Misato's Fan Service Center: Book 1, Issue 4

Dear Rei Ayanami,

Hi. My name is Charlie, and I heard that later this year there will be a full-length motion picture of the EVANGELION series. Is this just a rumor? Also, I would like to know if someone in "high places" there could maybe get me a data with Rei Ayanami. I think she is the greatest thing to happen in my life, even though I have not actually met her. I would like to speak to her in person rather than write, but it's worth it anyway. Although Rei is not very talkative, I believe I will be able to make her smile. There is something special about her, and I'd like to tell her how special I think she is, also.

I'm nineteen and Rei is fourteen. I know there's a big difference in our ages, but I can't help it. If I could be any girl's boyfriend, it would be Rei. Oh, I love her so much. I even draw pictures of her and daydream about her all day! Well, anyway, please tell her how I feel, and if she'd like to respond, my address is: P.O. Box 7038, Nikiski, AK 99635.

Thanks a lot!

Charlie Boucher

P.S. I LOVE YOU, REI!
P.P.S. Tell Pen-Pen, "Hello."

Although Mr. Boucher's letter was directed towards ANIMERICA, we hope he won't mind it being re-routed to these pages instead, as it seems most appropriate for it to be included here. He drew a picture of Pen-Pen on the envelope (which, we noted, was mailed with a stamp that depicts the San Francisco garter snake). As fans of the EVA anime know, Pen-Pen (a.k.a. Pen²) is Misato's pet hot-springs penguin, whom we meet in Episode 2 of the TV show, but not until Stage 7 of the manga.

There are actually two EVANGELION movies: EVANGELION: DEATH AND REBIRTH, which premiered March 15 in Japan, and THE END OF EVANGELION, which premiered July 19 in Japan, and which, like the EVA TV episodes, bears both an English and Japanese subtitle (AIR and MY PURE HEART FOR YOU, respectively). As of this writing, no plans have been announced for their release in the United States. A.D.V. Films, which is currently releasing the EVA TV episodes, has indicated that they have no plans to acquire the movies, but it is expected that they will be available as import Japanese LDs (and/or DVD's) before too long.

Mr. Boucher enclosed a drawing of himself rather than a photograph, demonstrating that he's considerate enough to meet Rei on her own two-dimensional terms. Nevertheless, the problem remains that Rei isn't really fourteen right now; she's minus - that is to say, as EVANGELION takes place in 2015, Rei presumably won't be born until 2001. This would seem to hearken a true May-December romance, but if Mr. Boucher can slip the bonds of sphereland, perhaps neither will he be restrained by the hands of the clock. It is said that love is a fortress exceeding both time and space.

Dear Carl,

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION is one of those very rare series that takes a particular genre and shakes the dust off. The giant robot genre is a venerable one both in Japan and in the United States. I have fond childhood memories of ULTRAMAN, JOHNNY SOKKO (the English dub of the 1960s Japanese live-action film adaptation of the original GIANT ROBO manga by Mitsuteru Yokoyama), and SPACE GIANTS (the English dub of the 1960s Japanese live-action television adaptation of the original MAGMA TAISHI ["Ambassador Magma"] manga by Osamu Tezuka). EVANGELION takes all the best and the worst parts of these shows and puts a new spin on them, creating a new and powerfully different entity.

What is EVANGELION really about, though? Is it about man's search for God as we come closer and closer to being able to "play" God on a major scale? Is it about the search for self that the characters undertake as the series progresses? Or is it merely a really good giant robot show with better than average characters for a television series? I've seen half of the series so far and these questions (and many, many others) have yet to be answered. There are more questions now than there were at the beginning.

The manga version of the story is interesting because it's a good adaptation of the story and yet it's different enough that those fans who've seen all of the series so far will be coming back each month to see where the story goes. Sadamoto's art is wonderful. The characters look even more realistic here than they do in the anime. The only complaint I have here is the use of color on only a couple of pages. I'd prefer either a fully colored book or a fully black-and-white book. The move from full color to black-and-white is extremely jarring.

So, I'm hooked. I was hooked by the end of the first episode. NEON GENESIS EVANGELION is a classic in its own time.

Sincerely,

Matthew Wilbur
Santa Rosa, CA

The EVA manga is definitely its own experience, and Sadamoto feels free to change dialogue, remove scenes, put in new ones, put characters in different places, and speed up or slow down events in relation to the TV show. Of course, as has been said before, EVA was a co-creation of Sadamoto and anime director Hideaki Anno (as well as others at studio Gainax, which has always had a collective creative ethic). It has always been understood that the manga (which began before the anime first aired) is Sadamoto's own interpretation of the story. And of course, I imagine that neither he nor his readers would enjoy the EVA manga for very long were it simply a note-for-note adaptation of the anime.

Regarding the four pages of color which open issue #1, whereas the rest of the issue (and most of the EVA manga in general) is in black-and-white, this is of course how things were in the original Japanese printing. Readers may be aware that although the vast majority of comics in Japan are printed in black-and-white, publishers often call attention to a new story by printing its opening pages in color. Sometimes, a manga may have occasional color pages later on in the story as well (as is the case with EVA, as well as, for example, Masamune Shirow's GHOST IN THE SHELL).

While many manga artists are certainly proficient with color, various factors account for why it is not the general practice in Japanese comics. Before the Second World War, many manga were in full color, as is common (but by no means any longer universal) in the U.S. But the manga industry as we know it today was born in the ashes of the post-war period, when a dirt-cheap entertainment medium was all people could afford. That meant black-and-white printing, but it also meant a tremendous opportunity to lay the foundations for an incredibly vital comics industry, which would reach practically every segment of society.

As manga became more and more popular, the demand for output also expanded, to the point where a single manga artist might be contracted to produce several hundred pages a month. Even with the ubiquitous staff of assistants to help with laying tones, drawing backgrounds etc. (Sadamoto at times has had five assistants on EVA), the volume of pages required helped to ensure that the less time-consuming black-and-white remained the practice. This holds true for artists such as Sadamoto, who don't have to churn out manga at such a great pace. Finally, the economy of scale that enables a Japanese publisher to put out five million copies a week of a 400-page manga magazine and sell it to five million customers for the equivalent of $1.85 each (to cite the example of industry champ Shueisha's SHONEN JUMP) is all predicated on producing in black-and-white.

And so color is a special occasion in manga. While on one level it's a shame we can't see more of it, especially when the artist has the color talent of Sadamoto, manga has taken the pleasures of black-and-white comics into many new artistic directions. And, of course, you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't enjoy comics in black-and-white as well. The transition between the two formats may seem a little strange at times, perhaps, but what Sadamoto does in color, we're glad to have the opportunity to reprint in color. We think our printer, Quebecor Lebonfon of Quebec, did a very good job with the separations - the four pages in issue #1 create a soft, clear, watercolor-like effect. The next color section, by the way, will be coming up in EVA Book Two: 2.

Carl Gustav Horn