Manga Discussion/News Thread |OT4| New Ch/Vols! - SEE FIRST POST FOR RULES!

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Forever said:
Kagami

A mandatory harem end? As long as they don't switch the rules up again this could be interesting.
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upandaway said:
Mirror World

That is goddamn incredible. Wow. I have such a "!!?" face right now haha.

Absolutely amazing.

This changes everything.

And people were saying how this could end soon, too. Hilarious.
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scy said:
Kagami 19 - True End Harem route unlocked.
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angrycarwi8p1.gif


Cool, found a use for multi-quote already.
 
Soul Eater 92

Stein v Justin next chapter? Yes please. Great sword fighter is possibly a new favorite though I wish he could have actually fought. Though the best fight was Kid and his partner against the woman.
 
Defuser said:
Look like both shippers get their own wish. Can't beat em? Join the harem route!
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I'm more disappointed at the way that it was worded
to imply there will definitely be more girls to join the harem. Dude is getting more possible action when he's not even around!
 
Soul Eater

Who is that dude with the glasses? Hell, who is that old lady too? I feel like these chapters would be better if we were introduced to these characters before.

Can't wait to see madness of Stein going berserk next chapter.
 
survivor said:
Tried searching for the book on both Chapters and Amazon.ca and I still can't find it. And doing ISBN Google search only gets me links to their website. It's like they want me not to buy their book.
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Yeah, I'm in Canada as well and I couldn't find it on our bookstores. I think it's a self-published/small press thing, so probably the only way to get it is from them or via Amazon.com? We'll see on Tuesday.
 
firehawk12 said:
Yeah, I'm in Canada as well and I couldn't find it on our bookstores. I think it's a self-published/small press thing, so probably the only way to get it is from them or via Amazon.com? We'll see on Tuesday.
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They just answered on Twitter. They said appearance on Amazon.ca should take up to 10 days. And they are unsure if Chapters.ca will have it.
 
Bobobo-Bo bo-bobo

Watched this a long time ago back when it was first being subbed and then a bit again on Cartoon Network. Found it hilarious back then, but the subs stopped at like episode 9 and the dub was completely different. So for whatever reason, I was reminded of the series and started reading it.

Jesus fuck, it's crazier than I remember. I think this is literally as random as a human creation can get and I'm loving every second of it. The plot is nonsense, the characters are always off in their own little insane world, the gags are ridiculous, and there are only 2 straight men out of a ton of characters (and even they have their moments of insanity). I would post a page, but I would have to post EVERY PAGE. Every single chapter is more indiscernible than the last and I wouldn't have it any other way.

On volume 7 right now. Gonna be really sad when I get caught up and the translations stop. This series puts a gigantic smile on my face.
 
cosmicblizzard said:
Bobobo-Bo bo-bobo

Watched this a long time ago back when it was first being subbed and then a bit again on Cartoon Network. Found it hilarious back then, but the subs stopped at like episode 9 and the dub was completely different. So for whatever reason, I was reminded of the series and started reading it.

Jesus fuck, it's crazier than I remember. I think this is literally as random as a human creation can get and I'm loving every second of it. The plot is nonsense, the characters are always off in their own little insane world, the gags are ridiculous, and there are only 2 straight men out of a ton of characters (and even they have their moments of insanity). I would post a page, but I would have to post EVERY PAGE. Every single chapter is more indiscernible than the last and I wouldn't have it any other way.

On volume 7 right now. Gonna be really sad when I get caught up and the translations stop. This series puts a gigantic smile on my face.
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Viz translation > fan junk.
 
Soul Eater

I'd missed the last three chapters, but I caught up now. This is such a crazy series, but that's part of what keeps it interesting... I mean beyond the always crazy artwork, this part has some goodguys taking a magic airship to the moon, which is a somewhat insane looking crescent-moon shaped thing in the atmosphere, apparently? What? That's either awesome or completely ridiculous... probably both. :)

Saki 90 (latest chapter)

And the series crawls another few moments forward, before yet another announcement that the next chapter won't be out for a month, again... when was the last time Saki actually had two chapters in a month, like it was supposed to? At least this one was 16 pages though, one chapter a few months ago was only eight... clearly, between the upcoming Achiga-hen anime, the Achiga-hen manga (which is being drawn by Bamboo Blade's artist, sure, but she (the main series author/artist) needs to write it...), and the Saki Biyori 4koma spinoff, the main series has suffered.

