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b-else-writes · 3 months ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 12: Wish

Have you ever read something and thought that it definitely used to be fanfiction? The familiar character designs, the lack of character writing, the odd pacing and plotlessness.... CLAMP have never hidden their doujinshi roots, and continued to release doujinshi well into the 1990s, including a rather infamous one based off Jojo's Bizarre Adventures with the ship Jotaro/Kakyoin. Now, I certainly can't prove Wish was at some point Jotaro/Kakyoin doujin, but I know self-indulgent slice-of-life fluff fanfic when I see it.

But despite its infamous roots, Wish itself never reached lasting cultural memory (I suppose because Kakyoin Kohaku didn't lay an egg). It was serialized from 1995 to 1998 as 26 chapters, and compiled into 4 volumes (later re-released as an Omnibus) and a bonus artbook-exclusive chapter. A drama CD, as well as a 6 minute music video were also released. Wish was noteworthy as the first time Nekoi was the artist on a long running series from them, rather than Mokona. Yet, despite being a little known series of theirs, it not only has links to multiple future works, but it began to shift CLAMP away from their dark, psychological roots, into the more child-friendly work they are now best known for. Heavy spoilers ahead!

Synopsis: One day, while walking home, young doctor Shuichiro rescues the angel-in-training Kohaku from a crow. In return, Kohaku offers to grant Shuichiro a wish. But Shuichiro has no wish, so Kohaku decides to live with Shuichiro until he can think of one. What follows is a romantic comedy as the unlikely pair are soon joined by a runaway angel-devil couple, a naughty devil-in-training, and two catgirls. Will Kohaku learn what is a wish that cannot be granted alone? Will love prevail, or will Heaven get in the way?

The Story: Wish suffers from the storytelling and pacing issues you often see in fanfic. There is a plotless story of how Kohaku and Shuichiro fall in love because they're forced to live together, and then there is the supposedly high stakes of whether they (and Hisui and Kokuyo, an angel-demon pair) will be caught by Heaven. Except, CLAMP never manages to maintain any tension regarding this second plot. God's punishment is meaningless (despite characters saying a war might break out), nobody acts worried, and ultimately tension is created through deliberately withholding information in a way that is infuriating despite the oh-so-clever in-universe reason. We never get a sense that Hisui or Kohaku are in any danger.

The abrupt twist ending is poorly paced, such that it barely sunk in. This isn't helped by the fact that it isn't built up to that well, and I don't buy God's plan for Kohaku that quickly avoids any lasting pain. Ohkawa has said she felt like they had to write a semi-tragic ending, but I think the result of trying to mash these two genres doesn't work. This especially so because the conflict in the story feels juvenile. It can be hard to remember that Shuichiro is a grown adult man, not 14.

Despite that, the story was entertaining enough, largely of its supporting cast and well-timed charm and humour. There are some unique world-building elements where Heaven and Hell are interpreted through Yin and Yang, and a Buddhist lens of attachment leading to suffering and a fall from divinity, which bolstered the trite premise of angel/demon love. This may also be the most sex-positive CLAMP manga yet! In sum, the story is heavily cliched and slice of life has never been my thing, but I was never bored reading it.

The Themes: Wish's arc words are that "some wishes cannot be granted by yourself". This refers to true love, that love is about two people mutually coming together to make each other happy. However, how Wish actually handles this left a sour taste in my mouth. There is an unnecessarily Oediphal b-plot that Shuichiro's adoptive wisteria fairy mother decides to leave as her husband is about to die. Shuichiro, who is also in love with her (this is never taken in any thematically interesting direction and exists purely to cause relationship drama with Kohaku), begs her to stay. Instead, she tells him that one day he'll understand how you'll have one person you want to be alive for. I know CLAMP loves this trope of "the one", but to see a mother abandon her child this way isn't romantic and isn't explored meaningfully to how it might affect her son. This idea of "the one" is heavily emphasized with Kohaku and Shuichiro being destined lovers. CLAMP has played with this idea before (most prominently in Tokyo Babylon), but here it feels cheesy and forced.

That being said, I do really like Hisui's line that the hardest thing to do is to know yourself, and that may be the most important thing you do with your life. It’s such a humanising moment for both them and Kohaku, and is a genuinely good message of self-understanding leading to actualization and fulfillment - even if Kohaku's journey is like a 5 year old who can't understand what these butterflies are. This carries over to when Kohaku is reunited with reincarnated Shuichiro, and admits that they love uke!Shuichiro because of who he is - reincarnated love still takes work, even if the pacing and characterization of the manga means it's all show, not tell.

The Characters: I've said before that CLAMP has never created characters I hate (yet), and that is the strength of Wish against its cheesy, paper-thin plot. Admittedly, the characters are not their best, and I do think it's because of the fanfic origins. In fanfic, you don't need to work on developing characters, because your audience already knows what they're getting. The result is that Kohaku and Shuichiro are very flat to me, not helped by their ridiculous misunderstandings and will they-won't they. There was some attempt to characterize Shuichiro in suggesting he has childhood PTSD from his mum abandoning him, but it's never developed, like many threads in this manga that feel rushed and aborted.

Kokuyo and Hisui really carried this for me. Kokuyo might look like discount Fuuma, but there's something charming about him being a reformed slut deeply in love with Hisui and eating their cooking while wearing fetish outfits. Their romance feels real and passionate, with even their love at first sight actually having emotional weight. They feel like actual adults who have kinky, fun, loving sex. Koryuu similarly is such a loveable rogue, from his obvious pigtail-pulling crush on Kohaku to his threesomes with Hari and Ruri. Whenever I wanted to tear my hair out that Kohaku would seriously leave or feel betrayed over a stupid "Shuichiro likes someone else", they kept me coming back for more.

The Art: Wish was clearly drawn by someone still finding their style and understanding of visual storytelling. It begins with very basic panel layout, but you can see how Nekoi grows into a more dynamic panelling, especially by volume 4, where Kokuyo and Hisui's love is gorgeously expressed. Wish also has an extreme lack of backgrounds (apparently Ohkawa advised using minimal screentone to make the series feel very white and soft). The art is less impressive and visually dynamic than Mokona's work, with a lot of stiffness in action and unclear visual storytelling. Particularly in volume 1, I had trouble understanding some panel to panel transitions.

More positively, I do like the character design (Kokuyo is really hot), except Shuichiro, who is painfully unmemorable. Uke! Shuichiro is even uglier. I know the designs are ripped from Jojo, down to Shuichiro's grandfather being identical to Jotaro's grandfather, but the designs are at least memorable (probably because they're taken from eye-catching designs). I did find the angel masters hard to distinguish though, besides Hisui, but their cat creature is well done. The cover and overall book design is quite lovely, I liked the harsh white with a pop of colour. It is not CLAMP's best art, and I found the colour spreads especially unimpressive, but there is real and commendable growth and still panels to enjoy, particularly those with Kokuyo and Hisui, that feel breathless and tender.

Questionable Elements: The constant fat shaming jokes about Kohaku's weight while in chibi form are very off-putting, especially since they're stick-thin ordinarily. It's an aspect that has aged poorly. I also have mixed feelings on their execution of genderless Kohaku and a queer romance. As an angel, Kohaku is meant to be genderless. In practice, all the angels are female-coded and demons are explicitly male. Not only female-coded, but traditional gender role coded - Kohaku and Hisui function as housewives for their partners, who are big, strong, burly men in contrast to the waifish, petite, ultra-femme angels. I'm not going to get into how seme-uke is just rebranding heterosexuality, but suffice to say, if you can change all the angels into women without any story dissonance - which the original Tokyopop translation did - then maybe something is wrong.

The Jojo Elephant: I tried reading JJBA in order to see what CLAMP saw in it, and all I can say is that Kakyoin and Jotaro sure do stand next to each other and that's about it. I don't know why they inspired such devotion! Regardless, neither character, especially Kohaku-Kakyoin, really act like the original, and the two series are so detached from one another that you don't need the backstory.

Overall: Like silly coffeeshop AU fanfics of your OTP, Wish is entertaining popcorn. It has some actual charm, but it doesn't ever rise beyond its initial set-up nor will really remember its plot beyond a vague memory jolt when you see it amongst your bookmarks. It reflects a CLAMP that is beginning to tire of their dark writing, resulting in a series that doesn't quite cohere. Still, it makes a quick, breezy read with some actually good romance in it. I would recommend this perhaps to slice-of-life lovers, but I'm not certain if I'd try to find a copy of it for myself.

#clamp #wish

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b-else-writes · 4 months ago

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Jojo part 2?

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (Manga/Anime, 1987/2012)

Explain your reasoning in the tags!

