Gate 7 vol. 1
Aug. 22nd, 2011 12:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyCLAMP. Gate 7. 1 vol. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2011.
This is CLAMP's newest manga, which I've been translating, and it is the combination of so many things that I like separately and love in combination that I feel as though it were written just for me.
To wit, the manga is set in current Japan, and our viewpoint/sympathy character is one Takamoto Chikahito, a Tokyo-ite high schooler with a lifelong yen for Kyoto, which as the manga opens he is finally able to assuage by taking a solo trip to the old capital of flowers. At Kitano Tenman-gû he meets three people from the "Urashichiken" of Kyoto, who are part of a secret network of onmyô practitioners sworn by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to protect the city. Chikahito, despite being completely normal, can see the onmyô and resist its effect on him, and one of the Urashichiken members, Hana, enchants Chikahito so that he transfers to a high school in Kyoto and winds up moving in to the Urashichiken, which is currently under the headship of the reincarnation of Toyotomi Hidetsugu. It transpires that most of the major figures of the Sengoku period have been reincarnated and are running around Japan trying to recover the corpse of Oda Nobunaga and of Nobunaga's oni, Dairoku Tenma-ô (aka Mara). Oni bearers swear blood contracts with these powerful entities, granting them various abilities by respect of the alliance, and everyone wants Nobunaga's oni because it was the strongest of all.
There's something of a Sengoku boom going on in Japan right now; this is one of at least three current manga I can think of dealing with the period, though I think CLAMP's entry, in its reincarnating the Sengoku figures as bishônen, is the one calculated to appeal most to rekijo and other female history buffs. The manga is also an unmistakable love letter to Kyoto, where three of the four members of CLAMP grew up; they haven't used this many actual photos in a manga since X/1999, and all the locations and restaurants the characters visit are actual places in the city, most of them quite famous.
I would love it for all these things, but what I really am intrigued by thus far is the presentation of Hana, who unlike the other Urashichiken members Tachibana and Sakura, who are affiliated with the moon and the sun respectively, is affiliated with wu/mu/nothingness/the stars and is entirely gender-neutral. The manga has thus far frustrated Chikahito's attempts to place Hana somewhere along the gender binary, and I'm looking forward to see how things transpire further on this front, given various other personal entanglements among the characters. Honestly out of the whole cast I probably like Chikahito the least, though he's at least marginally more self-aware than similar CLAMP protagonists at the beginning, such as Watanuki or Kazahaya of Legal Drug,. I'll keep reading this manga and being reminded of Kyoto, my home away from home, with great pleasure. (For that purpose, I actually made a map of the city from the manga's perspective.)
This is CLAMP's newest manga, which I've been translating, and it is the combination of so many things that I like separately and love in combination that I feel as though it were written just for me.
To wit, the manga is set in current Japan, and our viewpoint/sympathy character is one Takamoto Chikahito, a Tokyo-ite high schooler with a lifelong yen for Kyoto, which as the manga opens he is finally able to assuage by taking a solo trip to the old capital of flowers. At Kitano Tenman-gû he meets three people from the "Urashichiken" of Kyoto, who are part of a secret network of onmyô practitioners sworn by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to protect the city. Chikahito, despite being completely normal, can see the onmyô and resist its effect on him, and one of the Urashichiken members, Hana, enchants Chikahito so that he transfers to a high school in Kyoto and winds up moving in to the Urashichiken, which is currently under the headship of the reincarnation of Toyotomi Hidetsugu. It transpires that most of the major figures of the Sengoku period have been reincarnated and are running around Japan trying to recover the corpse of Oda Nobunaga and of Nobunaga's oni, Dairoku Tenma-ô (aka Mara). Oni bearers swear blood contracts with these powerful entities, granting them various abilities by respect of the alliance, and everyone wants Nobunaga's oni because it was the strongest of all.
There's something of a Sengoku boom going on in Japan right now; this is one of at least three current manga I can think of dealing with the period, though I think CLAMP's entry, in its reincarnating the Sengoku figures as bishônen, is the one calculated to appeal most to rekijo and other female history buffs. The manga is also an unmistakable love letter to Kyoto, where three of the four members of CLAMP grew up; they haven't used this many actual photos in a manga since X/1999, and all the locations and restaurants the characters visit are actual places in the city, most of them quite famous.
I would love it for all these things, but what I really am intrigued by thus far is the presentation of Hana, who unlike the other Urashichiken members Tachibana and Sakura, who are affiliated with the moon and the sun respectively, is affiliated with wu/mu/nothingness/the stars and is entirely gender-neutral. The manga has thus far frustrated Chikahito's attempts to place Hana somewhere along the gender binary, and I'm looking forward to see how things transpire further on this front, given various other personal entanglements among the characters. Honestly out of the whole cast I probably like Chikahito the least, though he's at least marginally more self-aware than similar CLAMP protagonists at the beginning, such as Watanuki or Kazahaya of Legal Drug,. I'll keep reading this manga and being reminded of Kyoto, my home away from home, with great pleasure. (For that purpose, I actually made a map of the city from the manga's perspective.)