That's too bad, because though I like the spinoffs too for sure, the main series probably is best. Also, the series is at a seriously tense time, right at the beginning of Saki's climactic match in this, the first round of the national tournament. And this time, unlike the regionals, Saki isn't entering with a lead, she starts well back in second... we'll need a comeback here! She finishes this chapter with a Rinshan Kaihou, but she'll need more than just one win to win the match...


Kimi-iro Focus all so far

This is such an insanely fanservice-centric manga... :lol Basically the whole thing is a setup for the MC to take scantily clad or naked pictures of the various girls in his harem/highschool photography club. He's got two personalities -- one, the normal average generic weak anime/manga protagonist, and the other that he transforms into when he takes off his glasses, a bishonen guy who can get the girls to do pretty much anything he asks (and seriously, I don't think he's been refused once in glasses-off mode), and takes great photos. In glasses-off mode he's pretty much a completely horrible person -- convincing them to do things for him for photos with sweet talk, saying he likes them, etc, but he doesn't mean any of it at all (and supposedly forgets some of it later), he's just trying to get the picture. It is kind of funny how effective he is at getting the girls to do whatever just by looking at them, pretty much, even though it certainly also makes him look bad, as I said.

As for the characters, the cast's not too bad. Nice variety of characters. Oddly enough, the twintail girl isn't tsundere, the childhood friend (who has a single ponytail) is. So different! :p

... So yeah, it's a decent series, if you want to read that kind of thing. (Oh, despite the CONSTANT fanservice and occasional nudity, I can only remember one time that it actually showed nipples. Usually it doesn't. That one time was a big two page spread though.)

Seitokai Yakuindomo 1-36

... Yeah, I wasn't expecting this, really. Somehow I didn't know what this series was actually like. It seems like it'll be a harem thing -- I mean, it's your standard "recently integrated girls school" setting with a guy lead -- but no, instead it's a dirty joke centric comedy series with very little if any harem in it at all, where most of the series is about the girls saying crazy things and the MC being the straight man. Among other things, I'm pretty sure I've never seen so many menstruation jokes in one manga before...

It does do other kinds of jokes too, though, but yeah, it's like that frequently. It is amusing though, and I do like that it's not really harem (so far anyway). It's funny, by now you'd think that I'd be used to it, but no, I still react like "what?" regularly, so it works, clearly. I know there was an anime, but I wonder how the anime went though... ... so I watched ep. 1. I wasn't expecting it to be the same, but it's basically a straight copy of the manga material. Impressive, I will watch more.

Witch Craft Works 1-10 (all so far)

This is a decent shonen action/romance-ish series. Harem? Well, two girls at this point, so not now. ANyway, it's an action show about a boy who has a demon sealed in him and is being protected by good witches against bad ones who want to free the demon. Conveniently the witches are female of course, for haremizing potential. The two so far are this one who is tasked with protecting him (a beautiful girl and the school's most popular girl, and pretty much in charge of the place, and her mother runs the school too), and the other is (naturally) his seriously brocon sister and also a good witch. He's the weak and wishy-washy type of course, and keeps trying to get away from the one protecting him because he dislikes how jealous everyone else in the school is of him and thinks he's bothering her by being near her, etc, etc, but of course he's always wrong and just gets into trouble every time, because she's protecting him for a reason. It gets a bit old. The brocon sister was not a welcome addition either. The series is alright so far, though. It's got some decent art, too. It's somewhat generic, but entertaining so far.
 
I just learned that Shingeki no Kyojin is getting a light novel adaptation called SnK: Before the fall. I wonder if it's canon or if it will be its own thing. Someone better translate it.
 
cosmicblizzard said:
Would be nice if they didn't just stop out of nowhere :/
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Being a Bo-bobo fan outside of Japan just sucks. The dub of the anime didn't finish IIRC and the only way to watch all of it in something other than Japanese is the Spanish dub, the DVDs bombed badly and there were only like 3 releases, the manga release was just a mess, and scanlations stopped :(
 
SolarKnight said:
Being a Bo-bobo fan outside of Japan just sucks. The dub of the anime didn't finish IIRC and the only way to watch all of it in something other than Japanese is the Spanish dub, the DVDs bombed badly and there were only like 3 releases, the manga release was just a mess, and scanlations stopped :(
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If the series had a lot of fans I would've imagined that someone would just pick it up and start scanlating it. Why the neglect?
 
