cover image Tokyo Babylon Book One

Tokyo Babylon Book One

CLAMP. Dark Horse, $19.99 trade paper (560p) ISBN 978-1-61655-116-2

Subaru Sumeragi, age 16, is a clan leader, one of Japan’s most powerful onmyōji (a kind of seer with esoteric powers), and, with his twin sister Hokuto, one of the guardians protecting the people of Tokyo from supernatural menaces, a duty his family has carried out for centuries. The situations the kindly teen and his cheerfully eccentric sister face range from the tragic to the overtly threatening, from simple hauntings to demonically possessed clothes. Although this volume is episodic, hints of a grander arc are visible by the end. Tokyo Babylon is set in those glory days before Japan’s Lost Decade in the 1990s, a time when the country’s economy seemed unassailable. The story—as created by the famed comics collective CLAMP—evokes that confident era effectively, with Subaru’s and Hokuto’s optimism paralleling its naivety, while other characters, less lucky in their situations, reveal the darker side of Japan’s society. While the stores are fantastic, the social commentaries are not. Although now over 20 years old, it’s still an exciting story, with CLAMP’s signature fluid, fast-paced art. (Mar.)