Bleach Takahashi Rumiko, Mangaka of Inuyasha

[Lord Raine]

I'm not kidding. It's not actually Bleach, but it's so incredibly similar that it is almost unbelievable.

Just in the first chapter, we've got:

~ A main character who is a normal human save for the fact that they can see spirits.

~ Spirits that are normal ghosts unless they linger for too long in the world of the living, at which point they corrupt into monsters.

~ A group of spiritual beings that normal individuals cannot typically see, who admit to being "essentially Shinigami" and run around sending ghosts on into the cycle of reincarnation and combating corrupted ghosts.

~ A single "Shinigami" of the opposite gender to the main character accidentally getting the main character involved in an attempted purification gone wrong, where they are forced to combat a corrupted ghost.

~ Said Shinigami mysteriously showing up again at the end of the first chapter in a body that everyone else can see, attending the main character's school.


So yeah. Sauce. I wonder if chapter two will have the Shinigami shacking up in the main character's house? Only time will tell.


This is really only made all the more surreal by what the ghost(s) turned into after it corrupted. Seriously, just go and read it. It's wacky.

 

[trevelyan1983]

Huge shout out to Hayao Miyazaki, in the first part of chapter one, too.

Nice to see she's taken her art style out of the 80's and into 2000 <s>barring the fact that it's yet another Ranma/Yasha male design, and a pig-tailed Kagome chick</s>, but I have little faith left in Takahashi - or her legion of fans, who will doubtlessly adore this.

 

[SotF]

So its probably going to be another abusive/BDSM type relationship mixed in with a names filed off Bleach setting...

joy...

 

[shiki]

So its probably going to be another abusive/BDSM type relationship mixed in with a names filed off Bleach setting...

joy...

Give it another 10 or so chapters. So far, there has been no indication of that occurring. She has had nice female leads before...

From the three chapters so far, I don't think it will be like Bleach. It has been relatively more humor oriented than anything else. Less Ranma/Inuyasha like and more similar to some of her earlier works.

 

[nuclear death frog]

Chapter three was published Wednesday night. Although that isn't much I think it's already diverging and will wind up very different from Bleach.

 

[nick012000]

I wonder how long it'll take before we start seeing Ichigo/Rinne slashfics.

 

[Lord Raine]

Another potential comparison. We thought Ichigo was a normal human, but found out later that he had Shinigami blood. Given the fact that the main character seemed to be genuinely related to her aunt/sister, and that said relative was obviously a Shinigami, it would seem as though she too unknowingly possesses supernatural heritage.

Give it another 10 or so chapters.

I intend to, but that doesn't change how much of chapter one is a direct ripoff of Bleach. They must not have the same laws on plagiarization in Japan that they do elsewhere, because seriously. That is just excessive.

Nice to see she's taken her art style out of the 80's and into 2000

I'm glad someone else thought that her artwork has drastically improved. She's been stuck in the same level and same style for years. It's nice to finally see some improvement. (Though you can still see traces of that old, old 80's style of facial construction if you look long enough.)

 

[Vexarian]

*Slams LR's face with a cake, and as a result slamming his head into a wall*

NEW SERIES!

*Runs off in chibi-form, waving arms and leaping into the air*

 

[tahu1809]

Hay give her a brak she's like the Stan Lee of Manga.

 

[Latewave]

How dare you befoul the name of Stan Lee.

 

[grant]

This doesn't seem the right place to have this thread.

 

[jaredstar]

soooooo how long do you think it will be before the crossovers start

 

[Luthorne]

So yeah. Sauce. I wonder if chapter two will have the Shinigami shacking up in the main character's house? Only time will tell.

Or you could swing over here, which has up through chapter three in English, and find out for yourself.

Though, really, protagonists who can see spirits are pretty common in manga, at least in ones with a spiritual bent, and the notion of human ghosts becoming rather monstrous if they don't move on has also been around for a fair bit. Shinigami not being visible to most humans and acting as reapers who maintain the cycle of life is fairly par for the course in series where shinigami pop up in, for that matter...Full Moon o Sagashite springs to mind, as does Botan from Yu Yu Hakusho...

