Thoughts about Gate 7

Chikahito Takamoto is a normal high school student from Tokyo visiting his dream city of Kyoto. While visiting a site, he comes upon a battle that has the warriors just as perplexed to see him there. Within months, he moves back to the old capital and there he begins a life with Hana, Tachibana and Sakura.

Fans familiar to Card Captor Sakura, xxxHolic or many of CLAMP’s other manga shouldn’t feel out of bounds with picking up and reading Gate 7. The first volume reminds me a mixture of CLAMP’s other works Kobato, X and xxxholic. Other similar reads should be series like Natsume’s Book of Friends or Mushishi for paranormal stories beyond. The artwork of CLAMP is superb as always. I wouldn’t be surprised to see if Gate 7 gets picked up for anime series. For now though this series has been picked up to be translated into English by Dark Horse, so it is bound to be available at comic retail stores.

Rarely has it been to my knowledge of manga set in Kyoto. Much of CLAMP’s works are set in Tokyo with the fantastic view of Tokyo Tower as a cultural reference, but perhaps CLAMP is trying to explore settings outside of Tokyo is their way of featuring Japan to the rest of the world. Their usage of Japanese historical figures are also something not out of the ordinary, since they explained Vedic mythology with RG Veda. I had a fun time reading about the culture and historical notes in this story.

Another point to indicate from this story is Hana’s love for all things noodles, and yes I can only imagine just how much there is to love about noodles. It would like onigiri if you give it a couple of more years. ^_^

Author: Linda

Linda is a life long fan of anime, and dabbles in a lot of things. She writes with a tentative neutral voice.. and as for that three year anime blogging mark, she tries to defy that as she is gaining a voice in other mediums ie: Twitter. Find her at other places online. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance." -Terry Pratchett