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Worlds Without End Blog

SF Manga 101: Neon Genesis Evangelion Posted at 11:01 PM by Glenn Hough

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Glenn Hough (gallyangel) is a nonpracticing futurist, an anime and manga otaku, and is almost obsessive about finishing several of the lists tracked on WWEnd. In this series on SF Manga Glenn will provide an overview of the medium and the place of science fiction within it.


EVA1Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here!

Neon Genesis Evangelion, or NGE, has been known to do things to people; it changes them.  You have been warned.

When otaku start talking about the NGE anime, it’s normal to talk in clichés and you start to use words or phrases like ground breaking, shattering, stunning, mind-numbing complexity, totally awesome, Rei is so Moe, Or Baka! Shinji (You fool, Shinji!).

When the anime hit in 95 and 96 to say that it changed the face of anime and that it reforged the big giant mecha genre, is not an understatement or hyperbole.  That’s what happened.  But NGE didn’t just stop.  The anime had several movies, which tied up the ending of the series, before moving on to a rebuild series of movies that clarified and distilled the major themes, concentrating and enhancing what was already there.

Now the manga is what we would call a novelization.  And they’re still being produced, even after almost a lapse of 20 years.  One of the leads from the anime is doing this.  Yoshiyuki Sadamoto is sort of slow and there have been pauses in the production.  That’s just the way it worked out.  But this slowness has allowed the manga to follow it’s own process of distillation and clarification, making for a more concise rendering of the basic story line.  I feel the manga stands by itself and is good enough for a top five placement in the SF manga pantheon.

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This is what the publisher says about volume one:

In 2015, the “Angels” have returned, and Shinji Ikari, a fourteen year-old child of the new Earth, is forced by his father Gendo–commander of the secret organization NERV–to pilot the monstrous biomechanical weapon called “Evangelion” to match the Angels’ fearsome power…

This description sounds almost benign.  It’s a simple mecha story, right?  No, that’s not even close.  It’s the layering of story, the interweaving of story which sets Evangelion apart.

NGE is, on the first level, a big giant robot story, which is a Japanese mainstay.  But even saying that leads one astray.  The evangelion units are biomechanical monsters.  They’re not the mecha of Gundam.  They’re not the powersuits of Appleseed.  They live.  The pilot needs to synch their brainwaves with their unit before it will respond to them.  One unit has even moved on it’s own.  The armor of the unit is also a containment mechanism for what’s inside.  The technology used to make them is not fully understood.  Later in the series, a half completed unit, it’s assembly plant and the town next to it, disappears: gone.  When there is an accident with these monsters, it’s serious.

EVA2

And now we come to the human drama layer.  The three main characters are the three main pilots.  Shinji, Askua, and Rei.  All fourteen, all in the same middle school, the same class.  The logic here is that you put all your pilots and those who might become pilots in the same place.  So they’re close at hand.  So they can be watched, studied, experimented upon.  NGE, the mecha masterpiece, suddenly merges into a middle school drama, with characters that come to the story with baggage.  At fourteen!  One can go on for pages about the inter complexities of these three main characters and how they interact with all the adults around them, who have their own baggage.  The NERV project has ground up and spit out one generation of researchers and scientists and has now got it’s teeth into a second generation, the sons and daughters of the first.

EVA5The third layer is the changes to humanity.  That bland “child of the new Earth” statement from the intro does nothing to inform us that over half the world’s population is gone.  The whole ice sheet of Antarctica unfroze in about five seconds.  The resulting tidal wave re-contoured the continents and sea level rise was somewhere around a 100 feet.  Humanity is still reeling from this.

The fourth layer would then be the web of conspiracies and shadow agencies.  It was not a meteor that hit Antarctica, like the history books say.  This so called second impact was something else.  There was a project, and a team, and they woke something up.  Bad move.  The one survivor was a young teen girl who had to be institutionalized for a time, since Misato stopped talking and interacting with the world, because of what she saw.  And now Misato is Shinji’s, Rei’s and Asuka’s commander at NERV.  Another character with major baggage.

Then there is SEELE, which instituted the second impact.

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There is the Human Instrumentality Project, Project E, the Marduk Institute and even the classified, never been seen by the public, section of the dead sea scrolls, which lays out the coming of the angels.  Even Rei’s origin and exact nature is a closely guarded secret.  NGE is awash in conspiracy and counter conspiracy.  It’s deception, betrayal, and who do you trust in a time of war, since the Angels are coming.

The fifth layer is obvious, Christen mythology is used liberally just about everywhere.  Adam, yes, that Adam, is what the team woke up in Antarctica.  Lilith, Adam’s first wife according to Judaic text, is also present.  The Angels are all named after biblical angels.  The fast approaching third impact.   The whole of the apocalyptic ending.  The three magi computer system and on and on….

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It all comes back to this incredible weave of events, people, forces in the world, forces from beyond the world, prophesy, desire, effort, blood, sweat, and tears which makes Neon Genesis Evangelion what it is: a classic.  Each time I reread it, there is always the possibility of a new connection, of something I just didn’t get, becoming clearer.  This time through it was with Rei.  Sure, she’s a clone and all but what about where her soul comes from?  Not even that’s “normal”.

There are three other NGE manga series: NGE: the Shinji Ikari Raising Project, NGE: Angelic Days and NGE: Campus Apocalypse. The secondary series all add detail and flesh out various points the main series didn’t have the time or the inclination to get into.  That, and you had to give the ravenous legion of otaku something to tide them over while the movies were in production.  Of these three series, the Shinji Ikari Raising Project is the best and it’s still in production.

The main series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, is available from VizAngelic Days was published by ADVManga, which is now out of business. You can find that series through Amazon or your favorite online bookseller.  Both the Shinji Ikari Raising Project and Campus Apocalypse can be found from our friends at Dark Horse.

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