Tsubasa Character Guide by Clamp

For those already interested in the Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle story, there is available this volume, which explores in more detail the main characters, some of the side characters, the worlds and the stories in the first 9 to 10 volumes of the series. Also included are pictures of the merchandise available in Japan at the time of this volume's release, and an extensive "Fan's Corner", with the results of various polls and questions asked of the fans, interviews with members of CLAMP, creators of the series, and a series of unanswered questions that may impact the story later in the series, such as "Why doesn't Fai use his magic?" and "What is the real reason Tomoko sent Kurogane on this journey?" Some, of course, have been answered, such as "Who are the vampires that Seishiro is chasing?" and "What is the secret power of Sakura's?"

The book ends up with drawings of the characters- from their first tentative incarnations to their finished looks that were incorporated into the manga, and a series of sample pages (with dialogue in English) of a rough-drawn version of the manga from the very first volume, with Syaoran and Sakura visiting the newly uncovered ruins in the Kingdom of Clow and Sakura's memories becoming feathers and being ripped away.

This book is packed with stuff, although some of it seemed less than interesting to me, such as the poll questions, like "Which couple do you think is the cutest?", since all the answers seemed to be taken from the Japanese fans, and not American fans. American fans and American Manga Magazines in particular don't seem to do these sorts of polls, but maybe the American fans don't do it because the magazines don't. In any case, it just added to the Fluff content of the book. Now, I don't mind fluff, as you can see from some of my other reviews, but I thought these particular bits of fluff were particularly pointless and not really needed.

Mostly, the book was worth the money, except for the large parts of fan poll results in the back. Also, the merchandise section was repeated in color images and then in black and white. I felt the B&W merchandise, since it's exactly the same as the color section, could be excised without losing anything, but obviously I wasn't consulted on that. ::Grin.::

So, in short, I think this could have been a shorter, lighter book without losing anything too interesting, as it is, there is a high fluff to solid material content. YMMV, of course.