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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse GN 1
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_V_
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I enjoyed this review, though I'm not too keen on the series.
Basically, I view most Eva manga spinoffs as sort of...our version of the Disney direct-to-video sequels. Basically a shameless attempt to cash in on the original, which only results in "diluting the brandname". After a lot of knockoffs of "Eva", people start to associate the word "Evangelion" with cheap knockoffs. Sort of like how today, someone who knows "Star Wars" as "that brand name appearing on all of those unsold Jar Jar Binks coloring books" might be surprised there was this original movie in 1977 which was actually really inspiring. I treat Sadamoto's manga separately, as it is made by an original creator of the series and planned from the beginning. A major point, of course, is that none of the original Gainax staff were actually involved in these other spinoff manga. But lets hold off on that, and get to business: Evangelion manga spinoffs have had a pretty bad history. Sadamoto's manga isn't really "a spinoff", the idea was to make a manga series to boost buzz for the *upcoming* TV series. I seriously doubt that anyone is going to attempt to make a third retelling, if we count Sadamoto's as a second retelling (even Rebuild is different enough that it doesn't count as that). So the Sadamoto manga was something made by one of the creators, telling a variation on the story, which similar artwork because he was character designer: its like the difference between a Star Wars movie and one of the novelizations, really. ***But of the actual "spinoffs", ADV Manga's lamental "Angelic Days" left a bad taste in all of our mouths. Just to bring everyone up to speed, the whole thing was a result of the overspeculation boom: ADV overspeculated by making ADV Manga, and then as a major tentpole of this new branch they licensed "Evangelion: Angelic Days"...mostly just because it had "Evangelion" in the title. "Shame, shame, all is shame"...well, "overspeculation, overspeculation, all is overspeculation".... What was so bad about Angelic Days? 1 - the artwork was awful. The knee-jerk fan reaction would be "it doesn't look like the series!" -- leading to the question "well, should it?"...yes, yes, I know. But it was pretty lousy. Sometimes artwork isn't *trying* to look conventional, to experiment. This was just lousy, it wasn't really a "style" they were shooting for. 2 - the plot was literally an adaptation of one of those dating sims for hikkikomori shut-ins, in which idealized versions of the characters have moe love subplots. 3 - the irony is, Angelic Days sold so poorly that *I can still readily find entire sets of it at MOST New York area book store manga sections*, simply because no one bought it, just the same copies on the shelf though long out of print. So why am I bringing this up? Well lets use Angelic Days as the paradigm example of a "bad" spinoff manga. I'm not very happy about Shinji Ikari Raising Project. It was really the same basic idea as Angelic Days: "lets make an entire series set in the happy alternate universe dream sequence!", except handled a little better plot-wise, and with artwork that *actually looked like the show* First off, lets just focus on storyline. No, Evangelion is not "endlessly re-interpretable"....at the very least, not in the sense that we can drastically re-imagine characters, plot, basic storyline to the point that they're nothing like the original. This is difficult to describe, so let me use analogy. Um...I like a method that angry Star Wars Episode I review did: "describe the characters, without mentioning their actual role in the series, appearance, ability, or actions. Just their personality" I.e. that "Han Solo" is "he acts like he doesn't care, but he does, he's a rogue" etc. while "Amidala" is....a blank. You can tell who a character is and how well they're written by this. So you see, if you were to describe "Shinji Ikari" or "Asuka Langley Soryu", you'd wind up with "wimpy boy who at times rises above his faults but is overall crippled by his insecurities, utterly introverted" and "angry bitchy girl whose tough tsundere outer exterior masks extreme inner trauma" etc. etc. "Shinji Ikari" and "Asuka" in "Angelic Days" are....nothing like this. So can we truly say they are "Shinji" and "Asuka"? Same holds true for Shinji Ikari Raising Project. I am increasingly disillusioned that Carl Horn actively promotes this mentality: His actual words on this were: "Think of the original Evangelion TV series as a deck of