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Bleach Manga's Famous Poetry Gets Official Karuta Game

Tite Kubo's Bleach manga is iconic not just for its stylish art and hot-blooded battles but also for the artful poetry at the start of each volume. These poems are now being compiled into a custom karuta collection called Bleach: Songs of the Soul.

As a bit of background information, karuta refers to traditional Japanese card games. Anime fans may know about "poetry karuta" from the hit anime and manga series Chihayafuru. The idea of that game is to match sounds spoken aloud to lines of famous Japanese poetry written on cards. That basic style of play can be adapted to many different texts.

The Bleach karuta collection was first offered exclusively to members of Tite Kubo's fanclub "Klub Outside" last year, but the staff Twitter account announced on Friday that the set will get a broader release in Japan. Tatsuo Ishino designed the manga's compiled volumes and designed the packaging to fit with the other 74 volumes.

Pre-orders opened on Friday, and advance sales will be available at the Jump Festa event on December 17-18. If you purchase it through Klub Outside at the venue, you'll receive a special "Episode 0" karuta card as a bonus. The set will also be available through other retailers such as Amazon and toy stores in Japan starting from December 19.

Source: Tite Kubo's official Twitter account