Minor trials of CLAMP fandom

[rallamajoop]

The irritating thing about being in xxxHOLiC fandom (she said, still waiting idly for enough new chapters to come out to get her out of this stupid cliff-hanger inspired block on that giant AU thing she's working on) is that it's pretty much pot luck whether we get a new chapter in any given week or not. Tsubasa's a bit more reliable, but still well short of once-a-week regular. Our problem is that while regular mangakas are content to produce just one series for years and years on end, CLAMP insist on doing two 'weekly' series at once (Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC), plus an extra one that comes out once a month or so (Kobato). Which got me all curious about just how many chapters we've gotten out of them in total when you add everything they've done this last year.

So I had a look back through the clamp_now archives, applied some basic maths and wound up with 39 new chapters of Tsubasa, 20 chapters of xxxHOLiC and 8 of Kobato. So if you thought xxxHOLiC was getting the raw deal as compared to TRC, you would've been right. However, if you thought CLAMP have been slacking off, it's worth remembering that your average Shonen Jump style mangaka probably turns out about one chapter of about 20 pages every week, and I've long been in a sort of awe that they can pull off that much. Let me take a brief aside here for for people who haven't watched artist friends turning out doujinshi ever year - even going full time with all the assistants you can fit in a small apartment, holy crap, that's a lot of work to turn out every week. Anyway, minus a couple of holiday weeks at the end of the year, we'd be looking at about 50 chapters per year. Whereas if you add up the tallies for CLAMP's three series, you get a total of 67. I'm basically thinking that's what counts as a lot.

I could go on to try and factor in the different number of pages per chapter in each series, compare this against the same totals for the last couple of years, try and include all the other odds and ends they might've had to take up their time, but it all sounds like a bit too much work for still wishy-washy results. At least we can safely say that for what they've taken on, they haven't been half bad at keeping up the productivity.

Which doesn't really make the wait for that next holic chapter any less irritating, but it's nice to know. >.>

Comments

[mushroom18.livejournal.com]

I already deem a new chapter of Holic as a "pleasant surprise".

:(

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

I think it always has been pretty irregular, considering they've only produced about two or three complete volumes of holic a year since it started. Unfortunately, this one's been a two volume year. ;_;

Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be up to reading the latest chapters.

[koevie.livejournal.com]

But CLAMP is four people! And they're only producing 1/3 more chapters than the typical 1-person mangaka.

Not that I'd expect them to produce 4x as much (200 chaps/year, yay!), but. . . I want my HOLiC ;_;

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Now that would be where you're wrong. Remember that part where I mentioned that a lot of other mangaka have assistants? As in, people who write the story, or do backgrounds and toning and other minor jobs besides the main character artwork? Not all of them have the same amount of help, but the creator of Naruto, for example, has apparently had a small family of them working with him from the start.

CLAMP, as you say, are four people. One of them is their writer - she doesn't draw at all as far as I know. And most of their work has the same artist doing all the main character artwork, which would basically leave them with just two assistants to help out with the rest of it.

So basically, I wish they'd pick up the pace on holic as much as the rest of us, but what they turned out this year isn't at all unreasonable for a four person team.