The four women who make up the manga group
CLAMP (Ohkawa Nanase, the scriptwriter; Mokona Apapa, the lead artist; Igarashi Satsuki, the layout designer; and Nekoi Tsubaki, the character artist) are to manga (and manga turned into anime) what
Megumi Hayashibara is to voice acting. They began as doujinshi artists but went pro in 1989 with
RG Veda. The original doujinka group was actually
ten members (one of whom was a guy), but six of them left (one in 1990, two in 1992, and three in 1993), resulting in the four-woman team we know today.
That Other Wiki has a little more information on their contributions and accomplishments since in CLAMP's
article
.
Since
RG Veda, nearly all of their work has been animated, a list which includes many of the staple series of anime.
A theme that runs through
CLAMP's works is that love transcends everything,
particularly that pesky little thing called gender. Note that this is not a "
love conquers all" kind of thing, as gender/age/being a robot/being a ruthless assassin/etc can be insurmountable barriers to having a functional relationship. No barrier can stop people from falling in love but it may very well prevent that love from reaching a happy resolution. (See the relationship between Tomoyo and Sakura in
Cardcaptor Sakura, or the one between Sakurazuka Seishirou and Sumeragi Subaru in
Tokyo Babylon and
X, or between Kazuhiko and Suu (or Ora) in
Clover as prime examples.)
Their manga work is characterized by a highly-detailed
Shōjo (Demographic) art style, though for budget reasons the designs are often simplified for animation. Their style underwent a noticeable change in the late 1990s when Mokona starting ceding more design responsibility to Igarashi and Nekoi. Nekoi's distinctive character designs are responsible for the "
noodle people" description common in fandom. CLAMP also errs on the shojo side thematically (despite being published in an unusually wide range of magazines), and thus are very prone to
drama and painful
family unfriendly or
broken aesops. Being former doujinka, their work is also notable for a deliberately high degree of
Fanservice and
Fetish Fuel.
A quick note about the members of
CLAMP: In July of 2004, they all changed their pen names slightly. Mokona Apapa became simply Mokona, Ohkawa Nanase became Ohkawa Ageha, Nekoi Mikku became Nekoi Tsubaki. Igarashi Satsuki simply switched her family name into hiragana, and her given name into kanji. Nekoi and Mokona had been wanting to change their pen names for awhile; Ohkawa and Igarashi just went along for the hell of it. Ohkawa has since reverted to Ohkawa Nanase for attributions. At least three of them have used their names (partially or entirely)
for characters in series: Satsuki as Yatouji Satsuki in
X, Nekoi as Nekoi Yuzuriha in
X, and Mokona as Mokona in
Magic Knight Rayearth,
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, and
xxxHolic.
Some of their works:
Tropes common across most of their works:
- Arc Welding: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle combined the Plot of XX Xholic, Cardcaptor Sakura, X and all other CLAMP works into one huge Gambit Pileup.
- The Beautiful Elite
- Back from the Dead (averted like crazy, and by Word Of God, impossible. However, if a certain Xanatos Gambit is successfully carried out, this trope will become possible.
- Not quite - this trope is still very much averted. Clow's wish to keep Yűko from dying only froze her in time and possibly messed up the multiverse in the bargain. When time started moving again, she had died right on schedule hundreds of years ago the whole time, as far as most of reality was concerned.
- I was thinking in terms of Fei Wong Reed and the stuff he did. Guess they aren't useful to him.
- But when they do die in space-time twists, they are back to life when it's all undone.
- Speaking of Clow, technically he comes back from the dead in the form of his reincarnation, Eriol, who has most of his memories and some of his powers. Though that too is subverted in that, as Eriol points out to Yue, he's not really Clow.
- It seems to take 100 years for a reincarnation to happen.
- Bishounen and Bishoujo
- Costume Porn: With long, lacy ribbons being a particular hallmark in their promotional art. Oddly, it only occasionally shows up in the actual stories themselves (and almost never in animated versions due to the cost of animating all that billowing ribbon properly).
- Cultural Cross Reference : When you see terms such as RG Veda, Ashura and even Samsaara, you know they've been studying Hinduism.
- Everyone is Bi
- Eye Scream
- Because it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
- Fanservice
- Foe Yay
- Hot for Student
- Even in elementary school. Where it is treated as wholesome!
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl (not universal, but fairly common)
- If It's You, It's Okay (there are no gay relationships. Only "love that transcends gender".)
- Impossibly Cool Clothes
- Maybe Ever After: Their favorite ending...even in Denouements.
- Mind Screw: Deserves a special award! Their last latest works have taken it Up to Eleven frying brain cells across their fandom and leaving a probable legacy of several decades worth of forum discussions, all of which add to the confusion even more. Trying to trace the law of causality after a case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero would cause more brain damage than the combined screws of Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, and Superstring Theory put together!
- Just one of the results was a situation where thanks to incorporating every single type of Time Travel, you can't say if it is Always Identical Twins, Alternate Selves, Identical Grandson, Generation Xerox, Cloning Blues, My Own Grampa, Summers Family Tree, Everyone Is Related or a blow your brain combo of all of these put together simultaneously!!
- And now look what's happened! After overdosing on this trope, things have reached a point where, now that both Tsubasa & the Holic have ended, even Word Of God has admitted that they too are rather confused over how everything turned out and want to re-read it. You read that right! EVERYONE'S CONFUSED! What a feat!
- This probably has a lot to do with the fact that Ohkawa dictates the story to the others and they draw it on her directions. She doesn't always tell them the entire plot at once (Mokona once drew a look from Tomoyo towards Touya as if she had a crush on him when it was later revealed to her, by the actual dialogue, that her stare at him was a sign of her love for Sakura). The other three members of CLAMP are probably scratching their heads whilst Ohkawa snickers at her own genius.
- Noodle People
- No Ending: Quite well known (and well critcised too) for open ended and unresolved closures.
- Omake
- Only Six Faces: They are masters of this trope.
- Pimped Out Dress (especially in the omake art)
- Recurring Element: Mokona.
- Reincarnation Romance
- Rule of Glamorous
- Screw Destiny
- Shōjo (Demographic)
- Shout Out
- Side Story Bonus Art : Enough to fill whole libraries.
- Unlimited Wardrobe
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