Retrospect on CLAMP: In good and bad times...

5 things I LOVE about CLAMP and 5 things I want to complain about...

Their destiny was foreordained - an X/1999 review

The seven angels and the seven seals.

  At the millennial edge, the concluding battle for humanity's future is staged. Kamui Shirou's destiny has been decided as he returns to Tokyo to face his ultimate challenge. The Dragon of Heaven, defenders of the Earth, stand ready to protect the world from the Dragon of Earth, the seven angels of legend, who embrace the devastation of the planet to bring about its purification. Now Kamui must decide which side to fight for although he finds the idea utterly unappealing. It isn't until realizing that his two childhood friends, Fuma and Kotori Monou, are in grievous peril that Kamui decides to step into his fated position in the climactic struggle of the Year of Destiny: 1999.

Do you love Tokyo? - a Tokyo Babylon review

From right to left: Subaru, Hokuto, Seishiro

   The year is 1990. The city is Tokyo, a busy megalopolis where people are caught in dreams, anonymity, loneliness, sadness and crushed hopes underneath the fevered rush for success and wealth. Sometimes the high-pitched emotions and acute despair manifest themselves into ghosts and curses.
   Enter Sumeragi Subaru, 13th head of the Sumeragi clan and a 16-year-old onmyouji. He uses his spiritual power and genuine compassion to help people, exorcise trapped spirits and undo maledictions. In this modern world, where nothing is truly black and white, this is hardly easy, especially because of Subaru's tendency to care too much for people. His twin sister Hokuto is there to help him, to cheer him up, and to make him wear eccentrically fashionable clothing. Sakurazuka Seishirou is a (male) 25-year-old gentle veterinarian friend of the twins, who professes to love Subaru.
   Hokuto thinks that making them a couple would be a marvelous idea, even though - or maybe because - she believes that Seishirou is the mysterious Sakurazukamori, an assassin onmyouji said to protect Japan from the shadows.

A mysterious very young thief- a Man of Many Faces review

Akira, Utako and Akira's mothers

   By day nine year old Akira Ijuyin is a normal student at Clamp School, but at night he becomes the mysterious thief 20 Masks. His thefts are usually subject to the whims of his two stepmothers, which Akira pulls off without any true objections or interactions. One night Akira ducks into the room of five year old Utako Ōkawa in an attempt to hide from the police.   
   Although the pair shares a four year age difference, they find themselves quickly falling for each other even as Akira finds himself being increasingly more involved with thefts, some of which include Utako's family. This as well as several other obstacles give the young couple's budding relationship a fair amount of difficulty.

"Six stars will fall to this plane. The dark stars that will defy the heavens..."- a RG Veda review

From left to right: Ashura, Yasha-ou, Souma-ou, Ryou-ou, Kendappa-ou, Karura-ou

    A 10-volume manga series by CLAMP, notable for being their debut work, and named after the ancient Hindu hymn collection the Rigveda. The series borrows elements of Hindu and Buddhist mythology for its setting and characters.    
300 years ago, the general Taishakuten rebelled against the Heavenly Emperor, killing both him and the guardian god Ashura-ou and installing himself as the king. The Ashura clan was thought to be destroyed until the god Yasha-ou found the remaining child sealed in a forest and began to gather the Six Stars, a group of individuals said to be the prophecied bringers of a celestial revolution.

Down the hole in Clampworld!

“A land that doesn’t need a map” claim CLAMP the world of their works to be, but only in terms of enjoyment; because otherwise their claim is a belief of theirs… Especially after TRC and xxxholic, more readers have question marks floating over their heads about the past of the cameos and how things function in CLAMPverse. And let’s not forget how tags like shoujo and shounen don’t apply to CLAMP due to their diverse writing and styles. For a beginner a guide is useful.

Saya Monou: a mermaid of sin

Illustration by CLAMP for the Tarot Collection - 0. The Fool

After I got into CLAMP fandom, I started exploring the various manga out there and of course X, being the masterpiece it is, wasn't left out. It must have been while I was still in high school and I wasn't that aware of the Internet communities out there or the streaming online - if I remember correctly. I was a newbie 'otaku'. So when I read about Saya Monou turning into a mermaid in the afterlife as punishment, question marks started floating over my head. And I guess that I'm not the only one feeling puzzled about this fact, if we take for granted the strong influence of Disney's The Little Mermaid adaption of the homonym fairy tale in the West. This article is my attempt to explain the imagery associated with Saya Monou.

Memories, Loneliness, Wisdom and Objects in xxxholic

colored scan by Outou

While in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles the fanservice takes the form of reoccurring characters from previous CLAMP works, in xxxholic this is done with a way more subtle and mysterious way, that suits more obsessed/ well-informed fans: reappearance of objects. In general, the universe of xxxholic, where Yuuko -and later Watanuki- rules, is full of objects and not without a reason.

Pool of memories: TRC things to remember and fawn over

crossing time and space is 'remembering love'

Neko has already covered me up and said what it needs to be said about the TRC manga. So this post has to do with things I liked in the series and lots of fan stuff! Like amvs, fanfictions, fanarts, sites and quotes.

The journey for the Lost Feathers: a TRC manga review

A princess, an archeologist, a mage and a ninja, and a white fluffy bun -and the journey begins...

CLAMP are a group of female mangaka that have published some of the most popular manga of the past two decades, with works such as xxxHolic, Card Captor Sakura and Tokyo Babylon. They are extremely loved by fans all over the world. That kind of hype though is what always kept me away from their stories. A few years ago I bought and read The One I Love but I never went any further. That was all until about a week ago, when a friend tagged me in a Facebook picture to a CLAMP character (namely Syaoran) from their manga series Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles. That was the initial reason I decided to sit down and read the story. In the beginning I told myself today that I would read four chapters, just to have a speedy start and be able to finish the whole thing in a month or two. Three days after I started, I had gone through all the chapters of the 28 volumes and I was officially owned.

A singing bird : Maaya Sakamoto

Maaya Sakamoto with Kobato, Suu(Clover) and Sakura Kinomoto(Cardcaptor Sakura)

The above illustration is by CLAMP. That's pretty natural isn't it? Maaya Sakamoto has tied her name very strongly with anime adaptions of CLAMP's works (Cardcaptor Sakura, Clover, Clamp School Detectives, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles). But that's not where Maaya started from...