The CLAMP Project: Episode 11: RG Veda volume 10

Volume 10 of RG Veda is just a series of one death after another. That's certainly one way to end a series, though the body count and the sheer amount of blood and violence make me wonder. Not about RG Veda, but about another CLAMP series, X, which has been on hold since 2003 because of the amount of violence in the ending. It could be that since X is set in a modern world, the violence was seen as more disturbing than violence in a fantasy world like RG Veda. Regardless, I'd love to see the end of X, and this will certainly not be the last time that I mention that in this project. It's interesting to think about the impact of X on RG Veda and RG Veda on X. By the time that RG Veda had finished, there had already been at least seven volumes of X published. Tokyo Babylon had been over for years. And Cardcaptor Sakura was just about to start. That's a lot of work to happen at the same time as RG Veda, and I think that RG Veda ended up suffering for it. 

After Karura's death, Kendappa explains to Sohma that she knew that Sohma was fighting a losing battle going against Taishakuten, but she had to let her go and fight against him because Kendappa knew that Sohma would never be happy otherwise. How's that for a tragic relationship? It gets worse.

Yasha kills Bishamonten, who is revealed to have joined Taishakuten's side only because he was promised that he would be able to marry Kisshouten. Kisshouten mourns her dead husband - it turns out that even though he married her as a prize after the rebellion, she'd already been in love with him all along. She doesn't have long to mourn - no one does in RG Veda - because Taishakuten quickly strikes her down, after telling her that her father, the former God King, did things that were worse than what a demon would do. It's a very violent death, too - he slices her in half from the shoulder down. Ow.

Meanwhile, Kujaku has been having wordless and confusing flashbacks showing a lady with an eye on her forehead behind bars, strangling a small child with black wings. He reveals to Taishakuten's stargazer that he's a stargazer himself, only one marked by a terrible sin.

Yama and Taishakuten fight one another until Zouchouten steps in and asks if Taishakuten cares for his kingdom at all. Taishakuten admits that no, he doesn't care for Tenkai at all - he's only doing what he's doing because of a promise he made in the past.

Ashura shows up and reveals that he killed Ryuu, taunts Yasha that he was foolish to awaken him, and says all he wants is to destroy the world. He fights against Yasha for a while, telling him that the Ashura that Yasha knew earlier is dead. He stabs Yasha in the shoulder and then disappears in a white light - the Ashura castle has awakened and he's been transported there.

Yasha runs after Ashura and Sohma goes against Taishakuten. She's completely unmatched, however, so Kendappa steps in. If Sohma is going to have to die, Kendappa is going to kill her herself. Yet another tragic relationship. At this point, the meaning of all these deaths and tragedies is sort of starting to wear away. There's just been so much death and so much destruction and so much tragedy that it just doesn't have any impact. Kendappa stabs Sohma, and as Sohma lays dying, Kendappa slices her own throat. Sohma awakens and tries to give Kendappa her blood to pass along her immortality, but Taishakuten pulls Sohma away before she can succeed, saying that there is nothing worse than living without the person you love.

Thankfully, the destruction stops for a bit and we get some revelations. Ashura, in his castle, receives the memories of his father. At the same time, Kujaku reveals his own truths to Yasha. It turns out that the prophecy had more to it than we had known. Basically, Ashura was destined to destroy the world. When Lord Ashura found that out, he decided that he would do everything he could to keep his son from doing so. He recruited Taishakuten to his aid. Taishakuten's price? Ashura himself. I'm amazed it took CLAMP this long to reveal some boy's love in their first series. Taishakuten and Ashura became lovers. Taishakuten swore to help Ashura and to prevent his son from destroying the world. He staged his rebellion so he'd be in a position to stop the Six Stars from gathering together, in hopes of preventing the prophecy from happening.

After the rebellion, Ashura asked Taishakuten to kill him and eat his body, so that Taishakuten would inherit his powers and be able to strike down the new Ashura. Taishakuten did so (another tragic relationship!!!), which is what caused his third eye to pop out on his forehead. 

Kujaku's third eye, on the other hand, was through no fault of his own - he was the son of the old God King and his sister, a stargazer. Because Kujaku's death was a sign of the king's crime of incest, Kujaku and his mother were locked away. Young Kujaku tried to kill himself to let his mother be released from the prison, but then his mother stepped in and tried to strangle him. What happened next is unclear - either Kujaku stabbed his mother accidentally with the stargazer staff or someone else did.

Yasha's sword, the Yama sword, is a special sword that will be able to control the Ashuras. Kujaku has been working behind the scenes to try to form a special bond between Yasha and Ashura in the hopes that Ashura will not kill Yasha and fulfill the prophecy.

In the end, it works out. Yasha confronts Ashura, who charges Yasha, but love wins out and at the last minute, turns his sword on himself. Ashura is swallowed up by his tentacle plant things and stays in stasis for some time. Yasha swears to stay by Ashura's side until he awakens. Sometime later, Kujaku comes and stabs himself with his staff, offering up his life in order to awaken Ashura. Yasha and Ashura go on to live happily ever after, even though Ashura feels pretty guilty about having killed everyone and all.

Now that it's over, I'm glad I read RG Veda for the sake of completion, but I'll never read it again. If it hadn't been by artists that I enjoy and part of this project, I'm not sure I would have finished it. It suffered from a real lack of momentum in the middle and from too-extreme brutality by the end. One tragedy at a time can bring pathos and emotion to a story, but when they come one after another after another, they lose any impact that they might have had. There's some interesting ideas with the twists - Taishakuten's real motivations, Kendappa's true allegiance - but they come too late, at a time when too much else was happening. There's no time to reflect on the revelations. Finally, the ending, with Ashura and Yasha going off to live happily together, was just too sappy - especially in comparison to the violence and tragedy that had filled the rest of the last volume.

