Tsubasa 27

CLAMP – Del Rey – 2010 – 28 volumes

Okay. A few things about this volume.

– Lots of abstract fighting and magical swooshes. This is both very climactic and appropriate, and also too nonsensical to really mean anything. It also makes it a very, very quick read since there’s a lot more magic drawings than there are words, or even drawings of people’s bodies.

– Once again, I feel cheated out of explanations that I should have had in XxXholic, and would have been better off there. Yuko is little more than a background character in Tsubasa, yet her elaborate scene from volume 14 and her reason for existing at all in front of Watanuki are explained in this volume. They are awesome reasons, to be sure, and she illustrates a point in the ongoing finale here, but I would have loved this to pieces in XxXholic. While it’s true the reason for Watanuki being shown briefly are in XxXholic, his side of the conversation is cryptic and confusing. It makes me angry the whole story is in Tsubasa, which I feel is the inferior series.

– Christ, I wish this made sense. Another version of Sakura and Syaoran are pulled from… somewhere. Not even copies. Apparently they are… not Cardcaptor Sakura versions. Syaoran original seems to recognize them, but I don’t think the explanation is that simple. To make things more confusing, both the CCS version of one of the characters and the copy versions enter the story one more time. Ugh. Why. Why why why is the story growing more convoluted in the second-to-last volume? There is nothing to foreshadow.

– Fei Wang’s wish is made clear, though the reason behind it is not. The fight scene that stretches through the entire volume is basically a battle of abstract magical force as he pushes on Syaoran, Syaoran pushes back, Fai sort of pushes from the sidelines, Yuko does something, other Sakuras and Syaorans do things…

It had been getting better the last two volumes, too. While… the finale probably needs to be this drawn-out, it’s too abstract to enjoy, and I wish they’d speak in plain terms and finally just get down to brass tacks. Maybe it will make sense in the last volume.