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Tsubasa Chronicle Ramblings.
Right, and right on the heels of my previous entry about cheesetastically bad CLAMP projects, we have...
Tsubasa Chronicle volume 17, in all of its glory.
Can I just come out and say it? Okay. Yaoi Vampire Twincest Boys. That's a cliché up on the level of Robot Ninja Maid. As in, shit writing. But then again, this is freakin' Tsubasa, and so far the CLAMP ladies have not *failed* to deliver on a single opportunity for cliché. Seriously. If you at all mildly suspect that a clichéd plot twist or character is going to show up, IT WILL. If you think that you can predict the outcome of a particular subplot, YOU WILL BE RIGHT. If there is an opportunity for either a) fanservice, b) cute-overload exploitation of characters from X, c) insanely overpowered supervillains revealing their dastardly plans through overblown exposition, or d) yaoi vampire twincest, THEN IT WILL HAPPEN.
The other day on a livejournal community that shall remain nameless, I saw a post in which the OP praised Kurogane and Fay's relationship as not falling into the typical yaoi clichés. I did not respond to the post, but I headdesked for nearly half an hour straight. Fay is not a stereotypical uke? What the hell? No he's not weepy, but not being weepy does not excuse one from being a stereotypical uke. (If you think that weepy!uke is the only uke archetype in existence, then you need to seriously broaden your porn horizons. You hear me? YOU NEED TO READ MORE PORN!) First and foremost, Fay is the one who has to be saved - literally on many occasions, and metaphorically overall. Fay is always the one suffering from catastrophic injuries and having to be saved from danger by Kurogane. Over the past seventeen volumes, I don't think we have even once seen Kurogane get seriously hurt or injured. Whereas Fay has been attacked by flying acid, attacked by demons, sprained a leg or whatever that injury in Outo was, had his eye gouged out, and will likely be horrifically attacked and injured at least three times again before the story ends. Now couple that with Kurogane's storyline, which is all "OMG you must use your strength to protect the ones you love." (Literally. More than one character actually comes out and says that to him. That's subtle. Like Code Geass subtle.) So Kurogane is the taciturn and violent mysterious brooding warrior and reluctant seme, Fay is the mysterious and cheerful and infuriatingly consistently helpless uke who needs to be "saved" on so many levels that it's not even funny.
(And no, I am not conflating "Fay is an innocent victim of Ashura abuse" with "Fay needs to be saved." I think that the manga has so far made very clear that Fay was never an innocent person by any means, and while the nature of his relationship with Ashura remains unclear, I highly doubt that there was evol Fay abuse involved. I do think, however, that the manga has made abundantly clear that Fay needs to be "saved" from himself. Er, as well as from acid and demons and from evol Syaoran clones. That is where Kurogane comes in.)
Which is not to say that this dynamic doesn't work or that it can't be fun. The Fay/Kurogane relationship may travel over well-tread ground, but that doesn't mean that it - like the rest of Tsubasa in all of its badly-written, lushly-illustrated glory - isn't still great fun.
Still, it peeves me to see anybody praising Tsubasa for being fresh, original, subtle, or deep. It is none of those things. It is clichéd, predictable, overblown, and shallow. It also has pretty pictures and, like I said, it's fun. The characters work well together. Fay and Kurogane have chemistry. Sakura is officially squee-worthy again, after her badass display of badassness in volume 17.
On the same livejournal post snarked above, a commenter said something to the effect that she was sick of the fangirls predicting that in the end Kurogane will have to fight Ashura for Fay, because OMG that would be way too predictable. If you ask me, the fact that this is the predictable outcome is EXACTLY why I'm willing to be money that this will be what happens. Also, I predict that it will involve mecha. So far, gigantic mecha is about the only clichéd trope that Tsubasa hasn't hit on yet, and with the story wrapping up soon IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME.
