#Miyuki chan in wonderland

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CLAMP EXHIBITION (2024)

New Merchadise: Metal Clips feat. the new PJs illustrations!

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miyuki chan in wonderland designs

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Outfit 16 - world of mahjong

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Store is up!

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Master Post

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Clamp Ship Mega Tournament

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CLAMP EXHIBITION (2024)

Merchadise: Acrylic Keychains

New illustrations of the characters in fun pajamas! Featuring:

Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura)

Ashura (RG Veda)

Tomoyo Daidouji (Cardcaptor Sakura)

Fuu Hououji, Hikaru Shidou, Umi Ruuzaki (Magic Knight Rayerth)

Subaru Sumeragi (Tokyo Babylon)

Seishirou Sakurazuka (Tokyo Babylon)

Kamui Shiro & Fuuma Monou (X/1999)

Syaoran & Syaoron (Horitsuba)

Fay & Kurogane (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle)

Kimihiro Watanuki (xxxholic)

Shizuka Doumeki (xxxholic)

Miyuki (Miyuki-chan in Wonderland)

Kohaku (Wish)

Chii (Chobits)

[b-else-writes]

The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 9: Miyuki-chan in Wonderland

Part 1 (RG Veda) | Part 2 (Man of Many Faces) | Part 3 (Tokyo Babylon) | Part 4 (Duklyon) | Part 5 (Clamp Detectives)| Part 6 (Shirahime)| Part 7 (X)| Part 8 (Chunhyang)| Part 10 (Rayearth)| Part 11 (The One I Love)

Runs both my hands slowly down my face. Miyuki-chan in Wonderland ran intermittently from 1993 to 1995, when CLAMP was asked to fill a slot in Newtype, a magazine geared towards largely male otakus. CLAMP has made no pretenses about what Miyuki-chan was intended to be: a fanservice-filled, barely plotted excuse for Mokona to draw sexy women and cash that Newtype paycheck. Despite (or perhaps, because of that), Miyuki-chan proved popular enough to receive a tankoban release of its 7 chapters, with Tokyopop doing the now out-of-print English version. It also has an image CD and OVA adaptation, and technically exists in the same universe as X/Tokyo Babylon/CLAMP School, if you believe the CLAMP School Detectives anime to be canonical. And like ferrets.

I do like ferrets. I don't much like Miyuki-chan in Wonderland.

This is CLAMP's first (and only) gesture towards a wlw story, and their first foray into the ecchi genre. Neither element (as handled by CLAMP specifically, which I'll elaborate later) filled me with great confidence. This is one of the few CLAMP manga I hadn't read but did know existed; I knew instinctively I would dislike it and so actively avoided it. I read this entirely online, and wouldn't pick it up unless I felt like being a completionist. "Spoilers", I guess.

Synopsis: Miyuki-chan is an average, chronically late Japanese schoolgirl, who finds herself pulled into various worlds populated by buxom, scantily-clad women who find her hot. Miyuki-chan fends off their advances, but was it all just a dream?

The Story: Miyuki-chan is doing ordinary activity. She gets pulled into world filled with sexy ladies, usually parodying and fanservicing some aspect of otaku and wider Japanese pop/mass culture. They attempt to rip her clothes off and grope her. B-b-ut nobody will have me if I don't remain pure and virginal! Miyuki-chan, potential closeted lesbian, sobs. She attempts to fend them off. There's an abrupt conclusion out of nowhere, where she wakes up/escapes. Oh it was just a dream! The final panel then flashes "Neverending" or some variation. Rinse, repeat, for 7 chapters.

Miyuki-chan commits the greater cardinal sin than its male-gaze, which is that it is just boring. Much like Duklyon, CLAMP apparently thinks a comedy equates to telling the same joke over and over. The chapters blur together due to how repetitive they are, and I only got one genuine laugh, in Chapter 3 with the legs poking out of the TV screen. Despite its short length, I took months to read this, because every chapter felt like a waste of time. There's no punchline to the entire piece, or even within each chapter. It's the worst sort of edging, leaving you confused, and irritated. And frankly, despite being ostensibly a sex comedy, this manga is profoundly unsexy.

The Themes: lol

The Characters: Look. This is a manga to look at hot girl not to consider hot girl's interior life. I wish I could attribute some greater meaning to Miyuki-chan - that this is all a result of her deeply closeted lesbian desperately trying to fight her own sex fantasies. But I think that's wishful thinking (and generous interpretation from fandom, when CLAMP and Newtype magazine are not attempting anything remotely introspective here). Miyuki-chan textually is one-note. Her best chapter is Miyuki-chan in Mahjong Land where she shows a bit of mischief and confidence.

The Art: There's some pages I find very beautifully rendered with screentone (this is probably their heaviest screentone manga barring X), but its also bogged down with mostly mid-shots and close-ups, with little to no backgrounds. Panel-to-panel storytelling feel very disjointed, likely because the story itself is very disjointed, and action is often unclear. It's some of CLAMP's weakest visual storytelling. The character designs don't stand out much. I liked the vaguely "ethnic" (oh, CLAMP...) priestess from Miyuki-chan in Video Game Land, and that was largely because she had a slightly different face than the typical CLAMP face.

Also. I have to say. CLAMP people look FRIGHTENING naked. There's a fully nude lady in I think Chapter 6 (didn't write the chapter down in my notes) and I was horrifically entranced by her enormous, nipple-less breasts attached to her long, rib-cage less torso, strange pelvis, and spidery legs. In general, CLAMP anatomy does work against itself, in that I found a lot of it anatomically mystifying than I did sexy. This is of course, personal taste, but by and large, I think they are much more beautiful but stupid manga to purchase, if you want to look at pretty pictures.

Questionable Elements: CLAMP, to this point, has had a mixed track record with lesbians (all dead, unable to be together, some psycho lesbian tropes). They have also had, being frank, a mixed to poor track record with female characters. CLAMP are Japanese women born in the late 1960s. Miyuki-chan's fascination with her purity for marriage, the male-gazey depiction of sexuality and the predatory lesbians are dismal, to say the least, but frankly, not unexpected. It's not surprising given its target audience, but the result is a strong heterosexual and male eye to lesbian interactions. It's not actually as offensive as I make it sound, largely because the manga is actually quite sexless and mostly boring, but it's an added layer of irritation.

Overall: I was right to suspect that Miyuki-chan in Wonderland would not be for me. It's a sex comedy that is neither sexy nor funny. CLAMP, I have decided, are just not adept comedy writers. They're good for a pratfall in a wider story, but they can't seem to break the formula of repetition + zaniness = humour. I have criticized Duklyon and CLAMP School Detectives for the same, but they could at least rise beyond their weak writing on the strength of charming characters (and for Duklyon, some occasionally funny story commentary). Since Miyuki-chan has no plot and no real characters, it must succeed on either being hot, or being funny. It does neither, and the male gaze-ness doesn't help. I would not recommend this manga at all.

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April CLAMP fanart challenge 2024 is started!

Outfit 01 - sailor fuku

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