Next up: a special side episode on the RG Veda anime, followed by CLAMP's next series: Man of Many Faces.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 10: RG Veda volume 9

I'd forgotten that one of the things that CLAMP does well are twist endings, where people aren't who you expected them to be all along. I also forgot about just how terrible a person Demon Ashura was, what with the blood-licking and the evil taunting in the first book. So I was pleasantly surprised reading volume 9 of RG Veda. For a while there, I was losing patience with the series, but everything is moving quickly here. It's sometimes possible for a strong ending to overcome a slow middle section. That's especially true in manga, where it can take months or even years to go from one volume to the next. 

Lady Kendappa is revealed to be not only the Sixth Star, but also Jikokuten, the fourth of Taishakuten's great generals. That's not really that surprising when I think about it: She's the only character who has had the slightest hint of ambiguity about her (aside from Kujaku, who is mostly a mystery, and demon Ashura, who vanished for most of the series), and so it makes sense that she'd be the one with the divided loyalties. She bursts onto the scene in magnificent armor covered in horns and spikes. Best of all, her harp transforms into a giant curved sword. It's a great great character design. Just look how well it works as cosplay. 

Kendappa refuses to join the rest of the Six Stars when they attack the castle, because her loyalty lies with the strongest warrior in the world: Taishakuten. She curses Sohma for being too weak to fight back, but does not kill her. Various others of the stars face off against Taishakuten's generals as Ashura goes straight after his mother.

Ashura attacks his mother, against Tenou's wishes. Tenou begs him for leniency, but Demon Ashura has taken over and Ashura can't be swayed. He runs the Shura sword clean through Shashi, resulting in a very CLAMP image of Ashura holding Shashi in his arms as she dies. It's a very familiar pose, one that we'll definitely see at least once more in another CLAMP series, but very striking.

Ashura and Shashi

At this point, we're probably supposed to feel badly that Ashura was willing to kill his own mother, if Tenou's crying is any indication, but she was so terrible that her death seems reasonable. With Shashi dead, Ashura can take the seal from her forehead and use it to completely awaken the Shura sword. This turns Ashura into a full-out demon and unlocks the passageway between Taishakuten's castle and Shura castle.

Ashura is swallowed up by mechanical looking tentacles that seem a lot like what Lord Ashura saw in his future in the flashback last volume. He emerges, older and now completely changed from the sweet child who was seen earlier in the series. He craves nothing but destruction and shows this by striking down Ryuu.

The rest of the Six Stars sense Ryuu's death, but they're busy in a fight of their own. Karura insists on facing off against Taishakuten alone, but she's too weak and is defeated. So our heroes end the book in a bad place: out of the six stars, one is still fighting for the enemy, one has turned into a demon, and two are dead, leaving just Yasha and Sohma. Yasha, of course, will be heartbroken to see that Ashura has turned evil, and Sohma is basically crippled because of her love for Kendappa. 

It's hard to see now how we'll get anything resembling a happy ending. We know that Ashura is going to kill Yasha, and now it seems pretty likely that nothing will happen to get away from that. The only possibility is in a really interesting exchange that happened between Taishakuten and Kujaku. Kujaku reveals that he, like Taishakuten, has a third eye in the middle of his forehead. This eye is a mark of having done something so terrible that even a demon wouldn't consider it. Kujaku also reveals that he's someone who "used to live here" - the former Lord Ashura reborn perhaps?

I'm impressed at how my attitude towards the series can change so quickly in a single volume. So much happened here that was actually surprising and interesting that I can almost start to forgive the meandering in the middle of the series. It could have been better if it were shorter, but I'm pretty convinced now that CLAMP is going to pull off a satisfying ending, if not a happy one.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 9: RG Veda volume 8

Finally, we have five of the six stars! And we've known about all five for half the series. Why did it have to be such a secret if it was going to be the most obvious choice? Yasha, Ashura, Ryuu, and Sohma are all Stars, along with Karura. The big question going into volume 9 is "Who is the sixth star?" The options seem to be Tenou, the kindhearted prince who is Ashura's brother, Kendappa, the royal harpist who now is clearly manipulating things so that Taishakuten will be defeated, or perhaps the general with a weakness for Karura whose name is escaping me because these names are killers.

There's another mystery repeated in volume 8, but I can't see how that really matters: "Who is the fourth great general?" 

As we start volume 8, Karura makes short work of Aguni, which of course she does, because she's a woman and so is Aguni and somehow the women always end up fighting one another in these types of series. Everyone learns that Rasetsu is dead, including Shara, who grieves for about a second before offering some horses to Yasha and the rest. She says that she promised Rasetsu that she would not cry when he died. It's the type of promise that people make and keep all the time in fiction that I don't think would ever work in real life. (Anyway, she doesn't have long to pretend not to grieve, because she kills herself soon after they leave. Supposedly this is because she doesn't want to reveal their whereabouts, but it's also because she doesn't want to live on without her husband, and because she's a character who isn't super duper important to the story, and so she can't be allowed to live.)

Ashura pops into his demon form and reveals that lo and behold, we've had four of the Six Stars all along, and Karura makes five! Then he changes back to his real form and says that he wants to go to Taishakuten's castle. He wants to confront his mother about why she tried to kill him. And he wants to confront Taishakuten about why he keeps killing people and causing sadness.

Tenou and Ashura

On the way there, our party runs into Tenou and Kendappa on a date. Tenou has just asked Kendappa to marry him, the poor fool. Kendappa and Sohma stare longingly. Tenou and Ashura have a psychic connection of some sort and realize one another's identity, but there won't be any time for a real meeting, because Komoukuten shows up, looking very much like a character right out of Ruroni Kenshin.

Komoukuten fights with Yasha, unwisely taunting him with tales of how he killed Rasetsu and split Shara's body in half. Yasha gets furious and does something that I can only describe as "going Super Saiyan". He glows, his hair flows up into the air, and his fighting aura becomes a physical thing that literally disintegrates Komoukuten.

Is this CLAMP or Dragonball?

