Everyone is
clear about the difference between Asuka and Rei. One is fire, the other is
ice. And yet, the anime world narrowly missed out on Asuka Langley as we know
her, because the voice behind that character went to the audition to look for
something completely different. Yuko Miyamura just revealed on
her official YouTube channel that in the fall 1994 auditions, she even
auditioned for the role of Rei Ayanami.
Miyamura's
agency had labeled her as a type of "traditional hero" and sent her
to audition for Rei. She interpreted the lines assigned to her in a calm and
restrained way, exactly as instructed. It was in the middle of the process that
the director chimed in with a question he wasn't expecting: Would you like to
try reading another character's lines?
That
character was Asuka Langley Soryu. The indication was clear: to
interpret it with energy, in the same style I had been using. Miyamura admitted
that at the time he felt confusion, because he didn't think his performance was
being particularly forceful. Even so, he followed the direction of the team,
and the result was that he kept the role. What the director saw in her during
that impromptu reading was exactly what Asuka needed, even if the seiyuu
herself didn't know it at the time.
There is a
detail of the context that makes the story even more interesting: at that time
of the auditions, Neon Genesis Evangelion had not been
confirmed as a television series. The project was being developed as a 26-episode
production in OVA format. Miyamura auditioned for a project whose final
format was not even closed, and ended up giving life to one of the most
influential characters in the history of anime.
About
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Neon
Genesis Evangelion (Shin Seiki Evangelion) premiered as a series in 1995 under the
direction of Hideaki Anno and quickly became one of the most
influential works in the history of the medium. The story of teenagers piloting
giant mechas to combat mysterious beings called Angels worked in multiple
layers: action, psychological horror, religious criticism and personal drama in
proportions that no other series of its time had tried to combine in such a
way. Beginning in 2007, Anno revisited and reimagined the story through
the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, whose final installment,
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, arrived in 2021 and became the
franchise's highest-grossing film in Japan, surpassing 10 billion yen and
attracting more than 6.7 million viewers. The role of Asuka Langley
Soryu, which Miyamura won thanks to an unforeseen turn in an audition room more
than thirty years ago, remains one of the most celebrated in the history of
Japanese dubbing.