#i have started reading jjba casually to understand that one clamp egg kakyoin doujinshi #and i can safely say no and anybody voting yes is crazy #I don’t think hirohiko araki has ever met a woman. not even his wife I don’t believe she’s real #jjba is gay in the way so many shonen are gay because they don’t believe women are real #i like the character designs a lot but truly one of those series that would be good if it was good #also battle tendency has full on Nazi apologism. so there’s that

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b-else-writes · 4 months ago

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b-else-writes · 4 months ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 11: The One I Love

The 90s were a period where CLAMP's star was on an astronomic rise, and they were frequently scouted to publish works in a variety of magazines. This resulted in their most obscure work - and yes I mean it this time! - the semi-autobiographical manga The One I Love, serialized from 1993 to 1995 in the short-lived josei magazine Monthly Young Rose. It was compiled into a singular volume (released in English by Tokyopop), and its lack of adaptation or crossover potential is rather obvious - as a work of creative non-fiction vignettes, it simply doesn't work. Even CLAMP themselves forgot they made this!

The One I Love is formatted as individual vignettes of around 7 pages, all illustrated by Nekoi, her first time as the primary illustrator on a CLAMP work, and accompanied by an essay by Ohkawa, where she explains the real-world inspiration of the vignette and her thoughts on love. It's also the first real peek behind the curtain of Ohkawa as a person and her opinions on love and womanhood. What is there is....frankly a lot more unsatisfying than I really wanted to know. I'll be formatting my thoughts on this one differently as well, since this is such an outlier in CLAMP's oeuvre - and not one I really think anyone should be rushing to get ahold of.

I think there is a real danger in work that is autobiographical, or semi-autobiographical, in this case. The reality is not all of us have the deft hand or complex life experience that produces work like Maus or Persepolis, leading to shallow work that attempts to package rather bland incidents as revelatory Live-Laugh-Love moments. This is the great weakness of The One I Love: it is largely pedestrian in its stories, with trite little reflections such as "love happens unexpectedly", or "try on something different in order to express yourself without your insecurities". There's nothing groundbreaking or particularly meaningful here, and the collection feels geared more towards young girls than it does adult women because of how juvenile a lot of it comes across.

While some of the "lessons" have some merit, because they're approached so shallowly, I often find myself disagreeing. For example, the vignette that features, of all things, Sonic the Hedgehog, is about how girls shouldn't be judged for getting into their boyfriends' interests because it's good to share interests. Well, yes, it is true you'll be happier if you and your man have the same interests....it also shouldn't be an obligation especially if you don't have a genuine liking for a thing. And that's not even getting into the whole gendered aspect of this! But that's the whole issue - because these stories are so superficial and trite, you end up with these empty platitudes that don't offer any new insight into love.

Now, on the issue of gender, the other great issue of autobiographical fiction is the peek behind the curtain. I'm not saying that I lost all respect for CLAMP, but I was reminded that they're women born in the late 60s in Japan. There's a strong "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" theme underpinning a lot of the essays - women are inherently more paranoid and neurotic and insecure than men and have Strange and Mysterious Reasons for how we approach romance, and not the basic human desire for connection and reassurance. The amount of neuroses on display here are more than a little alarming (listen, if you are catastrophizing on this level that your boyfriend hates you, it's not because you're a #Girl). Men are largely framed as breadwinners and women as aspiring housewives, and women especially as "all wanting to feel and be pretty" (again, #Men also like reassurance about their looks, men aren't cave trolls and women beautiful fairies). It really makes a lot of the stories very difficult to read - but it does also validate a lot of the lingering unease I feel with how CLAMP approaches female characters and the regressive gender roles and writing they often fall into. I love CLAMP, I do, but I'd really like to know less about how they think Men and Women have Men Brains and Women Brains.

Also, because it must said: ALL the relationships in this are heterosexual.

That's not to say I didn't find some of the vignettes cute. I did like their vignettes on marriage - that it shouldn't fundamentally change you as a person, but life will be different (from the POV where it is uncommon to live with your partner before marriage) afterwards, and that is the adventure you undertake with someone. I also found the story "Suddenly", while largely silly in its topic, to be cute. But none of the stories necessarily moved me to want to pick this up again.

I also have mixed feelings on the overall art of the series. I do like the opening colour spread with all the different ladies. It has a nice, delicate sensibility that matches the romantic nature of the story (though it's a shame they all have the exact same face). But in the manga proper, there's a certain plainness and simplicity to the art style that I find lacks the lavishness of their earlier work. Even low stakes work like Man of Many Faces had a decadent nature to its designs that really remain in my memory despite my indifference to its plot. The One I Love, in contrast, feels less refined - and I know Nekoi was taking on a very big new task here, and I don't want to sound harsh, but I simply didn't find the work very visually impressive when judged against their entire oeuvre. Also, I really don't like how the noses here are drawn.

Overall, The One I Love is a quick and lightweight read with some big pitfalls in its approach to gender and a troubling look behind the curtain. It is not in any way an essential CLAMP work, and while cutely illustrated, I didn't particularly find it impressive or meaningful. I would recommend this only for diehard completionists.

#clamp #the one i love

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b-else-writes · 5 months ago

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I do think a pretty noteworthy part of the Overwhelming Fandom Fixation on Gay Men - or, rather, their Heteronormative idea of what Gay Men are like - has less to do with Covert Homophobia (though that is a large element) and more to do with the Elimination of Women from discussion.

A lot of Fandom Depictions of Gay Men are debilitatingly Heterosexual - one man is put into the role of the "Real Man", being a masculine, older, stronger, taller, more capable 'Top', while the other is put into a "Pseudo-Woman" role of being more feminine, younger, weaker, smaller, and more helpless 'Bottom'. The depiction of the relationships of Gay Men in Fandom has a fixation on removing the Identity and Implication of Gay Men and what it means to be a Gay Man in reality, merely using Homosexuality - or, "Sodomy", as some so gracefully unironically call it - as a kind of "Taboo" Seasoning to otherwise entirely standard M/F Dynamics. M/F Dynamics + Relationships, in many Fandom Spaces, are looked down upon heavily, as are F/F Dynamics + Relationships. This is because Fandom has an incredibly strong track record of being Intensely, Unabashedly Misogynistic. Fandom Spaces tend to want to avoid even basic acknowledgment of Women as much as physically possible. Commodifying Gay Men is a useful way to ensure that you do not ever have to acknowledge that Women exist, all while for the most part avoiding accusations of Bigotry - because, hey, look! I'm not a Bigot! Look at all the times I've acknowledged Gay Men exist!

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b-else-writes · 5 months ago

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We’re going through this phase of fandom right now where people willfully ignore the sexist implications of female characters being shafted into housewife/mother roles or disempowered by the end of their stories. If you dare to criticize such writing decisions, you will be accused of sexism and be hounded for not “respecting their choices” as though these characters are actual people and not tools of storytelling. As if the cliche of female characters “sacrificing” their powers or having them stripped away exists in a vacuum and isn’t influenced by any larger cultural factors.

They’ll say: “Not every character has to be a girlboss!!” Or “Let women be soft and traditional!!” As if that’s some revolutionary way of thinking and not the norm. It’s an extension of choice feminism, dismissing any dissent about the quality of the narrative to make it make sense and avoid the uncomfortable truth. Diminishing the agency of female characters and cramming them into traditional roles is a common occurrence in many stories, and we should be allowed to criticize them without being silenced.

#fandom sexism #literally people act like these are real people and not characters written by real people #like oh no will someone save us from the evil feminists who want women to have short hair and use swords #being ultra feminine and having no agency or ambition beyond traditional gendered pursuits is the NORM #you don’t see male characters ever having to grapple with these choices #I understand the overcorrection of thinly written strong female characters but please use your heads #and this thinking has extended into hating on characters who aren’t doing traditional gender roles #see: everyone hating Daenerys because she is proactive rather than reactive in her arc

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b-else-writes · 5 months ago

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Hi! I've been really enjoying your CLAMP retrospectives. I wanted to say hello and see if we could get a conversation going. (If you're up for it, of course.)

hi! yes, i would love to! b-else-writes is a sideblog, so i can't send DMs through it unfortunately, but you can DM me through tumblr if that's cool (or are there other platforms you'd prefer?)!

#asks

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b-else-writes · 6 months ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 10: Magic Knight Rayearth

In 1991, Sailor Moon was launched in the magazine Nakayoshi, aimed at younger girls. It kicked off an era of fantasy and magical girl-oriented manga, and CLAMP were scouted to publish their own in Nakayoshi. Rayearth is very dear to me as my very first CLAMP story, as the anime aired in my country in my kindergarten years. Released in two parts, Part 1 ran from 1993 to 1995 in 3 volumes, followed by Part 2 from 1995 to 1996, again in 3 volumes. It spawned a two season anime, an OVA, multiple video games, a forthcoming new anime, and countless merch. I purchased the 25th anniversary release, a lovely hardcover version that allowed me to appreciate and reflect on a childhood love as an adult.

I've discussed how X ended CLAMP's 90s run, both in art style and thematic content, but I do think Magic Knight Rayearth was the beginning of that end. The mega-hit cemented their rising star, and proved that CLAMP's favourite themes could be meaningfully applied to a younger audience they'd never reached before. While Rayearth does not entirely stick the landing, it cannot be overstated its impact on the magical girl genre as it deconstructs and reconstructs ideas of girlish purity, innocence, and power systems in a thematically brilliant combination of philosophy, fantasy, and video game tropes. Some imagery from Rayearth has remained with me forever, a testament to its emotional impact. Heavy spoilers!

