The History of X

The biggest manga CLAMP ever attempted, and the one that outgrew its magazine.

X premiered in Kadokawa Shoten's shojo magazine Monthly Asuka in May 1992. CLAMP, the four-woman team of Nanase Ohkawa, Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi, had closed their first epic, RG Veda, and set out to build a story around two matched armies of seven, led by two boys whose names were the same word: Kamui.

The premise is an appointment with the end of the world in 1999. Kamui Shiro returns to Tokyo after six years away, carrying a power that lets him choose the planet's fate. Join the Dragons of Heaven and humanity survives as it is; join the Dragons of Earth and the world is cleansed of humanity so it can heal. The catch, and the engine of the whole series, is that whichever side Kamui refuses gets a Kamui of its own: his best friend, Fuma Monou.

THE RUN

Monthly Asuka, 1992 to 2003

1992 to 1994

Serialization begins in May 1992. The first six volumes appear at a strong pace, and CLAMP build the cast from their whole back catalogue: Subaru and Seishiro arrive from Tokyo Babylon, and several minor players began life in CLAMP’s early doujinshi work.

1995 to 1999

The series pauses repeatedly as real disasters echo its subject matter, detailed on the hiatus page of this shelf. Volumes 7 to 13 still land between October 1995 and August 1999, including volume 12, dated 17 March 1999, months before the story’s own promised year.

2000 to 2003

The final Asuka volumes arrive: 14 in February 2000, 15 that August, 16 in March 2001, 17 in November 2001, and 18 on 17 September 2002. Five more chapters run in the magazine in early 2003. Then serialization stops, in March 2003, a few chapters short of the end.

2005 to 2023

In March 2005 CLAMP said publicly that they were looking for the right magazine to conclude the series. The stray chapters were reprinted in 2006 and 2009, and in 2023 Kadokawa’s CLAMP Premium Collection reissued the whole run with new covers, giving the orphaned chapters their own volume, 18.5, on 4 November 2023. No new chapters accompanied it.

THE ADAPTATIONS

Madhouse, twice

The 1996 film

Madhouse filmed X first: a 97-minute feature directed by Rintaro, co-written by Ohkawa, released 3 August 1996, with X Japan’s Forever Love as its theme. It compresses the war into a single tragic arc and invents its own ending.

The 2001 TV series

Yoshiaki Kawajiri directed a 24-episode television version for WOWOW, October 2001 to March 2002, preceded by the direct-to-video primer X: An Omen. With room to breathe, it follows the manga closely, then also has to end the story itself.

The audio dramas

Before either screen version, X lived as a set of audio drama CDs in the mid 1990s, an adaptation route CLAMP’s work often took in that decade.

WHERE IT STANDS

Unfinished, not abandoned

The official line

CLAMP have never declared X cancelled. Their stated position, repeated across two decades, is that the ending exists in plan and that they intend to publish it when a suitable venue and moment allow.

The arithmetic

Eighteen volumes, five extra chapters as 18.5, and a plan remembered at about twenty-one volumes. What is missing is small in page count and total in consequence: the final battle and Kamui’s answer.

Why it still matters

X is the summit of CLAMP’s most ornate art period, the hub that connects Tokyo Babylon, CLAMP School Detectives, and later Tsubasa, and the rare shojo epic built entirely around an ending its creators refused to soften.

The History of X

THE RUN

THE ADAPTATIONS

WHERE IT STANDS

THE FIRST WORD