NOOOOOO!

CLAMP, I hate you. Or rather, I hate your habit of never allowing any of the couples you create and draw so beautifully, ever to have a happy ending. Look at the tally- Ashura-Ou is fated to kill Yasha-Ou in RG Veda, Hideki and Chii get to be together only under an extreme qualification in Chobits, Kotori dies a gruesome death in X as a result of Kamui's choice (and if he'd made an alternative choice, he'd have had to kill her himself) while Karen pines for a married Aoki, and let's not even start on Sorata and Arashi, Yuzuriha and Kusanagi, and the ultimate tragic couple- Subaru and Seishirou across two separate series (Tokyo Babylon and X- they haven't met in Tsubasa) and in Tsubasa itself, Clone Syaoran stabs the love of his life to death- all this while we don't even know everything the real pair have been through). In all of this, there was a grand total of one pair of leads in a series that got what looked like a happy ending- Syaoran and Sakura in Cardcaptor Sakura. And now I discover that they got killed in a car accident as Watanuki's parents! My only consolation is that they're probably an alternate-dimensional version of the CCS pair we know and love and CCS!SyaoSaku are safe somewhere in Yuuko's dimension and haven't grown up yet (going by her comment in xxxHolic Vol. 1 about wanting to meet the girl and her boyfriend- not husband, boyfriend)
CLAMP, I really hate you.

Tsubasa 198

First off, I'd like to record a HUGE sigh of relief that Tsubasa 198 is finally here! Now, on to the actual subject of the post, but first: one big squeeeeeeeeeee for the first page! (above) Chibi Kuro-pon, Fai and Syaoran are so adorable, they need to be glomped at once. Especially Syaoran* (awwwww!), and it's lovely to see Fai as a happy kid, especially after the childhood he had.
After a break of nearly ten chapters, we finally see Kurogane and Fai again, since Syaoran's snapped back to the present after telling them his story, with Sakura doomed by the black feather seal. I was afraid the flashback would end there, but CLAMP know they've got a lot more explaining to do for young 'Syaoran'- so it's back to his memory again, and on that point; well done, ladies. I know a lot of sites said Tsubasa and xxxHolic were supposed to be complete by the end of this year, but there's absolutely no way that's happening with the current storyline- it's defnitely going to take over two volumes more to figure things out, let alone wrap them up. The storyline isn't at a point that feels like a wrap-up yet...
On a second note: Syaoran hugs Sakura! Awwwwwwwwwww....there's a reason why they're one of my favourite manga couples of all time, and it's just this: they're so fantastic together. I know TRC gets a lot of flak from CLAMP fans and non-fans alike for being long-winded (what do you expect, it's 25 volumes!) and having fanservice (duh, CLAMP said they were featuring AU versions of characters from every series they'd ever written!), but to me, it's the new spin on Syaoran and Sakura that really got me reading, and it's the biggest part of what keeps me glued to IRC looking for the next chapter. They've gone from cutesy funny to epic, and gone that way successfully too- not an easy thing when its essentially the same people you're reading from a diffeent series (and I speak as a pre-chapter 189 reader).
*and here's my impetus to write yet another story at FF.net about Kero and Syaoran. I tried Kero and Toya last time, and it seemed to work nicely but Kero-Syaoran is equally funny.

Squiggles of Manga Theory:Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, in all the years that I've been following it, has always been a little bit of a tangle for me to figure out (for a start, the name- why Reservoir?). The CLAMP multiversing isn't what does it- it's just the fact that things are really messed up in that world.

1. For a start, there's the issue of just who "Syaoran" and "Sakura" really are. I, along with the rest of the CLAMP fandom, was pretty sure they were AU Syaoran Li and Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura, but Chapters 189 and 191 shot that one to pieces- the child who later gets imprisoned by Fei Wang Reed is actually the son of Syaoran and Sakura, and the princess he meets upon his arrival in Clow Country isn't actually named Sakura, she just says that's her name.

2. Just which dimension did that kid "Syaoran" come from, anyway? Chapter 189 sees him walking into Yuko's shop, having been sent there after his mother had a dream. But 192 shows "Syaoran's" use of some kind of spell involving a square compass like the one Syaoran Li uses in CCS, which makes it seem like he was sent to Yuko's world from another dimension- and that his parents are another AU CCS Syaoran and Sakura. Which makes sense, since Yuko, in Volume 1 or 2 of xxxHolic, says something about wanting to meet 'that cute girl and her boyfriend' who lived in her world, the 'cute girl' being the owner of Sakura's card-sealing wand from CCS- Sakura Kinomoto herself. Also, the reference to a 'boyfriend' would sound out of place for someone who had a seven-year-old child, wouldn't it?

3. The timeline- what the hell happened? I'm sure CLAMP intends us to ask this question, but I really badly want to know- what on earth could have warped the timeline so completely that Fujitaka is "Sakura's" father in the original timeline, but the Clone Syaoran's adoptive father in the altered one (with Clow Reed as the cloned Sakura-hime's father)? What happened to Fujitaka and Nadeshiko in the original timeline- did they die? (they needn't have). And, among other things, who is the person Clow misses, and wants to see? (somewhere in Chapter 130/140-something, when Sakura gets a feather back, she remembers) I'm curious...could it be Yuko?

4. The names. It's funny that both the child who gets sent to Clow Country and the princess he meets there don't give out their true names, even to each other- xxxHolic did once go on about the importance of true names....and now it turns out that not one of the travellers who began the journey, gave out their true names- Fai was Yuii all along, Kurogane Youou, and the Clone Sakura and Clone Syaoran are both clones of people who didn't disclose their true names to each other when they first met. Wonder if not having the 'true' names of their prototypes affects the nature of the Clones...
5. What's happened to Clone Syaoran? He hasn't been heard from since Clone Sakura's soul dissolved into petals (does that mean she's dead, then? But the Clone body she had is still in existence, while the real princess's body disappeared on being cloned, according to Fei Wang Reed. So there's the real princess's soul in that glass tube, a cloned body with Dr Kyle and Fei Wang Reed...looks like at least one couple will not get a happy ending in this manga).

Arrrgh, this is confusing...

A Statement Of Intention

Anyone who came here looking for the real Nonsense On Stilettos, go here please. It's my very own fashion blog that's been up and running since January 2007, and I'm the one who came up with the name after thinking about a possible fashion spin on Jeremy Bentham's famous postulate that the idea of natural human rights was nothing more than 'nonsense on stilts' (the name of yet another of my blogs).
Now I'm slightly hacked off that some high-schooler twit has stolen it to use as the url and name of her wannabe blog, and there is no way on earth I will believe that she came up with it on her own, since for seventeen months any internet search for any variations of 'nonsense on stilettos' led to only one place- my blog! I should really have registered that url ages ago (can one hold copyrights on the invented title of a blog?), but I'm doing the next best thing and installing this as a url placeholder of sorts. If I ever use it for anything, it might be to blather about manga every once in a blue moon, but remember this, children- the real Nonsense On Stilettos belongs to Blue Floppy Hat, and this is where I mark my claim. Anyone else= a bit fat phony.

Utter Nonsense

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