The CLAMP Project: Episode 17: Tokyo Babylon volume 5

I'll be honest: when I finished reading volume 5 of Tokyo Babylon I immediately had to read volumes 6 and 7, despite my goal of writing about each volume separately. It's just that good. Without the overarching story between Subaru, Seishiro, and Hokuto, Tokyo Babylon would only have been an interesting set of standalone tales. But with the overarching story added, you have a real classic manga.

It's difficult for me to reconcile exactly how good Tokyo Babylon is compared to the concurrently-running RG Veda. How could the same people be responsible for both series? I think that it comes down to the simplicity of the story in Tokyo Babylon. At the end, there are only three characters whose interactions matter. In RG Veda, there were quite a few more characters and a more epic scope to the story. At this point, CLAMP was still starting out, and they hadn't quite developed the ability to tell a story as ambitious as RG Veda. By focusing on a smaller story in Tokyo Babylon, they were able to play to their strengths: angsty drama and surprise endings.

Volume 5 starts out with two final standalone stories. In the first one, "Old", Subaru befriends an old man whose family has begun to resent his presence. The old man wishes for nothing but to fulfill a promise he made to his late wife and make his daughter happy, but the daughter is so caught up in her financial hardships and stress that she doesn't recognize that. Finally, the old man is struck by a car and killed while delivering one final gift to the daughter. It's a story made doubly tragic by the man's connection with Subaru. Finally Subaru has found someone aside from Hokuto and Seishiro who he feels comfortable speaking with, and too soon he's lost. Subaru gets along so much better with the dead that I wonder if his connection with the old man was made easier by the fact that the man was so near death.

The second story, "Box", has Subaru, Seishiro, and Hokuto visiting a karaoke box. When a bet about whether Subaru can sing a random song goes poorly, Seishiro sends Subaru away so that he doesn't have to fulfill his end of the bet. Subaru leaves, wondering what kind of person Seishiro really is. He seems kind, but Subaru wants to know more. Subaru meets a woman who is singing by herself. She tells a story of how she had an affair with and was dumped by her boss, with the reveal at the end that she committed suicide after the breakup and is now a ghost. That should have been expected based on how easily Subaru spoke with her.

Finally, the last story, "Rebirth", is the start of the finish to the overall plot. Subaru meets with a small boy who is undergoing dialysis treatment. They bond quickly, perhaps due to how sickly the boy is, and Subaru continues to visit the boy in the hospital. The boy has an even more tragic story than simply having kidney failure: both he and his sister suffered from the same disease. Their mother, with only one kidney to donate, chose to give her kidney to her daughter, but the transplant was rejected and the daughter died. Stricken by guilt and grief, the mother snaps and comes after Subaru with a knife, demanding his kidney - an ultimately ironic gesture, for Subaru would have given up his kidney willingly. Seishiro steps in and protects Subaru from the madwoman, but he is slashed in the face in the process. As Seishiro is wheeled into an operating room, Subaru breaks down in grief.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 16: Tokyo Babylon vol 4

Can anyone ever really learn to understand another person? It's possible to get along with other people, and to feel empathy for them, but at the end of the day, how much do you actually know about your friends or family, let alone the people you pass on the street?

Surrounded by millions of other people who one can almost never hope to find a true connection with, no wonder the residents of Tokyo Babylon's Tokyo are so lonely. Those who Subaru comes into contact with have given up on happiness, but because Subaru (and Hokuto) make an effort to come to understand them, they find hope. Tellingly for both the plot and the theme, when Subaru and Hokuto are discussing whether Seishiro is really one of the Sakurazukamori assassins, Hokuto says that she's not sure that they actually know Seishiro at all. That's the key to the series right there: You can't even really understand your best friend.

Later, Hokuto and Seishiro get a scene alone. Seishiro asks Hokuto whether she's ok with him seducing Subaru. She says she is, but threatens that if Seishiro ever hurts Subaru, she will kill him. It's strong foreshadowing, played for laughs.

The focus of volume 4 of Tokyo Babylon is on the living, not the dead. At a temple, Subaru runs into a woman who has begun the process of summoning an inugami, a dog spirit, to take revenge on her daughter's kidnapper and murderer. The woman is drawn with anguished lines etched into her face. Unlike before, Subaru doesn't try to make the woman happy. His failure to make a connection with the girls on the chat line in volume 3 showed him that in some circumstances, you just can't make someone happy. All you can do is make an effort to understand them. This is very similar to Hokuto's logic earlier, and it shows some character growth for Subaru.

Subaru, hoping to stop the woman from using the dog spirit and getting herself killed, summons the spirit of her daughter. Surely the daughter would want to see her mother happy, not destroying herself through revenge. The result is heartbreaking: the daughter cries out in pain and begs Subaru, who is the only person who can hear her, for revenge. For the second time in the series, Subaru's plan has gone horribly wrong. He was so unable to make a connection and come to a true understanding of the daughter that her request was the exact opposite of what he had expected. He lies to the woman and tells her "She wants you to be happy."

