Cinnamon Ass - Reborn Like a Zombie

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 12 - A Warm Smile

The group arrives in a world with a vast lake - while Syaoran goes a-searching for a feather, Sakura stares at a campfire for a very...long...time... until he resurfaces and they reminisce about loads of things. A great big whale thing pops up and makes Sakura faint by asking her why she's there (I know, using your brain CAN be difficult...) while Syaoran dives back down and also encounters the big whale thing. Later, they travel down together, and once more bump into the giant whale after finding a miniature sunken city - Sakura answers this time, that she's there because of Syaoran and everyone, and the whale gives them a funny plate thing that was throwing off Mokona's sensors - no feather, so off they go, but everyone's happy!

Ah, how lovely.

That's really all I've got to say, though. While I'm actually still rather enjoying Tsubasa, it's not exactly the most exciting show ever, and trying to find something to say about it that I haven't managed before is a little on the difficult side - every episode is pretty much the same, a little languid but nicely produced. Since this was a self-contained episode at least it didn't drag out its story for too long or anything like that, which I suppose is a plus point.

Anyway, Jade Country next time. I admit the sole reason I liked this arc in the manga was because it looked like Tim Burton's film of Sleepy Hollow, but a visual aesthetic can go a long way for me.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 11 - The Chosen Tomorrow

Syaoran fights the possessed villagers but is losing until he spots that the Sakura and Chun Hynag that the Ryoushi appears to have captured are actually copies. Chun Hyang uses her mirror to free the villagers, Debonair takes care of the Ryoushi, everybody lives happily ever after and Syaoran and co. head off to another world.

Meh, again I find myself bored with Tsubasa. Another one of those lobotomised monkey moments, perhaps, in that since it's the end of the arc it all has to get wrapped up nice and neatly so Syaoran can head off to the next storyline, so interest gets sacrificied for coherence I suppose. It wasn't badly done or anything, just not particularly exciting, although once more Bee Train show off how good their inbetweening artists are with Syaoran's wonderfully fluid fight sequences.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 10 - The Mirror of Separation

While Syaoran defeats the Ryoushi's son and the Kurogane/Fye team free Debonair from his control, the Ryoushi takes control of Sorata and the other villagers. Sakura, meanwhile, is possessed by the soul of Chen Hyang, Chun Hyang's mother, who gives Chun Hyang a special mirror and teaches her to use her special powers selflessly - however, they are captured by the possessed Sorata, and Syaoran is faced with a horde of zombie villagers standing between him and Sakura's feather.

Another better episode for Tsubasa! I thought we were going into yawnsville at the beginning of the episode when the pre-title sequence managed to drag out two people looking at each other for about twenty seconds, but things definitely picked up - it's not that Bee Train CAN'T animate action, what there was was great, they just don't pick up the pace enough! We also got some good acting from Sakura, although admittedly she wasn't really "in character" given that she was possessed, but still, accentuate the positive and all that. I'll be quite glad to leave this world next episode, it is, as I've said before, my least favourite arc of Tsubasa in the beginning and I'm really looking forward to some of the later stuff.

Is it my imagination, or has Miyu Irino's finished breaking or something since the first episode? I could have sworn he was playing Syaoran with a much higher vocal pitch at the beginning of the series, much closer to his Daisuke from DN Angel sound (I'm not following Eyeshield 21 any more, obviously, so I can't comment on his Sena). If that IS the case I greatly prefer it - much as Yui Makino's performance as Sakura is definitely perfect for the role now.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 9 - Mysterious Woman

Fai trades his staff with Yuuko for a magic orb that can break the defenses on the castle, so Syaoran and co. invade to attack the Ryanban. They break their way into a room where Kiishimu (Debonair in English, apparently, thank you Reika!) awaits, and she attacks them with giant balls of acid - Fai and Kurogane stay to fight her, while Syaoran heads on to face the Ryanban's son - in the meantime, Sakura glows cryptically, and tells Chun Hyang that it's time for something...

Wow! Action! That lasted more than a couple of seconds! And was half decent! I don't believe it, it must have been a hallucination. But the next episode preview shows even MORE action! It must all be lies, I refuse to believe that it happened.

