Depressed by a Manga?

Bleach is just depressing right now. I have been keeping up with the manga, just not blogging about it. It's on chapter 424 right now. There are a few things bugging me and I just need to vent. If you haven't read up to the current chapter, be warned that the rest of this post will be full of spoilers for you.

First, the Deicide arc was freaking annoying. It took forever for anything to happen, and most of it was just Aizen leveling up. He turned into a freaking butterfly, for goodness sake. That wasn't exactly intimidating. The whole "yay we killed Aizen ... oh wait, we didn't" routine had gotten really old. I was looking forward to the guy finally kicking the bucket. But nooooo. I'm not allowed that satisfaction. Even Ichigo's  final getsuga tenshou doesn't do it. No dying, just sealing. It's like playing an incredibly long and difficult video game, battling the final boss for ages, and then, just when he's down to 10 hp, someone comes along and says, "alright, we're done here". It makes the last 400 chapters seem like a futile endeavor.

That seal is not going to last for 20,000 years. Come on, people. Don't you remember that the guy hypnotized everyone in Soul Society? There's no way he's gonna stay locked up for that long. Besides ... why only 20,000 years?? Why not forever? Or even better ... figure out a way to kill him, dammit!

It just pisses me off that Ichigo loses his shinigami powers and doesn't even accomplish his goal. Well, I guess Karakura town is safe, but I don't see that as the final goal. As long as Aizen is alive, no one is safe. Even if he is sealed.

So now, Ichigo has no powers at all. Normal human teenager. Well, he's strong, but I don't see that as incredibly unusual. But he can't see any of the friends he made from Soul Society and he doesn't really have a purpose or any direction in life. Things continue on around him like they did before he got his powers. No one needs Ichigo.

Then there's the mountain of unanswered questions. Do Orihime and Chad still have their powers? What happened to the Visoreds? Ichigo would probably be able to see them since they're in gigais, right? I'm not gonna write them all out... suffice it to say that I'm not satisfied. It also doesn't help that I don't have any friends who keep up with Bleach, so I can't vent with them about all of this crap. (That would be why I'm writing this post.)

So when I start thinking about all of this, it brings my mood down. I had a particularly frustrating day today and ended up falling asleep in front of my computer. When I woke up from my involuntary nap, I started thinking about Bleach and got downright depressed. I'm sure that there are other factors involved here, including my incredibly high stress level as of late. I probably shouldn't be surprised that I'm affected so much by a manga. I'm always very affected by books and movies in general. Much more so when I find them engaging. Since I've spent so much time reading and watching Bleach, I guess it should be expected.

Still. It's just a manga. I should just get over it. Right?

Wow - It's been a long time....

It looks like I skipped September entirely.  Quite a change from posting nearly every day for months.  Well, there's a good reason.  All of my free time has been going toward cleaning.  I'm working on Kaichou wa Maid-sama with CrazyKitty Scans, which we're trying to get out as fast as possible every month. Since I do everything except translation and QC, I pretty much lose two nights of sleep for each chapter.

We're also working on Faster Than a Kiss. It was apparently dropped by another group after chapter 32, so we've got chapters 33 through 38 to do so far. We're not worried about the schedule as much on that one, but our goal is to release a chapter every two weeks.  If we stick to the schedule, chapter 33 should be out by Sunday! KWMS and FTAK are published in LaLa magazine, which is released on the 24th of each month.

My third project is Skip Beat! with Franky House. Luckily, I'm working with a great group on this one, including another cleaner and a typesetter. Last chapter I cleaned the whole thing, though. Kind of a rite of passage for joining the group it seems. :P Skip Beat is published in Hana to Yume, which is released on the 5th and 20th of each month, skipping every other 5th.

I'm insane. I have been keeping up on a few things, like the Kaichou wa Maid-sama anime (loved it!), Kuroshitsuji II (LOVED it!), and Bleach and Naruto mangas.  I just haven't had the time or energy to write things up. When I finish Ch. 33 of FTAK and we're done with Skip Beat Ch. 164, I'm going to take some time to go back and write in here. I really enjoy having a record of what I've read and watched, even though I now have some friends to talk to about this stuff since I've joined the scanlation community. I swear to not abandon this blog!!!