Asuka mouse pads for the desk

Our Asuka mouse pads and desk mats carry art inspired by Asuka Langley Soryu, the red-haired pilot of Evangelion Unit-02, printed edge to edge on 3 mm neoprene with a fabric top, a non-slip base and stitched edges that keep the fabric from fraying. The range runs across eight sizes, from an 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad that holds the mouse and nothing else to a 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm) mat that covers most of a desk, and a pad only goes to print once you have ordered it.

This is a character page within the Evangelion section. Shinji, Misato, the other Units and everything about NERV and the Angels live on the Evangelion page, and Rei Ayanami, the pilot Asuka spends half the series measuring herself against, has a page of her own.

A pilot who wants to be noticed

Asuka enters the story announcing herself. She is fourteen, already finished with university in Germany, sure of her skill and openly unimpressed by Shinji. Where the other pilots doubt themselves, she performs: a hand on the hip, a pointed finger, a smirk aimed straight at whoever is watching.

That temperament is exactly why she works on a desk. Asuka art is rarely quiet, and a design with that much attitude does the job of a poster without taking any wall space. It also means an Asuka pad will usually be the loudest object in the setup, so plan the rest around it: a plain black or white keyboard, a mouse without a busy shell and cables tucked out of sight leave the red with nothing to compete against.

The red plugsuit

The image most people picture first is the plugsuit: a close-fitting suit in bright red with black detailing, worn with the red interface clips in her hair. Red on a pale figure, set against a dark background, is about the strongest contrast a desk mat can carry, and it stays clear at a glance even from the door of the room.

Placement decides whether you actually see it every day. On the 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad, a half-length portrait set toward the top edge keeps her face clear of your palm. On a wide mat, look for a composition with Asuka standing at the left end, away from the mouse, or leaning in from the top right corner above your hand, so the keyboard lands on empty sky or the flank of Unit-02 instead of on her.

The interface clips as a symbol

Every Evangelion pilot wears a pair of neural interface clips in their hair, small devices that help them synchronize with their Unit. Asuka's are red, and because she wears them all the time, in school uniform as well as in the cockpit, they became part of her silhouette in a way that a plugsuit alone never could.

That makes them one of the cleanest symbols in the series for a small pad. Two red clips, or the clips with a strand of copper hair falling across them, read as a neat graphic to anyone else and as Asuka to anyone who has watched the show. On a work desk, a symbol like that is the quiet way to carry a loud character.

Soryu and Shikinami

There are two Asukas. In the TV series and The End of Evangelion she is Asuka Langley Soryu. In the Rebuild of Evangelion films she becomes Asuka Langley Shikinami, first seen in Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance in 2009, with a reworked plugsuit, a sharper temper and, from the third film onward, an eyepatch over her left eye.

The two versions suit different desks. Soryu comes from hand-painted cels, so her red is a little softer and the backgrounds carry a slight grain, a good match for a warm desk lamp and a wooden surface. Shikinami is drawn with digital color, with cleaner lines, deeper shadows and a red that looks lit from inside, which sits naturally beside a monitor and LED strips. The eyepatch version is the darker of the two and belongs on a black desk.

The arrival by sea

Asuka's first entrance in the TV series isn't in a plugsuit at all. Shinji and Misato fly out to meet a UN fleet carrying Unit-02 to Japan, and Asuka is waiting on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a yellow sundress, with wind across the flight deck and open ocean in every direction. Minutes later she is piloting Unit-02 from ship to ship to fight an Angel at sea.

That episode holds the lightest Asuka palette there is: yellow, sea blue and a pale sky. A design built on it is the one to pick for a bright room, a white desk or a setup used mostly in daylight, where a red plugsuit on black might feel heavy. It also fits a long format naturally, because the deck, the horizon and the fleet all run from side to side.

Unison with Shinji

In the ninth episode, Asuka and Shinji face an Angel that splits into two halves, and the only way to beat it is to strike both at exactly the same moment. So the two of them move in together and train to music, step by step, until every movement matches, and the fight ends with a perfectly timed double kick.

Mirrored designs inspired by that episode suit a desk mat unusually well. Two figures in matching poses, one at each end, leave the center free for the keyboard, and the symmetry still looks deliberate when half of the mat is under your arms. If you like a setup that balances left and right, or you share the desk with someone, this is the direction to look in.

