Once again I am bringing over a review I have made roughly 2 years ago on my MAL account when I was still more active over there. Simply because I got to talk about this underrated favorite of mine again recently because of the current ongoing trend of getting nominated for literally every single challenge possible again for some reason I will be posting the MALversion down below as is maybe add a few pictures and formatting and stuff and afterwords go over a few additional points and why I might not agree with everything I said in here anymore as I have done for my other reviews I already brought here BIY and Humanity has declined specifically because theres certainly things in here that didnt age particularly well. This is mostly a spoilerfree review that you can check out safely if you want to get into this series but I will be talking about a few specifics here and there regarding the initial premise and general concept of this series. I personally dont think that counts as spoilers as you would find that out in the first chapters anyway but maybe some people do so I leave this little warning here atop first. MALVersion created on May 22nd 2022 Ever since I finished reading Pandora Hearts at the beginning of last year Ive asked myself if Ill ever find something that captivates me as much something that resonates with me as much and something that just blows me away as much as it did. Now I MIGHT be leaning myself a bit far out of the window BUT I think I just found it. Is this really the one? Have I found it? After all this time? Having said this lets not waste any more time and get straight to the review TLDR at the end this time STORY Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle takes the question ist predecessor Cardcaptor Sakura asked of something worse than the world splitting in two as its base premise: Forgetting everything about the one you care about the most. At the beginning its a story about a guy and his companions travelling the multiverse to find and collect the memories of his most beloved even if she will never remember him while the mysterious villain watches over their steps from the background. So basically a lot like the inital first half of Pandora Hearts but with a little more teen angst thrown into it But its SO MUCH more than that. From the moment the journey starts we are accompanying our group of 5 into a plethora of wonderfully intriguing and captivating different worlds where in each one they are put in a particular situation they have to worm their way out of finding a feather and getting to the next one. I am a bit surprised at how lighthearted it starts out tbh. Every single arc and world even if it initially doesnt seem all too interesting manages to be incredibly well crafted and pulls a twist on you at the end that makes it absolutely worthwhile. At around 90100 chapters in it begins to reveal certain characters pasts their motivations and what shaped them into who they are now and for some time youll ask yourself am I still reading the same story? because the further it goes on the more twisted and dark it gets with each arc yet always with that small ray of hope still shining on never to the point of the story becoming too bleak. Ultimately this is a story about choices and decisions. What is it that I want to choose? How will my decision affect my future and the future of others around me? Am I willing to go so far to make this choice even if it might hurt others even my friends and loved ones? Was the choice I made right or wrong? Is there even such a thing as a right choice? I believe CLAMP did an excellent job at getting through to the reader how heavy of a burden you carry or how much of a toll certain decisions you made can be on you. The story is twisted dark messed up captivating and all in all just mindblowing in the best way possible but yet it sill manages to carry out a romance plot that is so engaging that you just cannot help to root for it to come to fruition even if the initial base line for it is incredibly painful Therefore from me it gets a full score of 10/10 CHARACTERS https://media.indiedb.com/images/groups/1/1/84/Tsubasa20Chronicles.jpg source https://www.indiedb.com/groups/animefansofmoddb/images/tsubasachronicleswallpapers4 Now on to the heart and soul of this story: Its characters. This is genuinely one of the most amazing ensemble cast Ive seen in everything Ive read. Period. Every single character is incredibly well defined has their own style and personality goes through their own struggles and develops over the course of the story on their own but also through the influence of the other characters around them. MY GOD Sakuras development alone is some of the best Ive seen in the medium. What impresses me the most personally is the fact that you can put any combination of 2 or more characters in the same scene toghether and still just KNOW it will be an amazing dynamic and conversation. Every single character has a unique relationship with each of their companions and they help each other develop and overcome their struggles. After that the next point on the menu of mindblowingness is each individual characters backstory. Just when you think I dont think anything this manga does next can top that guys backstory they pull out the uno reverse card and be like HA you thought but how about you take THIS kind of pain next? and reveal another characters past that just completely recontextualizes every event prior to this point in the story. Imghttps://official.lowee.us/manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle/0001006.png All I can say to that is: One last thing to look at a thing that I usually dont really talk about a lot or not at all when it comes to characters is their design. Now the character design itself may not be the most special or unqiue thing and if youre like me youve probably seen a shitton of similar looking characters in other stories youve watched or read BUT what stands out in this as well as most other CLAMP manga from what Ive seen is the characters costumes and clothes. If theres anything CLAMP knows how to do its FASHION. And if theres anyone in the industry knowing how to give every single character an incredible flair and style then it is CLAMP. Just watch and read Cardcaptor Sakura to see that for yourself. Ive mentioned Pandora Hearts being my favorite story at the beginning and I wanna talk about a point