For the character's name, Hideaki Anno took inspiration from , the protagonist of the manga , written by Shinji Wada; for the surname, he merged the names of two ships used in the Second World War, the Japanese World War II aircraft carrier "Soryu" and the American aircraft carrier "Langley". Despite her multi-ethnic origins, the staff made Asuka's skin the same color as that of Rei Ayanami. For the German terms used in the scenes with Asuka, staff asked for help from an American employee of Gainax, Michael House, who exploited his basic knowledge of the language, acquired in high school, and a Japanese-German dictionary from a local library. Gainax did not pay attention to the dialogues' German grammar, believing the series would never be successful enough to be distributed to native German speakers.