 The Neon Genesis Evangelion manga is based of its anime predecessor. The anime was
produced by studio Gainax and created by Hideki Anno. While the manga was done by
the anime’s character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Surprisingly the manga is still
running in Japan, as well as being releasing in the States.
So far in the manga... Since arriving in the super-technological city of Tokyo-3, 14 year
old Shinji Ikari has been through a great deal. Reunion with his estranged father Gendo
Ikari, head of the classified United Nations agency, NERV. Sudden recruitment into
piloting NERV’s top-secret weapon, the Evangelion Unit 01, against the mysterios
invaders code named "Angels." And not least, exploring a brand new social life with his
mysterious, withdrawn fellow Evangelion pilot, Rei Ayanami and the two faced Asuka
Langley Soryu. Meanwhile, NERV’s tall, dark and handsome Ryoji Kaji (who
accompained Asuka to Japa from Germany) has presented Gendo with a very special
cargo: a tiny, embryonic object code named "Adam." But does Kaji know about Gendo’s
decision to digitally "copy" Rei’s persona into an experimental "dummy plug" system,
designed to deceive an Eva Unit into thinking it has a pilot inside.
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Shinji feels a strange connection to Rei, for some reason |
Now it has also become clear to NERV’s senior officers that Kaji is acutually a double
agent, working for the Japanese Minstry of the Interior as well as NERV. After the spy
reaveals to both Shinji and Misato the sub basement hangar where NERV keeps the now
monstrously grown and incomplete Adam, Kaji decides to go further. He tells Shinji
privately what he’s learned: that Gendo knew, based on hermetic prohecies from the Dead
Sea Scrolls, exactly when the Second Impact wold occur, and that he recieved that
information from SEELE, an obscure society that may have been the secret force behind
world history. Most disturbing for Shinji is that Kaji prompts him to remember that as a
small boy, he witnessed his mother’s horrific disappearance during the creation of the
first Eva Unit, her invention, not Gendo’s.
In Nevada, at the one of the two American NERV bases, the Eva Unit 04, under
construction, explodes together with its base, leaving a vast crater. Cause, unkown,
although NERV suspects it happened during an attempt to load the experimental S2
engine onto Unit 04. Following the disaster, the NERV base in Massachusetts requests
their own Eva Unit 03 be transferred to NERV Matsushiro in Japan for its startup test.
As Gendo prepares to report the Nevada affair to SEELE as a simple accident, the time
has come to pick Unit 03’s pilot. |