Bleach

Am i allowed to link to live Journal Article. All the links are there and Wikipedia pages.

A well thought out essay on pagan symbolism in Bleach. Not writing by me. There are some links to Bleach manga pages which i don´t link since it´s against the TOS here.

Part one.
And Juliet, she is the sun
So this has been nagging at the corner of my mind for a while - a long while, actually - but only just recently have I realized that I should really... write this essay out so that I don't have to flail around when I point these things out to someone I'm talking to on IRC. So here, have an essay on pagan symbolism in Bleach!

Updated Oct 11th, 2009: to add a section on Tarot symbolism! So there are now four sections!

Preface

I will be the first to tell you that I don't talk much about my own religion. Most people don't even realize I'm Wiccan, and that's because I don't talk about it! There are a couple reasons for that - first and foremost being that when I was younger, I went around telling absolutely everybody, and generally got two responses. I either got treated like a loony (and often invited to Sunday services at the local church, to ~save my soul~ or something), or I found myself attracting a very special kind of fruit loop. Neither of those things are very fun, and I still find both of them to be very true and pertinent, so I 'hide my light under a bushel' A LOT, so to speak. In fact, I'm usually embarrassed by other Wiccans and some of the wacky shit they do (and that is in part what prompted this essay ahahaha), which is why I tend not to talk about it at all!

I also feel religion should be a deeply personal experience and don't feel like sharing that with all and sundry anymore. And yeah, that's going to be the same here - this is mostly about symbolism that I've picked up over the years, and how much I like to lol at some of the stuff Bleach throws out there. But because I don't particularly care about all the characters and their various and sundry symbolism, I'm only covering three particular things that interest me.

Oh, and before I begin: this isn't mean to be some FASCINATING LOOK INTO THE TRUTH BEHIND BLEACH or whatever. This is just symbolism I've picked up on - I might be right, but I might also be totally screwed in the head. Symbols only run as deep as you let them. While I'm sitting there going "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, HE DREW ANOTHER MOON", KT might be sitting there going "Man, I just really fucking love drawing these moons - it makes me feel like I'm writing Sailor Moon!" Also, I got half-way through writing this and went "God, I sound like a fruitcake"... until I realized that this isn't any crazier than the BANDAGES!!1! essay or the people that claim IchiHime is ENDING FOREVER every other chapter or so. Also, sounding like a fruitcake is pretty much a requirement for any Wiccan, so I guess I'm right on course today.

I. The Devil and the Phoenix

Why is there religion in my science?! But alas, there is! Actually, this is one of the most hugely blatant things I think KT has pulled yet. Here, let's have a little comparison:

Compare the chapter art for chapter 306 to this picture of Baphomet.

And then go read the description of Baphomet. Put briefly, Baphomet is a false god, one created wholecloth by various people and groups for various things. He's generally associated with Satanism and the occult, particularly with Aleister Crowley.

Put briefly, Mayuri here is being compared to a devil, possibly Satan himself.

As for Szayel, I think this chapter art speaks for itself. I really don't think I have to explain Jesus to anyone. But to be sure, that is who he is being compared to. For one thing, phoenixes are sometimes associated with Jesus because they both rise from the dead. There's also the matter of Szayel being able to 'rise from the dead', so to speak, by means of reproducing asexually within the womb of his prey - an 'immaculate conception'. And the name of that move? Gabriel, which was also the angel in charge of that whole Annunciation business. Oh, and in case we've missed the point thus far, Szayel calls himself an 'immaculate being' and claims he's achieved perfection.

Upon further examination, one can see that this is a battle between two philosophies - Szayel's, which professes to have attained perfection, and Mayuri's, which spits in the face of perfection. Comparing this to religion, Mayuri's philosophy is scientifically sound - there is no such thing as perfection in nature - but is deeply profane. To say there is no such thing as perfection is to deny the very existence of divinity. Hence, the lowercase 'o' in 'Not Perfect is Good' - one can also read it as 'Not Perfect is God'. God's perfection is, by its very nature, a flaw.

