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The End of Tsubasa, Part 4 of 4: Chapter 232
All right.
Okay.
I have never, ever read an ending to anything - ever - that more clearly screamed of the writers just throwing up their hands and giving up. It's clear that CLAMP doesn't give a flying fuck about this series any more, and they just wanted to end it already, so end it they did. It's really their own damn fault for writing themselves into a corner the moment that they started the whole Oedipal time travel plot twist, though. There was never going to be any way to resolve that without completely fucking over the storyline, so they just... well, didn't. They didn't really resolve anything. They just stopped.
We open with a picture of a feather, and a caption: This is all of my precious memories with you. Remember that, kids, 'cause it's gonna be important in a few pages.
Okay, so, Oediporan and Watanuki are still trying to bust out of the space-time void. Fei Wong's voice echoes again: "PAY THE PRICE!"
Suddenly! Black goo tentacles appear out of nowhere and wrap themselves around our heroes! Oh noes!
All right, so I guess they aren't getting out until they pay a price, then.
"All right, so I guess we aren't getting out until we pay a price, then!" Watanuki says.
Oediporan is still clutching the feather that Cloney left behind when he died. "Okay," Oediporan says, "a price. Gotta think of a price. It can't be too much, though."
"If you pay too much of yourself, you'll only end up hurting yourself," Watanuki points out, stating the blazingly obvious. "If Yuuko-san were here, then she could tell us what would be the right price to pay! But she's not." Her kimono is, though! 'Cause Watanuki's still holding her kimono in a TOTALLY NOT AT ALL CREEPY way. "Normally, a person can't judge an appropriate price for himself. But since we're both here, and since we're both the same - but not the same - we might be able to judge whether each other's price is correct."
"So this is Fei Wong's last curse," Syaoran says. Okay. That makes sense. Let's go with that.
"Unless we give up something precious, it won't be a real payment," Watanuki says.
"But if we give up something too precious, then there's no point in escaping at all," Syaoran counters.
Syaoran holds out the feather. Watanuki reaches out and touches it. The feather glows.
Together, they say: "The price will be..."
Syaoran looks somber. "I know that my leaving here will never change or prevent all that has happened so far. I know that there are people who will be hurt and saddened by my decision. Yet, this is the price that I choose to pay."
Watanuki is equally as somber. "I don't think that my decision is correct. I don't think that this is the price that I should have to pay. Yet, because I have chosen to wait, then I must pay this price."
And then there is glowing.
Y'know, I thought these two guys were supposed to judge each other's prices. I think they kind of skipped over the part where they actually told each other what they were choosing to pay. Oops.
So anyway, now there is glowing everywhere. Watanuki begins to fade away. He grasps Oediporan's hand, smiles, and says, "Thank you for bringing about my existencethrough your epic and repeated time-traveling failures." I guess Watanuki doesn't harbor any resentment about that whole thing where his parents faked their own deaths and abandoned him to grow up as an orphan, then.
A flash of light.
Suddenly Oediporan is back in the ruins. The ruins have been completely restored, no sign of battle damage or dead FWR minions anywhere. The fountains are flowing again, so I guess that means time is moving again. Kurogane, Fay, Mokona, and Sakura are there. Kurogane and Fay still look extremely battle-damaged and worse for wear. Sakura is holding a feather identical to Cloney's feather, and sobbing.
"I... The other I... she disappeared..."
Fay and Kurogane look on, grimly. Mokona cries.
Oediporan walks up to Sakura as she keeps weeping. "She said she knew that it would turn out like this. But Syaoran, I knew that at least you would come back to me, so... Syaoran, as long as you and I remain... And if we still have their memories, then... It's not the end."
Sakura absorbs her clone's feather into her chest.
Oediporan absorbs Cloney's feather into his chest.
Then both of them collapse into Fay and Kurogane's arms.
Sakura closes her eyes, as tears leak from beneath her eyelids. Oediporan looks up at Kurogane, but then Kurogane punches him in the face.
Awesome.
