BLEACH: OFFICIAL CHARACTER BOOK SOULS
July 5th 2011 00:16
Category: Manga
Story & Art by: Tite Kubo
Translation: JN Translations
New Touch up Art & Lettering: Mark McMurray
Lead Design: Courtney Utt
Graphic Design: Gerry Serrano
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Cost: AU$19.95/US$14.99
This has been another publication I’ve wanted to get my hands on for a while now, having seen it advertised numerous times in the back pages of various manga volumes I’ve read and reviewed. So when I saw it was available for purchase here in Australia online I leapt at the opportunity to pick up a copy. Bleach is a series that I’ve become a fan of over the last few years in both of its incarnations, manga and anime, so it’s only natural for me to seek out a work like this and give it a perusal. As with the Naruto Official Fanbook (NOF) the focus here is on the manga series, although unlike that other work the format is decidedly different although there are some similarities between the two.
As each of these characters are introduced there is a profile provided on them and often snatches of the particular moment in the manga when they make their appearance. In certain pivotal moments of the story there are excerpts from the manga to emphasise certain elements of the character and their back-story. Of course it isn’t just the protagonists that also get a mention in the book, the antagonists are also given some air time and we thus learn about the various hollows that Ichigo encounters in his first faltering steps as a substitute soul reaper for Karakura town.
Of course it all goes pear shaped when the two members of Sixth Company appear to take back Rukia to the Soul Society in order to punish her for her crimes. One could say that this is when things start getting interesting although frankly I feel the whole series is an interesting saga from the get go. What happens instead is that we are given the opportunity to see the characters, the action and the story itself grow like a tree before our eyes and this is literally the case with this work. In essence you can read this book and by the time you’d reached the last page you’d have a fairly good grasp of the story that unfolds in the first twenty volumes of the saga. And you’d know who all the characters were and what motivated them, what their abilities are and why they acted the why they did in the story.
So this work serves as a great means of introducing someone to the world of Bleach, and even though the essence of the overall story is contained within its pages it makes you either wont to read the manga in itself if you haven’t already or go back to various sections if you’re already a fan and reread them. One of my favourite sections in the whole story outlined in the first twenty volumes is when Ichigo finally learns the name of his zanpakuto and we’re introduced to the character of Zangetsu who is describe in the book as a tall, thin great man with some funky shades in my humble opinion.
The final two sections in this work are focused on an interview with Tite Kubo and Masakazu Morita, the seiyu (voice actor) responsible for the role of Ichigo Kurosaki in the anime series and then there is the one shot story that got the ball rolling so to speak. Unlike the Naruto one shot the Bleach one shot has a lot of similarities with the manga that eventually emerged and took everywhere by storm. Though there are differences between it and the eventual saga there is enough common ground between the two works to give the reader so insight into where things were likely to go once it became an ongoing series. If you’re a big Bleach fan like me you can’t go past this work…and if you’re not do yourself a favour and get your hands on it, it could spark the desire to finally immerse yourself in all things Bleach…BAN…KAI TENSA ZANGETSU!
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