At this point, the artwork is the main reason to read RG Veda, and it continues to stun. There are some great two-page panels, like the silent meeting of the eyes between Tenou and Ashura as they realize that they are brothers, or Tenou revealing a field of giant flowing blossoms to Kendappa, or Komoukuten facing off against Yasha. The magical auras in the fight scenes flow around the page like fire or wind. I never cease to be impressed with the way that things flow in CLAMP artwork.

I'm happy to only have two books left and to be able to move on soon. Tokyo Babylon is calling to me, and it's only a few short volumes away.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 8: RG Veda volume 7

At least more happens in volume 7 of RG Veda, but not with our main characters. Ashura, Yasha, and the rest end up staying with Shara, a nice human woman who turns out to be Rasetsu's wife. CLAMP spent most of volume 7 trying to hide her identity, but it wasn't very effective because it was revealed in the next-volume preview of volume 6. I hate when people do that. I wonder if that was a Tokyopop decision or if it was in the original text.

Ashura bonds with Shara and asks questions about what it means to be a family and protect the people you love. Yasha lets Ashura do whatever he wants. Finally, we get an explanation for that: Because the Shura sword will lead them to the six stars, and because the Shura sword is inside of Ashura, Yasha figures the best option is to follow Ashura's whims. It's not a bad reason to wander around randomly. Eventually, the fire god Aguni attacks and there's some fighting that is interrupted when Karura finally shows up.

Meanwhile, we spend quite a bit of time in the castle. Queen Shashi plots to have her son Tenou replace Taishakuten as God King, which she feels will put herself into power. Prince Tenou, Ashura's brother, attempts to hit on Kendappa, who is clearly oblivious and uninterested. Kendappa again swears her allegiance to Taishakuten, but simultaneously hides the fact that she knows that Karura is alive. General Zouchouten, the guy who stopped Taishakuten from killing Karura, also knows that she is alive, but refuses to say anything. Taishakuten speaks of the one thing that he wants to protect, which he'll give up everything for. 

There are a couple of experimental wordless passages here that depict battles. The first one is a flashback to the battle between Taishakuten and the former God King. The second is a demonstration battle between Tenou and Zouchouten. They're really effective sections, showing just how skilled the artwork is. It's clearly the artwork that drew in the audience for RG Veda, because the story just isn't there. But the art is absolutely stunning.

Finally, the volume ends with a confusing flashback to Lord Ashura (our Ashura's father) in the past. He speaks of his "sin" and confronts a fellow pointy-eared individual who is wrapped up in some sort of machine. He knows that there is some destiny that he does not want to happen, so he speaks to Yasha and tells him to protect the thing that he finds precious. He mentions his child, so it's clear that he's referring to our Ashura, but I can't tell if speaking to Yasha about protecting Ashura was Lord Ashura's crime, or if there was some other crime involved.

Throughout the chapter, there's a theme of how fighting your destiny makes you a sinner because you're going against the laws of the universe, but I don't think CLAMP believes that. In fact, most CLAMP characters manage to work within their destiny to do good. It's just not clear enough what Lord Ashura knew, what he did to try to prevent it, or why it matters.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 7: RG Veda volume 6

What is this, a shounen manga? I kept being reminded of Ruroni Kenshin as I read the sixth volume of RG Veda. 

Yasha takes his party back to the Yasha tribe's destroyed village once again. This time, he's going to burn the bodies of the dead villagers. I'm not sure how long has passed since the start of the series, but by this point, I wouldn't imagine there was much left of the bodies to burn. Still, because there are only about 5 places in the world, that's where we are for volume 6.

Karura, who decided to join Yasha, only shows up in a quick vision at the beginning of the book. Sohma is at least there and gets some speaking parts, though now she's filling in for Gigei and acting motherly towards Ashura. Ashura continues to insist that the only person who appreciates him and loves him is Yasha, yet Ryuu and Sohma and even Kujaku all seem awfully friendly towards him.

While Yasha's burning whatever is left of the village, his long-lost brother Rasetsu shows up. Rasetsu sports giant spiky armor and a killer mullet and fights with two scythes connected by a chain. He could have come straight out of Kenshin. He's justifiably angry at Yasha for protecting Ashura and getting his tribe killed and so he attacks Yasha. 

The rest of the book is pretty much taken up by the two of them fighting and remembering the past. Rasetsu was Yasha's younger brother, but he was the son of the king's wife. Yasha's mother was a concubine, so Rasetsu should have been the next leader of the tribe. But Rasetsu decided that Yasha was the stronger warrior, so he left the village so that Yasha would have to lead. Now he's back, and pissed off that Yasha got everyone killed.

Eventually, Yasha explains to Rasetsu that he was told by the old Lord Ashura that he should protect whatever is most precious to him, even if it meant death, if he wanted to fulfill his destiny. He's come to realize that it wasn't his tribe, but rather Ashura, that is most precious to him, so he's going to protect Ashura. I'm not sure how it took him so long to realize this since he's been acting like a father to Ashura for the last six books, but RG Veda is full of people taking far too long to come to emotional decisions that they seem to have already made. Rasetsu gives up on killing Yasha, saying that he gave up on the tribe, too, so they were basically even. Then he goes out and gets himself killed, despite saying that all he wants to do is live to protect the one he loves. It's probably supposed to be tragic, but it all happens so fast that I just shrugged it off.

Meanwhile there's a whole lot of Ashura feeling guilty for getting the Yasha tribe killed, and of Yasha feeling guilty for getting the Yasha tribe killed, and Ashura wanting to protect Yasha, and Yasha wanting to protect Ashura, and Ashura feeling bad that his mother tried to kill him and of course, the prophecy of the six stars. Four books to go. Four more stars to find and a final battle to be fought.

At least when a book is all fighting, it's easy to get through quickly.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 6: RG Veda Volume 5

Here we are, halfway through the series, and we now have two of the six stars identified. We only have 5 books left for our heroes to find four more stars, defeat Taishakuten (I have no doubts that this will happen - there's not enough sophistication in the story for there to be a neutral or bad ending), and for Ashura to kill Yasha. That's not a lot of time, and it's one reason why I'm not happy with what happened in RG Veda volume 5.

