Anime Explosion!

by Drazen, Patrick

  The artwork in this first official CLAMP creation featured what would become a trademark. In a medium where a character’s eyes are larger than usual, the eyes of the RG Veda characters are even bigger and more intricately detailed than its contemporaries. The story CLAMP created is set in the Hindu cosmology but seems reminiscent of Shinto legends. It’s a story of heavenly beings, one of whom is born neither male nor female, and the “Six Stars,” whose coming together will signal the appearance of the God of destruction.

  CLAMP had timing on their side. 1988, when RG Veda was in the planning stages, saw the release of the anime classic Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo’s apocalyptic masterpiece that hit anime fans like an earthquake. Anime scholar Susan Napier has noted:

  One of the most striking features of anime is its fascination with the theme of apocalypse. . . . While some, such as Princess Mononoke, hold out a promise of potential betterment alongside their vision of collapse, many others tend to dwell on destruction and loss. Destructive or hopeful, these anime seem to strike a responsive chord in the Japanese audience. In fact, it might be suggested that the apocalyptic mode . . . is also deeply ingrained within the contemporary Japanese national identity.1

  Anime doesn’t have a monopoly on mass destruction in Japanese pop culture; just look at Gojira (aka Godzilla, 1954) and its brothers and sisters who regularly eat Tokyo for breakfast. Still, RG Veda was the best possible calling card for CLAMP, and it was inevitably animated in 1991.

  Most of CLAMP’s works were subsequently animated, and the continued popularity of their work, and its wide variety, from child-friendly Magical Girl to bawdy erotica, are a testament to their creativity and their ability to bring something new or different to the table.

  One trait in particular has been a vital part of CLAMP from the first. They are among the few mangaka who still look to the comics of Osamu Tezuka and what they call his “star system” (what I call the Tezuka Repertory Company—see the sidebar “Parallel Universes” in part 1, chapter 13), and reuse characters from story to story. As of this writing, there are CLAMP manga being published (and animated) which reference older, well-known titles. . . .

  Not to get ahead of ourselves, though.

  Tokyo Babylon

  Shortly after RG Veda began appearing, the manga magazine Wings began serializing Tokyo Babylon. Once again, CLAMP created a template with elements that would return in other stories. Another apocalyptic story, nested this time in Japan, the focus is on Subaru Sumeragi, a teenaged sorcerer whose family has served the emperor for centuries. He lives with his twin sister Hokuto, who designs fanciful outfits for her brother and herself and acts as a go-between between Subaru and Seishiro, a slightly older male veterinarian who is in love with Subaru.

  Subaru always wears gloves, on the advice of his grandmother, who wanted Subaru to cover up the pentagrams on each hand, which mark him as a target; in this case, a target of Seishiro, member of a clan of magical assassins, whom Subaru saw killing someone years before. By the time the manga ends, Seishiro has lost an eye, Hokuto has lost her life (but not before using her death to awaken Subaru from a magical paralysis), and the stage is set for the sequel, X.

  Cute, Cuter, and Moe

  An episode of Ouran High School Host Club, in which Honey’s addiction to sweets finally results in a cavity, has one other notable plot-point: the ever-pushy student Renge declares that one of the customers of the Host Club, who’s had her heart broken by an unresponsive host, has entered a wider world: the world of moe. Pronounced “mo-ei,” this is one subject (among many) on which Renge is an expert.

  Unfortunately, hardly anyone else is. Moe as an aspect of anime/manga flared up around 2002. The problem was, and is, the lack of a clear definition for the word. Some have described moe as a cross between the bishojo (beautiful girl) type and the Lolita, thus suggesting a more underage version of a sexualized girl. Others point to the waif-like character of Rei Ayanami in Evangelion, who is in high school and hardly qualifies as a Lolita. Some look to character names, including Hotaru Tomoe, the grade-school-aged Sailor Senshi who becomes Sailor Saturn. Still others say that the word is a pun on the Japanese word for “sprouting,” which suggests junior high school and the age when hormones usually kick in. And then there’s the Anime Saimoe Tournament held annually since 2002, which tries to rank such characters. (The winner of the first tournament was Sakura Kinomoto, the star of CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura.)

