Sunday, November 05, 2006

Musings : Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle 2

Tsubasa Chronicle Season 2 ended at episode 52 this weekend.

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I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed with this season.

Story line
On the story-telling, the story lines were mostly original, i.e. not from the manga, but what was a let down is the stories are so boring. They lacked the excitement factor, are very draggy, and simply put, BORING. A lot of time was wasted on scenes that do not bring any progress to the story. The writers keep returning to the places Syaoran & co. had been before in the first season, and in every new world they traveled to, writer-san used back the same supporting characters. It gets r-e-a-l-l-y mundane with the recycling of characters. Character development was not very satisfactory either... actually, there wasn't much character development at all. All of the main characters remain pretty much stagnant.

Although there are many episodes I find dull, I do have some favorite episodes. One is of the Ashura-ou arc and the other is the original Chibi episode. The Ashura-ou arc has some good art, animation and soundtrack, so the few episodes are quite enjoyable.
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The Chibi episode is super cute. For this episode, the art really ruled. Chibi Syaoran, Sakura, Fye and Kurogane kawaiii!!!

Animation & art
The animation and art paled in comparison to the first season. There were alot of still scenes, especially the fighting scenes... there were mostly images rather than animation. What was terribly disappointing was the animation done stripped the meaning and emotions off the plot Clamp had placed into the manga. There were many scenes that could have done better to convey the emotional depth delivered by Clamp in the manga. If you had read the recent manga chapters, you will find the anime spastic.
The art wasn't very consistent either. Overall the art is pretty decent, but there were some scenes involving Yuuko and Mokona that were so poorly drawn they looked horrible.

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Makes you wanna cry, "Nooooo.... Clamp's artwork!!!" However, the one thing that didn't quite change was the colors. I still like the colors they used for Tsubasa Chronicle S2. The tones were just right, and the contrast were pretty good.

Soundtrack
This is probably the only saving grace for Tsubasa Chronicles S2. Kajiura Yuki superbly injected excitement with her music, accurately at the right moments, when the animation failed to entertain. FictionJunction YUUKA and FictionJunction KAORI gave commendable insert songs, Aikoi and Dreamscape respectively, both of which are featured in the Tsubasa Chronicles OST 3 and 4. The opening and ending were quite nice too, but not entirely outstanding. Overall, the standard of the soundtrack is pretty much maintained from the first season.

Seiyuu
The voice acting were pretty much maintain over, but I felt that they could have done better. At some scenes, the voice acting doesn't quite seem to match the emotions of the scene, so they sound kind of weird. I think the Sayako Ohara did quite a good job with Yuuko, her acting matched the circumstances very well. Unfortunately, the main characters' seiyuu left more to be desired.

If Tsubasa Chronicles is going to continue with season 3, I hope that either they faithfully follow the manga OR they better come out with really good original stories. If the standard of season 2 is to be carried over to season 3, I think TRC anime is going to be a real bore. Heck, the closing for the season 2 finale was pretty crappy if you ask me.

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-_-'''

~みはる~