CLAMP (Mangaka group)

Dana Hayward

On the world of Infinity Princess Sakura has become a Chess Master with her fellow travelers as chess pieces in a game rigged by the Mafia.

Tsubasa

Sakura, the princess of Clow, has a strange power that could change the world, and lives in an alternate-reality world with her childhood friend Syaoran, with whom she begins a series of journeys to other worlds.

Time Will Tell

Tsubasa 10 Reservoir Chronicle

Sarah Sammis

Clamp

Volume 14

Let's steal from the library! Syaoran show's his true colors and wakes up. What's with the post apocalyptic Tokyo?

Anonimo

Tsubasa 13 Reservoir Chronicle

Memories through a book and a sword recognized.

Reservoir Chronicle (YA)

Tsubasa, 11

The Piffle Race begins. Yuko wants her presents. Someone is rigging the race.

Reservoir Chronicle. Volume 9

The quest for Sakura's memories take the group to a jungle where a beast is terrifying helpless creatures by demading sacrifices. Then, the group is separated and the members find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that may destroy a group of women performers and possibly the entire world.

Volume 08

Journey to another made up world, this time with a whirlwind and sentient rabbits. It was too easy. Everyone's suspicious. Then the start of the Shara tale with the dual gods: Yasha and Ashura (who are also from RG Veda. Another instance of the missing right eye. 

http://www.pussreboots.pair.com/blog/...

Syaoran overmatched

Tsubasa, reservoir chronicle, vol. 7

The end of Oto. Players and non-players. Reality bent. And a lot of pages wasted on swoosh bang.

http://www.pussreboots.pair.com/blog/...

Tsubasa: Be careful when the sun goes down!

Perception vs reality in Oto. Time to find swords. A trip to Clover for info and drinkies. What's with the Oni and can an old sensei be trusted?

http://www.pussreboots.pair.com/blog/...

Syaoran, Fai D. Flowright, Kurogane, and Mokona msut penetrate a forbidden castle to rescue Sakura after she is captured while searching for the stolen children of Spirit Town. Will they discover the truth about Princess Emerald and recover another fragment of Sakura's lost memory?

Tsubasa: The end of a fairy tale

Volume 5 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by CLAMP is where the plot takes a left turn. The ghost princess of Spirit Town warns Sakura that someone is watching. Turns out many someones are watching and they all have a stake in the outcome of their search for Sakura's memories.

Meanwhile Sakura et al go to the Oto Country. Here's a point where the anime is actually sillier than the manga. The anime plays up the pseudonyms Fai picks for everyone: Big Dog, Little Dog, Big Cat, Little Cat and gets a lot of gags out of them.

Fans of other CLAMP series will notice a few familiar faces. These are other residents or visitors to Oto. Some are Oni (demon) fighters who fight alongside Syaoran and Kurogane.

For those who are also following xxxHolic, points of similarity between Syaoran and Watanuki are revealed.

The trail to restoring Sakura's memory leads Syaoran, Sakura, and friends to a small town where a ghostly image steals away the children in the night; the group mount ventures into forbidding woods to solve the mystery, retrieve the children and reclaim one more piece of Sakura's past.

Reservoir Chronicle

Volume 3 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by CLAMP is where the consequences of Sakura's missing memories and Syaouran's bargain with Yûko begin to take shape.

Sakura has her first memory restored where Syaouran was present. She remembers her conversation but not him. It's like the Garfield Minus Garfield strip. Call it Syaouran minus Syaouran. Sakura notices the glitch in her memory and that causes even more discomfort.

This volume also introduces the idea that the feathers are powerful and valuable things. They are also things that have gone across all time and space.

They arrive in a world with a legend of a princess who kidnapped children after the death of her parents. Now the children are being kidnapped again and the villagers suspect her ghost. At the heart of the legend is one of Sakura's feathers which as been waiting for her for decades.

Pay attention to Sakura's ability to see the ghost princess. This ability will become more important as the series progresses. It will also help draw connections between Sakura and a similar character in xxxHolic.

Syaoran, Fai, Kurogane, and Mokona venture to the Hanshin Republic to find one of the missing pieces of Sakura's memory, transformed into magically powerful feathers. There, Syaoran meets his "Kudan": a fierce wolf-spirit whose fiery power mirrors Syaoran's personal strength. But with foes like a pop idol who sings words of pain, Syaoran's hunt for feathers is no child's game! Even if he finds the feathers, will Sakura ever wake up from her magical sleep? And since Syaoran bargained away their relationship in a pact with a witch, can their love ever return to the way it was?