This volume focused almost entirely on Karura, only by the end, I found her losing her initial appeal. Once a powerful warrior, she's shown here to be wishy-washy and indecisive, impulsive in the worst way possible, and generally weak-willed. She spends the days after her sister's death in her sister's room, crying and refusing to eat or sleep. Kendappa, the harpist who may or may not be Yasha's half-sister, comes to revive Karura by playing the song that Karoubinga sang as she died.

Upon hearing the song, Karura is revived and vows to seek revenge against Taishakuten. If things had stopped here, I would have been happy. She had her grief, it's time to move on, and we can get going with the story. Unfortunately, Kendappa convinces Karura that what Karoubinga really would have wanted is for her to keep on living instead of throwing away her life for vengeance. So Karura changes her mind in the space of a single conversation and decides to keep working for Taishakuten like she always has.

Kendappa is a bit of an enigma here. She speaks to Taishakuten as if she is completely loyal to him and convinces Karura not to fight against him, but in the past, she helped Yasha. So many of the characters are this way - only serving Taishakuten because it's easier - that it seems like rebellion has been brewing for years.

Only Taishakuten proceeds to behave in the worst possible way imaginable for someone who is trying to keep the loyalty of a barely-willing populace. He calls Karura to his castle and reveals that he fed her sister's body to his pet beasts. Let me repeat that: We have a king so cruel that he takes his fourth-strongest general, kills her sister, lets his pets eat her body, and then rubs it in her face -- this despite the fact that she was willingly serving him for hundreds of years. There's never any indication that he has any idea that Karura has helped Yasha and Ashura. She doesn't put any outward sign that she's not willing to serve him. And he still feeds her sister to his pets. It's not exactly the smartest political move.

Again: How is this guy still in power? No one likes him. This can't be the worst thing he's done in the last 300 years. Even with 300,000 warriors, someone at some point has to have wanted to slip some poison into his food or something. It's completely unbelievable. His actions don't show him as a strong leader, and so there's no tension about whether or not he will be defeated. I half think that as soon as Ashura shows up, everyone in the castle will turn their back on Taishakuten, who will somehow be allowed to escape and live a life in exile.

So Karura, finding that her sister was pet food, lashes out at Taishakuten in rage. One would think that would be the end of her and her people, yet somehow King So-Cruel-He-Feeds-Girls-To-Pets is convinced by Zouchouten to let her go. This is so stupid that I have to say it again: The king, knowing that his fourth-strongest general is now never going to follow him again, and has indeed attacked him in the middle of his own castle, decides to let her go with a simple demotion. 

Karura returns to her air castle, makes her people promise not to act against Taishakuten, and fakes her own death so that he won't decide to attack her tribe. That being done, we flash over to Ashura, who sees Karura's image in his sword: she's the second of the six stars, and we've wasted an entire book and a whole lot of brain cells to get her to make a decision she should have been able to make back when Taishakuten had simply just killed the beloved sister whose protection was the only reason why she served him. 

Is it over yet? I really just want it to be over.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 5: RG Veda Volume 4

I spoke too soon. Just an hour or so ago I was praising CLAMP for adding a strong female character, and here comes volume 4 of RG Veda, with only two women present at all.

The first is Taishakuten's soothsayer, Hanranya, who isn't even called by name. She's unable to watch Ashura, Yasha, and Ryuu in her water mirror because Kujaku is blocking her. Taishakuten has sent another of his generals, Vahyu, to lure Ashura, Yasha, and Ryuu near the lair of a monster that lives near the destroyed Yasha village in the north.

Without any clear direction in mind, Yasha has been wandering around at random. It's so nonsensical that Kujaku, ever present and ever-watching, even says so. After leaving the air castle in the south, they've wandered north to the ruins of the Yasha village. I still just don't get it. Why don't they go somewhere off in the woods somewhere and stay for a few months, let Ashura catch another growth spurt, maybe spread some rumors and see if any fellow rebels come to join their cause? Why go wandering around in circles? 

It's especially strange because it seems like both the air castle and the Yasha village are within a day's travelling distance of Taishakuten's castle. It's possible for Yasha to travel from the castle to Kuyou's hiding place to the village and then off to Ashura's woods in a day or so. It's also possible for the messenger from Taishakuten to kidnap Karyoubinga and take her back to Taishakuten in the amount of time that it took for Karura to take a walk in the market. So why on earth is Yasha staying so close when he knows that he has to gather more people before Taishakuten can be defeated? The answer is easy, but disappointing: because the creator just can't come up with any more places. That's why the world feels so small.

So Yasha, Ashura, and Ryuu end up at the Yasha village, where a monster who lives in an ice castle is waiting for them. This monster has been waiting all its life to attack Yasha, yet somehow never got the chance during the hundreds of years that Yasha was living in the village. It waits until now, when it's convenient for the story. 

The monster sends magical butterflies to attack Yasha and Ashura with disturbing psychic visions. Ashura sees Gigei, who is then killed before his eyes, and the villager who blamed him for the destruction of the village. Finally, he's faced with his mother, who tried to kill him as a baby. It's hard not to feel bad for little-boy Ashura, even knowing that demon Ashura lurks inside him. 

Yasha sees the dead Yasha villagers, who blame him for their deaths, and is sucked away into the ice castle, where a monster with a little girl's beautiful face and an insect-like body traps him in ice, planning to eat him and gain his strength. Before it can do that, however, Kujaku leads Ashura and Ryuu to the castle, where they defeat Vahyu's forces with the help of Sohma.

There's woman number two! It turns out that Sohma's not been following the group around after all - she's been back with Kisshouten. This shows the smallness of the world, because she could show up quickly enough to make a difference as soon as the attack started, so Kisshouten must be very very close to the Ashura village. It also shows how much Sohma matters to the story when her being with the characters is pretty much the same as her being away from them.

