Tsubasa Chronicle 2nd Season

Compared to the first season in which I did really like, the 2nd season was less climatic and actually more 'peaceful', yet I kept watching it till the end, probably just to see a resolution to the story or maybe just due to liking the main characters.

Animation: This is what I shall always be critical about, I have never liked BeeTrain's style which tends to drag the story and make everything slower paced than they are supposed to be. Noir and Madlax have been a snore fest for me, Tsubasa Chronicles although having a manga to backup, had almost the same pacing with characters wearing ... static expressions throughout the episodes with the exceptions of a few gasps and shouts... I mean... they are even lazy to make livelier expressions! And due to NHK restrictions, everything has been toned down. A little more blood and gore like the anime X or as projected in the manga would have propelled this anime to a higher rating, how they tried to make everything bloodless just seemed awkward. Don't misunderstand, CLAMPs art is still really good, its just the animation that did not live up to standards

Sound: No one has complaints here, Yuki Kajiura's music continues to excel with some great tracks like Crying Alone, Aikoi and Broken Sword of Justice, in fact, almost everyone would agree that the music is the main factor that still keeps viewers interested. For this season I preferred the ending to the opening, an uplifting, lively song full of hope and happiness, perfectly suited for Syaoran and Sakura's feelings. The seiyuus gave the same pleasing performances as before.

Story: there were some arcs that were very good, like the Ashura arc, Kurogane's past and the Piffle arc. Some fillers were quite interesting too while some others like back to ChunHyang's world were just too repetitive. It was very apparant that they were trying to save the 2nd Syaoran bit as a climax for the next season by dragging out the plot to the extent of turning it into 'finding one feather an episode'. Therefore as an intermediate bit for the Tsubasa series, this season didn't leave too strong of an impression, yet it did succeed in leaving some questions and desire for the next season, thanks to the excellent Kurogane arc and the mysterious 'Syaoran in the tube' which gave hints to the other side of Tsubasa, a darker and unpredictable plot which was to be unfolded in the future.

Character: The good point of Tsubasa is that the group of main characters are basically lovable, with different personalities and from different backgrounds, yet giving off a feel like they are one big happy family who care for each other very much. Mainly 2 obvious character developments were done in this season, including the background story of Kurogane and most importantly, Sakura does have a bit more development compared to the walking shell in the 1st season. Syaoran, Mokona and Fai were still their usual selves but I never minded that because seeing this group interacting is basically one of the fun moments of Tsubasa. Although thanks to the rigid animation, the characters still gave off a rather stony, lifeless feel. It may just be me but yes, compared to the other animated Clamp works, this seemed too obvious.

I did still enjoy this series, thanks to the excellent music and my love for the Sakura+Syaoran pairing but still I can't help thinking this could have been handled a lot better with such a strong manga to back it up. In other words, it had potential, but it just didn't live up to most expectations.
If you are fond of the first season though you might like the second season. However it would be advisable not to read the manga first or you'd get very disappointed with how this anime turned out to be

Choose the title you find more appropriate: Tsubasa Filler Chronicles or Tsubasa Disappointing Chronicles, because either way, I wouldn't exactly call this an actual "season two".

STORY: CLAMP's ever so popular (And probably my favorite CLAMP title) massive cross over manga series, Tsubasa, continues on it's second anime season.

With it's likable main cast: the determined Syaoran, the kind and sweet Sakura, gruff swordsman Kurogane, the goofy but mysterious Fai, and of course the mascot, Mokona all in toll, most fans are expecting another enjoyable (and hopefully with a faster paced story) world(s) traveling adventure as they continue to collect feathers in order to return Sakura's lost ... memories.

And from what I can tell, that's exactly what the producers were hoping for, that the fans love the characters just enough to watch this season, so they can get away with very pointless episodes, and with little actual story material only follow about three story arcs from the manga that barely cover half of the animes episode span, and the rest of it becoming boring filler episodes (With nine straight filler episodes until its end).
It's not that these episodes are the most absolutely terrible things in the world, it's just that the writers, unfortunately, seem to have taken advantage of the traveling to different worlds concept for the sake of being a cash in, with no effort on expanding the story.
And what's the worse side-effect of a mostly filler season? Little to almost no character development at all.
The cast are simply boring husks of themselves, they don't develop, they don't do anything different, they just stay the same.

