#aoki seiichirou

[noa-ciharu]

[pensivehastur]

X/1999 Ending Speculation : Part 3 : The Substitutes

I have decided to break this post into two pieces because I want to talk about some other things before I talk about the Decoys.

Ôkawa Nanase had, apparently, been planning out X/1999 since she was quite young.  This implies that several characters who appeared in X/1999 were added part of the way through its development.  These are Subaru, Seishirô, Hokuto, Seiichirô, Yûto and the Detectives.

You probably will immediately realise that most of these characters appeared in different series.  Subaru, Seishirô, Hokuto and the Detectives are obvious, while Yûto’s previous appearances (in Hagunsei Senki and as a cameo in CGT) are less well known.  Seiichirô is the only one of these who first appeared in X/1999, but he did not originate in X/1999, because he is a real person, namely, the editor of X/1999.  

Subaru and Seishirô are rather clearly afterthoughts :  lots of people have noted that, other than Fûma punching Subaru’s eye out and Kamui’s apprenticeship(?) to Subaru, there is little connection between Subaru and Seishirôs’ storyline and the rest of X/1999, and how Seishirô joining the Dragons of Earth seems a bit OOC for someone supposed to be preserving Japan. (IMO, it would have been better if Subaru and Seishirô had been swapped, with Seishirô fighting for the people of Japan as a job and eventually coming to realise that he wants to protect Subaru and Subaru having become broken by the events of Tokyo Babylon to such an extent that he does not care whether humanity lives or dies, or maybe it would have been better to just give them their own series, or have them be supporting characters who are not Dragons, or something.)

It is also quite clear that the people who were originally supposed to be Dragons in their places were  Hinoto and Kanoe.  Many readers of X/1999 thought that Hinoto and Kanoe were Dragons, or knew that they were not but counted them around their number anyway.  Also, early on (even through Volume 5, where Seishirô was introduced), Hinoto repeatedly refers to the Seven Seals in first person plural, or implies herself to be a member.  This seems to suggest that Ôkawa Nanase originally planned for Hinoto and Kanoe to become Dragons in place of the Tôkyô Babylon characters, and still thought of them as Dragons early on in the print run.

The presences of none of the other substitute characters was jarring.  This may be because they were added earlier.  However, people have noticed that Yûto’s motivations for joining the Dragons of Earth were never really stated in the actual manga, the drama CD, or the anime.  Also, completeoveranalysis said that Shougo Asogi (I can see you cringing already) seemed like he should have been the replacement for Yûto, not Kakyô.  Maybe COA was wrong about the order of the replacements, and Yûto replaced Shougo?  Assuming that Shougo would be more like TRC!Shougo…

… nah, still don’t see this.  You know what, just pretend I never mentioned him.  Maybe they would explain Yûto better in Volume 21 or something.  Maybe he was in the plan for a while longer?  

Also, me and a few other people on the Tomoeda discord have grown the giant epileptic tree that Yuna from CCS:CCA was the original Reject Love from X/1999 and that Akiho was also based on a removed Dragon (probably Reject Humanity, maybe Reject Life)

Aoki seems well integrated into the plot, more so than any of the crossover characters except Nokoru.  This might be because he entered even earlier than Yûto, or because he replaced a different character with a similar personality (like Miyazaki from the TB OVAs). I also think that whatever character he replaced had the same mutual protection relationship with Karen that he did.  Some fans have suspected that he replaced Saiki.

I will talk about the Detectives in a later post.

[ornamental-coping]

X Vol. 1 by CLAMP

[ornamental-coping]

X Vol. 1 by CLAMP

[blackstripess]

[abemasters]

CLAMP's X

[moonlightsdreaming]

