What horrors lurk in the mind of CLAMP?

[branchandroot]

*trips over a discontinuity*

All right, so in Card Captor Sakura, Sakura's mother dies at age twenty-five. At this point, Sakura is three and Touya is ten (1.5.11).

Let me say that again: Touya is ten when Nadeshiko is twenty-five.

Even if we go by the grades, Touya must be at least six years older than Sakura, being a second year in high school while she is a fourth year in elementary school. The youngest he could possibly be when Nadeshiko dies is nine, even if CLAMP mistyped in volume one.

Nadeshiko married at sixteen. By the numbers, Touya would have been born either the year she married or possibly the year before.

Now, I'm willing enough to entertain CLAMP's taste for cross-generational love, and the notion that Nadeshiko fell in love and married at sixteen. But for her to have had her first child at that age, possibly at fifteen? To possibly be having sex with her high school teacher and get pregnant and have a child at fifteen?

CLAMP, you nasty, skeevy people. I sincerely hope that was a stupid, thoughtless mistake and not a deliberate choice. The elementary school girl engaged to her teacher makes me twitch enough.

ETA: 2.1.22 Nadeshiko 27 when she dies. Definite continuity problems.

Comments

[written-in-blue.livejournal.com]

O_o

UGH.

That's really...

UGH

This is why you plot out your timelines, people!

[branchandroot]

Seriously. Especially since I have a really hard time seeing Fujitaka as the sort of guy who'd knock up a girl and not marry her instantly. Moreso since it was supposed to be love at first sight.

[tallihensia.livejournal.com]

Of course, there's also the Japanese manga love of changing little things like details in their stories along the way.... I've never seen a manga series yet that's consistent by the end with everything they said at the beginning. ;p

(On the other hand - that could very well be deliberate too... it may very well be something that happens and they thought they'd write it in.)

[branchandroot]

Since I'm finding different ages for her, just in the first two volumes, I think it was just laziness. Or an "oops" on CLAMP's part. *wry* And when you're writing a weekly, some of that is understandable. But the fact that the initial math seems to have escaped them still makes me go Ew!

[dimmie.livejournal.com]

This would probably be more shocking if it was not in CCS, where some relationships were pushing the limit, even to CLAMP's standards. Terada in his 20-somethings and Rika in her 11/12s come to mind as an even worst example (of course, they have no babies to speak of, but the engagement itself pushed it from cutesy to just this side of creepy).

[branchandroot]

Yeah, that's one reason I tend to prefer the anime, where it's glossed more as just a crush on Rika's part. I mean... a /ring/. No. Just no. Whatever cross-gen arguments may be made, no eleven year old in either that or this culture can give informed consent to a social contract like marriage.

Man, at least Ashura had the excuse of being an ageless elemental force of destruction and chaos...

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Continuity glitches aside, the (by Western standards) underage moms and student/teacher marriages aren't just a CLAMP thing-- in Fruits Basket, Tohru's parents met when her father was a student teacher to her mother in high school; in Great Teacher Onizuka, Murio's mother Julia got pregnant with him at age 13.

However, in FB and in the GTO manga, both Kyoko and Julia are delinquent gang girls, while iirc CCS's Nadeshiko was pretty much yer standard, well, dainty well-behaved yamato nadeshiko. So I dunno.

(FWIW, Interpol (http://www.interpol.int/Public/Children/SexualAbuse/NationalLaws/csaJapan.asp) sez that in Japan, girls' sexual age of consent is 13 and their marital age of consent is 16, although minors ( < age 20) still need their parents' permission for marriage.)

[branchandroot]

Yeah. I'm used to CLAMP and their fetish for True Love Across All Boundaries, indluding those of physics and sanity. This just shocked me because Nadeshiko /is/ gives as such a good girl, and that's totally counter to how very-young-mothers are usually presented. And also because teen pregnancy is a personal social squick of mine.

*wry* Somehow, I think CLAMP missed the memo about marriage consent, since it's hammered pretty heavily that Nadeshiko married Fujitaka over the objections of her family. Ah well. /That's/ the sort of bobble I expect, at least.

[chronolith.livejournal.com]

This is why I never pay attention to continuity in manga if I can help it, because it only fucks with you. Especially in [i]shoujo/shonen[/i]. The stuff aimed at adults is a little more careful with its timelines, or it's time lines are there specifically to fuck with you. (curse you, [i]Lain[/i])

[branchandroot]

*wry* I find it easier to not pay attention when they aren't hammering me with the numbers (albeit slightly different numbers) every three issues. If they just didn't mention it, I'd be fine, I'd never have sat down and done the math, all would be good. *frowns* And for all that, I still don't think they did it deliberately. CLAMP is just capable of fucking up that ridiculously.

I mean, honestly, they turn a character into a vampire so they can feed the fangirls, and then have him drink from the /wrist/? Peh! All kind of fingertipy and bodies-way-apart, too. Talk about a waste.

[chronolith.livejournal.com]

[shrugs] I come from an DC/Marvel background. You know, the guys who are all, "lalalala, oh, Superboy punched the time stream and that's why all this stuff that you read previously now doesn't exist anymore."

I've also given up on CLAMP, I think they've jumped the shark and are now just shamelessly pandering. (I do like xxxholic though, but don't tell anyone.)