Here's another shortfic SEELE-01 ordered me to review. However, I didn't thought of that review as a chore once I had read the fic, but rather as a pleasure...

Everything begins with Shinji remembering various things and feelings about Asuka. All the descriptions are rather well done, with a slight bit of a WAFFy effect. As we read further, we discover that Asuka has been married with Shinji, but he doesn't seem to remember even having met her before. The mystery around this seems very interesting, and the main idea has never been used so efficiently in any other Eva fic before (well, I may be wrong, but...)

However, all this WAFF had to come to an end (or explode, depending on your point of view) when Gendo makes an appearance, to use a mindwipe program on Shinji. This sound a bit strange, but this way, we understand better why Shinji can remember things about his former wife, but can't remember having ever met her.

The ending is a bit depressive, in my point of view anyway, and one mystery remains unexplained in my mind: what exactly happened to Asuka? Why is Gendo trying to erase his son's memories? I really can't help to think that the author should have given at least some explanation about this, in the author's notes for example...

In conclusion, it's another WAFFy shortfic, quite interesting in a way, and quite depressing in an other. A good fanfic to read, in my opinion.

SEELE-02

Shinji has dreams of a woman he's never met, yet one who he knows he loves with all his heart.

And before you have the red menace come screaming in to give the eternal wuss some well deserved cranial damage, this woman he's never met... her name is Asuka.

Thus opens up the fic 'Memories,' quite a touching fic that is a definite case of WAFFy, and a good one at that.

Shinji is working at some desk job doing the kind of thing that would drive anyone nuts. But, what is driving him nuts are these dreams he keeps having of Asuka, a girl he's never met, and certainly not one he'd ever want to date. As he himself states, he hates violent, pushy woman. (Once that comes out, you know something's wrong with him.)

Driven to near distraction by these images in his mind, he searches for the truth, only to have it denied to him at the end. There is something almost 1984-ish about this fic: in that Shinji is searching for something he knows is true, but can't quite seem to find. He gets closer and closer, but in the end, it is all for naught as his dream is taken away. Or is it...

The fic works wonderfully just as a WAFFy fic, or taken as I see it: WAFFy with a hint of darkness that never overcomes the final sweet feeling. That evil and suffering exist, but love exists as well, and may just prove harder to get rid of than we think.

The fic raises threads that never get answered, but they aren't important. In the end, what matters are the emotions, thoughts, and dreams that make up who we are and those we love, and that can never be taken away.

Touching, and if you want to look, surprising deep.