Man of Many Faces was the lime sherbet of manga. Just like how small scoops of sherbet are served between courses at dinner as a palate cleanser, Man of Many Faces cleared away much of the disappointment of RG Veda from my mind. However, also like sherbet, having too much at once can make you feel a little sick to your stomach.
I was planning to cover all the CLAMP manga, one volume at a time, with a plot recap for each, but there's no point to a plot recap for Man of Many Faces. The basic story is this: elementary school sweethearts learn about and discuss love, then grow up and marry. The rest of the story, such as our protagonist being a mysterious phantom thief who lives with two mothers and never sees his father, really seemed to be there to fill in the spaces between characters opining about the meaning of love. It was obvious that the rest of the plot didn't matter because in the bonus manga between chapters, CLAMP would point out the plot holes and inconsistencies.
It's almost like the story was written as a doujinshi featuring other characters altogether. When you're writing fan fiction, you don't need to do much characterization because all of your readers will already know who the characters are and what they are like. You could take almost any characters and stick them into Man of Many Faces and it would work just as well, because what happens has no dependency on who it's happening to.
Imagine this: nine year old Han Solo, a handsome youngster with a gift for cooking, lives with his two mothers in a giant mansion. Why two mothers? Because it's quirky! That's all you need to know, and it won't be explained other than making it clear that the mothers are not lesbians, but rather two women who married the same man. At night, Han assumes the identity of the mysterious 20 Faces, a phantom thief whose main mission is to steal items demanded childishly by his mothers.
One night, young Han happens upon a 6 year old kindergarten girl, Leia, who is heartbroken at being turned down by her teacher, Obi-wan. Han and Leia fall for one another, despite the fact that Han keeps stealing things from Leia's family, including her birthday present. Leia always liked a bad boy, you know. Han succeeds in his thievery despite being chased by high school student Boba Fett, who has a completely inexplicable command of the local police forces and is advised by school doctor Yoda, who tends to speak in full-page lectures.
This weakness in characterization was my biggest gripe with RG Veda, and it's still present in Man of Many Faces. I think it comes from the CLAMP background in doujinshi, which is essentially fan fiction. They didn't have to create strong characters before going pro, because someone else had already done it for them.
On top of that, it was very unclear who the audience should be for this manga. The speeches and discussions of love had some very realistic sentiments: love is something you have to work at, and if your love never changes that means that you're not growing. If two people really love one another, they'll find a way to understand one another even though they're different people.
That's pretty different from the shoujo fairy tale romance that you see sometimes, but then at the end of the story we got exactly the shoujo fairy tale romance ending that the characters were seeming to speak out against. After dating all through elementary school, our protagonists married at the ages of 22 and 18, moving into separate beds in a house where the woman cooks and cleans for the man, despite his being much much better at housework.
It felt like Man of Many Faces was written for a young female audience, along the lines of Card Captor Sakura, but it turns out that it ran in Newtype - an otaku magazine. CLAMP still haven't found their true voice, or their true greatness yet, but Tokyo Babylon is next, so by working through these weaker series, they're clearly preparing for some of their best work.
I ended up paying about $20 for the two volumes of Man of Many Faces. If I had to do it again, I's probably buy at $8-$10 for the whole series. It's insubstantial and silly, but was enjoyable regardless. If I had simply shut off my mind, I would have liked it more, but then I wouldn't have had anything to say about it.
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