Finally, I recently flipped through Del Rey's translation of Tsubasa volumes 5, 6, and 7 the other day. The translation itself is still good, but the notes at the end of the story are more useless and irrelevant than anything else. Amusement parks are popular in Japan?! Sweet breakfast foods aren't traditional Japanese breakfast foods?! Interesting little cultural tidbits, sure, but also completely irrelevant and useless in terms of understanding the Tsubasa manga. Sometimes I think that Del Rey is catering a little bit too obviously to the hardcore squealing Japanese manga fangirls. OHMIGOD ITZ CULUTRAL INFO ABUT JAPAN I MUST KNOW THIS TO BE L33T!!!!1!11
I would rather that Del Rey focused their note-making energies on actually being thorough when they try to point out all of the crossover characters and locations in Tsubasa. As it is, they managed to point out only half of the crossover characters in volume 6. And I'm not talking about them missing minor background characters like the Misaki and Hatoko cameos in the Cat's Eye cafe. I'm talking about missing major speaking roles from Kentarou, Takeshi, and Eri from Duklyon when they appeared as Informants in Outo. And Sumomo and Kotoko in volume 7. And the fact that Fairy Park is taken from Clover. Del Rey seemed to be doing a good job of pointing out crossover places in the manga too, but they missed Fairy Park (the most obvious crossover location yet) in their notes.
Maybe Del Rey doesn't intend to completely list all of the crossover characters at the back of each volume. But, is it just me, or is it a little bit weird (and stupid) to keep a partial, half-assed list anyway? Maybe this is just the OCD part of my brain talking, but if you're going to go to the trouble of, say, listing CLAMP's crossover characters that appear in Tsubasa Chronicle at the end of each volume, you really should just go all the way and list them all. Why bother only pointing out half of them? Especially when the rest of your back-of-the-volume notes are wasted on useless information like the fact that amusement parks are popular in Japan. OH MY GOD I WOULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED.
Speaking of "the story wrapping up soon," I heard once that there will be twenty volumes of Tsubasa manga. But at the end of the volume 17 we are nowhere near approaching any sort of resolution for the story, so... Does the "twenty volumes" thing still hold true? And where DID I hear or read that originally? I totally can't remember. Considering CLAMP's average Tsubasa pacing (one and a half to two volumes to address a single plot point), I see no way that they can resolve Tsubasa in the course of three more volumes. But then again, I would like to be proven wrong about that.
Tsubasa Chronicle volume 17, in all of its glory.
Can I just come out and say it? Okay. Yaoi Vampire Twincest Boys. That's a cliché up on the level of Robot Ninja Maid. As in, shit writing. But then again, this is freakin' Tsubasa, and so far the CLAMP ladies have not *failed* to deliver on a single opportunity for cliché. Seriously. If you at all mildly suspect that a clichéd plot twist or character is going to show up, IT WILL. If you think that you can predict the outcome of a particular subplot, YOU WILL BE RIGHT. If there is an opportunity for either a) fanservice, b) cute-overload exploitation of characters from X, c) insanely overpowered supervillains revealing their dastardly plans through overblown exposition, or d) yaoi vampire twincest, THEN IT WILL HAPPEN.
The other day on a livejournal community that shall remain nameless, I saw a post in which the OP praised Kurogane and Fay's relationship as not falling into the typical yaoi clichés. I did not respond to the post, but I headdesked for nearly half an hour straight. Fay is not a stereotypical uke? What the hell? No he's not weepy, but not being weepy does not excuse one from being a stereotypical uke. (If you think that weepy!uke is the only uke archetype in existence, then you need to seriously broaden your porn horizons. You hear me? YOU NEED TO READ MORE PORN!) First and foremost, Fay is the one who has to be saved - literally on many occasions, and metaphorically overall. Fay is always the one suffering from catastrophic injuries and having to be saved from danger by Kurogane. Over the past seventeen volumes, I don't think we have even once seen Kurogane get seriously hurt or injured. Whereas Fay has been attacked by flying acid, attacked by demons, sprained a leg or whatever that injury in Outo was, had his eye gouged out, and will likely be horrifically attacked and injured at least three times again before the story ends. Now couple that with Kurogane's storyline, which is all "OMG you must use your strength to protect the ones you love." (Literally. More than one character actually comes out and says that to him. That's subtle. Like Code Geass subtle.) So Kurogane is the taciturn and violent mysterious brooding warrior and reluctant seme, Fay is the mysterious and cheerful and infuriatingly consistently helpless uke who needs to be "saved" on so many levels that it's not even funny.