Synopsis: Three colour-coded Tokyo middle schoolers are summoned to the world of Cefiro, where the strength of your heart's will can shape yourself and the world. Princess Emeraude is Cefiro's Pillar, spending all her days praying for Cefiro's peace. But the priest Zagato has kidnapped Emeraude, and Cefiro is crumbling. The trio, revealed to be the Magic Knights of legend, must journey and level-up, video-game style, to unlock the mashin and save Cefiro. But all is not as it seems about Emeraude's kidnapping - and should the happiness of a world rely on the prayers of one single girl? Who will pray for that girl's happiness? Can such a world be truly beautiful?

The Story: Initially, Magic Knight Rayearth feels charming but a bit rote - especially in 2024, with a glut of bad isekai out there. Cefiro isn't a terribly fully-realised world and we never meet its ordinary citizens - though the pace means we don't really notice. Hikaru and Emeraude embody the classic pure-hearted shojo, who valiantly fight against the evil adult sexuality the likes of Alcyone and Zagato. Yet, the rote nature of the girls' fantasy video-game quest is precisely part of Part 1's entire deception: Princess Emeraude is not a child, but an adult woman trapped in the confines of the Pillar System that demands she remain a sexless little girl and pray for the happiness of others, instead of her own. The Magic Knights exist to kill the Pillar, following their pre-scripted roles to the one of the most haunting moments in manga where they have no choice but to kill Emeraude.

Its such a brilliant deconstruction of magical girl tropes that usually valorize girlish innocence, where everything can be overcome by the purity of one's heart, and fantasy RPGs, of a perfect princess and an evil dragon. The Magic Knights never consider Emeraude's humanity or free will, only her relation to her society, playing the video game only to realise the entire system is broken and at its heart, Omelas-style, lies a suffering child. Its bone-chilling as the girls celebrate that they've saved Cefiro by killing Zagato, unaware Emeraude is losing her mind. Its not to say Part 1 doesn't have some structural narrative issues: its pacing, while relentless (I could not stop reading Vol 3 in particular) can feel uneven (the Forest drags, while Ascot's turn is too fast and cheesy), the prat falls get tedious as an adult reader, and its meta-narrative of formula to critique formula is better understood on second readings. Still, I loved so much of what Part 1 ambitiously tries to do on a thematic and structural level and it is a gripping read.

Part 2, CLAMP admits, was written very quickly because it was not expected to happen - and personally, I think Part 1 is much stronger than Part 2. Part 2 tries to meaningfully address the trauma the girls have experienced ("the weapons I made became instruments for your suffering" from Presea was one I had to write down), but it does gloss over the culpability and tragedy of Part 1 - I hated that Emeraude was happy in death to placate the girls. A lot of stuff feels retconned in, and the lack of driving narrative means the story treads water in unnecessarily long bits with Fahren and Chizeta and the Magic Knights are mostly reactive. I also cannot take god Mokona seriously.

Still, I enjoyed Part 2 for the strong arcs of characters like Eagle, Hikaru, and Umi, and the conversations about whether a world built on the suffering of another can really be beautiful. Despite how silly god Mokona is, I do think the ending is a fantastic answer to Part 1: the only way to save Cefiro is to break the entire system and rebuild it again where everyone must, together, make society worth living in. Hikaru becomes the new Pillar not because of her purity - indeed that self-sacrificing Christ-like behaviour is what gets Emeraude in trouble in the first place - but because of her earthly refusal to accept anyone else sacrificing themselves for others AND her belief that we have to trust and try to make society better. It's a very mature look at empathy and compassion and individual vs. collective happiness, handled for children to understand, and its lush, badass, and emotional to watch Hikaru save Eagle in the process. Yes, its cheesy and sloppily paced (it is for 12 year olds and I do have to remind myself of that), but damn if it didn't move me. As I keep saying, CLAMP has never written a character I've loathed!

Despite its inconsistent quality, I do think it is good to read both Parts 1 and 2 for how they overall deconstruct and reconstruct magical girl manga in a way that moves away from rote roles of purity and self-sacrifice that bog down the genre, in a story that is overall fun and deeply emotional.

The Themes: I can absolutely see how Rayearth was written concurrently with X (Mokona tossing aside Earth for its corruption). But these same themes of what makes life, and the world, worth living, are taken in fascinating new ways. Here, CLAMP's favourite concept of "destiny vs. free will" explores destiny not as a divine system but a societal enforced structure. Emeraude believes she's fated to only pray and thus her loving Zagato destroys everything, but this is the result of her accepting that the system is infallible and unchangeable. She is the Christ-figure maiden trapped in the world tree to support it, but who needs redemption not from the divine Eagle, but the earthly Hikaru, who teaches self-love. Nobody in Cefiro (or beyond) can conceptualize a Pillar-less world. The people of Cefiro accept the game's logic and play it, but - as CLAMP loves to remind - we are individuals and our choices have meaning and power.

And this leads to a really interesting theme of whether peace bought too dearly is even worth it - is collective happiness more important than individual happiness? Happiness, CLAMP does remind us, is different for every person, but comes out on the side that individual suffering suffuses the whole system. Self-sacrifice - like in X! - does nothing but lead to suffering from the people who love you and holds no glory. And who can't love a story that tells little children that we have to find a way to live that allows us all to be happy?

There's also a really interesting gender dynamic that I rarely see discussed by fans that I find fascinating. Shojo is infused with pure-hearted innocent heroines who face off against "phallic mothers", that is, adult women who embody sexuality and power in contrast to acceptable female roles (there's a lot of very interesting discussion on whether shojo is actually feminist that I feel bypasses Western audiences). At first, Rayearth seems to follow these tropes - the girls and Emeraude are shojos, while characters like Alcyone (a sexually mature woman who is characterized as evil for loving Zagato when he doesn't love her) are phallic mothers.

Yet the finale twists this - Emeraude is another phallic mother whose "selfish" love for Zagato has transformed her into an adult woman that must be killed. And killed she is, as shojo tropes demand, but no happy ending comes. Emeraude was not selfish, but human, and failed by a system that demanded this of her. Part 2 never lives up to the potential set up by Part 1 - Hikaru remains a shojo who can't recognize Lantis is confessing to her - but it was something I really enjoyed chewing over in Part 1.

The Characters: While the girls might seem typical at the start, CLAMP has a real charm for making cliche work for them. Fuu is much quirkier than the shy meganekko trope, and Umi. Umi was the stand-out for me as the most dynamic of the bunch, with such a wonderful character arc across all 6 volumes from bratty rich girl to compassionate, brave warrior. It is she who recognizes the world isn't beautiful and her own naivete, she who finds inspiration from her friends to like herself more, she who grows up! The supporting cast is equally charming, and I loved the tragedy of Emeraude and Zagato.

While Lantis is a fine Yasha-style giant guy, I really adored Eagle by the end and his relation to Hikaru and Emeraude. Hikaru is s a highly static character, but her deep self-love and determination are impossible not to love. There's something just so compelling about his mirror of Emeraude and especially Hikaru, who frees them both by absolving them of their self-denying divinity. Their entire arc is a beautiful reaffirmation that we are humans who deserve to live and find meaning in that. I would say the character I cared for the least was probably Ferio, who never shows either comedic charm (Caldina, Ascot) or inner depth. But he appears so minimally that I can wave aside that he's a boring, paper-thin love interest.

The Art: I'm in two minds when it comes to Rayearth. There are some truly stunning moments in the artwork and visual motifs. The very idea of making an Art Nouveau magical girls in a fantasy RPG world led to so many incredible creative design choices (though Hikaru's skirt in her final armour bothers me. Metal and fabric don't fall like that). The silent two page spread where the girls murder Emeraude will likely haunt me for the rest of my life. Emeraude's hair pearls transforming into her crystallized tears is such a brilliant twist on the established visual motif. There's a lot of highly inventive panelwork that lushly moves between the real world and contemplative spaces.

On the other hand, because Cefiro is not the real world, CLAMP could not use their trick of scanned photo backgrounds. The result is a distinctive lack of backgrounds that were especially frustrating because I felt like I had no idea what these fantasy spaces look like - and RG Veda never had this problem! There's one particular hand-drawn Tokyo background that looks horrendous in how sketchy it is. Rayearth definitely reflects CLAMP's burnout period in that there are definitely more corners cut, like with the constant chibi scenes (very classically 90s, but not something I've ever enjoyed) and heavy use of screentone to mask lack of background. It's still visually stunning, but it's definitely not their drawing peak. Would I still frame some of these pages? Absolutely.

Questionable Elements: Presea makes an off-colour Native American joke. The designs of the Chizeta and Fahren characters lean heavily into cultural stereotyping of the "Orient" - they at least are real characters in the story, but they really irritated me for quite a long time in the story because of how glaring this is. Especially when Aska says white-ish, blue eyed blonde Emeraude is a "true princess". It makes the epilogue's (very good) moral of "we were all made different so we can learn from one another" fall a bit flat if CLAMP themselves made no effort to actually learn from people unlike them.

