PowerUpOrDie

The manga that started a year before its TV counterpart, but didn't finish until nearly 20 years later. Comparisions to the legendary anime are inevitable, but how well does this manga stand on its own?

STORY

As it has been a couple years since I've seen the original anime, and the fact that the manga version is considered equally 'canon' with the anime, I'll be refraining from doing a full-scale comparsion and try to deduce whether or not this version can stand on its own.

In short, it does. The premise is established quickly and effectively, then built upon carefully to slowly turned what might first pass for a generic mecha story into a full-scale psychological drama. NGE functions on the principle of 'deconstruction', the idea of picking a genre story and its typical tropes apart with a more realistic approach and seeing what might actually happen in a more life-like setting.

I do have to mark one particular strike against this story, however. The final arc, while fast-paced, emotional, and intense isn't always fully comprehensible, with a great deal of techno-babble thrown around and and events occuring extremely rapid-fire. Though perhaps that helps induce the feeling of disorientation and confusion the cast is also feeling. In any event, it's the characters, not the events that drive NGE, and the story functions as a solid framework for their drama to unfold.

And while I promised to try and avoid an anime to manga comparison, there's no getting around the elephant in the room: the ending. The manga ending gives a slightly different spin on the anime's legendary/infamous 'Gainax Ending', opting for a more straightforward, less ambiguous conclusion. The more conventional finale will likely be loved or hated depending on your opinion of the anime's mind-screw ending. Less intellectually challenging, but more emotionally satisfying is the best way I can describe it- make of that what you will.

ART

Sadamoto brought down the house with his artwork in this manga. There's a reason he's been hired to design characters for major projects such as 'Summer Wars', 'The Girl Who Lept Through Time', and 'Wolf Children'. And his characters simply steal the show in the artwork department: they have a certain, unique 'swagger' to their designs. Realistic, but with just enough 'manga' touches to make them distinct and memorable. Each cast member can easily be differentiated from the others, and they move and act with real energy. The backgrounds, however, while good, never achieve a truly jaw-dropping effect. Art is the strongest part of this manga, and that's no backhanded compliment given how good the rest is.

CHARACTERS 

Let's start with the man so many fans love to hate: Shinji Ikari. He may not fulfill the typical power-fantasy archetype of getting all the girls and having all the deus ex machina powers needed to break the plot to his whim, but he is one thing: believable. Shinji's backstory and character development reveals a boy who's been traumatized, never in command of his own fate, cast off by his father, and treated as a burden by the people who raised him, and all this while growing up in a psycholgically scarred world that can no longer take humankind's continued existence for granted. Not exactly the ideal environment for raising a cocky, devil-may-care action hero. The battles may be fought from inside an EVA, but the war is being waged inside his mind.

The rest of the cast is very strong as well, each major character having a distinct and believable driving motivation, although some are explored more in-depth than others. Of particular note is Rei Ayanami, whose character I found to be most interesting in this version of NGE, as we get a few more looks inside her enigmatic mind (or, in less scholarly terms, I found Asuka more interesting in the anime, but Rei claimed the title of 'Best Girl' in the manga.... I can only imagine how Asuka might react to hearing that...). The characters drive this story, and they do an excellent job. 

OVERALL

The Evangelion manga finds itself in a weird middle ground, being a technically an independent and equally canonical version as the Evangelion story found in animation, but also inescapably overshadoweded by the anime's fame. The biggest audience for this series will likely be anime fans looking for a more cathartic Evangelion experience after the animated version left our minds reeling. And the manga certainly isn't as iconic and influential within the world of manga as the anime is within the world of anime. But it is a solid manga perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet, and well worth reading.