Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
It was serialized in Kodansha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine from May 2003 until October 2009, and was collected in twenty-eight tankōbon volumes, totalling 232 chapters - 18 to 20 pages each. The manga was adapted into an anime series, Tsubasa Chronicle, animated by Bee Train, which aired 52 episodes over two seasons during 2005 and 2006. Production I.G released an interlude film between the first two seasons titled Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle the Movie: The Princess in the Birdcage Kingdom, as well as five original video animations between November 2007 and May 2009, which acted as a sequel to the second season.
The series has been well received by Japanese and English readers, and it reached high positions on various best-seller lists; the series has sold over twenty million manga volumes in Japan and one million units in North America. Both the manga and anime have had positive responses from critics, who praised their connections to previous works and their artwork. The plot twists in later parts of the story have resulted in mixed reactions due to a positive focus on the impact on the plot and a negative one based on how confusing they are.
Plot
The series begins by introducing childhood friends with quite a strong and close friendship: Syaoran, a young archaeologist who is investigating a ruin within the Kingdom of Clow, and Sakura, princess of the Kingdom of Clow and daughter of the late king Clow Reed. When Sakura visits Syaoran in the ruins, her spirit takes on the form of a pair of ghostly feathered wings that disintegrate into other dimensions. As she descends into a catatonic near-death state, Syaoran meets the Dimensional Witch, Yūko Ichihara, to whom he begs for help to save Sakura. Yūko is also visited by two others who each have their own wish: Kurogane, a ninja who wishes to return to his home world after being banished from his world by Princess Tomoyo to allow him to learn what true strength is; and Fai D. Flowright, a magician who wishes to never return to his home world, Celes to avoid his king, Ashura-ō. In exchange for the ability to travel across dimensions, Yūko demands that each pay with what they value most: Kurogane offers his sword Ginryū; Fai offers the tattoo that suppresses his enormous magical strength and power; and Syaoran offers all of Sakura's memories that involve him. Yūko then presents them with a creature named Mokona Modoki that sends the group on a journey across dimensions in search of Sakura's feathers. After obtaining the first feathers, Sakura awakens from her catatonic state and starts recovering her memories. During their adventures, the group gradually grows closer to the point that Fai jokingly labels them as relatives. As they travel, they learn that the feathers have their own unique abilities and can bestow several supernatural abilities to those who possess them.During their journey in Tokyo, the group discovers that Syaoran is in reality a clone imbued with half the heart of the original Syaoran. Several years ago, Fei-Wang Reed, the wizard who caused Sakura to lose her memories, took the original Syaoran prisoner and created the clone to collect Sakura's feathers. Shortly after the original Syaoran breaks free of Fei-Wang's hold, the clone loses his heart and becomes an emotionless puppet that follows Fei-Wang's will, betraying the group. The original Syaoran joins in the group's journey with Sakura wishing to save the clone. Foreseeing a future in which Fai kills the original Syaoran forced by Fei-Wang's curse, Sakura gets stabbed in his place, but at the same time splits her body and soul, sending each to different worlds, Seresu and the Dream World, respectively. In the Dream World, the Syaoran clone destroys Sakura's soul when trying to get the feathers. Before her soul perishes, Sakura reveals that she too is a clone of the original Sakura who was also taken prisoner by Fei-Wang. Fei-Wang then takes Sakura's body to use its stored power. The group departs to rescue the two Sakuras learning from Yūko that Fei-Wang is in an alternate dimension from the Kingdom of Clow. Such a parallel dimension is the result of Syaoran's wish to save the original Sakura from Fei-Wang's curse years ago. In order to grant his wish, Syaoran became Fei-Wang's prisoner and Yūko's assistant, Kimihiro Watanuki, was used to replace Syaoran within his original world's history.
The group battles Fei-Wang who destroys the Syaoran clone when he betrays him. He then uses the immeasurably strong ability and strength of the two Sakuras to resurrect Yūko, accidentally frozen in time by Clow Reed himself to halt her death, therein proving himself Clow's superior. Yūko uses her life and Clow's magic as payment to make the clones reborn in the past to live together. As the two know all of the series' events would repeat, the clones seal themselves in Yūko's shop until the battle against him. The group manages to kill Fei-Wang, who traps Syaoran in a void between time and space, dragging both his clone and Watanuki along as a consequence of their connection. With their creator's death, both clones of Sakura and Syaoran fade away leaving behind two feathers. Syaoran and Watanuki escape from the void for a price: Syaoran must continue traveling through the dimensions forever, while Watanuki must stay in Yūko's shop. The group rests in the Kingdom of Clow, where Fai, Kurogane, and Mokona decide to join Syaoran once again in the hope of finding a way to bring back the clones who still exist as the two feathers. Before departing on their separate ways, Syaoran and Sakura confess their mutually strong, close and pure romantic love for each other, as well as their shared real name, Tsubasa, as they hope to meet again.