Overall, the series kind of reminds me of an amalgamation of Bleach and Ghost Hunter so far...with the usual sprinkling of Takahashi madness.

And now I'm imagining a Bleach/Full Moon o Sagashite fusion. Ack. Disturbing.

 

[nick012000]

So yeah. Sauce. I wonder if chapter two will have the Shinigami shacking up in the main character's house? Only time will tell.

Or you could swing over here, which has up through chapter three in English, and find out for yourself.

Not working for me. All I get is a blank page with a red bar on the left side and a few teeny-tiny white-on-white buttons down the left side that crash the page when I press them.

 

[Luthorne]

So yeah. Sauce. I wonder if chapter two will have the Shinigami shacking up in the main character's house? Only time will tell.

Or you could swing over here, which has up through chapter three in English, and find out for yourself.

Not working for me. All I get is a blank page with a red bar on the left side and a few teeny-tiny white-on-white buttons down the left side that crash the page when I press them.

Lemme guess; not in America? I think someone mentioned that that site doesn't work for non-American-based servers or something along those lines...not sure on all the details, since I'm not really incredibly computer savvy.

 

[nick012000]

So yeah. Sauce. I wonder if chapter two will have the Shinigami shacking up in the main character's house? Only time will tell.

Or you could swing over here, which has up through chapter three in English, and find out for yourself.

Not working for me. All I get is a blank page with a red bar on the left side and a few teeny-tiny white-on-white buttons down the left side that crash the page when I press them.

Lemme guess; not in America? I think someone mentioned that that site doesn't work for non-American-based servers or something along those lines...not sure on all the details, since I'm not really incredibly computer savvy.

I live in Australia. I guess we jus have to wait for someone to download it and upload it to onemanga, I suppose.

 

[zeebee1]

So, is she finally going to write a female lead that can actually fight?

 

[nick012000]

So, is she finally going to write a female lead that can actually fight?

She was the one who wrote the harem manga whose lead female the oni chick with the leapard-spot bikini, wasn't she? Wasn't she capable of fighting? I've never actually seen the series.

 

[Lord Raine]

So, is she finally going to write a female lead that can actually fight?

She was the one who wrote the harem manga whose lead female the oni chick with the leapard-spot bikini, wasn't she? Wasn't she capable of fighting? I've never actually seen the series.

Yes. Lum is capable of flight and has significant electrically-based powers. She's also physically superior to a normal human, and has moments where she displays a near genius-level of intelligence in regards to technology, even though she herself has a somewhat immature mindset.

I believe she's technically classified as being a magic girl, though I can't quite recall.

 

[Garahs]

Though I think Rumiko was pressured into making Lum the female lead do to her popularity. If I remember correctly, it was originally supposed to be the girl that promised Ataru to marry him if he won Tag (forgot her name).

 

[Lord Raine]

I believe that's also one of the theories behind the Nekoken in Ranma. Shampoo was too much like Lum, and there was no really legitimate reason for Ranma to not marry her beyond him not feeling like it.

Some believe that the Nekoken and Shampoo's own cursed form are a deliberate act to lock Shampoo out of all realistic running for Ranma's hand.

 

[nick012000]

LOL at the reverse-gigai cloak. She really is making this like reverse Bleach, isn't she?

 

[Ura Mamoru]

Chapter 4 (See Luthorne's link, if it'll let you from where you live).

Was that a Panda!Genma boat?

 

[jojo23]

Anyone else still following this?
It still remains pretty interesting, but I get the feeling that the mangaka is falling into her old trap of Zero plot progression.

 

[daniel_gudman]

I read a few chapters, but I lost interest, because it does seem like it's "okay, we've found the status quo, get used to it because it needs to last us 500 chapters."

I'm a little amused that people think it's a Bleach ripoff... the spiritual sensitive that can see ghosts, ghosts corrupting into monsters, and the starting setting being a school are all cliches of the genre, not just Bleach.

Hell, you could describe "Ga-Rei" this way, and that's literally the first manga that came to mind as "kinda similar".