Ageha Ohkawa of the manga collective CLAMP gave a rare public interview at the Taipei International Book Exhibition, and Anime News Network was there to write it all down. Ohkawa was appearing with Mitsuhisa Ishikawa of Production I.G., which produces the CLAMP anime, and much of the discussion revolved around the transition from manga to anime, but ANN reporter Chih-Chieh Chang got in a question about the unfinished manga series X. Ohkawa’s response:
Many people have died because of major earthquakes, plus there were several horrible murders committed by juveniles in Japan (note: Sakakibara Seito) – both are related to the story of X. Those reasons made it difficult to continue serializing in a shoujo manga magazine. Basically, we want to finish the work, but serializing it is difficult, so we are still looking for a suitable magazine to serialize it till the end.
She also explained how CLAMP divides up the workload:
Basically, CLAMP works like a small animation studio: I write all scripts; other three draw drafts and originals. They take turns for different jobs each time.
… and why they avoid publicity:
There are two reasons for shying away from media: 1) as a group of four, we were not sure how to present ourselves in front of media. 2) Hiding from media creates a “legendary” aura around the circle. There are many “urban legends”, like there are 20+ members in CLAMP, or there are eight “clones” of Nanase Ohkawa. Being afraid of too many baseless rumors and willing to interact with fans, we started to appear in front of media.
Reporters were instructed to avoid pointed or personal questions, but if only because of its rarity, the interview should be of interest to CLAMP fans.
(Via Manganews.)
I love interviews with CLAMP. They manage to be so cynical and so straightforward at the same time.