O Flist, lend me your collective wisdom!

[darkelf105]

Erm, so besides the obvious stuff, if one were to do a short little spiel about CLAMP and their significance to manga-dom, what would one be sure to mention?

I have to admit, CLAMP is not my thing and I only have a passing familiarity with their work. However, the alliteration of "Christmas with CLAMP" was too cute to resist and I think something should be said about the group.

BTW, this is a group of novice manga readers, so any information is new to them.

Brain dying, please to be helping resuscitate, kthanx.

Comments

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Card Captor Sakura and Tsubasa would be the big ones, I'd think, along with X/Tokyo Babylon. Wouldn't want to miss xxx-holic either, since it's actually, like, somewhat good. Might wanna make sure to mention Miyuki-chan in Wonderland since iirc it was their debut work. I'd also mention Chobits since it was their token male-target-audience title. (I mean, yeah, there was Angelic Layer, and several of their titles are aimed at mixed audiences, but those don't have the pure "OMG PANTIES" thing going on.)

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Hee, xxxHolic is one of the CLAMP titles I am actually following. Yuuko got a slide all to herself because she is that sexy and awesome.

[mimibean.livejournal.com]

Also, Clamp School Detectives, Magic Knights Rayearth, Clover, and Wish (shounen-ai). You might like to mention that a lot of characters from their titles cross-over into other series. For example, Chii is in Tsubasa and so are some characters from X. (That's one of the many things I love about Clamp.) Xxx-holic is a spin-off of Tsubasa as well. And characters from most of their titles appear in Clamp School Detectives.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Why thank you.

Am mentioning the cross-over habit of CLAMPS.

[kazeraikaku.livejournal.com]

I know calliopepurple, he sent me here xD; Erm... this will probably be a list of doom for you ^^; I haven't read *some* of theirs, so I may be a little off on titles or miss one or two.

My all-time favorite CLAMP series is actually their first, though it came out... later. Rofl. I think they just recently finished printing the books.. It's called RG Veda, and it leans sort of toward the darkness that you get in X/1999 and such.
Obviously, you've heard most of their 'big' series already. It's good to note that Wish is actually NOT shounen-ai (the nonhuman main character just has no gender, and is usually referred to as 'she' anyway) though it has a few instances OF shounen-ai in the comments to each other. It's four volumes long.
There's also CLAMP Campus/School Detectives, which is... fairly adorable. It's three volumes. Legend of Chun Hyang, which was dropped after one volume, is kind of... special. I only read it once xD;. Um... another is Shirahime-syo, I think that's how they left it but it may have been translated as Snow-Goddess Tales or... something. There's another short one called Man of Many Faces/20 Masks, I believe it's two volumes, which is a very sweet love story.
There's another called Duklyon, or CLAMP School Defenders, which I haven't read (it's kinda hard to find for me) yet.
Huh... I'm surprised. It doesn't look like anyone mentioned Legal Drug/Lawful Drug yet, although I know a lot of people don't actually care for that particular series.

Aaaaand that's about all I can think of. If you want, you could check their Works section (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLAMP_Manga#Works) of the CLAMP wiki, and if you had any questions on something, I could try to give insight, providing I know what the series is.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Why thank you, that was helpful.

Is there anything significant about the group itself I should mention? I looked at the wiki and incorporated much of the information there, but I think my powerpoint is missing a key point about CLAMP, mainly why kids should care and go read their stuff.

I'm usually more articulate in squeeing about manga to kids, but my brain is tired.

[kazeraikaku.livejournal.com]

Mm, of what I can think of, there's not a whole lot to note. Basically, they're a group of four girls who started out drawing doujin.
Also, their more recent works (Holic, Tsubasa and Legal Drug, and probably a couple others I'm missing) are actually drawn by another member of CLAMP - Mokona Apapa did the art for almost all of it, and I can't think of which girl is the new artist since she stopped, which I believe was due to arthritis, or otherwise wrist/hand pain.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

I actually talked about Holic, Tsubasa and Card Captor Sakura quite a bit, because those are the series I've read. I also squeed about RG Veda because that's they only one of their series I've read from beginning to end. I think I may actually have about twenty minutes with the info you and the others provided, so I think I'm good :).

I'm going to show Magic Knights Rayearth and Tsubasa...mostly because I can.

Thank you!

[kazeraikaku.livejournal.com]

Haha yeah. Congrats <3

XD MKR is a good one to show, I haven't seen Tsubasa yet.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Magic Knight Rayearch is win. Mecha and girls. I like Tsubasa's animation quite a bit, some of my other friends, not so much, so I guess it's a toss up. But I like the manga something fierce.

[kazeraikaku.livejournal.com]

Haha yeah. It was one of my favorite ones for a really long time. <3 I really need to see Tsubasa sometime... ah well. I'll see/read all of it, one day. Haha.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Tis worth it :). Though Sakura from Tsubasa seems dull and lifeless compared to CSS Sakura, but I think Fai and Kurogane more than make up for it.

What do you know about Legal Drug? I was thinking about reading it, but I'm so busy that I usually only pick things up on some one's recommendation.

[kazeraikaku.livejournal.com]

Haha, given what happens to her, I suppose it's not really that surprising.

Ah... I don't really know much about Legal Drug at all - to be honest, I really don't care much for the artstyle of the new artist, and the story didn't seem all that interesting to me.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Lol, that's pretty much what one of the kids in the manga program I do at work said. Gonna knock it off my ever growing "to read" list and maybe come back to it.

[kazeraikaku.livejournal.com]

Haha fun. xD; I definitely know that feeling D:

[vieve-kethrun.livejournal.com]

Legal Drug was a three volume series that has currently been put on a semi-permanent hiatus. Features a drug store that will do odd jobs in addition to everyday selling of stuff. And has possibly more blatant gayness than Holic and Tsubasa combined. Characters had interesting powers/backstories but we never really got anything on it. If you go back to the first volume of Holic, Watanuki visits their drugstore for Yuuko's hangover medicine, and sometime later in the series, theres a reference to a vase that Yuuko 'aquired' through the services to the store.
Overall, a good series, but it shows no signs of continuing at all. Dammit.

[vieve-kethrun.livejournal.com]

Umm, Clamp is best known for Rayearth, Chobits and Cardcaptor Sakura. If you're doing a younger group, you might be able to show off Clamp in Wonderland (both versions, thought the second is arguably better). You could probably also bring up Shirahime-Syo, as it was a 'oneshot' done in a more old fashioned style involving japanese watercolor. ANd it rocked.
Covering Tsubasa briefly might also be good, as it shows the massive amount of crossovers and showcases a shitload of characters as well, without a lot of the gay.

But basically, i think Clamp sorta has done everything from shojo to shonen and had their quasi porn (which is Miyuki-chan). They've done crossovers-something I don't think I've seen a lot of in any other sort of manga, and they did them in every series. Angelic Layer references Rayearth, Chobits references Angelic Layer, etc. And they are generally horrifically cute when they chose to be. God knows they have subtext, but its mostly innocent (with the possible exception of Seishiro and Subaru in Tokyo Babylon/X).