NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: LEGEND OF THE PIKO PIKO MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS VOL. 2

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NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: LEGEND OF THE PIKO PIKO MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS VOL. 2

12/19/2017 10:17am

The perfect hangout while waiting for that fourth movie!

So...there's this brief conversational exchange between Misato and Shinji in the new volume of Neon Genesis Evangelion: Legend of the Piko Piko Middle School Students. It raises a point that perhaps should have been brought up way back in the original TV series:

"Ritsuko Akagi is a very troubled person. As is Principal Ikari. As is Kaji. As am I. You'll see that this…this is the true nature of…a human being."

"Yes, but, maybe adults could refrain from showing their true nature to kids? I mean, what's the benefit?"

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Legend of the Piko Piko Middle School Students isn't really a spinoff manga. It is instead—dare I say it—a reboot, as some argue the movies are (it's very Evangelion that there are different theories on this issue). It has everything you'd want from a real Evangelion story—Shinji, Kaworu, Asuka, and Rei are actual pilots, who actually train to get into actual Eva Units, and then they go fight actual Angels. It's just that the day-to-day details this time are slightly different; refined, you might say. For example, in the original anime Gendo neglected Shinji and treated him with coldness. In Legend of the Piko Piko Middle School Students, Gendo only grudgingly even acknowledges that Shinji is in fact his son, musing aloud at one point that the one thing he never understood about The Empire Strikes Back is why Vader admitted he was Luke's father, as "it took a court order with me."

Evangelion: Piko Piko—see, I'm shortening the name, even though the full version would have helped me quickly make the word count—is currently the only regular Evangelion manga series running in Japan (the longest of which, The Shinji Ikari Raising Project, has concluded with Vol. 18, and we'll be bringing you the English version next year). Piko Piko has been a successful one, too, with over 600,000 copies in print. If you follow the Evangelion manga, you've seen its creative team before: writer Yushi Kawata and artist Yukito. They did several stories in Dark Horse's previous Evangelion: Comic Tribute (from whose pages also spun off the one-shot book Tony Takezaki’s Neon Genesis Evangelion—you see how the plot thickens). And you've seen Yushi Kawata's work on Crunchyroll, too—he wrote the manga Fist of the North Star: Strawberry Flavor on which the anime short series is based.

As for Piko Piko's artist Yukito (whom Yushi Kawata makes write the manga afterwords, because, as Kawata explains, "I have insurmountable social anxiety"), well...Yukito is very, very good. Don't just take my word for it; in fact, don't just take my word on how much fun Piko Piko is—check out what Otaku USA magazine had to say about the first volume, in a review by Che Gilson that leads off with some of Yukito's beautiful color artwork.

And also, as you see from the cover, in Vol. 2 you get plenty of extra Kaworu, who in Piko Piko wears a tailored sleeveless plugsuit that reveals limbs like "slim columns of alabaster," as the Fifth Child puts it. So while you're waiting (and waiting) for the final Evangelion movie to come out, why not relax with the characters you know so well in Evangelion: Piko Piko...? Plus, there's a really cute new glasses-wearing character in this manga. No, not Mari Makinami Illustrious. It's a Shiba Inu. Shinji Shibainu, Kaworu’s pet dog.

By Carl Horn, Editor

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Legend of the Piko Piko Middle School Students by Yushi Kawata and Yukito is available Dec. 27, 2017.

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NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: LEGEND OF THE PIKO PIKO MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS VOL. 2

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