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REVIEW: Tsubasa, RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE GN 27


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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:09 pm Reply with quote
Carl, I am just going to put a link to this review whenever people ask my opinion of Tsubasa and where it wound up. I feel biased in saying whether your review was "good" or not because I so heartily agree with it. You put into words all my frustration with the series.
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wandering-dreamer



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
Posts: 1733
PostPosted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:15 pm Reply with quote
I'm debating which is a better description of the series at this point, this:
Quote:
It's not so much that CLAMP have written themselves into a corner. Rather, they've written themselves into a funhouse mirror maze, and nobody knows the way out anymore.

or this:
Quote:
At this point in the game, it would be inaccurate to say that Tsubasa has gone off the rails. No, what we're looking at right now is Tsubasa pulverizing the rails, tumbling down an embankment, and erupting in a giant, hundred-mile-per-hour ball of flame.


Seriously, after the Acid Tokyo Arc it looked just so cool and then it muddled around a bit and then heeeeeellllll it made no sense at all. I know I started looking through the chapter and then finding a discussion thread to figure out what the heck went on (it's a bad sign when tvtropes, as awesome as it is, manages to have some of the best explanations about the series).

And now I'm paranoid that Holic is going to end in a similar and confusing manner. CLAMP in general right now is just worrying me.
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yblees



Joined: 10 Jul 2008
Posts: 165
Location: New Zealand
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 3:45 am Reply with quote
Completely agree with above two comments Laughing
It was around this point in TRC where I started to fear CLAMP might break off with this series and leave it unfinished, like X-1999,
because they might not be able to figure out how to conclude the story....
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Aylinn



Joined: 18 Nov 2006
Posts: 1684
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:06 am Reply with quote
Has anyone else noticed that any romantic relationship between R!Syaoran and R!Sakura is incest? I mean spoiler[R!Syaoran parents are C!Syaoran and C!Sakura, C!Sakura was cloned from R!Sakura, which means R!Syaoran’s beloved R!Sakura is his (grand)mother.] I’m still not sure whether CLAMP has noticed it or whether TRC turned out to be an incomprehensible mess even for CLAMP. Laughing

If anyone likes Tokyo, Infinity, Celes in TRC and wants to see something similar I recommend Pandora Hearts, a shonen series by Jun Mochizuki. It has a similar idea, the main character helps the main heroine to find her memories; the biggest difference is that Pandora Hearts doesn’t try to bore you to death before something interesting happens. This search for Alice's memories is the primary focus of the story only for a short time, not to mention that the characters from Pandora Hearts are more interesting than the characters from TRC.

For me Pandora Hearts is an example of what CLAMP tried and failed to do.

Quote:
And now I'm paranoid that Holic is going to end in a similar and confusing manner. CLAMP in general right now is just worrying me.

If Watanuki is Clow Reed, then yeah, I'm going to bang my head against the wall.
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Shenl742



Joined: 11 Feb 2010
Posts: 1524
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 9:34 am Reply with quote
Honestly, it seems to me like the whole thing would make a lot more sense if you go back and read the whole thing a second time (Like a comicbook written by Grant Morrison) which I intend to do when XXXholic finishes and I have both series owned legitamitly
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wandering-dreamer



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
Posts: 1733
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 11:28 am Reply with quote
Aylinn wrote:
Has anyone else noticed that any romantic relationship between R!Syaoran and R!Sakura is incest? I mean spoiler[R!Syaoran parents are C!Syaoran and C!Sakura, C!Sakura was cloned from R!Sakura, which means R!Syaoran’s beloved R!Sakura is his (grand)mother.]


And every time someone brings this up I get the urge to hum this song Very Happy

(And I actually love PH, it's complicated but it's still making way more sense than this did in the end).
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Aylinn



Joined: 18 Nov 2006
Posts: 1684
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 12:30 pm Reply with quote
wandering-dreamer wrote:

And every time someone brings this up I get the urge to hum this song Very Happy

Laughing This is hilarious, and it suits TRC perfectly, since Syaoran is his own grandfather. Someone should make an amv with this song.

wandering-dreamer wrote:

(And I actually love PH, it's complicated but it's still making way more sense than this did in the end).
That’s why I love Pandora Hearts the reader can have fun by trying to figure out what happened or who is the headhunter, etc and by trying to foresee certain events. It's a complicated story, but not a ridiculously complicated story with a string of far-fetched plot twists like TRC.
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machetecat



