I want to find happiness

I’m not sure exactly when manga started being published by companies in the United States.  My earliest manga purchases were the paperback size Mixx Manga of Sailor Moon, and the big flopped Magic Knight Rayearths.  The latter of which was surprisingly expensive even then – 14.95 per volume.  Yet I bought them.  I started into anime and manga fandom in the middle of my high school years and remember there only being a shelf of books to consider buying.  Thankfully over the years, the selection has grown to such an extent that I couldn’t possibly keep up with all the titles I want to keep up on, let alone new ones.  I’ve still managed to amass what I’d like to think is a pretty impressive collection.

There was a time early in my fandom when I was able to keep abreast of all CLAMP releases, and one that stood out was Clover with its weird tissue paper-like dust covers.  The volumes I own are in decent condition, but those covers tear so easily.  They’re pretty, but ultimately impractical, so I was glad to see an omnibus edition collecting all of Clover into one convenient volume.  Of course, I purchased it, and re-read the entire thing, and it surprised me.

A quick synopsis: Kazuhiko, a retired military officer, is requested to go on a final mission for his former commander.  He is to escort a girl, Sue to Fairy Park.  Along the way they are intercepted by the military of an opposing country, but eventually they reach their destination.

Now what really surprised me about it is that Clover annoys me terribly.  There are two giant reasons that it annoys me.  I appreciate the story being somewhat centered around a singer and the song that she co-writes with the girl, but the endless repetition of random song lyrics really got on my nerves, personally.  For me, it doesn’t help that I have absolutely no frame of reference for the tune of the song.  Without the tune, the lyrics have no rhythm and don’t add anything to the story besides my annoyance.

The other reason is the art, or the lack thereof.  It’s old style CLAMP with loads of wispy hair and sharp pointy eyes, which isn’t a problem.  The problem for me is all the white space, and all the panels that look like they were simply photocopied badly and pasted into place.  I spent a little time reflecting on why this bothers me so much and the simple reason is that I feel cheated.  I buy manga for both story and art, but this one seems awfully light on the art.  With all the manga I read, I’ve really become used to the page being filled, with empty pages serving to emphasize an event.  Most of the pages being empty however, emphasizes nothing and merely irritates me.  It seems awfully lazy.

My smaller complaint is the story.  The main story is linear, but it’s resolved in two volumes, leaving the other two volumes to fill in background.  I actually enjoy narrative that jumps the timeline of the story, so I didn’t mind this…much.  On a second reading however, it just seems like volumes three and four are filler created solely to fill up space.  The sad part is, I liked volume 3 more than the rest of the series.  It does the most to shed light on the entire world setting and general plot.  Plus the relationship between Ran and Ginsetsu is more interesting than any of the other relationships in any of the volumes.

Sadly, I have to say that I would not recommend buying the Clover omnibus, unless you happen to be a CLAMP completist.  Even then, I probably wouldn’t suggest it, simply because it’s so different from the works of CLAMP that I happen to be familiar with.  I will however, being looking forward to the Cardcaptor Sakura omnibuses with much glee.