bleach vs others

Q: what are the similarities between bleach and sailor moon or doraemon?
A: NOTHING BASTARD! if you ever thought that i would compare bleach with sailor moon or doraemon, you must be deluded! no, i didn't say any of these shows are bad. i watched doraemon before and liked parts of it. i did watch sailor moon for awhile when i was small. the story got too cheesy though (the manga is so much better, my friend had a whole collection of sailor moon manga).

oh, a friend told me recently that sailor moon is really a kind of soft porn, which was funny, dun you think? we kids didn't think of this kind of things until we become teens/adults huh? but i must admit he is perfectly right comparing sailor moon and soft porn.

well, anyway, no point comparing bleach with this kind of kids show. bleach is in totally different league. in the league of rurouni kenshin, naruto (the manga), saiyuki, and dragon ball (the manga).

the thing that i want to talk about bleach this time is how similar it is to other anime. in particular rurouni kenshin and naruto. seriously. after watching 73 episodes of bleach anime and reading 221 chapters of bleach manga, the similarities are striking.

let's evaluate rurouni kenshin first. i just rewatched the first 65 episodes of rurouni kenshin recently, and i must say, i found that kubo tite, the author of bleach, took quite a bit of ideas from rurouni kenshin. both are mangas that involve swordfighting (zunjutsu is the term, i think). both main characters are bloody fast! kenshin with his hiten mitsurugi ryu (a style of swordfighting with supersonic speed) and ichigo with his bankai tensa zangetsu (heavenly chain cutting the moon). both abilities allow the user to move with unbelievable, beyond godlike speed.

wow, i can't stop talking about these swords man. these two men are really amazing. hahah! tensa zangetsu is especially beautiful to behold. a black katana and a black cape. whereas kenshin reverse-blade sword could be used to perform the ultimate attack, amakakeru ryu no hirameki, a very powerful attack that attack nine vital parts of the opponent bodies at the same time.

well, enough about that. let's continue with the similarities. both the main characters, ichigo and kenshin, are fighting to protect their loved one. kenshin protecting kaoru-dono and yahiko, whereas ichigo is trying to protect rukia-san, orihime-san, chad and ishida-kun (sigh, there are so many polite and impolite ways to call people in japanese--dono, san, kun).

both mangas also involve many, many, many swordfighting style and swords. in rurouni kenshin, the emphasis is on the style of fighting: hiten mitsurugi, gatotsu, double kodachi, homuradama, etc. whereas in bleach, the emphasis is on the different swords (called zanpakutou) and their abilities. each swords have their own name and abilities. zangetsu have getsuga tenshou and its godlike speed, benihime with its blood-mist shield, zenbonsakura with its scattered small blades and senkei (its bankai form), kyouka suigetsu with its total hypnosis, ashisogi jizou with its poison attack, and of course captain hitsugaya's (my third favourite characters in bleach, after ichigo and shinji; rukia is fourth) hyourinmaru and its ice attack.

the main characters have striking characteristic of having coloured hair, kenshin's read and ichigo's orange.

with current development with hollow ichigo (what we bleachers now termed with shirosaki, although it has no name actually), ichigo's inner hollow who's trying to take over ichigo's body due to the fact that ichigo is weaker than him, we can see striking similarities with naruto and kyuubi. i don't watch naruto, and that's about so much i could say about naruto and bleach. i don't really plan to start watching naruto, unless somebody tell me that the fillers are going to be over (i heard it's going to be over next week).

hmm. it's amazing that after taking so many ideas from previous mangas, kubo tite really managed to bring this manga into heights unsurpassed by most other mangas. bleach smells like originality and that's why no matter what, i will always wait for its raw (japanese) manga every thursday night and its scanlation (english translation) during the weekend.

you must be wondering why would i post update to new chapters of bleach every week. that's because it deserves it. every single chapter really gives you a withdrawal syndrome right after you finished reading it. amazing really.

anyway, if you had the time, and if you hadn't realised it yet, this write-up is really of damn low quality. we had just finished a whole night of bantering at eei-block rooftop with prbs, slam, eysc, roy and sc. damn tired now. i realised that i wrote this entry almost without thinking. i thought of scraping the whole entry altogether and post it another time. but then i thought that it looks quite decent to be posted. and it reveals what happens with my writing when i'm damn tired. totally incorrigible.

well, after this rather neutral entry, i had a sad entry to be posted next when i have the time. it's about the particular banter we had at eei-block rooftop just now. sigh. back to doom and gloom everyone!