Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle: Volume 25

by CLAMP, 183 pages

How many times, in how many dimensions, have Syaoran and Sakura crossed paths, shared lifetimes, missed chances? Everything he does, everything he has ever done, has been for her. Their souls are so intertwined with one another that it is impossible to separate them, no matter what fates may befall them, no matter what barriers may divide them. Somewhere, somewhen, they are together, even if only in spirit. The tragedies of the past play out, to be returned to over and over again in a desperate race to change the tiniest of moments. And in this one thing, Syaoran shares a motive with the great manipulator Fei-Wang--a wish. But though they both live to fulfill that one desire, it is the way they choose to chase after it, and why, and what they sacrifice in the process, that makes all the difference between them.

Timelines weave in and out as Syaoran explains himself to his friends. The scattered nuts and bolts can be hard to reverse engineer without a detailed schematic, but you believe it can all be made to fit together again, regardless, because the care has been taken to show the individual pieces lying around throughout the entire run of the series. It's only now that we see their relation to one another and begin to understand how they make a whole. And as I've said before, the emotional lives of the characters, and their bonds with one another, are so believable that at this point I'd probably swallow whatever explanation the manga-ka cared to offer me, even if it weren't so epically crafted as it is. Is it convoluted? Sure. Melodramatic? Absolutely. And I don't care one whit. Just give me the next book.