If you've been an anime fan for a long time, there's a good chance that you've probably at least heard of CLAMP at some point. Many of their manga are beloved and famous throughout the world, from the kid-friendly magical girl manga CardCaptor Sakura, to the epic old-school isekai Magic Knight Rayearth. Nowadays, they're mostly known for Tsubasa Chronicle and XxxHolic, but they recently started writing a sequel to CardCaptor Sakura called Clear Card, so they're still around. But another thing diehard fans know about CLAMP is their...unfortunate history of starting new manga and then putting them on indefinite hiatus, the most egregious of them being the X manga, which ended on a massive cliffhanger and never went beyond that. Putting manga on hiatus seems to be a trend for them, whether it's because the original magazines they ran in shut down, or due to lack of ideas, or other factors, CLAMP have a bunch of manga that are in dire need of continuations or conclusions. Clover is one of those manga, and many say it's their most experimental work. Having bought and read it long ago, and re-reading it now, I'm inclined to agree, and this manga really deserves to have its story finished.

In a dystopian, cyberpunk world, Kazuhiko is a young but wounded and retired black ops agent. But he suddenly gets called back in by his company for a new job that supposedly only he can do: A young woman, Sue, is requesting to be taken to an old, abandoned amusement park for some reason. The thing is, Sue is a Four-Leaf Clover, the strongest and most dangerous psychic human in the world, whose technology-manipulating powers are apparently so devastating, the powers that be have kept her in confinement, knowing that they wouldn't be able to stand a chance against someone like her. Thus, she's a top military secret. Kazuhiko has to take her there, but people from his past and other countries' armies have no intention of letting him complete his duty.

There's no denying that CLAMP's artwork has always been gorgeous and lushly detailed, but here its on an entirely different level. You'll notice that the pages don't have a lot of panels, instead using a lot of white and black space, completely empty. Many of these artistic choices are used to convey a character's mental state or to experiment with panel layouts, and I think it works here. Very few panels take up the pages, and are instead arranged like collages or puzzles. Of course, CLAMP's trademark detailed art combined with the intense cyberpunk world, heavy machinery and intricate technological marvels, makes the dystopian setting really stand out in its harshness and wonder. In a way, the setting combined with CLAMP's artwork and the way the pages and panels are arranged make it almost haunting, and I wonder if that was intentional on CLAMP's part. I hope it is, because this manga has a great sense of atmosphere.

But you can't have a setting and a story without characters, right? I liked the whole ensemble, even if they don't necessarily receive a whole lot of development, and none of them fall into any particular tropey archetypes, like the moe girl or the badass soldier. Sue and Kazuhiko are those two things, but CLAMP is careful to give them more subtle nuances to their characterization, along with everyone else, oftentimes letting the art and story speak to what they're like, through gestures and conversations, without the need to drop a bunch of exposition. All of them have a variety of engaging personalities, and it's clear that CLAMP wanted to do more with them but didn't get the chance to. Why? We'll get to that further down.

The story itself isn't much to write home about. The manga consists of four volumes, with the first two showing Kazuhiko and Sue on their journey, and the other two being flashbacks that take place before then. The manga doesn't like to go into much detail about what it's world is like or why certain things are happening, letting the readers interpret things for themselves, but it also tackles themes of loneliness, love, what it means to be alone, and whether it's right to consider people to be dangerous because of their powers. But it's not without its bumps in the road. For one, the story doesn't have a conclusion, so there's a lot of plot threads left unresolved, such as what the deal is with that Bols guy who dismembered Kazuhiko's arm, or who killed Kazuhiko's girlfriend. Plus, there's a significant continuity error: Kazuhiko's girlfriend, Ora, is revealed to be a One-Leaf Clover, but she has a tattoo of a four leaf clover, which goes against the series' established rules.

It's clear that the manga has much more story to tell. According to CLAMP, while Clover has four volumes out, they intended for it to be six volumes long. Unfortunately, Clover was put on indefinite hiatus, and the reason for that mainly has to do with bad timing. The original magazine it was serialized in, Amie, shut down in 1999. Most manga get moved to other magazines so they could continue, which is the current standard nowadays, but CLAMP never got around to finishing Clover, and they never gave a particular reason for why they never went back to it. For all we know, it might have been out of their control, or maybe there's some legal issues involved that's preventing CLAMP from finishing not only Clover, but a bunch of their other manga, probably to the point where they wouldn't be able to legally be free to move their manga to another magazine for completion. As of now, who knows? This is why Clover's story is unfinished and why the characters don't get explored more than what we get. It's a shame, because for what it is, I genuinely like Clover, and it deserves to have its story concluded in some manner. Hey, if Samurai Jack can get an ending, why not this? One can only hope, right?

While not one of CLAMP's best works, it's a criminally underrated manga that deserves more love than it gets, and it'll be perfect for sci-fi fans who love over-the-top cyberpunk settings.