in which these two are pretty similar. The main villain: Both of these manga share a particular kind of villain one of my personal favorite kind of villains as their main antagonist: The one who manipulates everything and everyone from behind the scenes and makes themselves comfortable in it. Initially I did not like FeiWang Reed that much as a character for this kind of thing but in the end when it was revealed or rather theorized what he ACTUALLY was I began to see him in a much different light than what I thought before. Just like he said to Syaoran Hes the same. But Ill say a bit more to that in my personal section later. For now Ill leave this off and also grant TRC for its characters a perfect score of 10/10 Kind of bummed out that that one girl thats shown in every single world running or sometimes flying with bread in her mouth didnt turn out to be something bigger than just a fun background easter egg for people who inspect the details to look for every clue theyll get like me. CONCLUSION/ENDING I am keeping this section the shortest because I do not want to spoil anything and I will go into it a bit more in the personal section later but this manga hurts me right where it matters with its conclusion because it is a kind of ending I will ALWAYS absolutely adore: A bittersweet open ending leaving you with just enough to theorize on what is going to happen to our beloved characters next. Well putting the sequel Tsubasa World Chronicle aside for now 9.5/10 ART The art is phenomenal. CLAMP have their own somewhat unique style of drawing their characters but I think they make it work out the best in this story compared to some of their other works looking at you xxxHolic and Code Geass. Its not the best art Ive seen around by far not the best actually but it has a certain magic that just completely pulls you into it and never lets you go until youve either finished it entirely or are too exhausted to even keep going. Just me? Ok then I guess If youve seen my reviews for Umineko part 4 https://myanimelist.net/reviews.php?id=421047 and part 7 https://myanimelist.net/reviews.php?id=430045 youll know what Im talking about when I say this. The backgrounds are beautiful and manage to bring life into every single place they go to and make this whole manga just a beautiful sight to experience. 9.5/10 SIDENOTE: While reading I listened to the soundtrack of the anime adaptation for this combined with a 10 hour loop of just Cicada sounds please dont ask why which just further proofs the point Ive been trying to make ever since Madoka Magica that Yuki Kajiura is a literal goddess. 10/10 anime soundtrack. Right now day 4 of writing this Im listening to the xxxHolic soundtrack also very solid OPs and EDs have no business slapping that hard. So finally were coming to the most important part of this review and also the longest. THE PERSONAL SECTION/EMOTIONAL IMPACT Ive been planning on reading this ever since Ive started watching anime and reading manga back in summer 2018ish MUCH longer before I even knew Pandora Hearts which is now my favorite story existed in the first place. So now with finally having been able to read it all I am just so excited that it turned out as good as it was. Coming from the high of just having finished my previous CLAMP manga Cardcaptor Sakura which btw is also one of my personal favorites I was IMMEDIATELY 100 attached to the main characters of the story Sakura and Syaoran. I know that its not the same characters and just different versions of them out in the multiverse but that still didnt stop me. Starting right at the beginning emotional scene after emotional scene no matter how small got to me and put another dent in my already fragile heart. Even the supposedly wholesome scenes of the characters supporting each other were hard to read because of the messedupness of the situation of Sakura not remembering who Syaoran is not a spoiler thats literally the premise of the story as I talked about earlier and him just laughing off the pain. As the story continued to go on even in the parts or worlds that initially didnt seem that interesting I could always hold on to the indepth characterization everyone got and about halfway through I just KNEW that unless it managed to mess up big time this would become one of my favorites. And like I mentioned a bit earlier even those parts managed to make me completely love it by some kind of twist at the end of the arc. I cant really think of an arc that I do not like in this and that is kind of rare even for some of my favorites. Every time the characters felt pain I felt it too every time they celebrated a success and could be happy and very drunk lots of times I felt their happiness too. It was just an incredibly engaging and captivating experience going through this whole thing chapter after chapter after chapter. It got to the point where I had to literally watch a cutegirlsdocutethings show right after to calm my feelings down a bit Is the order a rabbit? surprisingly a REALLY fun show so far shameless pandering to the kind of weeb whos a little too into CGDCTstuff for comfort so basically to me. One of the big things I wanna adress is the fact that people often talk about how confusing and hard to follow this story is but to be honest I do find it quite easy to follow not predictable they always pull some kind of unexpected twist on you that you never couldve guessed in a lifetime and didnt have any real problem with how much of a mindfuck this manga is. IS WHAT I WOULDVE SAID IF THE LAST TWO VOLUMES DIDNT EXIST because oh boy does it get complicated and twisted. I was having zero problem following the events as they unfolded and as twist after twist came shooting at me until a certain point in the second to last volume revealed the mangas main plot twist to me: The meaning of the very first pages of the very first chapter. That was the point where my brain just decided to turn itself into emergency mode and I had to quite literally read every chapter that followed at least twice to get everything that I was seeing. I had no problem seeing what happened but taking it all in is where the hard part set in and my brain just noped out entirely. That said in the end everything managed to make sense and wrap up nicely for the aforementioned bittersweet open ending which just left me with a feeling of complete emptyness that I havent felt in