A review by noorandbooks
Neon Genesis Evangelion, Vol. 1 by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

5.0

If only we could have stayed in the dark together.

Shoutout to the manga for:

- Making Shinji not afraid to run his mouth. 'Talk shit get hit' attitude and he SHOULD'VE been allowed to punch his dad

- Making Kaworu really pathetic. Karl and Shaun is the best dynamic and Karl should've been allowed to give Shaun some more CPR... while romantically holding his face... yeah... But yeah, just like the anime, I spent the whole story waiting for Kaworu to come and then he did come, and he got more than ten minutes of scene time, but once again, off with his head!

- Defining Shinji and Rei's relationship a bit better. Anime made it overly romantic, this one feels more abstract, suiting them.

- Making Asuka a LOT stranger. That entire talk she had with Shinji about how she was born...

- Letting Suzuhara die??? I was sitting here, all determined and like 'oh yeah, the manga will have him and Shinji's relationship be fixed' and then. He just died??? And Shinji was given all the blame??? Oh well, that's classic NGE for you. Still messed up about it.

- And making a less satisfying ending than the anime somehow. I mean, I liked it but. It wasn't explained enough? The ash to snow and then it's just. Oh look, Shinji isn't traumatized anymore? I feel like it's not fair that past life Shinji had to suffer through all of it and new life Shinji just. Doesn't even get a shot at redemption since there's nothing to redeem.

The ending was nice, I do want them all to be happy but given how much more in depth the entire manga was, I was left disappointed. But I'll shrug it off as classic NGE, never getting enough explanations and being given the freedom to interpret what happened. There was a lot to dissect and analyze in this and I do appreciate it... time to spend years piecing together a good narrative of what happened.

...As long as the earth, the moon and the sun exist... everything will be fine.