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Wish Vol. 1

Wish Vol. 1

Written by Bridget Fox on 28 Aug 2005

Distributor Tokyopop • Author/Artist Clamp • Price $9.99


Wish is the kind of thing you would read if you were on a manga diet. It’s kind of satisfying, it’s light, and it’s not too heavy on the stomach. However, it leaves you wishing that CLAMP had fleshed out the characters a little more – although the story comes to a resolution, even that could have been elaborated on. It’s sparse in all the wrong places.

Wish is a four volume shôjo fantasy series by the all-female manga creating team CLAMP. It tells the story of a pure-hearted angel named Kohaku whose life is saved by a stoic doctor named Shuichiro. In return for saving her life, Kohaku promises to remain on earth to grant Shuichiro a wish. However, Shuichiro claims there’s nothing he wants that he can’t get on his own, and so Kohaku remains on earth, waiting for the day when she can fulfil a wish for him.

There’s shades of Oh! My Goddess here, in case you didn’t notice, and Kohaku is true to the pure, gentle celestial lady stereotype, down to the singing, the odd dress sense and the affinity with nature. The domestic setting of the manga also leads you to draw obvious parallels between the two series, but Wish is a very different kettle of fish. It doesn’t have Oh! My Goddess’s sense of fun or drama for a start, which is hardly surprising considering the short length of this series – there simply isn’t any room for character development.

Shuichiro and Kohaku live in Shuichiro’s house with another other-worldly couple, Madam Hisui, a former Angel Master from heaven, and Kokuyo, the son of Satan. Obviously, this pairing is more than slightly scandalous to the residents of both hell and heaven, so the couple have to hide out on earth to avoid detection.

Wish’s plot unravels at a fairly sedate pace. The doctor’s big secret is what drives the story along and without his interesting background story (and what a weird story it is), this series would fall flat on its face. None of the characters are really explored in any real depth, and the storyline doesn’t really try to make you like any of them. In fact, the most endearing and lively characters are Koryu, a devil, and his two cat servants. Their dialogue, whilst not particularly witty, is still more vibrant than anything else in the manga.

5
Fair

Guest
Written by Bridget Fox on 28 Aug 2005

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