Seriously, that was pretty neat! Admittedly, it's still a bit Bee Train-y (if there aren't endless grunts to shoot down they obviously can't quite do it) but the advent of some proper action is very much welcomed - plus, I'm ashamed to admit it, but every time that particular piece of "battle" music plays in the anime (the one that starts with the drums and then adds in the strings and the occasional bit of flute) I get carried away by the Kajiura awesome factor and unquestionably accept anything happening on screen as vaguely cool - it helped that the purple acid balloon sequence wasn't too bad. In fact, I've decided that Tsubasa genuinely isn't that bad, it's just... well, I'm happy to have it on in the background while I do something else, rather than pay total attention to it, which suggests it's pleasant enough to have on in SOME capacity I suppose. I'm still looking forward to the next story arc, too, so that must count for something.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 8 - God's Most Beloved Daughter

Chun Hyang introduces Syaoran and co. to a rebel faction in the village, whose membership includes this universe's Sorata and Arashi. Apparently the last attack they led on the castle failed as there's some magical forcefield doohickey (the name of which I have already forgotten) that sucked in a bunch of the townsfolk. Sakura is mysteriously called towards the castle and does her glowing special power thing before entering inside - Syaoran gives chase, and they eventually end up in a special world where all the townsfolk have been transformed into monsters, an enchantment which will dissapate when they destroy the forcefield thing. Sakura and Syaoran make it out, and...that's pretty much it.

It was only about an hour ago that I watched this and already it's fading from my mind. That said, as with the previous anime original episode, I think the pacing was a lot better and it was a lot more enjoyable as a consequence. I still wish there were more fights, though *mutter mumble groan mumble*.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 7 - Cracked Memories

OUr next stop is the world of Koriyo, which looks like feudal Japan. Syaoran and co. land in a market and cause a ruckus with the son of the evil despotic ruler of the land, the Ryanban, but end up kipping with Chun Hyang, a girl whose mother tried to face up against the Ryanban and died. The Ryanban uses one of Sakura's feathers to control the wind, attacking Chun Hyang at random opportunities - he destroys her mother's magic fan, and leaves her swearing for revenge. In the meantime, Mokona spazzes around, Sakura gets EXTREMELY lucky, and Syaoran doesn't really say very much as usual.

The silly humour really worked quite well in the first half of this episode (the Fye-Mokona-Kurogane interaction is working really well now), but after that I slid back into my usual Tsubasa torpor. I didn't like this arc much in the manga, and flicking through volume 3 reveals that Bee Train have almost literally storyboarded the episode directly from the manga, so that's probably te most likely explanation for my negative feelings here. I really liked the NEXT arc, though, so hopefully we'll get onto that soon - or have fight scenes that last longer than 5 seconds, maybe.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 6 - Uncried Tears

Shougo and Syaoran face off in a Kudan battle, but it turns out that Sakura's feather is inside Masayoshi's Kudan, which ends up going on a Godzilla-esque rampage until Syaoran successfully retrieves the feather. However, Sakura (unsurprisingly) doesn't remember Syaoran once she finally awakens properly from her coma, and it's off to the next world (at last).

Tsubasa is trainwreck anime. It's not awful per se, but it's not good either - yet I still feel the compulsion to keep watching it, and I don't know why. I think it's because it's pretty and the music's nice, but I really can't appreciate it on any other level. I don't think I really blame Bee Train any more, though, I think I'm just not that enamoured with the Tsubasa property any more. I'll still buy volume 10 ASAP, though... it's going to be interesting to see how the film turns out, I guess.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 5 - The Battle of the Wizards

Masayoshi and Mokona get kidnapped by Primera, Hanshin's number one idol singer, who was actually trying to capture Syaoran. Fye steps up to the spotlight and uses his kudan (Windam from Magic Knights Rayearth, I believe) and his charm to defeat Primera's incredibly bad CG musical note attacks and save Masayoshi and Mokona. Mokona detects one of Sakura's feathers nearby and says it's hidden within a kudan - Syaoran takes it to be in Shougo's possession, and so challenges him to a duel! Although without slapping him with a glove or anything like that.

Tsubasa is SO FRUSTRATING! It's just SO close to being genuinely really quite good, but for some reason there's always something that stops me from totally engaging with it. The maddening pacing is the main problem - they've drawn out volume 2 over four episodes, which is fine, but they draw out all the talking scenes and make the fighting last about ten seconds! Plus Primera's voice was awful this episode, which didn't help.

