That Genchu is a sentimental softy. The small tablet with the Daisuke Red Dragon symbol on it is a spirit tablet.
We’ve posted a new page to the Extras section to NN4B: Bushido Bards. On this page we are slowly collecting some of the many song-based reader contributions to NN4B. We’ve only just started, but check it out!
Work on prepping NN4B Voulme 2 for print continues. The book is going to be somewhere between 200 and 300 pages! I can’t really give an accurate estimate yet because we have quite a few “pages” online that will have to become 2 or 3 pages once they’re formatted for print.
We’re working really hard on improving these pages as we go. We’re adding bubbles, improving the sound effects (not yet complete on this page), updating the panel layout, and revisiting the dialog itself.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the first page of volume 2. I think you’ll see, it’s quite an improvement over the old version from nearly a decade ago!
Published on by Joseph Kovell
Needs more fire 😉
…an unknown, possibly destiny-laden bird cawing in the background?
Shit just got real, folks.
It’s an assassin birdfish sent by Hirotomo.
Daisuke
note to self, eventually make spirit tablets for all the clans IRL maybe for Halloween….”Spooky scary Skella-Daisuke…”
#2spooky4genchu
You’re quite ambitious!
Headcannon: Genchu had a Daisuke Girlfriend!!!!!
Hmmm…
AND a Wataro Girlfriend!
That WOULD explain a few things….. Wait, a Daisuke AND Wataro girlfriend AND he was close with both Ken AND Yori………… KNEW HIM REALLY WELL.
His effects were on a beach with palm trees? Or did he just totally take off and leave the others behind?
I imagine the “holy flipping shnikies of death!” have been toned down. The line was never that funny in the first place.
He says it a total of one time now, I don’t much care for that line now that I’m old and grumpy.
“holy flipping shnikies of death!”was the very catch phrase that won me over and made me a fan of this comic. A brave samurai warrior said “holy flipping shnikies of death!” where else in this genre am I gonna read that. you had me at “holy flipping shnikies of death!”
No doubt when you get as old and grumpy as me, you’ll realize how that’s not funny at all and needed to be toned down!
Well, they’re near a beach, since the portugese came in at a port. Genchu is introduced in that scene fishing on a boat, and he’s actually kind of a beach bum, living in a shack on the beach. Palm trees are probably NOT the appropriate foliage to be drawn, but that’s just what happened, I’m sorry I don’t know the ecology of Japanese beaches!
Me either, and I later remembered they arrived by boat, so a beach wouldn’t necessarily be that far away from the manor.
Nooooooooo! You left the “DONK” out of the next-to-last panel! Please don’t mess with the sound effects! *breaks down in tears*
Worry not, reynard! The sound effects just haven’t been added in yet. I intend to hand draw them in the style of the later pages instead of warping a font like I did on the original older pages.
Who put the donk in the donk-a-donk-a-donk?
Why are you changing the classic dialog so much? I can’t be the only one who thinks the older dialog was better.
I’m sure some do prefer the older dialog. But some also prefer a black stroke around text instead of word bubbles, which is why I stuck with the stroke for so long even though I thought word bubbles were cleaner and better visually.
We’re tweaking the dialog to reflect the personalities that the characters have come to be defined by in the later part of the comic. We also don’t change the dialog unless it’s too wordy and can be simplified, or if there’s the opportunity to turn up the comedy a bit more without breaking the scene. Trust me when I say that any added jokes get a lot of genuine laughter before they get added in! Joe and I are both confident the new dialog is going to be more enjoyable to new readers.
Even a translator needs his swords
For a moment I thought he was gonna change into the kimono . . . that would’ve been a bad idea, unless he wanted to be recognized . . .
… I think I prefer the old version of the page. But that might just be because I prefer loose text to speech bubbles… and also I’m sentimental.
A bit of trimming and shrinking and growing huh? better texts?
Oh my word, the original NNFB unbubbled text! You know I had forgotten that? I remeber when I originally saw that, I thought, “ok, these guys just want to tell a story, they don’t give a sh*t about gpic novel convention!” and somehow that made me appreciatethe story more. I’m really pleased at where the comic’s quality ended up, mind, no doubting that!
What a foolish corpse
I wanna go back to my little grass shack…