CLAMP may be talented and have made some excellent manga over the years, but they seem to have forgotten how to tell a halfway decent story from the looks of “Gate 7.”

Originally a one-shot, “Gate 7” is about a teenage boy named Chikahito Takamoto who moved to Kyoto because he was drawn to it. He finds out he was drawn to it by a girl named Hana who, along with her comrades, are fighting a war against elemental beasts called Oni.

That may sound like a good story, and maybe even a tag for a love sub-plot, but the four chapters in the second volume spend way too much time talking about Japanese history,. We get it, CLAMP; you love history as does your main character. But there’s a time and a place for exposition and introductions and here CLAMP goes way overboard. This bore and drive away many readers.

Speaking of Japanese history, they chose the most overused characters from Japanese history to be paired up with oni: Nobunaga, the Toyotomi clan and the entire Tokugawa family line. Nobunaga has been shown as a demon or working with demons so many times that now people outside of Japan are starting to wonder if he really did exist and actually had any involvement with demons. Tokugawa Ieyasu may be the most important figure in Japanese history, but do we really need to see him fighting against demons?

At least the artwork that CLAMP is known for still has quality. Many manga fans will recognize this style as that of CLAMP’s most recent works such as “xxxHolic” and “Chobits.” This is where the characters, especially the females, have that Japanese Lolita goth look to them, good use of shadows and splash effects in fights. Not to mention Hana changes from hot to “aww, she’s so cute I can eat her whole” throughout the manga. This alone makes her the best and only interesting character in the whole series.

If “Gate 7” Volume focused more on story than on history and exposition than it would’ve been a decent manga. You’ll learn more about Japanese history in this manga than from a history textbook and that’s not you’re reading a manga like for, right? At least readers have Hana to look at and fall in love with. Buy her some ramen and ditch her boring friends.

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