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ファイト／ステイナイト 
After another long wait, Shounen Ace (issue 2/2004) finally presents a new chapter of the Evangelion manga. For those of you who like freebies, this edition of Shounen Ace also comes with a free Eva Shitajiki (pencil board) that features one of the two new illustrations created by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto for the Renewal project. As for the story itself, it's basically a retelling of the Eva units vs Armisael fight. In case you've forgotten about it, Armisael is the angel that looks like a chain of DNA linked together forming a ringband and then later on unchained itself to attack Rei and Shinji. Having said that, the manga shows a rather different take of the scene than the one that was presented in the anime.
The most obvious difference is the complete absence of Asuka from the scene. In the anime, Asuka comes to the fore, ready to fight Armisael after Rei got attacked by the Angel. But unfortunately, she's unable to move her Eva due to her emotional instability. In the manga, she's nowhere to be seen in this chapter. Unfortunately, I missed ch.59-62 (you can find ch.58 on my old Geocities site) so I don't know if she's already in her state of depression at this point of the story or whether Arael attacks her mind just like in the anime. Anyway, we started the manga with Misato arriving just in time to witness Rei and Kaworu (inside Asuka's EVA 02) going into the battlefield to face Armisael. Shinji and his EVA are not allowed to help at this point in time.
We then get the same scene as in the anime with Armisael unleashing a sudden tentacle attack on Rei. Here though, instead of Rei being caught off guard straight away, we get a scene where Kaworu managed to push Rei's EVA off to safety while he fights, evades, and sommersaults his way around the Angel's tentacle attack. It's a very cool scene that demonstrate Kaworu's excellent piloting skill, which surprises Shinji, who also thinks that Kaworu is cool. After a while, Kaworu manages to capture one of the two ends of the Angel's tentacle with his weapon. Unfortunately, the other end manages to stage a second attack on Rei and invades her EVA's armor. We then get a rather similar scenes to the anime where Rei attempts to free herself but unable to do so.
The manga ends with Rei's EVA starting to become 'infected' by the Angel while Kaworu, who tries to help her, is surprised to find out that his EVA's weapon is slowly getting 'infected' as well. This is quite different from the anime where we get to see Shinji jumps to the fore, trying to help Rei and in the process was the one who got 'infected' by the Angel's tentacle. So in the manga, there seems to be a clear suggestion that the Angel intends to merge with either Rei or Kaworu (as opposed to just plain attacking anyone on its sight), the two beings created out of Lilith and Adam respectively. Ever since I watched the anime, I've always wondered whether the 'Angels' can't tell the difference between Lilith and Adam (possibly due to their lack of 'Tree of Knowledge', which is possessed by humans). Clearly throughout the anime (and the manga), most of them attack the Geofront because they believe that it's Adam that lies dormant in the central dogma.
I know the humans (Misato, Kaji, Shinji, etc) were fooled about this fact due to Gendou and Ritsuko's lies. But I was never really sure how the Angels got deceived thinking that Lilith is Adam. This chapter seems to suggest that they can't tell the difference between the two. The only exception to this is Kaworu, who gets to see Lilith up close later on, and possibly has a higher intelligence than the other Angels (since he's a human descendant as well). I like that Sadamoto chose to make Armisael dormant until both Rei and Kaworu appears on the scene. It is then that the Angel starts to seek these avatars of Lilith and Adam. I know that this happened in the anime as well to Rei. In the anime, however, Armisael was also chasing after Shinji's EVA making things more muddled. Plus Rei's monologue about her other 'self' wanting to be one with Shinji adds to the confusion.
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