That aside, while the pacing is terrible, the actual content isn't so bad really - what humour we still get is actually pretty funny (hurray for Arashi!) and it's all nicely done. The potential is there, but it's just not quite clicking yet. Plus looking ahead, the next volume and a half of story in the manga left very little impression on me at all, so I hope things don't suddenly slump...

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 4 - The Innocent Wanderer

Sakura awakens whilst the others are all out searching for her feathers, and after going through some very CLAMP-esque cotumes goes out wandering. She gets picked up by the crappy street gang leader and his accomplice, and we find out his entire gang has left after his pathetic displays against Syaoran and Kurogane. Of course, Sakura, being the nicest of nice people, comforts him, and turns him from his life of crime, after which she tries to walk off some scaffolding. As you do.

So Shougo takes her flying briefly on his kudan before Syaoran and co. find her with Masayoshi's help - the sight of birds spurs Sakura to remember about her feathers, and as she glows with light she flies through the sky until a single tear drop sends her crashing to the ground (of course, Syaoran picks her up along the way). All is well, Sakura goes back to sleep, and things are peaceful again.

What a pleasant surprise - in a similar vein to Reika and Matthew I thought this episode was quite a bit better than the last one - even though it's non-manga material! Actually, this may be WHY it's better - while there was lots of talking and stuff, it didn't feel forced or laboured like in prior episodes, and there was less in the way of Bee Train budget skirting - in fact, I thought the flying sequence was really rather nicely done (if perhaps a bit on the long side).

I also heartily approve of having a slightly less catatonic Sakura, to be frank - while she'll never kick as much ass as her Cardcaptor counterpart, I liked that she was sweet in this episode, rather than completely dippy. Furthermore, we got some great moments with Kurogane and Mokona as usual, which always bring a smile to my face.

Hopefully this improvement will last, although I fear I will be incredibly amused by the CG musical notes promised by the next episode. We shall have to wait and see.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 3 - The Anti-Demon Katana

Shougo (the gang leader) and Syaoran's fight is interrupted by the arrival of the police, so he gets to return the first feather to Sakura. They rest in an inn owned by the kindly Sorata and Arashi (whom CLAMP fans will recognise from their important roles in X), where Kurogane dreams of meeting his own Kudun. As Kurogane and Syaoran seem to have totally ignored Yuuko in the last episode when she told them they'd see familiar favces, Kurogane goes dashing after a Princess Tomoyo lookalike and Syaoran gets surprised by the reappearance of King Touya and Yukito in an okonamiyaki restaurant - Kurogane ends up in a fight with some of the street punks, but that's about it really.

Tsubasa's anime adaptation is still kind of dull a lot of the time - my attention really wandered a lot, and the flashbacks to the previous episodes were really quite unnecessary given how it's only the third one! I suspect most of this would be negated if I wasn't just letting most of the dialogue flow over my head. There were more plus points, though, this time round than last in my opinion - the animation was better (Kurogane's fight with the crappy green spikey blob looked good, even if it WAS a crappy green spikey blob) and I'm definitely enjoying Kajiura's work here more than her work on Erementar Gerad (just compare the Engrishy insert songs for each show - Tsubasa's is about a million times better. Plus the music is basically cooler). So it looks like this one's safe for the moment, too.

Finally, you can ignore this if you haven't read the manga (I'm trying really hard not to let it cloud my view of the anime, but it's quite difficult) - NO PUPPET SHOW! Bah.

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.

Tsubasa Chronicle Episode 1 - The Inevitable Meeting

OP - Blaze (Kinya) - I don't know why, but I just don't like the song very much, and thus my opinion of the OP is slightly clouded. Nice animation, though.

ED - Loop (Maaya Sakamoto) - I'm a Maaya fanboy, sorry. The song is pretty good, and the animation rather sweet - floating Sakuras and Shaorans with some actual animation, a rare thing in EDs it seems recently.

Be warned, I think I'm going to waffle about this one...