"Since he left without me getting a chance to hit him," Kurogane says, "you have to take it instead. Sorry."
Oediporan is squinting up at Kurogane like, WTF?
"You should sleep now," Fay says, "both of you. We can make our new beginning when you wake up."
Oediporan closes his eyes. "Thank... you..."
We cut to a shot of Clow Country, albeit seen from a distance. The buildings all look fine and perfectly restored, but as this is from a distance, I can't tell if there are any people left alive. Anyway, the sun is rising over the desert. A caption informs us: The brilliant sunrise is both a prayer for their good fortune, and the mark of the end of their journey of dreams.
The End.
.
.
.
.
.
NINJA BONUS TEXT OMFUCKING GOD TEENY-TINY PRINT AT THE BOTTOM: Epilogue next week! Whoo-hoo!
Or not.
Sooooo, I guess we have to wait until next week to find out what the flying fuck kind of price Oediporan and Watanuki paid, huh?
And I guess that the souls of the clones (apparently represented by those feathers) have like... merged with Sakura and Oediporan? Or is it more the case that Sakura and Oediporan have absorbed the clones' memories?
Either way, I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT THE FREUDIAN IMPLICATIONS OF THAT. Holy shit, dudes! How fucked up would it be if Oediporan now remembered being his own father?!?! And I don't even want to touch what might be going on inside Sakura's brain right now. Especially not if she now remembers giving birth to Syaoran. Holy shit. Hoooooooooly shiiiiiiiiit.
So, in the end, we're left with this: Kurogane, Fay, and Mokona survived. Sakura and Syaoran survived too, so I guess they can still all be one big happy family. It's not the same Sakura and Syaoran that went on the journey with Kurogane/Fay and who for all intents and purposes adopted Kurogane as their father and Fay as their mother; but we can go ahead and pretend that they're still the same Sakura and Syaoran, and then we'll have a happy ending.
It's kind of like that Simpsons episode where it turned out that Principal Skinner wasn't the real Principal Skinner after all. But at the end of the episode, his mother insisted that she would rather pretend that he was her real son and just go back to the status quo, rather than ever having to acknowledge the truth ever again. So then nobody ever spoke about it ever again.
Or that other Simpsons episode, where Lisa's cat Snowball II kept dying horribly, but she just kept adopting a new identical cat and re-naming it Snowball II every time, and in the end, nobody was the wiser.
That's kind of the same thing that's happening here, really.
Okay, so... That's it, then! The end. Yuuko is gone, but since Syaoran and Company still have Mokona with them, they can keep hopping dimensions indefinitely from now on. So I guess our heroes are riding off into the sunset, then. Further adventures await! Unless they decide to stay in Clow Country and rebuild--
Wait a minute.
So like, IS EVERYBODY ELSE IN CLOW COUNTRY STILL DEAD?!
No, really. Is everybody else in Clow Country still dead?! What happened to Fujitaka, Touya, Yukito, and everybody else? ("Everybody else" does not include Nadeshiko at this point because we already found out that she was simply erased from reality during one of the previous time resets. Sorry, lady!) Anyway, we already saw most of Clow Country melt into goo, so... did Touya and Company melt into goo, too? I'm assuming that Clow Country is no longer separated from the flow of time, but that begs the question: now what? Has time "started over" seven years in the past, as it was one the day that Syaoran, Kurogane, Fay, and Mokona arrived? Or did time flash-forward to the point seven years later, when Sakura and Syaoran first left?
I guess we'll find out next week, hopefully!
Anyway, that is so, so NOT the only plot hole left unresolved by this ending. To whit:
1. Why was FWR so concerned with gaining the "power to cross dimensions" to find a not!dead!Yuuko when he could already send other people across dimensions to do his bidding for him? (Not to mention the fact that he could already stick his arms through holes between dimensions to pull off most excellent feats like, say, stabbing Kurogane's mom, too. And he could already see into other dimensions as much as he wanted to, so again, why...?)
1a. Speaking of which, why DID Fei Wong kill Kurogane's mom?
