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RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE Tsubasa
I was looking around on Amazon during Black Friday and noticed that many of the volumes for RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE Tsubasa (geez CLAMP, couldn't you have made the title a bit easier to type?!) were a bit cheaper than if I bought them at regular price in a bookstore. So I went ahead and bought the rest of the series since I was a bit behind. >_> I've been curious about xxxHolic too, so I bought volumes 1-10 of that series as well to see if it was any good.
Once the volumes arrived, I sat down and read the rest of Tsubasa in 1-2 days. (I had left off on volume 22.) The artwork for the series is decent. The storyline? It's fairly disappointing to me. It's too contrived.
I had a hard time caring about any of the main characters. The only main characters I cared about were Syaoran and Kurogane. Even then, they just barely held my interest. I was far more interested in the vampire twins (heh) or how all the different worlds were connected to each other. There were some implications about some of the worlds I would have liked to know more about.
It seems to me that CLAMP is running out of good ideas for their manga. Tsubasa is to CLAMP as Kingdom Hearts is to Square-Enix; a way to make an engaging story without having to re-invent the wheel too much. (I haven't really played Kingdom Hearts, so I hope Kingdom Hearts' storyline is much better than Tsubasa.) I was actually excited over the initial idea of Tsubasa, and I enjoyed the first few volumes of the series immensely.
However, as the series dragged on, I found myself getting really annoyed with the series. There are parts that are not fully explained, so you have to guess by examining the imagery carefully. Sometimes you have to go back and read past volumes just to get a sense of what you missed out. In the later volumes, I found myself staring at a some of the pages just trying to figure out what was going on. All I could make out were explosions, yet I got the feeling there were some small details on the page that were significant... Except I couldn't really find or see them. >_> That was pretty frustrating.
Maybe one day I'll go back to volume 1 and reread the whole series again. For now however, I remain somewhat disappointed in the entire series.
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I haven't really had any spare cash as of late to pick up anything like that actually. Though I do keep up with some manga by scanilation, though I admit three are pretty mainstream sorts of things, like;
-Naruto - To be honest I think the only reason I keep up with this one anymore is out of habit because I've been reading it so long. While I did enjoy the story and characters earlier on, the story has taken turns I really don't care for and now things just seem to come out of nowhere sometimes that barely make sense.
-Bleach - I've quite enjoyed this one all the way through, and though the last story arc kinda dragged on for a bit things have gotten interesting again I think. I've always thought Bleach had some good characters (though sometimes it can be hard to keep track of them all) and the story's good for such an action series, plus the battles are usually really good.
-One Piece - This one's always been a bit weird, but it's rarely ever dull. While it does have it's serious moments it's a really fun series I think that's always good for a laugh.
As for other manga I read... usually it's stuff that's rarely brought over to the US, like manga/doujinshi of rpgs like Suikoden and Dragon Quest. And sometimes I'll check out random series that happen to catch my interest somehow.
Though not everything I read I get from online, that latest series I've been trying to collect the volumes of when I have the spare cash and when I can find it in the stores (which rarely seem to happen at the same time these days) is a series called "Dorothy of Oz". As the name suggests it is a retelling of the "Wizard of Oz" type of story but with it's own twist on things. I've been enjoying it so far, though I only have the first four volumes.
As for Kingdom Hearts, I think it has a good storyline and is a fun game. Though I haven't played all of them yet; just the main two games on PS2, the game that takes place between the two on GBA (called 'Chain of Memories, which also has a PS2 remake now), and I'm currently working on a side-story game on the DS. There's also a prequel on the PSP and some other sidegame that was never brought over (a cellphone game called 'Kingdom Hearts: Coded' I believe).
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The basic story is that a basic event happens which shatters Sakura's "memories" across different worlds (they are referred to as 'countries'). Syaoran and Sakura travel with two other characters to retrieve these memories, so the series is a little like a crossover with CLAMP's other series.
It is not an exact crossover because there are a lot of things that are different than what CLAMP originally wrote, but there are a lot of familiar faces in the series. Hence my analogy with Kingdom Hearts and Square-Enix. (Though, I guess Dissidia: Final Fantasy would also qualify.)
> -Naruto - To be honest I think the only reason I keep up with this one anymore is out of habit because I've been reading it so long. While I did enjoy the story and characters earlier on, the story has taken turns I really don't care for and now things just seem to come out of nowhere sometimes that barely make sense.
