Tsubasa Chronicle 2nd Season

Compared to the first season in which I did really like, the 2nd season was less climatic and actually more 'peaceful', yet I kept watching it till the end, probably just to see a resolution to the story or maybe just due to liking the main characters.

Animation: This is what I shall always be critical about, I have never liked BeeTrain's style which tends to drag the story and make everything slower paced than they are supposed to be. Noir and Madlax have been a snore fest for me, Tsubasa Chronicles although having a manga to backup, had almost the same pacing with characters wearing ... static expressions throughout the episodes with the exceptions of a few gasps and shouts... I mean... they are even lazy to make livelier expressions! And due to NHK restrictions, everything has been toned down. A little more blood and gore like the anime X or as projected in the manga would have propelled this anime to a higher rating, how they tried to make everything bloodless just seemed awkward. Don't misunderstand, CLAMPs art is still really good, its just the animation that did not live up to standards

Sound: No one has complaints here, Yuki Kajiura's music continues to excel with some great tracks like Crying Alone, Aikoi and Broken Sword of Justice, in fact, almost everyone would agree that the music is the main factor that still keeps viewers interested. For this season I preferred the ending to the opening, an uplifting, lively song full of hope and happiness, perfectly suited for Syaoran and Sakura's feelings. The seiyuus gave the same pleasing performances as before.

Story: there were some arcs that were very good, like the Ashura arc, Kurogane's past and the Piffle arc. Some fillers were quite interesting too while some others like back to ChunHyang's world were just too repetitive. It was very apparant that they were trying to save the 2nd Syaoran bit as a climax for the next season by dragging out the plot to the extent of turning it into 'finding one feather an episode'. Therefore as an intermediate bit for the Tsubasa series, this season didn't leave too strong of an impression, yet it did succeed in leaving some questions and desire for the next season, thanks to the excellent Kurogane arc and the mysterious 'Syaoran in the tube' which gave hints to the other side of Tsubasa, a darker and unpredictable plot which was to be unfolded in the future.

Character: The good point of Tsubasa is that the group of main characters are basically lovable, with different personalities and from different backgrounds, yet giving off a feel like they are one big happy family who care for each other very much. Mainly 2 obvious character developments were done in this season, including the background story of Kurogane and most importantly, Sakura does have a bit more development compared to the walking shell in the 1st season. Syaoran, Mokona and Fai were still their usual selves but I never minded that because seeing this group interacting is basically one of the fun moments of Tsubasa. Although thanks to the rigid animation, the characters still gave off a rather stony, lifeless feel. It may just be me but yes, compared to the other animated Clamp works, this seemed too obvious.

I did still enjoy this series, thanks to the excellent music and my love for the Sakura+Syaoran pairing but still I can't help thinking this could have been handled a lot better with such a strong manga to back it up. In other words, it had potential, but it just didn't live up to most expectations.
If you are fond of the first season though you might like the second season. However it would be advisable not to read the manga first or you'd get very disappointed with how this anime turned out to be

Choose the title you find more appropriate: Tsubasa Filler Chronicles or Tsubasa Disappointing Chronicles, because either way, I wouldn't exactly call this an actual "season two".

STORY: CLAMP's ever so popular (And probably my favorite CLAMP title) massive cross over manga series, Tsubasa, continues on it's second anime season.

With it's likable main cast: the determined Syaoran, the kind and sweet Sakura, gruff swordsman Kurogane, the goofy but mysterious Fai, and of course the mascot, Mokona all in toll, most fans are expecting another enjoyable (and hopefully with a faster paced story) world(s) traveling adventure as they continue to collect feathers in order to return Sakura's lost ... memories.

And from what I can tell, that's exactly what the producers were hoping for, that the fans love the characters just enough to watch this season, so they can get away with very pointless episodes, and with little actual story material only follow about three story arcs from the manga that barely cover half of the animes episode span, and the rest of it becoming boring filler episodes (With nine straight filler episodes until its end).
It's not that these episodes are the most absolutely terrible things in the world, it's just that the writers, unfortunately, seem to have taken advantage of the traveling to different worlds concept for the sake of being a cash in, with no effort on expanding the story.
And what's the worse side-effect of a mostly filler season? Little to almost no character development at all.
The cast are simply boring husks of themselves, they don't develop, they don't do anything different, they just stay the same.

Going further into laziness, this anime constantly rehashes all of it's side characters from various other series created by CLAMP, which is another concept that got taken advantage of from the manga, that even fans of other CLAMP titles will tire of these recurring characters. Which was something manga was charming and famous for.
Another noticeable fact is the series main antagonist does little to nothing at all in the story (Less than what what he did in the manga I mean) except a few chats with his female subordinate or a few speeches.
And in the end, hardly any progress is made in the story, that ended up becoming just a waste of time.

ART: Constant low budget animation, that sometimes have obvious quality issues, and Tsubasa deserved better than this, even flipping through pages of the manga looked better than half of the anime, which only adds to the disappointment.

SOUND: But unlike the animation, it appears that they had put effort with a bigger budget for the background music, though there are some techno background music that sounds totally out of place, and the theme music is nothing special compared to season one's.
The english dub in the first season suffered a lot from the voice actors having to get used to their roles in a slow start up feel, but thankfully in season two it's not the main problem anymore.
The english cast itself is quite an impressive line up with big name voice actors Vic Mignogna, Chris Sabat, Monica Rial, and Jason Liebrecht voicing the main cast.
Especially Chris Sabat who is well suited for Kurogane and Monica Rial was an excellent choice for Sakura.
But even with the improvements to the english dub, it is still underwhelming.

