Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle 20

CLAMP – Del Rey – 2008 – 28 volumes

While I am still enjoying this, I realized the problem with the last few volumes has been that it has ceased to tell the story and is merely explaining to the reader what is happening.  Ame pointed this out in the comments, but one of the reasons I gave up on this the first time I was reading was that every volume really is an information dump.  The characters will do something cryptic, and then Yuko will show up to explain what just happened.  I’m following along pretty well, and I realize the story isn’t very well-suited to this, but it would be much better if… I don’t know, maybe the characters were shown actually doing things, rather than just having Yuko tell us about things that they’ve done in the past, or tell us about what’s going on behind the scenes that, for whatever reason, the reader isn’t privy to when the scene played out just a few chapters before.

For instance, instead of the seal in “Syaoran’s” eye shattering and pulling the real Syaoran through for no reason, then having “Syaoran” go on a rampage, perhaps it would have been better for the travelers to stumble upon Syaoran in a world, discuss the implication of this, maybe be given some explanation or warning about the seal breaking before it actually happens, and then going through the big battle and the rest of it.  That’s still pretty cryptic stuff, and I realize that the best thing going for the series right now is the fast pace and action, but it would be a lot clearer.

This volume starts with an explanation of the cryptic Sakura business.  While I understand what is going on, I’m not even going to pretend that it’s clear or makes for an easy read.  I’m very troubled by all this exposition and this sudden downturn in mood, which makes all the characters do things that are extremely out-of-character.  Sigh.

A big chunk of the next part is an explanation of Fai’s past.  This follows all sorts of cryptic business about his magic and curses and lies and whatnot.  I still like Fai best, but he definitely crosses the teaser line and ventures into confusingly vague territory for stuff we are and are not told about him.  Again, the story about his childhood makes things clearer, but I nearly ripped my hair out trying to figure out what was going on because DAMMIT HE HAS A TWIN AND APPARENTLY TOOK ON HIS NAME?  WHAT.  That does not help tell a coherent story.  Also annoying is the fact that a big part of the… theme of their story is the fact that the two don’t know much about what’s going on in the country (being completely innocent and guilty of simply being born), and consequently, neither does the reader.  Great.

Now that the group is in Seresu and following up a plot element that’s been laid out since the beginning, I’m hoping the story will start moving forward and we won’t need any more of these Yuko Fireside Chats.  Whatever.  I thought that last volume too, but then Sakura had to go and do all this complicated business because she’s a dreemseer now… I weep, but understand.

Let me talk myself through this a little, just so that I have notes and can keep everything clear.  In other words, here are some VERY CLEARLY MARKED SPOILERS.

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This explanation is not short, but it is written out in the most logical way I can manage.

Okay, so the feather Sakura got back in the X apocalypse kingdom contained some of her magical powers, specifically the ability to see the future in dreams.  With this power, she saw that, at the end of the Chess/Layer Battle tournament, she would gain a feather containing more of her magical power, and this would trigger a curse that had been put on Fai.  The curse states that if Fai ever comes across a magician more powerful than himself, he will kill them (there’s a total BS explanation as to why the curse didn’t trigger when he met Yuko).  In the dream, Fai killed Sakura, then slayed Syaoran and Kurogane, then killed himself.  To prevent this from happening, Sakura asked Yuko for a wish.  She wished for the power to travel dimensions by herself, partly to escape that gruesome future, and partly to be in a place that “Syaoran” would eventually be.  Her fee for this wish was her good luck (given to her for being a daughter blessed by the Gods and the one thing protecting her from a lot of harm the whole series, ie those races a few volumes back) and the use of the leg she injured last volume.

When they finally win the tournament, Sakura is awarded the prize, which is the persocom Freya.  Freya can take Sakura to one world, not of her choosing, and is also made out of one of her feathers.  When Sakura is given Freya, Freya resonates with Chi/Elda, the persocom that Fai made in Seresu before he left, and Elda appears in front of Sakura.  Elda is made out of another of Sakura’s feathers.  Coincidentally, both feathers contain the rest of Sakura’s magical powers.  In one of the most cryptic scenes of the series, Elda, Freya, and Sakura float in midair, linking three dimensions together (the current world, Seresu, and the one that Sakura wants to travel to).  Sakura absorbs the two feathers and gains all her magic back, thus triggering Fai’s curse, so Fai stabs her.  This causes her soul to separate from her body, and her body is pulled to Seresu with Elda and her soul to the world of Dreams, where Sakura wanted to go in order to wait for “Syaoran.”

Deep breath.  Kurogane stops Fai from hurting himself and others, and Yuko shows up to explain all this to the reader.  Fai wants to go and get Sakura’s body from Seresu, and offers to pay the price for his wish with the vision in his one remaining eye.  The others stop him, and they all four decide to go together, the price being their winnings from the Chess Layer tournament (notably, Sakura had lied to the others about wanting to win the tournament to get this money in order to restore the world “Syaoran” had laid to waste, when what she really wanted was Freya.  The money came in handy anyway, because there is no coincidence, only hitsuzen).

Deep breath.  Fai had lied about a great many things, including the extent of his magical power (he has enough magic to travel the worlds by himself, without Yuko’s help), not knowing anything about the feathers (he had brought one with him to the meeting with Yuko, and lied about pulling it off Syaoran), and even his name.  Nobody holds this against him.  In Seresu, the entire land has been laid to waste.  There is not a soul alive anywhere.  The four make their way to the castle we saw in volume one, where Ashura-ou is waiting for them (he looks like Yasha-ou, but Fai calls him Ashura-ou.  Perhaps he is Ashura’s father?).  Ashura-ou is in possession of Fai’s long-dead twin brother… er, Fai.

Cut to a flashback.  Two twins are born, Fai and Yui.  The birth of the twins trigger a lot of bad luck for the kingdom, death, famine, all sorts of nasty stuff.  So the two are banished to a valley of purgatory where time stops, the two remain ageless and bodies don’t rot.  Eventually Yui goes insane and Fai wishes for death in order to save his kingdom.  Eventually, they become the only living people in the world, cursed to remain forever in the purgatory.

Enter Fei Wang Reed.  He tells Yui that there are other worlds, but that only one of the twins can live if the other is to escape.  Yui asks that it be him (I think, he’s referring to himself in the third person here, which is kind of weird), and Fai is hurled from the top of the tower and killed, with the promise that someone will show up and take him away, and that by going with him, he’ll be able to bring Fai back to life.  Enter Ashura-ou.  He comes to take Yui away in order to grant his own (unspoken) wish.  Yui lies and tells him his name is Fai, and goes with him.

For the price of valuing his life above his twin, currentFai is cursed with the spell that made him stab Sakura, and another, unspoken curse.  For whatever reason, Ashura-ou has the still-living body of pastFai and is torturing him with it.  So now we know that Fai has been traveling with the group, perhaps to stay away from Ashura-ou, but also because Fei Wang Reed promised him it would lead to the resurrection of his twin.  Notably, Fai stabbing Sakura at that moment in the story was the first serious deviation from Fei Wang Reed’s master plan, as he had planned to have Fai stab Syaoran when he got his magical powers back later, or perhaps Yuko, on the off chance she was unaware of the curse and did not guard against it at the beginning of the journey.  For what it’s worth.

Whew.  On to the next volume.