Review: Angelic Layer Omnibus Vol. 2

Remember how during my Tokyo Babylon review I gushed about how I was a CLAMP fangirl? Well, I’m channeling that part of my personality once again this comic review day to tackle the second Angelic Layer omnibus! In the sense of full disclosure, I haven’t read the first omnibus, but unlike Tokyo Babylon, I have watched and enjoyed the whole run of the Angelic Layer anime, so I’m familiar with the storyline and characters. It’s cute, fun, and definitely much more lighthearted than Tokyo Babylon, but as far as CLAMP goes, it isn’t all that special to me. For fans of the group, it’s worth a read if only because it’s fun to see them do a storyline so different from their usual ones, but I have to say: it’s far from great.

Angelic Layer is a prequel series of Chobits, one of CLAMP’s most well-known and well-received series (and one of my personal favorites). Some characters even have brief cameos in Chobits (Kaede, a Deus scene in this omnibus, for example, is Minoru’s older sister. For those of you that have read Chobits, you know why that’s a big thing.) It does not deal with Persocoms, however, but their precursors, fighting dolls called Angels that resemble really awesome ball-joined dolls that can be mentally controlled by their owners, called Deuses, when played on an arena called a Layer. The Layer can take on a variety of features that impact how the game is played, and different Angels have different stats depending on the Deus’ play style. The series follows Misaki Suzuhara, a prodigy Deus, and her rise in fame through the ranks of Deus players despite only learning of the game at the start of the manga when she arrives in Tokyo. She fights with the Angel Hikaru, who is inspired by the character of the same name from Magic Knight Rayearth, because if there’s one thing CLAMP loves, it’s having a lot of inter-series references and cameos – they’re a little like Pixar with that, I suppose.

Anyway, it all sounds a bit tournament-battle-based, right? Well… it is. It’s basically the story of Misaki using the Angels to make friends she typically wouldn’t have and, in the broader scheme of things, reunite with her estranged mother (unbeknownst to her).  A lot of pages are devoted to Angel battles, which I’m not sure work as well in print as they did in animation. It’s difficult to follow what’s going on in the fights sometimes, and they just don’t seem necessary. You get a very strong “Believe in the heart of the cards, Yugi!” (if you’ll pardon the veering into Yu-Gi-Oh! land) vibe from the title, and while that works for the anime it works far less so in the manga.

CLAMP isn’t new to the battle-of-the-week, of course: Card Captor Sakura relied heavily on that, with each episode or chapter dealing with capturing a different Clow Card. The difference between CCS and Angelic Layer is that I don’t feel like the fights add much, which is a big problem when the fights take up as much of the manga as they do. They begin to feel formulaic and poorly-paced, with lots of interjected thoughts. This could be really bothering me because the second omnibus begins in the middle of a tournament, so it doesn’t feel balanced between Angel fights and actual plot. They just feel dragged out, with a lot of repetition. For example, in Misaki’s fight with a higher ranked player, Sai Jonouchi (yes, Jonouchi like Joey Wheeler’s Japanese name… is Yu-Gi-Oh! slowly invading my Angelic Layer review? It’s more likely than you think), we get three different sets of characters all explaining the same thing, at the same time, in basically the same way. I found myself going, “Yes, yes, I get it, please move along to the part where Misaki realizes it as well and then wins anyway because that’s how this sort of manga works”. It gets reallytiresome when the “reveal” regarding an opponent is given to the reader before Misaki realizes it, so you spend a few pages waiting for Misaki to catch up to everyone else.

The art style contributes to this, in a way. Angelic Layer uses CLAMP’s more modern art style, which focuses more on exaggerated gestures than the very fine details like those used in Tokyo Babylon. As such, there are a lot of action lines used for some fight scenes, which make the panels feel messy and chaotic. That was probably intentional, but it doesn’t make the fight easy to comprehend. Everything is blurry, it’s hard to see specific moves; it’s just a mess, especially if you read the manga after watching the beautifully and clearly animated fights of the anime. This is most evident during Misaki’s fight with Ohjiro; a move happens, there’s some blurriness, it’s hard to see what happens but then you get to the next page and she’s won the fight and you have no idea how. It’s infuriating! I was able to figure out what move was used only after I relooked at the pages a couple of times, knowing it was the kill move. This happens again with the later fight against Arisu, and it’s just… bad. Even outside of fights, though, I found myself very annoyed with the style, as it fell back to over-simplified silhouettes multiple times, which I find as a lazy trick, especially when I know what CLAMP is capable of. A bit of simplified silhouettes-with-hair is one thing, but multiple pages in a row with the majority of panels being that way? It annoys me, to be frank.

The usual CLAMP tropes are still present, of course: the role of over-enthusiastic best friend is played by Tamayo, who is Misaki’s biggest fan and will not let you forget it. The somewhat weird but hilarious mentor is played by Icchan, who is easily my favorite character. Missing-parent syndrome is present, but in such a way for it to be a plot point (at least relating to her mother, anyway), And, of course, there’s a smorgasbord of following-your-heart-is-what-matters that spans from relationships to friendships and back again. It boasts a large cast of characters that are all distinct and endearing, and much of the non-Angelic Layer-related plot involves how Misaki changes them and their relationship dynamics. The characters are easily the strength of this title, and it’s what makes the lackluster fights and somewhat flimsy plot bearable.

There also seems to be some pacing issues. A lot of time is spent on battles against named characters, which makes sense, but not when all of a sudden an opponent isn’t named and isn’t developed and thus Misaki beats them in a page or two… especially when that battle is the semi-final one. Don’t really know what was going on there. Also, the end reveal is just… odd, even by CLAMP standards, which is saying something. Dunno how much I buy it. Spoilers: her mother couldn’t live with her because she loved Misaki so much it made her too flustered to function. Seriously.

I say all this having seen the entire run of the Angelic Layer anime, as I said previously, and I loved it in anime form; the fights were beautiful, and for once, I think the anime made changes to the plot for the better. Rather than being estranged from Misaki because she loved her too much to function around her (and I say again, seriously?), in the anime Misaki’s mother lives apart from her because she has multiple sclerosis and was part of the development of Angelic Layer as part of a way to seek out a cure for herself. Much more compelling if you ask me.

In comparison to other CLAMP titles, Angelic Layer is cute, but that’s about all that can be said for it. The plot is flimsy, its pacing is poor, and I just don’t think the medium works for it. I did enjoy Misaki’s diaries, which were put into the series as breathers between battle arcs, but they were too few and far between. At its heart, it’s a solid story with compelling, cute characters, but I just get lost in the messy fights and weird pacing of the manga, which I don’t find myself enjoying nearly as much. If you want to experience the title, my advice would be to watch the anime instead, and that’s not something I usually say. It just suits the anime medium better, plain and simple. For $19.99, I’d say skip this and go right for the anime, and then if you decide you’re a huge fan, you can always pick it up later.

Jeni “Science Whyzard” Hackett is suddenly filled with a mad longing to rewatch the Angelic Layer anime… and Yu-Gi-Oh! while she’s at it. She’s particularly shocked her first negative review is going to a CLAMP title and feels a little like she has betrayed her manga goddesses in the process, but hey, honesty is honesty. They can’t all be Card Captor Sakura! You can find her on twitter under the name @allonsyjeni, email her at jeni.is.a.geek@gmail.com, or find her on tumblr at hellomynameisgeek.