Anguished, Subaru runs to Seishiro's apartment, where Seishiro consoles him. Subaru worries that by lying to the woman, he has denied her the option of choosing whether to be happy or not, but Seishiro counters that only the woman could judge whether or not Subaru's lying to her would make her happy. If Subaru would not blame someone else for making a mistake, he should not blame himself for doing the same.

After Seishiro puts Subaru to bed, he punches a mirror and gloats that he is probably going to win his bet with Subaru. Again, I read this before, but I don't remember the exact nature of the bet. That makes the mystery of the overall plot that much more compelling, though I do know the outcome.

The second story in this volume follows another person who is desperate to be understood. Hashimoto is a high school student who is being terribly bullied and beaten by her classmates. Her teacher blames her. If she was just a little more outgoing, he says, she would make friends. She runs into a woman who professes to understand her - a woman who just happens to be the leader of a cult, which just happens to be under investigation by both Subaru and Seishiro, though for different clients.

The cult teaches that every person is a god, the most important person in the world, and that people must forgive themselves and others to be strong. Hashimoto follows the cult doctrine, praying every night, but the bullying continues. There is no easy way out, and the cult has no real power. Eventually, Hashimoto ends up getting stabbed in the eye by a classmate. 

What ends up helping Hashimoto is Subaru. He listens to her story and does something new. This time, he doesn't try to make her happy. He tells her that he doesn't know what to say. He couldn't possibly come to understand what she's gone through, so he doesn't lie and say that he does. This honesty and kindness wins Hashimoto over. Like when Hokuto met the foreign woman, the true kindness and happiness was found in admitting that it was impossible to fully understand the other person, but expressing a willingness to try.

By contrast, the cult leader was like Subaru in the earlier volumes: professing a profound understanding when there really was none. Subaru was able to come to enough of an understanding with the spirits that he exorcised to send them away, but when he was confronted with real people with real living desires and thoughts, his understanding was inadequate to make them truly happy, or even to make a connection.

Subaru ends up confronting the cult leader, telling her that she can't save anyone. Seishiro comes in and puts Subaru to sleep once again. Then he tells the cult leader that her cult will become huge in six years, and so he has been hired to kill her. The assassination scene is beautiful, with magical spells represented by flowing cherry blossoms across the page and stark black backgrounds for contrast.

The cherry blossoms are especially meaningful because earlier in the volume, Subaru's grandmother told him that he must beware the cherry blossoms and not let them steal his heart. This clearly refers to Seishiro, who leans over the unconscious Subaru and attempts to remove the gloves that Subaru's grandmother told him to never take off. Sparks and light emanate from the gloves and deter Seishiro - for now. He says once again that he is about to win their bet, and leaves Subaru for "the final day".

The CLAMP Project: Episode 15: Tokyo Babylon volume 3

The 1990's Tokyo presented in Tokyo Babylon is a pretty terrible place. The world is going to hell shortly before its inevitable destruction. The environment is falling apart and even conscientious people like Hokuto embrace the hypocrisy of  using destructive products simply because everyone else is. It's a place where people are accosted on the street, where people struggle to find even the tiniest happiness or connection with others. 

With so little joy and happiness in the world, it's no wonder that the three antagonists of volume 3 embrace a fantasy of being special and different. They convince themselves over a chat line that they alone will be able to fight against an unknown enemy, and begin to do so through the phone lines. Subaru is hired to investigate them because they've been calling phone numbers that end in 1999 and casting magical spells over the phone.

Subaru's usual friendliness gets him nowhere - these girls are too far lost in their own delusions to listen to him - but he struggles on to save them for two reasons. First, he's a professional and is being paid to stop the girls. Second, he knows that if they continue to cast magical spells without the proper protection, they'll be hurt. But because he doesn't want to hurt the girls, he can't really fight back against them. He ends up getting knocked out on the floor.

Seishiro steps in to help, but in that incredibly creepy way that is Seishiro's trademark. He does something to make Hokuto pass out, and then steps up to the phone to fight back at the girls in the way that Subaru wasn't willing to do. The girls end up suffering some heavy psychological damage, and Subaru is depressed that he failed to save them.

Though Seishiro keeps professing his love for Subaru, I'm not sure that I believe it. He clearly wants Subaru alive, but I think that's more for the "bargain" that Seishiro brings up on the last page of this volume. Because Subaru's death belongs to Seishiro, his life does, as well. This is where I wish I remember more about exactly what happens. I know how the series ends, but I can't remember the details of why. I'd read ahead, but I only have four short volumes to go before I'll be reminded.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 14: Tokyo Babylon volume 2

In this second volume, we get two stories that help provide more insight into the characters of Hokuto and Subaru. Seishiro is around, but he remains mysterious.