  Using Sakura as a template points to what some consider the turning of prepubescent girls into sexual fetish items. If so, this would be a step beyond the “Lolita” trend, which at least focuses on high schoolers and other adolescents. If all of this sounds a bit kinky, there may be a saving grace: moe is not really real. Japanese author Yoshiki Takahashi has written that male moe fans “long to be dominant and masculine,” as opposed to having “a real relationship with an independent woman.” So by this theory the moe fad is an extension of the idealization of the “Yamato nadeshiko,” the beautiful, virginal, submissive Japanese maiden.

  But there are problems with this theory. Many of the youthful beauties described as moe don’t fit the personality. Physically, most of the featured characters in the Gunslinger Girl anime and manga could be called moe, even if they’re essentially robot assassins. Second, compared to older manga from the postwar years up to the turn of the century, the Yamato nadeshiko type in manga/anime is increasingly endangered. It’s hard to find any type that can be called “typical.” There are moe girl vampires (Vampire Knight), cross-dressing moe girls (Ouran High School Host Club), moe circus acrobats (Kaleido Star), moe witch trainees (Ojamajo Doremi, Negima! Magister Negi Magi). . . . Finally, anime fans (despite the occasional news story about an otaku wanting to marry a virtual idol singer) can tell the difference between media and reality. The life of a fan is too grounded in the reality of broadcast schedules, cosplay events, and purchases of books, magazines, discs, models, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. That kind of life usually attracts similarly committed female fans rather than submissive flowers.

  Whether there’s a dark side is almost irrelevant; for all practical purposes, young, female, and cute generally equals moe.

  The most obvious parallels are the apocalyptic theme continued from RG Veda, and the character of Hokuto, whose hobby of designing fanciful outfits will be picked up in Cardcaptor Sakura by Tomoyo.

  My Own Private Campus

  In 1992 CLAMP created five manga titles, two of which took place in the same little cosmos: Duklyon, also known as CLAMP Academy.

  Duklyon: CLAMP School Defenders looks back to the group’s Saint Seiya dojinshi in this parody of superhero manga. In this case, two high school students, Kentaro and Takeshi, regularly don armored uniforms to battle various monsters. They take their marching orders from Eri, another student who doesn’t fight monsters but regularly beats the two Duklyon knights with a large mallet if she disapproves of their performance.

  CLAMP Campus Detectives started in December 1992 and brought together elementary school students from previous CLAMP manga to form a gang of amateur detectives. It’s a light-hearted and nonviolent series, with three clever (but occasionally childish) grade school students solving cases “for the sake of women’s happiness.” They meet their first client by accident at the observation deck of Tokyo Tower; this works out so well that the Chairlady of the campus sets them a test: retrieve a missing floppy disc in twenty-four hours. And so it goes.

  The campus itself is literally a stellar location, and inspired later self-contained campuses like Mahora Academy (Negima! Magister Negi Magi), Ouran Academy (Ouran High School Host Club), and Otori Academy (Revolutionary Girl Utena). CLAMP Campus is built to house students, faculty, their families, and support staff—ten thousand people in all, with students from elementary school to college age. In a circular tract of land, drawing a five-pointed star in the circle would also outline a five-sided forest at the center of the property. The campus is also a mix of elements of a school an
d an amusement park—the detectives travel in their own dirigible, the campus has its own baseball diamond, the graduate school launches its own weather observation drones. You name it, the school has it.

  With all of these adventures and romances being tended to by elementary school students, the series has an air of children playing make-believe. One two-part episode, “The Fashionable Thief,” has a fifth grader dressing as a celebrity thief known as 20 Masks, yet who looks a great deal like Tuxedo Mask from the Sailor Moon TV series (mask, cape, top hat, and tuxedo), while the girl he courts wears a replica of the gown designed by Cecil Beaton for the Ascot scene in the 1964 film of the musical My Fair Lady.

  One thing it has is something seldom seen anymore: shota (see part 1, chapter 12, footnote 6). Since the three detectives are also officers of the student council representing grades four through six, this trio is generally shown wearing shorts (a common symbol of pre-adolescence in earlier days) and speaking in high, feminine voices. The latter is because anime has used actresses to voice children, regardless of gender. The original broadcasts of Fullmetal Alchemist have actresses voice the Elric brothers, including Edward Elric, who’s a teenager (but—a sore point with him—short for his age). That voice actor, Romi Park (also spelled Romi Paku, depending on who’s transliterating), is among Japan’s best-known seiyuu. These days, however, even the youngest boys in manga are drawn in long pants.

