'Prayers for Japan'

     Over the past week and a half now, the Japanese have been suffering from one of the most catastrophic disasters to ever hit their Island. I love Japan, and it upsets me to see them going through so much pain. I have a sort of hopeless feeling, like, "What can I do?" I've donated, but I still feel somewhat helpless. I decided I could do more... And this is what I came up with:

Click for a higher resolution (clearer picture)...

     The idea: As I was surfing the web, trying to find the latest news about the disaster, I stumbled upon an Anime News Network article about an artist, Noizi Ito, drawing Haruhi Suzumiya, from the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, praying for Japan. I thought it was a beautiful idea. Then I had an idea... What if I drew some other anime characters doing the same?

      It took over a week of off-and-on drawing and fiddling with Photoshop, but I was able to do it. I took the originals, drawn by hand, scanned them into the computer, and then cleaned them up in Photoshop. I was going to color it, but the size of the picture and the slowness of my aging computer were each causing debilitating problems. I think it's just fine not colored though; the point still gets across. My prayers still go out to Japan in their time of need. I hope they can get the reactors in Fukushima out of their critical state, and that Japan as a whole will recover quickly from this crisis. Ganbatte!

     Now, time to throw in a little quiz: See if you know where all of the characters in the picture above came from (bonus points if you can name them all). Answers below (highlight to see!).

Bottom left: Togame the Strategian, from Katanagatari.

Bottom center: Konata Izumi, from Lucky Star.

Bottom right: Miku Hatsune, a Crypton Future Media Vocaloid.

Middle left: Ash Ketchum and Pikachu, from Pokemon.

Middle center: Goku, from Dragonball Z.

Middle right: Edward Elric, from Fullmetal Alchemist.

Top left: Ichigo Kurosaki, from Bleach.

Top right: Naruto, from Naruto Shippuden.

(The above characters are the trademarks of their... Do I even need to put this here?)