This is newly-formed book club for those who enjoy manga created by CLAMP.
CLAMP’s Bio
CLAMP is an all-female Japanese manga artist group, consisting of leader and writer Nanase Ohkawa (born in Osaka), and three artists whose roles shift for each series: Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi (all born in Kyoto).
Clamp was first formed in the mid-1980s as an eleven-member group creating dōjinshi (self-published fan works), and began creating original manga in 1987. By the time the group made its mainstream publishing debut with RG Veda in 1989, it was reduced to seven members; three more members left in 1993, leaving the four current members of the group.
Notable works by Clamp include X (1992), Magic Knight Rayearth (1993), Cardcaptor Sakura (1996) and its sequel Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card (2016), Chobits (2000), and xxxHolic and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (both 2003). Various series by the group cross-reference each other, and characters reappear in multiple works by the group, with Tsubasa, a series set across multiple dimensions, featuring multiple alternative versions of characters from past works. Clamp are noted as among the most critically and commercially acclaimed manga artists in Japan, and as of 2007, have sold nearly 100 million books worldwide.*
Feel free to use this thread to discuss CLAMP and share recommendations. This thread will continuously be updated with more information as we read through CLAMP’s works and discuss their influence on manga.
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CLAMP works in chronological order of release
Bolded and italicized titles are currently halted.
What do we want to do for our next book? I had a short poll over on the MKR thread, but we only have a few participants. I’d be fine either continuing with MKR 2 (or doing it as an offshoot) or starting something new.
I’d be interested in either xxxHolic (and/or Tsubasa), Chobits, CCS, or X… Mainly bc they’re the only ones I have passing familiarity with. Open to others of course.
Note: xxxHolic and Tsubasa ran concurrently and have some connected scenes, but also work fine being read on their own. (You might occasionally be mildly confused later on… But it’s CLAMP and that’s par for the course anyway)
X pulls characters from Tokyo Babylon and I think Clamp Gakuen Detectives, and maybe some more (it’s been a really long time since I read them). So one could potentially make the case for reading those first, but also, Clamp be Clamp sometimes (aka I totally read X before I even knew about the other series).
Acc to Wikipedia, it’s the same star system method that Tsubasa uses (same/similar char designs, names, similar general relationships and personalities, but no actual relation to CCS). So probably fine either way. Btw for anyone who liked Mokona, there are 2 Mokona in Tsubasa, and they talk and are quite adorable and hilarious, and the main one is actually a solid character
It would be nice to read those before X/Tsubasa, but as you say it’s not totally necessary (I also read X before School Detectives).
That being said, I think the only prereq before reading X is Tokyo Babylon since the story from Tokyo Babylon carries into X and from what I remember Subaru is a pretty central character.
Yeah, I’d agree with that. I did read it without knowing who he was at the time and I mostly just had a feeling of “hmm, now I want to read the story that he comes from” and not that I felt entirely lost.
With all the talk of which books we should read before others, is it worth thinking of what long read we might want to work up to and then read any “prerequisites” for it first?
In that case, building up to X would be easier than Tsubasa since to my knowledge it would just be School Detectives and Tokyo Babylon, and those are both relatively short series.
It would also make sense to read those before Tsubasa because the world of X is heavily used in Tsubasa as one of the settings if I am recalling correctly.
Seeing that I have all of X, Tokyo Babylon, and Clamp Gakuen I can’t say I’m opposed to this idea
I also read Tsubasa ages and ages ago (xxxHolic doesn’t have furigana so I didn’t even try at the time), but I feel like I also remember it pulling in CCS? Which is a big prerequisite commitment also not me trying to not read CCS
All of CLAMP’s works seem to exist in a giant multiverse that occasionally crosses over with each other and different versions of characters exist within them.
That said while Tsubasa in particular is the most direct example of it, I don’t think reading any of their other works is necessary to enjoy it. The closest would be xxxHolic since they run parallel stories with each other.
So should we run another poll on what to read? As I see it, the choices now are Clamp Gakuen, Tokyo Babylon, X, xxxHolic, and Tsubasa. I know someone also mentioned Kobato previously as well.
It pulls in the character designs, names, and general relationships, in an abstract sense. There is one arc that’s a clear tribute to CCS, which if you know you’ll be like “that’s cute”, and if you don’t, you’re not missing anything. No connection otherwise.
Yes exactly
It does have some, but it’s mostly for names, or for words that have some sort of deeper/double meaning (願い、店、etc, get katakana). Still, words like 清浄, 相方, 宿酔い have regular furigana as well - but they’re definitely in the minority
Cool, definitely in favor of postponing Tsubasa then, especially since it’s 29 volumes, I think it’s a much better “later on” read.
Then maybe we can do something like Tokyo Babylon – > X/1999 – > Tsubasa. We can obviously do a check in between each to see if we want to take a break and read one of the shorter ones, like Clamp Gakuen etc.
If that sounds good, I can throw a poll up to decide when we want to start and what a general timeline should be for reading.
