(no subject)

[winneganfake]

OK, TV watching types. Well, anime-watching types, anyways. I need some input. Aside from what's on Adult Swim, I've been pretty out of the loop for what's good in the way of new anime shows, and I need to start doing some research towards Sakura-con designs. So, any really good series hit the States in the last year and a half or so? And can anyone think of any anime that features masks or a masked character or two?

Comments

[feralboy.livejournal.com]

Naruto is pretty popular and there are a couple of masked characters. It seemed like every third kid at the San Diego ComicCon was wearing a Naruto costume. The "special agents" of the leaf village also wear these animal masks which would probably be interesting to a few people.

[coeli.livejournal.com]

Let's see... I'm not up on the most current stuff, but here are the masks that come to mind. (Some of the reference pics are poor, but the best I found without an exhaustive search.)

Naruto does have some good masks. Among them are the ones worn by the ANBU squad:
http://www.narutopride.com/images/anbu.jpg
The character Haku has my favorite mask of the series (or rather of the limited part of the series I've seen.)
http://www.narutospain.com/mdn/personajes/Haku.jpg

One of my longtime favorite masked anime characters is Larva, from Vampire Princess Miyu:
http://www.ld50.hu/res/user_images/004/555/tn_120_larva(vampire_princess_miyu).jpg

San, from Mononoke Hime/Princess Mononoke, has a cool mask:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v144/ameko/san01.gif

Sango, from Inu Yasha, sometimes wears a half-mask:
http://kiltgirl1.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/sango.jpg

Karasu from Yu Yu Hakusho wears a similar one:
http://www.yuyuhakusho.com/characters/villains/karasu/picture.gif

The Hollows (soul-devouring spirits) from Bleach have masks, each different but always white and basically skull-like. At one point, for complicated reasons, Ichigo (the hero) has a Hollow mask too. This version of the character looks to be currently popular among cosplayers.
http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/4720/hi0ld.gif

It's very old-school, but fans of classic Gundam stuff might go for Char Aznable's mask, with
http://www.encirobot.com/gund/nemi/char06.jpg
or without helmet:
http://www.flowerstorm.net/disa/Pictures/Gundam/anti-char-zechs.jpg
Fans of the more recent Gundam Wing might prefer the blatant imitation of Char, Zechs Merquise:
http://br.geocities.com/neoanimes/imagens/sinopses/gundam_wing_serie/zechs_merquise.jpg
Truly up-to-date fans, however, will be most interested in Rau Le Creuset from Gundam SEED:
http://www.sokutsu.com/IMG/jpg/Rau-Le-Creuset.jpg
Perhaps you could make Rau's mask and display it with a note about the others, since they are less "current" but might draw a commission request.

Vega from Street Fighter has a fairly spiffy mask.
http://www.geocities.com/cecil.geo/vega2.jpg

Chichiri, from Fushigi Yuugi, sometimes wears a very simple mask:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/6409/ca36.jpg

I don't know much about Kakurenbo, but it's a relatively recent horror anime in which children wear catlike (or perhaps foxlike) masks for a sinister game of hide-and-seek:
http://www.kds.kddi.com/topics/kakurenbo.bmp

And then there's Kekko Kamen, a superheroine rarely cosplayed because, apart from mask, gloves, and boots, she does her derring-do completely naked. For obvious reasons, I had trouble finding screen shots that focused on the mask...

If you want to do some Japanese-inspired art masks, you might want to draw inspiration from the face masks of samurai armor. There are some really interesting designs:
http://www.artsofthesamurai.com/menpo/html/menpo.html
And of course, there are many traditional Noh masks (some sources say 250 designs!) which might spark ideas.
http://nohmask21.com/eu/mlist.html

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

Bleargh. I keep meaning to reply to this, and keep spacing on it. Anyways, thanks for all the references at once!

With the Bleach series, any idea which episodes feature Ichigo with the mask? The ones I've caught on Adult Swim don't seem to be anywhere close to that storyline, so I may just netflix the disc with the right episodes.

The classic Gundam stuff I knew about, but I had barely heard of SEED, much less that there was a masked character in it- spiffy. And probably getting added to the build list.

And as far as Kakurenbo goes, definitely check it out- I own a copy personally, and it's up there on my fave animes list. Good storytelling (even for a half-hour short piece) and awesome visuals. I regularly do two masks inspired from this anime.

Anyways, again, thanks for all the links!

[coeli.livejournal.com]

Glad I could help!

As for Bleach - I think the mask first appears in Episode 19, though it doesn't become a major storyline factor until waaaay down the road (much farther than I think the official translations have reached.)

Thanks for the recommendation on Kakurenbo. I'll definitely check it out!