2. Who/what was Xing Huo? And why did she have the power to send Oediporan to a different dimension? Why did she betray FWR in the first place?
3. The time resets. There is no way - no fucking way - that these make any sense whatsoever. But I've covered that in a previous post. If you stop and count the Sakuras, even allowing for cloning and time resets, they don't add up, either. "Paradox" and "plot hole" are really understatements, here.
4. Speaking of which... The Sakura clone. When she was first revealed as a clone, FWR made it very clear that she was created at the moment when the first Sakura had her incident in the ruins, or what we saw depicted in the first chapter of the manga. And yet, later, this was retconned into "oh it was the clone Sakura all along who grew up with Cloney in the reset!Clow Country." Yeah, okay. No. I'm not even asking a question here. I'm just saying: No. Hell no.
4b. WHY. THE. HELL. DID. FEI. WONG. REED. TRY. TO. KILL. SAKURA. IN. THE. FIRST. TIME. LOOP. It makes no sense. No sense whatsoever. Not only does it make no sense that FWR tried to kill Sakura, but the WAY that he chose to kill her makes no sense as well. Why did he bother sticking a "death seal" on her that would take SEVEN YEARS before it finally killed her?! Why didn't he just shishkabob her right away, like he did with Kurogane's mom? Or if he wanted to wait until she was fourteen years old, then why not just kill her then?!
4c. Also, I'm not exactly sure how real!Sakura conveniently got over being dead a couple chapters ago, anyway. Maybe this has something to do with what Yuuko said back in chapter 220, when she revealed that she Deus Ex Machina'd clone!Sakura's soul and real!Sakura's body away from certain death? But... See, that explains why clone!Sakura has been cradling real!Sakura's corpse in her arms during most of the finale. It most certainly does not explain how that corpse came back to life. Yuuko specifically said that she saved real!Sakura's body and clone!Sakura's soul. Then she sent clone!Sakura's soul on to be reincarnated with Syaoran. Yuuko made no mention of what could possibly have happened to real!Sakura's soul.
5. HOW DID THE UNIVERSE FIX ITSELF?! I thought that FWR fucked it over irreversably by "breaking the rules of the universe." He even said, several times, that what he had done was irreversable. And then Team Incest further fucked things over by breaking the Doom Tube. And yet... the universe has magically healed itself! HOW?!
6. What are the ruins in Clow Country? How did FWR imbue them with the power to cross dimensions, as he claimed to? How did he take that power and put it into the Doom Tube? (Again, begging the question of why FWR wanted to gain the power to cross dimensions in the first place if he could already imbue it into some other location/object.)
7. What is the Doom Tube? How does it work? Is there more than one? Or is the Doom Tube in Yuuko's shop the same as the Doom Tube that FWR used? (And if it is, how the hell did FWR get his hands on it?)
8. Why did Cloney and Clone Princess abandon Watanuki, fake their own deaths, and revert themselves to their teenage forms to hang out inside the Doom Tube for seven years? Whhhhyyyyyyyy?! I mean, yes, I know that the answer is "because Cloney was reborn as Clow Reed's relative so he wanted to use his new magical abilities to help fix the universe when right moment arrived." But that still doesn't explain why exactly he and his wife had to abandon their son, fake their deaths, and seal themselves inside the Doom Tube in order to be able to show up at said appropriate moment.
9. What is the black vortex of doom that showed up in chapter 230? Why were only the two Syaoran sucked inside? Why did it cause Oediporan to lose his powers? HOW DID WATANUKI GET IN THERE?! Blah blah blah. "Fei Wong Reed's last curse" is barely any sort of explanation whatsoever.
10. What was the point of giving us that big dramatic awesome reunion scene in chapter 226 if the clones were just going to die again anyway?
