Bleach, Vol. 28
By Tite Kubo
Published by Viz Media

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Ichigo, Uryu, and Chad face their first foes since their arrival in Hueco Mundo to rescue Orihime, but more importantly, they meet the comic relief, appearing in the form of a group of rag-tag Arrancar (considered “garbage bugs” by the higher-ranked types) seemingly led by a noisy toddler named Nel. Also joining the fight are Rukia and Renji, who arrive wearing capes provided by austere older brother Byakuya–an unusual gesture of kindness (not to mention insubordination) from him. Meanwhile, Orihime’s grim Espada guardian, Ulquiorra, explains how his apparent sympathy for Orihime (allowing her to put her affairs in order and make her secret goodbye to Ichigo) was a technique intended to break her will, which he arrogantly assumes has occurred. Orihime has other ideas, however, as she bides her time and makes plans to sabotage Aizen’s most dangerous tool.

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I’ve had a couple of reviews out at Manga Recon over the past couple of days. First of all, I wrote a full review of the first volume of Yen Press’ Pig Bride which I enjoyed quite a bit, though I’m not at all sure where it’s headed. I look forward to reading the second volume.

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I’ve had a couple of reviews out at Manga Recon over the past couple of days. First of all, I wrote a full review of the first volume of Yen Press’ Pig Bride which I enjoyed quite a bit, though I’m not at all sure where it’s headed. I look forward to reading the second volume.

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The snow today has forced me to take a day off, which ends up being a replacement for the day I planned to take (but did not) on Friday. Still, I’d like to have a day off that did not involve shoveling snow. *sigh*

I have one review out today, at Manga Recon’s Manga Minis for volume 26 of Bleach. I still enjoy Bleach more than some of my MR cohorts do, so this was fun for me to review.

I’ve been working on a full series review of Tokyo Babylon, but I’m having a lot of trouble finding a way to address its most compelling themes without giving away major plot points. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Also, I’ve been watching the discussion on the demise of Scans Daily at LiveJournal, and a lot of the arguments I’ve seen flying around have been perplexing (if not surprising). I can go along with objections to scanlations and the sharing of full scans of comics, but objections to the posting of partial scans with analysis/discussion baffles me. For some very sane words on the topic, check out Brigid Alverson at Digital Strips and Johanna Draper Carlson at Comics Worth Reading.

You know, one of the points I’ve seen argued in favor of Scans Daily is that, unlike many comics forums, it was a place where non-typical fans, particularly women, could feel comfortable talking about comics without feeling like they were intruding in someone’s clubhouse, and honestly, I can really understand that. I think some guys in the comics world don’t realize that they exist in an atmosphere that actually discourages new readers to a great extent. I’ve had a hard time getting into western comics, despite the best efforts of some of my friends. I was not a reader of Scans Daily, but I’m considering checking out their new home to see if it might help steer me towards some western comics I could love.

On a completely different topic, those who follow me on Twitter, either through Twitter itself, its RSS feed, the sidebar of this blog, or Facebook (where it feeds my status updates), will know that Paul and I were unexpectedly gifted with free tickets to the Fountains of Wayne acoustic show last night at the Iron Horse in Northampton. I may try to write up a review of some kind later on (the show was fantastic), but for now, here’s a review Paul tracked down at the Hartford Courant. FoW draws a nice crowd in this area (which is Chris Collingwood’s home), and it was great to be there with so many people, most of whom were our age or older.

That’s all for now. Wish me luck on the shoveling. Later!

It’s a dim, cloudy kind of morning over here in western Massachusetts, and I can’t seem to shake the grogginess I woke up with today. It’s a perfect day for cozy blankets, grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and manga.

Here are a few brief thoughts on new chapters of xxxHolic, NANA, Bakuman, and Bleach.

SPOILERS after the jump!
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I don’t ever seem to have time enough for anything lately, so just a few brief items today.

I’m having a lot of frustration while trying to write these days, and I expect it’s a bit of anxiety over the self-imposed deadline I have coming up which I don’t think I’m going to make. For the most part, I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m not always going to make the deadlines I set for myself, and that it is still good to set them, because I’ll still get further along than if I did not, but I think in this case I may have paralyzed myself a little bit with the urgency of it, and how much important I’ve placed on it. I guess we’ll see.

In any case, time to move on to my topics of the day, Bleach, Bakuman, and Princess Tutu!

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It’s a beautiful day, and I should be taking advantage of that, so this will be a brief post. I just had a few thoughts regarding new chapters of Bleach and xxxHolic released this week.

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Wow, it’s been a while, I realize. The holidays took over my life for a bit, but now I’m back into the daily grind. I worked a lot on the graphic novel over the past week, and things are really starting to take shape. I won’t have as much time, now that I’m back to work, but I’m trying to set some realistic goals over the next few months to keep myself motivated. I truly have never had an original project of my own that excited me as much as this one does, which helps too. I’m hoping to have a final script for the entire series completed by the end of the year, and possibly even well before then, depending on how demanding the rest of my life is. I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions, because I think they tend to set a person up to fail, so I’m not going to make one. But my desire to complete this project is strong, as is my resolve to do so.

I also did some reading over the holidays!
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It’s been a while since I’ve written here, primarily due to stress and illness, both of which are still with me. Tonight I am snuggled under and electric blanket with my pup at my feet, and as usual, these things make me want to talk about manga. Actually anime, tonight, I guess. Heavy cold and flu medicine have made reading difficult, though I am still working my way through the Bleach manga, and have re-read Fullmetal Alchemist 13 & 14 in anticipation of the English release of volume 15, which should be sometime this month, I think.

Speaking of Fullmetal Alchemist, I must take this opportunity to tell you all that my workplace Secret Santa (who today was revealed to be our creative director’s assistant, Chelsey) has outdone every Secret Santa in the history of time by making me an Elric Brothers shrinky-dink keychain. I repeat, an Elric Brothers shrinky-dink keychain. That’s right, she drew Edward and Alphonse Elric on a shrinky-dink, baked it, ran a key ring through it, and gave it to me for Christmas. I spent much of this afternoon admiring it, and now my coworkers may believe I am insane. I will attempt to blame this on the illness.

Anyway. Continuing. Not even illness can stop the consumption of anime, so that’s what I’ll talk about tonight.
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It’s been a long week in just two days, and I’m very happy to have only one day left of work. We’ve been busy hiring performers from the auditions I talked about recently, and revving up for the new season. Meanwhile, Paul is sick as a dog, which makes the upcoming long weekend even more of a relief.

We’re still watching the Bleach anime, and have reached the portion of the series that is made up of 48 episodes of filler, created while they waited for new manga material from Tite Kubo.
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