Going further into laziness, this anime constantly rehashes all of it's side characters from various other series created by CLAMP, which is another concept that got taken advantage of from the manga, that even fans of other CLAMP titles will tire of these recurring characters. Which was something manga was charming and famous for.
Another noticeable fact is the series main antagonist does little to nothing at all in the story (Less than what what he did in the manga I mean) except a few chats with his female subordinate or a few speeches.
And in the end, hardly any progress is made in the story, that ended up becoming just a waste of time.

ART: Constant low budget animation, that sometimes have obvious quality issues, and Tsubasa deserved better than this, even flipping through pages of the manga looked better than half of the anime, which only adds to the disappointment.

SOUND: But unlike the animation, it appears that they had put effort with a bigger budget for the background music, though there are some techno background music that sounds totally out of place, and the theme music is nothing special compared to season one's.
The english dub in the first season suffered a lot from the voice actors having to get used to their roles in a slow start up feel, but thankfully in season two it's not the main problem anymore.
The english cast itself is quite an impressive line up with big name voice actors Vic Mignogna, Chris Sabat, Monica Rial, and Jason Liebrecht voicing the main cast.
Especially Chris Sabat who is well suited for Kurogane and Monica Rial was an excellent choice for Sakura.
But even with the improvements to the english dub, it is still underwhelming.

OVERALL:
The Good:
+ The Tsubasa crew enters in its "second season."

The Bad:
- Almost no character development at all.
- Very boring filler episodes make up the majority of the season, taking advantage of several concepts the manga has in order to make these episodes.
- Bland theme music and a sub par english dub.
- Disappointing animation.

I feel that by the end of the season many fans will feel that they wasted their time, but not completely hate it, just feel very disappointed that very little of manga's story made it's way to the anime's "second season".

Animation: No complaints

Sounds: No complaints

Plot: Lots of complaints. The first half of this season builds a number of interesting scenarios with some rather deep messages- death is permanent, coping with your past, what it means to love someone vs what it means to love your idea of someone- these ideas disappear in the second portion of this season and are replaced with numerous cheesy platitudes and reused worlds. There is also a guy in a tank of water who bears a striking resemblance to the main character, but nothing about him is ever explained. The villain with muttonchops and a monocle seems important but is ... passed over and replaced with a person who is- apparently- a sentient version of Sakura's feathers, it is never explained why these particular memories are able to achieve sentience, or why they are all together for that matter.

Characters: Lots of complaints, I'll just list them by character.

Syaoran- Generic hero, his childhood friend and possible love interest is in danger and he needs to help her. Nothing ever comes of a rather intense scene wherein Syaoran seems to forget who he is for a moment and utterly destroys a guardian in the lands of Rekord.

Kurogane: Generic monsters-destroyed-my-village fighter.

Sakura: Cardboard cut out love interest and plot device. She demonstrated the possibility of being interesting, then Mokona's spell backfired.

Fai- On the verge of becoming interesting. Like Syaoran, there are numerous hints up to the land of Rekord that imply something not quiet right about our little Wizard friend. It's a good thing Mokona's teleporting spell backfired, or else you may have had to develop a less than Black-and-white character with (GASP) complexities that stem beyond happy-go-lucky Fai. Why, in the first season, does Fai give us the impression his own life isn't worth all that much to him? Why, in this season, does Fai go out of his way to help that girl from Chobits? Why is that tattoo so important to him? Who is King Ashura? Who is Yuui?(Oh wait, the name Yuui isn't even mentioned because that takes us to close to a character being three dimensional and not all-good or all-bad.)

Yuuko- I've been building a bit of a theme here, up until Mokona's teleportation spell backfires in the Land of Rekord a number of characters seem to be on the verge of becoming interesting. Yuuko's personality before Rekord is a complete 180 from her personality after Rekord. In the final arc of the show Yuuko spits out this “Be good so good things happen to you!” line that her character lacks both the moral authority and stupidity to blurt out. What happened to the character who demands equal compensation for all services rendered and why would someone with a philosophy like that spout such idiotic none sense? What happened to the character who attempted to work around the fate she was provided without breaking the codes she adhered to? I really don't even know what to say, I'm pretty sure I suffered a concussion from the amount of times my head hit my desk when that line came up on my subtitles.

This series wasn't just bad in the way some series are bad: It was bad because it was so disappointing.