11. All of that shit that Yuuko said in chapter 220 makes no sense in retrospect. See point 4c above.
12. I give up. There's more that I could be asking, but I give up. Too many plot holes, sooooooo many plot holes, I just can't count them all! Oh, I guess I should mention the epic BIOLOGY FAIL of Oediporan's origin, though. How exactly did Cloney and Sakura's DNA combine to create an exact copy of Cloney, again? Is there any possible way that CLAMP could ever explain that? Any way? Bueller?
And aside from issues of plot holes, shitty plot twists (motherfucking! Syaoran being his own grandpa! Fay's entire ridiculous over-the-top backstory!), horrible pacing, stupid dialogue, and general lack of any sort of coherent ending whatsoever... I am still, yes, still not happy with the gender dynamics in this manga. To be fair: Waaaaay back in the beginning, when Tsubasa first started, this was my main complaint about the series. Sakura, one of the most awesome heroines that CLAMP has ever written, was reduced to being a helpless, pretty prop in Syaoran's story, with her powers basically erased (or relegated to being completely passive) and her personality flattened to cardboard. This is why I was so happy when we finally got to the Piffle arc, and then the Tokyo arc, and then - glory! - the Infinty arc, when Sakura not only finally started doing heroic things, but she also - finally! - got some of her personality back, too. She finally moved beyond being just a generic love interest, and she finally started to show some complex motivations and feelings.
Then of course, after the Infinity arc, the storyline went to shit. And Sakura went back to being totally helpless. And then she died, like, three times. And then we ended up being treated to totally awesome moments like in chapter 218 when Oediporan was gazing at his own mother holding Sakura's lifeless corpse and dramatically vowing that he would never let Sakura die even though she was already dead. Dead three times over, in fact. Oh, the miracles of cloning and time travel!
Okay, you know what? I just can't write anything else in this entry. I'm done. I am so, so done with this pile of shit. Now all I can do is sit back, relax, and pop some popcorn. Why? Because I'm waiting for the glorious, glorious moment when all of the North American manga bloggers who have been singing Tsubasa's praises start to read the Clow Country arc. I predict that there will be some epic backlash. I also predict that there will be some epic stubborn CLAMP apologists who continue to defend the storytelling integrity of this series to the bitter end.
The bitter, bitter end.
If you need me, I'll be sitting curled up on top of my bed, soothing my soul with a most excellent re-reading of the entire Cardcaptor Sakura manga. You know, from back when CLAMP could actually write something that deserved the title of "one of the greatest fucking manga series that I've ever read," and they could actually write a Sakura who seriously deserved the title of "possibly the greatest magical girl heroine ever written, hands-down."
I want to remember the good times, not the bad.
So long, Tsubasa. It's been nice knowing you.
(Oh who am I kidding, I'm going to read next week's epilogue anyway.)
Edited to add: Epilogue recap is GO. Have any of the plot holes listed above been addressed in the epilogue? The answer is: No, not really. But that's no surprise.
Okay.
I have never, ever read an ending to anything - ever - that more clearly screamed of the writers just throwing up their hands and giving up. It's clear that CLAMP doesn't give a flying fuck about this series any more, and they just wanted to end it already, so end it they did. It's really their own damn fault for writing themselves into a corner the moment that they started the whole Oedipal time travel plot twist, though. There was never going to be any way to resolve that without completely fucking over the storyline, so they just... well, didn't. They didn't really resolve anything. They just stopped.
We open with a picture of a feather, and a caption: This is all of my precious memories with you. Remember that, kids, 'cause it's gonna be important in a few pages.
Okay, so, Oediporan and Watanuki are still trying to bust out of the space-time void. Fei Wong's voice echoes again: "PAY THE PRICE!"
Suddenly! Black goo tentacles appear out of nowhere and wrap themselves around our heroes! Oh noes!
All right, so I guess they aren't getting out until they pay a price, then.
"All right, so I guess we aren't getting out until we pay a price, then!" Watanuki says.
Oediporan is still clutching the feather that Cloney left behind when he died. "Okay," Oediporan says, "a price. Gotta think of a price. It can't be too much, though."