cards, which was dealt to you in a certain way...Osamu Takahashi is using the same deck, but he's playing a different game, and you don't know quite what card you're going to get next" ....no, its not the same "deck of cards". In these spinoff manga the children are traumatized, in the other, they're just generic romantic comedy. One of these things is not like the other. And of course the other statements trying to justify all this: that after seeing the characters suffer so much in the TV series itself, isn't it great to enjoy them being happy? Well...by that logic, do we release Grave of the Firefly spinoff manga in which the kids lived? Or, Cowboy Bebop spinoff manga in which Julia lived? "wow, my fanfic fixes Romeo & Juliet, they both live in the end"? The reasons are simplistic: Dark Horse wants fans who have heard of "Evangelion" to buy whatever spinoff manga they were able to license...of course they're going to say nice things about it, and that it is "really Eva" At first I thought they were shooting for the impulse-buy market, but in the age of the internet and lets be honest, fans flipping through this in stores, that doesn't sound practical. The spinoff manga are actually targeting the addicts: "collectors" who will literally buy anything with the name Evangelion attached. It can be said, *without fear of hyperbole*, that if you sat a "collector" type fan in front of your booth at a con dealer's floor...defecated into a box, then penciled "Evangelion poop" on the side, while he was watching...he would still be compelled to buy it, for a sense of "completion". This destroyed the anime market. Look back at the ANNcast Geneon interview from December: turns out that the collector-fans buy things no matter what the price is, sure. They buy it simply because you release it, that's what makes them "addicts". But addicts alone cannot sustain the general market. Indeed, this review mentions part of this attitude: that "Eva" material these days is marketed only at people who already watched the series. A major point I'm trying to make is that: 1 - maybe half of fans today, particularly the new wave of younger fans, actually hasn't seen it. 2 - the general public beyond that hasn't even heard of Eva People who watched the show over 10 years ago are often jaded, and looking for amusing variations on Evangelion; "haha look its Evangelion but involving magic" But I digress... At any rate, Angelic Days failed. SIRP became painful, and fast. In terms of storyline, these simply are not "Evangelion" characters. ***the analogy I wanted to use was Gurren Lagann's "Parallel Works"....i.e. you can move all of the Eva characters into a Wild West setting, but so long as Shinji is still a wimp, Asuka is angry and crying on the inside, the adults are all immature, and they all have abandonment issues....the setting is changed, but at its heart, its still "Eva" Therefore, I haven't seen enough of Campus Apocalypse to judge it this way, but the major litmus test is "are the characters still struggling and flawed"? Another big question of course is, "is it a good manga, regardless of whether it was right to use the name "Evangelion" on it?" The way I see it, there are many different versions of "Gundam" but all share a common thread: their theme is "war, and its impact upon people". As I said, so long as Eva is dealing with "screwed up characters"...its *generally* still Eva. I personally think Eva was so firmly rooted in "Giant Robot" that it is difficult to move to another genre outright. For example, "Godzilla films" are all about criticizing atomic power. Could you make a high school story about a kid bitten by a radioactive lizard, that goes on a Hulk-like rampage? That is, transplant "Godzilla" into the high school genre? Arguably you can, and even retain much of the core message. but there was some key element about it being "Kaiju" that added to that tone. Same goes for Giant Robot. So "can Eva manga change the setting and genre, so its about magic, ninjas, whathaveyou?"