Wish: Vol. 1

by Clamp

Synopsis
One moonlit night, Shuichiro saved an angel stuck in a tree. The angel granted him a wish to repay his generosity. Shuichiro said, "I need no wish, I can get what I want on my own." But they both soon learn that some wishes can't be fulfilled alone.

Review
It took me a couple tries to get through this. At first, it just seemed like a goofy comedy, complete with cliche, ditzy hero(ine). But after you get through a few chapters, the real meat of the story comes into play. Basically, it uses the whole heaven/earth/hell with angels/humans/devils motif that's been used before. The angel Kohaku gets saved by Shuichiro, and wants to give him his reward, but he doesn't need one, so she stays with him until he decides what he wants. I say "she" but, the footnotes tell me that angels and devils have no gender, so they call angels she, and devils he. Anyway, goofiness follows ditzy Kohaku, who keeps complaining that she can't do anything right.

The real story comes into play when we learn that Kohaku's real mission is to find a AWOL angel, Madam Hisui, the master angel of wind. It took long enough to get to that point. This volume might have caught my attention faster if it hadn't. Anyway, the rest of the volume involves finding her, and finding out the reason she went missing. It's interesting enough, but not unheard of, and I suspected something like that. One question I have is how do genderless angels, well, make love? Maybe I don't want to know.

One thing that was really annoying was the use of slang language. I mean like, gag me with a spoon. I really hate when they try to make people sound "hip," because usually it comes out forced and lame. Also, someone needed to proofread this volume, because some words had the last letter relegated to the next line due to lack of space in whatever editing program they used.

Still, it's interesting, and though I've heard it called shounen-ai (which I don't care for), I fail to see how it can be, since neither angels nor devils are male.

Final thought: I'll check out the next volume.