Is he really there? Why, yes he is!

Out of all the cons in the country, San Diego Comic Con has managed to pull off the nearly impossible:

Bringing Kubo Tite to United States!

That's right, the acclaimed creator of Bleach graced us with his presence at SDCC 2008. In a move that seems to be Comic Con's attempt to bringing anime fans into the attendance figure, I saw offers I could not refuse. One of the offers was of course, the Kubo Tite panel. Fearing the flood of fans trying to enter this panel, the Traveling Valentine crew, along with many Bleach fans, sat through two panels before it. It worked out rather well since the second panel before Kubo-sensei's Panel was the Hasbro Transformers panel where we expressed our joy over the picture of the Blurr deluxe figure. But I digress.

As expected, as soon as the door opened for the Kubo Tite panel, Bleach fans entered like a landslide. I just wish whoever was in charge of the panel told us sooner about how we had to vacate the first two front rows because we got kicked back to middle area instead of the front row.

When Kubo Tite came out, the audience greeted him with thunderous applause. The panel started with introductions: the translator for Kubo-sensei, the man of the hour himself, Kubo-sensei's editor whose name I keep forgetting, and the editor of Viz Media. Before the next segment of the panel, a Comic Con representative introduced Mr. Kubo Tite with the prestigious Inkpot Award for his excellence in graphic novels. After that, the panel also showed the two winners of the Bleach fanart contests and introduced 10 lucky winners from Japan who won trips to Comic Con throgh an essay contest.

The panel went underway with a video tour of Kubo-sensei's studio. Somewhere in Japan is this two-floor studio where he and his assistants create this world of Shinigami. As the tour went on, Kubo-sensei added comments to the video time by time. When the video tour showed his CD player, I thought I saw a familiar CD in it. I thought about bit more after I came back home and found out it was the new Bad Religion CD. I swear, this man is transcending all levels in my book now. Kubo-sensei went on to say that he currently has 2300 CDs (not a typo, people). The video tour showed a huge CD rack with portions of his CD collections,which explains the rest are stacked somewhere else.

The tour continued with lot of interesting facts about the studio as explained by Kubo-sensei. He commented about his kitchen, which was a small clean kitchen with a lead fridge from the recent Indiana Jones movie. He went on to say that the reason this kitchen is clean is because no one cooks in it. Then the tour showed many other things in the studio such as a rare Bleach watch, gift art boards from Jump artists such as Matsuei Yuusei (Majin tantei Nougami Neuro), and Yoshi sawai (Bobobo-bo bo-bobo). The tour proceeded to Kubo-sensei's office, which at the end showed him interacting with his editor.

After the video tour, the Q&A session with Kubo Tite was next. In order to move the panel smoothly, they asked the audience to write their questions in an index card. Many questions were asked, only few were answered. There were few interesting points out of this Q&A session:

- He always wanted to be a manga-ka, and if he wasn't he might have gone into architecture.
- To the aspiring manga-kas: “Believe in your talent. Do not let anyone bring you down and trust yourself.”
- There will be background story on Kurosaki Isshin (finally!)
- The term 'Quincy' is based on 5-point star and latin term 'quinquae' which means five.
- The hell butterfly comes from an actual species of butterfly and its literative association with death.
- Kon's background story that is so depressing.

When the panel ended, everyone stood up to thank Kubo-sensei and believe me, you could feel the electricity all around the panel room. When we got out of the panel room, they gave us an exclusive SDCC Bleach poster, which I need to get mine back from Kat.
The Kubo Tite panel was one of those panels that should not be missed if you were a Bleach fan. Even if you're not a fan of the series, not only was he a class act with a sense of humor but also he was inspirational to any aspiring artists out there. This is one panel I will not forget for the rest of my life.

(Note: SDCC did not allow anyone taking pictures of the panel.)

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