Rather than the resolution of this fight being presented as grim and apocalyptic, however - Satan did just triumph over Jesus, after all - Mayuri is presented as being in the right (for once in his life). The moral seems to be that there is no such thing as perfection in nature - the only law that matters is the law that says that anything can be improved or changed. In this way, the story also resembles some of the philosophy of Taoism - this being that when something is 'too full' (that is, has too much of something, good or bad), it then necessarily has to decrease, because the only place to go from the top is down. Hence, "When you began spouting that nonsense about perfection, your fate was sealed" - the only place to go from perfection is ruin.

II. She is the Sun

Monotheism, as many of you might realize, only truly came into its own with the rise of Christianity (and a bit later, Islam). Before then, most religions held a pantheon of gods - the most famous of these are still the Greek and Roman deities. But in nearly all of these polytheistic religions, there is usually one head god and one head goddess, and these are usually based on the sun and the moon respectively.

The same is true of Wicca and neopaganism in general, too. Most traditions hold that the sun is a god, somewhat like the GrecoRoman Apollo and that the moon is a goddess, usually somewhat like Artemis. Along these lines, these two opposing natural phenomenon have developed into two general archetypes: the Horned God and the Goddess.

I'm not going to hunt down links because I'm going a lot off of the multitude of books I've read on this subject and also because sweet Jesus that would take forever. But briefly, each deity has three stages that represent three stages of human life. Each stage has its own strengths and weaknesses and none of them are any better or worse than the others. For the Goddess, these are Maiden, Mother, and Crone; for the God, these are Youth, Father, and Elder. I think the names are kind of self-explanatory, here.

You can also associate different times of the year with the different aspects of each. In the Spring, the God and Goddess meet and fall in love. In the Summer, they get married. In the Fall, the Goddess gives birth to the harvest. And in the Winter, one or both of them dies and travels to the underworld to rest until Spring, when they're reborn again. Traditions and folklore on this vary A LOT, but that's the general gist of things.

Each deity is also associated with a couple of core things. The God is the god of the hunt, and generally associated with hunting and killing (hence the horns), strength, manly man stuff, and death. The Goddess is associated with growing things, fertility, love, birth, rebirth, and life in general.

Japanese folklore also has its own set of sun and moon deities. However, unlike almost every other set, in Japanese folklore the sun is female and the moon is male. You might better know them as Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi. They don't really bear much resemblance to the neopagan God and Goddess, but this is all worth noting for reasons I'm about to get to in a second.

So where does this all come into Bleach at? Why am I even talking about this at all?

First, let's take a look at Ichigo and his relation to the moon and the God of Death.

For starters, there's the fact that the kanji for 'moon' is in the name of his sword and all of his attacks - the 'getsu' in Zangetsu and all of its moves. I really don't think I need to elaborate on this much - it's pretty self-explanatory. There's also the fact that he wears all black. Yes, all Shinigami wear the same thing, but it is part of his character design and worth acknowledging - it's partially because, hey, they're representatives of death to begin with!

And then there's the sheer number of times the moon randomly appears whenever there's an important Ichigo moment happening (or... an important moment in general). I could try to link to every time it happens, but really, KT fucking loves drawing moons. I'm not just talking about the Hueco Mundo arc - he's been doing this shit since chapter one, page one, panel one. Here, have a few more, in case you didn't catch them before.

We even get chapter titles like "Black Moon Rising" for this. Oh, and his astrological sign? Cancer, the sign ruled by the moon.

And then we get to chapter 350, and really, what the hell, guy. Let's think about this one for a moment. Most Arrancar (or whatever he is at the moment there) have some kind of recognizable form - for instance, Il Forte was a bull, Nel was a goat, Ulquiorra was a bat. But this isn't an animal. It's literally a human skull with horns. Ichigo is literally the Horned God of Death there (see what I did there? Ohoho so clever!). Also possibly worth noting is that he also has regenerative abilities in this form - so not just death, but rebirth also.

And in case this wasn't already starting to be kind of giggle-worthy, if you go back and look at a few of the chapters where he's fighting the inner hollow, they have titles like "Imminent God Blues" and "Tug Your God Out".

So if Ichigo's the moon, who is the sun? Let me be the first to theorize that Orihime is the one related to the sun. And everyone on my flist is now ready to throw a brick at my damn face (ETA: Apparently, after visiting FLOL again, I wasn't the first person to draw this conclusion. D'oh! Oh well!)

