The The Clique [Paperback]

I usually love gobbling up the over the top shoujo manga. But this one... well, it was a little... unsatifactory.

This manga is supposed to be an adaption of the bestselling series. I've never read the series, but I'm not huge into teen girls' series. But I am into manga so I bought it.

Opening with Massie, a snobby brunette (I take offense as a brunette.), the story seems to try to keep your attention on her for thirty pages. But by then Claire arrives, and suddenly it becomes a fight between Claire and Massie for the spotlight. In books, usually you see one main character who the author attempts to make you sympathize with and root for. This manga seemed to want me to sympathize with both Massie and Claire. Considering the fact that these two are constantly catfighting, I found it rather impossible to sympathize with either. Not enough development went into either girl to make them appealing to me. Both came across as catty (which is typical of girls of that age. You start getting curves and you become the snidest creature on the planet.) Point being, due to the constant hopping between the two girls' problems, I found myself not really caring if they figured out their issues.

In addition to the lack of real development, I found the writing hard to follow. You'll probably need to read the book before starting this manga because despite being an adaptation, the setting is basically ignored. They travel around too abruptly. While a name is given to some places, others are barely mentioned and leave the reader completely lost.

This jumpiness also applies to the sequence of events. Scenes are at times hard to follow as random people talk and you then never see them again. These random people only serve to confuse the reader and add nothing to the plot, and even at times make it harder to understand the clique's comments.

While the art is decent, it is nothing spectacular and the book lacks any real impact scenewise. There are no pictures that explode with beauty. While the artist portrays the spindly legs and barely there breasts of preteens well, the rest of the art falls flat. Massie's love interest is flat and dull, hardly looking like the "Leo Decaprio" he is made out to be. He's slightly attractive and bishie, don't get me wrong. But frankly, I've seen better.

This may be due to the lack of line variation. There's slight, very subtle depth, but overall all the lines look the same thickness and bland. Nothing stands out within a page, fading all into the background. In addition, the tones were not applied as well as they could have been, resulting in further distraction. The tones often are too low in their lines per inch count, thus making it obvious to the reader that they are not in fact shades of grey but lines of dots. This makes the shadows more weighty than the actual lineart more often than not, detracting from the page as a whole. Furthermore, the tones rarely added much emotional depth to the scenes, being used mainly to only show shadows and colors, rather than using some with more emotional impact to convey feelings.

Perhaps with this and some less jilted and affected writing and a bolder use of line and tones, this might have been a worthwhile read. But in the end, it comes off flat and dull. The story has potential with the rampant hormones these girls are just beginning to experience and the maturing of their minds to be something quite profound. But the writing falls far short, leaving you wanting more meat and less fluff.

My score: 2 stars out of five.

I Loved this book, Unlike the movie, this Graphic novel (a few pages of color, the rest is black and white shaded style manga).

I'm used to reading similar kinds of manga books similar to this one, but this one really caught my attention. The Drawing was lovely, and they showed as much as details from the book to this one in a great way.

Im waiting for Volume 2 now, hopefully they keep it up. and if possible, with color like most graphic novels.

I have read EVERY Clique book.. and I came into this book with high hopes. This book dissapoints in two ways.
1. Factual inaccuracies. Like Massie didn't have a IPhone until later in the series. She had a Palm Pilot and got a IPhone later. The first Clique was published in 2004 and the IPhone didn't come out until 2007. Are we turning back time here or what?
2. This is the BIG ONE. The Twilight series has the majority of the book in color. This one has a few pages in color and then the rest in B&W. That is the sinker for me. The few color pages up front are beautiful. The rest- not so much. How do you waste graphics like that in B&W.

Try again and make it all in color, please!