Sakura of DOOM

Since I was (finally) making rachelmanija her Cracktastic Manga Fowl of DOOM icon, I decided to make some more as well! Also, I can now color in black-and-white manga images!

9 Bleach icons, 1 Samurai Champloo, and assorted manga/anime fowl of DOOM below the cut.

( Icons! )

I really adored Cowboy Bebop, so I wasn't quite sure what my reaction to Samurai Champloo would be. But after rachelmanija told me it was a deliberately anachronistic yet extremely accurate loosely-structured quest story set in late Edo Japan, complete with hip hop, I decided I'd definitely give it a try, if nothing else.

Fuu, a bouncy 15-year-old waitress with no family, manages to sort of rescue Jin, a stoic ronin, and Mugen, a convict from Ryuukyuu (Okinawa). In return, she makes them promise to a) not kill each other and b) help her find a samurai who smells of sunflowers. And off they go, a-questing.

It took a while for the characters to catch me, but right now, I really want to watch more! This is largely due to episodes 6 and 7. Episode 6 is extremely cracktastic and had me giggling so hard that I would have fallen off the bed, except rilina's laptop was on my knees and that would have been bad. So I just giggled nonstop through all of this episode and half of the next episode.

Episode 7 is more serious, and there's just some beautiful animation in the last parts.

To give you some sense of how the series works, the first episode starts with a statement that the series is set in Edo Japan (1600-1867) and that it is historically inaccurate. And then they add something like, "And if you can't deal with that, screw you!"

Another episode narration starts with a summation of the action done kabuki style, and yet another follows Fuu, Mugen and Jin's tracks across an ancient map of Japan, except their trail looks like a series of subway stops.

And now, episode six, which is currently my favorite episode ever! I'm cut-tagging, but seriously, anyone can read this. No spoilers except for the episode, and it was so utterly cracktastic and insane and funny and historically accurate yet anachronistic that it still makes me giggle!

( Episode 6 )

rachelmanija has some write-ups, as does kate_nepveu (here), and rilina (eps. 1-4 and 5-7).

(ETA: fixed links)

If anyone else has any, let me know!