Ranked #555

Tsubasa Chronicle

Tsubasa RESERVoir Chronicle (TRC) - the anime - showed a lot of promise from its very first episode. However, because of the fact that TRC is aired during the children's hour in Japan, which limits exactly the kind of content they are allowed to put into this anime, as a result, have disappointed many viewers thinking they would be witnessing a story that was close to what was written in the manga by CLAMP. However, despite all of that, Tsubasa Chronicle still shapes up to be a relatively enjoying series, if you can get through a couple of the more slower arcs and horrendous fillers.

First of, in case you did not know, CLAMP decided to "recycle" a lot of its characters from Card Captor Sakura and other anime in this show. In essence, you will see a ton of familiar faces, but that's all they are - faces. For the most part they have completely different personalities and histories. I don't know if that's because they ran out of ideas for completely new characters or not, but that's just the way it is. But don't get me wrong, it's definitely not a bad thing.

The animation, as usual from CLAMP, is up to par with today's standards and what today's viewers expect from an anime. It's very crisp and clean and very colorful. The relationship between Sakura and Syaoran is something you could shed a tear witnessing the trials they go through, but once again, the slowness of it all prevents a continuous enjoyment of that.

Yuki Kaijura has once again put together a very beautiful soundtrack to go along with this anime. From the very first time the piece named "A song of storm and fire" is played with the anime, that alone will urge you to keep watching this anime. However, this anime does progress extremely slowly at times, especially after the first arc and the fillers (you wouldn't think there would be fillers in a 26-episode season, but there are) are extremely boring, possibly with the exception of one or two filler arcs.

Even with all of that, its the animation and music that keeps Tsubasa RESERVoir Chronicles - the anime - alive and what keeps its viewers, in my mind anyway. The story has the potential (well, it does if you read the manga) to be amazing, but the fillers and slow progress prevent it from doing so. If you want to know what happens, pick up the manga and start reading it. You won't be disappointed. The anime is something you have to be patient with. read more

I'll try to get straight to the point with this review. Before watching this series I had never read the manga nor had I ever seen anything about it beyond the wiki page for the show. I thought it looked decent so I began watching.

The anime had a very promising first episode and the characters seems well thought out and reasonably likable. I found it entertaining and continued onward.

It goes all downhill from there. The plot starts out strong and then begins failing very quickly. There is a massive amount of what I would claim is filler and you really cannot see much progression at all in the story throughout the entire 1st and 2nd series. (I just found out that the third was canceled >_<)

Basically you could skip episodes 10-47 ish and still know whats going on. The part that really got to me was how often they would play a song while slowly moving frames across the screen to take up time during an episode. I know what the characters faces look like and I don't need to see close ups of them doing nothing for 10 minutes every episode. They never even bothered to come up with new songs, just replayed them.

If you can sit through 52 episodes of sameness and you enjoy that feel free to watch. I have nothing against the characters or the idea behind the show. It just seems to me that they never went anywhere with it. Maybe the manga is better, I wouldn't know. Hope this review is helpful and not seen as a hate thread. read more