Joined: 06 Jan 2010
Posts: 396
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:53 pm Reply with quote
Aylinn wrote:
Has anyone else noticed that any romantic relationship between R!Syaoran and R!Sakura is incest? I mean spoiler[R!Syaoran parents are C!Syaoran and C!Sakura, C!Sakura was cloned from R!Sakura, which means R!Syaoran’s beloved R!Sakura is his (grand)mother.]
I'm not sure if what I'm about to say are from future volumes of the series, but the way I figured, spoiler[since C!Sayoran and C!Sakura are reborn on Earth, they keep the same soul, but their genetics are completely different.] explaining it this way also solves the problem of how spoiler[C!Sayoran can be R!Sayoran's father, since that should be impossible.]
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Jaymie



Joined: 18 Jun 2009
Posts: 915
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 2:21 pm Reply with quote
I don't disagree with the story grade, but I don't think C+ is a fair grade for artwork. CLAMP may have turned Tsubasa's story into a Magic 5D Cube, but the art has stayed consistently beautiful throughout.
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braves



Joined: 29 Dec 2007
Posts: 2309
Location: Puerto Rico (but living in Texas)
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 2:40 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I don't disagree with the story grade, but I don't think C+ is a fair grade for artwork. CLAMP may have turned Tsubasa's story into a Magic 5D Cube, but the art has stayed consistently beautiful throughout.
I think this is a case where you need to take his actual words in the review into context.

Grades-- not worth placing on reviews.

I might be willing to agree that Tsubasa's art style is "still unmatched in the genre", but it frequently makes no sense whatsoever. There's no flow in the action at all. The panel composition doesn't do anything to help either. Whenever I think of Tsubasa's artwork, all I can think of are two-page spreads full of swirly shapes. Pretty, but not practical.
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Kelly



Joined: 17 Nov 2003
Posts: 868
Location: New York City
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 3:07 pm Reply with quote
I've been torn since Celes as well, as it seems from reading this many others are. CLAMP had seemed to tie all Yuko's wishes together in a rather cool package that would leave everyone scathed but not broken, and then...the clone situation got too overcomplicated. And I hate to say it, because I love these characters, but things are just dragging out too long now in spite of starting to resolve some issues. At some point, it's time to wrap things up, and I think that time has come for Tsubasa. If CLAMP doesn't let Kuro-daddy run Fei Wang through soon and have a really good plan to wrap up the clone situation, they're going to completely dilute the power of the arcs when the series was at it's best.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 3:45 pm Reply with quote
Shenl742 wrote:
Honestly, it seems to me like the whole thing would make a lot more sense if you go back and read the whole thing a second time (Like a comicbook written by Grant Morrison) which I intend to do when XXXholic finishes and I have both series owned legitamitly

I'm not so sure about that... I recently reread all of xxxHOLiC that's been released thus far, and a lot of the twists made sense in retrospect (such as spoiler[Himawari's secret]), but not the ones directly tied to Tsubasa. I mean, spoiler[Yoko being dead] made a certain amount of sense, but the introduction of spoiler[Watanuki being the remains of Syaoran after he went back in time] felt very much like an "oops, we wrote ourselves into a corner and have to invent a new back-story quickly."
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Kalessin



Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 4:44 pm Reply with quote
I'm not sure that I agree with the overall review, since I really like how complicated Tsubasa is getting, but I can understand thinking that it's a bit much. I do have to agree with the artwork though. It looks great but is often incomprehensible. In particular can be quite difficult to draw complicated action sequences and still have it be clear what's happening, and CLAMP doesn't seem to be able to do that. A lot of action-oriented series have that problem, actually (though having all of the magic flying around in Tsubasa sure doesn't help). One of the few that stands out to me as really pulling it off is Bleach. I guess that it's just too difficult to make things clear when you have that much going on in a single panel. I love Tsubasa just the same, but my biggest complaint would definitely be how incomprensible the artwork tends to become in action sequences.

machetecat wrote:
[/spoiler] explaining it this way also solves the problem of how spoiler[C!Sayoran can be R!Sayoran's father, since that should be impossible.]


It wouldn't be impossible, just astronomically unlikely. Arguably of bigger concern is the spoiler[temporal paradox] involved. Regardless, however, the whole situation is undeniably wacky. Personally, I love it that way though.
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KENZICHI



Joined: 16 Oct 2010
Posts: 1101
PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 6:44 pm Reply with quote
i was seriously not pleased w/ the ending at all. it's not going to stop me from getting the last volume when it hits the shelves at borders, but seriously... i think i would have been better off just coming up w/ my own ending to this than what they gave us Confused
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Tamaria



Joined: 21 Oct 2007
Posts: 1512
Location: De Achterhoek
PostPosted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 2:28 am Reply with quote
I couldn't stop making Xenogears jokes while reading that volume.

But now that I think about it, I should have been making Xenosaga jokes. The whole clone situation. Xenosaga was released before Tsubasa, right? So Xenosaga had the Sakura clone first (whose design was based on Cardcaptor Sakura!) and so... yeah.
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