Grade: D+
Originally posted to my anime blog (http://nantene.giapet.net/content/view/60/1/).
Okay, seriously-- wtf is this? Are people in Japan so needing their Tsubasa fix (there's been a huge gap between season 1 and season 2; the latter starts in April) that they're willing to watch this oddly unfinished-seeming...thing?
So our scooby gang-- Syaoran, Sakura, Mokona, Kurogane, and Fye --land in two separate groups in the Land of People who are Obsessed with Birds, or something. Everyone in this land has a sort of bird counterpart, or familiar. Syaoran, Sakura, and Kurogane meet up with a Princess Tomoyo (not the one from Kurogane's homeland), whose bird has been sealed by her WICKED UNCLE the king, and who can therefore not talk.
Tomoyo has just enough time to give Sakura a MYSTERIOUS ring before she is kidnapped by a group of brainwashed ninjas in bird costumes (I'm not kidding).
Meanwhile, the completely useless Kurogane and Fye have already been captured and locked into magical golden cages that they can't break out of.
Suffice it to say that our heroes eventually save the day, although the purpose of Sakura, Fye, and Kurogane's inclusion in this 35-minute "movie" seems kind of, um, nonexistant (I mean, they had to be there, they're the stars, but they contribute very little, aside from some cute Syaoran/Sakura huggng and almost-kissing, plus some classic Kurogane/Fye humor).
On top of that, there were a few weird things about the art. Most notably, Syaoran's hair is suddenly a dozen shades lighter (still brown, but very light), and Mokona has magically shrunk to about half his size in the original show. And although it hardly seemed possible, the characters seem even taller and skinnier than before. Yow.
But worse than all the above is the fact that the movie feels like a bunch of scenes and dialogue have been cut. Actually, it feels like this was originally intended to be a multi-episode arc-- not long, maybe 3 episodes --crammed into 35 minutes. We see Sakura get Tomoyo's ring, but we don't understand what the ring does.
We hear about things like water being purified and the king wanting to plummet the entire country into eternal darkness, but we don't know exactly how he intends to do it, beyond using the "key" in some mystical device whose purpose is...to plummet the entire country into eternal darkness (WTF? What moron said "hey, I think we need a device to force our entire country to suffer from eternal darkness-- just in case!")
Don't even get me started on the last 30 seconds of it. I don't know why it was included. I can't really talk about it without giving the only surprising thing in the movie, but it's weird and pointless and dumb to boot.
So-- watch it with your friends and mock it mercilessly. Or, I guess if you're really that addicted to Tsubasa Chronicle, go ahead and give it a serious run, but uh...don't say I didn't warn you.
Oh, and it's worth mentioning to you guys that I had some problems with the volume levels in my copy from Shinsen-- most of the audio was fine, but dialogue and sounds that were from "further away" in the movie was often too quiet.