I commented recently over email, in a conversation with several friends on the subject of CLAMP's Wish, that if I were ever to encounter Ushagi-san, my desire would be to kill it, stuff it, mount it on the fireplace mantle, with a small card saying "I killed the messenger of a really pretentious God."
            People call me sick for this, and perhaps it's true, but the above statement begins to express my irritation with aspects of this series.
            I know for a fact that several friends have been anticipating this rant for some time, and I plan to enjoy myself writing it. I am, however, aware that what I say here may offend some people, so I wish to tell anyone who is easily offended by foul language or harsh religious commentary to please go read a different essay. Also, anyone spoiler-sensitive for the ending to the series, you won't want to read this; the ending is in fact the subject of the majority of my ranting.
            The politeness ends here.
            I really enjoyed the first three books of the series. Damned saccharine at times (ugh, baby angels), but fun entertainment, interesting relationships between interesting characters (I love Kouryuu passionately even now, though I still say Kohaku can jump of a cliff at any time). The first half of the fourth book was going nicely, with actual emotional depth (what the hell, even cotton candy has three dimensions to it, even if it doesn't pack much weight).
            Kohaku and Shuuichirou discover their love for one another, as we all knew they would from the first page, but what the hell, I wasn't reading it because it was unpredictable. If I had, I would have stopped about three pages in. If not sooner. And it's beautifully done, as I've come to expect from CLAMP. It has meaning and depth and complexity.
            So as an emotional climax, since CLAMP had to pull out something depressing, true to their reputation (and seemingly for no other artistic reason than that it was expected of them to have their characters' lives go to hell in a handbasket), Shuuichirou keels over. For no reason except that it was "his time to die." And with this explanation, everyone seems satisfied.
            Ehhh? What the hell? Excuse me?! Run that by me again?! Last I checked, which was a few months ago when I fucking experienced it myself, losing someone close to you isn't going to heal that easily. Yet almost all of the characters (thank you, Kouryuu, for being the exception) of this series, including Shuuichirou's grandfather and his supposed friends, seem to be satisfied with a "do not question the wisdom of the Almighty." Which words come from the mouth of Lucifer's fucking nephew... does this make sense to anyone else? Hello?!
            For one thing, I'll question the wisdom of whomever the fuck I please, thank you very much! And that "do not question" mentality seems to be the entire point of the damn series, in the end, contrary to what seems to be the message of the rest of it, with angels and demons alike refusing to be pigeonholed into their categories of good and evil.
            It certainly doesn't have another, with the world's most contrived ending. Everything's going happily, then our dear creative team realizes, whoops, we've got a happy ending here, can't have that. Um, let's have him keel over, does that work? Let's try it. Oops, that ruined it. We have to bring him back now, don't we... let's have him reincarnate! Is there an explanation for that? Ha, we don't need an explanation, our readers will buy it.
            In one fell swoop, they manage to kill their protagonist, their story, their point, and the tone of respect for their readers' intelligence which is maintained even in such lighthearted works as Cardcaptor Sakura. Now that takes skill. Congratulations to CLAMP on a beautiful job of sitting on the damned fence on every single issue they brought up.
            And now, briefly, I return to politeness, because I think this is important enough. The reasons I read CLAMP are as follows: a healthy (?) dose of masochism, the beauty of the writing, the beauty of the art, and the fact that they have never, other than Wish, disappointed me in confronting the issues contained in their work, and lastly, the fact that I could once trust them not to play with my emotions pointlessly. This is a group of very responsible writers, and they do right by their readers, almost all the time. However, that trust evaporated with this series. I still read CLAMP, and will continue to read CLAMP. But I will never again enter a reading experience of their work with the same abandon and enthusiasm I had before reading Wish. I have not felt so betrayed by a writer since watching End of Evangelion.