CLAMP 30 Day Challenge: Day 5 - Your first CLAMP fandom: X again.  It's a favorite in part because it's such a formative series for me, but it's still what drew me into CLAMP in the first place.  I don't remember how I stumbled over it, probably I was browsing Aestheticism for more Gundam Wing fic (oh my god, I remember Aestheticism, HOW OLD AM I?) and kept seeing X pop up and it looked so pretty... so I started looking at websites... and stumbled over Val's Ueno Park and was stunned by how pretty it was and I was pretty much a goner from there. I came in not too long after Seishirou's death in X, so that probably made things a little easier for me, since I didn't have to learn about CLAMP the hard way.  (Ie, getting attached to a character and then having CLAMP be CLAMP.)  But that also means that I still judge CLAMP by X, even when that may or may not be fair--like, I still have trouble trusting that they'll actually finish their series, despite that 1) it's not their fault that X was put on hiatus and 2) it's actually only been, what?, two series that were put on hiatus?  And they've already picked Gouhou Drug back up!  But still.  Part of me always thinks, yeah, they never did finish X so they're THAT kind of mangaka.  (Which is unfair, but.  Formative series and all that.) As for the fandom itself, oh, man, nostalgia bombs away!  I still have a lot of feelings about the TBX fandom to this day because it was so formative and because it was such an intense fandom!  To be fair, a lot of that was the X fandom had a LOT of crossover with people segueing to Prince of Tennis fandom and, holy shit, did that fandom ever fuck me up good.  Don't get me wrong, I loved Tenipuri fandom and I met the most amazing people there and I felt like that's where I really established myself (in terms of how other people see me, but more in how I saw myself as a fan), but it was a toxic fandom a hell of a lot of the time.  In comparison, TBX wasn't nearly as bad, but it wasn't exactly a nice place, either. Nobody was a saint in that fandom, certainly not when it came to discussions of shipping and what was and wasn't canon.  That's why I still have such strong compass points with shipping and favorite characters, because it usually defined which line of the sand you were on.  if you shipped SxS, well, we could probably hang out then.  If you shipped KxS, we probably weren't going to have a lot to say to each other, especially if you tried to tell me that, no, SxS wasn't actually canon.  Looking back, I can definitely see it was hard to be on both sides of that shipping match--SxS had control of the fandom, which meant the KxS fans got really bitter and nasty.  Especially a certain fan, if you know who I mean.  At the same time, KxS fans had to constantly, constantly defend themselves and nobody gave a shit about how the pairing was often looked down upon.  (To this day, because of the behavior of some fans, I still can't bring myself to particularly care about that.) I got caught up in a lot of that rage going around in the fandom, especially when I actually sort of halfway shipped Sorata/Kamui and shipped it out of pure spite at a chunk of the fandom, because you'll never be able to tell me that Sorata didn't have just as much meaningful interaction with Kamui (that scene at the picnic table where he touches the back of Kamui's head and gives him THAT LOOK, seriously, that was pretty overt) and Subaru had someone he was just as wrapped up in as Sorata was in Arashi.  I'm still a little FOREVER BITTER and cranky about that.  (Despite that I didn't actually ship it that hard, since, you know, FUUMA.) So, there was a lot of negativity going around there.  Probably the only thing that kept it even somewhat sane (and I did just say SOMEWHAT) was that the majority of people shipped along similar lines, so not a lot of direct fighting broke out.  Looking back, it's really not surprising that Tenipuri fandom exploded, once the arrogance and obnoxiousness of the fans started falling on different sides of the shipping lines.  It's really not surprising that, towards the end, everyone started turning on each other. But that isn't to say that there wasn't a lot of wonderfulness there, too.  The memories I have of fic reading from back then are still some of my favorites, I still remember pouring over CLAMPesque and delighting in seeing my favorite authors putting out new pieces.  The memories I have of creating some of my first websites, the memories of playing around with blog layouts with X manga panels, all of that is really good stuff.  The hours spent discussing the characters or the ideas that consumed me for awhile (especially fix it fic, which there is STILL not enough of in this world, goddammit)!  The websites that were just utterly gorgeous!  It was the first fandom where I anxiously awaited raw chapters coming out because I couldn't stand the wait!  I'm having nostalgia flashbacks all over the place here and have even been reading fic again over the last few days. For all that I spent a lot of time going on about the negative aspects of the fandom that I remember (which are just easier to talk about, since they stand out in my memory so much more clearly), it was a really good fandom.  I still have some of my dearest friends from that fandom!  I still feel like X fandom, no matter how many years its been since we were all actively in it, has a special bond that's near and dear to my heart.  Or, hell, even if we didn't actually meet back during the day, just having been through the same fandom is enough to make me feel bonded to you!  Being able to mention certain authors' names and getting that instant HOLY SHIT REMEMBER WHEN-- reaction, even if you were more on the sidelines (like I was--though, I wasn't invisible) than immediately in the thick of things.  All of that still brings up ALL THE FEELINGS in me and that's why X will always be my Forever CLAMP Fandom.