This one didn't really start to crop up until around the time Ulquiorra kidnapped her. That chapter's title? "The Sun Already Gone Down". Depending on your translation, Ulquiorra either tells Ichigo "The sun has already set in our hands", or "The sun has already set. The day is ours" (Viz's translation). Either way, the next page has Orihime in front of her healing shield, which coincidentally seems to resemble a setting sun. In fact, much later on, Aizen also famously compares her smile to the sun.

Then, a few chapters later, Aizen makes the remark that Orihime's powers are like a god's. Powers that, interestingly enough, can reverse any wound and even revive the dead! In short, they're the direct opposite of Ichigo's powers - his are based on death, and hers are based on life.

There's also the fighting in Hueco Mundo. Outside of Las Noches, it's always night. Inside the dome, it's always day. When Ichigo finally breaks into the dome, Ulquiorra promptly smacks him down and leaves him for dead. It's not until Grimmjow brings Orihime to heal him that he actually gets to really see the sun in Las Noches, so to speak. Furthermore, when he fights Ulquiorra for the last time (and subsequently dies and goes full!hollow), it's above the dome in the moonlight. This is also the first time Orihime's been outside of that dome, except to look at the moon through the bars of her room - here, she's entering the land of the dead to go to Ichigo, who has just died. He also doesn't actually revive until she cries for him (although, to be completely fair, he would've revived either way - her crying 'triggering' the event is pretty much just icing on the cake).

And finally, there are little things, like her costume change to an all-white outfit and the way that all of her powers contain the kanji for 'heaven' - 天 (ten) - in them. The ten thing doesn't look to be a big deal, at first, but if you've read the I Ching or know something about the way the trigrams work, 'ten' isn't just a place or space, it's an element. 'Heaven' doesn't just refer to a place where angels float on fluffy clouds and play harps, it is basically the essence of the 'light' element in Taoism, and the use of the kanji also retains some of that function. It refers to light, to creative force, to pure strength, to the sun and sky, to the white yang part of the yin-yang symbol. In Taoism, as in most other traditions, the element is male and represents the father of the family, but there it is.

As for the outfit, I will be honest and say that I didn't like it at first. This is mostly because of fandom and their inability to ever make icons or cosplay of Orihime in anything but the Hueco Mundo outfit. This also had an unfortunate tendency to coincide with their shipping her rabidly with Ulquiorra, which I also hate almost irrationally, so the two became conflated in my mind (and I'm still sure there's some correlation). It wasn't until I actually read the Hueco Mundo arc and actually realized that the outfit was supposed to contrast Ichigo that I stopped disliking it on sight. But for the record, some of the traditional Western meanings of the color white are purity, virginity, goodness, light, and life. In Japanese tradition, it's also a color of mourning and death - hence why all of Aizen's forces wear white. (Yes, color symbolism is funky like that - colors can mean different things in different cultures, or at the same time. Multiple colors can also mean the same thing - for instance, you could switch gold with white for a lot of meanings)

Finally, as far as astrological signs go, Orihime's is Virgo, the Virgin. It might not mean anything at all, but hey, she would be the Maiden aspect, wouldn't she? Otherwise, Virgo's a bit of an odd choice for her - for example, the archetypal Virgo character would be Sailor Mercury from Sailor Moon (the Sailors were designed basically to be archetypes of their zodiac signs - Mercury 'rules' Virgo).

III. The Descent of the Goddess

There exists a particular breed of legend across quite a few pagan traditions in which the Goddess travels to the Underworld, for whatever the reason. Traditionally, this is used to explain the changing of the seasons - the Goddess of Life goes to the land of the dead, causing nature to wither away and die for the winter; when she resurfaces in the spring (either through reincarnation or of her own accord), life comes back to the world and everything regrows, starting the cycle again.

Probably the most famous of these (I even used to have an English textbook with this particular story in it) is the story of Persephone being abducted to the Underworld by Hades. There is also the story of Innana traveling of her own free will to the Underworld. In fact, this is such a common motif that Wiki has a page specifically for stories like these (you won't be surprised to find there's a Shinto legend in this vein, about Izanagi and Izanami). And not surprisingly, Wicca also has its own version.

