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.
No comments:
Post a Comment