....arguably yeah, if you do it well enough. But there was some part that needed Giant Robot. I enjoyed and actually agreed with your discussion of the artwork: Angelic Days had awful artwork that didn't look like the show. SIRP...actually looked like the show, and at first I praised this...but as it dragged on into over 5 volumes now....the effect of that wore off. I'm not sure how exactly, but if a storyline is bad enough, eventually after so many volumes, you realize that the artwork alone cannot sustain or justify a $10 purchase. Sadamoto's manga, in contrast, looks *exactly* like the TV show, even more than SIRP. I guess the problem is that SIRP never looked *quite* as good as Sadamoto's, just enough that it felt like a retread but not distinct in its own right. At least Angelic Days was "different"...though it was also, awful in its own right. That can happen. So I must say that the artwork in Campus Apocalypse isn't slavishly trying to recapture the original, but strike out into new territory. That's admirable. I can't say I enjoy it that much, but at least its not an insult: bold use of black/white solid shapes, not trying to use a lot of detail but in its own way that can work as art. In case you can't tell, I foolishly waited up all night for this review to appear, only to start writing late and its 2 AM now, so I'm kind of rambling crud. The major points I want to make are: *Evangelion has not had a successful history with spinoff manga (not including Sadamoto); this isn't Gundam or Star Wars Expanded Universe *Angelic Days was a failure in both storyline and artwork *SIRP's storyline was marginally better...but by volume 5 is once again resorting to "the girls are all naked at an onsen spa!" territory; its an adaptation of a dating sim video game set in the happy dream sequence, what did you expect?! *SIRP's artwork was at first a relief because it looked like the show....but not *quite* like it. Just similar enough that you can say it was "unoriginal", non-distinct. At least Campus Apocalypse is "distinct" *SIRP was also horrifically trying to force Eva into the usual wish-fulfilment genre crap. *Campus Apocalypse is apparently a fanfiction-esque attempt to *transplant* (not force) Eva into another genre, with a new art style, and see how it works. *I do not think it really lived up to this task. *I increasingly think Dark Horse's thought process on this echoes that of ADV Manga: "its got Evangelion in the name, so lets license it; people obsessed with Eva will feel compelled to own it" Well...even the most hardcore Star Wars fans don't feel compelled to own, say, Jar Jar Binks coloring books, *just because they exist* Really, there was this whole post in the Dark Horse blog where they thought this was going to be a a new major tentpole. I may sound a bit angry because I'm fuming about SIRP, simply because I've seen more of that than Campus Apocalypse. As I was saying before but not very coherently: Campus Apocalypse is indeed "trying to tell its own story" instead of "cramming familiar faces into stereotypical trimmings" but even if its a good story, did it merit the "Evangelion" brand name? I mean, even a good space scifi movie, might not be worth calling "Star Wars" no matter how good it is. Simply because its a non sequitor. I hope you can respect, from my position as an Eva fansite guy, that this kind of detracts from the focus on the primary continuities: original series (including End of Eva), Rebuild, even Sadamoto's manga. Far from exhausting the original Eva series....I dont' think we ever fully sat down and understood it (particularly when its infamously "that show no one understands...so lets make porn fanfic out of it anyway!") When Eva has reached that "point of exhaustion", when we earnestly explained the whole thing, we might be ready for little diversions like this. But as it stands....do you realize that it would cost $50 to buy the first 5 volumes of SIRP? I've shopped around, and you can actually buy the box set of the TV series, as well as the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie, for the same price. And not everyone has $100 to blow. For younger teenaged fans facing a stark choice on what to buy....I'd urge them to focus on the original series and Rebuild, or even Sadamoto's manga from Viz, first. "An interesting mix of supernatural and science that works with the elements of NGE while still being accessible to those who haven't seen the original; strong artwork that suits both existing characters and new elements; generally good action scenes" ...well I don't know if it "works with the elements of NGE" per se but yeah, its "accessible", the artwork is different (a compliment in regards to SIRP), etc. I'm just upset that Dark Horse felt the need to license this at all. I'd have probably enjoyed it if it didn't even have "Evangelion" in the title. And the characters are a bit TOO different from the originals to still merit *using the exact same names*. In short, this is just fanfiction they slapped the name "Evangelion" onto. Good fanfiction, with an actual cooky story on its own but....not in any good Turn-A Gundam way. I don't know its really late now and I'm trailing around. The point Lissa, is that I agree with much of what you've said, but that ultimately I feel that Dark Horse is taking advantage of fans who need to "buy everything Evangelion" to satisfy the collector's