Overall: While Part 2 of Rayearth never quite lives up to the potential set by Part 1, the entire series overall is such a refreshing take on the magical girl genre, even 30 years on. Its meta-narrative and postmodern reflections on the genre and its blend of magical girl tropes, philosophy, fantasy and JRPGs, and unique and timeless visual influences has led to a series that has withstood the test of time - and many of its peers that similarly attempted to be the "next Sailor Moon". I think, unlike them, Magic Knight Rayearth has such a strong CLAMP fingerprint upon it - it is their humanist and occult-flavoured take upon the genre, and for that it affirms the value of individual human life, each one, and our choices, in being necessary to create a society that will last, not divine action.

It is a story about stories, making it fascinatingly ahead of the curve. And while its child audience means that it lacks subtlety and nuance in many ways (and frankly Nanase Ohkawa has the subtlety of a brick in her writing in general), I can't deny how much it has remained with me all these years and I find something new to love in it each time. It warrants being one of CLAMP's hits for these reasons, by taking apart the genre set up by Sailor Moon to say it is not pure-hearted divine princesses who will save the world, but our selfish human love that will fight off entropy, every time.

#clamp #magic knight rayearth

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b-else-writes · 8 months ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 9: Miyuki-chan in Wonderland

Runs both my hands slowly down my face. Miyuki-chan in Wonderland ran intermittently from 1993 to 1995, when CLAMP was asked to fill a slot in Newtype, a magazine geared towards largely male otakus. CLAMP has made no pretenses about what Miyuki-chan was intended to be: a fanservice-filled, barely plotted excuse for Mokona to draw sexy women and cash that Newtype paycheck. Despite (or perhaps, because of that), Miyuki-chan proved popular enough to receive a tankoban release of its 7 chapters, with Tokyopop doing the now out-of-print English version. It also has an image CD and OVA adaptation, and technically exists in the same universe as X/Tokyo Babylon/CLAMP School, if you believe the CLAMP School Detectives anime to be canonical. And like ferrets.

I do like ferrets. I don't much like Miyuki-chan in Wonderland.

This is CLAMP's first (and only) gesture towards a wlw story, and their first foray into the ecchi genre. Neither element (as handled by CLAMP specifically, which I'll elaborate later) filled me with great confidence. This is one of the few CLAMP manga I hadn't read but did know existed; I knew instinctively I would dislike it and so actively avoided it. I read this entirely online, and wouldn't pick it up unless I felt like being a completionist. "Spoilers", I guess.

Synopsis: Miyuki-chan is an average, chronically late Japanese schoolgirl, who finds herself pulled into various worlds populated by buxom, scantily-clad women who find her hot. Miyuki-chan fends off their advances, but was it all just a dream?

The Story: Miyuki-chan is doing ordinary activity. She gets pulled into world filled with sexy ladies, usually parodying and fanservicing some aspect of otaku and wider Japanese pop/mass culture. They attempt to rip her clothes off and grope her. B-b-ut nobody will have me if I don't remain pure and virginal! Miyuki-chan, potential closeted lesbian, sobs. She attempts to fend them off. There's an abrupt conclusion out of nowhere, where she wakes up/escapes. Oh it was just a dream! The final panel then flashes "Neverending" or some variation. Rinse, repeat, for 7 chapters.

Miyuki-chan commits the greater cardinal sin than its male-gaze, which is that it is just boring. Much like Duklyon, CLAMP apparently thinks a comedy equates to telling the same joke over and over. The chapters blur together due to how repetitive they are, and I only got one genuine laugh, in Chapter 3 with the legs poking out of the TV screen. Despite its short length, I took months to read this, because every chapter felt like a waste of time. There's no punchline to the entire piece, or even within each chapter. It's the worst sort of edging, leaving you confused, and irritated. And frankly, despite being ostensibly a sex comedy, this manga is profoundly unsexy.

The Themes: lol

The Characters: Look. This is a manga to look at hot girl not to consider hot girl's interior life. I wish I could attribute some greater meaning to Miyuki-chan - that this is all a result of her deeply closeted lesbian desperately trying to fight her own sex fantasies. But I think that's wishful thinking (and generous interpretation from fandom, when CLAMP and Newtype magazine are not attempting anything remotely introspective here). Miyuki-chan textually is one-note. Her best chapter is Miyuki-chan in Mahjong Land where she shows a bit of mischief and confidence.

The Art: There's some pages I find very beautifully rendered with screentone (this is probably their heaviest screentone manga barring X), but its also bogged down with mostly mid-shots and close-ups, with little to no backgrounds. Panel-to-panel storytelling feel very disjointed, likely because the story itself is very disjointed, and action is often unclear. It's some of CLAMP's weakest visual storytelling. The character designs don't stand out much. I liked the vaguely "ethnic" (oh, CLAMP...) priestess from Miyuki-chan in Video Game Land, and that was largely because she had a slightly different face than the typical CLAMP face.

Also. I have to say. CLAMP people look FRIGHTENING naked. There's a fully nude lady in I think Chapter 6 (didn't write the chapter down in my notes) and I was horrifically entranced by her enormous, nipple-less breasts attached to her long, rib-cage less torso, strange pelvis, and spidery legs. In general, CLAMP anatomy does work against itself, in that I found a lot of it anatomically mystifying than I did sexy. This is of course, personal taste, but by and large, I think they are much more beautiful but stupid manga to purchase, if you want to look at pretty pictures.

Questionable Elements: CLAMP, to this point, has had a mixed track record with lesbians (all dead, unable to be together, some psycho lesbian tropes). They have also had, being frank, a mixed to poor track record with female characters. CLAMP are Japanese women born in the late 1960s. Miyuki-chan's fascination with her purity for marriage, the male-gazey depiction of sexuality and the predatory lesbians are dismal, to say the least, but frankly, not unexpected. It's not surprising given its target audience, but the result is a strong heterosexual and male eye to lesbian interactions. It's not actually as offensive as I make it sound, largely because the manga is actually quite sexless and mostly boring, but it's an added layer of irritation.

Overall: I was right to suspect that Miyuki-chan in Wonderland would not be for me. It's a sex comedy that is neither sexy nor funny. CLAMP, I have decided, are just not adept comedy writers. They're good for a pratfall in a wider story, but they can't seem to break the formula of repetition + zaniness = humour. I have criticized Duklyon and CLAMP School Detectives for the same, but they could at least rise beyond their weak writing on the strength of charming characters (and for Duklyon, some occasionally funny story commentary). Since Miyuki-chan has no plot and no real characters, it must succeed on either being hot, or being funny. It does neither, and the male gaze-ness doesn't help. I would not recommend this manga at all.

#miyuki chan in wonderland #clamp

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b-else-writes · 9 months ago

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@agapeo Hi! Thank you so much for your response! My stance on CLAMP and RG Veda is complicated and I didn't want to belabour a very long point in my review, because I think it's a nuanced discussion that deserves consideration. I don't think it's wrong of people to write stories based off cultures not their own. My issue with Chunhyang is not that they're not Korean, but that their biases against Korean people were stark within the text itself, and that it was very intentionally meant to be set in Korea and everyone is Korean, while showcasing a flagrant disregard for the actual culture and mythology. It is intended to be representative of these actual cultures. CLAMP themselves even mentioned they did research on Korean dress for it - bad research, but they very much are clear it's meant to be Korean. It's explicit so I approach the text as such.

RG Veda is more murky. It's deliberately eclectic in its style (the armour design is ripped from Saint Seiya, the clothing is broadly and vaguely "Eastern" but pantless, some of the architecture is Greco-Roman, the story is very loosely based off the Rigveda but shows greater connection with Buddhist cosmology and myth, etc) so it is explicitly a fantasy world that never claims to represent the cultures that influenced it. It also does not Other its inspirations; Yasha and Ashura and Souma etc are framed as heroic and sympathetic, and their world is depicted as nuanced in its flaws rather than an inherently bankrupt system as in Chunhyang. If we are to read Yasha and Ashura as South Asian (which is a plausible reading supported by supplementary materials), then the text itself never frames them or their world as inferior. That's not to say I know, or can claim to know, if CLAMP think Indian people are good or bad, but that at least I personally don't read a bias against Indian people in RG Veda.

Writing about a culture not your own is not the issue, it's the framing that matters, that makes something Orientalist. RG Veda is a fantasy pastiche that generally respects its South Asian characters and their fantasy world, and that is why I am less harsh on it. I would scrutinize it a lot more if it claimed to be depicting an ancient India. Chunhyang wanted to have its cake and eat it too, because it is Korea, it is meant to be depicting ancient Korea (but with magic) while also having nothing to do with actual Korean history and painting it in an especially negative light. That does not mean RG Veda is without fault or disrespect.

It's similar to how I view shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender (coming from a culture that do feature in its world), in that I don't think they're cultural appropriation for making a blended fantasy world that includes cultures they aren't from, BUT I don't think they're above criticism in how they went about it.

I think the question is whether or not CLAMP should have taken inspiration from the RG Veda and made essentially a completely new story and world, rather than choose to do research and write a story that was explicitly based in South Asian cultures. There's also the complication that a lot of the figures and story elements in RG Veda are based off Buddhist versions of Hindu deities and specific Japanese Buddhist elements. But more to the point, there is a real lack of representation of actual South Asian culture in popular Western and Japanese media and choosing to make a fantasy world rather than a historically (or at least mythologically) grounded South Asian world does reflect that continuing bias. It IS a shame that South Asian culture is never placed front and center, especially in a case where it very well could have.

