Tsubasa Chronicle 2nd 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.

The first season of Tsubasa Chronicle was riddled with problems that bogged down an otherwise great show concept. Having an expanded universe of in-house creations across different worlds/dimensions is an exciting idea. Sadly, when coupled with mediocre animation, flat voice acting, and worst of all, one-off stories that don't go anywhere, it's hard to still justify that concept. The 2nd season promises more exciting and dangerous adventures and to possibly repair the mistakes of the past. But does it actually deliver on its promise? Personally, I have to disagree.

With the last major arc of the 1st season, we are left with a few unresolved questions. ... Who is the mysterious clone of Syaroan kept by Fei Wong? Will Syaroan's rival Seishiro come back to impede his progress? How many more memory feathers are there? What about the pasts and significance of Fai and Kurogane? There's a lot for this show to explain and cover in 26 episodes and yet it seems that the series seems more content dragging its feet than to hold its viewer's attention. More "feather of the week" episodes are abound in this season, many of them never relating back to the main questions at hand. The first 3 episodes are dedicated to a race with a feather as the prize. During the preliminaries, it is discovered someone is meddling with the race and causing the "dragonfly" cars to explode! Fast-paced action plus a dash of psychological insight would have made this a stellar beginning to the season. Instead, it's a slow watch as the race plays out predictably up until a nonsensical twist. You could say the same for many of the arcs in this season - they have an interesting premise, play out slow and predictably, then throw a random twist in there that's more confusing than entertaining. Considering the series has been quite straightforward thus far, I doubt it's anything that you need to think about - it's more or less a way so the story can start moving to the next world.

What could be considered the most disappointing is that a rather large chunk of the season is filler! The first 17 episodes are more or less canon, while the last 9 are all originals. Are the original episodes at least a worthwhile watch? Normally I'd say no, but considering the material I've seen up until these episodes, I'd say stick with it if you like what you see. Most of the originals are bland like the one where Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura and Mokona meet, but some of them have some fairly interesting ideas. The one where they return to Koryo to meet Chu'nyan and enter a demon parallel world is decent for extended world building and the last arc in Tao Country with the ruler Chaos had a lot of good ideas. But I've said this before - this show is great with ideas but it doesn't know how to properly execute them. With a better studio or writing staff at the helm, it would've made for a great OVA. Instead, its underdeveloped and is more content being padding for a season than it is showing off the team's creative talents.

As curious as some of these originals are, it begs the question - why not adapt the manga portion for the last 9 episodes instead of coming up with originals? There's a rather intriguing answer behind this. According to a comment made by a fan of the series, the show originally aired on a channel that was more educational and made for kids. A major arc in the series, the Tokyo arc, shows a lot of violence and gore(!) - rather than adapt this, they instead filled up the rest of the requested episodes with their own. There are many conclusions you can walk away with from this story - the studio weren't fully aware of the restrictions and they did it out of necessity, they wanted a kiddie series like Cardcaptor Sakura and instead they got something much more dark, etc. Whatever the case, everyone loses with the end result and the Tokyo arc could've showed off the strong potential the series has.

So does this season at least do anything better than the previous one? Gladly, it does! The biggest takeaway from this is Kurogane's backstory, in which we see a tale of a young swordsman hone his craft in a royal family only for tragedy to strike and scar him permanently. It's not as impactful as a solid "wandering ronin" tale, but it's a shining moment that the series desperately needed. Though Fai doesn't get any real backstory (again), an early one-off episode gives a small peak as to what it may be. Even without all the finer details, it still is a rather sweet story that shows off Fai's boyish charm. Though we don't get all the pieces to the puzzle, there's enough to help shape a better image of Syaroan and Sakura's partners.

The animation is still the same for the series, bland and second rate. It needs help from Bee Train's parent company, Production I.G., badly. Compare this to the flashiness the Birdcage movie had - it's a real disappointment. As a general rule of thumb, if your show is action oriented, shortcuts only hurt it overall. This wouldn't be as bad if the series were a slice of life but the cutaways during a critical scene and off-models really damage the appearance of the show. I will say that there seems to be more variety in the music, with a few more original songs. I take back what I said about the first season music-wise - the soundtrack to this anime is very good and helps save a few scenes with Yuki Kajiura's wonderful songwriting. The voice acting also seems a bit more lively this time - it's not perfect but it evokes more emotion than the stale delivery that haunted the first season.

Overall, I give Tsubasa Chronicle 2nd Season a 4/10. Some series get better if you allow them the chance to shine. Other series are almost mandatory to watch in full - to quote a friend, "you need to see the ending to understand the beginning". Tsubasa Chronicle, at least from the anime adaptation, is neither of those. It is a series that comes close to achieving strength but poor circumstances deny it from being a series that's worth any investment. I can not recommend it.

Do you like or dislike this anime? If you haven't watched it, are you encouraged to watch it or not? Leave a comment on my profile telling me what you think of the anime and/or my review.

Thanks for reading and have a blessed day!