Unit-02 behind her

Asuka is rarely drawn far from her Evangelion, and Unit-02 has features that work even when only part of it is in the frame: a head with four eyes, the tall pylons on its shoulders and armor in the same red as her suit. Putting Asuka in front of the Unit, small in the foreground at one end with its head looming over the other, gives a desk mat depth without crowding her.

That kind of layered scene needs width and some height. The 4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm), has room for both the pilot and most of the Unit with the keyboard in between. On shallower mats, a crop at the Unit's shoulders keeps the four eyes visible above the number row.

The fight in The End of Evangelion

The End of Evangelion gives Asuka her defining battle. Trapped at the bottom of a lake, she realizes that her mother has been with her inside Unit-02 all along, and the Unit surges back to life to face the white, winged Mass Production Evangelions descending from the sky.

Designs that draw on that sequence carry a hard, high-contrast palette: red armor against pale bodies and wide white wings. That combination looks sharpest under cool white light rather than red lighting, which would flatten the two colors together. It is an intense image, better for a gaming desk than a shared one, and it needs the larger sizes to fit more than one opponent.

Attitude in two words

Asuka's catchphrase is two words of Japanese, "Anta baka?", usually translated as something close to "Are you stupid?" and aimed at Shinji more often than anyone else. It sums up the side of her that keeps the series from becoming entirely grim.

Designs that lean on that side, a speech bubble, a sulking face, a chibi Asuka with her arms folded, are much lighter than any battle scene. They suit the small pad, a dorm desk or a gift for a friend who answers every bad idea with the same line. Comic designs also forgive a cluttered desk, because they never depended on a clean composition in the first place.

Asuka at play

The Rebuild films give Asuka a habit that fits a computer desk neatly: she is often shown absorbed in a handheld game, barely looking up while the people around her talk. For a desk that is mostly about gaming, that makes the Shikinami version a fitting companion.

The pad is built for that use as well. Its fabric top lets the mouse track and flick without catching, the non-slip base grips the desk when you swing the mouse from one side to the other, and the stitched edges survive a forearm resting on them through a long session. Low-sensitivity shooter players should think about XL or larger, where a full-arm swipe doesn't run off the edge.

Red on a white desk, red on a black one

Red changes with its surroundings more than most colors. On a black desk under dim light, an Asuka mat glows and its darker details sink into the background. On a white desk in daylight, the same red looks brighter and flatter, closer to the cel-painted look of the 1990s series. Neither is wrong, but it helps to know which effect you want before choosing a design with a lot of black in it.

Small red touches tie the setup together without matching exactly: one red keycap on Escape or Enter, a coiled red cable or a warm bulb in the desk lamp. Keep strong purple and green lighting away from an Asuka design, though. Those are Unit-01's colors, and they pull the whole desk toward Shinji.

Sizes for an Asuka desk

Every design's product page lists the sizes it is printed in. These are the ones that suit Asuka art.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	The red interface clips or a half-length portrait
Next to a laptop	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	A chibi Asuka or a speech-bubble design
Short keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	Two mirrored unison poses
Keyboard and mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	Asuka at one end, the carrier deck behind her
Extra depth	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	A plugsuit portrait with sky above the keys
Across the desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	Asuka in front of Unit-02

Two more sizes fill the gaps for long, shallow desks: the L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm), and the 3XL, 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm).

Gifts for an Asuka fan

An Asuka pad suits someone who argues for Unit-02 in every Evangelion debate, a cosplayer who has sewn the plugsuit or anyone who prefers the loud pilot to the quiet one. Decide first between Soryu and Shikinami, since most fans have a preference, and when you have no idea how big their desk is, go with the XL: a full keyboard fits on it with the mouse beside it, and it rarely overhangs a desk.

Ordering starts the clock: we need 1–3 business days to make the pad, after which it flies out of Turkey and usually lands at a US address within 2–5 business days.

Keeping the red vivid

The fade-resistant print keeps the red strong for years; what dulls it is a film of skin oil and dust where your wrist rests. Every week or so, wipe the pad with a cloth dampened in plain water. When that isn't enough, give it a gentle hand wash: lukewarm water, a drop of mild soap, a soft rub over the marked areas and a thorough rinse. Blot it between two towels, then leave it lying flat to dry overnight. Washing machines, dryers and irons are all too rough for it.

A note on names

Asuka Langley Soryu, Asuka Langley Shikinami, Evangelion and the names of Units and places appear here only to describe what inspired our designs. Hideaki Anno, Studio Khara and Gainax have no connection with Padrift, and they do not sponsor or endorse anything sold here.