CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators, vol. 1

Author: Tomiyuki Matsumoto

Illustrator: CLAMP

The renowned CLAMP school may be famous for its world-class facilities, beautiful grounds, and superior education. Or perhaps, to those who know it more intimately, for the charming elementary student council or the daring gentleman thief who roves its grounds. Less well known, through no fault of their own, is a small group of creative, scientifically-minded students who have dedicated themselves to researching the unusual (and possibly supernatural) events that occur around the campus–namely the CLAMP School Supernatural Phenomena Research Association. Now if only they could convince the powers that be to recognize them as an official club!

Being a huge CLAMP fan, I found reading the first volume of the CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators to be both fun and fascinating. It’s basically a couple of short episodes chronicling some cases the five members of the Association investigate. The stories are fun (kind of remind me of the CLAMP School Detectives, but with a more supernatural aspect). And the characters are quite good–I particularly enjoy Yuki in all of his/her dramaticism. (Is it just me, or does anyone else see Tamaki Suoh in Yuki’s pose of the cover?) I find it intriguing that both the idea for the story and the characters come from a game the members of CLAMP used to play together–and it’s even better since they do the art for this book, including a mini manga! My one complaint is that this light novel jumps into the storyline after several episodes were already published in magazine-only format. So it feels a bit like you’re jumping into the middle–because you are. But I would consider that a minor fault compared to the overall enjoyability of the book. CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators is a story I would recommend especially to CLAMP fans, but also to anyone who likes an unusual, light, and somewhat mysterious school story.