Bleachness

Well, um, yeah.... this week's chapter is 24 pages of Hitsugaya backstory, apparently drawn to coincide with the release of the all-Hitsugaya Bleach movie.  I'm one of those who doesn't understand the Shiro-chan phenomenon, but I do like the little grumpus and this chapter sounds good--even if pure fanservice for HitsuHina and HitsuMatsu!  Bring it on, Kubo. If your editors are running the show this much, then I fully expect IchiRuki fanservice soon---and a little IchiIshi  UST might be good while we're at it! Feed usssss, we are your ravenous fans.

Anyway, still no popularity poll announcements and we have to wait until next week for a "shock" during the mad scientist duel. In the meantime, to assuage your impatience--Tah-dah! A bleachness  exclusive! From the brilliant gallo_de_pelea ! A shimmering rendering of Inoue Orihime!

Tasteful nudity. Not work safe.


I love her fingernails there, not to mention those perfect nipples. *sigh* I want to be able to draw nipples like that.

EDIT: Ugh, dumb me. I uploaded on photobucket where the pic was promptly kicked off! Anyway, you should be able to see it now under the cut and here on Deviant Art where it is, unfortunately, censored a little.

You people write such thoughtful entries.! I get on here and type as fast as my fingers allow. I've read a lot about 278--some of which has made me change my mind about tiny things. Goes to show what a dynamic chapter it was. Kubo did a fine job of telling a-hurricane-is-brewing story here. The fight is coming, but yes, there's more  of a psychological story coming too. Every manga chapter cliffhanger screams "buy the next Jump to find out what in the world will happen!", but in this case, we know what's going to happen--a fight. That the chapter isn't skimpy about character growth/regression/sexual tension/power differences and that's what made the chapter interesting, for me--not the fight therein (although Ulqui/IGrimmjow was marvelous) or the fight to come.

In an attempt to be organized, I'll say that there three elements of 278 I want to look at here--Orihime's possible big personality change, Ichigo's morally ambiguous behavior, and the UlquiHime dynamic. (It should go unspoken that Grimm and Ichi are shooting the sparks! XD)

If shounen manga is supposed to tell moral tales for how young Japanese men should behave, Bleach ain't anything new. I could argue (and might someday) that Ichigo is more complicated than your typical shounen hero, but in this chapter he did something that struck me right away as "oh damn, such a man--he's regressed to the boy who wanted to fight with Ganjyu in SS." But there's more to Ichigo's expression of  "Woo boy, the fight I've been waiting for!" Half-healed and looking downright terrible (especially terrible since Kubo paid the art so much attention) Ichigo rose to defend Orihime. Yes, this time he defended her (Ichigo's previous exchange with Ulquiorra, I believe strongly, had nothing to do with Orihime and more to do with wanting to pass, and because Ulquiorra wouldn't let him pass. Clashing against Ulqui with that undrawn shikai showed Ichigo's usual temper, not a desire to protect Orihime in the present moment. Immediate reasons are what propel Ichigo most of the time.

Ichigo's name is about protecting. He has never failed to (try to) protect. Maybe Kubo slyly put Orihime here to be defended since Ichigo was running away from her in 270 and his audience was seeing that as a very bad thing. Maybe, as one well-thought 278 entry suggested, Kubo wanted to make a little fun of the audience who saw 270 as purely IchiRuki (I'm still of this IchiRki persuasion, btw, because Ichigo actually wanted to leave a fight--but my interpretation of 270 that way doesn't exclude being made fun of by my favorite manga-ka. <3). Kubo's is sadistic genius so the idea has some merit. There are plenty other places in this arc where I see Kubo poking fun at BL, but hey that just may be me. The joke in 278 exists only if one reads Ichigo's stopping for Grimmjow as comparable to him stopping for Rukia. In order for that to be, Ichigo has to be a pretty unheroic hero (and Grimmjow has to be an Irresistible attraction XD) But wanting to fight and wanting to protect are both congruous inspirations for any of Ichigo's behaviors.

Grimmjow challenges Ichigo to interrupt to the shounen hero's goal, any goal--protecting Orihime or protecting Rukia or going back to help Chad or going to the bathroom. Did anyone think Ichigo would refuse to fight?


I don't give away enough juicy links when I find them. This isn't Bleach related but it's such a wonderful entry for fic writers. Does Fanfic Need to Be "Responsible?"

First, an illustration! I was really sick of the (damn sexy but) girly Uryuu of the filler arc ( He's so vuuulnerable) so I drew a picture in which he is the hero of the current. I challenge (beg?) someone to write a fic for this. I need more IshiHime to read (says she who started yet another IchiIshi last night....)

If Only

Now onto my Tanabata shipping crisis. I was up too late last night reading the various versions of the Tanabata myth (I've done this before) and trying to weave (ha ha) the various mythological threads here and there into the Bleach story. There's really no doubt that Kubo Tite (originally at least) intended for the story to mean some sort of connection between Ichigo and Orihime. I mean, really-- Orihime the weaver/handicrafts girl and Ichigo (one of whose kanji representations means ox king or something), the ox-puller, the hikoboshi who travels to heaven (hmmm, it was Rukia that he went to "heaven" to save?) to get his goddess woman in a moon-shaped boat (yep, yep, Ichigo is represented by the moon, no one can deny--it's his symbol in Bleach). There's all the damn rain imagery (when rain falls in the Tanabata story, the lovers can't meet), and there's fricken rain all over Bleach. Rukia in the rain with her arms around either Kaien or Ichigo (she really cares for them both--it's heartbreaking--but if Ichigo turns out to be a "bleached" version of Kaien,I'm screaming IT WAS TOO OBVIOUS, KUBO! I'm hoping that the reincarnation stuff is a red herring--the way Byakuya's picture of Hisana looking exactly like Rukia was supposed to make us guess at an unsavory backstory--did he adopt Rukia bc she looked like his ex-love? Did he want to kill Rukia for that reason?) The rain imagery goes on and on--Ichigo's mother dying in the rain, Orihime with her umbrella pining for Ichigo, Uryuu whose name means "rain dragon." At some point, the mythological parallels break down--there's something there, but the pieces don't all make sense.

The Tanabata myth also seems to fit the essence of the Bleach conflict (earth and sky, humans and Soul Society) for a while there. In another version of the myth, Orihime's lover has to weave 1000 pairs of shoes to reach her in heaven, and well, the lover is a weaver/handicrafts feller too (Uryuuuuu?)

But did Kubo's story run away with him? How can characters which have developed one way be squished to fit a mythological paradigm?