a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time the last time being after finishing Hibike Euphoniums second season at the beginning of 2020. So this story managed to do something none other not even my favorite story ever has managed to do in the last two years. And that fact alone makes it a worthy contender to stand on the same heights as the aforementioned favorite Pandora Hearts. I briefly talked about the similarity between FeiWang Reed in this as a main antagonist and the main villain of Pandora Hearts but the reason Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle falls juuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a little short of actually managing to reach the same height as Pandora Hearts in my book is because the latter handles its plot and development around the main villain in a MUCH MUCH better way. That is not to say that Tsubasa doesnt handle it well it does really well actually or that FeiWang Reed is a bad antagonist because quite frankly the concept alone of what he is if he actually is what our characters theorize at the end is incredibly intriguing and opens up tons of possibilities it is just that the main villain in PH was handled so well that every other villain almost pales in comparison to them and theyre what I consider one of the best written fictional characters ever. Ive found a guide online and have been reading this in tandem with the xxxHolic manga because the two are connected and I definitely think you should check out xxxHolic too if just to see another side of the events transpiring in this manga and to get more of that sweet Sakura character development. And to know whats been going on with Watanuki the main protagonist of xxxHolic because he shows up in Tsubasa a lot later on. Ive been somewhat put on a mission by my brain halfway through this story to read EVERYTHING CLAMP wrote that has any kind of connection with Tsubasa no matter how small it is and even if its just a version of a single character from another story. So far Ive figured out that X xxxHolic obviously and Chobits definitely belong to the ones I should read. Now letting one of my longest reviews yet among the ones I wrote on here and just for myself too come to a close Ill just leave it with a small fun fact about something I said not too long ago: About two months ago I messaged a friend that 86 aside from Pandora Hearts and Shinreigari was the best thing Ive watched and read this year last year and probably for the next 2 years too. Welp guess I was wrong because THIS right here is peak fiction. Im actually kind of floored by just HOW good this is. Its been a long time since I gave something a full full 10 points. Ill be giving this a reread soon after finishing some other CLAMP mangas just to find more details and see if it actually manages to catch up to Pandora Hearts. This review is now 7 days in the making and finally finished. TLDR: This right here is peak fiction. If you want an engaging and captivating tragic tale with loveable yet deeply complex characters great fantasy and world building with a fantastic conclusion completed by a welldeveloped and wellrealized romance subplot all while building/keeping up and developing a mindblowing mystery in the background then here you are exactly right. Seriously read it its a masterpiece. If you want more reasons read the essay above. Here youll find a Sakura that is not useless the very opposite of useless in fact. This is actually a shounen where the word unique is quite fitting. ADDITIONS FOR THE ANILIST VERSION START HERE Alright like I said at the beginning there are a few things I want to add in here for this broughtover version because there are most definitely some parts I need to adress. Both Sakura and Syaoran are still among my top 10 anime characters ever and I do like the small little line I used in my top male main characters posthttps://anilist.co/activity/786604114 recently to describe them: This alternate universe copy of Cardcaptor Sakuras Syaoran much like the one in Cardcaptor Sakura wouldnt work half as well without his counterpart Sakura but its exactly their undying love for each other that make this story as special as it is to me. In this review talked about how I wanted to watch and read other CLAMP works somehow related to this and yet I havent even managed to do a single one of those in these 2 years. I havent even finished the Cardcaptor Sakura anime in that time yet I do very much still recommend to read this in tandem together with xxxHolichttps://anilist.co/manga/30010/xxxHOLiC/ both because of their connection with each other as well as the intriguing premise and characters of that one itself. There are guides on when to switch between the two online or if you want you can also come to my profile to ask me about it too. Unfortunately I now also have to go into the postrecencybiasinduced negative aspects and why I have now retroactively changed my score from a 10/10 to only a 9/10 which kind of pains me to do a little bit: Like I said under that one and only spoilertag I made earlier and that unfortunately still holds true now: I spent all that time above there in the personal section hyping up the main villain FeiWong Reedhttps://anilist.co/character/6729/FeiWongReed and even compared him to the main villain of Pandora Hearts will not reveal for spoiler reasons but to be perfectly honest with you: I barely even remember half of what he actually does throughout the manga outside of some general things and like I mentioned the thing that made him so intriguing to me near the end of the story Thats kind of a pretty big nono for me when it comes to the stories I read and watch I can imagine it would be for anyone so yeah All in all roughly 90 of what I said in my original review especially in regards to the characters still holds true even now I did have an absolute blast reading it and imagine I will again when I reread it maybe even rekindle my love from seeing all the hints clues and foreshadowing early on and would still recommend this to anyone whos a fan of darkfantasy manga so for this one Ill go with a Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle: 90/100 Recently I have been overcome with the urge to rewatch or reread some of the things on my list even though I am currently kind of burned out on anime a little bit especially when it comes to seasonals and now with this another one just got added to that list