The Anime Streetwear Blog - Sword/Fish
How to Start Learning Japanese
Posted by Tomas & Sebastian on
As you may have guessed, Tomas and I are both avid anime and manga fans. Our interest in Japanese pop culture goes right back to elementary school. Reading and trading our issues of Shonen Jump at recess, while we excitedly discussed the latest chapters of Naruto, Dragonball, and One Piece. This is what Shonen Jump looked like at the time: They weren't just collections of serialized manga either. They often featured exclusives - in fact, we've both still got our special Shonen Jump edition of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon card from Yu-Gi-Oh! While our interest in Japanese pop culture started with these...
Paying our Respects to Nujabes
Posted by Tomas & Sebastian on
In June of this year we took a two-week trip to Japan. We one-bagged it (for you fellow light travellers out there) and had a great time. We spent most of the trip exploring Shikoku and Kyushu, with a few days at the end in Tokyo. Now that it's been a few months since our trip, we thought we'd share a story from our time in Japan that relates to who we are as a company. We're both fans of Shinichiro Watanabe, and a number of his series have inspired our designs, such as the Swordfish and Bang from Cowboy Bebop. For both of us,...
Anime NYC 2018
Posted by Tomas & Sebastian on
This year we got a vendor booth at Anime NYC, New York City's largest anime, manga, and Japanese pop-culture convention. This was a major milestone for us, as our last convention was Toronto's Anime North. At Anime North, we had a table as a part of the Nominoichi - the fan-run anime flea market. It's a short four-hour event where con-goers can sell their own merchandise including figures, posters, anime, manga, cosplay items and much, much more. The flea market at Anime North was our first real foray into the anime convention scene, and a great way to get our toes wet. In...
Substitution Jutsu
Posted by Sebastian Ko on
Naruto holds a special place in hearts. We grew up watching the show, caring for the characters (Jiraya’s death still hurts), and posting on fan sites while we eagerly awaited the next week’s chapter/episode. So, when we first started thinking about anime-inspired designs, Naruto was where we started. The Rasenegan, based on Uzumaki’s signature technique, was actually where Katana Sakana started. We traced one of our hands, used a plate and bowl to get the circles going - and before we knew it we had our first design! When we wanted to do another Naruto-inspired design we knew we had...