RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE Tsubasa

[asiren]

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.

Comments

[deaku]

Hmmm... haven't read RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE Tsubasa (or xxxHolic for that matter) yet myself, though I have seen it in bookstores and flipped through a couple volumes, art looks nice though I couldn't tell anything about the story from the brief looks I've taken.
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).