In short, I don't think it's wrong as a fundamental conceit to create a fantasy mash-up world and story based off their own and other cultures. And I don't think what it actually does textually is prejudiced against South Asian people. Still, RG Veda could have depicted South Asian cultures, and it didn't, and that should be scrutinized for what it says about how we view South Asia and CLAMP's Japanese ethnocentric behaviour.

The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 8: Legend of Chunhyang

The RG Veda historical epic that never was, or better off cancelled? While X is widely cited as CLAMP's first unfinished work, there is actually another 1992 stillborn CLAMP work, before we can finally move onto 1993 in the CLAMP timeline. To be a broken record, I had no idea this existed! It’s unsurprising: only 3 chapters were ever published (plus 1 drama CD), before the magazine folded and CLAMP decided to cancel the project (yeah yeah they said they’d love to finish it. They’re liars).

Unlike many of their other discontinued early works, this one actually got a tankoban release, and Tokyopop did the now out-of-print English translation in a single volume with no extra art. Plus, I was hesitant about approaching a work of Korean folklore written by 4 Japanese women, given the history, and my fears were not unfounded. So I’m content that I put off getting the physical release for my collection. Spoilers (?) ahead.

Synopsis: In Ancient Korea, a brave young maiden called Chunhyang, opposes the injustices of the corrupt governing Yangbans. When her mother, a magic-wielding mudang, is kidnapped by their town's Yangban, Chunhyang is aided by the lecherous Mongryong, the Amhaeng’eosa, a secret government agent. Together, the two set off on adventure that will take them across Korea to liberate towns and discover the truth of Chunhyang's father.

The Story: I wrote all of that out, but the reality is what actually exists of Legend of Chunhyang is two chapters and a flashback. It's very hard to judge a story that hasn't settled in or moved further than the set up for the adventure. What we got is entertaining enough - chapter 1 is the inciting incident where Chunhyang’s mother dies and she teams up with Mongryong, 2 has them liberate a mystical flower village with the help of a rain god and twin mudang, and 3 is a flashback that reveals Chunhyang’s dead father was important and killed for defying the Yangban. It’s very Robin Hood, and moves at a good pace despite being pretty standard YA fantasy. Speaking of, I don’t think CLAMP realises most Korean towns back then would have been agricultural. Why does Chunhyang live in a huge villa doing nothing all day? I want my peasant hero, not a disgruntled pseudo noble.

The skeleton for the entire story is pretty obvious (bring revolution to Korea) and I’d definitely be curious to see more of it. But I’m also not sad we got nothing more. It’s a pleasant afternoon distraction.

The Themes: Don’t be a bully and tyrannical governments are bad and must be resisted - as long as they’re Korean (side-eyes that Rising Sun flag in CLAMP Campus Detectives. Ah, Japanese nationalism). It’s 3 chapters, that’s all I can glean.

The Characters: Chunhyang fits heavily into the CLAMP stock heroine: young, spunky, strong, pure-hearted, and athletic, shojo ingenue. Still, while she’s nothing new, I enjoyed Chunhyang. CLAMP has the formula for the fun, palatable heroine we love to see win, and I’m hardly immune. Mongryong was more bland to me, falling hard into that 90s era shojo hero who gets comically beaten up by his love interest, but always suavely swoops in to save her. It’s nostalgic, he’s hot, but that’s it. Maybe with time they would have defined themselves like RG Veda’s cast did (also archetypes), but there’s just so little!

The crumbs of minor characters are equally stock - one dimensional cackling villains, and pure beyond belief good guys. Mongryong’s tiger spirit was my favourite because I love all cats. It’s really the charm of Chunhyang that carries us above - she’s a good balance of fierce and endearing.

The Art: Legend of Chunhyang is interesting in that chapter 1 was brush inked due to their experience on Shirahime, but the remaining art was done with marker pen. The result is chapter 1 feels a bit unpolished, with backgrounds being mostly chunky blobs and quick lines in a way I found distracting. 2 and 3 work much better, with thick swirls of soft magic and flowers, giving Chunhyang a slight distinction from their other early 90s work. The panel work is quite conservative unlike RG Veda, very rarely having dynamic spreads, but satisfactory and readable. Chapter 2 is a standout of circling dragons and flowers. Everyone is gorgeously dressed and pretty. It’s not the best of CLAMP, but it’s nice and elevates the material.

Questionable Elements: While certain CLAMP podcasts have praised CLAMP for essentially rewriting the folktale to make Chunhyang more active - why would you even choose to adapt that Korean folklore then, if your intention is to make a generic Robin Hood sword and fantasy series that has zero to do with the original culture? You could just set it in feudal Japan! It feels very distasteful to deliberately choose Korea as a setting of barbaric unending tyranny that needs correcting. Especially given Japan’s history in “modernising” Korea.

On top of that, there’s a clear lack of research done - a lot of the outfits and hair accessories are inaccurate. Chunhyang’s mother’s decision to kill herself than risk dishonour is also incredibly Japanese (and notably doesn’t exist in the original). I have to cry foul because if you’re going to actually set this in a real ancient Korea, you should do your research. I’m not saying CLAMP are anti-Korean but they show a disappointing lack of care and bias.

Also. How old is Mongryong if Chunhyang is 14. Answer quickly, CLAMP.

Overall: Listen, RG Veda 2.0 this is not. Rather than an imaginative, fantastical, sweeping epic, Legend of Chunhyang is built on very familiar tropes and stock characters with a dose of cultural insensitivity and bias. It doesn’t even have a proper narrative arc, existing more as a “what if” than an almost masterpiece. It’s alleviated by the sheer charm of Chunhyang herself, its brisk, entertaining pace, and the enjoyable art. But it’s no great literary tragedy that it was never finished, and I’d really only recommend it to diehard CLAMP fans who want a quick, pleasant escape on a fantasy adventure.

#and this is solely my opinion and i'm open to being challenged on it!

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b-else-writes · 10 months ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 8: Legend of Chunhyang

Also. How old is Mongryong if Chunhyang is 14. Answer quickly, CLAMP.

#legend of chunhyang #clamp

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b-else-writes · 10 months ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 7: X/1999

The magnum opus that never was. Spanning 18.5 volumes, with 3 volumes unpublished, X is the most notorious of CLAMP's unfinished works, stalled for over 20 years at a cliffhanger because they and their publishers allegedly lost their taste for its too-real destructive violence and ending. Both the 1996 film adaptation and 2001 film attempt to give the story an ending, and while I'll touch on them briefly, I'm trying not to allow speculation to influence my reading.

X (subtitled as X/1999 in its original USA run) ran from 1992 to 2003 and in many ways marks the end of CLAMP's 90s era, tying up and saying goodbye to the stories of Subaru, Hokuto, Seishiro, and the CLAMP School, for now. There's a stylistic and even tonal shift after X halted, ending a run of tragic, violent, interpersonal psychology that so characterized their early writing. Reading it was bittersweet in that regard, as going through CLAMP's early years has made these characters, ideas, and dynamics some of my all-time favourites. At turns frustrating and meandering, revelatory and awe-inspiring, a surreal mix of Western and Eastern mythologies, with some of their most beautiful art yet, let's bid farewell to Tokyo and the Earth with CLAMP's most ambitious work yet. Heavy spoilers!

Synopsis: In the year 1999, the esper Shirou returns to Tokyo to fulfill his mother's dying wish of changing the fate of Earth. Kamui is destined to save the world, or destroy it, but he only cares about the protecting his childhood friends, Kotori and Fuuma Monou. In his wake are drawn the Dragons of Heaven, who fight to preserve humanity and the Earth as is, and the Dragons of Earth, who seek to destroy humanity and renew the Earth from our corruption. As the promised day of destruction draws near, what does Kamui wish for? And who is the second Kamui, and how is he connected to Fuuma?

The Story: A Christ figure character having to save Earth? Everything being re-explained at least 3 times? Constant dream scenes? In every way, X seems poised to fail, but CLAMP succeeds in infusing a level of ambition and sweeping grandeur that lifts X up in spite of itself. What sells X is that it takes a story about the end of the world and tells it on an emotional, inner-world scale - dreams become entire volumes as characters puzzle out destiny and what makes life worth living. The entire first arc revolves around building the relationship between the main trio, and Kamui's character psychology, so that Kamui's choice actually resonates and emotionally and narratively destroys us. The entire sequence of Kamui and Subaru inside Kamui, and the end of Seishiro and Subaru's arc will haunt me FOREVER.

At the same time, it contains all the sweeping epicness of RG Veda (and shares many motifs and plot elements!), presenting the tales of god-like characters against the backdrop of emotional, homoerotic fights. We're dealing with fate and god-like power, but all of this is placed against the question of, "who are you? and what do you want? And is that the right choice for others and yourself?" Set against the fight between two homoerotic best friends - honestly this manga is so sexually charged, from the BDSM undertones to Satsuki's computer-sex. This god-scope conflict is reduced to our own base instincts for humanity and sensation and consumption and intimacy. There's highly compelling stuff in here. It's so shojo in the best way.

