Spring is in full swing here in [location redacted], which means it is for some reason more than 80 degrees in mid-April! But more importantly, VIZ has new manga and announcements to share with you all! From an interview with the creator of BLEACH and Ichigo’s Japanese voice actor to new manga series Love’s In Sight!, we have a lot to talk about today. So let’s dive in!
Interview with Tite Kubo and Masakazu Morita
A rare and exciting treat for fans of BLEACH and anime in general! VIZ’s blog published a long and involved interview with both Tite Kubo, creator of BLEACH, and Masakazu Morita, who voices Ichigo in the anime. I’m disappointed but not surprised I didn’t see a translator credited on this blog post, but the post itself is very interesting and fun to read as both creators dive deep into the technical attributes of their respective crafts and their own personal backstories. I love this conversational style of interviews, where it’s clear everyone present is comfortable with each other and having a nice time. Check it out here!
New Kishimoto Illustration of Naruto‘s Most Popular Characters
Masashi Kishimoto, creator of Naruto, drew the winners of #NARUTOP99, a worldwide character popularity poll that took place from December 17, 2022 through January 31, 2023. Did your fave make it into the illustration? Go take a look here. And don’t forget to see the full results here. Funko is also releasing a new line of Naruto-inspired Funko Pops, if you are into that sort of thing. The proliferation of Naruto related items is making me wonder if there’s a Naruto anniversary or something coming up. Is Boruto ending? Is there a new spinoff manga starting? As someone not up to date on the Naruto News, a quick search revealed nothing particularly significant. But maybe I just missed it. Anyway, congratulations to best girl Sakura for taking the #3 spot!
That’s enough news for this month, let’s talk about…
What I’m Reading
Love’s In Sight! Volume 1
Uoyama
April 18, 2023
I was genuinely blown away at how funny, cute, and thoughtful this manga is. The premise is simple: a scarred thug of a high school dropout falls in love at first sight with a cute, tiny girl who is legally blind. I don’t expect a lot from het romance comics in general, but Love’s In Sight! manages the rare feat of selling me on the romance between the leads as much as each character individually. Morio and Yukiko are adorable together and individually, and Yukiko’s visual impairment is depicted with details and nuance. (As far as I can tell, anyway). I was struck by how differently Morio and Yukiko’s sister reacted to her disability, and how they both care deeply for her but show that care in different ways. It’s also hilarious! Morio and his delinquent friends have such a great dynamic together, and Yukiko’s sister is silly in a different way. I laughed out loud multiple times when reading this volume, and I could hardly put it down. The art is a little wonky sometimes, but not enough to distract from the story at all. What a surprisingly great reading experience.
Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man: 22-26
Tatsuki Fujimoto
April 18, 2023
I think the stories in this collection landed worse for me than the 17-21 stories did. “Woke-Up-As-A Girl Syndrome” especially was… weird to read, because I got the sense that it was intended to be funny but it was not funny to me in the least. It didn’t really explore the gender and sexuality questions inherent to the premise… at all. I thought “Mermaid Rhapsody” was cute and sweet, and it was fun to see Nayuta as the gestation of Power and the other fiends in Chainsaw Man. Similarly, “Sisters” was a clear precursor to Look Back, exploring similar themes of creativity and envy. I was amused but not super surprised at the author’s notes alluding to battles with Jump SQ Editorial. Listing it all out now, I think I did like 3 of the 4 stories collected here, but “Woke-Up-As-A Girl Syndrome” kind of ruined the overall impact for me because it was so jarringly different. It’s comforting to know Fujimoto-sensei, like all of us, has made some less-than-brilliant comics too, though.
Tista, Volume 1
Tatsuya Endo
April 4, 2023
I’m a big Spy x Family fan, so I was excited to read an earlier work from the same creator. Having read it, I can now see both what made Spy x Family a smashing success, and why Tista wasn’t as popular. I was surprised at how deathly serious, almost humorless Tista is a lot of the time. The character names are still funny– Arty Drawer the artist, for example. And there’s a thematically relevant cartoon on TV like Bond-man in Spy x Family. But there are fewer gags than I was expecting to see from my familiarity with SpyFam, and Tista the character is just deeply traumatized from page one. It’s easy to feel sorry for her but kind of hard to read about her. The inking is thinner and scratchier than Spy x Family‘s lines as well. I get the sense Endo switched from traditional inking tools to digital between Tista and SpyFam, based on the difference in line quality. I was also reminded of Master Keaton from the intensely researched depictions of the Western world. The backgrounds and characters all rang fairly true to me, a regular visitor to New York City, although I think he was a bit confused about Thanksgiving. It’s a dense and emotionally packed ride—the first chapter felt like an entire graphic novel in just 60 pages. I couldn’t breeze through this comic and had to read it in chunks instead. The bonus pages at the end were hilarious, but I wished the rest of the content was more like that instead of about Tista’s slowly fracturing mental state, which made me sad. I can see it resonating more with other kinds of readers, but it wasn’t my kind of thing at all.
That’s all I’ve got for you this month! Tune in next month for more VIZ news and reviews!
