 Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles #15
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Crossover Info: A very major scene in this volume crosses directly over into xxxHolic #9 where a certain character confronts Yuko. In a similar way to what happened in Tsubasa #1 and xxxHolic #1 and #2 when Syaoran and the gang met Yuko the event is seen from both points of view from the respective characters in their books.
While xxxHolic #9 came out before this volume of Tsubasa, I would recommend reading this volume first as it's covered more here and reading xxxHolic beforehand does lessen the impact of the character's arrival.
Picking up where Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle #14 left off, Syaoran and the gang find themselves in a world nearly destroyed and populated with characters from CLAMP's famous X/1999 series. Unlike other crossovers so far though this whole arc so far seems to be written with the assumption that the reader is a fan of X. Personally I've seen the X movie and half of the anime series but I still feel lost with the number of characters on display here and feel like I'm missing something important with several of the small character moments that seem to be important or defining but go right over my head.
Another let down in this volume was the artwork. While several panels show similar brilliance that this series is capable of, some panels are downright confusing such as Faye after his confrontation with Kurogane where I was left shocked that and arrow had hit him (a very poorly chosen sound effect) and then wondering if he magically made that wall appear to slump into and fall to the ground and then confused when the whole page was just him sitting down. Very messy.
Some of the dialogue was equally awkward such as the final page's "What is asleep... is her soul" line. It sounds like a direct translation of the Japanese with no attempt at resorting out the word order into something more natural. It's almost as if Yoda was in charge of the script.
There were several positives about the volume though. The cover for one, has got to be one of my favourite covers so far in the series and the plot seems to be getting ready to progress towards a faster pace than what we've seen so far with the other Syaoran becoming more prominent, Kurogane finally confronting Faye, Sakura's powers awakening more and Faye Wang Reed's assistant (what's her name again? Xing-Huo?) actually possessing something of a storyline.
Things seem to be building up something big with this volume but that's really all it is so far, build up. This whole arc should be really amazing but as a stand alone it falls short.
Still a good read though and I'd even say necessary. Also good to read it before the Tokyo Revelations OAV comes out in a few days as this arc is what it will be covering.
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