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Not CLAMP's best work, but easy Fantasy
I was very underwhelmed by this, compared to the other CLAMP works I'm familiar with (Tsubasa and xxxHolic manga/anime, and CCS anime). While the main trio are enjoyable enough, the side characters are pretty terrible. I find it hard to believe that they're this bad at communication and preparation, when this isn't their first rodeo with the whole magic knights thing, nor with their rivals. All of the side character interactions take like 2-3x as long as they should b/c the side characters either can't get to the point, are bickering with the girls, or the girls have randomly gone off on some tangent. Whatever humor is provided by the interruptions is detracted from by their frequency. Unlike other CLAMP stories I've gone through, where things are long-winded and abstract, but have some depth, things just felt very shallow in this story, in general.
Anyway it wasn't all bad. Like I said, the trio themselves are (mostly) enjoyable (I find Hikaru the most relatable/exciting). The battles are enjoyable enough, the artwork is gorgeous as ever, and when they're just journeying on their own, it's perfectly fine. As another review mentioned, the fantasy vocab here is given with a katakana reading (what the characters are saying) above the kanji (semantic meaning) - which is great, and it's definitely worth paying attention to. I'm glad that by the end of the volume it's finally(?) getting out of the setup phase.
Anyway, given its level I think this is a good early fantasy manga (particularly if you like 90s 少女), even though I didn't find it particularly interesting. I'll give the next one a chance tho.
Update: having finished all 3 volumes, while I can't say I didn't somewhat enjoy myself, I'd really only recommend this series to: 1. People who really love light shoujo, with little romance. 2. People looking for an easy fantasy read. 3. People really interested in seeing what CLAMP's early works were like.