"If you pay too much of yourself, you'll only end up hurting yourself," Watanuki points out, stating the blazingly obvious. "If Yuuko-san were here, then she could tell us what would be the right price to pay! But she's not." Her kimono is, though! 'Cause Watanuki's still holding her kimono in a TOTALLY NOT AT ALL CREEPY way. "Normally, a person can't judge an appropriate price for himself. But since we're both here, and since we're both the same - but not the same - we might be able to judge whether each other's price is correct."
"So this is Fei Wong's last curse," Syaoran says. Okay. That makes sense. Let's go with that.
"Unless we give up something precious, it won't be a real payment," Watanuki says.
"But if we give up something too precious, then there's no point in escaping at all," Syaoran counters.
Syaoran holds out the feather. Watanuki reaches out and touches it. The feather glows.
Together, they say: "The price will be..."
Syaoran looks somber. "I know that my leaving here will never change or prevent all that has happened so far. I know that there are people who will be hurt and saddened by my decision. Yet, this is the price that I choose to pay."
Watanuki is equally as somber. "I don't think that my decision is correct. I don't think that this is the price that I should have to pay. Yet, because I have chosen to wait, then I must pay this price."
And then there is glowing.
Y'know, I thought these two guys were supposed to judge each other's prices. I think they kind of skipped over the part where they actually told each other what they were choosing to pay. Oops.
So anyway, now there is glowing everywhere. Watanuki begins to fade away. He grasps Oediporan's hand, smiles, and says, "Thank you for bringing about my existence
A flash of light.
Suddenly Oediporan is back in the ruins. The ruins have been completely restored, no sign of battle damage or dead FWR minions anywhere. The fountains are flowing again, so I guess that means time is moving again. Kurogane, Fay, Mokona, and Sakura are there. Kurogane and Fay still look extremely battle-damaged and worse for wear. Sakura is holding a feather identical to Cloney's feather, and sobbing.
"I... The other I... she disappeared..."
Fay and Kurogane look on, grimly. Mokona cries.
Oediporan walks up to Sakura as she keeps weeping. "She said she knew that it would turn out like this. But Syaoran, I knew that at least you would come back to me, so... Syaoran, as long as you and I remain... And if we still have their memories, then... It's not the end."
Sakura absorbs her clone's feather into her chest.
Oediporan absorbs Cloney's feather into his chest.
Then both of them collapse into Fay and Kurogane's arms.
Sakura closes her eyes, as tears leak from beneath her eyelids. Oediporan looks up at Kurogane, but then Kurogane punches him in the face.
Awesome.
"Since he left without me getting a chance to hit him," Kurogane says, "you have to take it instead. Sorry."
Oediporan is squinting up at Kurogane like, WTF?
"You should sleep now," Fay says, "both of you. We can make our new beginning when you wake up."
Oediporan closes his eyes. "Thank... you..."
We cut to a shot of Clow Country, albeit seen from a distance. The buildings all look fine and perfectly restored, but as this is from a distance, I can't tell if there are any people left alive. Anyway, the sun is rising over the desert. A caption informs us: The brilliant sunrise is both a prayer for their good fortune, and the mark of the end of their journey of dreams.
The End.
.
.
.
.
.
NINJA BONUS TEXT OMFUCKING GOD TEENY-TINY PRINT AT THE BOTTOM: Epilogue next week! Whoo-hoo!
Or not.
Sooooo, I guess we have to wait until next week to find out what the flying fuck kind of price Oediporan and Watanuki paid, huh?
And I guess that the souls of the clones (apparently represented by those feathers) have like... merged with Sakura and Oediporan? Or is it more the case that Sakura and Oediporan have absorbed the clones' memories?
Either way, I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT THE FREUDIAN IMPLICATIONS OF THAT. Holy shit, dudes! How fucked up would it be if Oediporan now remembered being his own father?!?! And I don't even want to touch what might be going on inside Sakura's brain right now. Especially not if she now remembers giving birth to Syaoran. Holy shit. Hoooooooooly shiiiiiiiiit.
