Big Fat Icon Post (SDK, Saiyuki, Bleach, Fruits Basket, Blade of the Immortal)

[chomiji]

I've been having much too much fun with my icons. At first I felt very protective and parental and didn't want to let any of them go, but now that I have lots of them, I don't mind so much ... and it's very warm and fuzzy to see them show up in other folks' posts.

Samples:

Samurai Deeper Kyo
1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8
Saiyuki
9	10	11
12	13
Bleach
14	15	16
17	18	19
19	20	21
Fruits Basket
22	23	24
25	26	27
Blade of the Immortal
28	29

Some Notes:

9. Lyrics adapted from those of a traditional British folk tune.

10. With apologies to certain boutique popular with Gen Y.

12. Inspired by the Young Lady, who said that Gojyo's going-adventuring wardrobe in the first books made her think of what happens when you let preschoolers dress themselves.

27. Yes, I know, everyone makes an icon out of this picture. But there's so little good Furuba art online. Let me know if you have a pipeline to some more! (And besides, I messed with his mouth a little to make it look more like the manga Hatori.) Lyrics from The Who, of course, in "Tommy."

28. Ummm ... there may be a generation gap issue here. The reference is to Dr. Suess' immortal work On Beyond Zebra.

29. Lyrics from folksinger Carrie Newcomer (song: "It's Not OK")

If there's another one I use regularly that you'd like to have, you can always ask ... (the ones I still feel the most protective about are the Yukimura ones I use regularly), and I love making them by request too.

ETA: And I meant to put all the disclaimers: no hotlinking to my poor Earthlink account, please credit, etc. etc.

Comments

[chomiji]

XD

I'm sorry, but I'm sort of not sorry too ... isn't it great? What a crazy series. Once you start getting into the Mibu arc, there's no turning back. I love the mix of over-the-top shounen action and angsty back-stories. Who's your favorite character, or do you have several? Yukimura is my man, obviously. But I'm also very fond of Muramasa, and I have a soft spot for Akira.

Once you get through 22, let me know, and I'll get you the link to a very pretty extra cartoon that appears in the art book. But it's a bit of a spoiler for some of the things that are revealed in that volume.

[tangerine-haze.livejournal.com]

Argh! I can't believe how hard it was to find copies of the manga to buy. Can you believe they didn't have half of them on Amazon.com?! I finally managed to get my hands on volumes 17-25 through a combo of Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.Of course Volume 17 was the last to arrive.... isn't that the way things always turn out? Having all the other volumes and not 17 was torture. But now I'm happy! I'm off to go read some SDK. Hehehehe.

ps can you point me in the direction of some good SDK fan fics?

[chomiji]

Enjoy! You're getting into the really meaty, involved part of the story!

Fanfic is kind of a problem ... I should take another look at the Pit of Voles and see whether it's all as bad as I remember. (meganbmoore recently described as making her want "to claw my eyes out.") Otherwise there is some on the love_deeper LJ community, but ... one of love_deeper's major activities for a while was fan translations of the new Japanese issues as they came out. So the vast majority of the fic there is full of really, really important spoilers for the end of the series.

There are a few little things:

1sentence for Akira/Benitora - many of them surprisingly effective and pithy.

Flash fic. Sasuke musing on survival instincts ... and Benitora

Give and Take (PG; Kyo/Hotaru)

Also, from Yuletide:

Casual Observer (G; gen, Yukimura-centric, but mostly about - you guessed it, Kyo/Yuya. Still, pretty well-written.)

And, um > blush <   I've written a few things myself.

[tangerine-haze.livejournal.com]

Long time no talk on the SDK front. Well I've finally made it to Vol 28... I now own about half the series. It's really getting good from this point, but there's no more to buy! I haven't been able to find any scans for 29+ Do you have any ideas if such exist? I've seen some translations, but not scans to go with.

[chomiji]

Hmmm ... sanada's Hana-mi SDK site has scans/trans for 33 onward, and she filled in a couple of the translations betwen those and now, but no one seems to have done the scans. I think that the fangirls were just really getting going with LJ etc. at that point in the Japanese publications. The late lamented SDKPowaaa site, which was French, had scans ... but the webmaster got bored and just pulled the plug one day. All that great stuff - GONE!

Hmmm .. this looks like vol. 29 here and the first chapter of vol. 30. But I'm not having much luck finding the others. Sorry!

[tangerine-haze.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Vol 29 is definitely a pivotal chapter. I'm glad you had a link for it. :)

I think you said something about 33 Volumes so far. I've read some comments that say spoiler for the end of SDK, etc. I was just wondering is SDK finished in Japan or is it still ongoing?

[tangerine-haze.livejournal.com]

Ok I'm a dork. I just scrolled up in our conversation and saw you said the series went to 38 Volumes. *head desk* I'm a moron! LOL!

[chomiji]

>> Ok I'm a dork. I just scrolled up in our conversation and saw you said the series went to 38 Volumes. <<

Not to worry! Yes, the series ended in Japan in the early fall of 2006 - just about the time I first got into it!