type_wild | Wish (Reply)

I don't know what people normally do when passing through Paddington Station on their way to Heathrow, but I for my part picked up the novel "Billy and Me", which sounded absolute rubbish from the summary but had a pretty cover. I'm nearly halfway in, and it reads like shitty fanfic. This is interesting not so much from the perspective of story quality and what kind of nonsense obviously is deemed good enough to be published by Penguin and have four stars on Goodreads - it's interesting because I suddenly realised that that particular brand of grating narrative voice isn't necesssarily the mark of inexperienced ficwriters, it's actually something they've picked up from real, published books. It's a particularly self-absorbed first-person narrator that was similarly present the last time I tried chick-lit, too, and so seems to be a genre marker and not just the writers being unskilled. And even though my only real impression of "Billy and Me" is to find it refreshingly contemporary British and to find the heroine an idiot and god I wish she'd stop talking, I'm sticking it out because it's quick and I feel like I should have more than two books to point to when complaining about all the people who have no idea about good books. This I feel entitled to because a lot of the comics I read fall firmly into the "cute but pointless and not even very good" box, as should be obvious by how I'm apprently going through my Clamp collection anew.

I'M ON SUMMER BREAK OKAY

In a world that is in fact the Cardcaptor Sakura world (because this is the same world as Legal Drug and Kobato, and thus the same world as xxxHolic), there are angels and demons. Angels live in heaven, demons live in hell, but sometimes they venture down to earth, such as the angel Kohaku, who's searching for an AWOL senpai. The pediatrician Shuuichiro Kudo saves Kohaku when she's bullied by ravens, and so Kohaku vows to grant him a wish. But since Shuuichiro already has everything he could wish for, Kohaku has to camp out at his house until he comes up with something. That's all, folks!

Well, that and a kooky secondary cast consisting of the son of Satan, the angel who eloped with him, a demon whose long-standing hobby is to bully Kohaku, and his two henchcats. That's where the REAL action lies, and why keep you wondering: Yes, Kohaku is cute. Yes, Shuuichiro is the hands down most boring and most blandest hero Clamp has ever created. His facial expression never changes. xxxHolic plays Doumeki's deadpan as comedy, but for this guy, it's honestly because he has no personality. Yes, there's romance and it's dull and predictable and fifty shades of Clamp's speciality, which is how some wise person around will be advicing them on "but how do you REALLY feel about him, why does your heart hurt when you think about him going away? Think about what that means, and then you'll know the answer".

On the technical side of things, Wish is a CCS-era-ish comic in looks and that's all there is to say about that. At four books, it's a lot shorter than CCS, and similarly smaller in story scope; there are no grand conspiracies nor big thematic issues to be discussed. Unlike some other of Clamp's shorter works, however, it is a coherent story with a beginning and a definite ending. Unfortunately, it isn't a terribly exciting story, because it's a love story, and Clamp has always been miserably bad at those. Yes, yes, of course they're going to get together in the end, but the obstacles on the way there honestly don't feel very threatening at all - or IDK, maybe they would be if I actually cared about what happened in Shuuichiro's life, but then I can count on one hand the number of canon Clamp romances I like, and I'll still have fingers left. Wish is a cute comic, but it's nothing more - least of all memorable.

Surprisingly, though, Wish is one of the Clamp series that I've gone back to most frequently. I've rarely sat down to re-read it all, but I've spent a lot of time looking at my favourite bits. I have a great fondness for a lot of this comic, and it's all about that secondary cast. They're a collection of well-portrayed archetypes, because it's not like any character here gets to truly be interesting in their own right. But Clamp do archetypes well, and I care a lot about the minor characters in this one in ways I DON'T in some other works of theirs. Yeah, their take on the Christian...ish cosmology is more high fantasy than it is monotheistic mythology, but it's still fun to see the angels and the demons play off each other and somehow being a lot alike even though they supposedly are not. (yes, this series is in dire need of a Good Omens crossover)

But overall, "Wish" is a dull, dull, dull love story and like a lot Clamp's love stories, it ends up being a ridiculous one. The secondary cast is fun. If you want my honest opinion, then here it is: Clamp shoulda just removed stupid boring Shuuichiro from the story entirely and have it be about the angels and demons dealing with the Hisui and Kokuyo trouble and also, Kohaku should get together with Koryuu because that would be a romance that would actually demand, oh I don't know, interesting interaction and honest personality growth for those involved. It would've been glorious. It would've been memorable. It would've been worth at least a Tsubasa arc, and it would've been more than enough for me to forgive an ending that not only is the stupidest nonsense of this side of xxxHolic/Tsubasa, but also the most infuriating example of deus ex machina I can think off. And thanks to the nature of the series, that is literal deus ex machina.

And Jesus, if it IS God that's stopping Kokuyo from revealing That Thing He Knows, doesn't that mean that God was intentionally setting things up for Kohaku to fall for Shuuichiro and THEN dishing out the consequences of that as punishment but lolnope it was for her own good all along? What a dick.

But then again, considering the face of God in the one comic where Clamp DID show it...

amirite