Shigeru Aoba

The record offers little about his looks beyond his official art, illustrated by Youichi Fukano. His one visual signature is musical: in civilian life he moves through the city with a guitar case in hand.

Music defines Aoba's off-hours. A devoted guitar shredder, he plays air guitar around headquarters when off duty and leafs through guitar magazines between shifts. Underneath runs a strain of nihilism and mild cynicism: he scoffs at Maya Ibuki's total faith in the era's technology and shows no hesitation about opening fire on JSSDF soldiers during the assault on NERV. For all that, he stays on good terms with his co-workers.

Throughout Neon Genesis Evangelion, Aoba serves as one of the three principal computer technicians at NERV Headquarters, working beside Makoto Hyuga and Maya Ibuki from the first Angel alarm onward.

His end comes in The End of Evangelion. As Third Impact unfolds, each person on Earth is approached by a guide wearing the form of someone they loved or trusted, whose touch turns them to LCL. Aoba, who never loved anyone, instead faces a mob of naked Rei Ayanami duplicates giggling madly around him; he cowers under his console until one touches him and he dissolves. In the spin-off Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gakuen Datenroku, he passes his days as a science teacher while secretly working for NERV.

His surname honors the Aoba class of Japanese Imperial Navy heavy cruisers, and combined with his given name it deliberately evokes Aoba Shigereru, a film by Kihachi Okamoto. A scene cut from Episode 11 would have shown him playing guitar for the pilots on the hilltop, and an early idea for Episode 26 had him performing an instrumental A Cruel Angel's Thesis during Shinji's congratulations scene.