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.