So, in the end, we're left with this: Kurogane, Fay, and Mokona survived. Sakura and Syaoran survived too, so I guess they can still all be one big happy family. It's not the same Sakura and Syaoran that went on the journey with Kurogane/Fay and who for all intents and purposes adopted Kurogane as their father and Fay as their mother; but we can go ahead and pretend that they're still the same Sakura and Syaoran, and then we'll have a happy ending.
It's kind of like that Simpsons episode where it turned out that Principal Skinner wasn't the real Principal Skinner after all. But at the end of the episode, his mother insisted that she would rather pretend that he was her real son and just go back to the status quo, rather than ever having to acknowledge the truth ever again. So then nobody ever spoke about it ever again.
Or that other Simpsons episode, where Lisa's cat Snowball II kept dying horribly, but she just kept adopting a new identical cat and re-naming it Snowball II every time, and in the end, nobody was the wiser.
That's kind of the same thing that's happening here, really.
Okay, so... That's it, then! The end. Yuuko is gone, but since Syaoran and Company still have Mokona with them, they can keep hopping dimensions indefinitely from now on. So I guess our heroes are riding off into the sunset, then. Further adventures await! Unless they decide to stay in Clow Country and rebuild--
Wait a minute.
So like, IS EVERYBODY ELSE IN CLOW COUNTRY STILL DEAD?!
No, really. Is everybody else in Clow Country still dead?! What happened to Fujitaka, Touya, Yukito, and everybody else? ("Everybody else" does not include Nadeshiko at this point because we already found out that she was simply erased from reality during one of the previous time resets. Sorry, lady!) Anyway, we already saw most of Clow Country melt into goo, so... did Touya and Company melt into goo, too? I'm assuming that Clow Country is no longer separated from the flow of time, but that begs the question: now what? Has time "started over" seven years in the past, as it was one the day that Syaoran, Kurogane, Fay, and Mokona arrived? Or did time flash-forward to the point seven years later, when Sakura and Syaoran first left?
I guess we'll find out next week, hopefully!
Anyway, that is so, so NOT the only plot hole left unresolved by this ending. To whit:
1. Why was FWR so concerned with gaining the "power to cross dimensions" to find a not!dead!Yuuko when he could already send other people across dimensions to do his bidding for him? (Not to mention the fact that he could already stick his arms through holes between dimensions to pull off most excellent feats like, say, stabbing Kurogane's mom, too. And he could already see into other dimensions as much as he wanted to, so again, why...?)
1a. Speaking of which, why DID Fei Wong kill Kurogane's mom?
2. Who/what was Xing Huo? And why did she have the power to send Oediporan to a different dimension? Why did she betray FWR in the first place?
3. The time resets. There is no way - no fucking way - that these make any sense whatsoever. But I've covered that in a previous post. If you stop and count the Sakuras, even allowing for cloning and time resets, they don't add up, either. "Paradox" and "plot hole" are really understatements, here.
4. Speaking of which... The Sakura clone. When she was first revealed as a clone, FWR made it very clear that she was created at the moment when the first Sakura had her incident in the ruins, or what we saw depicted in the first chapter of the manga. And yet, later, this was retconned into "oh it was the clone Sakura all along who grew up with Cloney in the reset!Clow Country." Yeah, okay. No. I'm not even asking a question here. I'm just saying: No. Hell no.
4b. WHY. THE. HELL. DID. FEI. WONG. REED. TRY. TO. KILL. SAKURA. IN. THE. FIRST. TIME. LOOP. It makes no sense. No sense whatsoever. Not only does it make no sense that FWR tried to kill Sakura, but the WAY that he chose to kill her makes no sense as well. Why did he bother sticking a "death seal" on her that would take SEVEN YEARS before it finally killed her?! Why didn't he just shishkabob her right away, like he did with Kurogane's mom? Or if he wanted to wait until she was fourteen years old, then why not just kill her then?!