Production
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle began with an inspiration of the four-member team, Clamp, to link their works set in a realistic world with their works set in different fantasy worlds. Prior to beginning work on Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Clamp had created the manga Cardcaptor Sakura, from which the two main characters are taken. Clamp decided to draw Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by using a style first conceived by Osamu Tezuka, named the "father of manga" and often credited as the "father of anime", known as Osamu Tezuka's Star System. In this system, characters with the same name and design are used in different settings, drawing mostly from the vast character pool of its own works and occasionally from others' works. Unlike characters under the Star System, three months prior to the release of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, the Young Magazine began serializing Clamp's xxxHolic, a manga whose two main characters, Kimihiro Watanuki and Yūko Ichihara, are two of the same characters used in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle; both series run in parallel. Like many of their other works, each member of Clamp had a role different from their other projects instead of retaining set roles. For Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Mokona drew the main characters, whereas Tsubaki Nekoi and Satsuki Igarashi drew the side characters and backgrounds; Nanase Ohkawa was the sole person in charge of the storyline; the other members of Clamp were not told in advance how the plot would unfold. The word "Tsubasa" was used so that the title would be easy to read. However, believing "Tsubasa" only would be too short, they added the words "Chronicle" and "Reservoir" from Nekoi's notes.A special interview with Ohkawa and Kiichiro Sugawara, Clamp's editor from the Weekly Shōnen Magazines Editorial Department, took place after the story of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle had progressed past the arc from Ōto Country. Ohkawa has stated that the group is very conscious of the fact that Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle is the title in Shōnen Magazine with the youngest readership and that it is their very first foray into the shōnen demographic. Thus, the members of Clamp ensure that they employ a drawing style and dialogue appropriate for young male audiences; the manga incorporates furigana that makes reading Japanese easier. To aid in this effort, the group holds conferences with Sugawara where they discuss the plot. Ohkawa stated during the interview that the only time the story significantly changed was during Country of Jade arc; It went from a "horror story with vampires" to a "detective mystery". Following the story in the Piffle Country, Clamp aimed to make the series darker and more complex, resulting in it receiving elements previously seen in other of their series. The Shura Country's story was written to introduce the idea that a dead person cannot be revived even if somebody travels back to the past and changes history. This theme would be further explored later in the story.
The members of Clamp had some difficulty adjusting to their typical style after deciding to publish with Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Because their typical thinner lines did not give the desired impact, Ohkawa expressed the group's desire to make their lines thicker, and to use simpler layouts similar to the other stories already present in Shōnen Magazine. She stated that they used their original artistic style to attract initial readers and then slowly transitioned to a new style. Sometime around when the story arc focused on the Country of Ōto took place, their art style had gradually been changing again; at this point they were thinking of returning to their original style. They were still adjusting to a weekly schedule; many of their previous works were on a monthly schedule. Sugawara expressed concerns about the strain on the artists of concurrently doing a weekly issue of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle linked with xxxHolic, but in the end he whole-heartedly approved. In accordance with Ohkawa's desire for each to have a well-organized story, Clamp avoids putting references between the two stories too frequently. The main idea was connecting these two series was to have protagonists from two different manga with different personalities and designs. However, during the ending they would be stated to share the same existence, and had to go on different paths. As Tsubasa is connected with xxxHolic, the characters' designs are also meant to be similar; Like xxxHolic, the artwork is sometimes influenced by Ukiyo-e art style which leads to the characters have longer limbs. When asked if another series influenced Tsubasa in the concept of parallel worlds, Ohkawa replied that she was not a fan of sci-fi series and pointed that all worlds shown in the series were other works from Tsubasa. At the same time, she wanted to segregate Tsubasa from previous works. She also explained that while some characters are the same, their traits and personalities were modified due to different backstories.
When thinking about including character goods with the volume releases, Sugawara came up with the atypical idea of releasing a deluxe and normal edition of the manga after contemplating the inconsistency of novels getting both a soft-cover and hard-cover release, but manga only received one version. Because it was a new concept, the group experienced several mishaps such as accidentally placing a vertically flipped illustration on the first deluxe edition. The group also decided to use another atypical practice of keeping catchphrases that appeared in the magazine identical to the ones that appear on the frontispieces of the deluxe editions.