#S: 20 Menso ni onegai!!

[jjblue1]

X books by CLAMP & Co (and not only)

As someone asked me about them here are my recommendations.

With this post I'll cover X, Tokyo Babylon, 20 Menso ni onegai!!, Gakuen Tokkei Duklyon, CLAMP Gakuen Tantei Dan and Hagunsei Senki.

Note that what's reported are my personal opinions, feel free to disagree or to add more info.

Hagunsei Senki

Good luck finding material on this one. So far I didn't have it but you might be luckier than me. Anyway since it’s actually so hard to find anything on it I’ll tell you also about the manga version.

So, there are actually 4 chapters, never collected into volumes, printed on Kid's Vol 6, 7, 8 & 10 by the Fusion product. In the net you can see that some had ripped apart the chapters from the volumes and are trying to sell them separately. A tiny booklet about this series was also made and some pics were shared through the net. Last but not least, Mokona draw one fanart for Tamazusa, one of the characters of the series, which you can find in the CLAMP north side artbook.

20 Menso ni Onegai!!, Gakuen Tokkei Duklyon & CLAMP Gakuen Tantei Dan

I put those 3 together because some of their material was sold together.

For art made by CLAMP there’s the artbook CLAMP south side.

Then there’s the CLAMP Gakuen kōshiki Guidebook – CLAMP Gakuen no subete” (CLAMP学園公式ガイドブック - CLAMP学園のすべて) which deals on how CLAMP Gakuen (the campus, not the series) is and even talks about its students. It’s sadly untranslated but it has comics, official arts, a set of cards, draws on how the uniforms are and other goodies so, even if you don’t get Japanese you can still enjoy it a bit.

Another book that should be enjoyable but that I’m still hunting is the CLAMP Settei Shiryôshû, which is actually about the CLAMP Gakuen Tantei Dan anime series but should have character settei, background art and probably shots from for the various episodes in an amount that should be satisfying for fans.

The anime series spawned also 3 anime comics, 3 novel books and Akira-kun cooking manual.

Honestly I’m not even trying to get them. The anime comics are nothing else but the anime in manga format, and I don’t like CLAMP Gakuen Tantei Dan that much to feel the need to have them, the novels are the transposition of the anime series in a huge walls of test with some black and white draws which honestly don’t seem made by CLAMP but by the animators (though I might be wrong) and I’ve the feeling Akira-kun cooking manual contains too much text for me to be enjoyable.

Tokyo Babylon

Not much material for Tokyo Babylon either as it only has one artbook which doesn’t contain all the art for the series, though it’s enjoyable just the same.

It seems the OAV spawned the production of some booklets with the settei for the OAV characters (one of them was sold with a special edition of the OAV though now you often find them sold separately in the net) and those are enjoyable. One of this day I'll manage to get my hands on that even if most of them have been already shared in the net.

It also seems the ‘Tokyo Babylon 1999’ live action movie spawned a pamphlet or two which are worth buying because they contains a manga transposition of some scenes from the movie. They’re hard to find though so… good luck in finding them. If you have none of it you can try searching through the net as someone shared them.

X

X spawned two artbooks, which don’t contain all the art done for X but that are good anyway.

Then the X movie spawned the X film comic, which is nothing else but an anime comic which I recommend only for fanatics (read ‘ME’), X perfect book, which contains some pictures from the movie, some pictures for the backgrounds and the character designs for the characters done by Nobuteru Yuki (it’s worth being bought just for them), X memorial book, with some pics from the movies, bigger pictures of the characters standing, a couple of new original illustrations made by the animators, and some Genga (Genga are drawing of important scenes made by senior animators) by Nobuteru Yuki. I bought it for the Genga of course (and because I’m an obsessed collector… :P). Last but first in importance in my collection, Nobuteru Yuki X book, which is basically the collection of all the Genga made by Nobuteru Yuki for the movie (and also for the video ‘X2’) which makes the characters so damn awesome and sexy I wish they had used them instead than cells to make the movie. Really, I’ve no idea why in the movie they didn’t come out as equally cool.

I seem to remember I should also have a movie pamphlet somewhere in my huge pile of CLAMP material but it should be something minor compared to the other stuffs… LOL, I can’t remember it as of now…

As far as I know the anime instead spawned only the book ‘X first contact’, which is a nice introduction to the anime with pictures from the anime, character introductions, some anime illustrations (some of which original) and that’s worth having and 3 visual novels. Despite the awesome cover of one of them they are, like the CLAMP Gakuen Tantei dan, huge wall of text transpositions of the anime that should have some pics too and that I didn’t deem worth buying (though a certain cover was really tempting).

The huge mix

CLAMP made some publications that contain… a bit of everything, really.

Let’s start with the really old ones which are the Clamp News (14 magazines printed around 1990-1994), Clamp Laboratory (6 magazines printed around 1993-94), Clamp Gakuen Bunko (3 zine-room printed around 1997-1999 and the only ones I miss as of now).

Generally they contain small comics, some of which are parodies, original illustrations, interviews and what else. They’re pretty small but personally I like them. Now if only someone would translate them… :P

The artbook ‘CLAMP north side’ contains illustrations done for ‘CLAMP in wonderland’ and other illustrations that present CLAMP characters from various series, included the ones we’re talking about.

The magazines ‘CLAMP no Kiseki’ which introduce all the CLAMP manga and gives you 3 chess pieces for each volume. Personally I don’t find them so great as there isn’t that much new material but I love the interviews (most of which had been translated by fans) and the chess pieces.

The book ‘All about CLAMP’, which is the collection of the magazines CLAMP white, CLAMP Platinum and CLAMP Pastel all in one book so don’t be like me, either get ‘All around CLAMP’ or the magazines. Hum… I liked them, not only because they include the 5 chapters of X that weren’t in the volumes but because they showed also some arts that weren’t in the artbooks and many magazine articles about the anime series.

CLAMP Pia is more similar to the CLAMP no Kiseki only with info on CLAMP last series that weren’t on Kiseki and some original art as well as postcard. You might like it, you might not, it’s up to you.

I don’t recommend buying ‘CLAMP festival 2011 Tokyo Official guidebook’ as the only cool things it has are the cover and the plastic bag with the draw of the cover.

Shoten

A special mention goes to the 6 Shoten doujinshi. They’re the size of a manga volume and contains various comics and written tales. CLAMP art is very… rough as they’re works they done before becoming mangakas, but they set the basis for ‘Tokyo Babylon’, ‘Combination’, ‘Hagunsei Senki’, ‘20 Menso ni Onegai!!’, ‘Gakuen Tokkei Duklyon’ & ‘CLAMP Gakuen Tantei Dan’ so you might feel up on buying them.

There’s probably much more but, as of now, that’s all I can think of.

Feel free to warn me if you think I’ve missed something and I’ll probably add it to this list asap (or go hunt for it if I don't have it yet... :P).

Oh, I didn't mention in the list postcard collections and calendars but yes, they exists.