  One of CLAMP’s running in-jokes has been reviving the name “Duklyon.” Volume 2 of Chobits features the Duklyon burger shop;2 likewise, in volume 4 of XXXholic, one of the campus lecture halls is named Gamera Hall after the monstrous movie turtle.3

  Good Knights?

  An early entry in the Magical Girl sweepstakes was popular in its own right and also contributed material for CLAMP’s later works. Magic Knight Rayearth was published in Nakayoshi magazine from late 1993 to early 1995, and the TV adaptation proved to be very popular.

  Three girls attending three different junior high schools just happen to be on school field trips at the same landmark (Tokyo Tower, which is one of anime’s most recognizable landmarks [see the sidebar “Tokyo Tower” in part 2, chapter 9]) when the three are summoned to the alien land of Cephiro. This is a land where a girl’s emotions literally can directly affect reality. Fear can beget monsters, while well-intentioned wishes can work wonders.

  The Knights have color-coded uniforms and elemental powers determined by their names: Shido (fire), Fuu (wind), and Umi (water; literally, her name means “ocean”). The three girls have to stop the thoughts of the evil (and very bishonen) priest Zagato from taking control of the land from the Princess Emeraude. They get help from Mokona, a magical creature that resembles a mix between a rabbit and a football.

  This assignment, however, gets much more complicated than the typical Good Princess versus Evil Wizard scenario. Zagato himself had summoned the Magic Knights from Tokyo to Cephiro; he hadn’t even kidnapped Emeraude until after she fell in love with him. This got in the way of Emeraude sending good vibes to Cephiro, since she prayed for the wizard. Zagato had originally wanted the Magic Knights to kill Emeraude, since nobody on Cephiro could harm her and she wasn’t doing her job. The knights kill the wizard instead, and the princess turns dark because of the death of her beloved and attacks the Magic Knights. They ultimately have to kill her, too. In the end, their job is to bring a whole new system to Cephiro. As the tragic life of Emeraude demonstrated, becoming the world’s Pillar means renouncing everything that makes one human, most notably love.

  In the Cards

  CLAMP’s manga and anime don’t always travel well to other countries, but their first and biggest international success to date is one of their entries in the Magical Girl genre: Cardcaptor Sakura. The manga (published in Nakayoshi from 1996 to 2000) and anime (broadcast in Japan from 1998 to 2000) draw on elements which should be familiar to CLAMP’s followers: the cute Magical Girl, the friend who designs new outfits for Sakura, and whose mother and Sakura’s mother had a yuri-type friendship4—at least, until Sakura’s mother met and married Fuji-taka Kinomoto, Sakura’s father. When Sakura becomes the Cardcaptor, she also gets a magical animal sidekick, which resembles a stuffed bear and is called Cerberus (after the three-headed demonic dog of Greek mythology—note that Cerberus, spelled out in the Japanese alphabet, is “Keruberosu,” which is very close to “Care Bears”. . . .).

  The quest that preoccupies Sakura is a nicely limiting gimmick. A wizard named Clow Reed had created a magical deck of Clow Cards, with each card embodying a particular element or trait. Note that the cards are neither “good” nor “bad”; cards such as Wind and Water, Wood and Fire, Light and Dark are natural phenomena that can be either good or bad, depending on circumstances. Sakura Kinomoto is a grade school student who, as the title Cardcaptor, must round up the cards that have gone astray. In doing so, she joins up with a Chinese Cardcaptor about her own age, Syaoran Li. They gradually become romantically interested in each other and are a full-fledged couple by the time they return in the series Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle.

  Hikaru’s Dream House

  In early 1999 CLAMP shifted gears and tried to create a shonen (boys’) battle manga. The six-month result, Angelic Layer, is a sort of mash-up of Pokèmon and Barbie dolls, done in a sketchy style of uncharacteristically rough artwork—rough at this point, but a style CLAMP would turn to again.