Kujaku performs a rite on Ashura that fully wakes the Shura sword - and the Ashura demon, which really freaks out Ryuu. Then they all enter the castle, where Ashura frees Yasha and Kukaju slays the monster, revealing his true black-winged form.

Kujaku, from the Tenmagouka artbook. Image source minitokyo.net

So there we go, 40% in to the story and we still only have 1 of the Six Stars. Meanwhile, Taishakuten is losing generals left and right. I think all that's left is his head general Bishamonten. It's clear here that Ohkawa, who is creating the story, just doesn't have the chops yet to keep together an epic of this nature. RG Veda should be a vast, world-spanning tale, but most of the time new characters are killed shortly after their introduction. The world is tiny, able to be travelled from end to end in a day or two, and the villain is so incompetent that it's amazing he's gotten anywhere at all. There's a saying that all authors should write their first novel and then throw it away, never to be seen by anyone else. I'm not going to go as far as to say that's what should have happened with RG Veda. It's entertaining, as long as you don't think about the logistics (or the women).

The CLAMP Project: Episode 4: RG Veda Volume 3

I'll admit it, I was getting a little worried there. RG Veda is a manga for girls/women, by a group of women, and up until Volume 3, the only women in the story were playing minor parts at best. They were dancers or musicians or wives or lovers - the sort of secondary bit players that women tend to be in many fantasy series. 

I'm not going to go proclaiming that all stories need to star strong women - strong men are interesting, too - but I'm a little tired of women always being the wives and the priestesses and the supporting cast in a way that I never really recognized until I played Final Fantasy XIII. At the opening of that story, we were presented with a female protagonist who was a strong soldier fighting to save her sister. Lightning's initial battle role wasn't the support job, it was the fighter job, and until I saw that, I didn't realize just how much I had wanted to see a woman in a video game who wasn't just a healer. Eventually, Lightning became a supporting cast member in her own story, and did gain one of those support jobs, and then the entire story went to pieces, but I prefer to remember her as the character she was in the first half of the game. Yes, she was essentially a female version of Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, but what's so wrong with that? 

Last night I read an article by author Daniel Swenson about the story possibilities opened by changing his originally-male protagonist into a female. While reading Volume 3 of RG Veda, I couldn't help but think of that article. There's really no reason so far that Yasha couldn't have been a woman. The only loss would have been that there would be one less bishounen pretty-boy for readers to ogle. A great warrior leader? Can be a woman. Who decides to rebel against an evil leader for the love of a child? Definitely could be a woman. The father-son relationship developing between Yasha and Ashura is interesting, but there's no reason that it couldn't be a mother-son relationship.

That's why I was relieved to see that Volume 3 is devoted mainly to the introduction of new character Karura, queen of the air-faring Karura tribe. She's one of the Guardian Warriors of Tenkai - on the same level as Ryuu and Yasha, sharing their role as a protector of the land. The Karura protect the lands to the south from their castle in the air, which is only accessible by flying on the back of giant birds. Each Karura's life is tied to that of a bird, so Karura has a garuda bird (like a giant phoenix) which rides on her shoulder at all times, making her look like one of the Biblical Archangels.

Picture from the RG Veda Tenmagouka artbook. Not my scan, from minitokyo.net

Karura, like Lightning, is motivated to protect her little sister, Karyoubinga. Karyoubinga is a sickly child who has never left the purified air of the air castle. Karura hates Taishakuten's rule, but she's served as a loyal servant to the usurper king for the last 300 years solely out of fear of what his retaliatory blow would do to her sister.

With the other two Guardian Warriors gone - and for some reason, no one has put it together that Ryuu's vanishing at the same time that Yasha was travelling through the dragon kingdom means that Ryuu ran off with Yasha - Karura and her people are essential to Taishakuten's security forces. He even says so himself. Right before he has a messenger kidnap Karyoubinga from the air castle and bring her to sing at a celebration of the 300th anniversary of his rule. I'm flabbergasted at this point that this man has managed to rule for 300 days, let alone 300 years. There's absolutely no motivation for this move - it's something he does out of a cruelly capricious whim. Karyoubinga dies from exposure to the dirty air of the world, and suddenly Taishakuten has yet another enemy where once he had an ally.

At this point, I'm half expecting that the end of the story will be Taishakuten tripping over his own robes and falling onto his own swordpoint. There's something to be said of people bringing about their own downfalls due to pride, but then there's something else to be said about outright stupidity. It's as if CLAMP can't figure out how to write a villain who is both powerful and yet vulnerable to their heroes' attack. 

Back to Yasha, Ashura, Ryuu, and the silent, almost never-seen, certainly never-heard-from Souma: Yasha destroys Varuna with a magical sword attack. Ashura's demon side awakens and goes to release the Souma sword. It turns out that all that stuff about having to wait for an eclipse was just Kahra lying to Kumareten in order to have more time with him. She's been tied to the Shura sword somehow, so in order for the sword to be awakened, she has to die. Out of his love for her, Kumareten chooses to die, as well. And so we lose a few more characters. These brief vignettes provide a history to the world, but I feel like they're distracting me from learning more about the really important characters in the story, like Yasha, who gets very little development aside from his wanting to 1) protect Ashura and 2) bring down Taishakuten.

Another guess for the future: any character whose name we've learned who somehow manages not to die will be one of the Six Stars. We're 30% finished with the series and only know one of the Six Stars (Yasha). Probably, Ryuu, Karura, and maybe Souma will all be Stars as well. We'll see as the story goes on.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 3: RG Veda Volume 2

Now that's more like it. With the introduction out of the way, the story feels like it's really beginning here in the second volume of RG Veda.

After being warned outright that his rule will be over if Yasha and Ashura gather the Six Stars, Taishakuten sends two of his strongest generals, Zouchouten and Koumokuten, after them. Not trusting anyone, he sends spies after them. We're reminded that the queen, Shashi, is actually Ashura's mother, but she completely lacks any affection for him, calling him an abomination. There are rumors that her other son, Tenou, might actually be the son of the old Lord Ashura, not Taishakuten. We also learn that Ashura is one of a set of twins - I hope that's not just a bad translation.

