PinkuBentoBox

Those who know me know that I’m a bit of a CLAMP fanboy. Not fanatically so, but I have a strong liking to their stuff, mainly towards their manga rather than the anime adaptions thereof. Cardcaptor Sakura was one of my all-time favourites, and still holds a special place for me as being some of the first shoujo I ever experienced. So, naturally, I was looking forward to the impending release of Tsubasa, though perhaps not as strongly as I might have been.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting a huge amount from Tsubasa. The manga it’s being adapted from is among Clamp’s weaker products. Some cynics would say that they’ve run out of ideas and resorted to crossover fanfiction. On the other hand it has Sakura and Tomoyo, who are among my favourite characters. What had caused a bit of consternation from me recently was when they announced the cast list.

Now, let’s be clear: I wasn’t expecting Sakura Tange to reprise her role as Sakura. As much as I like her, whenever I’ve heard her Sakura Tange has had that classic cutesey voice, perfect for Cardcaptor Sakura. But Tsubasa Sakura is different. She’s older - 16 - and she’s a princess in a fantasy kingdom. Either way, Sakura Tange retired from Voice Acting several years ago so she couldn’t reprise her role. However, I was quite surprised to find that for such a well-known character, they had cast a relative nobody.

Perusing the cast listing further, my heart sank. Not only was Sakura Tange not reprising her role, it seemed that none of the crossover Clamp characters were having their original actors and actresses. It seems that they were unable to get hold of Junko Iwao to do Tomoyo again, which was a big downer from me. Maaya Sakamoto is good, but lacks versitility, and it’s pretty clear that they’ve just grabbed her as a cast member so she’ll be able to do the ED piece. Basically, everyone’s changed, replaced with relatively unknown actors and actresses. Now, I have nothing against fresh talent, but this struck me as worrying as it could have indicated budgetary problems. We’ve already been disappointed by Negima’s budget problems this year, and didn’t need another high-profile manga adaption having the same fate.

Another thing that worried me was the choice of animation production. Previously, all Clamp’s work has been animated by Madhouse. This time, it’s Bee Train. Unlike Madhouse, Bee Train don’t have a stellar track record when it comes to anime. Very much a pile of mediocrity - Aquarian Age, Avenger, Noir, .hack//SIGN, Madlax… it’s all okay stuff, but really not that good, mainly due to issues with pacing (and being unmitigated shit in the case of Avenger). On the other hand, I quite enjoy Bee Train’s style, and while their pacing is awful their animation is top notch. They also to my knowledge don’t usually adapt an existing story, which may have an impact here.

One thing I had not picked up on which I realised the instant I heard the opening bars in the first episode was that Yuki Kajiura was providing the background music. I love Kajiura’s stuff, and I suppose it’s not so surprising that she’s doing the job here since she basically does everything for Bee Train. Once again, it seems that she’s done an excellent job on the music, and that’ll probably keep me watching even if the series itself doesn’t turn out as well. I have a habit of enjoying series she composes for a lot. She’s got a lot of choral-based stuff here this time, which was something I personally felt was missing from My-HiME, her previous work.

So, enough about the crew… what is this about anyway? To put it pretty simply, Sakura is a princess of a magical country in the desert, the Clow Kingdom, and Shaoran is one of the everyday citizens. Essentially, there is a magical incident which Shaoran ’saves’ Sakura from. In so doing, he causes her magical wings to be broken, the feathers scattered. These feathers represent fragments of Sakura’s heart and memories. Yukito and Touya (CCS fans will know these two) send Shaoran and Sakura through a portal to another world, from which they will jump throughout the many worlds in order to collect all of Sakura’s scattered memories.

The first episode is produced very nicely, and I liked it a lot more than I expected to. The only downside for me was the character animation. For some reason they’ve gone towards a very odd style - the characters have very long arms and legs, and this makes them look gangly and slightly misshappen. It also makes their heads seem too small. At least I guess their feet and hands aren’t miles out of proportion, I’ve seen that style before and it’s very unappealing.

Tsubasa is only available raw at the moment, but I guarantee this gets heaps of interest from the fansubbing community. Should be a pretty quick license too, I expect Geneon to snap it up quick-smart.