4c. Also, I'm not exactly sure how real!Sakura conveniently got over being dead a couple chapters ago, anyway. Maybe this has something to do with what Yuuko said back in chapter 220, when she revealed that she Deus Ex Machina'd clone!Sakura's soul and real!Sakura's body away from certain death? But... See, that explains why clone!Sakura has been cradling real!Sakura's corpse in her arms during most of the finale. It most certainly does not explain how that corpse came back to life. Yuuko specifically said that she saved real!Sakura's body and clone!Sakura's soul. Then she sent clone!Sakura's soul on to be reincarnated with Syaoran. Yuuko made no mention of what could possibly have happened to real!Sakura's soul.
5. HOW DID THE UNIVERSE FIX ITSELF?! I thought that FWR fucked it over irreversably by "breaking the rules of the universe." He even said, several times, that what he had done was irreversable. And then Team Incest further fucked things over by breaking the Doom Tube. And yet... the universe has magically healed itself! HOW?!
6. What are the ruins in Clow Country? How did FWR imbue them with the power to cross dimensions, as he claimed to? How did he take that power and put it into the Doom Tube? (Again, begging the question of why FWR wanted to gain the power to cross dimensions in the first place if he could already imbue it into some other location/object.)
7. What is the Doom Tube? How does it work? Is there more than one? Or is the Doom Tube in Yuuko's shop the same as the Doom Tube that FWR used? (And if it is, how the hell did FWR get his hands on it?)
8. Why did Cloney and Clone Princess abandon Watanuki, fake their own deaths, and revert themselves to their teenage forms to hang out inside the Doom Tube for seven years? Whhhhyyyyyyyy?! I mean, yes, I know that the answer is "because Cloney was reborn as Clow Reed's relative so he wanted to use his new magical abilities to help fix the universe when right moment arrived." But that still doesn't explain why exactly he and his wife had to abandon their son, fake their deaths, and seal themselves inside the Doom Tube in order to be able to show up at said appropriate moment.
9. What is the black vortex of doom that showed up in chapter 230? Why were only the two Syaoran sucked inside? Why did it cause Oediporan to lose his powers? HOW DID WATANUKI GET IN THERE?! Blah blah blah. "Fei Wong Reed's last curse" is barely any sort of explanation whatsoever.
10. What was the point of giving us that big dramatic awesome reunion scene in chapter 226 if the clones were just going to die again anyway?
11. All of that shit that Yuuko said in chapter 220 makes no sense in retrospect. See point 4c above.
12. I give up. There's more that I could be asking, but I give up. Too many plot holes, sooooooo many plot holes, I just can't count them all! Oh, I guess I should mention the epic BIOLOGY FAIL of Oediporan's origin, though. How exactly did Cloney and Sakura's DNA combine to create an exact copy of Cloney, again? Is there any possible way that CLAMP could ever explain that? Any way? Bueller?
And aside from issues of plot holes, shitty plot twists (motherfucking! Syaoran being his own grandpa! Fay's entire ridiculous over-the-top backstory!), horrible pacing, stupid dialogue, and general lack of any sort of coherent ending whatsoever... I am still, yes, still not happy with the gender dynamics in this manga. To be fair: Waaaaay back in the beginning, when Tsubasa first started, this was my main complaint about the series. Sakura, one of the most awesome heroines that CLAMP has ever written, was reduced to being a helpless, pretty prop in Syaoran's story, with her powers basically erased (or relegated to being completely passive) and her personality flattened to cardboard. This is why I was so happy when we finally got to the Piffle arc, and then the Tokyo arc, and then - glory! - the Infinty arc, when Sakura not only finally started doing heroic things, but she also - finally! - got some of her personality back, too. She finally moved beyond being just a generic love interest, and she finally started to show some complex motivations and feelings.
Then of course, after the Infinity arc, the storyline went to shit. And Sakura went back to being totally helpless. And then she died, like, three times. And then we ended up being treated to totally awesome moments like in chapter 218 when Oediporan was gazing at his own mother holding Sakura's lifeless corpse and dramatically vowing that he would never let Sakura die even though she was already dead. Dead three times over, in fact. Oh, the miracles of cloning and time travel!
