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cyanide_latte's review against another edition
4.0
It's so good to be getting to a CLAMP title I've not read before, and especially one tied to the CLAMP School Universe, because heaven knows I've been needing fun, fluffy little reads with a lot of humor. First things first though, if you ever pick up this light novel, I highly recommend you read the afterward from the author before you read the rest of the book. It gives insight into how the chapters are broken up and the ways in which they interconnect, as well as the origins of this particular aspect of the CLAMP School Universe.
Let me be the first to say I already love and adore this gaggle of oddballs trying to take their "association" to new heights in hope of reaching "official club status", and constantly enduring everything that that entails, especially considering the speed bumps they hit along the way. At present, I worry that two of the characters somewhat fade into the background due to less focus on them (and it doesn't help that one of those two looks almost identical to Hikaru from Magic Knight Rayearth,) but perhaps the following two light novels will remedy that and ease my concerns.
A big thing I mentioned in one of my status updates that I have to express here: the elected leader of this association is trans MTF. An issue I will state right now, go into this expecting her to be constantly misgendered in pronoun use, and have the narrative and the other characters point out that she was AMAB. I'm not sure why this was a choice, either by the writer Tomiyuki Matsumoto or by the Tokyopop team that translated and adapted this for English readers, but while Yuki herself makes the effort to remind her friends (and the reader) that she is a woman on the inside and that she did not choose to be born into a male body, she is constantly referred to as "he/him" and is constantly called a boy. This is not a case of a male character cross-dressing, as both Yuki and the narrative blatantly state that she has always known on the inside that she is a girl. But for all the writing is borked (and keep in mind this was originally written in Japan in 1998, so there IS some age on it) it was really nice to see Yuki's character, to have her leading the association, and to see her efforts to ensure her true gender is acknowledged and accepted by those closest to her.
That's about all I have to say for the moment. I do have the other two light novels, and I hope to get to them very soon!
Let me be the first to say I already love and adore this gaggle of oddballs trying to take their "association" to new heights in hope of reaching "official club status", and constantly enduring everything that that entails, especially considering the speed bumps they hit along the way. At present, I worry that two of the characters somewhat fade into the background due to less focus on them (and it doesn't help that one of those two looks almost identical to Hikaru from Magic Knight Rayearth,) but perhaps the following two light novels will remedy that and ease my concerns.
A big thing I mentioned in one of my status updates that I have to express here: the elected leader of this association is trans MTF. An issue I will state right now, go into this expecting her to be constantly misgendered in pronoun use, and have the narrative and the other characters point out that she was AMAB. I'm not sure why this was a choice, either by the writer Tomiyuki Matsumoto or by the Tokyopop team that translated and adapted this for English readers, but while Yuki herself makes the effort to remind her friends (and the reader) that she is a woman on the inside and that she did not choose to be born into a male body, she is constantly referred to as "he/him" and is constantly called a boy. This is not a case of a male character cross-dressing, as both Yuki and the narrative blatantly state that she has always known on the inside that she is a girl. But for all the writing is borked (and keep in mind this was originally written in Japan in 1998, so there IS some age on it) it was really nice to see Yuki's character, to have her leading the association, and to see her efforts to ensure her true gender is acknowledged and accepted by those closest to her.
That's about all I have to say for the moment. I do have the other two light novels, and I hope to get to them very soon!
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