Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
| Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle | |
|---|---|
| Original Manga | CLAMP |
| Format | Anime (TV), Anime (Movie), Manga |
| Made By | Bee Train |
| Episode Length | 25 Minutes |
| # of Episodes | 52; 5 OVA episodes, 1 short film |
| # of Volumes (manga) | 28 volumes |
Contents
Genre
Sum it up in a Sentence
Shaoran, but not the actual Shaoran, travels across dimensions and crosses over with practically every CLAMP title ever in order to save the life of Princess Sakura (but not that Sakura).
Main Description
Shaoran - not the actual Shaoran Li from Cardcaptor Sakura, but someone who looks just like him and is named just like him - lives as an archaeologist in the Kingdom of Clow, in a world that is clearly not our own. When his good friend Princess Sakura comes to visit, an accident leaves her catatonic and her soul is split into many fragments that look like feathers, which are then scattered outside the bounds of reality as Shaoran knows it. He learns that, in order to save Sakura from certain death, he will have to travel to these other dimensions and recover the feathers. The witch who will allow him to travel dimensions demands a high toll, however; Sakura's memories of him. Shaoran stoically agrees, preferring Sakura live and not remember him rather than watching her wither and die. Along the way, he picks up a pair of traveling companions who are dimension-hopping for their own reasons: the ninja Kurogane and the strange magician Fai.
As it turns out, the dimensions Shaoran must travel to are basically every other CLAMP manga ever made, turning Tsubasa into one of the biggest crossovers in history. And once he begins recovering Sakura's feathers and the plot really gets moving... well, shit. Just read the Wikipedia article and try to keep things straight.
If You Liked This, You Might Like...
- Angelic Layer
- Chobits
- Cardcaptor Sakura
- X
- Or anything from CLAMP, really
Personal Opinions
SpaceDrake
Sweet Jesus-God Christ. This mother fucking, god damned show. And manga. Behold, CLAMP's greatest trainwreck.
This was supposed to be CLAMP's love letter to their fans; a shonen-level story about a boy wanting to save a girl, using familiar characters and featuring a crossover with nearly everything CLAMP has ever done. Instead, it turned into one of the most confusing messes print manga has ever seen, and the anime was little better.
What's sad is that the story, in both cases, starts out strong enough: the concept is solid (having to save someone at the cost of their affection for you, but maybe you can get it back), the set-up of the scenario is a little out there, but it's meant to be a bit trippy, and the rest of our core cast is definitely likable enough and the four have great chemistry. Even the crossover concept was pretty neat, especially for the early crossovers - watching Shaoran get into goofy hijinks with the Magic Knights or dodge death in a dystopian X-inspired Tokyo was pretty cool. The problem was that CLAMP hadn't planned out how the plot would go down and end from the start, and as things continued to unwind there were clones everywhere and the core cast both was and wasn't who they thought they were and both Shaoran and Fai are but aren't villains and the plot crosses over directly with xxxHolic and what in the godchrist. In the end, even CLAMP was forced to admit that the story had become an impenetrable mess.
The anime suffers even worse. Previous CLAMP efforts were lavishly animated and lovingly adapted by such groups as Madhouse, Bones, and Production IG. The primary TV adaptation of Tsubasa was handled by... Bee Train. Needless to say, the quality took a bit of a dip compared to other CLAMP adaptations. It was a far cheaper affair than, say, Cardcaptor Sakura, and it proceeded at a snail's pace. The worst part is that the TV anime ends basically halfway through the manga story, concludes unsatisfactorily, and even the follow-up OVAs don't really expand on things much. There's plenty of crossover shenanigans, but in the end there's little closure to Shaoran's main quest.
If you're just looking for some fun times with crossovers (and the manga does have some great moments), the manga can be worth your time, so long as you realize it gets desperately confusing in its latter half. The anime is very hard to recommend if only because its production values are so very, very low.