In general, the story goes like this: For whatever reason, the Goddess (or sometimes the God) travels to the Underworld. This can be for a variety of reasons - to gain power, to gain the knowledge of life and death, through abduction, to rescue his/her dead consort, etc, etc, etc. While there, she is granted an audience with the King (or sometimes, rarely, Queen) of the Underworld (who himself is usually the most mature aspect of the God), who then absorbs her into the Underworld itself - usually either through marriage, punishment, or some form of training. The Goddess is then recognized as the Queen of the Underworld and gains some new and amazing power over reincarnation or something similar. When it's time for spring to come, she is either rescued or comes back to the regular world through her own free will to start the yearly cycle over again. Sometimes there's a child born from this union, which is the God for the next year.

So we come to the Hueco Mundo arc in Bleach, which draws some pretty strong parallels to this particular branch of folklore at points (mostly at the beginning). You have a female character compared to a god (Orihime) make a journey (through her abduction) to the Land of the Dead (Hueco Mundo). There, she meets the King of the Dead (Aizen), who compels her to stay with him (by coercively enlisting her in his army), and offers her knowledge and power in return (by telling her about the true nature of her powers), thus enabling her to effectively raise the dead (she could not do this before coming to Hueco Mundo - she only thought she could heal catastrophic wounds).

Aizen himself is pretty interesting in this respect, since he himself has a decently strong tie to the moon himself (with the name of his sword, which means "Mirror Flower, Water Moon"). This also may explain the name of his palace - Las Noches - when everything under its dome is under a false sun. Also interesting is that he not only put that sun into Hueco Mundo, but he also brought Orihime there, as well. There is also another subset of folklore related to the Summer aspect of the God (the Holly King) fighting the Winter aspect (the Oak King) and either succeeding or dying, depending upon the season. So it may be that Aizen is intended to be a dark mirror to Ichigo, with similar symbolism. It may also be that Ichigo will kill Aizen and take his place as the King of the Dead (although I'm sure KT will jerk us the hell around a lot before anything like that happens, augh).

Interestingly, also, is that with this particular legend tying into the cycle of the year, this legend is usually given to happen around the time of the mid-autumn cross-quarter - in other words, Samhain or Halloween. That's the time of year that everything really starts to die off rapidly; hence, the Goddess of fertility has gone beneath ground.

Honestly, this idea wouldn't have even really struck me if I hadn't been looking through old chapters of Bleach and noticed a random date stuck into the middle of one of the chapters. KT did keep careful track of time at the beginning of the series (particularly in the SS arc, when time was crucial to rescuing Rukia, although I'll be damned if I can keep up with how those days moved, with all the constantly changing execution dates), but up until this point, we hadn't been given an actual date for several chapters. And after this page, I don't think another date has appeared in Bleach since. Either way, we can construct a rudimentary time-line from this date:

- Oct 29th: Luppi brings his crew to Karakura as a distraction, which lures Orihime into the dangai. (ch 229-233) Ulquiorra corners her there and tells her she has until midnight to say goodbye to one person. Orihime then visits Ichigo (who is bedridden from Luppi and Grimmjow's attack) and then disappears at midnight. (ch 237)
- Oct 30th: Ichigo wakes up, healed and apparently well-rested, and is informed that Orihime is missing. He then proceeds to yell at Yamamoto a lot. (ch 238)
- Oct 31st: It appears that a day has passed, since Ichigo shows up at school with bags under his eyes (presumably from either not sleeping or sleeping poorly). This is also where he drops the bandages off at Vizard HQ (HAHA BANDAGES YOU GUYS!!1! - that will never NOT be funny now okay). Later that night, he approaches Urahara, who sends him to Hueco Mundo. (ch 239)

Alternately, you could say that the events I have listed as happening on the 30th and 31st happened on the same day (you could say he visited Orihime's apartment very early in the morning, and he was extremely tardy to school, ran by the Vizard HQ, and somehow developed bags under his eyes in the space of a few hours), but I don't think it makes as much sense as my timeline. Either way, he would still have left on the night of the 30th and early morning of the 31st, so the same significance still holds.

Honestly, this is one that I can't believe is a coincidence - why give a date when KT had otherwise stopped giving them? There was a month-long timeskip in there, too - why bother with that when dates had otherwise been fuzzy beforehand? Even if it's something as minor as "hee hee going to the land of the dead on Halloween", I still think there's something there - it's pretty much just icing on the cake that everything else matches up with a particular set of myths fairly well.
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Bleach

A well thought out essay on pagan symbolism in Bleach. Not writing by me. There are some links to Bleach manga pages which i don´t link since it´s against the TOS here. There are some Wikipedia too.

