Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Volume 1 Book

OK, I plowed through all 28 volumes of this initially in an effort to make sense of xxxHolic. Which, eventually, it sort of did. What I am to use to make sense of Tsubasa, I don't know. Well, Wikipedia, I suppose, but even it only becomes comprehensible after one has read the thing maybe twice.

I had actually, as usual, started with the anime, but it does not go all the way to the end of the tale, and it skipped some parts I'd been especially curious about. The anime is quite well done and recommended, if incomplete even with the OVAs added.

Attractions include a couple of very beguiling side characters, and a good bit of sartorial and art value. Also, it never descends into smarminess. De-tractions include the utterly tedious fight scenes that seem to be a requirement of the form, and without which one could get through things in half the time and page count with no loss of information.

The most complicated end-game I have ever seen finally clears the decks for the happy ending, which is: all the male characters go off into the sunset together, and they finally dump the girl who stays home. Granted, she's spent half the tale comatose, taking passive heroine-ing to whole new levels just short of necrophilia. So they're all probably better off without each other.

All the markers of the genre cranked up to eleven; angsty backstories, wildly melodramatic set pieces, dark secrets, a peculiarly Japanese idfic.

I kinda liked it, actually.

Ta, L.