Kensuke Aida

Kensuke is a fourteen-year-old student in Shinji's class, born in Yokohama on 12 September 2001, with Type A blood. The anime gives him brown hair, which Sadamoto's manga swaps to blond, and he is practically inseparable from the camcorder he aims at anything military.

Confidence and self-sufficiency set Kensuke apart from Shinji, whose circumstances otherwise echo his own: both boys lost their mothers, and Kensuke's father also works at a NERV facility. He camps alone in the hills ringing Tokyo-3, stages one-man war re-enactments, and dreams loudly of a pilot's seat, a childlike streak offset by flashes of real maturity about owning his ambitions himself.

He is sociable and capable, having once cooked the welcome dinner for Asuka's party at Misato's apartment, but he can also be pushy, calculating, and self-serving. He sells covert photos of Asuka to classmates for profit, shares Toji's crush on Misato, and stays cheerfully blind to the physical and mental toll piloting takes on the people he envies. For all that, he understands loneliness well enough to be a genuine comfort, and he stands out as one of the few cast members carrying no serious psychological wounds.

Kensuke enters the story when Shinji joins his class, watching Toji flatten the new kid over his sister's injuries. During Shamshel's attack he talks Toji into sneaking out to witness the battle firsthand, arguing they owe the pilot their support, a stunt that nearly kills them both until Shinji pulls the pair into Unit-01's entry plug. Later, after Shinji runs away, Kensuke stumbles onto him during a solo camping trip and the two trade stories until NERV comes to collect its pilot; he and Toji then reach the station in time to see Shinji off, cementing the trio's friendship. Aboard the carrier Over the Rainbow he films everything in reach, including Unit-02's clash with the sea Angel Gaghiel.

His campaign for a pilot's seat goes nowhere. He begs Shinji to lobby Misato, then asks her directly and comes away empty, and when an Eva finally does go to a classmate it goes to Toji. After the Unit-03 disaster he leaves Shinji a frustrated recorded message asking why he keeps running while others get their moment. As Tokyo-3 empties out, Kensuke lingers in a nearly deserted classroom alongside Hikari, and after Unit-00's destruction he apparently leaves the city, never seen again.

The manga hands him a crush on Asuka instead of Misato, an early sense that something about Kaworu is inhuman, and a farewell voicemail to Shinji after Toji's death; in the reborn world of its ending, he greets Shinji at a train station as a future schoolmate and self-declared rival. The Battle Orchestra game finally grants his wish: SEELE appoints him pilot of Unit-04 in a yellow plugsuit, runs him through simulated battles and a fight with Leliel, then orders him against Unit-03, and his route ends on his gasp as Toji's voice comes from inside the enemy machine. In Toji's own story mode the friends see through SEELE's deception and turn on it together.