Uh... well I think I found my least favorite CLAMP work. I will be terribly upset if I find something in the CLAMPverse that is worse than Suki. I desperately hope that this is the worst that they have to offer because this is bad both in terms of writing and making me morally repulsed. I should start saying What CLAMPery is this? whenever I become disturbed by something they wrote because their type of fuckery is so special Im rebranding it. Hinata Asahi is booksmart but naive and simpleminded in all other areas. She lives alone with only her teddy bears to keep her company. But that changes when Shirou Asou moves next door to her. He may be twice her age and her new teacher but that doesnt keep Hina from falling in love with him. Shirou also takes an interest in her but it seems that something is keeping him from pursuing a relationship. https://i.pin.com/736x/0f/25/e3/0f25e3afa6e14e24c92f1ec18f2bc5ec.jpg So before I start talking about the plot I must address the central problem I have with this manga the age gap. Hina is 16 years old. Shirou is 32. And to make things worse Hina has the mind of a preschooler. I dont know if CLAMP intended to create a mentally disabled character or they just infantilized her. Shes extraordinarily rich and very sheltered but the two reasons I provided before are the only ways for her character to make sense. Ive known some of the most sheltered kids known to man and none of them are as childishly innocent as Hina is. For all intents and purposes of this review her mental age is like 45. And Shirous teacher which creates a power imbalance. Honestly the moment he walked in I guessed that he was a pedophile exclusively because he was a teacher in a CLAMP manga. Thats how low the bar is. The way they executed the reveal about him being a bodyguard whos protecting Hina was so awkward too since youre supposed to root for him. What we have is Hinas friends being suspicious of him trying to groom or kidnap her and him saying that hes a bad person when they ask if they can trust him. Then we get shots of him having cameras in Hinas house. But theres also a picture book series about bears that is based on Shirou and Hinas relationship that is woven into the story. Its about a little bear who wants to befriend a grumpy old bear who everyone says is bad. But the little bear doesnt believe hes bad and the bear is actually kind. Thats all well and good. A story about not judging people by how society perceives them but instead the content of their hearts. But Hina has been kidnapped nine times and doesnt view any of her kidnappers as bad people. This man seems to be a creepy groomer from the context we get. He very well could be and shed refuse to believe that hes in the wrong or evil. CLAMP presents this as admirable but its really upsetting for me. Its equating befriending a social outcast to letting someone who is a walking red flag into your life. I think the way the picture book about the bears was incorporated in the worst conceivable way. like 68 pages at a time with walls of text split into 46 squares with minimal illustrations of teddy bears. It just felt awkward and like a pain to read and I like reading as you can probably tell by the ridiculous amount of manga reviews that I post. https://static.zerochan.net/Suki.Dakara.Suki.full.44320.jpg I also had many questions about why Hinas father let her live alone. The girls been kidnapped nine times and she didnt want to be a burden to her family so she moved away from her rich family who can provide security. Why they failed to prevent her from being kidnapped nine times I do not know. If her dad is so rich he can pay nine ransoms youd think hed be able to hire a ton of highly trained bodyguards to protect his daughter. I dont understand why he let her live on her own with just a single bodyguard since shes mentally a preschooler. Its just a dumb plot device and poor writing. I get what CLAMP was trying to accomplish with this. They wanted to explore the emotions of first love in a time where you dont understand what love is. Theres a lot of innocence and discovery. A time where you learn about yourself and your feelings. But CLAMP just had to go and make it as weird as possible. Im not even going to go into the part where sex comes up because just no. The level of CLAMPery in this manga is off the walls. The characters have absolutely no chemistry either. Shirou is cold and emotionless and he has the personality of a stick. Him falling in love with Hina was so forced that I prefer the romance in Tokyo Mew Mew and Vampire Knight and we all know how I feel about those. Hina is like if my 5yearold sister had no sense of stranger danger or bad people. Honestly even my 2yearold cousins have a concept of stranger danger. Hina would get into a strange van if they offered her candy. Im sure one of her nine kidnappers used that trick. She also forgave one of her best friends for kidnapping her so that was weird. The only characters who had personalities were the author who was trying to push Hina and Shirou to get together romantically and started the sex conversation so hes not even a decent person and Hinas friend who actually has common sense and is suspicious of Shirou. https://encryptedtbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTRgjefu74X8J9GjzmhDegCkRIkLegCrabW5DNmjHHXuQKbI8s4ZHJEOyVO2ukPteH7susqp=CAU The art was done by their character designer Tsubaki Nekoi. And its rough. I think most of the CLAMP manga that Ive read have had Mokona as the artist. Nekoi is the one who makes the characters really long and noodley with tiny heads. Of the three male characters two of them were identical. I could not tell the authors bodyguard apart from Shirou. They looked the exact same. It wasnt terrible art but it wasnt anywhere close to their best. Im going to put it bluntly: I dont like this manga at all. Its not the worst of the worst On the Emperors Lap flashbacks commence but it was terribly written and creepy. Id only recommend it if you felt the need to complete the entire CLAMP bibliography and even then Id warn you that its not good. Dont waste your time with this please. Theres better manga to read.