impulse. Unlike Sadamoto's manga, it won't really give you a good alternate insight into Evangelion, either. This is an amusement for jaded fans who've seen so much Eva anything new is "novel"...or for fans who've never heard of "Eva" and thus won't care that its not related. But if you're an Eva fan, yet not so old guard and so jaded that you just sit around making it into motivator cards for 4chan while eating tofu in the dark in your dorm room....you'd just be confused why its so different, and be disappointed that it wasn't like the series. In principle, I think those who have to chose what money to spend shouldn't make this their first pick. Darn it. I walked in here full of invective, but your review was pretty rational Lissa and has softened my mood. I still don't like it, but its hard to complain until I at least have more info and its a bit more nuanced. Its just that we've been being subjected for a full year to propaganda that "SIRP is a legitimate alternate take on Eva, and you should spend actual money on it"....while Viz takes it sweet time prepping Sadamoto Volume 12 for a Christmas 2011 release....(it has the Mass Production Eva fight in it! We had to slog through volumes filled with Kaworu-on-Cat action (don't ask) to get to this! And now its stuck overseas? ...so can you please get to reviewing SIRP? (I don't think ANN has one) so we can have fun taking digs at it? Thank you, --- V P.S. True story: at San Diego Comic Con, I attended the big Manga panel, and there was a guy in the front row who was deaf and needed sign-language interpreters. When the presentation showed that Sadamoto's manga was serialized in one magazine, but Campus Apocalypse and SIRP in another, he tried to ask (via his interpreters) why, but did not understand, and the presenter kept moving along. I felt bad for him, that he wasn't able to quickly ask the question via his interpreters so it got lost in the shuffle, and he's probably get tricked into buying SIRP....so while the panel went on for the final 15 minutes, I wrote out a note on the back of my printed out list of panels, in neat block print, and at the end I handed the two page note to him, explaining the situation, i.e. that Dark Horse is basically diluting the brand name by releasing things like SIRP, it comes as no surprise that it wasn't even in the same magazine as Sadamoto's stuff, etc. So this is the note I wrote for that deaf Eva manga fan who attended the panel at SDCC, which I happened to hang onto because I stuffed it in my schedule: http://revolutionofevangelion.org/wiki/images/6/63/SDCCMangaNote1.jpg http://revolutionofevangelion.org/wiki/images/c/cf/SDCCMangaNote1a.jpg http://revolutionofevangelion.org/wiki/images/9/9f/SDCCMangaNote1b.jpg http://revolutionofevangelion.org/wiki/images/a/a8/SDCCMangaNote2.jpg http://revolutionofevangelion.org/wiki/images/d/dd/SDCCMangaNote2a.jpg http://revolutionofevangelion.org/wiki/images/e/ec/SDCCMangaNote2b.jpg |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I think I'm going to wait for the movie version of _V_'s post to come out. The book is just too long, and I hear the film version's in 3-D.
I'm waiting for the space opera version of Evangelion, because they're clearly planning to make it into every single type of manga/anime story. |
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_V_
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I apologize, as I said I was writing at 2AM and began to ramble.
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Penguin_Factory
 Posts: 732 Location: Ireland |
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I had literally never heard of this before now. It seems sort of like Eva crossed with Persona 3 which is..... interesting? I guess. Although if it didn't have Evangelion characters in it, it would be the most boring premise in the world.
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pachy_boy
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_V_ -Please keep in mind I’m expressing my disagreements with respect, or tried to at least.
You have to speak for yourself on this one. I acknowledge this manga has some of its non-fans, and yes I can agree the artwork was rough, but from where I was at, I was reading an excellent adaptation of that alternative-world sequence from episode 26, in which the story was very well-done and the character relationships were all believable.
You have to be kidding, unless you're basing this solely on the artwork. Angelic Days has a rolling story, while Shinji Ikari Raising Project was almost pure romantic-comedy BS that goes almost nowhere and where Shinji and Rei clumsily fall on top of each other about 5 times in just the first 3 volumes.
