Tsubasa: Resevoir Chronicle: Volume 13

by CLAMP, 187 pages

Young archaeologist Syaoran loves his life and his best friend, the sweet, unconventional princess Sakura. When they are attacked at a desert excavation site, Sakura's memories are all turned to feathers and scattered across multiple dimensions. To retrieve them, Syaoran makes a deal with Yûko, the enigmatic space-time witch, who gives him the means to travel (in the form of her servant Mokona, a magical, fluffy, bunny-type creature) and companions (the easy-going Fai and the caustic Kurogane), who have their own closely-held reasons for leaving their respective worlds to join him. But in return for her help, each of the three must give up something precious to them. For Syaoran, those are Sakura's memories of himself.

In this volume, the companions find themselves in the world of Recort, a land resembling a Victorian London in which the supernatural is normal. While Mokona goes off to try to sense the presence of a memory feather, the others visit the magnificent central library where Kurogane discovers a book with no title and no text. But when he hands it to Syaoran, the boy is immediately flung into the world between the pages where he witnesses the tragic youth of a child who looks exactly like a young Kurogane....

CLAMP is a group of women manga-ka (manga creators) deservedly famous within Japan and around the world. Their genre-crossing stories are complex and nuanced, their characters original and endearing, and their instantly recognizable art a pleasure for the eyes. They also have a penchant for interweaving elements of their various titles together, so readers of their other works will here see random appearances and even major roles filled by familiar characters from, among others, Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon, and XxxHolic (which is actually the home world of Yûko and a parallel crossover with Tsubasa that doesn't have to be read at the same time in order to follow the plot).

As corny as the premise for this series sounds, it's really quite powerful. The first few almost wordless panels of the first volume nearly made me cry. And although not every episode in the Tsubasa saga has been as entertaining as it could be (one in which the gang participates in a flying race has loads of boring zipping about and little character or plot development), the series as a whole (so far!) is ambitious and intriguing. This volume is especially effective as it reveals so much of Kurogane and who he was before life made him into the brusque, pragmatic, bitter (but still with a deeply-buried warm gooey center) man he is now. And I'm not just saying that because I have a little crush on him. Really.