That's not to say X doesn't have structural issues. It has some severe pacing issues, mostly at the end as the Dragons of Heaven are stuck losing battles while Hinoto goes evil and Kamui can't make a kekkai, ad nauseam. It feels like trying to fit the Tarot card number to number of characters, bloated the story. Additionally, while I really love the Keiichi arc, I think X needs more grounding in characters not tied to the apocalypse. Destruction can often feel weightless, an issue for a story that trades on the idea of human connection vs. apathy. Gaia Theory (killing humans will save Earth) is also just bullshit, which can make the conflict frustrating because nobody questions its logic.

Still, despite all that, I can't argue that X is just compelling. It has SUCH a strong sense of millennium angst mood, such interesting character and thematic ideas, lays just enough narrative bread crumbs, that it's visceral enough to work despite itself.

The Themes: X is sooo crystallized RG Veda with the deeply psychological exploration of human loneliness of Tokyo Babylon, CLAMP once again returning to these core themes of their career at a new, fresh angle! X feels so thematically cohesive in what it's trying to do. It's the journey of The Fool across the tarot deck into Judgment and The World. X takes the notion of fate internally, beyond the will of the stars, to explore shadow selves and personal desire. I LOVE a mirror character and Greek tragedy; I ate up the dualism and fatal flaws. It's all very (attributed to) Carl Jung: Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Fuuma reads the deepest, most self-destructive wishes of others, and is himself the shadow self Kamui cannot accept: only by realising his true wish and self, can destiny be overturned!

People focus heavily on the apocalyptic conflict, but X is so meaty because it is fundamentally about our own sense of self-identity. X deconstructs RG Veda's thesis that holding onto your wish (CLAMP defines as love for one person), beyond reason, pity and rectitude, is NOT a moral high ground. It tracks Subaru's character to its logical end-point: The Dragons of Heaven subsume their love for one singular person into their only self-worth that they self-destruct without them. Conversely, the Dragons of Earth lack all connection to anyone. It's nature vs humanity, attachment vs detachment, desire vs freedom. For all its Christian trappings, X is deeply Buddhist: we escape samsara in a middle path of a stable self-identity, beyond apathy and desire. X uses the end of the world to position the singular truth that you have to want to live and be a person.

The Characters: Oh Kamui, Fuuma, Kotori, my bargain bin Subaru, Seishiro and Hokuto, who are bargain bin Yasha, Ashura, and uh, Gigei I guess (who are themselves bargain bin Jotaro, Kakyoin, and Girl. God, it's just endless games of telephone between masculine reserved seme and feminine emotional uke. I see you CLAMP).

Okay being serious, I do actually find Kamui interesting - and I think it's meant to be textually repetitive. It's refreshing to have a shojo man who is a violent unpleasant little asshole. And while narratively I understand Fuuma absorbing these traits when he becomes Kamui's shadow, I don't care for the uke-fication of Kamui. Still, Kamui's inner conflict and inability to figure out who he is beyond "the Kamui" works. Fuuma never quite grew on me, mainly because he is so blandly perfect at the start, but I think he's acceptably charismatic as a villain. And the concept of twin stars is undeniably compelling. Kotori fared the worst for me. The purehearted housewife shojo ingenue is so riddled with sexism and Kotori never becomes anything beyond a satellite character - her dream scenes are narratively compelling, but her character is lifeless (literally) and dull.

The supporting cast fares much better, though it's too large. Aoki and Saiki, for example, could have been merged. Still, I loved Arashi and Sorata, Karen, Yuzuriha, Kusanagi, and of course, the conclusion for Subaru and Seishiro. There's such interesting ideas woven into the cast, and I really enjoyed watching them wrestle with connection and self-identity. The Dragons of Earth aren't as individually interesting, but they're just cool enough that it wasn't too bothersome (except Yuto. I kept forgetting him). The main issue is that having so many perspectives meant character arcs had less room to breathe.

The Art: With one major caveat, this is probably THE most beautiful CLAMP manga, ever. Very few pages have a traditional grid layout, with incredibly beautiful and inventive panelwork that bursts out and follows characters' emotions and dreams into consecutive pages of gorgeous spreads. Panels are layered but never visually messy and only enhance visual storytelling and meaning. The constant use of motifs and visual metaphor is, while unsubtle, just gorgeous that we become swept away in the grandeur of a new myth with swirling dragons consuming Earth. Water, feathers, sakura, ticking clocks and glass Earths lead the eye through dreams and inner worlds and even characterize entire interactions and distract from sometimes painfully repetitive dialogue. And the colour spreads and tarot cards are insane maximalist works of art. The fight scenes are illegible, but I don't think CLAMP knows how to solve this.

The character design is mostly memorable, transforming undeveloped personalities into fully realised characters, like Satsuki's bio-tech room - though Aoki and Fuuma look too similar. My caveat is I don't like the cuter look we get in the later volumes when they were influenced by other series they were drawing, though it still reads (Vol 1-10ish are the peak). Still, the art grants the story a mythos greater frankly, than what it ever achieved in its writing.

Questionable Elements: I've alluded that many CLAMP manga have a baseline sprinkle of sexism - not anymore than a lot of shojo, but something I'm more able to spot now than when I was a teen. X is decidedly more sexist. FIVE separate women are fridged to either help a male character and/or cause a male character pain, with Hokuto's being the worst because X strips her of so much agency to turn her into Kakyou's lost love. Arashi loses her power because she is no longer a virgin. Yuzuriha and Satsuki's arcs revolve around their male love interests. Kotori's writing is terrible (bless the anime for making her a PERSON) and Kanoe can definitely veer into hyper-sexualized fanservice in a way male characters aren't. I don't love how Karen's emotional worth culminates in becoming a mother. And Nataku lacking a soul because they weren't "born from a mother" sits poorly (plus being genderless because they're literally from a lab). X is one of my favourite CLAMP works, but it has a sexism issue and I think dismissing it as "well, it's a tragedy", fails to see the differences in how women are written and treated by the story, vs. the men.

The Ending: So, the elephant in the room is X has no ending. The anime and movie attempt to conclude things, to mixed effect: the anime ignores that Kamui's true wish is NOT to bring Fuuma back, and while the movie ending ties us back to X's inspiration Devilman, it feels mostly for shock. Ultimately, it doesn't matter because, how do you assess a story that is only 6/7 way told? I'm trying not to heavily speculate on whether the ending would have elevated or diminished X. In the end, I think X is still worth the read despite the lack of ending. As Subaru says, nothing will change and nothing will get better if you don't, but you will walk away changed if you do try it.

Overall: I've seen people say X is a series more to be experienced than to be read, and I both agree and don't. X is a visual tour de force, probably one of the most beautiful manga I have ever read and lessens MANY of its flaws. And it's true it doesn't stick all its story beats or character writing and perhaps, in hindsight, they might have written it smaller and more cohesive. But there is something beautifully human and raw and ugly and intimate at the heart of X, of human connection and shadow selves and self-destruction and free will, that really haunted me afterwards.

'X, despite its edginess, stands out from the drecks of misanthropic, apocalyptic, violent tales of dueling best friends for centering its story at the heart of the human soul. It remains deeply resonant and influential more than 30 years after it was started, and 20 years after it halted, and for that I would count it amongst CLAMP's best. It's a fascinating deconstruction of heroic sacrifice and selfless love and in so doing reaffirms human connection, individuality, and hope in the face of the apocalypse. The future, after all, is not yet decided.

#x 1999 #clamp #long post

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b-else-writes · 1 year ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 6: Shirahime-Syo

I'm constantly saying in this early era of CLAMP, "here's one of their most obscure works", but this really is CLAMP's most obscure work. It has no anime, no drama CDs, I daresay beyond Shirahime herself, none of the other characters who appear have been remembered by CLAMP or their fans. Not to say this work is bad - the opposite! It's simply beautifully self-contained (what a rarity).

This exists because a magazine that would soon go out of print requested a series from CLAMP. Published in 1992, Shirahime was finished in just 10 days and marked a departure from CLAMP's style and tone. A hardcover volume was published in English by Tokyopop in the 2000s, collecting the 3 chapters, prologue and epilogue. Happily, I was able to snag a copy of this evocative, atmospheric work. Finally, some good food after the CLAMP School downturn!

Synopsis: Legend tells that the falling snow is the tears of the snow princess, Shirahime. Across three interconnected stories in ancient Japan, CLAMP explores human grief and folly, isolation, and the anthropomorphism of nature.

The Story: This is a manga written in 10 days in the best way possible. There's a frame story to the whole manga, where a man unknowingly encounters Shirahime and gives us her legend, warning of the snow's dangers. The epilogue returns us here to wrap up the thematic elements. The three chapters are each self-contained stories centered around snow and despair, and they feel ephemeral in some ways. But this works beautifully with the entire theme of bleak melancholia of snow covered mountains.