  In a future world of hi-tech media events, seventh grader Misaki Suzuhara has moved to Tokyo to live with her aunt. No sooner does she leave the station than Misaki sees a televised battle between two “Angels”—dolls that are customized and animated by the owner’s thoughts. With a little help from a strange man named Icchan (who turns out to be the inventor of the Angels, Ichiro Mihara) and coached by an avid kindergartener Angel-battler named Hatoko Kobayashi, Misaki the total novice and her Angel Hikaru rise (predictably) to the top of the Angel fighting world. Misaki at first also has to cope with the mass of peripherals that Angels seem to require.

  This all happens while Misaki is watched over by her mother, who hadn’t been with Misaki since the girl was five years old. In the anime, her mother was stricken by muscular dystrophy and confined to a wheelchair; she developed Angels as a way of willing her uncooperative legs to work. (In the manga, an extreme case of shyness, rather than a disability, caused Misaki’s mother to hide behind the Angels.) Hatoko also has a brother, Kotaro, and he and Misaki are a couple by story’s end.

  The sketchy, rough quality of the art would be repeated in later CLAMP manga, notably Chobits. Both titles were animated, but neither tried to copy the art style. A few characters also carried over from Angelic Layer to Chobits. Other in-jokes in the manga include characters singing the themes from the anime versions of Cardcaptor Sakura and CLAMP Campus Detectives. And there are variations of the Angel duel in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle.

  Seven Wonders

  2000 presented one of CLAMP’s sexiest parodies: Miyuki-chan in Wonderland. There’s no need to spell out the title, except to note that Miyuki-chan is a junior high school student who appears in a middy blouse (or sometimes less—MUCH less) as she gets pulled into a variety of worlds. These include Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland and the realm Alice discovers by going through the looking-glass; there’s also the world of a French movie from the ‘60s, based on an adult comic book: Barbarella, a bit of sexual science fiction which starred a newcomer named Jane Fonda in the title role. These are followed by the land of part-time jobs (a serious concern for college students; in this case, Miyuki has to battle fast-food restaurant workers), mahjong, computer games, and CLAMP’s own X.

  Every other character Miyuki-chan encounters is female, older, and often dressed in something revealing (if they’re dressed at all). During the Wonderland tea party, the Mad Hatter plays word games with Miyuki-chan, who wants to know where she is. She’s told, “You’re Over There.” So she asks, “But where’s Over There?” The Hatter replies, “It’s Asoko.” Literally, “asoko” means “
over there.” But “asoko” is also one of the most common euphemisms in Japanese for a woman’s sex organs. If CLAMP created one consistent theme in Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, it’s the anxiety of a newly pubescent teenage girl toward the sexual world she is suddenly about to enter.

  Chobits

  Just as Magic Knight Rayearth sounded at first like a typical Magical Girl story, the 2001–2002 manga Chobits sounded like a typical sci-fi romantic comedy. A boy finds a model girlfriend (literally) in Chi, a human-shaped PC; much hilarity ensues as the PC, which has had its memory erased, has to be taught everything.

  By now, it should be clear that CLAMP doesn’t do anything obvious. Chobits is technically a seinen title, aimed at an older audience of young adults. Like Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, there’s a bawdiness that doesn’t appear in teen-oriented titles. For example, CLAMP put the on/off switch for Chi in a rather intimate location. . . .

  (Oh no, they didn’t. . . . Oh yes, they did. . . .)

  There’s also a dark, somewhat foreboding quality to the manga, as Chi communicates with her own alter ego, an identical looking PC dressed in Lolita-goth garb. Humor happens on the way to figuring out Chi’s identity. Inclined at first to go without clothing, her owner/boyfriend Hideki sends Chi out to buy underwear; however, Chi trips up on the similarity between the Japanese words for panties and boxer shorts. Things take a more adult turn when Chi, who cares for her new owner, takes a job with a virtual “peep show,” a voyeuristic website that has cameras looking through holes in a room’s walls while Chi is supposed to undress and act suggestively. In the manga, the incredibly naïve Chi has to be shown by the site’s webmaster how to touch herself. When he tries to force her to touch her “switch,” the offstage results are disastrous and Chi flees. When she appears to Hideki after that incident, something about her immobilizes every other humanoid PC in the area. In the anime, however, the darkness is downplayed and hilarity comes first, especially in the character of Plum, a doll-sized PC dressed in a stereotypical harem outfit.