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

[oyceter]

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.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I found the manga much easier to parse, although maybe that was the effect of having seen the anime first, so it's hard to judge. And in general there seems to be more humor.

I have most of the manga in Korean as well as English, even though my Korean isn't good enough to make it through most of it without stumbling.

[oyceter]

*nods* I'm actually having the opposite happen to me, but that's probably because I've seen the anime so much. Heh, it's gotten to the point in which I've stopped noticing the surreal parts as particularly surreal.

I'm not quite sure what I think of the humor -- one of the changes that I didn't like was the scene in which Misato gets drunk and is taken care of by Kaji. I particularly loved that episode of the anime though...

I have most of the manga in Korean as well as English, even though my Korean isn't good enough to make it through most of it without stumbling.
Argh, I have the same problem when I read manga in Chinese. I find it a lot easier to read shojo in Chinese or Japanese than shonen -- too many martial arts terms or sci-fi mechanical terms there!