Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project vol. 18

Fuck this series.

 

What started out as a fun alternate-universe “Evangelion” title burned away any goodwill it had long ago.  There’s no denying that it’s take on the franchise, a happy ending filled with wacky hijinks compared to the world-ending apocalypse of the TV series and movies, was refreshing at first.  After a while it became clear that mangaka Osamu Takahashi had no greater ambition than to put these characters through a familiar set of tropes -- studying together, a beach trip, more studying, having the girls dress up as maids, even more studying after that -- with copious amounts of unimaginative fanservice thrown in because that’s what the fans really want to see.  This was the laziest of licensed cash-ins that reduced the talents of Carl Horn and his English adaptations to the level of turd-polishing.

 

If I’m going to give Takahashi credit for anything in this final volume, it’s for actually stringing together a multi-chapter story that sees Rei lose her memories as a result of a nefarious plot by SEELE.  She gets them back soon enough however, because friendship. I could keep going about how terrible this all is, but I think what I’m most disappointed in is myself for buying ALL 18 GODDAMN VOLUMES! I should’ve just cut my losses sooner, yet here I am.  Left with eighteen volumes of an “Evangelion” manga that I’ll probably never read again, of which (at best) a third of it is only worthy of. Don’t be like me. Do the manga world a favor and stop spending your money on this and give it to a Dark Horse manga series that actually deserves it.  Like “Eden: It’s an Endless World” or “The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.” The fact that we got eighteen volumes of this crap while those two are on might-as-well-be-permanent hiatus is further proof that we are living in the darkest of timelines.

 

jason@glickscomicpicks.com