Okay, you know what? I just can't write anything else in this entry. I'm done. I am so, so done with this pile of shit. Now all I can do is sit back, relax, and pop some popcorn. Why? Because I'm waiting for the glorious, glorious moment when all of the North American manga bloggers who have been singing Tsubasa's praises start to read the Clow Country arc. I predict that there will be some epic backlash. I also predict that there will be some epic stubborn CLAMP apologists who continue to defend the storytelling integrity of this series to the bitter end.
The bitter, bitter end.
If you need me, I'll be sitting curled up on top of my bed, soothing my soul with a most excellent re-reading of the entire Cardcaptor Sakura manga. You know, from back when CLAMP could actually write something that deserved the title of "one of the greatest fucking manga series that I've ever read," and they could actually write a Sakura who seriously deserved the title of "possibly the greatest magical girl heroine ever written, hands-down."
I want to remember the good times, not the bad.
So long, Tsubasa. It's been nice knowing you.
(Oh who am I kidding, I'm going to read next week's epilogue anyway.)
Edited to add: Epilogue recap is GO. Have any of the plot holes listed above been addressed in the epilogue? The answer is: No, not really. But that's no surprise.
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QFT
I had a feeling it was going to end this way... Thanks for helping us keep our sanity throughout. XD
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It's a very confusing loop.
Uhh... at least the art is pretty? Is that a plus for this?
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I so totally want the BIG version that was made from XD
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O_O
THANK YOU SO FREAKING MUCH!
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I'm glad that's over.
I bet CLAMP will introduce the GOD BEING NAMED CLAMP-SELF-INSERT-NAME-HERE WHO MAGICALLY FIXED EVERYTHING WITH PUPPIES.
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Here is a puppy:
Wow, I really DO feel better now.
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But yes, puppies made my night.
Here's betting that the epilogue has ten parts to it.
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xxxHolic seems so simple art wise (except for some scenes, but I guess it's because of the premise of the series), and Tsubasa's WTF IS GOING ON moments.
Bah. The epilogue BETTER have some closure. I seriously expected Yuuko to come back from the dead. Cliche, but I like her.
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and yes - Cardcaptor Sakura is the best anime. Ever. Period.
Feck you CLAMP, feck you.
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CLAMP sounds like they've really fallen far, which is depressing... but no one can stay at the top of their game forever. It's just that some manage to stay up there longer than others.
Oh, well. I've still got Magic Knight Rayearth.
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God, I think I need too some CCS to see a Sakura who is not a fail and an ending that makes sense.
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No. Goddamn. Sense.
UGH, GAWD, THIS IS NOT AN ENDING, IT IS AN ADMISSION OF DEFEAT.
I get the feeling it's going to be To Be Continued, only as seen through intermittent communication with Watanuki via the Mokona^2.
I also want an explanation for why Watanuki is so goddamn creepy in the "new" xxxHOLiC. It's like he's trying to act like Yuuko, adopting some of her body language and facial expressions. It's fucking creepy.
I wonder if Kobato will be as big of a clusterfuck.
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Part of me wonders if Kobato will turn out to be tied to xxxHOLiC, especially with the latter's timeskip. She possibly lives in Watanuki's old apartment building, she interacts with Obaa-san, who has become a more major character in xxxHOLiC, and she has to collect things as a price to go somewhere. I wouldn't put it past CLAMP to pull a "we started the sequel before the original ended!"
Randomly, am I the only person who thinks Kobato sometimes looks like Sakura with long hair? I see it more in the b/w images, but I remember that when I first saw her, I thought she was an older Sakura.
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I was so excited when I first read it but then after Fay lost his mojo my enthusiam dropped less and less and now its in the negatives. I had to read blogs and forums because I had gotten so confused about the story and now in the end it still does not make sense. I really hope xxxholic does not end like this but yeah I'm not holding any hope for it anymore even though I'll totally read it still...but definitely not buy. What a waste.
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Thank you for making this shit bearable. <33