My feelings on Evangelion are complicated. I became obsessed with it as a teenager. Aesthetically, emotionally, and artistically it's had more of an impact on my life than basically any other media. Politically and morally I find its leering camera and the fortune it made in skeevy figures of 14-year-olds entirely reprehensible.

Asuka struck me immediately. Her rage, her ego, her deep-seated loneliness; it was like looking in a mirror. She embodied the struggle of adolescence under the pressures of misogyny and objectification, desperate for adult attention in the only ways she's been taught it's available. Thinking too much about how the average anime fan perceives her makes me want to punch holes in a wall. The Series 2 fight from End of Evangelion changed something in my brain permanently.
I still love her as an adult. I have a little collection of figures and keychains of her. The rest of the series is still important to me too, but she's the star; my little bastard daughter with the most problems in the world.