First, Subaru goes to help a girl who has fallen into an unexplained coma after being raped by boys in her neighborhood. It turns out that this girl was his first love, Mitsuki. They suffered a misunderstanding in their youth: wanting Subaru's attention and kindness all to herself, Mitsuki told Subaru that she hated him for not being normal. Now, though, Mitsuki remembers him fondly and has been wishing for him to come and save her from her despair.

Mitsuki says that it wasn't fair that someone could take away her dreams and happiness, which is why she decided to never wake up, but Subaru tells her that if she never wakes up, she'll be taking away her mother's happiness - and his own. In Subaru's worldview, keeping other people happy is paramount, even if it requires sacrificing yourself. This is another direct contrast with Seishiro, who in volume 1 claimed that the only way to find your own happiness is by taking happiness from others.

The second story in volume 2 presents yet another worldview: Hokuto's. She saves a woman who is being accosted by several men. When they get to talking, it turns out that the woman is a sex worker and the men are the police. Hokuto doesn't work to keep others happy or to keep herself happy - she works to try to understand other people. While Subaru claimed that he wouldn't be able to understand Mitsuki because he wasn't her, Hokuto puts herself into others' shoes easily. She has sympathy for the foreign woman because she understands that service workers of any sort have difficult jobs. She even shows understanding for the police officers who she helps the other woman to avoid. Their jobs are also difficult and they're just living their lives the best that they can, just like everyone else. Hokuto won't ask questions of a stranger because it would be rude to make them answer if they didn't want to -- but if that stranger happened to want to talk, she's willing to listen and understand.

The foreign woman tells Hokuto that it's impossible for a foreigner to understand the Japanese mindset. What's telling is that Hokuto, the understander, doesn't contradict her. Hokuto says later that it doesn't matter where someone's from, that they're still people, but the understanding seems to work in one direction. Hokuto understands her new friend, but isn't understood in return. It's not an uncommon theme for the Japanese to see themselves as so different that others couldn't possibly understand them. I remember seeing a quote from a manga artist who was amazed that foreigners would be able to appreciate their story because they felt that it was so fundamentally Japanese that no one outside of the culture would get it.

So my question here is whether CLAMP was speaking through the foreign girl in claiming that no outsiders could understand the Japanese, or if they were simply echoing a popular sentiment. Hokuto says something later that shows what the CLAMP mindset might be: "You can't classify a person as an objective unit - as a "Japanese" or as a "Gaijin". You and I are basically the same, we're just human beings." Instead of asking whether "foreigners" as a group can understand "Japanese" as a group, the important part is that each individual person can do their part to understand the other individual people, regardless of what group they belong to.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 13: Tokyo Babylon vol 1

A quick note: I'm reading the Tokyopop 7-volume version of Tokyo Babylon, not the new omnibus versions. I've read that the new omnibus versions are very nice, but since I already have the Tokyopop version, I'm not going to go out and buy something new just because it might be a little better.

This is probably only my second or third time reading Tokyo Babylon. My first exposure to the characters of Tokyo Babylon was through their appearance in X, so I went into reading the series knowing what was going to happen, but not knowing why.  The impressive thing about Tokyo Babylon is that even when you know the ending, the series still works.

Perhaps that's because the hints of things not quite being right are dropped pretty early in the series. At the end of this first volume, we see the portentous first meeting of Subaru and Seishiro, where Seishiro tells Subaru that each cherry tree has a dead body buried beneath it and then tells Subaru that he will let him go - for now.

Years later, Subaru has forgotten that meeting, and has become as innocent as a teenage onmyouji can possibly be. Many of his actions are driven through the desire to make other people happy. He frees the spirits that he goes to exorcise by coming to an emotional understanding with them. He suffers his sister Hokuto's teasing about his relationship with Seishiro and lets her dress him up in outfits because that's what she enjoys. His openness and desire to please are putting himself into grave danger, but at this point in the story, he doesn't know that.

Seishiro, even at this stage of the story, is revealed to have a terribly pessimistic view of life. When a spirit reveals that she committed suicide, he scolds her for making trouble for other people. The only things he says that aren't dark are related to his professions of love for Subaru, which at this point, I don't believe are sincere. Somehow, Subaru and Hokuto don't see his dark side. They see him as a happy veterinarian who just happens to be the heir to a family of assassins.

I think that is largely Hokuto's doing. She fills in for what the readers of a typical boy's love story would be saying, encouraging Seishiro in his pursuit of Subaru. At one point, early in the story, Hokuto accuses Seishiro of having no intensity and being too happy-go-lucky. It's almost like Hokuto is writing her own doom. She loves drama and wants there to be more of it happening in her life, and soon she's going to get it.

So with Hokuto pushing Subaru into Seishiro's arms, neither Subaru or Hokuto notices that Seishiro says really shady things, or that he seems to be hiding who he really is. That's the key to the story: What seems like a typical boy's love tease is really hiding a dark destiny under the surface. Hokuto, by saying what the readers would usually be wanting, helps to hide what's really going on.

The CLAMP Project: Episode 12: Man of Many Faces

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.

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.