OVERALL:
The Good:
+ The Tsubasa crew enters in its "second season."

The Bad:
- Almost no character development at all.
- Very boring filler episodes make up the majority of the season, taking advantage of several concepts the manga has in order to make these episodes.
- Bland theme music and a sub par english dub.
- Disappointing animation.

I feel that by the end of the season many fans will feel that they wasted their time, but not completely hate it, just feel very disappointed that very little of manga's story made it's way to the anime's "second season".

The first season of Tsubasa Chronicle was riddled with problems that bogged down an otherwise great show concept. Having an expanded universe of in-house creations across different worlds/dimensions is an exciting idea. Sadly, when coupled with mediocre animation, flat voice acting, and worst of all, one-off stories that don't go anywhere, it's hard to still justify that concept. The 2nd season promises more exciting and dangerous adventures and to possibly repair the mistakes of the past. But does it actually deliver on its promise? Personally, I have to disagree.

With the last major arc of the 1st season, we are left with a few unresolved questions. ... Who is the mysterious clone of Syaroan kept by Fei Wong? Will Syaroan's rival Seishiro come back to impede his progress? How many more memory feathers are there? What about the pasts and significance of Fai and Kurogane? There's a lot for this show to explain and cover in 26 episodes and yet it seems that the series seems more content dragging its feet than to hold its viewer's attention. More "feather of the week" episodes are abound in this season, many of them never relating back to the main questions at hand. The first 3 episodes are dedicated to a race with a feather as the prize. During the preliminaries, it is discovered someone is meddling with the race and causing the "dragonfly" cars to explode! Fast-paced action plus a dash of psychological insight would have made this a stellar beginning to the season. Instead, it's a slow watch as the race plays out predictably up until a nonsensical twist. You could say the same for many of the arcs in this season - they have an interesting premise, play out slow and predictably, then throw a random twist in there that's more confusing than entertaining. Considering the series has been quite straightforward thus far, I doubt it's anything that you need to think about - it's more or less a way so the story can start moving to the next world.

What could be considered the most disappointing is that a rather large chunk of the season is filler! The first 17 episodes are more or less canon, while the last 9 are all originals. Are the original episodes at least a worthwhile watch? Normally I'd say no, but considering the material I've seen up until these episodes, I'd say stick with it if you like what you see. Most of the originals are bland like the one where Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura and Mokona meet, but some of them have some fairly interesting ideas. The one where they return to Koryo to meet Chu'nyan and enter a demon parallel world is decent for extended world building and the last arc in Tao Country with the ruler Chaos had a lot of good ideas. But I've said this before - this show is great with ideas but it doesn't know how to properly execute them. With a better studio or writing staff at the helm, it would've made for a great OVA. Instead, its underdeveloped and is more content being padding for a season than it is showing off the team's creative talents.

As curious as some of these originals are, it begs the question - why not adapt the manga portion for the last 9 episodes instead of coming up with originals? There's a rather intriguing answer behind this. According to a comment made by a fan of the series, the show originally aired on a channel that was more educational and made for kids. A major arc in the series, the Tokyo arc, shows a lot of violence and gore(!) - rather than adapt this, they instead filled up the rest of the requested episodes with their own. There are many conclusions you can walk away with from this story - the studio weren't fully aware of the restrictions and they did it out of necessity, they wanted a kiddie series like Cardcaptor Sakura and instead they got something much more dark, etc. Whatever the case, everyone loses with the end result and the Tokyo arc could've showed off the strong potential the series has.

So does this season at least do anything better than the previous one? Gladly, it does! The biggest takeaway from this is Kurogane's backstory, in which we see a tale of a young swordsman hone his craft in a royal family only for tragedy to strike and scar him permanently. It's not as impactful as a solid "wandering ronin" tale, but it's a shining moment that the series desperately needed. Though Fai doesn't get any real backstory (again), an early one-off episode gives a small peak as to what it may be. Even without all the finer details, it still is a rather sweet story that shows off Fai's boyish charm. Though we don't get all the pieces to the puzzle, there's enough to help shape a better image of Syaroan and Sakura's partners.

The animation is still the same for the series, bland and second rate. It needs help from Bee Train's parent company, Production I.G., badly. Compare this to the flashiness the Birdcage movie had - it's a real disappointment. As a general rule of thumb, if your show is action oriented, shortcuts only hurt it overall. This wouldn't be as bad if the series were a slice of life but the cutaways during a critical scene and off-models really damage the appearance of the show. I will say that there seems to be more variety in the music, with a few more original songs. I take back what I said about the first season music-wise - the soundtrack to this anime is very good and helps save a few scenes with Yuki Kajiura's wonderful songwriting. The voice acting also seems a bit more lively this time - it's not perfect but it evokes more emotion than the stale delivery that haunted the first season.

Overall, I give Tsubasa Chronicle 2nd Season a 4/10. Some series get better if you allow them the chance to shine. Other series are almost mandatory to watch in full - to quote a friend, "you need to see the ending to understand the beginning". Tsubasa Chronicle, at least from the anime adaptation, is neither of those. It is a series that comes close to achieving strength but poor circumstances deny it from being a series that's worth any investment. I can not recommend it.

Do you like or dislike this anime? If you haven't watched it, are you encouraged to watch it or not? Leave a comment on my profile telling me what you think of the anime and/or my review.

Thanks for reading and have a blessed day!