Now With Bleach

I'd have to say it all started with the wristband.

I have a pretty selective palate when it comes to Manga and Anime, even with my recently rekindled interest in both mediums.  One thing that's hardly ever appealed to me was your straightforward, giant-sword-brandishing-monster-hunting teen manga.  There's about a zillion examples of the genre and none of them ever caught my eye.  But there was something just incredibly cool about a kid in the typical getup of these kinds of stories wearing the red white and blue wristband.

So, that's what originally drew me to Bleach.  Lucky for me, it's a legitimately great comic.  The closest comparison I can draw would probably be to Buffy at its root.  You've a noble teenager fighting monsters but the story never slouches on delivering the minutia of teenage life that's essential to having any kind of lasting interest in the characters.  Ichigo, our protagonist, is tasked to become a Soul Reaper, which is sort of like a combination between a Ghostbuster and, I don't know, Nate Fisher?  But really all that stuff is the incidental backbone of the story and not really what I feel like talking about.

This is what I'm talking about:

I mean, it's like Jamie Hewlett drawing manga.  I am completely enamored with the design that author Tite Kubo puts into the clothes that Ichigo rocks both in the story and in the chapter endpapers like this one.  It's probably one of the greater recent influnces on my upcoming Kid Analog mini-comics. I mean, I know that there's no way I could pull off that exact level of detail in my own work, but that kind of casual fashion badassery is exactly what the doctor ordered for the adventures of a 28 year old ennui driven super-hero in the suburbs of Minnesota.

That reminds me, I haven't said word one about Kid Analog.  I ought to post a crapload of stuff about the development of the character here.  You know, show some sketches, the evolution of the pencil-only style I plan to use, that kind of stuff.

In the mean time, know this: Bleach is good.  You should read it.  I mean look at this one:

Nuts, right?  Absolutely radical.  He's even got the parka collar that is, like, Kid Analog's raison d'etre.

Oh, did I mention I learned the Hiragana?  I can write anything phonetically in Japanese now.  It's basically a first grade level of Japanese language retention, but still.  By the end of the year, I'll hopefully be able to at least read Japanese at some kind of functional level.  I've got to reccomend Remembering The Hiragana by James Hesig, the book I used.  It doesn't take long, and its use of imagery to teach you the hiragana is nothing short of brillaint.  For よ (yo), Hesig has you visualize a puppy, tied to a boomerang, getting egg yolks chucked at it.  How could you not remember that?  Four stars.

Comments

[Robin Collabell]

This has been a while after this was posted, and i'm not really sure where i am since i just looked up "Ichigo's wristband" on google, and it led me here. But i have to say anyone know where to get one of those awsome writsbands?! ^_^