Theme Spotlight: CLAMP Edition

Since I don't think I've made it 100% clear yet on this blog how desperately obsessed I am with CLAMP (sarcasm), today's Theme Spotlight is going to be devoted to the music of the anime based off CLAMP works. As a worshiper of the original CLAMP canon, my reactions to the anime have been varied from absolute love (xxxHolic), to annoyance at an overabundance of contradictory filler (Tsubasa), to outright horror that a 10 volume series was condensed into one OVA (RG Veda), but there's no denying that the music that comes along with CLAMP anime is killer. Here are my top 10 picks:

10. "Magic Number" from Kobato: Maaya Sakamoto is a staple to CLAMP anime, from Card Captor Sakura to Tsubasa, so I was beside my self when I turned on the first episode of one of CLAMP's more recent series Kobato to hear one of my favorite songstresses at it once again. Sakamoto is a veteran on the scene, but this song is so current, fresh, and exciting that you might be surprised to hear she's been working since the late 1980s, and has contributed seven full lengths CDs to the industry. In any case, this song is practically bursting with the spirit of Kobato and made a fantastic opening to a heartwarming and adorable series

9. "eX Dream" from X: X is CLAMP's dark and broodingest (now a word) emocalypse (also a word), and they were wise to stay away from anything too perky for this series. Masatoshi Nishimura/Myuji provided an emotional and atmospheric rock opening with "eX Dream," which is spot on for the theme of the show, although whenever I sing along, I mess up and say "Drowning for my life" rather than "Burning for my life." Whoops!

8. "The Starry Sky" from Angelic Layer: I was half-and-half with my opinion of the Angelic Layer anime (loved the action, hated the meddling with the original pairings), but I loved the closing theme from HAL. HAL brings that nostalgic 90s sound which I often find myself missing, and delivers a solid vocal. Oh, CLAMP from the olden days... -sniffle-

7. "SONIC BOOM" from Tsubasa: Wait, Maaya Sakamto again? While it's true Sakamoto is an idol of mine, this track would have probably given me a swift kick in the heart even if I hadn't known it was her. After the insane opening to the Tsubasa Shunraiki OVA I was already bawling my eyes out courtesy of Kurogane and Fai, and as soon as this beautiful and heart wrenching track about losing the person you love started I was so out of control thinking about Kurogane, Fai, Syaoran, and Sakura that the waterworks only got worse. And the violins.... AND THE GUITARS ON THE LIVE TRACK!!!! Aaah, yes. So this is love I feel.

6. "Let Me Be With You" from Chobits: Winning the most adorable track in existence award is Chobits opener "Let Me Be With You" by Round Table with Nino (and I'm pretty sure Nino is Rie Tanaka's alias, because it sounds/looks just like her). This song is pure, sappy romance at its best, and I don't care if the sugar is piled on high, because I want more of it!

5. "Yuzurenai Negai" from Magic Knight Rayearth: I mentioned 90s nostalgia earlier with Angelic Layer, but this song is the very definition of it. Whenever I hear this track, I think back to the glory days of InuYasha, Ranma, Kenshin and all the fun and action that went along with them, and I get all warm and fuzzy inside. I still want to be Umi, Hikaru, and Fuu even at 21, and I love this song for all memories it brings.

4. "Catch You Catch Me" from Card Captor Sakura: I have a difficult relationship with this series. I loved the manga and the Japanese Card Captor Sakura, but the horror that was the American Cardcaptors cannot be forgotten. Moving the episode timeline, giving the characters American names, diminishing Sakura as the lead, cutting out canon pairings (TOUYA/YUKITO!?!?).... it cannot be forgiven. However, the CLAMP original and Japanese editions are not to blame, and this song from Gumi proves exactly why this series was perfect in its native land. Poor American children brainwashed by our stupid reinterpretation...

3. "Peony Pink" from CLAMP Campus Detectives: May I also add that Japanese shows for younger audiences are boss? Card Captor Sakura featured a whooping number of homoerotic situations (Everyone of every gender having the hots for Yukito, Tomoyo lusting after Sakura, Yue lusting after Clow, etc), and CLAMP Campus Detectives had elementary school students Akira and Suoh with kindergarden aged girlfriends. And kicking the collective butts of grown adults alongside young womanizer Nokoru. In any case, the brilliant theme was performed by the baroque duo Ali Project in their milder years, which makes for an interesting comparison to their newer stuff. It's light and fluffy like the show, but an excellent listen.

2. "Ningyo Hime" from Chobits: Chobits makes the list twice for spanning the whole range of emotions. After the joy of "Let Me Be With You," Rie Tanaka shifts gears into the deeply bittersweet "Ningyo Hime," an ode to desiring love no matter how badly it hurts. As Chii herself phrases it, "If the someone just for me doesn't choose me, I'm afraid the hurt will be so bad that I'll stop working. It's a powerful feeling, isn't it? A hurt so strong that it could cause you to break." Commence sobbing. Thank you, thank you, Rie Tanaka.

