Let me preface this with if you havent seen the anime I cant really say if youll enjoy it less or not but youll certainly be unable to appreciate a lot of what it does with the source material. Ill also be running on the assumption youve actually watched the anime first because its hard to talk about this manga at all if you havent and you really really should So unmarked spoilers for that abound from this point forward. The Neon Genesis Evangelion manga is to oversimplify a loose adaptation of episodes 1 24 as well as End of Evangelion. Most of the context is the same the series hits many of the same plot points and for the first few chapters it will feel like an outright retelling of the series albeit working on an older version of the story. However you will pretty fast discover that this is not onetoone with the Evangelion you know. About halfway into the mangas equivalent of the first episode we get to the part where Shinji refuses to get into the Eva with the team wheeling out a heavily injured Rei and a light fixture falls from the roof. However it doesnt fall above Shinji with the Eva throwing its hand out to save him no its falling onto poor Rei and Shinji throws himself to get her out of the way without the second thought The manga pretty quickly establishes this Shinji Ikari isnt the same as the one from the anime through changes like these sure his confidence is still at an alltime low and hes still deeply depressed but this Shinji has significantly more selfagency hes more openly emotive hes more ready to act for the people he cares about. Throughout the series were presented with a Shinji whos more willing to open his heart to others and let down his ego. Its a nice change of pace after going through the entire series with a clamped up Shinji and opens the series to different emotional plotlines that the anime could never have explored. Its not necessarily better but its not worse either its different and its the mangas biggest strength. Youre not experiencing Evangelion in a different format youre experiencing a different Evangelion. The story has a lot of fun altering how its characters react and interact with each other. Asuka is a lot less aggressive yet more independent Misato is a lot more motherly Shinjis other classmates get different arcs entirely mostly by just changing how they percieve others. The biggest beneficiary of this is Rei who in the anime more or less completes her character arc in Rei II when Shinji encourages her to smile. In the manga shes given a lot more character and a lot more things to do she has significantly more dialogue than she does in the show and has ongoing plot threads through to the end of the series that arent just the fact shes a clone. Its one of the things Id say the manga does outright better than the anime. Its hard to talk about this manga without talking about its production. The sole person to work on it Yoshiyuki Sadamoto is also the guy responsible for a majority of the main series designs from the main characters to the iconic Evangelions themselves hes probably the guy who understands it the most aside from series creator Hideki Anno. The series was also conceived as a way to promote the show but due to production issues with the show released an entire year prior it then was updated periodically over the next two decades with the final chapter releasing well after the third Rebuild film. Those two factors combined make the fact this deviates very heavily from canon so interesting. You can tell that once the series finished airing Sadamoto felt the agency to make more significant changes to the story all the significant plot changes are found in Volume 4 onwards such as the mangas equivalent to the episode Asuka Attacks being completely rewritten so none of the characters are on the ship to meet Asuka and instead meet her later or how Kaworu is bumped up to main cast oh yeah Kaworu goes from being a oneepisode character to being there for a FULL THIRD OF THE SERIES. His character and his relationship with Shinji is the most radically altered from his anime equivalent in part to account for him appearing much earlier in the story but also in part to give him more things to do than invading NERV. Its hard to talk about these changes a lot more indepth without spoiling them but its at the very least one of the most interesting changes made to the source material. Thats it for nonspoiler stuff. I do have a few criticisms trust me the praise isnt unanimous but theyre so spoilerheavy and mostly lategame that you might as well just dive in. If youre interested in them Ive tagged it in a spoiler section at the bottom alongside some other big spoiler thoughts but trust me just go in blind. All in all its not a particularly long series only clocking in at under 100 chapters and if you even only somewhat enjoy Evangelion you should really give this one a read. Its in my opinion incredible and in some places improves an already pretty amazing anime and if youre checking this out you probably already agree with that sentiment. Slightly more nuanced but spoilerheavy section: