Huang Zhetian entered the Changing Room, gave himself a quick rinse, then grabbed a towel and wiped himself down haphazardly. He couldn't help it. He had grown so used to the smell of LCL all over him that it had practically become part of his natural scent.
Today, the Dummy System had recorded his combat data. Later, they would add the combat data of the other two pilots, Kaworu Nagisa and Rei Ayanami. How many of those Mass Production Units would successfully receive the data, and what percentage of it?
Huang Zhetian narrowed his eyes and chuckled. He didn't mind. He had deliberately left plenty of subtle openings in his combat moves anyway. With a little training from him, Asuka and Shinji would be able to handle them when the time came.
But Shinji... Hmm... Tsk.
Shinji? To be honest, Huang Zhetian didn't hold out much hope for him. Whatever he might do to pull Shinji out of his withdrawn state and untangle his inscrutable mind, he simply didn't have the time or energy to spare.
There was another important point. This was the one part of the plot Huang Zhetian couldn't change-and mustn't change, either. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't!
Nobody could get inside Shinji Ikari's closed-off heart, at least not before the finale. His current state and emotions had already entered the first stage of his eventual breakdown.
In the Original Theatrical Version, Shinji Ikari was a character Hideaki Anno had written with fixed emotions and a fixed personality. He couldn't change. From the beginning to the very end, the director had destined him to be a coward who couldn't express himself, whose psychological wounds wouldn't heal, and whose double standards even Shinji himself struggled to recognize.
A video creator's commentary in Huang Zhetian's previous life