Meanwhile, Yasha and Ashura are picked up by Queen Kendappa, who lives in a flying castle and is both the royal musician and loyal to Yasha. She calls herself Yasha's sister, but I'm not sure if she's telling the truth. Her mother fell for Yasha's father, despite being married to someone else, and then pined herself to death because her marriage kept her away from him. Lord Yasha is said to have done nothing wrong, so it's probably not true that Kendappa and our Yasha are actually related.

Kendappa gets Yasha in touch with Kisshouten, Bishamonten's wife, who offers Yasha what little support she can in the form of the service of Souma, a female alchemist and assassin who has been hiding from Taishakuten since he slew the rest of her tribe years ago. It's a wonder anyone is still alive, what with Taishakuten killing off entire tribes whenever someone pisses him off.

Souma and Kendappa are lovers, which is really surprising. Not that there is a lesbian couple at all, but that with CLAMP's doujinshi background, the first same-sex couple we see isn't a pair of men. They have a very sweet farewell scene that highlights their affection for one another. I hope that they end up back together, but with the body count so far, I doubt they will.

Kujaku, who seems to always show up to tell the characters just what to do, shows up and tells Yasha that he has to go to the western borders of the kingdom and get the magical Shura sword from the underground castle of Kumaraten if he wants to gather the Six Stars. Yasha isn't entirely convinced, but he doesn't really have any better ideas and is willing to do whatever it takes to bring down Taishakuten, so off Yasha and Ashura, now joined by Souma, go.

On the way, they meet up with Nahga, the reluctant soon-to-be Dragon King. All he wants to do is fight and get stronger, but his servants won't fight with him anymore because they think that he's already strong enough. So when Yasha shows up, he's thrilled and challenges him to a fight. They go at it for a while, but are interrupted by Ashura, who wants food. Nahga decides that he's going to join Yasha and Ashura on their quest, both so that he can continue his match against Yasha and also because it's more fun than ruling the kingdom. He accepts his title as King just so he can take the sacred Dragon Fang Sword and then runs off with the group.

It takes some convincing from Ashura to get Yasha to accept Nahga (now called Lord Ryuu, because he's the Dragon King), because Yasha doesn't want to be even indirectly responsible for the death of yet another tribe. He warns Ryuu that joining with them will bring Taishakuten's wrath upon the Dragon Tribe, but Ryuu brushes him off. Eventually, like a father spoiling his child, Yasha gives in and allows Ryuu to come along.

So now we're up to a party of four, and only one if them is one of the Six Stars - even if he doesn't know it yet.

They arrive at Kusumapura, where Kumaraten has laid a trap. He's been waiting for 300 years to get his revenge on Taishakuten after he - wait for it - slew Kumareten's entire tribe. Seriously, how cam there be anyone left for Taishakuten to rule if he keeps killing everyone off? Kumareten traps Ashura inside his castle, planning to use his blood to release the Shura sword during an upcoming solar eclipse.

It turns out that Kumaraten's lover, Kahra, used to be a priestess of the Ashura clan. Even more - she's actually Ashura's mother, Shashi's, twin sister. They were both humans chosen to become priestesses of the Ashura, but Shashi had more ambition. She married Lord Ashura and birthed the young Ashura. Along the way, she showed her cruelty by ripping the wings off of a bird who messed up her dress. When Taishakuten mounted his rebellion, she fled the Ashura to become his wife in search of power, vowing to slay her son Ashura with her own hands, just like the bird. Shashi is certainly not someone to be messed with.

Unable to enter the castle, Yasha, Sohma, and Ryuu face 52 of Koumokuten's men, led by Varuna, who foolishly taunts Yasha using Ashura's name. It's handy that two of them have magical swords, because Yasha seems able to blast through a dozen men or so at a time when he's powered up. And there we end, on a cliffhanger, with Yasha fighting Varuna and Ashura trapped below.

In this volume, there wasn't any of the demon child inside Ashura. He was sweet and caring, worried about others, and happy when he met someone (Ryuu) who was strong enough to come along with himself and Yasha without being killed. It almost makes me wonder why CLAMP had him show the demonic side in the first place. He's a much more compelling character as a sweet little kid, and the father/son bond between Ashura and Yasha seems so much more believable when Ashura's not busy grinning as he licks a dead woman's blood off his hands. Yes, the prophecy says that Ashura's alignment is not clear, but wouldn't it be more interesting to see how a sweet little kid could be driven to evil by circumstances, much like Darth Vader, than to see a half-demon kid, who is drawn to it by nature.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 2: RG Veda vol. 1

As much as I kept telling myself that I was going to try to keep from bringing too much of myself to RG Veda, I couldn't help but keep thinking of how similar the whole thing was to X -- or rather, it's the other way around. X is a lot like RG Veda, since RG Veda came first. 

Art-wise, RG Veda seems like a product of its time. The main character Yasha has amazingly wide shoulders, emphasized by giant armored shoulderpads. All of the men have long, flowing hair styled in ways that could have come straight out of a hair metal band. It's fantasy in the same vein as Beastmaster and Conan. But for a debut, it's amazing. The art is already 100% of the quality that you would expect from CLAMP. No strangely shaped faces, no off-kilter eyes, just gorgeous linework. One character, Ashura, has hair that turns to flames near the ends. There are magical barriers and spells that dash across the page and detailed thematic two-page spreads. I'm really impressed that it's all there so early.

The first chapter opens with a text-heavy page that sets up the story. Long ago, gods and humans lived together peacefully, until one of the head god Tentei's military leaders, Taishakuten, rises up in rebellion, slaying Tentei and taking over the world.

