Glossaries _ Characters _ Kensuke Aida

Name: Kensuke Aida
Designation: Fourth Level Candidate
Age: 14
Relations: None
Episodes:

Japanese Voice: Tetsuya Iwanaga
English Voice: Kurt Stoll

About Kensuke: Kensuke recieves very little attention or characterization in Evangelion, so we never get into his character and how he came to be the kind of person that he is. We can only presume, and analyize him accorduing to the type of person he is.  I would say that if Shinji is representative of Anno during the period of his depression, then I would have to say that Kensuke is representative of Anno during his youth.

Kensuke is an otaku, but not an otaku in its adopted western sense.  Just for the sake of thouroughness, "otaku" is an exceeedingly polite way of referring to someone, so much so that it is actually rude to refer to someone as an "otaku".  This term is often used to refer to the obsessively nerdy hobbyists.  Though anime fandom is prevalent among otaku, it is not a neccessity.   Instead, Kensuke is a military otaku.  There are quite a few of them in Japan, and it is not unusual for adult males, ranging from school teachers to young buisness professionals, to don full military regalia and a pellet gun, go out into the wilderness, and play war.  In America we generally play paintball, but Japanese tend to view it as an inferior derivitive to model pellet guns.

The scene in episode 4 where Kensuke is playing by himself illustrates a number of things.  Though it may seem odd to us, it shows us that the children in Eva are still kids, some of whom still haven't let go of playing "pretend".  This further illustates Kensuke as a representation of Anno's youth.  I am reminded of both Hideaki Anno's Ultranan fan film, and a documentary of him that features him on top of a swingset pretending to be a sentai hero.  They are indeed different hobbies, but the fandom is still the same.

Kensuke means well, and he is by no means a bad or immature person, but he is very ignorant to the feelings of the Eva pilots.  He envys and desires their position as if it were something to be covetted, when it is really a painful and inescapable burden.  You really have to focus on his phone call to Shinji in episode 19 to grasp his ingnorance.  He at first consoles and encourages him, however he quickly tangents into his desire to be in Shinji's place.  He is fairly oblivious to what the Eva pilots have to bear, and I doubt that it is simply for the fact that he is not aware of it, especially as he saw Shinji's pain first hand in episodes 3 when he and Touji were taken into the entry plug of Unit 01.

This ignorance to the greater scheme, the self centered nature of his character, and his fixative nature all illustrate him in a very child-like way.  It reminds me very much of some of what is said about about Anno.  Even Kensuke's visual design as a character reminds me of Anno.  Kensuke needs fairly little interpretation, just a simple consideration of what he represents.  And to me, he reminds me of Anno as a young boy.

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