Tsubasa 15
Posted: December 27, 2007 Filed under: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle 11 Comments »I think this series really is best in large chunks. I swing between loving it and thinking it’s sort of lukewarm, but as a really fast-moving action series, it’s best when a lot of stuff goes down at once so you can appreciate it. I’ll probably start saving up 2-3 volumes to read at once in English.
The part that went down in XxXholic 10 was shown here. Syaoran finally goes off to join the group. Only sadness can follow.
What wasn’t sad was how pumped I got about seeing all the characters from X again. You got the briefest glimpse of Kamui last volume, but after a scuffle with Kurogane, Fuuma shows up too, and we get a two-page spread of all 14 dragons of heaven and earth. Well, 12 of them at least. I was staring at that page and enjoying it for several minutes, but it was driving me crazy that two characters from X were omitted (with new people subbed in their place), one from each side. I had to cheat. I just could not remember Seishirou and Subaru. They appear in 3 series each! All three series are ones I’ve read in both English and Japanese. They’re like the CLAMP goddamn posterboys, and I couldn’t remember them. It really bothered me. Someone strip me of my CLAMP fangirl badge immediately. Please! Take all my CLAMP in 3D Land figures away!
I had forgotten their function in this bit of story. Seishirou has already appeared in Tsubasa, but we’ll see more of him, along with Subaru, a bit later. Well, really, we’ve already sort of seen Subaru. Let me just say that I like the pairings (so to speak, they’re not romantic in nature) in Tsubasa more than X.
But the Tokyo that appears in this dimension is one that is pelted in acid rain. One where water is a precious resource. It’s like a CLAMP version of the Road Warrior, except with X characters who fight in hand-to-hand combat over water instead of fighting in cars over gas. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It just so happens that I’ve amassed a chunk of Tsubasa to read, myself. I had volumes 10-13, but had kind of put off getting more until I read xxxHOLiC 10 and it spurred my interest in Tsubasa once more. Now I’m preparing to marathon 10-15, plus the little character book.
As soon as I finish my Basara (which you totally need to read!) backlog, that is.
I do totally need to read Basara. I really liked the shorter volumes I’ve read of Yumi Tamura’s stuff, and I think the only reason I’m not reading Basara now is because I think I probably couldn’t afford another new series when it started up about five years ago. It’s totally my type of thing.
I read… I think it was 9-12 in English together, and I remembered not really liking that race part of the story the first time through, but I really enjoyed it when I read all the volumes together like that.
Yeah, I have actually read 10 once before, but then I stalled out there. I was gonna reread it before launching into new territory.
The good thing about starting Basara now is that the main story is all out now with volume 25. The last two vols are side stories and things.
I finally read this yesterday (I decided to parcel out my Tsubasa instead of gobbling it all up at once) and really, really liked it.
I’ll be reading 16 tonight – the blurb on the back cover makes it sound totally awesome. It’s interesting how I went from stalled and kind of ‘meh’ about it to being antsy to devour the latest volume. I’m really, really glad I gave it another chance.
Yeah, the parts in Tsubasa right now are really, REALLY good. I was debating on whether or not to read volume 16 tonight since there was an unusually high number of crossover references in the volume of Holic I just read (an annoying amount, an entire chapter and several references throughout the rest of the volume), but I think I’ll wait, because I do like it more when I read a bunch of volumes together.
On the other hand, I think 16 has some great Fai moments in it, and I would certainly like to read those right now.
Heh. If you’re talking about xxxHOLiC 11, I read that yesterday and I am so glad I didn’t read it /before/ Tsubasa, or else I’d have been peeved. I included a cautionary note in my review. Del Rey really should put some kind of ‘spoilers up through vol ##’ note on them.
I remember fangirling ALL OVER those splash pages, and having a slight internal squeeee!!! at the Tokyo Revelations OVAs…it really was the most appropriate setting for the events of the Acid Tokyo arc, putting them all in a world that looked like a post-apocalypse version of X.
I really do want Seishirou and Subaru to meet in Tsubasa…but I loved Kamui.
One thing I’d like to mention that this actually feels like continuation of X/1999 (as that series was not finished) and I like that fact. Seeing the post-catastrophic Tokyo is not a happy sight, of course, though.
And speaking of the change in art style (you mentioned it somewhere), I noticed in the last couple of volumes of Tsubasa and xxxholic that when drawing the profiles, people often have no noses (!) or bettera say they have a nose as two not-connected lines. I don’t like this at all, it looks weird.
Hmm, I hadn’t actually noticed the new nose style. I’m surprised that the change carries over through both series, since I always imagine xxxholic as the more stylish one (or the one that’s easier to imagine noses disappearing in, I guess). I guess the character designs between the two series are very similar though, and occasionally the flourishes from xxxholic make it into Tsubasa, which is nice.
Yeah, now I really need to go back through and look at how the art’s changed through both series. They’ve both been running for years now, and I tend to be shocked by art in early volumes when something is this long. It’s fun ^_^
Oh, I know! I was very excited by this. There is a lot of fanservice in Tsubasa, and I was really excited by the apocalyptic Tokyo here after reading the really nifty take on the RG Veda characters in the story before this one.