I saw the first ten episodes of Naruto, and I got really annoyed with the series in the very first fight. >_> What annoyed me was that Naruto decided to show off and tell the enemy how he tricked them to win the fight. I'm sorry, you just don't TELL your enemy how you BEAT them because they're going to think of a way to BEAT YOU while avoiding your previous strategy!
So I didn't continue with Naruto past that point due to that pet peeve.
> -Bleach - I've quite enjoyed this one all the way through, and though the last story arc kinda dragged on for a bit things have gotten interesting again I think. I've always thought Bleach had some good characters (though sometimes it can be hard to keep track of them all) and the story's good for such an action series, plus the battles are usually really good.
I've been curious about Bleach, but I've been kinda reluctant to buy the manga since I'd have to start with volume one. I was already buying Tsubasa, so I felt like I really should only follow one series at a time. However, now that I'm done with Tsubasa, maybe I should reconsider getting Bleach... >_>
> -One Piece - This one's always been a bit weird, but it's rarely ever dull. While it does have it's serious moments it's a really fun series I think that's always good for a laugh.
I really don't like the art style for One Piece. I admit it is a stupid reason to avoid a series, but that's the main reason why I don't have any interest in it. Though, after what's happened with Tsubasa, maybe I should reconsider...
> Though not everything I read I get from online, that latest series I've been trying to collect the volumes of when I have the spare cash and when I can find it in the stores (which rarely seem to happen at the same time these days) is a series called "Dorothy of Oz". As the name suggests it is a retelling of the "Wizard of Oz" type of story but with it's own twist on things. I've been enjoying it so far, though I only have the first four volumes.
Interesting... I'll check out that series if I see it around.
> As for Kingdom Hearts, I think it has a good storyline and is a fun game. Though I haven't played all of them yet; just the main two games on PS2, the game that takes place between the two on GBA (called 'Chain of Memories, which also has a PS2 remake now), and I'm currently working on a side-story game on the DS. There's also a prequel on the PSP and some other sidegame that was never brought over (a cellphone game called 'Kingdom Hearts: Coded' I believe).
I have both the PS2 games, and the GBA game, but embarrassingly enough, I haven't touched any, except the first game. The first game is pretty good except I have some problems with controlling the camera. So I end up getting motion sickness if I play for too long.
The last time I played the game, I played so long that I felt nauseous enough to vomit. >_> I didn't actually throw up (I stopped playing before it got that bad), but it's probably the main reason why I never returned to the game. Any game that makes me that sick is one I'd rather avoid. Usually it's only the first person shooters that do it to me.
I didn't touch the other two games since I didn't want to spoil the story on the first game.
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Yeah Naruto isn't the smartest of heroes, and he was quite sure of himself early on, pretty convinced he could beat anybody no matter what. He improves pretty quick though and instead of shouting out plans (or even making them even) and just starts making things up as he goes along, making him unpredictable in battle and that can make him tough for opponents to deal with.
Though to be honest while I like Naruto himself, because I often find him quite amusing, it's other characters I really like.
But as I said I'm only really reading out of habit these days so I really wouldn't recommend it unless you really like ninja themed stuff. While some of the battles can be quite good, especially before the time-skip, I really think the story takes some odd turns/loses something later on.
Well I'd very much recommend Bleach ^_^ I've always enjoyed the story and it has some great battle scenes. Although it's a series lots and lots of characters; sometimes it can be difficult to keep track of those that aren't part of the main group, and some just turn out to be brief one-shot appearance characters. But the author usually does a pretty good job of making the characters memorable no matter how short a time they appear.
As for the art; I've always liked the style, though I've heard some people were turned off by the style at the beginning. But it's definitely worth it to stick with it because the art style continues to improve as time goes on and I think it looks great these days.
Yeah, One Piece has a 'unique' art style to say the least, it put me off at first too. But the story kept me interested, not to mention very amused, so I kept on reading and it's become one of my faves. It's another where the art improves as time goes on, though the style does retain it uniqueness.
So to sum it up, One Piece's art style is definitely an acquired taste; but the story, characters and the world/setting itself make it worth it to stick around I think ^_^
Yeah I've heard of that particular complaint a lot in regards to Kingdom Hearts' camera system; while I don't get nauseous from it I find it can make things rather chaotic and confusing when fighting large groups of enemies and the targeting is swinging the camera around like crazy as the player takes out the enemies.
Unfortunately I haven't really heard any ways to get around the motion sickness problem =( Except for maybe playing in small chunks of time and taking a break from it before one gets too sick.
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Unfortunately, the series is so old that the anime isn't sold by Amazon directly. However, the manga is available from Amazon (directly).
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