Clover

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Clover is a special manga that demands attention to the way ties intertwine intensely, guiding the unexpected.

What makes Clover's narrative special, apart from the fact that it is very well written, is the way in which, constantly in te midst of the artwork, song lyrics are composed and introduced into the contexts of the characters in the story. Part of this is a special factor in the midst of a cinematic expression, which plays with the positions of the frames, explores spaces and shapes feelings. It's something that constantly gains more layers through conflicts and interactions, as the past, present and future intertwine. At the ... beginning, with the lyrics being constantly introduced as a flow, a feeling of strangeness and that it is a negative repetition is natural, but as the plot unfolds, everything gains a captivating clarity, with the nature of the characters becoming something remarkable.

Here Clamp's art meets an expressive standard like that of X/1999, with futuristic elements and a magnificent quadrinization structure. The art is beautiful, with memorable and characteristic designs, and a special sensitivity/delicacy for all the elements that Clamp introduces to enrich the visual language. Textually, I'm not going to lie, many times, years ago, I had tried to read, but I didn't understand the direction, I wanted everything immediate, delivered, without a gradual construction of a purpose that arises of ambiguity and takes shape. The artistic approach here is mystical and gradually increases in complexity, which makes reading a constant progression with a lot of aggregation.

Each character contributes in some way to the course of the plot, always carrying within them a mysticism and a concept, with metaphors, symbolisms and gains in meaning. The characters intertwine and complement each other, interfering in each other's paths.

I don't say this out of ego, but it is necessary to have sensitivity and maturity to appreciate the elements of Clover in the way the manga deserves. It requires patience and attention to pay attention to details. The representation of love in Clover is something honest and beautiful, and in this it is immediate, yet very natural. A romance without annoying stereotypes and which, above all, has aspects such as long-distance communication, friendship, identity, death, home, feelings and loneliness.

Lyrical repetition is the arduous description of each process that ends up being taken and acted upon. Clamp has a special sensitivity in representing feelings, but here, in a specially intimate and challenging tone.

Story: 4/10
For what it had of a story, Clover was interesting.
The major problem: Most of the pages were lyrics and mostly blank pages.
I hate lyrics in literary works because I don't know the melody. I'll try to make a tune, then fail. Eventually, I'll just skip the songs. That's all right, but if the pages are mostly lyrics, that's not good.

Also, there is little plot development. The volumes are told out of order. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE stories that are out of order: Like Pulp Fiction and Sin City. The thing about those movies/comics is that they have plot development.
What I mean about ... out of order is that volumes 1 & 2 are the "main story", then volumes 3 & 4 are "flashbacks".

Art: 7/10
I've never been a fan of CLAMP's character artwork, but their backgrounds, splash pages, and details are beautiful! That's the case for Clover, but a lot of the pages are mostly blank and with lyrics.

Character: 3/10
There is little character development. Scratch that. There isn't character development. Sure, volumes 3 & 4 add to the characters, but it isn't really character development. So, why do I rate it as high as I did? That's simple: I like the characters. Yes, the characters are enjoyable. They had so much potential though. Gingetsu was a potential badass!

Enjoyment: 2/10
It wasn't bad, but it's not a good sign if the reader can't wait till the manga is finished so they can put it away and (possibly) never read it again.

Overall: 5/10
The story, for what there was of it, was interesting, the art was okay, and the characters were enjoyable.
But there was no plot or character development, and Gingetsu could have been a badass.

Clover – Spoiler Free – Not Recommended

TLDR
Story – 1/10 – 1 x 0.275 = 0,275
Art – 3/10 – 3 x 0.2 = 0,6
Characters – 2/10 – 2 x 0.225 = 0,45
Enjoyment – 2/10 – 2 x 0.3 = 0,6
Total: 1,925 -> 2

Story – 1/10
... Clover is just a mess. There’s no saving grace on this one.
Clover is a manga made by the famous CLAMP group. And while it is said that it is unfinished by nature (there were two more volumes planned for it), thankfully, they didn’t prolong our suffering any longer.
Words cannot describe the chaos that Clover is. The story doesn’t make any sense, being just an exercise on some different visuals and page composition for a manga.
Moreover, they insist on a poem that appears at the beginning of each of the two parts. The poem is standard in its quality and doesn’t deserve even half of the attention it gets, being actually quite annoying to constantly see it popping up.

Art – 3/10
Art is the only positive aspect of Clover. The art is not stellar – not at all –, and it is actually quite average, but there is something that deserves praise: the page composition. Verily, they freed the page from its shackles and turned panels into pages and pages into free panels, rendering the manga very fluid in its current form. However, nothing else is worth mentioning: not the character design, background, or landscape.

Characters – 2/10
The characters are as mediocre as the story: they are not likeable, they make no sense, they have no backgrounds, they have no personality, and they have no character depth. Moreover, because the story is a mess, we have no idea what role the characters play. We get, however, the sensation that there are two important characters – Suu and Kazuhiko –, but again they have no depth and are just the main ones because they appear more often than the others.

Enjoyment – 2/10
Clover just doesn’t have a story or any characters. Everything is just too surreal to make any sense. However, Clover has a legion of fans who will try to make this sorry excuse of a manga into a masterpiece. I cannot see how. This is not to say that all the work that CLAMP has ever done is equal to Clover's. This just doesn’t deserve any type of recommendation.