Clover, Vol. I

Clover is… definitely a strange manga. When I first read the reviews for this, I didn’t think it could be as bad as most people said it was. Coming from CLAMP, I believed it would be of the same calibre as Tokyo Babylon – which is a manga I highly recommend, by the way.Unfortunately, I was wrong. The plot… I want to say it’s unique but to be quite honest, I didn’t understand what the plot was. It seems to jump around a lot, not quite finishing one line before it slips into the next one. Questions are left unanswered, and it has been done to leave them open, yet it just leaves the reader confused. The song that is repeated continuously in every chapter is repetitive, it becomes a bore quickly, and the panels were skipped over for me.The characters seem strong; the male lead is definitely clever in his job and position, and the female lead is smart, again, especially for her young age. However, this is countered by the extremely simple dialogue that made me flick away and flick through the manga to see how much was left of it. This volume hasn’t made me want to read the second of the four volumes, even being left off with a cliffhanger. My head hurts trying to make sense of what’s going on. A definite miss from CLAMP, although, I might finish the manga to try and see what’s going on with the plot.3/5 – would have been one or two, but I have to give the line work and graphics the praise they deserve, as this is beautifully drawn.