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").
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