It seemed natural that a yankii would be into Asuka. I don’t mean a yanqui or a yankee—a fan from the U.S. of A. This fan was a yankii from Japan, a biker like Ichigo in Kamikaze Girls. Shock of bleached-blond hair, red satin jacket with a Rising Sun patch, black lipstick, stiletto boots, the whole nine. And she was purchasing a ¼ scale Asuka Langley Soryu figurine in Nakano Broadway, the legendary fan shopping mall in Tokyo, portrayed in The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service as “a five-story ant farm for otaku.”
Kurosagi’s creator Eiji Otsuka, who’s coming to Anime Expo this 4th of July weekend, no doubt knows Nakano Broadway better than I do, living in town and all. But as an otaku who’s inched my way through its soil, I’ve seen a few things there, and sights like the yankii woman putting down cash for the high-end Asuka made me contemplate on just how well known Neon Genesis Evangelion is in Japan. We’ll be hosting an Evangelion panel at Anime Expo ourselves, discussing all aspects of the phenomenon, including the most recent movie from our friends at Funimation.
Vol. 14 of Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project is out this week from Dark Horse. What’s so special about volume 14, especially for an Evangelion spinoff story? Well, for one thing, it’s out—whereas vol. 14 of the original Eva manga series hasn’t come out even in Japan yet.
I’ve been editing different Evangelion manga series since 1997, and I wouldn’t necessarily have predicted the staying power of The Shinji Ikari Raising Project. It sometimes seems in Japan that all you have to do is stamp “Evangelion” on something and it will sell. And maybe that’s true to an extent, but getting that something to keep selling, year after year, volume after volume—that’s a different level of achievement. As mentioned above, the spinoff has now outpaced the original. And I’ve said this before, but I think The Shinji Ikari Raising Project represents aspects of the original 1990s Evangelion TV anime—the friendship, the fan service, the comedy—that fans still want to be able to experience somewhere, even if they also like the grim, gothic and intense mood of the Rebuild films.
Oh, yes, and Fuyutsuki shows up again in vol. 14—in the company of Gendo, naturally. You know, watching him in 3.33 make his usual noises about how he’s following Gendo into the abyss for Yui’s sake, it occurred to me—why can’t Fuyutsuki come out and admit he just wants to follow Gendo?
-Carl Horn