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Dark Horse Gets Eva: Shinji Ikari Raising Project Manga

At its Anime Expo panel on Saturday, the North American publisher Dark Horse Comics has announced that it has acquired Shin Seiki Evangelion: Ikari Shinji Ikusei Keikaku (Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project), Osamu Takahashi’s manga based on an Evangelion game spinoff. The game has the player “raising” Shinji Ikari, the main character of the Evangelion science-fiction franchise, and determining what path his life will take. (Before Evangelion, Gainax developed the Princess Maker franchise in which the player raises a girl to adulthood.) The manga version adapts the game storyline, particularly its school sequences. The manga has been running in Kadokawa Shoten’s Monthly Shonen Ace magazine — the same magazine that serializes Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s main Evangelion manga — since June of 2005, and five compiled volumes have been published in Japan. Dark Horse will start the manga in late spring or early summer of 2009.