1. "19sai" from xxxHolic: On a happier note, I am in love with Suga Shikao. Yes, I know he's an older man, but I just can't help myself! His chillaxing CDs are always a favorite on my Ipod, but I never would have discovered him if not for the glory that is the first xxxHolic opening theme "19sai." The song is catchy, fun, and smooth, and was just what I was looking for in the show based off my favorite manga. It was the first show where I had ever listened to the opener for every one of the 24 episodes, and even after I finished season one, I burned it to every mix CD in existence and listened to it some more. God bless those 19 year old days!

Angel Wings! Please Guide Me and Hikaru!

To make up for all my sundering of CLAMP soulmates yesterday, today I will giving props one of their classic manga series, Angelic Layer. Luckily, none of these characters made it on to my roulette list so I can proceed without dwelling on White Mokona's forbidden love for them. I'll leave that concern to Subaru.

Angelic Layer was one of the last CLAMP series I got around to reading, most likely because it looked to me like it was geared to a younger audience (but then again, so did Cardcaptor Sakura, and that turned out to have many sophisticated plot points). While it's true that many things about Angelic Layer will appeal to younger audiences, especially the plucky elementary school heroine Misaki Suzuhara, there are plenty of elements to love about the series from an adult perspective as well.

Our young heroine, Misaki. Known as 'Misakichi' to her friends, because cool nicknames are longer than the originals.

Angelic Layer follows Misaki as she arrives in Tokyo to live with her young aunt and discovers the popular trend in technological toys, the eponymous Angelic Layer battle system. The reasons why Misaki no longer lives with her mother are initially a bit of a mystery; according to Misaki, her mother is too busy with her job to properly raise her daughter, but from the conflicted looks on her aunt's face, we can tell there is most likely something else going on. In any case, Misaki is a fairly optimistic kid, and doesn't seem too troubled with her situation, at least in the manga.

Almost as soon as she gets outside the train station, Misaki sees a video billboard showing combat between a tiny woman in white and a bigger, stronger competitor. Misaki, who is a tiny girl herself, worries that the small woman will be easily defeated, and is struck with awe when she is able to overcome the other fighter, even in spite of her size.

The mysterious Ichiro (“Icchan”) appears behind Misaki clad in a white lab coat and acting suspiciously like a pervert to tell her that what she has just witnessed is an Angelic Layer battle. 'Angels' are advanced dolls (don't let the name fool you; no wings are attached) that accept brain signals from their users (the “Deus”), and are able to move accordingly, even though they are in no way sentient or free thinking. Skilled Deuses practice using their angels for combat, and fight competitively for the title of Champion of Angelic Layer. When Misaki expresses an interest, Icchan drags her off to buy an angel, still looking very much like a pervert as they wriggle along the street together like overgrown jellyfish.

Forget planes and trains and cars! Wiggling is the only way to travel!

Misaki's angel later becomes known as Hikaru (a name that should ring a bell for Magic Knight Rayearth fans), and she begins to train her doll for competition. Even though she is new to the game, she proves to be particularly adept and intuitive. During this time she also meets rowdy childhood friends Kotaro and Tamayo, as well as Kotaro's cute lil sis, Hatoko, who is one of the most skilled Deuses involved in Angelic Layer. She is also the first and only person Misaki and Hikaru lose to in Angelic Layer (until the very, very end of the series), and the two of them make a vow that Misaki is never allowed to lose to anyone else.

Hikaru as she appears in the anime. When  controlled by Misaki, she moves and fights much like a human.

Both the anime and manga keep the basic plot of Misaki touring the competition circuit and using her brainpower to take down even the biggest and best of the Deuses with little Hikaru consistent. However, many plot points diverge between the two (and this means that spoilers will be ahead). First of all is the issue of Misaki's mom. In both media she is the Deus of the white angel Misaki admired outside of the Tokyo station and the Champion of Angelic Layer, but the anime and manga differ on the reason why she hasn't been a part of her daughter's life. In the manga, Shuko Suzuhara is simply overcome with shyness when socializing with the people she cares about the most, and thus freaks out whenever she is in the presence of her adorable daughter. In the anime, in order to increase the level of drama Shuko becomes the victim of a degenerative disease which makes it impossible for her to walk. Icchan, who is actually the creator of Angelic Layer instead of the rampaging pervert he appears to be, takes Shuko under his wing and develops the technology of Angelic Layer with the hopes that one day he will be able to use brain signal response in prosthetic limbs, to help people like Shuko function fully again. Spoiler end.

He's got the pervert in a lab coat look down, but he may actually be more than he appears.

