Manga / Clover

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One of CLAMP's lesser-known works, Clover is a story about a young girl named Suu with mysterious powers. Ex-soldier Kazuhiko is tasked with the mission to escort her to Fairy Park, where she hopes that she can find happiness. Suu is part of a group of gifted individuals called "Clovers" who have the power to manipulate technology, and each Clover's power is classified by a clover-leaf tattoo categorizing their strength. Suu is the only known Clover to have a power level of four leaves.

The manga was serialized from 1997 to 1999 in the shoujo magazine Amie, and four volumes have been released. In 1999, a short animated musical film was made based on it. The series went on hiatus after Amie ceased publication; according to head writer Nanase Ohkawa, the story would need to be completed in two more volumes.

This manga provides examples of:

• A Child Shall Lead Them: The underground rebel group Shiao Mao is led by a young boy who seems very intelligent for his age.
• Anachronic Order: Chronologically, the events of volume four take place before volume three, which takes place before volume one. Volume two follows directly from volume one.
• Angsty Surviving Twin: Ran. Well, sort of his twin brother A is alive but still inside the cage which stops his time. So in a little under five years after Ran's introduction his brother will be the Angsty Surviving Twin
• Artificial Limbs: Kazuhiko has an artificial robotic right hand which is able to morph into both a shield as well as a massive laser bazooka.
• Blessed with Suck: the Clovers.
  • Suu is massively powerful, but is kept in complete isolation from the rest of the world, as the Wizard government officials are concerned that she is powerful enough to overthrow them.
  • Ran and his brothers were imprisoned for similar reasons, but kept in much less comfy digs than Suu's garden prison. CLAMP has stated in interviews that the grim, suffocating atmosphere directly led to A's deranged mental state. Ran managed to work out a deal with the Wizards to live with fellow Clover Gingetsu, but has an extremely short lifespan that is hinted to be linked to his powers.
  • Oruha is a weak enough Clover that she is permitted to be free, but her only power is to know the day of her death.
• Cool Shades: Gingetsu has a visor which he never seems to take off.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Kazuhiko. Barus is especially fond of him, and likes to call him his "prince." And, uh, snuggle with his severed hand at night.
• Explosive Leash: Gingetsu managed to convince the Wizards to let Ran stay with him permanently in the past by offering to implant a kill switch in his head that the Wizards can activate at any time should they believe Gingetsu and Ran will try to usurp their power. Since the manga was unfinished, we never get to see if it ever goes off or not.
• Gay Bravado: Kazuhiko towards Gingetsu, with the former often throwing around very vulgar joking threats about making the latter his bitch or implying that he’s gonna molest his corpse if Gingetsu breaks his promise and dies before him. While Gingetsu definitely isn’t straight, for his part he doesn’t seem to mind these barbs and will usually throw back more subtle insults at him. Kazuhiko is only confirmed to be into women, but with how usually Everyone Is Bi in CLAMP’s works, it’s not certain.
• Gilded Cage: Suu's greenhouse, which is fairly spacious and is basically a large greenhouse with plenty of foliage and windows, and she's attended to by a coterie of advanced animal robots, but her only contact with the outside world before talking to Oruha and meeting Kazuhiko was with General Ko through a video screen.
• Mayfly–December Romance:
  • Oruha knows she's going to die young, but wants to be with Kazuhiko as much as possible before the end.
  • Gingetsu and Ran: Ran has only five years to live at most. This could also be considered a subversion, as Gingetsu is probably quite a lot older than Ran.
• The Mourning After: Kazuhiko is not really over Ora, as stoic as he seems.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: A thought B seriously got in the way of his romance with C/Ran. He also tried this on Gingetsu, but failed.
• Parental Abandonment: Suu's mother turned her in to the government for the money, and she never knew her father, though it's unclear if he's just a Disappeared Dad or if he's dead.
• Preemptive Threat Elimination: Once Kazuhiko and Suu make it to Fairy Park, the Wizards turn on them and try to kill Kazuhiko. It’s revealed that if someone were to get too close to a Clover, they can inherit their powers, and as Suu is a four-leaf, Kazuhiko inheriting her power would be a threat to the Wizards’ power that they don’t want to risk.
• Punk Punk: The setting seems to incorporate elements of Cyberpunk, Steampunk and DieselPunk.
• Shout-Out: Several backgrounds, such as the page image, are based directly off of environments from the Gadget series, which was apparently later deemed egregious enough that the art book Inside Out with Gadget and Gadget's director Haruhiko Shono are credited in the copyright section of the 2020 hardcover edition. Kazuhiko's name may possibly be a combination of the aforementioned Haruhiko Shono plus Hirokazu Nabekura, the writer of Gadget, although it could be a coincidence. Both Kazuhiko and Gingetsu are reminiscent of the character Theodore Slowslop in different ways, the former more closely resembling him physically and the latter sharing Slowslop's aloofness and Sunglasses at Night.
• The Stoic: Gingetsu. He's very stone-faced even when he's with the people he seems to care about and he never seems to become anything more than mildly surprised whenever something unexpected happens. His visor covering half his face makes him very inscrutable.
• Technopath: All of the Clovers are stated to have this power, but Ran in particular has the most scenes demonstrating it.
• Twincest: The relationship between A and C/Ran is... interesting. But one-sided since Ran is already Gingetsu's partner.
• Twin Desynch: What eventually happens to C/Ran and A.
• Twin Telepathy: The connection that A and C/Ran have.
• The Unsolved Mystery: It's never explained who killed Oruha, or why, and if her assassination has anything to do with Suu's storyline.
• Winged Humanoid:
  • Suu can grow mechanical-looking bird wings that allow her to fly for a short period of time (as demonstrated in the beginning of the second volume). Oruha also has these wings, and she applies them to the costumes she wears onstage.
  • The wings themselves are also symbolic in regards to Suu frequently being referred to as a "caged bird."
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • Oruha's only power is to know the day she will die.
  • Ran, whose lifespan is stated to be less than five years outside of the cage. One can assume that Ran probably knows this, and Gingetsu certainly does.