'Bleach' Designer Shares Slick Spider-Gwen Sketch

Bleach was a manga and anime series known for its slick character designs, and one of its [...]

By Nick Valdez

Bleach was a manga and anime series known for its slick character designs, and one of its designers just gave Spider-Gwen a cool manga twist.

Masashi Kudo, who designed characters for Bleach, uploaded this cool drawing of Spider-Gwen on Twitter:

This sketch depicts a curvier Spider-Gwen whose suit has been slowly stripped away at parts, showing her worried face underneath. Fans of Bleach will note that her mouth has the slightly open design, much like characters had in Kubo's original work when drawn in casual poses between chapters.

It is great to see Spider-Gwen's already great suit and character design given just an extra pop from a manga character designer. The blend of Eastern and Western character sensibilities certainly makes for a great union.

Masashi Kudo worked for Studio Pierrot, the company who adapted Tite Kubo's original manga into an anime. Kudo himself designed characters who weren't depicted in the manga, such as characters from the non-canon films, and even contributed to the colorization of characters Kubo hadn't finalized yet.

For those unfamiliar with Spider-Gwen, the Marvel Comics series began in February 2015 and focuses on Spider-Man character Gwen Stacy. Although she has been killed off in Earth-616 (the mainline Marvel Comics canon), this version comes from the alternate Earth-65. First introduced in Edge of Spider-Verse #2 as part of the 2015 storyline "Spider-Verse," this alternate Gwen Stacy who was the one bitten by the radioactive spider and had developed powers instead of Peter Parker. The series is currently being written by Jason Latour, illustrated by Robbi Rodriguez, and colored by Rico Renzi.

For those unfamiliar with Tite Kubo's Bleach, the series follows the young delinquent Ichigo Kurosaki, who had the ability to see spirits. He soon obtains the power of a Soul Reaper - one meant to usher lost souls to the afterlife - and now has the duty to defend the living world from monstrous dark spirits known as Hollows

The manga was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump from 2001 to 2016, and was collected into 74 volumes. It has been adapted into English thanks to VIZ Media, and has sold over 900 million copies in Japan. The series was adapted into an anime by Studio Pierrot from 2004 to 2012, and has four feature-length animations, rock musicals, video games, and a ton of other merchandise.

The English language broadcast premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block in 2006, and you currently find the Japanese and English language versions now streaming on Hulu.

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