Welcome to July 2012, and the newest installment of the Manga Moveable Feast, the manga blogging community’s ongoing conversation about the medium we all love. Each month, a single series, creator, or topic is chosen for a week-long discussion across the entire community.
This month’s feast will run from Monday, July 23rd through Sunday, the 29th, featuring the works of CLAMP, and hosted here at Manga Bookshelf.
Few manga artists have acquired a level of notoriety here in the west approaching that of CLAMP, an all-female group of writers and artists who began their careers as an eleven-member doujinshi circle in the mid-1980s. Since then, CLAMP has solidified into a group of four, including leader (and primary writer) Nanase Ohkawa and artists Tsubaki Nekoi, Satsuki Igarashi, and Mokona. Their series span multiple genres and demographic categorizations, but their work tends to be immediately identifiable due to their elaborate character designs, recurring themes, and reuse of characters across fictional universes.
CLAMP’s works published in English include: RG Veda, Tokyo Babylon, Clamp School Detectives, Duklyon: Clamp School Defenders, Man of Many Faces, Shirahime-Syo: Snow Goddess Tales, Legend of Chun Hyang, X (sometimes X/1999), Magic Knight Rayearth, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, The One I Love, Cardcaptor Sakura, Wish, Clover, Angelic Layer, Suki: A Like Story, Legal Drug, Chobits, xxxHolic, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Kobato, and Gate 7.
With so many series released into the English-speaking manga market, love ‘em or hate ‘em, nearly everyone has an opinion on CLAMP, and I want to hear them ALL!
Over the course of the week beginning July 23rd, I’ll be writing about all my favorite CLAMP series—even those I sometimes hate—and I hope you’ll do the same! No blog? No problem! Send me your submissions by email anytime between the 23rd and 29th, and I’ll post them on your behalf. There is no end to the creativity encouraged by the MMF. Please explore the works of CLAMP in any way you choose, including anything from straight-up reviews, roundtables, or essays to a video of your CLAMP-inspired interpretive dance. All submissions and all participants are welcome!
I will post an introduction to the CLAMP MMF on Monday, July 23rd, including a link to the Feast’s archive page and instructions for notifying me of your submissions. In the meantime, feel free to send links to older pieces to melinda@mangabookshelf.com for inclusion in this month’s archive.
Any questions? Please let me know, or join the MMF Google Group.
1) Making a post about this and going to participate the entire week.
2) Why thank you for giving me a great reason to spend all the money ever on catching up on things (like the X omnibuses, the CCS omnibuses, the MKR II omnibus…)
3) I CAN’T WAIT.
Also you have “I will post an introduction to the CLAMP MMF on Monday, June 23rd” which I’m guessing you meant “I will post an introduction to the CLAMP MMF on Monday, July 23rd”
Moving on now.
Indeed! Thanks for letting me know! I look forward to your participation in the feast. :)
heh you say that now, but since I was gonna do a CLAMP retrospective in August anyhow, I just moved it up to coincide with the MMF and switched some dates around :)
Since haven’t participated in such a feast in the past, I’d like to ask for clarifications. The people applying for participants are to write EVERY day for 7 days? Or could it be less entries? Before stumbling to a link that got me here I was already intending to start reviewing almost all manga CLAMP work, but I would publish once a week like I use to. I do have 2 drafts almost ready, as well as previous entries (some reviews, some editorials), but I don’t know, if I can work intensively for a whole week. Do older CLAMP posts count?
Good timing! I was just talking to my co-worker about CLAMP, and, well…you can read about it on my blog.
And just when I was considering doing a post on manga artists. Who better to start with than CLAMP?