Part 2

IV. The Empress and the Moon

In looking through a page on Bleach, Tanabata, and Numerology yesterday, I noticed something else interesting. The characters in the top twenty of their class standings, as compared to the Major Arcana of the Tarot make for some interesting symbolism.

1. Ishida Uryuu

The Magician is the first card of the Major Arcana. Notice how a lot of the stuff on that page could apply to Ishida. The Magician is a conduit for outside power (much like Ishida himself relies on the absorption of existing reishi to use his Quincy powers) and represents logic, intelligence, and potential. The colors of the Magician are also red and white, much like the two kinds of spirit ribbons that Ishida talks about (as a human, his being white). There's also a nice bit in there about the Magician's power being in his will, and therefore being undestroyable. Hmm!

3. Inoue Orihime

The Empress is the third card of the Major Arcana, and the only card picturing female royalty, much like the 'Princess' part of Orihime's name. This card is the mother archetype, and represents fertility, life, and abundance. If there's a pregnancy going to be predicted, this card will almost always be in the spread somewhere, for example. It also represents unconditional love and protection, which seem to be big themes with Orihime. The card's weakness? She's overprotective and doesn't want anyone to be hurt.

11. Yasutora Sado

Justice is the eleventh card of the Major Arcana. At first this might seem like an odd choice for Chad, but consider that this card represents cause and effect and the law of karma. This seems to call back to his grandfather's speeches about protecting people with his fists and using his strength for good instead of for being a bully. You can see through the course of the story that this decision changed his life for the better, and I think that resonates with this card.

18. Kurosaki Ichigo

The Moon is the eighteenth card of the Major Arcana. I don't think I have to reiterate everything connecting Ichigo to the moon, but here's one more thing. The meaning of this card relates to the wild, hidden, human subconscious that howls at the moon - the Id, and in Ichigo's case, his inner hollow. There's also a theme here about things not being quite what they seem (as it's easy to mis-see things in the dark), and of traveling blindly along a path (as Ichigo seems to do pretty much all the time ever). It also speaks of illusion and deception, perhaps also tying it to Aizen as well.

And here's three more, just for fun:

7. Inoue Orihime

Strength is the seventh card of the Major Arcana, and is usually shown with a woman gently forcing open the mouth of a lion. To say Orihime's tied pretty tightly to the number seven speaks of her name's involvement with the Tanabata legend (the date of which is 7/7). The card fits her, as well - it speaks of the enduring strength of the will as opposed to physical strength. You can see this in the illustration: women are traditionally considered 'weak', but this woman is quietly and surely dominating the tradition symbol of strength, the lion. This points to the qualities of patience and determination and their eventual triumph over brute force. For bonus points, there's also a bright, shiny sun in the background; that, in addition to the Lion (which is also a symbol of the sun), makes this a fire-aligned card.

13. Gotei 13

Death is the thirteenth card of the Major Arcana, and this should really come as a surprise to no one. There being thirteen divisions is pretty much tied to thirteen being an unlucky number and being associated with death anyway, so this isn't so much an association with the Tarot, as both the Tarot and the Gotei 13 being associated with the same things. However, if you look at the card, even that is the image of the Grim Reaper making even kings equal before him - in essence, this is the card of the Shinigami, period.

15. Kurosaki Ichigo

The Devil is the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana. The number fifteen is pretty strongly associated with Ichigo throughout the series, considering that his name can be broken down into the numbers 1 and 5 (hence why we see it EVERYWHERE). Anyway, recognize the guy on the card? Yeah, it's him again. And I think here is the part where we note that the image of Satan with horns is traditionally thought to derive from older images of the Horned God mentioned above (after all, why else would someone magically have horns on their head?).

Perhaps more interesting is the meaning of the card, which speaks of one enslaving themselves to their own bad instincts and desires - in other words, letting your own 'bad side' enslave you. It also speaks of how your bad side can take control specifically by ignoring it and refusing to acknowledge it (the Yammy fight, anyone?). The real kicker here? The card points out that all one needs to do to free themselves from 'the Devil' is to take control of their own life and face their problems. So in this way, we see that Ichigo might just be more connected to his own inner hollow than we originally may have thought.


End[
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Um guys. Am I on another planet / in bizarro world here...?!?

