Clover (stylized in all caps) is a manga series created by Clamp, a creative team made up by Satsuki Igarashi, Nanase Ohkawa, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Mokona. The manga takes place in a dystopian future, where the government is out to control the "Clovers", a race of children with special powers.
Clover was serialized in Kodansha's Amie from 1997 until the magazine's demise in 1999. Kodansha Comics released the entire series in English as one hardcover volume in 2020.
Synopsis Setting Clover is set in a futuristic world where 10 years ago, the government launched the Clover Leaf Project, a nationwide search for children with magical abilities. These children are dubbed "Clovers" and ranked according to the strength of their powers, with four-leaf being the strongest. Higher leafs have more advanced abilities, such as being able to determine the locations and powers of lower leafs. The only four-leaf Clover, Su, has abilities so immense that she is confined to a military research facility, and her rank is kept secret. She is monitored by a parliamentary military council known as the Wizards, and sought after by the army of Azaiea, a country located beyond a mountain border.
Plot Volumes 1-2 During a meeting with General Ko, one of the five Wizards, Kazuhiko Fay Ryu resigns from his position as deputy commander of the parliamentary military. Kazuhiko is indebted to Ko after she saved him from court-martial on several occasions, and to pay her back, she orders him to meet Su and fulfill her final wish. Ko also imprints Kazuhiko with a tattoo that grants him temporary magic powers. With help from Gingetsu and his partner Ran, Kazuhiko and Su use a teleportation device to reach Fairy Park, Su's chosen destination. However, the device is hijacked and the two emerge in Azaiea, where they are subdued by the Xiao Mao. The Xiao Mao's leader lets them go after learning of Kazuhiko's reputation in the underground, and offers to hold off the Azaiean Army led by Bols.
Using technology that tracks the radiation of their weapons, Bols approaches the two and challenges Kazuhiko to a duel. He pins Kazuhiko with a blade while Azaiean soldiers go after Su, but Gingetsu comes to their rescue and brings them to safety. While being escorted in a car, Su sings a song composed by Ora, Kazuhiko's deceased lover. They stay at a government hotel, which gets invaded by soldiers working for the Wizards, and Su conjures mechanical wings to carry them both out of the building. Afterwards, Su reveals to Kazuhiko that she is a four-leaf Clover. She explains the purpose of the Clover Leaf Project, and mentions the existence of three Clovers of the three-leaf rank, though only two are still alive.
After another encounter with Bols, Ran teleports the duo to Fairy Park, which has a statue of a fairy that Su associates with Ora. Su confesses that she used to talk with Ora over radio waves, and despite never meeting in person, she was her first real friend. Ora told Su about the outside world, her relationship with Kazuhiko, and her ability to know when she would die. They had also written a song titled "CLOVER" together, which the statue recites in honor of Ora. While exploring the park, Su shares that as a child, her parents sold her to the military to experiment on her powers, then professes her love for Kazuhiko. Suddenly, the Wizards take control of Ora's statue and manipulate the park's structures to attack them. Kazuhiko is injured in the attack, but with Su's help, he summons a laser cannon to destroy the statue. Gingetsu arrives to retrieve Kazuhiko and arrest Bols, who was spectating the duo, while Su stays at the ruined park. Having found her happiness, Su thanks Kazuhiko and self-destructs, setting the park ablaze.
General Ko tells the Wizards how Su promised to destroy herself upon reaching Fairy Park, and that Kazuhiko also needed to die out of fear that anyone Su became emotionally attached to would use her as a weapon to control the world.
Volumes 3-4 Volumes 3–4 depict events before Volumes 1–2, beginning with Su hearing Ora's voice in her dreams through radio waves. Meanwhile, Kazuhiko and Gingetsu attend one of Ora's performances, and Su sings along in her greenhouse, wishing to meet Ora. Against the Wizards' orders to keep Su isolated, Ko allows her to use radio waves to call Ora, who talks about music and love. They co-write the song "CLOVER," but on the night of Ora's birthday, she tells Su that she is a one-leaf Clover and going to die soon. As she predicted, Ora is shot by a sniper while performing the song, to which Kazuhiko resigns from the military to dedicate himself to finding the perpetrator.
The story then flashes back again to approximately two years before Ora's assassination. Gingetsu is ordered by the Wizards to track down C, a three-leaf Clover who escaped from the research facility and abandoned his brother, A. Gingetsu brings a defiant C to his residence and reports to the Wizards, who are intent on keeping the higher Clovers under their control, and believe C will not live long outside of captivity. In a call with General Shu, C refuses to return to the facility even though it endangers his lifespan, recalling that A is emotionally unstable and has already killed their brother B, the third three-leaf. General Shu agrees that it is best to keep C away from A and entrusts Gingetsu with C's care. However, A appears in Gingetsu's residence and tries to kill them both, but C intervenes and parts ways with his brother for good. Realizing that combining his power with C's could usurp the Wizards, Gingetsu implants a kill device in his head that the Wizards can activate if anything happens to him or the remaining three-leafs. Shu accepts Gingetsu's condition, adding that C will age rapidly outside the facility, and that he will likely only live for another five years.