To me this is just a complaint for the sole sake of complaining, because that’s the whole point. This is an alternative-world spin-off, again based on that one sequence from episode 26! In this alternative universe, the characters don’t come from twisted backgrounds, and don’t meet twisted fates. You’re either not getting that point or you’re absolutely refusing to try, because you’re already set in your own mind what Evangelion is. Again I was reading a different manga from you, and in Angelic Days I felt that all things considered their essential characters were still there, and it was still ‘Shinji’ and ‘Asuka’ I was reading. Shinji is still a quiet, well-meaning boy, and Asuka still has a temperamental side. Again, they don’t have the twisted backgrounds in this alternative universe, so of course they’re not exactly like they are from the TV series, which is again supposed to be the point. These manga are meant to provide a window into their lives and how they grew up if all this terrible stuff never happened and scarred their earlier lives. Anyway, I haven’t read Lissa’s full review of Campus Apocalypse yet, since I haven’t got my copy from Right Stuf yet, but it sounds generally good, which is good itself. I’m really looking forward to this new Alternative-World spin-off where the same characters come from different backgrounds yet again, and see how they interact with each other this time. I'm a casual Eva fan, and as long as they just make these spin-offs entertaining reads, which is all I'm asking for, I'm there. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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You miss the most pertinent point; if a work of Manga or whatever is going to be titled "Evangelion", it should be an Evangelion work. If the setting is different, and the tone wildly different, and the characters have different personalities, and only fragments of the original plot remain, then why give it the Evangelion name in the first place?* You might as well have a new and entirely original work. When the Evangelion title is applied to something, anything at all, then like it or not that something is fair game to be compared to all the other works in the franchise. * Except for marketing purposes that is. But of course that is no excuse. |
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sepherest
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That's exactly what I thought when I started reading this...which must've been one or two years ago. I can't even remember anything that happened in it though. For combining two things I love it didn't turn out very good, maybe it was the execution after the idea? I don't know, but I think it's just best to skip over all these Eva spin-offs/series outside of the new films and the original anime/manga and the super-robot wars series because the games are a lot of fun. |
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_V_
Posts: 619 |
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There is it, succintly. Even openly acknowledging "this is set in that happy dream sequence", that its not even trying to be like the main story...well, the whole point of that dream sequence is that it was so different from the actual storyline. Why even make a series centered on this concept? Oh it may sound good in principle, but *would you dump $50 on something like SIRP?* No. I'm surprised someone liked Angelic Days but its a moot point now after so many years. I do sympathize if you think that the writing and execution of SIRP got actually *worse* than Angelic Days (shudder)
My short, short, analysis of the situation is this:
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Gundampilotspaz
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So, if I understand correctly, because as a community of Anime fans (Evangelion fans) we don't fully understand the original series there shouldn't be ANY playing around with the plot or characters in original ways? I call bull. Evangelion is a confusing mess... but it isn't that cryptic. It isn't that hard to understand. At its core it is a show about kids with parental issues transposed on an Apocalyptic mech story. It isn't some sacred text that should stand apart from all works following it till the end of time. Secondly, the text itself allowed for other realities using the world and the characters. The reason there are so many Evangelion Spin-offs is because of the single scene in Episode 26 where the one possible world comes into existence. The show tells the audience that any world can be created at that point if Shinji chooses. Using that logic any new version, spin-off, or retelling of Evangelion can be consider a part of the original work because the original work acknowledges the existence of parallel works where characters personalities and character relationships can be reshaped. Now I agree that Angelic Days was awful and I haven't read the other manga versions but that doesn't mean the exercise of creating Evangelion spin-offs is without merit or doing a disservice to the series. In fact it is supporting an idea created in the original series. I'd love to see a story that takes place in a world where Yui never died and Asuka is Shinji's childhood (sexually frustrated) friend. Seeing those characters in a new dynamic is the spirit of the end of the original series. |
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J-Head
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"Alternate Universe"
That is all. |
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Seca
 Posts: 149 Location: WA |
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Honestly I'm not really a fan of Eva, I watched the TV series and original movies once but have never done so again, but I found myself enjoying Campus Apocalypse. Probably because I did like the characters of the series just did not always care for the plot.
Of course I did not have high expectations when I began reading CA, and really only did so because I was bored and a bit curious, but I was surprised when it didn't seem all that bad. I'm glad I kept reading it as it seemed to only get better as it went and I loved the twists at the end. spoiler[Especially with actually tying this to the original series by having NGE's Gendo Ikari there as the villain.] So when I can afford to I'm going to be picking up the English release of this series, as it is surprisingly something I feel I can read multiple times and still enjoy. It's also has me interested in watching the new movies to see if their retake on the series is something I'd also enjoy. |
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Dessa
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I watched Evangelion in high school. (yes, it was over 10 years ago). I found the series boring and uninteresting. Picked up Angelic Days off the library shelf, and loved it.