Years later, Taishakuten still rules through fear and force, but there are cracks beginning to show in his power. The soothsayer Kuyou, who has been Taishakuten's captive for 300 years because of her refusing to prophesize to him, has escaped. Taishakuten calls on Lord Yasha, head of the Yasha tribe, to find and kill Kuyou. 

Yasha and Kuyou are old friends, so it's easy for Yasha to find her - she's in the building where she did her stargazing training. Kuyou, believing herself to be near death, tells Yasha her prophecy, which is where the X vibes kick in full blast. The child of a vanished race will lead six stars to "split the heavens". Kuyou doesn't know exactly what it means, but she tells Yasha that the child will one day kill him. 

Destiny is a huge theme in a lot of CLAMP works, but destiny is never as cut and dry as it seems - prophecies in CLAMP works can go in multiple directions. Someone is destined to change the world, but they have the choice of whether to do so in a good or an evil way. Even if someone is destined to die, they can choose to die in a way that affects the future and saves someone else. There's a sense of both accepting and railing against one's destiny in a lot of CLAMP works.

Yasha, learning that there is a sleeping baby in the woods who will one day kill him, decides to go and wake the sleeping baby. It's not the most intelligent of choices, but it is very brave and very noble. After fighting his way to the middle of the forest with his magical sword, Yasha finds a baby protected by a spirit. The spirit tells Yasha that he is foolish for breaking his seal and setting him free, because he is Ashura reborn. This is where having a bit more familiarity with the source material would come in handy. Ashura says that he is evil, so I have to believe it, but without any more background, I can't really be sure yet just how evil.

Before Yasha can take the baby Ashura back to Kuyou, a messenger comes and tells him that the village is under attack by monsters. Yasha gives Ashura to the messenger and goes to battle. Meanwhile, Ashura sprouts a strange shield-tree and ages to around 5-6. This makes him a much more interesting character, because he can now talk and walk around on his own. The village elder doesn't like Ashura, because he's a symbol of rebellion against Taishakuten, which he thinks will only invite trouble.

Later, Yasha and Ashura run into a mysterious purple-eyed traveler named Kujaku. Kujaku gives a lot of exposition about exactly how dangerous Ashura is - very - and how angry Taishakuten would be if he knew that Yasha had Ashura - also very. Kujaku also somehow knows of Kuyou's prophecy, which she only ever told to Yasha. The purple eyes mean that Kujaku is from "the evil side", whatever that means.

There's another battle with some demons, where this time Ashura bonds with and then sweetly saves the life of the messenger boy by giving off a magical energy shield of some sort, and then finally Yasha takes Ashura back to see Kuyou. I can't tell if the entire thing took a few hours or a few days, but however long it took was too long - Kuyou is already dead, pinned to the wall by her own staff. Kujaku is there, too, but he says he didn't kill Kuyou. It was done by Bishamonten, Taishakuten's right-hand man (and a Persona 3 summon, if I remember correctly). 

Kujaku and Yasha have a conversation about how Ashura is bad news, but the words aren't nearly as foreboding as Ashura's actions during the conversation. Ashura walks over to Kuyou's bleeding body and proceeds to gleefully lick blood off of his fingers. It's clear that this little kid has a hell of a dark side, which comes out and tells Yasha that he's likely gotten his entire tribe killed by setting him free and helping him.

Ashura's right, of course. Taishakuten sends his army to raze the village and kill every single person there. Meanwhile, he has another seer, Hanranya, who once again explains that the Six Stars will gather around Ashura and could be a threat to his throne. Just to drill the theme in again, Kujaku sits and watches the slaughter of the Ashura tribe and muses about how the Six Stars could either bring the world to hell or to heaven.

That's a hell of a first chapter - it takes up the first 100 pages - with a lot of pages spent introducing people who just ended up dying by the end, like the messenger boy and the village elder. I was convinced that the messenger boy would somehow end up raising Ashura, but it looks like now it's going to be Yasha, alone in the world except for the boy who is destined to one day kill him.

Chapter 2 has Ashura and Yasha traveling the countryside. They're taken in by a group of dancers on their way to a festival at the palace. Ashura, now the sweet little boy again, befriends a dancer named Gigei, who insists she's been in love with Yasha for six years now. It's described as love at first sight, but there's more to it. After seeing her mother's disastrous relationship with her second love, Gigei made a conscious decision to focus all her attentions on Yasha instead of on any other men, out of a desire not to mistakenly fall for the wrong man later on. It's misguided, but not unreasonable - who would expect to run into the king of a different tribe multiple times? 

Gigei seems like she'd be an interesting character, but she's soon killed off by Taishakuten's army. So there we go, another chapter spent introducing characters who are killed off by the end. I wonder if that's going to be the theme of the series. Yasha and Ashura go around meeting interesting people and getting them killed. It's enough to drive anyone sane into exile, but it's clear that Yasha just doesn't get it. He's dragging a demon child who brings doom around with him and doesn't really seem to care who he hurts.

Chapter 3 is a brief a flashback to when Tentei was king and the original Ashura and Kuyou were alive. Kuyou once again tells her prophecy, and then Ashura and Taishakuten fight an exhibition match in front of Tentei. Ashura has a magical sword, but Taishakuten manages to land a blow on his arm regardless, which makes Ashura wary of Taishakuten's strength.

Chapter 4 is another short one, which has Ashura and Yasha bonding as they sleep in a tree. Yasha tells Ashura about the legend behind his sword, Yama, and then they discuss mothers. Ashura seems almost sweet, until you remember that he has a demon inside of him, brings doom with him wherever he goes, and is destined to one day kill Yasha. Yasha seems not entirely smart, but I'm not sure what else he could do. Perhaps not call Ashura Ashura. That seems to be inviting trouble. If he called him by another name, maybe Yasha could find a nice family somewhere in the wilderness to raise Ashura for a few years. Of course, they'd probably just end up dying, too, so maybe Yasha really has no choice at all. 

