RG Veda (otherwise known as Seiden) is the first actual published in official book form and serialized work from the all female manga team, CLAMP. That said.....it's not that bad. I'll admit that it starts off pretty bad. It's a great concept (wait..wait...I think we'll see this one again around about oh, I don't know....1993), but it's not executed particularly well. The drawing is CLAMP-y....and one of the main characters looks dreadfully like Kamui from X (I told you we'd see this one again)...but that's not my complaint here (for once). My complaint is that this story could be awesome (it will be), but it has abysmal pacing. It seems like as soon as something happens and the characters need to be somewhere or will be travelling across the country...*poof* there they are. Either that's a REALLY small country, or these people are fast as lightning. They do a lot of things for the sake of convenience, especially in the early volumes. This tapers off as you get deeper in the story, but it's glaringly obvious that this is the first manga these people have published. After book 1, I admit that the story sounded interesting, but I didn't really want to read it anymore. However, having made a promise to myself that I will read everything that CLAMP has published (in chronological order), I forged ahead. And I'm glad I did. RG Veda turns out to be a REALLY good story. I knew it had potential...but I didn't know it was going to ever get there. Let's talk specifics.

So RG Veda starts out describing this nice country that all these nice people live in. It's ruled by the gods and everything is peaceful now...even though there was a war a long time ago. However, 300 years before the time of our story (people live a long time in this world), one of the rulers of one of the tribes (folks are divided into tribes....it's a bit biblical. Especially when you consider the title of the tribe of the gods.) killed the ruler of the Ashura Tribe--the god tribe--(for those of you not up on your biblical history....one of the gods that the people of Israel would pray to was Ashura). And took the throne. His name was Taishakuten, and he now rules the country. He's pretty much constantly trying to start wars and there's a lot of fighting in the land. The people are unhappy, and a lot of them want to defeat Taishakuten and restore peace to the land. As the story goes on, Taishakuten gives a task to Lord Yasha (the ruler of the Yasha Tribe and the strongest warrior in the land) to kill the stargazer. Yasha is friends with her, and he doesn't want to kill her, but he knows better than to rebel against Taishakuten. So, he goes to see her, and before he kills her, she gives him a prophecy. A prophecy that involves 6 stars, a child, and the end of the world (I keep telling you...we're gonna see this one again). So...instead of killing her, Yasha goes and rescues this child from the forest deep to the south (which takes him about 2 seconds to get to). Turns out the child is the last remaining heir of Lord Ashura, and pretty much everyone associated with Taishakuten wants him dead. So...they go on adventures, they collect the remaining stars, and they evade death at every turn. And as the story goes on........it gets EXCITING. I'm doing reviews for each of the volumes, so I won't go into much more detail on the storyline here, but suffice it to say that by book 3 or 4 I couldn't wait to read the next one and find out what happened to our heroes.

As for characterization...CLAMP does a reasonably good job. I mean, the characters are nothing to write home about, but you find yourself liking them at least. Which is much better than being completely indifferent. Lord Yasha is a great warrior, and he'll do anything to protect Ashura. He's also completely emo at heart. There's a lot of angst in this series, both by Yasha and Ashura. Yasha wants to protect Ashura, but he knows that if he does so, he'll let his tribe down. Ashura feels responsible for all the hardships that fall on everyone that surrounds him (because he is). There are also the times that CLAMP brings in random characters for one chapter, let you get attached to them, then make sure they die in a tragic situation. That's always my favorite. It happens more than a few times in the series. Usually people Ashura likes are the ones that get that fate. He's a dangerous kid to hang out with. There are also the other stars, some of whom I don't care about at all, and some of whom I really like. Lord Ryuu, the dragon king, is particularly entertaining, as is Kujaku...the mysterious guy from outside the country that seems to know everything about everything and sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. Ashura really likes him, everyone else wishes he would help out more if he knows so much, Yasha tolerates him at best. He's still really funny though. I like him. Taishakuten is kind of an evil guy, but not as much as I think he should be for someone as infamously terrible as him. Taishakuten's wife is probably one of the worst people in the world...you're supposed to hate her, and you totally do. Taishakuten's son is really a nice guy (and it's funny when he keeps trying to go out with Queen Kendappa...one half of what I've deemed the 'Girls Love Duo' of Queen Kendappa and the ninja Souma). Other than that...the characters are fine, but nothing outstanding. I didn't really care about most of them that much...I just wanted to see how the end of the world turned out.

Like I mentioned before...the art is definitely CLAMP. The manga was drawn by Mokona Apapa..who draws most of their things. It's not awesome, but it didn't bother me nearly as much as the art in some CLAMP works (*cough*Holic*cough*). RG Veda was first published in 1989, so of course the art looks "old" to use that relative term. The backgrounds aren't spectacular, the fight scenes are a bit campy, and the characters look like CLAMP characters. As I mentioned before...Ashura (especially on the cover and the splash pages) looks eerily like Kamui Shirou from X. It's creepy. Everyone else is fine. They look like early 90's characters, and some of them even have the classic "third eye" that CLAMP seems to be so fond of. Oh...did I mention there were stargazers????? You know it's a CLAMP work. It's good to know they got started on some of their common themes from the beginning!!

Overall...RG Veda is pretty good. I liked it a LOT more than I thought I would, and I DEFINITELY liked the end a lot more than I thought I was going to after reading the beginning. It's not revolutionary...it won't change the world...it won't even change manga (although I guess it did, since CLAMP is still hugely popular)...but it's worth a read. They throw a few interesting twists in at the end that kinda put me on the edge of my seat. If you can get past the slow beginning...this series is definitely worth the time you'd spend to read it for 10 volumes.