Sadamoto Yoshiyuki - Neon Genesis Evangelion, vol. 01-07 (Eng. trans.)

It's kind of strange reading this after having seen the anime about five or six times. The plot generally follows that of the anime fairly closely, although, as would be expected, Sadamoto condenses much more. Contrary to what generally happens, the manga for this one was written after the anime, and I think the manga is still ongoing while the anime ended around 1996 or so (movies included). Sadamoto leaves out a good deal of the angel/shito battles, especially the earlier ones that sort of act as filler episodes in the anime.

I particularly like how he's been expanding Rei's character and making her more transparent, since Rei at the best is never the easiest character to understand. I'm also very glad to have Kaji gain a background. It's also hard to judge, considering that the manga has just hit the point in which things get really interesting in the anime -- I don't know if book 8 is out yet =(.

I think my biggest quibble with the manga is the pacing though. I'm not sure how Sadamoto could have prevented it, given that manga is meant to be consumed very quickly -- I can't remember the average pages/sec for reading manga, but it's very very high speed. While the anime has a set time span, I tend to breeze through the manga very quickly, and as such, some of the bigger emotional moments don't stay with me or hit me as hard as they do in the anime -- the reaction shots of the characters last about a fraction of a second in the manga, versus maybe half a minute in the anime.

It'll be very interesting to see how Sadamoto chooses to render the extremely non-linear, non-traditional parts of the anime.

Etcetera

I have found that the general rule of the bookstore is: whenever I run out of patience and buy an out of print book online or elsewhere (without handy discount), a copy in about the same condition as the one I bought will invariably turn up two weeks later. Murphy's Law part 59. The book in question this time turned out to be Megan Chance's The Portrait.

A recent goldmine of a buy (imho) now means I have greedily borrowed five Hellboy books, of which I am happily reading now. The same buy also yielded many more graphic novels of which I will hopefully get my hands on. Another buy from a reviewer means I will soon be borrowing a book on math competitions (it looked like Spellbound), a book on rats and human society (not the new one about rats in Manhattan, although I want to read that one too), a rat care book (probably not much I don't really know, but pictures! Of cute fuzzy rats!), and probably a good deal of other stuff I can't remember.

They've completely pulled me off my sections at the bookstore, which is nice because now I don't feel like kicking everything in sight because the books won't fit. However, now I don't have enough to do. The boss says he might give me section 7 (humor, comics, role-playing, manga, games), which means I get first look at the graphic novels and manga. Whoo!

The boy makes fun of me when we talk about moving because I already want to get a new bookshelf. He says it'll just tempt me to buy more books. I, of course, think it's entirely practical. Besides, no such thing as too many books.

The really horrible thing about working at the bookstore is that it's starting to make me a book snob. Not in the sense of literary snob, but in the sense that I want shiny, hardcover, first editions of everything, along with a mass market paperback reading or lending copy. I've already succumbed and started buying signed things (Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, hee), which will probably be worthless in the years to come, but I don't particularly care. I just like knowing that I have them.

We had a first edition of an Isaac Asimov pass through last week, albeit an ex-library one.

I'm still in the middle of the Riddle-Master Trilogy (middle being two-thirds through the last book). I'm also still in the middle of, oh, maybe eight other books. Sigh. I really should just stick with one book, but unless one of them catches me so that I stay up till four in the morning finishing, I tend to skip around. Sometimes one book I'm in the middle of doesn't suit the mood of the exact moment, and I have to dig out another one instead.

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I feel slightly better now -- rambling about books makes me feel more relaxed.

I'm kind of helping a friend with her thesis, and yesterday I was talking to my sister about her Japanese film paper. I miss academia. Came across an issue of the Journal of Asian Studies during work today, one of the journals I used to use for research, and it made me feel very nostalgic for the EAS department and Gest library in particular. Old-fashioned shelves with carved ornamentation, dark wood, heavy wooden tables with worn leather chairs -- so different from the utilitarian metal of Firestone (the main library). I miss the rows and rows of bound journals. So I thumbed through the issue, looked through the reviews (definitely one of my favorite parts), and found a review or two of books I thought I'd like to read, plus a review of a book I'd used for my thesis. I like it when my opinion is confirmed by people ^_^. I briefly wondered how much a subscription would cost. I used to go there to research -- thesis, obviously, and one professor used to make us look up articles on the weekly readings junior year to get us used to the library. I'd get so distracted and thumb through issues and look for reviewers I recognized. This one had the obituary for Marcus B. Jansen, the guy who wrote The Making of Modern Japan, which I just bought. Written by Colcutt, in our dept., who gave me my comps.

That plus helping out friend with her thesis made me miss college. I even fondly recalled the thesis writing experience, which means I have definitely gone insane.