CLAMP admits there's no specific time period as they had no time to do adequate research, but we get enough sense of a pre-modern Japan. There's a very folktale feeling to the entire piece that lingers in the mind, giving just enough information to each vignette to convey themes and emotions. I was especially moved by the first story where a girl goes after a wolf she believes killed her father, only to grow attached to it. The girl's mother kills the wolf, telling her that it would only kill her in the end. We're left wondering if this is true or not - can we escape our natures? Do we cause our own grief?

The Themes: Which ties beautifully into the themes of the story. Shirahime ends the book by telling the man that snow is not her tears but the tears of man's grief and suffering. While seemingly rather banal, even edgy, it works within a narrative that explores how different characters anthropomorphize nature and ascribe human characteristics to it in an effort to push aside their own pain or make sense of the universe.

Is the wolf caring for the little girl out of guilt or is it just a wolf without human morality, and there is no rhyme or reason to its cruelty and mercy? Are two herons lovers, or are they just birds who must mate by their natures, just as our protagonist is drawn to war? Is it right to envy a frozen flower, or will it only lead to destruction? There's such an interesting concept here about trying to make sense of a cold and uncaring world through story, the human need to narrativize and personify, which is such galaxy-brained thinking for something literally made on the fly. It's so utterly early CLAMPian in its melancholia, and yet so poignant.

The Characters: As each story is self-contained, no characters reappear beyond Shirahime, who exists as a framing device (she is wonderfully mysterious and otherworldly). The thinly written, archetypal characters work in a folktale setting. We don't need to know beyond Fubuki, brave young girl, or Kaya, heartbroken lover.

The Art: Unlike their other works, CLAMP did this entire manga with a brush, using ink wash instead of their usual screentone. It's a very smart choice given the time limit they had, and it's clear they picked snowy barren landscapes so they could crunch those backgrounds fast. The result is hauntingly beautiful, with grays that feel cold, and visceral emotional moments reminiscent of ink paintings. That panel of Kaya frozen in the ice, or Inuki getting shot? Will live rent free with me forever. Shirahime's design is also gorgeous. While the paneling is definitely simpler, it works so well with the art that I can't complain. The art carries the stories so far that it is part of the narrative.

Questionable Elements: There is none, shockingly. A woman does die to fulfill a man's narrative but every other fairytale does this really.

Overall: A haunting atmospheric read. I knew I was going to enjoy the artwork because I love soft traditional brushwork pieces, but I didn't expect to really be moved by it, and I was. It gave me the sense of reading particularly haunting folklore that cuts to something true in humanity: that nature doesn't have a reason or morality, it just exists, but it is in our nature to try to make sense of it, to tell story and create myth and legend. We are storytelling creatures, to our wonder and our doom. This is a theme that I am an absolute sucker for, a meta-textual story that reflects upon their own work in many ways and their own place as storytellers. It's a short read, and I do highly recommend it to non-fans, if nothing else for how beautiful it is.

#clamp #shirahime #shirahme syo

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b-else-writes · 1 year ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 5: CLAMP School Detectives

I don't know about all of you, but one of my first fond fanfic-adjacent writing experiences was painstakingly creating a magical school rip-off story where mine and all my friends self-insert OCs could go on adventures. And we wrote all this by hand in a notebook! I bring this up because CLAMP School Detectives says so much about CLAMP's doujinshi roots and how that thinking, of a vast playground for their characters to mess around in, was going to shape their opus. I also bring it up because this is self-indulgence to its core, in the way the best and frankly, worst, of fanfiction is. Despite having an expanded anime adaptation, CLAMP School Detectives did not have the lasting cultural memory that their other adaptations did.

CLAMP School Detectives ran from 1992 to 1993, concurrent with all of their early series, and bridges several, with dozens of other references to their doujinshi and uncollected early abandoned works. It is out of print and only had a 2000s Tokyopop English release, of 3 volumes comprising 13 chapters. Again, I read this entirely online and wouldn't pick up a copy unless I wanted to be a completionist. "Spoilers", I guess?

Synopsis: Imonoyama Nokoru, Takamura Suoh, and Ijuin Akira are members of the Elementary School Student Board at CLAMP School. Nokoru has the incredible ability to detect when a woman needs help, and the three precocious children decide to form a detective team that solves the problems of fair maidens everywhere - if only Nokoru could get his paperwork done, to Suoh's despair!

The Story: If Dukylon and Man of Many Faces had barely a story, this is even less than that - it's a bunch of barely mysteries that the trio solve every chapter, with the finale being a flashback to explore Suoh and Nokoru's past and bond. It's a gag manga that relies on whether you think the gimmick of Nokoru being able to sense a woman in danger is funny, and find the little adventures cute, and it just did not land for me. It feels like an overly saccharine attempt at Enid Blyton type school boys solving mysteries (but in Japan), and it was just plain boring. Mostly because they're barely even mysteries - I felt cheated as a huge mystery lover! This is either going to read as really cute, or really boring to you, and it was the latter for me.

The Themes: Uhh.....help out fair maidens. It's a gag manga, if you're doing analysis on this, good for you, but I have a very packed life and I don't think CLAMP wants me to learn anything but "Nokoru cutie".

The Characters: The characters are largely enjoyable but quite plain. Nokoru is basically the perfect little elementary school boy dream, but it's done sweetly enough that he reads as funny rather than irritating. Suoh is textbook tsundere who devotes his life to Nokoru (Ashura & Yama you will always be famous), and Akira is ditzy. There's not much here beyond Nokoru secretly feeling distanced from people because he doesn't want to hurt others. If you like cute wacky elementary school stories, you'll like them. I found them fine. Though I did squeal in fondness when they showed up in X. CLAMP knows how to charm you despite yourself.

The Art: I find this some of CLAMP's weakest character design - Nokoru and Suoh look too similar to me beyond the colour palette, and the different women featured are unimaginative. It's overall decent art, but nothing special or groundbreaking. As someone who devoured RG Veda, Tokyo Babylon and even Man of Many Faces for just how damn pretty and creative they could get, it's lacklustre.

Questionable Elements: I don't know if this is a translation issue, but Nokoru's behaviour is referred to as "feminist", and it is not. This is Victorian era paternalism that women need taking care of and can't be held responsible for our actions because we're the emotional and fairer sex. While satirical, the sexism is still irritating. Also there's another "older person x literal minor bad, but only because older person is a woman". Are CLAMP ageist? One wonders.

Also. There is overt fascist imagery in CLAMP School Detectives:

CLAMP draws them in Nazi uniforms on another cover, and there are MULTIPLE images of the Rising Sun Flag (which is a symbol of fascist WW2 imperial Japan). It's abhorrent and there is much to discuss frankly about how fascist imagery is so ubiquitous in manga.

Overall: Putting aside the REALLY bad elements, CLAMP School Detectives is probably the most unmemorable so far of CLAMP's oeuvre. The characters are charming and the premise itself is not bad, but it never lands. It's a very cutesy, almost slice of life manga, which is just really not my thing because it never succeeds in at least being funny or exciting or anything substantial to linger on. Not something I'd recommend to anyone beyond devoted CLAMP fans, besides the adorable main trio. Say what you will but CLAMP really knows how to make you love their characters.

#clamp #clamp school detectives

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b-else-writes · 1 year ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 4: Duklyon: CLAMP School Defenders

Let's go a bit backwards in time to their fourth work, Duklyon: CLAMP School Defenders. It ran from 1991 to 1993, concurrent with all series mentioned in my past review, and in the same world as Tokyo Babylon/ X. It feels like the real start of CLAMP's interest with shared universes, meta-textuality, and self-reference, because so much of this series is tied to your knowledge of their other work. Proto-Tsubasa? Maybe that's a bit too much credit.

Like Man of Many Faces, I had never known this existed. It had no anime adaptation (but 1 drama CD). It's out of print and was released in English by Tokyopop in the early 2000s, in two volumes comprised of 13 chapters. I read this entirely online and like with Man of Many Faces, am not likely to ever get a physical copy unless I feel like completing my collection. "Spoilers", in the loosest sense of the word.

Synopsis: Higashikunimaru Kentarou and Shukaido Takeshi are freshmen students who lead double lives as masked sentai superheroes Duklyon, protecting CLAMP School from evil! Aided by the General and the fiery Eri Chusonji, they've got to fight the fiendish Imonoyama Shopping District from world domination (and also keep being main characters in their own story!).

The Story: Listen, this is a gag manga in the purest sense of the word. It starts off mocking the repetitive nature of tokatsu and kaiju shows, which made the first volume a slog. Satirizing repetition by being repetitive is not actually funny. Volume 2 improved by introducing a wacky alien love triangle and more CLAMP self-referential humour, which did land. The manga overall feels random and aimless, and while the latter chapters do manage to pull things together, the earlier chapters really struggle. The satire isn't particularly striking or witty, it's meant to ~cRaZy and poking fun for long-term fans. I'd rate this below average. When it leans into breaking the fourth wall and mocking themselves, it lands. When it parodies Super Sentai by just...being Super Sentai, it's a poor copy.

The Themes: There are no themes here. This is light and playful and silly and a way for CLAMP to poke fun at all the genres they like. I have learnt nothing from this and I think Takeshi and Kentarou would be proud of me.