So I just read Soul Eater (I had to catch up) and I just remembered how BAD the translators are. This isn't me being ungrateful, this is honest to god pure enmity towards the scanlators.

I can't post any manga links, but damn if you guys read the MS one then you know what i'm talking about.

"I'm too much powerful so I don't have any weapon"

Soul Eater deserves, much, much, much better than this.
 
PK Gaming said:
Um guys. Am I on another planet / in bizarro world here...?!?

So I just read Soul Eater (I had to catch up) and I just remembered how BAD the translators are. This isn't me being ungrateful, this is honest to god pure enmity towards the scanlators.

I can't post any manga links, but damn if you guys read the MS one then you know what i'm talking about.

"I'm too much powerful so I don't have any weapon"

Soul Eater deserves, much, much, much better than this.
Click to expand...

If only it stayed in one groups hand, though it seemed to always be plagued with either low quality image or just wonky readibility, only a few chapters managed to look and sound great :(
 
PK Gaming said:
Um guys. Am I on another planet / in bizarro world here...?!?

So I just read Soul Eater (I had to catch up) and I just remembered how BAD the translators are. This isn't me being ungrateful, this is honest to god pure enmity towards the scanlators.

I can't post any manga links, but damn if you guys read the MS one then you know what i'm talking about.

"I'm too much powerful so I don't have any weapon"

Soul Eater deserves, much, much, much better than this.
Click to expand...

Bad manga deserve bad translations
 
young man with a possibly angsty past meets magic loli with sniper rifle - 1

Hitsugime no Chaika wasn't terrible, just very average - and the sister will obviously be left behind thus invalidating every incestuous path it could have taken.

I'll probably come back to it to see if it gets better later. Also I think every Japanese artist uses the same reference for that same rifle.

hW5Pll.png


5l8t2l.png
 
Forever said:
If the series had a lot of fans I would've imagined that someone would just pick it up and start scanlating it. Why the neglect?
Click to expand...

Well there's a group that hasn't dropped it since it's still in their ongoing section and the last translated chapter was 4 months ago, but it looks like they've put it on the back burner for about a hundred other series. All hope is not lost, but it would be nice if they decided to pick up the pace.
 
PK Gaming said:
Um guys. Am I on another planet / in bizarro world here...?!?

So I just read Soul Eater (I had to catch up) and I just remembered how BAD the translators are. This isn't me being ungrateful, this is honest to god pure enmity towards the scanlators.

I can't post any manga links, but damn if you guys read the MS one then you know what i'm talking about.

"I'm too much powerful so I don't have any weapon"

Soul Eater deserves, much, much, much better than this.
Click to expand...

Was it edited by Peter Chimera?
 
Beam said:
Bleach

A well thought out essay on pagan symbolism in Bleach. Not writing by me. There are some links to Bleach manga pages which i don´t link since it´s against the TOS here. There are some Wikipedia too.

Part 2
Click to expand...

kG2g2.gif
 
Beam said:
I am not sure what you mean but in case you are talking about the links that i mentioned, i don´t know if i am allowed to post the link to that Livejournal where the person have made the analysis. Am i allowed to post a link to livejournal?
Click to expand...

I think he's referring to the article itself.
 
There's an early scan of TWGOK that's at least in passable English floating aorund out there now.

Given that Keima actually feels bad about what he did to Chihiro, I'm not entirely certain why his solution wasn't to just literally run away. It probably would have worked better than being a dick. I'm assuming this will get worked out by Chihiro finding out about the Goddesses at some point.
 
Infinite Justice said:
Really?

Looking forward to the reactions then.
Click to expand...

I have no idea who scanned it, it just popped up on Somemanga (which most people probably don't have a password for anymore)

GE 105

That former fat chick is going to kill Utsumi at this point.

"Hey, let's start dating but not tell Yuki" sounds utterly brilliant. Brilliant. The fact it's not Utsumi's idea is totally going to go over well with Yuki. Totally. This never doesn't work in a shonen.
 
Snakeyes said:
The blank backgrounds represent the emptiness of the universe.
Click to expand...
I just don't think there's anything about Bleach which would lead anyone to a conclusion there's anything particular deep about it. It's style over substance for sure.

As for backgrounds, it's again, a stylistic choice. I've never understood that as a complaint since his assistants would do the backgrounds if he wanted them and he has virtually unlimited resources in that department.
 
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