forgive me for knocking another hole in the wall to see evageeks through; but if the world of Evangelion is a macrocosmos of the individual pilots, then it follows that the individual pilots are microcosmoses of the world of Evangelion, and the metatextuality of Asuka being a clone takes on a particular new meaning. Shikinami being directed very emphatically as a different character to Soryu reflects the very worlds they live in; Rebuild of Evangelion is Evangelion in the same way Asuka is Asuka is Asuka, and though they have differences on the small scale, they make up constituent parts of a continuum; literally parts of a “series”.