Manga Review – Neon Genesis Evangelion, Vol. 8

The full story behind NERV and SEELE is revealed.

Story & Art by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
Based on the series by Hideaki Anno
Translated by Lillian Olsen
English Adaptation by Fred Burke & Carl Gustav Horn
Published by Viz Media

Available from Amazon.com

The Premise

Shinji Ikari has been absorbed into Eva Unit-01. Ritsuko & Misato attempt to get him back, while Shinji faces a literal existential crisis inside the Eva.

After Shinji gets out, SEELE orders Kaji to kidnap Fuyutsuki. Through his memories, we see the origins of NERV and SEELE, and how Gendo became the emotionally distant manipulator he is now.

High Points

Learning the full story of NERV could turn out to be very dry but it isn’t. Learning this fills in some of the holes of the story of “how it came to this.”

Low Points

The “Shinji’s Existential Crisis” episode, in the show, did a great job of laying out Shinji’s psychological issues – the trauma of having to pilot the the Eva versus his desire to protect his friends, his confusion over how he should feel towards Misato & Rei (whether his feelings should be familial or romantic) combined with his feelings with Asuka, and his hatred for his father versus his desire for his approval. In the manga this is heavily truncated, hurting the development of these relationships some.

Also, there is some information in Fuyutsuki’s flashback in the Director’s Cut of the show that we don’t get here.

Scores

Originality: Aside from the omissions, this volume changes little to nothing. 3/6

Artwork: 6/6

Story: The almost full story of NERV is spelled out very well, and it doesn’t get boring. 4/6

Characterization: Fuyutsuki gets the characterization he’s been lacking for the whole series, plus additional development for Shinji & Misato. 5/6

Emotional Response: And wham volume #4.

Flow: 6/6

Overall: 6/6

In total, this volume 35/42.

2 replies on “Manga Review – Neon Genesis Evangelion, Vol. 8”

  1. Does this complement, or contradict, or both, the anime? I have long thought a lot of the show was ambiguous and unclear. I’d be interested in reading some of this, but I don’t have the time or money to get into a big manga series just now.

  2. It does not contradict the reveals we get of NERV and SEELE’s backstory as depicted in the Director’s cut of the show, but there is some information we get here that we don’t get there. It’s more complementary. The manga series on the whole is on the more complementary side. There’s some plot beats we get in the show that we don’t get in the manga (Shinji’s Existential Crisis), and vice versa (Kaji’s backstory).

    As far as financial costs (if not time costs) go, Viz Media has been putting out omnibus volumes of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga, and they’ve basically covered volumes 1-12 in three volume sets. All the omnibuses are also available from Viz’s digital manga store, available through the iTunes store and Android, as well as being available through the Nook and Kindle store. Volume 13 is currently only available by its lonesome. Presumably they’ll do a 2-volume omnibus once volume 14 gets its legit English release.

    Now, I have not read the omnibus volumes, so I don’t know if some of the extras from those volumes (like interviews with Asuka’s Japanese and English voice actresses, as well with thoughts by Carl Gustav Horn on Eva as a whole, along with the playlists for his mixtapes (remember those) for the Eva TV series and End of Evangelion.

Comments are closed.