Since I’ve more or less caught up with my current anime episodes and am just waiting for the final subs of the final episodes, I decided to indulge in some manga and dived into Tsubasa. I had gotten up to volume 11 or so back when I was last in Taiwan, but haven’t read anything since. Picking it up this time I actually started a loong ways back at volume 4. And things were moving along quite happily with the worlds-hopping, feathers-collecting, budding romance between Syaoran and Sakura “formula” if you will. Until chapter 120 onwards that is, and then it was like WAM. CLAMP fucking kicked in and went, oh wait, we’re CLAMP, we freaking love messing with and messing up our characters, indulging in some pretty-boy violence and making people bleed bucket-loads. TIME TO THROW IN THE DOUBLE-WHAMMY!

…I seriously should’ve remembered I was dealing with CLAMP. The CLAMP who gave us all sorts of twisted relationships in Tokyo Babylon and X, delighting in surprise twists a la RG Veda style (even though I sadly don’t remember much of the plot of RG Veda, having read it last while I was in middle school? I still remember being damned surprised when that freakishly bloody ending came around)… Being a long-time CLAMP fan, right around now in my Tsubasa reading I’m kicking myself for not having expected something like this to happen. But then again, it’s really the power of CLAMP to reveal and surprise. This kind of messed up yet utterly addicting stuff is partly why I love them so much ; D;

I also found it really fitting that the big reveal about Syaoran’s character and the huge influx of violence came in the world where all the X characters were popping up like mushrooms. THAT should’ve been my first warning sign, given how screwed up the X world was! And CLAMP didn’t throw any punches in the introduction of the world… there was a lot of blood and a lot of dead bodies fairly early on. CLAMP just seems to love certain themes – eyes (or eye exchanges), severing of body parts, pinning body parts with a variety of sharp objects… all abound. Actually I was really struck with the sharp object pinning during Kurogane’s back-story; the reveal of his childhood past was definitely a fairly telling precursor to the violence. Given Kurogane’s personality though, it wasn’t as unexpected. Or maybe it wasn’t as unexpected as it should have been? ;P

Given that Subaru has been one of my favorite characters from Tokyo Babylon/X, and CLAMP really built up the similarities between Subaru and Kamui, I was really tickled to see the two of them come back in Tsubasa as twins. Vampire twins to boot lol. But yeah, Subaru’s whole story since Tokyo Babylon on has trampled all over my shoujo sensibilities while ripping my heart out.

Since I’m now in this semi-delirious love-hate-love state, and probably will be for the rest of the night, I’m not going to try to write up a proper ending for this post. I won’t be able to stop reading Tsubasa now since I seem to enjoy being in this kind of masochistic/melodramatic mood. Again, THIS is why I love CLAMP so much! T xT

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