Gingetsu gives C a new name, Ran, and introduces him to Kazuhiko. All the while, Su has been using her powers to eavesdrop on Ran since his escape from the facility. She remains trapped in the greenhouse, hoping one day she can be "reborn" like him.
Characters
A former soldier and deputy commander. He left the military after the death of his lover, Ora, and is indebted to General Ko for saving him from several court-martials. He lost his right hand in a fight with Bols and currently wears a prosthetic, which is fitted with technology that allows him to conjure magical armaments. At Ko's behest, Kazuhiko is ordered to fulfill Su's wish of being escorted to Fairy Park. Along the way, he discovers that Su frequently communicated with Ora before her death, hence his selection to be her escort.
The only known four-leaf Clover who desires happiness in a "true Elsewhere." Her name is stated to be derived from Sì, meaning "four" in Chinese. When Su was four years old, her parents gave her to the military research facility in exchange for money, and since then she has lived alone in a birdcage-like greenhouse. She is monitored by the Wizards, who fear that if she becomes emotionally attached to another person, she could be used as a weapon to conquer the world. Before meeting Kazuhiko, she used her powers to communicate with Ora, whom she grew very attached do despite never meeting face-to-face. Su keeps her four-leaf ranking a secret until Kazuhiko brings her to Fairy Park, where she divulges the truth to him before committing suicide.
A lieutenant colonel and two-leaf Clover, formerly Kazuhiko's superior officer. Despite their formal differences, Gingetsu and Kazuhiko are very close friends outside of work. He lives with his partner, Ran, whom he took in two years ago with the Wizards' permission.
A three-leaf Clover and Gingetsu's partner. Originally named , he lived in the military research facility with his identical brothers and . Since they were never told of Su's existence, the triplets believed themselves to be the strongest Clovers in the world. As three-leafs, C and his brothers have very short lifespans and age rapidly outside the research facility. At some point, A became mentally unstable and killed B out of a desire to keep C all to himself. As depicted in Volumes 3–4, C escaped captivity to separate himself from A and was taken in by Gingetsu, who gave him the name Ran. Living outside the facility causes Ran to age from a child to a young adult in just two years.
A member of the Wizards involved in the Clover Leaf Project. She is shown to be very compassionate, having gotten Kazuhiko out of many court-martials, and allowed Su to develop an interest in the outside world by talking to Ora.
A member of the Azaiean Army's intelligence special forces who condescendingly calls Kazuhiko his "dear prince." He is described as a sadist for wielding swords that emit shockwaves, and for keeping Kazuhiko's severed hand in his room as a trophy.
Kazuhiko's deceased lover who sang at live venues, but was not well-known while she was alive. She was a one-leaf Clover whose only power was knowing the day she would die, and therefore was dismissed from the Clover Leaf Project as a child. On the night of her birthday, Ora performed the song she composed with Su and was shot dead in front of Kazuhiko. This prompted Kazuhiko to leave the military and seek help from underground agents to track down Ora's killer.
Development The manga was conceived as a four-part story. The first two volumes comprise part I and trace the main story in the present. The following two volumes are parts II and III, and are flashbacks which explain the history behind certain incidents. According to series head writer Nanase Ohkawa, two further books are needed to complete the story."Interview with Clamp: Clover" in Clamp no Kiseki, Volume 2. Tokyopop, 2005. .
Release Clover was serialized in Kodansha's Amie from 1997 until the magazine's demise in 1999, and remains unfinished. Kodansha collected the chapters into four volumes. The first was published on June 6, 1997; the final was released on August 9, 1999. Kodansha re-released the series in two volumes on July 17, 2008.
Clover was licensed for an English-language release in North America by Tokyopop. It published the series from May 15, 2001, to March 20, 2002, but let the series go out of print on May 2, 2005. Dark Horse Manga picked up the license, combining the series into one volume () in its original right-to-left format and releasing it on May 13, 2009. The series is also licensed in French by Pika Édition, and in German by Carlsen Comics.
After Dark Horse Comics' license expired, Kodansha Comics licensed it and began releasing the series, combining into one hardcover volume in 2020.
Volume list
Media A Clover animated music video based on the prologue chapters of the manga was produced by Bandai Visual and Madhouse Studios and shown in Japanese theaters before the Cardcaptor Sakura film in 1999. It is directed by Kitarō Kōsaka, with Nobuteru Yūki designing the characters and Ichiko Hashimoto composing the music. The short film was released to DVD as part of the Clamp in Wonderland collection on October 26, 2007.
Dark Horse Comics, who previously held the license for the distribution of the English North American edition of the manga, were in negotiations with Universal Studios for the rights to develop a film based upon the manga. However, as of 2022, nothing from this has materialized.
Reception