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by the mangaka group CLAMP is the other side of the xxxHolic coin. It is because of that connection alone that I'm reading the series.

My husband read through about half of this series four or five years ago and made me watch the first disc of the anime which covers books one and two. Then when we got into xxxHolic we went back to Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle since the two are so tied together. We've rewatched the anime twice again and after suffering through the anime again I was ready to move beyond this part of the series, even in manga form.

In volume two the group arrives in a place that looks like modern day Osaka and for anyone familiar with Osaka will get all the puns and visual jokes built into the world. Everyone has a spirit animal as protection. These Kudan can be used in battles and are an awful lot like Pokémon. The only difference is that you can't "catch 'em all."

There's also a lot of fighting, drawn out in the fashion you'd see in Bleach or similar. Coming this early on the fighting is a distraction both in the anime and the manga. In the manga it's probably worse because it's basically filler for the book, even when it's obviously being a parody.

Volume 3 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by CLAMP was almost my breaking point. The Scooby gang having succeeded in the land of the Pokemon go to Koryo. As always, the feather is causing someone or something to have too much power and they have to defeat that someone before they can recover the feather.

It's a land of power derived from mirrors and will play a pivotal role later (something I didn't know when I was reading this volume). It's a world that on the surface looks somewhat feudal Japan. Sword play is a big theme of the book and like Bleach, lots of pages are devoted to swooshing swords, called out attacks and all that other stuff.

To make things worse, the copy I read was missing four pages. I guess a previous reader or two decided to keep the best for themselves. So if there were any important plot developments, I missed them.

Anthony Gerard

Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE by CLAMP is a companion series to xxxHolic. As I'm reading xxxHolic I feel obligated to try Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE.

Volume 1 sets up the story. Syaoran and Sakura (who are alternates from the ones in Card Captor Sakura) have grown up together. Syaoran is an archeologist's son and Sakura is a princess, the younger sister of the king. A freak accident at the archeological dig results in Sakura losing her memories and having them scattered across the dimensions. The manga recounts how Syaoran helps her recover them at the price of her never being able to remember their friendship.

To be able to chase after her memories, they need the help of the Dimensional Witch and are sent there with the aid of the king's magician (and best friend). When they arrive in Yuko's yard they do so with two other men whom they've never met but will now be forced to travel with them.

Now as this is a story about alternate worlds and doppelgängers, I see alternates even where they aren't explicitly pointed out. For example Sakura's brother looks like Domeki and the magician looks like a blond Watanuki. But I might be seeing things that aren't there.

Anyway, reading this first volume was a bit of a chore. The problem is that a few years ago my husband got into the anime series. And we rented the first disc a bunch of times. Then recently as we were getting into xxxHolic he decided to re-watch the series especially since he now knew who Yuko and everyone else were from the companion series. By the time I got to reading volume 1 I felt like I had already read it and I was to the point of being sick of the set up.

Volume 17

More in the ruined Tokyo. Thoughts on vampirism. The xxxHolic water jugs from Volume 10 make an appearance.

Clow Reed and Yuko's collaboration is explained here in greater detail.

Kirsten Simkiss

I liked the concept of this world. Reinterpreting a legend? The pied piper vibe? I thought it was super cool. I feel like the team needs to do a bit more team building, because right now they're not really super bonded, but I feel like that will come with time.

To be honest, this volume was pretty fun to read. I wish the minor characters were recurring, but I know it's not quite as possible in this story. I liked the concept and the throwback to the Angelic Layer series, which I loved.

To be honest, this volume is almost entirely action and not much in terms of overall plot. I think this book did it's best, but the action was difficult to understand. I didn't like this volume as much as I might have hoped.

I enjoy monster of the week plots, but I feel like they really ought to keep them contained in one volume unless they would prefer to create monster cliffhangers. I like that Sakura is taking more initiative with the situation and I look forward to her developing both as a new person and as someone who's remembering themselves.

This volume picks up the plot a bit more and continues to develop the characters. While it isn't clear how many versions of reality they'll have to visit, it is pretty fun to have old characters reappear as friendly new ones.

Sakura wins the race! It's not a huge shock, honestly, but it's nice that she's actually getting to do something instead of being the damsel in distress the whole series.

The race seems like a lot of fun, but how in the world did these guys learn to automatically fly a ship? One of them is from feudal Japan! There are no airships in Feudal Japan!

From eternal wars of gods to flying shuttle races, this series sure gets into a variety of odd situations.

Yasha and Ashura are way to pretty to not be a couple. I'm not even sure what genders they are, but they need to be a thing.

Tsubasa 18

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