And I love Campus Apocalypse even more. For the same reasons as Seca. I very much found the characters to be the same characters (yes, some act not exactly the same, since they had different experiences, but they're still the same characters), but in a vastly more interesting story. As soon as I have money again, I'm definitely going to be picking it up, probably before catching up on some of the other series I'm behind on. |
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gwern
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You know, it's funny that you chose 'space opera' as your too-wacky-to-be-true version of Eva. There are statements from Gainaxers and cut scenes which if you put them together right, suggest that Eva was originally a space opera: http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2010-March/005990.html |
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Mike Toole
 SubscriberANN Columnist  Posts: 105 Location: THE GOOD OLE U-S-A |
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jesus
I know, man! It's almost like they're a business-- like, they're in the publishing business, trying to sell books, and this is one possible way to convince people to buy their books. DIABOLICAL. Next you'll tell me that Gainax are selling little plastic figurines of Rei and Asuka dressed up like mermaids!
wait a minute, have you seen G-Gundam?
ehhhhh. I started out thinking of Evangelion as a pastiche of shows like Mazinger Z and Zanbot 3, but repeat viewings and broader exposure to other media over the years have left me leaning more towards the show's Ultraman-ness, particularly given Anno's background. They oughta make a manga about that. USING HIS BETA CAPSULE, SHINJI TRANSFORMS INTO ULTRAGELION!! Ultragelion: SHUUUUWAAA! (flies away) |
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_V_
Posts: 619 |
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You're mixing things up: I think Evangelion was actually not that hard to understand, and it is pretty much as you describe it. The problem with the "it was confusing, I didn't understand it, so I'll just make up my own explanation!" crowd is that this was used as justification to come up with whatever spinoff fanfic they wanted. Yes, it the original should stand apart from fanfic...for the very reason that it actually had a clear message, which the self-serving SIRP fanfic muddies.
....well in the ending of the story, the aptly named "The End of Evangelion" which was released theatrically (the TV clip show is basically "more Instrumentality scenes, shown out of context")....Shinji is presented with the possibility of living in any reality he imagines....but then has the epiphany that "wait, Fantasy isn't real. My life had an inherent Realness to it that gave it value, more than any of the billions of fantasy realities I could make up in my mind. I have to accept reality as it comes, with all its flaws, and try to make it better with what I have...not flee into fantasy." The "message of Eva" was the *exact opposite* of what you just described. I somehow suspect that's why some adamantly refuse to believe that End of Eva is the actual ending: because the TV ending was ambiguous enough to support the idea that "Eva promotes losing yourself in fantasy"...when its the opposite. I mean think about it: isn't the entire mantra of the series, since episode 1, that "I mustn't run away" from reality? That Shinji is wrong to (at first) cling to the fantasy that his father is starting to respect him, etc?
The original considered that someone might think up alternate versions, but then condemned this as running away from the only real reality, the only one that has value. You have the audacity to not only claim that it is "legitimate" or whatever, but actually *part of the original*? No wonder 15 years passed with "no one understands Evangelion" -- people weren't really trying to. Just sit back, write more interpretive essays about Sartre & Eva, or make fanart of Rei in a geisha costume. Its the deplorable cultus 1960's Lord of the Rings hippie fandom all over again.
It would be intriguing to see an Eva spinoff done well, but I haven't see one yet. I don't know if we can really call Rebuild a spinoff, because its sort of "lets try this again because you morons didn't get the point the first time"....but its not really "alternate" but a "variation"...etc. I mean as opposed to a version of Eva which is like Wild West or medieval Japan or something.
Why even bother "reviewing" these products if we're just going to openly admit that its all taking advantage of fan addictions? Why even bother assigning a letter grade? Yes, its a business...and I think Dark Horse made a mistake licensing it. I don't seriously think a series like "Shinji Ikari Raising Project" can sustain itself, once the novelty of volume 1 wears off, I think later volumes will drop like a stone....though I would be interested in seeing actual figures on this. I'm not treating it as particularly "out of the ordinary" -- rather, I think its all too predictable. But really, is "lets buy stuff with Evangelion in the title...people will be compelled to collect it!"....all that different from the mentality of "lets buy the rights to Heat Guy J and pay as much as FMA for it! Its from the guy that made Escaflowne! Surely, the fans will have to collect it!" They're only hurting themselves. Eva is indeed heavily based on Ultraman, but Ultraman is “kaiju” and I see Giant Robot and kaiju as overlapping… |
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