MANGA MONDAY: NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: CAMPUS APOCALYPSE OMNIBUS

04/18/2016 4:00pm
Is Shinji even allowed to look as cool as he does in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse…? Mingming, who wrote and drew the manga (the complete omnibus edition is already in comics shops, and will be in your book retailer by May) certainly thought so. 
Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact Campus Apocalypse is a shojo manga. Shinji being a clumsy nice guy who stumbles around into the female cast—that won’t do. How about bringing back the cynical brooder from the original Evangelion, but giving him a little dash and flair? How about having his legal guardian be not the hot Misato—but the hot Kaji? And instead of getting into the effing robot, how about him fighting the Angels hand to hand, by making the Eva units into occult melee weapons—a whip, a sword, a lance, and (in Shinji’s case) a pistol? Finally, get Shinji, Kaworu, Rei and Asuka all enrolled in Catholic school, so they have cooler uniforms, plus a solid excuse at last for all that deuterocanonical stuff without which, Eva wouldn't really be Eva. And also an excuse for Rei to play the Angel Gabriel and Asuka the Holy Virgin Mary during the school Nativity play, where, in the best shojo manga tradition, plays are a mystery of hidden feelings, and blossoms speak a silent language. In a traditional gesture, Rei is giving Asuka a lily—or “yuri,” as the flower is known in Japanese. 
[please insert image Rei and Asuka.jpg here]
We hear a lot about the different age and gender categories of readers to which manga are targeted in Japan—shonen, shojo, seinen, josei—but you may have also heard that in reality, readers follow whatever manga they personally like, regardless of who it was (in theory) intended for. Evangelion, which has existed in various manga forms for over twenty years, shows another interesting side of this debate, because Evangelion manga have been published in both shonen and shojo magazines. In other words, the same basic characters and concept could be either “shojo” or “shonen” depending on the different ways they are expressed for different manga magazines (another example of this are the different manga series based around the idol group AKB48, which have been done for both female and male-oriented magazines). 
I’ve edited nearly all of the Evangelion manga that have come out in English, but I do agree that Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse may be the most elegant expression of the by now iconic characters, second only to the works of their original designer, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Not that there isn’t a time for Shinji just being cute and clumsy, but we’ll discuss that in June. Not the yaoi magazine, the month. 
—Carl Horn
Manga Editor

Is Shinji even allowed to look as cool as he does in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse…? Mingming, who wrote and drew the manga (the complete omnibus edition is already in comics shops, and will be in your book retailer by May) certainly thought so. 

Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact Campus Apocalypse is a shojo manga. Shinji being a clumsy nice guy who stumbles around into the female cast—that won’t do. How about bringing back the cynical brooder from the original Evangelion, but giving him a little dash and flair? How about having his legal guardian be not the hot Misato—but the hot Kaji? And instead of getting into the effing robot, how about him fighting the Angels hand to hand, by making the Eva units into occult melee weapons—a whip, a sword, a lance, and (in Shinji’s case) a pistol? Finally, get Shinji, Kaworu, Rei and Asuka all enrolled in Catholic school, so they have cooler uniforms, plus a solid excuse at last for all that deuterocanonical stuff without which, Eva wouldn't really be Eva. And also an excuse for Rei to play the Angel Gabriel and Asuka the Holy Virgin Mary during the school Nativity play, where, in the best shojo manga tradition, plays are a mystery of hidden feelings, and blossoms speak a silent language. In a traditional gesture, Rei is giving Asuka a lily—or “yuri,” as the flower is known in Japanese. 

We hear a lot about the different age and gender categories of readers to which manga are targeted in Japan—shonen, shojo, seinen, josei—but you may have also heard that in reality, readers follow whatever manga they personally like, regardless of who it was (in theory) intended for. Evangelion, which has existed in various manga forms for over twenty years, shows another interesting side of this debate, because Evangelion manga have been published in both shonen and shojo magazines. In other words, the same basic characters and concept could be either “shojo” or “shonen” depending on the different ways they are expressed for different manga magazines (another example of this are the different manga series based around the idol group AKB48, which have been done for both female and male-oriented magazines). 

I’ve edited nearly all of the Evangelion manga that have come out in English, but I do agree that Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse may be the most elegant expression of the by now iconic characters, second only to the works of their original designer, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Not that there isn’t a time for Shinji just being cute and clumsy, but we’ll discuss that in June. Not the yaoi magazine, the month. 

—Carl Horn
Manga Editor

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manga neon genesis evangelion campus apocalypse darkhorseblog darkhorsecomics
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