Collecting X
An unfinished series makes a finished shelf: everything X will ever be in print already exists, and it fits in one beautiful row.
Collecting X has a strange advantage. Because the manga stopped in 2003, the bibliography is closed: eighteen Asuka volumes, one late orphan volume, two art books, two English formats, a film, a series, and one tarot set. Nothing is still issuing. A complete X collection is a knowable thing, and this page is its map.
THE JAPANESE SHELF
Asuka and PremiumThe Asuka eighteen
The first-edition set, 1992 to 2002. Buy for jackets and spines: the connecting spine picture and the flap tarot are the set’s soul, and both live on the dust jacket. Check colophons when a seller claims first printings.
The Premium nineteen
The 2023 CLAMP Premium Collection, volumes 1 to 18 plus 18.5, all new covers, color restored. It is the only way to own the last chapters as a book, and its full-set purchase bonus was the nineteen clear tarot cards.
The art books
X ZERO (2000) and X INFINITY (2005), with the 2005 new version of ZERO. Hardcover, Japanese, and importable; they carry the color work and, in ZERO, The Fool.
THE ENGLISH SHELF
Viz, two waysThe singles
Eighteen X/1999 volumes with their own black-and-silver cover system, completed in 2005. As objects they are the most handsome English X; as reading copies they belong to the flipped era.
The omnibuses
Six 3-in-1 volumes from 2011, right-to-left, restored, with color illustrations new to English readers. The practical complete set.
On screen
The 1996 film on DVD from Manga Entertainment and the 2001 series from Geneon are both long out of print in North America, which makes clean complete copies of the TV series box sets the sleeper item of this whole shelf.
THE HONEST GAPS
What this shelf cannot show you yetThe Asuka covers
This Library documents the original Japanese volumes fully but does not picture their fronts: no openly verifiable source for the complete set was confirmed in this pass, and the Library does not borrow marketplace photos. The gap is logged, with the fix path, in the photo-gap record.
Prices
Deliberately absent. This is a Library, not a price guide; what the pieces are and how to tell them apart is the value here.