Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle 19

CLAMP – Del Rey – 2008 – 28 volumes

The Hikaru doll blew my mind.  Wasn’t expecting it, but probably should have given the fact they were fighting in the layer and all.  Plus, you know, Eagle Vision and Hikaru Shido are totally OTP.  The only thing that could have made that better was if somehow, it was Icchan that transported them between dimensions.  That would have worked on a lot of weird levels, especially if he had shown up in addition to what actually happened.  And then claimed he was Fei Wang Reed.  That would’ve been so tight.

Anyway.  This volume throws a few random curveballs our way.  I’m pretty sure I understood pretty much everything that was going on, but even still, these curveballs felt a little over-dramatic and unnecessary.  The first one, dealing with Sakura, seemed completely unnecessary and against the spirit of what has been going on post-clone Syaoran, even given her justification for doing it.  The second curveball was just brutal, and we’ve hurt Fai enough already.  I know we’ve got more punishment to dish out to him later, and we’ve only really touched the tip of the Fai iceburg, but that double-page spread is still one of the biggest shockers in the series.  I mean, there’s just absolutely no reason for it.  Poor Fai.

There’s lots of little touches to develop Fai’s character in this volume.  Both Sakura and Kurogane give indications that they don’t like it when he hides everything and pretends things are peachy, and we also begin to see his world creeping in since… well, the thng he asks for is starting to happen.

I still like Sakura’s luck.  That’s a pretty nifty plot element, even if it’s something we may never see or hear about again.  Apparently… she got what she wanted?  I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the three dimensions being mentioned.  There was… Freya and Elda at work, one was in a different dimension, and one was in the dimension that the story is currently taking place in.  Since Sakura was using Freya, there was a partial third dimension being drawn in while Freya and Elda were resonating?  Hopefully that didn’t spoil anything, but it always helps to talk these things out for me.  Hopefully it’ll make sense to others later, as well.