Romance and Robots

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Romance and Robots

12/16/2010 11:45am

When it comes to manga, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger expert on the subject than Michael Gombos, Dark Horse's Director of Asian Licensing. Here's Michael now with a little about one of our most popular titles, Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project.

Many of my favorite manga remain untranslated from Japanese. It's not that they're bad (as there is plenty of bad stuff available in English), but rather, that they seem—at first--unsellable.

A fine case-study is one of my favorite manga of all-time (and incidentally, I notice it's still up on Deb Aoki's blog): Sekitou Erejii (Lit. "Red Light Elegy"), by Takashi Kira. It's saddening to me that it remains (legally) untranslated, but its so full of emotion, humor, dynamic characters that are easy to associate oneself with, "real" situations and the perfect smattering of fan-service, yet it will most likely not find an audience here. Sekitou Erejii ran in Kodansha's Young Magazine, spans 15 TPB volumes and even won the Chiba Tetsuya Award, so its not like it is some unknown, average page-filler in the magazine that hosted xxxHolic and at one time, Ghost in the Shell.

Sekitou Erejii is chock-full of romance between a bumbling, drab boy, Satoshi, and a yankii girl, Chiiko. It features everything that makes these types of series work: awkward-yet-intimate scenes, misunderstood gestures of romance between two very polar personality types...and story-transition driven by one character falling into another character after tripping on something.

I feel that in order to get titles like this over here in English, and in print, there has to be some sort of readily-identifiable element already apart of the property. This is where I believe that Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project excels. When it comes to manga/anime, I feel that there are few, hardly-more-identifiable series than Evangelion; even those who haven't watched the entire series will often be able to identify the three main characters.

The transposition of Shinji, Rei, Asuka and the other characters from Eva into a new and alien atmosphere (a typical school, and getting involved in typical classroom love-comedy mischief) really spins the franchise in a way that not only presents new (and far less dooming) situations, but that retains the personalities of the prime characters. Osamu Takahashi's protrayal of these characters is so natural that, oftentimes, I forget that the series is even related to Evangelion, and I feel like I am reading something different in its own right; the book functions perfectly well as a classroom romance/junjo love comedy, but the impetus for reading/catalyst for buying the book for most people will, of course, be reading about some of their favorite characters.

By volume seven, the all-too-familiar characters have evolved within the series in their own right, and maybe, just maybe, those of you who are pounding your fist on the desk, asking, "Where the hell are the giant robots!?" will likely have your answer by this point. Fans of Misato will have more than their fill, and you'll even see more of Mana. Gendo repeats his usual antics, and always comes through, with Yui left shaking her head but thinking, "That's my guy!" Also, a certain school nurse who might (or might not) be involved in a conspiracy is further explored in this volume, but in order for you to make sense of this, you'll have to pick it up and check it out yourself!

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project Volume 7 is in stores December 22nd.

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