties
 * Passing the Torch - he allows Asuka to pursue her militaristic ambitions because he can't be her guardian forever; he even gave her Marine-grade CQC training
 * Retired Badass
 * Semper Fi - he's ex-USMC
 * The Kirk

The Evas
Unlike the canonverse, the Ascensionverse's Evangelions don't need contact experiments to work. Using salvaged remains of the Overwatch Dispatcher, the Confederacy developed rudimentary AI technology for use on board larger spacecraft. For the Evangelions, AEL scientists write specially crafted A Is they convert into electric impulses and upload into the Evangelion's core, essentially acting as a crude substitute for a real soul.

Lilith
"We have not had many opportunities for communicating in the past; now we have an opportunity to rectify that."

The AI of Unit-00. Over time, Lilith bonded with Rei as a big sister and is the only person Rei ever considered to be her friend.


 * Japanese Honorifics - as expected from a One World Order speaking English, they are the only ones from the cast who use them
 * Japanese Sibling Terminology - she calls Adam niisan even though she's the older one
 * Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence - level 4
 * Yamato Nadeshiko - Lilith shows some traits: wise, mature, humble, loyal to Rei but obedient to Yui.

Adam
"Questions flow like water from the depths of the curious mind. [...] I was searching for ways to better serve the purpose which I was created for; for without purpose, our existence is nil. Purpose is that which creates us and binds us to existence, that which guides us in life, that which defines the part of us that makes us."

Adam is a more newer creation and barely interacted with humans before being. After his assignment to be Kaworu's partner, he rapidly starts forming his own personality which is quite similar to Lilith's.


 * Machine Monotone - before he became fully operational
 * Robo Speak - ditto
 * Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence - over the course of season 1, upgrades himself from level 3 to level 4 by reading human literature
 * Warrior Poet - he picked up quite a vocabulary when he rewrote himself

Sekhmet
"I MUST HAVE BLOOD!!!"

Sekhmet is Unit-02's AI. Unlike her fellow Evangelions, Sekhmet is completely, totally insane and not in a good way: she herself says that since she's a weapon made to kill and destroy, she might as well have fun while fulfilling her purpose. It certainly doesn't help that she's praising Khorne while working.


 * Ax Crazy
 * Blood Knight
 * Put the Laughter In Slaughter - she LOVES this, taking it far enough to freak even Asuka out
 * The Berserker