AnimeDetour has led me to this.....

So, I came out of the convention with a renewed love interest in some series that I hadn't really been involved with for a while, but have a deep love for. Namely, X TV (and the associated manga). The thing with X is.....I really hate CLAMP (the manga circle responsible for X). Or at least, I think I hate CLAMP. I will say that their character design for pretty much everything but X and Tsubasa Chronicle (we'll get to that later) looks HIDEOUS to me. And then they're responsible for such things as Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Magic Knights Rayearth. Which are fine if they're your thing (I guess), but they certainly aren't mine. I dislike pretty much ALL magic girl, I'm not the biggest fan of mecha, and Chobits.................there aren't even WORDS for Chobits. But X......X is completely different. For starters, it doesn't involve any crazy, messed-up "Clamp world" or characters that you have to have seen their other shows to understand...which makes X much more stand-alone for me, and makes me able to watch it. The other thing is that the characters, while Clamp-y (that's a technical term), are rather nice to look at. One in particular..........In fact, one of the best looking boys in all of anime and manga.......Mr. Fuma Monou. He makes me happy. That and X is interesting......I mean, it's REALLY interesting. Dragons of Heaven vs. Dragons of Earth and the battle for the end of the world. Good stuff. And the main character is a total badass (at first, until he turns into an emo bitch about things). X is good stuff. So I spent some time at the con and after the con watching X and reading the X manga, and then I took a trip to Best Buy to see about getting the last volume of the FMA boxsets.....but..............FMA was $40, and I just didn't want to pay that much for it, so I looked around. And......the absolutely GORGEOUS artbox for Tsubasa Reservoir (I never remember which letters are supposed to be in caps, so I'm ignoring them) Chronicle that I had been admiring for about 9 months now was only 13 dollars. So I bought it......to support my friends in the industry. As I said before....I LOVE the art in Tsubasa. I think it's beautiful. And Kinya did the opening themes, and Yuki Kajiura did the music......I've ALWAYS wanted to watch Tsubasa, even though it IS CLAMP. Mayama kept telling me not to watch it because it was Clamp-y and jumped around between the Clamp worlds and brought in all sorts of characters from their other shows (I mean, the main female is really just a grown-up Cardcaptor Sakura) and I would get confused....so I never watched it. Until last night. And (granted after only one episode) I'm SO glad I bought it. The art, the music, everything is AMAZING........it's an extremely visually appealing show to watch, and I think the storyline has promise. I'm very happy with it right now. At the same time, Mayama bought the first disc of xxxHolic (which has nothing to do with porn). The art is EVER so Clamp-y (WHY WHY WHY WHY does the main character have like a 10 inch waist, a 40 inch inseam, and GIGANTIC feet and hands?), which makes it hard for me to watch, and it has these OBNOXIOUS little girl things that make me think about Chobits and want to hurt people. But the dialogue is funny and the story is a bit intriguing, so I'll keep trying to give it a go.

Bottom line here........I now own 3 things by CLAMP. It's a bit scary, but I'm happy to be expanding my world a bit more. Stay tuned for the official date of CLAMPFEST 2008 , where we will view all of these shows--plus whatever anyone else has by CLAMP--over the course of a weekend. I'm actually starting to get excited.