Clamp: Swords and Sorcery--shojo style! by Carl Horn

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Clamp: Swords and Sorcery--shojo style! by Carl Horn

06/23/2011 10:15am

Magic Knight Rayearth is not only Dark Horse's latest CLAMP omnibus edition, it was CLAMP's own breakthrough into the big leagues of manga. At the time it was first published in Japanese, they had already been pros for four years, having emerged from Japan's dynamic self-publishing (doujinshi) scene in 1989. But in 1993, Yoshio Irie, the Kodansha editor who two years earlier had green-lit Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon, signed CLAMP to do Magic Knight Rayearth to run in the same publication—the monthly Nakayoshi magazine, then the hottest gig in shojo manga, with a circulation of two million.

In the early 90s, editor Irie was trying to shake up the Japanese industry by bringing in talent that had earned an independent audience, rather than going the traditional routes to becoming a manga pro—winning a magazine talent contest, or serving a long apprenticeship as a creator's assistant. In fact, bringing CLAMP in was an even more radical move than that, because one of the traditional ways the manga industry exerts editorial control over a title is by assigning creators their assistants—and CLAMP is unusual among manga professionals for not using assistants.

From the very first chapter of Magic Knight Rayearth, it was clear that CLAMP wanted to bring new things to shojo. Yes, the heroines, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu, are stylish schoolgirls, but they've got no time for class, and (surprisingly for a shojo manga) not much time for romance! They're here for action—"here" being Cefiro, the fantasy realm that is the setting of Magic Knight Rayearth's story. They've been summoned without warning from Earth and told they must rescue the imprisoned Princess Emeraude, based on the belief they are the destined "magic knights" of legend. But is that really true, and can they gain the knowledge of armor, weapons, and spells that will enable them to survive in this strange new world? And, wait a minute—are those giant robots, too?

Giant robots in a girls' manga? Why not? That's the sort of thing CLAMP , hardcore anime fans, were into, after all. And if Rayearth sounds a little like a role-playing game too, you won't be surprised to learn it was inspired in part by the creators' own gaming experiences. It's no wonder that Magic Knight Rayearth helped to confirm CLAMP as creators who made work that appealed to both female and male readers. As Shaenon Garrity, author of CLAMP in America puts it, in works like Magic Knight Rayearth they achieve "an almost perfect balance between shonen and shojo."

And as Frederik Schodt relates in his classic survey of the Japanese manga industry at its height, Dreamland Japan, Irie's daring in signing CLAMP paid big dividends, for in doing so he not only gained Rayearth and its sequel Rayearth 2, (also coming soon from Dark Horse!) but, in 1996, CLAMP's even bigger success Cardcaptor Sakura—Book Two of which is out from Dark Horse just two weeks after Magic Knight Rayearth hits the stores! As you've come to expect from the Dark Horse CLAMP omnibus editions, look forward to these manga appearing sharper than ever before, with pages newly remastered directly from the original art, and dozens of bonus color images inside. This July, it's it a CLAMP cavalcade from Dark Horse Comics!

-Carl Horn, editor

Dark Horse Comics

Clamp: Swords and Sorcery--shojo style! by Carl Horn

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