In the "Neon Genesis Evangelion" manga, illustrated and written by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Asuka has a more immature character than her animated counterpart and her story is different; despite having a similar, familiar past, in the manga she was conceived through artificial fertilization, as the result of an experiment in eugenics. In her first actual battle against Gaghiel, whom she confronts alongside Shinji in the same Evangelion unit in the classic series, she fights alone, while Shinji later watches the recorded fight on a projector. In the next battle, Asuka and Shinji fight, as in the classic series, against Angel Israfel together; Sadamoto conceived their dance training as akin to a "kiss", underlining their psychological connection. Also, in the comic, her fellow pilot Kaworu Nagisa is introduced before and interacts with her, immediately arousing her antipathy. Further differences are presented in the last chapters of the manga, corresponding to the events of the movie "The End of Evangelion". In the feature film, the Eva-02 is dismembered by the Eva Series before Shinji's arrival, while in the comic the Third Child intervenes in battle in her defense. In the final chapter of the comic, following the failure of Instrumentality, Shinji lives in a world where it snows again in Japan and where people do not seem to have any memory of recent events. The Third Child, traveling on a train to his new school, meets a girl similar to Asuka. According to Sadamoto, the girl is not concretely Asuka, but the symbol "of an attractive woman that Shinji can meet in the new world".