Syaoran is an archaeologist in the kingdom of Clow, and best friends with the princess of the country, Sakura. He is excavating some mysterious ruins which trouble the King, Touya, and his court wizard Yukito. Elsewhere, a mysterious Evil Man decides that the "time has come" and Sakura, enticed by a mysterious voice, ends up in the ruins and activating a magical seal there, sprouting strange wings of light. Shaoran knocks her away from the seal, but in doing so the wings disintegrate, feathers from it flying away with Sakura's memories. Yukito sends Syaoran to another world to the only woman who can help him get them back - the Witch of Time, Yuuko. On his arrival there, he is joined by two others - the brash swordsman Kurogane, exiled by Queen Tomoyo for his aggressive ways, and the enigmatic Fye, on the run from the currently dormant King Ashura.

It is incredibly difficult to write anything about Tsubasa Chronicle given where most of fandom stands in relation to it. I'm sure virtually everyone knows by now that Tsubasa takes the vast majority of its characters from previous works by its creators, the manga group CLAMP (creators of such fan favourites as Tokyo Babylon, X, Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura etc.) For those who are unaware of the extent of this, the two main characters, Syaoran and Sakura, were the leads in Cardcaptor Sakura (although about 6 years or so younger than they are in Tsubasa).

I'm a big fan of a lot of CLAMP's work, and own all 9 currently published volumes of Tsubasa (I've not really read them all...) So it's very hard for me to get outside of my vague fanboy-ism to judge Tsubasa Chronicle properly. It's also especially difficult given that the show is animated by Bee Train (Noir, Madlax, .hack//Sign etc.) and directed by Koichi Mashimo, whose directorial style is certainly an acquired taste, plus we have music from Yuki Kajiura who is recognisably stylised. I'm going to try my best, though.

Tsubasa Chronicle certainly looks right. Bee Train have captured the manga's impossibly gangly limbs and squished faces perfectly (don't get me wrong, I love the art style, but it is very, very silly) and the background art in particular is strikingly good. I'm not sure about the animation quality, though - I think it's pretty good, but there are plenty of Mashimo's traditional "sliding face" shots, although the pacing isn't quite as lethargic as something like .hack was. The little action there was in this episode was well animated, although the OP looked a little odd - I think I'm just not that keen on the song, so I didn't quite get how it meshed with the animation. EDIT: having rewatched the proper widescreen version with the full OP (the raw I had was missing the very opening) I think it looks MUCH better - watch in widescreen if you can, the show's background artwork certainly deserves it and the OP/ED in particular make very good use of the extra width)

Seiyuu-wise, as we've kept none of the old seiyuu for any of the characters from previous CLAMP series it's very, very difficult to throw off the distinctive portrayals by Motoko Kumai and Sakura Tange for Syaoran and Sakura in particular. In order to appreciate these roles properly, I had to continually remind myself that this ISN'T Cardcaptor Sakura, and these characters, while vaguely similar, are older and (slightly, anyway) more grown-up.

Miyu Irino's voice for Syaoran is okay, I guess - I can't think of anyway of doing it much better, and since he's young it actually suits the part quite well. I'm definitely more impressed with Sakura's new seiyuu, Yui Makino - she's definitely not Sakura Tange, but the hyper-cuteness doesn't really suit Sakura any more, and I think she's managed to get the characterisation in Tsubasa just right so that she won't come across totally vapid without her memories (a real worry of mine when I first began reading the manga). Haven't heard much of the other principals yet, though.

As a Kajiura fan, I can say that Tsubasa probably has her most interesting score since Petit Cossette, although whether it really suits the show is debatable. Lots and LOTS of wordless vocal stuff and some interesting "ethnic" tunes, which suits the relatively somber and serious attitude of the first episode, but there are parts of Tsubasa which are pretty light-hearted - there were definitely moments of comedy here (and I smiled! RESULT!) but it gets quite silly in places, and it remains to be seen how Mashimo can handle comedy. On another brief note, this episode feels quite rushed, although it was a similar situation in the manga so I'm not too concerned about that.

So, overall, I'm still a bit confused as to how I feel about Tsubasa. My fanboyism and the negative hype over this adaptation have somehow combined to leaving me unsure whether I enjoyed the first episode or not, because I was constantly thinking about different aspects of it rather than sitting back and just taking it in. If I can get past this, however, I think Tsubasa Chronicle should be an enjoyably solid, if not especially amazing, show - much like the original manga, in fact. I suspect, being a CLAMP whore as I am, I'll get a lot more enjoyment out of it than some others (I'm particularly thinking about the events of volume 6, for those of you who've read the manga), but as long as you don't try and overthink the show like I have, I hope other people will enjoy it too.