For part 1 of this article, click here.

The Soul Reaper Academy (every society needs an academy – see Plato, Aristotle, Hogwarts), founded 1000+ years ago by Commander-General Yamamoto, graduated the youngest person to ever become a captain, Hitsugaya Toushiro. Serious in countenance, sharp of mind, fierce in battle, child-like in stature (brilliantly voiced by seiyuu Romi Park and by English voice actor Steve Staley), with spikey white hair and turquoise eyes that made him an outcast in his rural Rukongai district (where most souls live; the Sereitei, Court of Pure Souls, is for the shinigami and nobility), and thus a loner, he nonetheless mastered the strongest ice-based Zanpakutou ever in its full bankai form, Hyourinmaru (manifests as an ice dragon and a regal humanoid). He stands tall amongst the captains, despite his relative youth, respected and well loved. But his soul knows only hard work and justice, unlike those who had defected and nearly killed him and everything he loves. Toushiro, too, knows loss, and he and Ichigo had seen battle together and they are friends, though opposites: Toushiro the samurai dubbed a “snotty brat” by Ichigo who is…well…15. When we meet Toshiro in this story, he and his lieutenant, Matsumoto Rangiku (who’d discovered him in the Rukongai), and soldiers of Squad 10 are guarding the royal family and the magical artifact, the Ouin, when the entourage is attacked, the Ouin stolen. The forces suffer heavy losses and Toushiro is seriously wounded. He sees his masked attacker, who says, “You haven’t changed,” and thus knows him by voice and leaves his post to go after him.

When a law becomes unjust, it is our duty to defy it and rewrite it. Ichigo taught Captain Kuchiki Byakuya (Rukia’s noble brother by adoption) this during the ordeal of Rukia’s execution and Byakuya eventually thanked him for it. Our Founding Fathers and the revolutionaries before them who’d inspired them voiced such axioms, schooled in the classics back to Plato. The Japanese constitution is based upon ours, framed by MacArthur at the armistice after WWII. We share an ideal and thus Bleach speaks on both sides of the world. And like much Japanese literature, though it shows many fierce battles, it counsels that battles are to be avoided whenever possible between people of reason – a hallmark of Philosophy, Just War Theory (Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas). Ichigo gets all this because he’s the outsider of the Soul Society, 17^th vs. 21^st C. The others are slower to defy even seemingly unjust laws and decisions, finding injustice in their midst so hard to believe due to their resolve, their utter certainty that what they risk their lives to do every day is Good, that all life on both sides of the veil depends on them (think Sorkin’s Marines in A Few Good Men). (more…)

To celebrate this week’s release of Surrogates on DVD, director Jonathan Mostow sat down with the press for a virtual press conference and ComicMix was in attendance. Here are highlights from that conversation. Our review of the film and DVD ran yesterday.

ComicMix: Mr. Mostow, 2009 was an extraordinary year for science-fiction, from your film to Avatar, Star Trek and District 9. Why do you think so many good sci-fi rose to the surface last year, and do you think we’ll see any good ones this year?

Jonathan Mostow: First of all, thank you for mentioning our film in the same breath as those other movies — all of which I loved. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 2009 was a good year for sci-fi. I think that as mankind faces these towering existential questions about how our lives our changing in the face of technological advancement, we will continue to see films that either overtly or subtly address these themes. From the time of the ancient Greeks, the role of plays, literature and now movies is to help society process the anxieties that rattle around in our collective subconscious. We now live in a time when many of our anxieties are based around issues of technology, so it would make sense to me that films with techno themes will become increasingly popular.

CMIX: This isn’t your first time dealing with a high concept of man versus machine. Can you talk about why this concept intrigues you?

Mostow: It’s true that I’ve touched on this thematic material before — in fact, I think all my films in some way have dealt with the relationship between man and technology, so apparently, it’s an idea that fascinates me. I assume your question implies a relationship between the ideas in Terminator and The Surrogates , so I’ll answer accordingly… Whereas T3 posed technology as a direct threat to mankind, I see The Surrogates more as a movie that poses a question about technology — specifically, what does it cost us — in human terms — to be able to have all this advanced technology in our lives. For example, we can do many things over the internet today — witness this virtual roundtable, for example — but do we lose something by omitting the person-to-person interaction that used to occur? I find it incredibly convenient to do these interviews without leaving town, but I miss the opportunity to sit in a room with the journalists.

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Robert Kirkman fans ought to pull out a celebratory snack from their beards, and rejoice as AMC has given the go to a pilot for the long running comic series The Walking Dead. Kirkman’s series, a “what happens after the zombie movie is over”, will be brought to the cable network from an adaptation from scribe Frank Darabont, and will be produced by Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert. Fans should feel safe in Darabont’s pen, as it’s adapted (and directed) some major works in the past, including Stephen King’s The Mist, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, as well as The Blob and The Fly II.

“Working with people like Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd is the right way in for us to deliver a project of distinction in this genre,” AMC’s Charlie Collier said.

No dates have been given yet for filming, so start gathering your zombie hunting gear in the meantime.

Here’s the press release from Sony:

CULVER CITY, Calif., January , 2010 – Marc Webb, the director of the Golden Globe nominated Best Picture (500) Days of Summer,
 will direct the next chapter in the Spider-Man franchise, set to hit
theaters summer 2012, it was jointly announced today by
Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios.

Written
by James Vanderbilt, Webb will work closely with producers Avi Arad and
Laura Ziskin in developing the project, which will begin production
later this year.

Commenting on the announcement, Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony
Pictures Entertainment, and Matt Tolmach, president of Columbia
Pictures, said, “At its core, Spider-Man is a small, intimate human
story about an everyday teenager that takes place in an epic
super-human world. The key for us as we sought a new director was to
identify filmmakers who could give sharp focus to Peter Parker’s life.
We wanted someone who could capture the awe of being in Peter’s shoes
so the audience could experience his sense of discovery while giving
real heart to the emotion, anxiety, and recklessness of that age and
coupling all of that with the adrenaline of Spider-Man’s adventure. We
believe Marc Webb is the perfect choice to bring us on that journey.”

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Robert B. Parker, the man behind the Spenser, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone mystery series, as well as the Appaloosa westerns, died this morning at his writing desk at the age of 77. Parker had written over sixty novels and won the Grand Master Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America.

I’d seen a few episodes of the 80’s TV series Spenser For Hire with Robert Urich and Avery Brooks (Spen-sah!) when it first aired, but I was introduced to Parker’s writing by DC Comics. The Spenser novels were a secret passion of a lot of the editors and writers there because of Parker’s elegant and compact style. I picked up on them and devoured them all.

I suspect one of the hidden appeals of the Spenser novels to comics writers wasn’t the mysteries themselves– Parker once said that his mysteries weren’t hard to figure out– but the moral dilemmas and character choices that came out of them. They weren’t so much whodunnits as whatthehelldowedoaboutits.

For many people around the world, the names Spenser, Susan Silverman, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone evoke more of Massachusetts than the Kennedy name does– and that’s saying a great deal.

I met Parker a few times, and he was just about what you would have expected from his prose or his appearances in some of the Spenser TV movies– thoughtful and cordial, yet without pretense. I am saddened by his passing, and wonder how I’m going to be able to reliably tell in the future when spring has come without a new RBP novel to mark it. My sympathies to his wife Joan, and his children David and Daniel.