The Characters: One thing I'm realising in these CLAMP re-reads is 1) the strength of CLAMP's character writing elevates their weaker material, and 2) they copy earlier character templates into newer characters. Takeshi and Kentarou are prototype Watanuki and Doumeki "stop saying we're close but actually they're in love". And it is charming to experience the second (first?) time, especially the flash-forward at the end where they're married (almost). I prefer the put-upon, fourth wall breaking Takeshi between the two, but their dynamic really holds things together. Sukiyabashi is pretty good as a fail villain with even more fail hair. There's nothing deep about the characters, but they're entertaining and carry the paper-thin plot.

The Art: It's competently drawn, comprehensible visual storytelling, and the detailing on the Sentai suits are pretty well-done (though something about how the codpiece connects to the legs bothers me anatomically). I do love the tokatsu villain costuming, but otherwise the character designs are quite plain. It was actually a little difficult to distinguish Takeshi and Kentarou at first. Like Man of Many Faces, it's fine, it gets the job done, but its lacking compared to CLAMP at their best. The colour spreads aren't even that fun!

Questionable Elements: I do think it's funny this is the ONE CLAMP series where an adult person-teenager relationship is treated as gross, and it's (so far) the only one where the adult is a woman and the teenager is a boy. Something something ageism misogyny. But otherwise there's really nothing to talk about here. Eri is portrayed as a lovesick harpy but it's mild, as sexism in shojo goes.

Overall: I can see why Duklyon is an obscure CLAMP work. Where Man of Many Faces had sweet charm to carry it, Duklyon treads the more fickle ground of comedy, and it just doesn't always work. There's some genuinely funny moments here, and I do like Takeshi and Kentarou, but I don't think it's a necessary read for anyone but the most dedicated of CLAMP fans. CLAMP can write a really dumb funny bit when they want to, but that's about it.

#dukylon clamp school defenders #clamp

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b-else-writes · 1 year ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 3: Tokyo Babylon

The CLAMP 90s series. Perhaps their greatest work ever. Tokyo Babylon ran from 1990 to 1993, concurrent with RG Veda, the CLAMP School, Shirahime, Chun-hyang, AND X. It makes you wonder how X and Tokyo Babylon shaped each other (but more on that later). Tokyo Babylon (and X) is also set in the same universe as the CLAMP School reflecting CLAMP’s early interest in crossovers. Planned out as 7 volumes, it consists of 11 big stories and 3 annexes. I read the omnibus versions which contain lots of coloured art, but the original print run is a beauty in 80s and early 90s graphic design.

While I'd never read this before, it's famous enough (two OVAs, a drama CD, and a live action movie), that I went in knowing some of the big spoilers, but not details. So while my reading was coloured by the knowledge of its tragic end, it still felt revelatory to me. It is the first CLAMP work where I think they had gotten their storytelling pinned down enough to consciously think of how to write a story that ties together on a thematic level, in every stage, and it's phenomenal. Heavy spoilers.

Synopsis: Onmyoji and thirteenth head of the Sumeragi clan, Subaru Sumeragi is called upon to solve occult mysteries in post-bubble Tokyo. It's a time of glittering lights, a rotten economy, and city populated by lonely people desperate for an answer to their problems as the millennium draws near. Joined by his fashionable twin sister Hokuto and the kindly but strangely sinister vetenarian Seishiro Sakurazuka - who is in love with him - the overly sacrificing and empathetic Subaru must solve these problems and learn how to live - but Tokyo is not a kind place, especially to those with gentle natures.

The Story: On its surface, Tokyo Babylon begins as a "case-of-the-week" style story, where Subaru has to solve an occult case and learns something. Its a deceptively simple premise that allowed for CLAMP to explore pressing social issues of their time (which still feel resonant due to the sensitive way they explored them), while also building upon Subaru's character development through this, and the suspense of Seishiro's true nature. We observe Subaru grow through his failures and learn more about the limitations of his empathy. No case feels pointless in how it develops Subaru as a person, and his relationship to Seishiro. The dread we feel about Seishiro's connection to Subaru grows that we almost believe we might just get out of this. It's just excellently plotted out.

The comedy is well-timed and CLAMP know when to pull back from it to allow the emotional aspect to come through. Every case is incredibly gripping and I even cried reading "Old". I have seen some suggest it would have been more effective to have a massive twist rather than seed Seishiro's psychopathy throughout, but I actually think this works on a thematic level, and finding out Seishiro is a murderer, the bet, and Hokuto's death, still hit like a gut punch. It's a brilliant usage of seeding information without the full context until the end. I have no complaints here. It's a poignant story of Tokyo in the early 1990s and its destructiveness, while never losing its humanity.

The Themes: Do you know why the cherry blossoms are red. Tokyo Babylon is a story about well, Tokyo. It's about how modern city living that pursues only personal gain and conformity leads to human loneliness, and loneliness is a trap that destroys us all. We can never know someone else's pain, which leads to loneliness - but to recognize that is also freeing because it means we cannot judge and be judged for it. Having empathy is good, but too much and for the wrong people and not for yourself, can only lead to death. Subaru forms his self-identity through others, in contrast to his self-actualized twin, remaining aloof and detached from his own self - this is why Seishiro's betrayal breaks him, because Subaru doesn't know how to live as his own person. It is also what causes his loved ones so much harm in how little he loves himself in comparison to others.

Its a fascinating interplay between community and individuality, the reality of modern life of trying to be someone while also needing to generalize, without ever really settling on either side. Hokuto is right that they're not the same person, but Subaru is also right that they are deeply connected, as all people must be. Where it does come down hard is that humans are not the villains but Tokyo is, in what it represents - greed, selfishness, cruelty, and apathy. "Things like this happen in Tokyo everyday". It is intensely tragic and yet, strangely, incredibly life-affirming. Despite everything Subaru suffers, people are not born and made evil and everyone should be taken for who they are, not a faceless mass. Including ourselves.

The Characters: Like the plot, everything in the characters is tied into the story of Tokyo. Seishiro is Tokyo: the slick, cool-cut well to do man in a suit with no empathy and a taste for violence. He's Subaru's mirror - charming AND connected to people, and yet not. Nobody is special in Seishiro's eyes, nobody deserves to be treated as anything but an object. And then we have Subaru, poor sweet Subaru who is so empathetic and yet so detached from the world and himself because he's so focused on only his job, on not being an individual. He is what Tokyo wants him to be, filled with self-loathing and frankly suicidal impulses that he shouldn’t be alive if others are not.

It's so tragic to watch Subaru finally grow into a person, but to do so to the one person who will hurt him. Subaru wants to to love Tokyo so badly, that it kills his sister, the one person he SHOULD have been pouring his love into, the person who could love him back and expect nothing in return, the person who would allow him love while not dissolving himself in it. And Hokuto is just a showstopper, funny, kind, witty and cool. She's Subaru's northstar, the empathy and humanity where he cannot, almost co-dependent. I love characters that reflect one another and the themes.

The Art: The visual storytelling and panelling are fantastic. Tokyo Babylon offers a sparser and more distinctly black and white look than RG Veda, with a stronger emphasis on emotional paneling that breaks into beautiful spreads. It creates an almost wood-block, timeless appeal (despite the fashion) that is neither too busy nor too simplified. Anything to do with the Bet and especially the finale is incredible. Subaru surrounded by cherry blossoms? Haunting. The fashion is impeccable, I love the bold design choices in the covers and spreads. The character designs in and of themselves are quite simple (and I don't love the seme-uke look of Seishiro and Subaru), but the personality-costuming is so well done and tell stories themselves. And the use of Hokuto and Subaru being identical to conceal the twist? Masterful character design. My only complaint is some of the scanned photo backgrounds are jarring against the lovely drawn art.

Questionable Elements: Subaru is 16 and Seishiro is 25. That being said, I do think from their interviews and the actual text, we aren't meant to ship them, and it's not unrealistic to be a teen and fall for an older person only for it to majorly fuck you up because they abuse their greater knowledge to harm you (which hey, might be a theme!). Some of the way issues are handled is dated, but not too badly. Again, I’m not going to comment on whether this is queer representation or not, since I don’t think that has ever been CLAMP’s intention. Despite the stereotypical seme and uke stuff, the relationship feels real and tangible (which is why the payoff works). My real gripe is Hokuto getting fridged, though it's handled better than expected (still. let's stop killing women to make men sad).

Overall: A beautiful tragedy and an ode to human alienation, identity, and empathy. I went into this expecting to like it, and ended it never the same. It is genuinely a fantastic, fully complete thematic work from them that speaks as a reflection of the time it was written, and yet remains resonant. I know some people find it edgy, but I actually don't think edge is its intention, it's dark and it's tragic but never misanthropic. Yes, Subaru enters the adult world broken, but his refusal to become like Seishiro and to continue to count himself amongst humanity despite everything, reaffirms that life and people have value (notwithstanding his behaviour in X).

You can see so much of their ideas crystallize here that they’ll repeat across X, Xxxholic, etc. We're all just lonely people and we hurt each other in our loneliness, and it's important to recognize that in ourselves and take care of ourselves for it. We have value as individuals AND through others. Read it!

#clamp #tokyo babylon

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