Manga Monday: Drug and Drop

If the name of this series sounds a little familiar it should, it's Clamp's long awaited sequel to Legal Drug (which went on hiatus after three volumes because all of the magazines it was running in kept getting canceled, seriously it went through two or three different magazines) although while it's been running for about a year at this point I don't know if there's been enough material for one full tankubon of this yet (currently it and Gate 7 aren't running in their respective magazines since one of Clamp's members has either an illness or an injury, not surprising considering how much they've been churning out for the last few years). Despite that there has been enough of it for me to get a feel for it and talk about the series, it does seem a little weird that I'm talking about two light BL series in a row though.....


Drug and Drop by Clamp

A year has passed since Kazehaya and Rikuo came to live above and work for the Green Drugstore. They both continue to take odd job, side jobs for it both for the money and hoping that these jobs will help them find the people that they're looking for.

A year has passed in series since the beginning of Legal Drug (and, according to people who have somehow been able to keep track of this, proves that Clamp can't keep track of their own timelines since the series crosses over with xxxHolic Rou when it should've been closer to ten years later from that cast's perspective) and not a lot has changed from the last volume. Same characters, same kinds of stories, same pacing, what is different is that the story has stopped dropping mere hints about Kazehaya and Rikuo's pasts and has started exploring them. Some of Kazehaya's past and why he ran away from home has been explained (his sister is, ahem, unstable it seems) and more details about Rikuo's life are emerging. For a series that barely has enough material for a printed volume and considering how long some Clamp series take to get going that's fantastic! The individual stories have ranged from being "meh" to alright which is what I expected but right now I think this story plays to Clamp's strengths, they can have a lot of mostly unconnected stories to set things up and I think those were the strongest parts of Holic/TRC and a lot of Kobato/Cardcaptor Sakura/Angelic Layer were that way as well. So for now I'm crossing my fingers that it stays strong and that someone in the US license rescues Legal Drug and releases Drug and Drop (IMO Dark Horse is the most likely candidate, considering how many other Clamp works they currently have, and hopefully Clamp's penchant for crossovers won't create confusing legal issues over here).