I have a soft spot in my heart for chaos gods, particularly homicidal ones, so I finally broke down and bought the Tokyopop edition of CLAMP's RG Veda Vol. 9. The RG VEDA series, which is incorrectly touted as CLAMP's debut work, is a genre-defining masterpiece of what I like to call shojo baroque: dark adventure epics laced with toxic but subversive sexuality, and replete with themes of destiny, vengeance, betrayal, forbidden love, androgyny, incest, and suicide. (Other Shojo baroque contenders and spiritual descendants are CLAMP's X, Kaori Yuki's Angel Sanctuary, Yumi Tamura's Basara, Matsuir Akino's Petshop of Horrors, and Yoko Matsupoopa's Descendants of Darkness, among others).






The manga's plot takes a small detail from a Vedic manuscript and expands it into an epic struggle between a tyrannical god-king and the six god warriors, or six stars, who are prophesied to end his reign. The heart of the conflict revolves around the first star, a mysterious child who is also the last survivor of the Ashuras demon tribe. Volume 9 reveals the Ashura's true nature: apparently the Ashuras are beings of pure destruction, dedicated to the extinction of all life. Ashura demonstrates this by slaughtering his own mother and his allies. Ooops. Now the fun really starts!

RG Veda's early volumes have been criticized for displaying one-dimensional characterization. While it's a legitimate criticism, Volume 9 upends almost everything we've learned previously. CLAMP sucker-punches readers at a breathless rate. Allies become enemies. Frail musicians morph into cold-blooded soldiers. Harps become swords. Gods become devils, and vice versa.

All this is drawn in a gorgeous shojo baroque style that seems to consist entirely of flowing tresses, screen tone, and copious splashes of blood. The amount of costume and design detail is insane: even the accessories have accessories. Don't be put off by the ginormous scolder pads though- remember, this was conceived in the late 1980's. Indeed, there's something ebullient about the art- an overabundance (overindulgence?) of detail and decadence that's unmistakeably  a product of Japan's Bubble economy.

Like Japan flexing its newfound economic dominance against the older superpowers of Europe and America, CLAMP's RG VEDA art constrains against their panel borders. Figures merge and meld into other figures. Whiteout explosions tear gashes across an entire page length. Stark juxtapositions of differently-sized panels and between closeups, distance shots, and extreme closeups consistently throw the reader off-balance. Action and time are fragmented, compressed, and layered in dizzying fragments panels that resemble nothing so much as shards of glass. The combined effect is one of epic on a massive scale, beyond normal time and space. Having read nothing but Marvel and Archie comics prior to finding CLAMP, I felt like I was deciphering a new language.

Volume 10 is the last of the series. Trust me: the poop aint hit the fan yet!