The great CLAMP readathon, episodes III & IV
. . . The manga also known as "It's the end of the world and everyone has multiple personalities".
I don't really know what to do with this manga, to be honest. It has an intriguing basic premise, interesting characters, but I remember vaguely that I disliked it the first time I read it, and I still can't bring myself to like it now.
Part of the problem does relate to some tangible things. This is one of those stories where all of the characters seem remarkably sluggish when it comes to actually getting things done. It's understandable at least in the case of the seven angels: they don't actually like working together, so it's understandably hard to coordinate and things just sort of happen whenever in their camp. Fair enough. But the seven seals seem capable of acting as a unit, so why are they so reactive? Like, why don't they get together at some point and try to find the seven angels and do something about them before they cause anymore earthquakes? And why didn't Hinoto actually do anything to warn anyone about her evil other self? It seemed kind of insincere for her to cry about her alter-ego taking over her body and doing terrible things when she could have prevented it all along just by telling someone, 'Hey, so, I have this other self who's going to take over soon; you need to stop listening to anything I say because I'm about to lose it.' It got frustrating to read given that it was one of those plots that would have been half as long if people had actually stopped to talk to one another once in a while.
I also found Sorata realllllly irritating. Not gonna lie. I know that he's supposed to be endearing, but all I can think is that he's just kind of a creep.
But . . . I can put up with a lot of nonsense in my manga, really. Somehow, I just can't really "bond" with the story in X. Not sure why.
I did like Kakyou, though. Also, Nataku. And Karen.
Weirdly enough, my memories of why I disliked this manga are totally different from why I actually dislike on the reread. For some reason that I don't quite get, I distinctly remembered it involving Kamui fighting giant demons . . . or . . . something . . . . Now I'm really scratching my head wondering what I could possibly have been remembering.
Never read this one before. I ended up liking it more than I expected to. (I'm not really sure why I expected to not like it . . . ?)
I really liked the realization of "Ohshit, you killed Emeraude, and Zagato wasn't really a bad guy*." Not just the twist itself, which I saw coming, but how the implications of it were handled. I mean, it's not like the knights meant to kill anyone (I'm going to say including Zagato here, because it's pretty clear from their dialogue in the early parts of the manga that he was more of an abstract idea than an actual person to them). But. Anyone in their situation after finding out the truth would feel horribly guilty. One of my biggest dislikes about manga with any sort of action portion is the extent to which it tends to ignore that its typical protagonists (i.e. teenagers from wealthy, industrialized, very safe nations like Japan) suddenly thrown into some weird world where they're expected to hurt or even kill others would be really fucking traumatized by that experience.
It also makes me really curious as to how the legal system would regard that, because I'm the kind of person who wonders about mundane normal people law even in situations like fantasy worlds where it obviously doesn't apply. Because, I mean, think about it. If you kill someone who's trying to kill you, it's not murder because you acted in self-defense. But what if the person trying to kill you was only doing so to protect the life of a third party? I bet there's case law on that. I'm too lazy to go look it up, though.
^ Fanfic about all of this shit is totally going to happen.
I really liked Fuu as well. I don't know; I liked the fact that in a lot of ways she's awfully selfish (lol at seeing yourself when you're supposed to be shown an image of your most important person), and at the same time, she's not in any way a bad person. It was interesting.
Also, Ascot. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. OKAY.
Otoh, I found all the other countries that came in at the end irritating --- all of the fights and banter between them felt like filler. -.-
* Well, sort of not, anyway. I still don't get why he killed Alcione.