A Hana Yori Dango & CLAMP Campus Detective Crossover Series
The First Story: An Unending Tale
Author's preface:
This is the first book of a crossover project between Hana Yori Dango (HYD) and CLAMP Campus Detectives (CCD), a manga work by the famous manga artist group, CLAMP.
The point of this project is to experiment on the following literary objectives. Firstly, to invent a story within a story, each differentiated by a distinct narrative style – as the fanfiction unfolds, one would understand what this statement means. Secondly, to rise to the challenge of meeting such two vastly different genres of manga in a reasonable manner that does not compromise on the canon.
HYD is deeply romantic with realistic issues of its own while CCD by itself is already a myriad of classifications from mystery to fantasy, even science fiction and splashes of romance. Add in the consideration of the CLAMP campus as the meeting point of crossover for many of the other CLAMP manga fantasy works (particularly the series 'X') and the contrast between HYD and CCD becomes even more glaring.
Neither HYD nor CCD is considered to be obscure works, although CCD (as one of the many projects from CLAMP) is certainly less well-known in comparison. HYD has immense popular fame not only of the manga (and anime) but also boast of three live-action series from Taiwan, Japan and lately, Korea which has proven to be hits across Asia. The CLAMP group, on the other hand, is a prominent manga group with a wide fan base for their works. However, the two genres are pretty much unrelated; it also stands to reason that they appeal to separate manga markets. One cannot easily assume that a reader of HYD knows anything about CCD and vice versa, although manga (and anime) fans nowadays can be quite versatile in their experience of various works, given the expansion of the industry in recent years.
Still, with all considerations in place, one cannot craft this fanfiction crossover assuming readily available background knowledge from the readers. Hence, during the writing process, greater effort of description will be given to CCD characters and places; the fanfiction is placed in the HYD archive after all (as opposed to the CCD category in : Anime) and HYD prior knowledge can be assumed. As to why this project is placed in the HYD category – that is because it will be clear along the way that this first crossover leans more heavily to HYD than to CCD.
Nonetheless, it would greatly help it one reads up on CCD summary using wikipedia – .org/wiki/Clamp_School_Detectives. CCD information is also readily available elsewhere online.
On the other, if anyone requests for it, I see if I will be able to do a write up of various characters or places and insert them as explanatory notes of something.
In the meantime, please make do with the following cast list.
From HYD:
All F4 (Domyouji Tsukasa, Hanazawa Rui, Nishikado Soujirou, Mimasaka Akira), Makino Tsukushi, Domyouji Tsubaki, Toudou Shizuka, Ookawahara Shigeru, Sanjou Sakurako, Matsuoka Yuuki and Aoike Kazuya.
From CCD:
Imonoyama Nokoru, Takamura Suoh & Ijyuin Akira.
Lastly, the usual disclaimer apply to this project: the original works of HYD belongs to Kamio Yoko and CCD belongs to the CLAMP mangaka.