(And no, I am not conflating "Fay is an innocent victim of Ashura abuse" with "Fay needs to be saved." I think that the manga has so far made very clear that Fay was never an innocent person by any means, and while the nature of his relationship with Ashura remains unclear, I highly doubt that there was evol Fay abuse involved. I do think, however, that the manga has made abundantly clear that Fay needs to be "saved" from himself. Er, as well as from acid and demons and from evol Syaoran clones. That is where Kurogane comes in.)
Which is not to say that this dynamic doesn't work or that it can't be fun. The Fay/Kurogane relationship may travel over well-tread ground, but that doesn't mean that it - like the rest of Tsubasa in all of its badly-written, lushly-illustrated glory - isn't still great fun.
Still, it peeves me to see anybody praising Tsubasa for being fresh, original, subtle, or deep. It is none of those things. It is clichéd, predictable, overblown, and shallow. It also has pretty pictures and, like I said, it's fun. The characters work well together. Fay and Kurogane have chemistry. Sakura is officially squee-worthy again, after her badass display of badassness in volume 17.
On the same livejournal post snarked above, a commenter said something to the effect that she was sick of the fangirls predicting that in the end Kurogane will have to fight Ashura for Fay, because OMG that would be way too predictable. If you ask me, the fact that this is the predictable outcome is EXACTLY why I'm willing to be money that this will be what happens. Also, I predict that it will involve mecha. So far, gigantic mecha is about the only clichéd trope that Tsubasa hasn't hit on yet, and with the story wrapping up soon IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME.
Finally, I recently flipped through Del Rey's translation of Tsubasa volumes 5, 6, and 7 the other day. The translation itself is still good, but the notes at the end of the story are more useless and irrelevant than anything else. Amusement parks are popular in Japan?! Sweet breakfast foods aren't traditional Japanese breakfast foods?! Interesting little cultural tidbits, sure, but also completely irrelevant and useless in terms of understanding the Tsubasa manga. Sometimes I think that Del Rey is catering a little bit too obviously to the hardcore squealing Japanese manga fangirls. OHMIGOD ITZ CULUTRAL INFO ABUT JAPAN I MUST KNOW THIS TO BE L33T!!!!1!11
I would rather that Del Rey focused their note-making energies on actually being thorough when they try to point out all of the crossover characters and locations in Tsubasa. As it is, they managed to point out only half of the crossover characters in volume 6. And I'm not talking about them missing minor background characters like the Misaki and Hatoko cameos in the Cat's Eye cafe. I'm talking about missing major speaking roles from Kentarou, Takeshi, and Eri from Duklyon when they appeared as Informants in Outo. And Sumomo and Kotoko in volume 7. And the fact that Fairy Park is taken from Clover. Del Rey seemed to be doing a good job of pointing out crossover places in the manga too, but they missed Fairy Park (the most obvious crossover location yet) in their notes.
Maybe Del Rey doesn't intend to completely list all of the crossover characters at the back of each volume. But, is it just me, or is it a little bit weird (and stupid) to keep a partial, half-assed list anyway? Maybe this is just the OCD part of my brain talking, but if you're going to go to the trouble of, say, listing CLAMP's crossover characters that appear in Tsubasa Chronicle at the end of each volume, you really should just go all the way and list them all. Why bother only pointing out half of them? Especially when the rest of your back-of-the-volume notes are wasted on useless information like the fact that amusement parks are popular in Japan. OH MY GOD I WOULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED.
Speaking of "the story wrapping up soon," I heard once that there will be twenty volumes of Tsubasa manga. But at the end of the volume 17 we are nowhere near approaching any sort of resolution for the story, so... Does the "twenty volumes" thing still hold true? And where DID I hear or read that originally? I totally can't remember. Considering CLAMP's average Tsubasa pacing (one and a half to two volumes to address a single plot point), I see no way that they can resolve Tsubasa in the course of three more volumes. But then again, I would like to be proven wrong about that.
Tsubasa
Re: Tsubasa
It's still worth checking out just for the artwork alone, though.
Re: Tsubasa
no subject
yetor anything, but I'd rather spend the money on other things). I admit the artwork is nice to look at, but good art doesn't make a good series.In my opinion, TRC isn't CLAMP's best, but it isn't the worst thing you could pick up. It really seems like one of those series you'll love or hate, but maybe that's because I'm not a very big CLAMP fan. :\
no subject
Exactly. I couldn't agree more.