Cinnamon Ass - Reborn Like a Zombie

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 2 - The Power to Fight

Yuuko explains to Syaoran that Sakura's memories have been scattered with the fragments of her wings, and she will die if they aren't recovered from the various alternate worlds in which they have landed. In order to travel between all these worlds, however, the three travellers must give up their most important possessions - Kurogane's katana (thank you all those who corrected me, I am officially a moron), Fye's tattoo and Syaoran's place in Sakura's memories. After trading these in, Yuuko bestows upon the group a white creature called Mokona Modoki, who teleports them to a world called Hanshin where the inhabitants control special spirit creatures called Kudan - Syaoran is bestowed with an especially powerful one as he fights some street punks in order to save one of Sakura's feathers.

This was a somewhat odd episode, which really encapsulates a lot of the problems with Tsubasa both with regards to its source material and the anime itself. I still think the look of the show is excellent, with some pretty good artwork and animation, but there are moments where it's just glacially slow panning shots with too much talking - the first half of the episode was at least written half-decently, because otherwise it would have been turgidly boring. I definitely like the acting, and aside from some stodgy moments of directing it's a fairly well made show.

But the problem is that it is Just Another Shounen Adventure, really, and I keep trying to expect something more out of Tsubasa that I'm not going to get. I think it just needs to keep the pace up, or if there's going to be filler it needs to be action-packed, otherwise Tsubasa will get dragged out waaaay too much and Mashimo (the director) needs to be kept busy or the show will become too dreary and static. I will be continuing watching for the moment, but I guess I still have mixed feelings about Tsubasa Chronicle which hopefully later parts of the series will clear up.

One thing I am glad about, though, is there ARE going to be moments of odd CLAMP-ish humour - hopefully Fye will get a bit more mischevious too, rather than sounding half asleep all the time, but Mokona is a welcome addition and Kurogane's seiyuu is really doing a great job at his spazzing and his brashness.