Is it dumb to accept your fate and to do what you can while being bound by that fate? I've been trained by movies that fighting against your fate is the only reasonable thing to do, but maybe what CLAMP is trying to say here is that there's a certain wisdom to be found in knowing and accepting your destiny, and then trying to work within the bounds of that destiny to do what good you can do.

Having chapters of such varying lengths means that we only really got one story this volume: the first chapter. All of the rest feel like bonus chapters that are tossed in to fill space in the book. In fact, only one - the fourth chapter - was tossed in to fill space. The rest ran in either Wings or its spinoff magazine South. It's handy that CLAMP tells us this, along with information on their home (one apartment! Four women! They've moved five times between 1989 and 1993!), their newsletter (shutting down in 1993 because of the expense of mailing it out), their phone hotline (still running in 1993 - how else to get the news out about their brand without the internet), and their hobbies (Mick eats three times a day, which is somehow "a lot").

The CLAMP Project: Episode 1: RG Veda

CLAMP's professional debut, RG Veda, was first published in 1989 in Wings magazine. Wings is a shoujo magazine featuring fantasy stories for an older audience. It's where Tokyo Babylon would eventually run, and also was the home of Antique Bakery, The Demon Ororon, and Princess Ai. I love looking at the context of the magazine where a manga originated, but in this case we have a less popular magazine from 20+ years ago, so it's hard to find information in English.

RG Veda takes its themes and names from Hindu mythology, which I haven't read much about since taking some religion classes in college. Mostly, I'm familiar with the names because of their use as summons in various video games. This creates an odd affinity to certain characters that is completely unrelated to the manga. I find myself liking Ashura because I played on the Asura server in Final Fantasy XI. 

That type of thing happens when you draw from an existing framework to create your story: your readers are going to bring their own experiences with them. It allows for some lazy storytelling - it's clear that a character named Hercules will be incredibly strong, and that Oedipus will make some terrible relationship decisions. But it also allows for juxtapositions - your readers will be expecting Achilles to have a fatal weakness, but they won't expect it to be in his thumb.

It's an effective way to do a debut: start with something familiar and then add your own spin. New readers won't be completely lost, and you may find an audience in fans of the original.

In order to keep from bringing too many expectations with me, I'm not going to read up on the source material until after I finish RG Veda. Afterwards, I'll take a look at where CLAMP made changes and injected their own sensibilities. 

Tokyopop published RG Veda in English starting in August 2005, right in the middle of my manga buying drought. As a result, I never picked it up. Like everything from Tokyopop, it's now out of print, so I had to track it down used. Most volumes are fairly cheap, but a couple seemed to have shorter print runs and are more rare. Those ran from $20-$30 used. I averaged about $10 a volume for the 10 volume series - not a terrible deal for out of print manga, but right at the limit of what I'm willing to pay.  I'm hoping that this will be the most expensive part of the CLAMP project, but I have fears about the other Tokyopop releases that I never bought, like CLAMP Campus Detectives and Man of Many Faces.

The CLAMP Project: Introduction

CLAMP is like a rock band. A bunch of women with a shared love for their art get together and move to Tokyo to break free of their amateur status and make it as professionals. Along the way, a few people drop out, leaving a core group of four who live and work together to create some of the most enduring manga of the 90's. More than 20 years later, they're still working together and their books are still being republished in new shiny editions around the world. (Forget Bakuman. The real manga I want to read about manga creation is an autobiography of CLAMP).

What impresses me the most is that instead of getting credit as individuals, CLAMP worked under one name, a name that became its own brand. When you pick up a CLAMP work, you expect a certain type of story: fantasy or science fiction so removed from science as to be fantasy, where the stories are filled with magic and adventure. CLAMP works are never mundane.

The artwork stands out, as well. Detailed pages filled with flourishes. Cat-like eyes and sweeping cascades of magical energy. Fantastic costumes. Androgynous  heroes with broad shoulders. . Beautiful women. (CLAMP appreciates beautiful people of all types). A certain disdain for normal human body proportions.

The CLAMP brand is a strong one, and for a while there, I was buying anything by them that I could get my hands on. X, Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, Angelic Layer, Tokyo Babylon - I have great memories of reading all of them, but aside from returning to Cardcaptor Sakura three years ago, I haven't bothered to reread any of them since their English publication.

There were two other things I never bothered to do. I never read any of their works before Tokyo Babylon and I never finished Tsubasa or xxxHolic. I picked up the first Magic Knight Rayearth omnibus a few months ago and it got me to thinking. Why was it that I had never read it before? Why was my brush with CLAMP fandom limited to their mid-period works?

I have a couple theories. First, the earlier CLAMP artwork scared me off years ago when those series were first published in English and I was just starting to read manga. The eyes are so huge, so heavily lined, so catlike that I didn't want to read anything with them. The style is strongly CLAMP, but it's also strongly Other. As a new reader, I was drawn more to the series that more closely approached the styles that I was familiar with. 

Another reason might just be timing. I wonder if those mid-period CLAMP works are remembered so fondly because they were released exactly at the right time. Manga was fairly new to the US audience, and certainly to me. I was trying out anything that I could get my hands on in Borders. The CLAMP series, like Chobits, were just flashy enough - just foreign enough - to get my attention, but not enough to scare me away. 

By the time that Tsubasa and xxxHolic came around, I considered myself a fan, both of manga in general and of CLAMP in specific. But there was so much manga coming out in 2005 that it was hard to keep up. Due to a change in jobs I moved twice, and soon I found that I could barely even keep up with reading each month's issue of Shojo Beat, let alone read anything else. I fell behind on CLAMP series, and I never bothered to catch up.

I'm going to fix that now. My goal is to read through all of the CLAMP series available in English, starting with RG Veda and ending when I'm either caught up or I've had enough. I want to find out if my fond memories of the CLAMP series I have read are because of nostalgia, or because they really are that good. I want to see what I was missing by skipping out on the rest.

Throughout the whole thing, I want to see if I can figure out why CLAMP works at all. Why is it that these four women created so many series that were so popular? Just what is it that makes CLAMP special?