Also, to my surprise, the pairings set in the manga were changed by the anime. Romance is not a big deal in Angelic Layer, and is written almost as a side note in the manga. CLAMP has Misaki date Kotaro, who has a pretty obvious crush on her throughout the series, and Tamayo (who also acted like she had the hots for Misaki, but this may have been because she wanted to grind Kotaro's gears) ends up with Icchan's younger bro Ohjiro, a high level Deus. The anime reverses this, and makes Tamayo have a long standing crush on her childhood friend Kotaro which he eventually reciprocates after getting over his own crush on Misaki, and Misaki herself develops feelings for Ohjiro, who initially had the hots for her mother. 

A little weird, if you ask me. The switched pairings added the drama needed to make Angelic Layer a full twenty-six episode series, but I would have rather seen more angel battles than have the pairings messed around with. Although love is a secondary thing in Angelic Layer, CLAMP couples aren't something that can usually be changed at a whim (I only did it as a joke in my last posting, I swear!). CLAMP believes in soul mates, and that people will end up with the person they are destined to be with regardless of space, time, place, gender, age, and all other sorts of complications. For example, Arashi and Sorata, one of the official couples of X, are together no matter which universe their souls exist in, including Tokyo, Hanshin, and Acid Tokyo/Clow in the CLAMP crossover series Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Breaking up love in CLAMP series just doesn't happen as a general rule; souls that are meant to be together always find one another, and they stay together no matter where they are in time and space. Of course, the characters of Angelic Layer are only twelve/thirteen and don't even start dating until the final pages, so the impact of their relationships is significantly lessened compared to more serious series like Tsubasa and X.

When anime and manga differ, I always go with the CLAMP canon.  Those ladies are my idols.

That aside, the real magic of Angelic Layer are the angel battles themselves, and these shine in both the anime and the manga. Misaki is new to the game, and she hasn't perfected the art of strategy like veteran players such as Hatoko, but all the same she possesses such a sharp and observant mind that she is able to realize her opponents' strengths and weaknesses even when she is on the verge of losing. As a big fan of strategy games and RPGs, I loved to follow her as she puzzled through her battles, gauging what worked about her plan of attack and what didn't. The angels are also so beautifully lifelike that it's easy to forget that they are toys. A Deus can have their angel wear whatever floats their boat, so there were a lot of gorgeous costumes to admire as well.

The lady fighters of Angelic Layer enjoy a moment with their dolls

All in all, Angelic Layer was a fairly simplistic offering from CLAMP, at least compared to titles like Tsubasa, X, or RG Veda. The characters are generally young and innocent (and like to wiggle like jellyfish), and there are no eyes gouged out or great betrayals aside from a brief brush with a Deus who tries to cheat. The battles are intense and Misaki stakes a lot on them, but the greatest danger from the perspective of someone on the outside looking in is wounded pride and a damaged doll that can be repaired (often for free) by the king of jellyfish, tech toys, and looking creepy, Icchan. In this sense, Angelic Layer is a good title to tackle in between “we need to save our endangered world” type series, while still offering enough fast paced action to keep things fresh and exciting for readers who want to be thoroughly entertained.

Since CLAMP is all about crossing over between series, characters/elements from Angelic Layer pop up in other titles:

• Piffle Princess, the store where Misaki does all of her angel-related shopping is a staple in CLAMP manga. It shows up in Cardcaptor Sakura, xxxHolic, Legal Drug, Suki, Chobits, and Kobato. It's also the name of Tomoyo Daidouji's company in Tsubasa.
• Chitose from Chobits and Kobato is the wife of the inventor of Angelic Layer... Icchan, you sly dog! This means he also went on the develop the persocoms, and was the personal designer of Freya and Chobits heroine Chii.
• Hikaru (as a living girl, rather than a doll) is the heroine of Magic Knight Rayearth.

  

  Hikaru in her native series.

  
  
• Angelic Layer Deus Kaede is the sister of Minoru from Chobits. Unfortunately, she has passed away at a young age since the events of Angelic Layer.
• Tamayo, Ohjiro, and Shuko exist in Piffle World in Tsubasa, and Kaede and Sai make a cameo in Rekord World. The chess tournament played in Infinity World is also very similar to the concept of Angelic Layer, except the Deus can also control human players. Hikaru, Eagle Vision, Lantis, and Geo Metro from Magic Knight Rayearth each make an appearance in the tournament.
• The angel eggs are utilized in Edonis World in another example from Tsubasa, and characters resembling Misaki, Ohjiro, and Tamayo appear in the Cat's Eye Cafe. The nurse-like character in City Hall also looks a lot like Kaede's angel Blanche!
• The name of Misaki's school features the name 'Eriol,' the mysterious transfer student from Cardcaptor Sakura.
• In the manga, Icchan sings the Cardcaptor Sakura theme song in the background, and Misaki sings the song from Clamp School Detectives!
• In Kobato, Misaki and Tamayo are seen giving away beer in the streets as a promotion (Kobato even gets her hands on some, though she looks rather underage to be drinking).

The Angelic Layers girls in Kobato, about to make the world a better place with free beer.

In case that wasn't enough, CLAMP will be making several appearances as I continue posting. But next up will be an in-depth of the game that got me into JRPGs Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Thank you for reading!