CLAMP - Clover, vol. 01-04 (Eng. trans.)
Fri, Apr. 14th, 2006 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI read the first volume a while back and then couldn't find the others in the library. So thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachelmanija for the loan! I also thought it was complete, but apparently it's one of CLAMP's long-unfinished projects, like X.
Clover is relatively early CLAMP (early 90s, I think), and so, the art is thinner and wispier and less defined than somewhat later CLAMP. Also, all the guys have hulking shoulders that make their heads look incredibly tiny.
I'm not actually sure what Clover is about. I mean, it's a futuristic story on a young girl running from government agents and the guy assigned to protect her, but it's more an exercise in style and mood than in plot. There are mechanical wings with feathers, a girl who spent her life in a giant, ornate bird cage, a song repeated over the radio, and shadowy government figures.
This was also published early on in the US, so it's flipped. Also, I was a little confused by the fonts used -- all the dialogue is in serif fonts instead of the usual all-caps sans serif comic font. It makes the page look interesting and less comic-like, but the font sizes kept changing depending on the bubble size, and large serif fonts look sort of silly and header-like to me. Minor complaint. I wonder if the original Japanese font was very different?
Other than that, the layout and the graphic design is beautiful.coffeeandink says it better, but the artwork is wonderfully evocative and minimalist. Most notably, it's not just the artwork but the entire page as well. I noticed that Clover actually uses many, many more rectangular and square panels than most shoujo does. In spite of this, it still looks and feels like shoujo, largely because CLAMP doesn't simply lay out all the panels in rows, like most shounen or American comics.
Instead, the square and rectangular panels are fairly tiny and they usually only show a face or a hand or a brief shot of feathers, and two or three of them will be placed on the giant blank page, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes with a grainy bleed. I noticed after a while that a lot of the layouts were symmetrical somehow, balanced on the page. But all the pages still look incredibly sparse and emotionally-laden.
The third and fourth volumes actually don't narratively connect with the first and second, but they do thematically and emotionally.
rachelmanija for the loan! I also thought it was complete, but apparently it's one of CLAMP's long-unfinished projects, like X.Clover is relatively early CLAMP (early 90s, I think), and so, the art is thinner and wispier and less defined than somewhat later CLAMP. Also, all the guys have hulking shoulders that make their heads look incredibly tiny.
I'm not actually sure what Clover is about. I mean, it's a futuristic story on a young girl running from government agents and the guy assigned to protect her, but it's more an exercise in style and mood than in plot. There are mechanical wings with feathers, a girl who spent her life in a giant, ornate bird cage, a song repeated over the radio, and shadowy government figures.
This was also published early on in the US, so it's flipped. Also, I was a little confused by the fonts used -- all the dialogue is in serif fonts instead of the usual all-caps sans serif comic font. It makes the page look interesting and less comic-like, but the font sizes kept changing depending on the bubble size, and large serif fonts look sort of silly and header-like to me. Minor complaint. I wonder if the original Japanese font was very different?
Other than that, the layout and the graphic design is beautiful.
coffeeandink says it better, but the artwork is wonderfully evocative and minimalist. Most notably, it's not just the artwork but the entire page as well. I noticed that Clover actually uses many, many more rectangular and square panels than most shoujo does. In spite of this, it still looks and feels like shoujo, largely because CLAMP doesn't simply lay out all the panels in rows, like most shounen or American comics.Instead, the square and rectangular panels are fairly tiny and they usually only show a face or a hand or a brief shot of feathers, and two or three of them will be placed on the giant blank page, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes with a grainy bleed. I noticed after a while that a lot of the layouts were symmetrical somehow, balanced on the page. But all the pages still look incredibly sparse and emotionally-laden.
The third and fourth volumes actually don't narratively connect with the first and second, but they do thematically and emotionally.
Tags: