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CLAMP: Sôryûden gengashû
Remember what I wrote in my entry about Tokyo Babylon Photographs? I wrote that the Soryuden artbook was the last thing CLAMP I'd pay to get -- and here it is! Neatly in my hands! All two-hundred-and-odd pages! Wheeeeeeee!!
Soryuden is an as-of-yet unfinished series of fantary/action novels penned by Tanaka Yoshiki, which paperback edition CLAMP illustrates (the original versions are illustrated by Amano Yoshitaka of Final Fantasy fame). This collection includes about 40 pages of color illustrations, about 70 pages of black and white illustrations, one short comedy comic, and a 110-page unfinished manga series that ran in a now-defunct magazine something like ten years ago and which had never been published in a collected format before.
CLAMP has been drawing for this series since 1993, so it's, um, interesting? to see their style go from Rayearth to Tsubasa within the colored 40 pages. I was surprised to see I actually rather liked their recent takes on the Ryudo brothers. The most recent color pic, the pin-up of volume 12 from 2003 featuring Hajime and Tsuzuku, is so devastatingly cute. (Nokoru from the cover of the same volume looks like no one but Xiao Lang, though.) I still really really like that madly elaborate Nokoru pic from the pin-up to volume one, too ... the moon, the cherry blossoms, the facial expression ... man, good stuff. So nice to see it in a larger size than a postcard. I had never seen the Nokoru/Tsuzuku and Owaru/Hajime two-shot pics from the CD dramas, but they're so very cute; especially the latter one.
There are hits and misses in the black and white illustrations, but I remember that from the actual books as well, so it's okay. Mokona manages in most cuts to convey situations and scenes well and interestingly, and I fear I actually think she's a better illustrator than a manga writer. Volume one, especially, was a hit. Owaru looking back into the side-mirror of a car while a car explodes behind it? Exploding tanks and a subtle outline of one dragon in stormy clouds? Yeeeeeeah, that's where it's at. This reminds me volume one didn't have the obligatory gratuitous dragon(s) illustration, which always annoyed me in the later volumes because there are only so many ways you can draw a dragon interestingly. Okay, the shot of the dragon curling itself around the Tokyo City Hall building while it went up in flames from volume two was good, too. But then it went downhill. Aside volumes one and two, seven was best: that Nokoru/Hajime pic where Hajime grabs a hand holding a knife? Neat. There really aren't enough explosions after that volume. I admit I haven't read past volume nine, but knowing Tanaka Yoshiki, the text can't have been lacking in explosions Mokona could have drawn. Pity.
The comic is Owaru-centric and pretty run-of-the-mill. The comedy and the interaction between Hajime, Tsuzuku, and Owaru is funny, but it ends just as the story gets rolling. Don't buy this for the comic.
I'm at a point where I don't care about the contents of this collection as long as I just own it, so I'm probably not the best one to judge, but ... don't buy this if you just like CLAMP. Especially if you're a recent fan. This is a Soryuden book first and foremost, here to be enjoyed by fans of the four dragon brothers. So if, on the other hand, you're a Soryuden fan ... man, what are you waiting for?!
Category: Artbooks | Posted by Alicia at February 10, 2005 06:47 PM