Review of Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE The Movie: The Princess in the Birdcage Kingdom

I am a rabid fan of anything relating to Tsubasa Chronicle, so I naturally picked up this movie. In this review, I will treat this movie as a side story arc within the Tsubasa Chronicle franchise. Story: 2 Whoever decided that 30 minutes was enough time for a typical Tsubasa Chronicle arc needs to be fired. You will hard pressed to find another story so rushed and choppy in anime. The scenes were extremely short, the story moved light-speed fast, and there were huge informational gaps between scenes. One particular scene transition that comes to mind is one scene involved the characters forming a plan andthen the very next scene the environment and circumstances had changed, a decent amount of time had passed, and what happened during that time was quickly brushed over with hurried dialogue. It was like watching the preparations for a battle and then skipping over the fight scene to the outcome. A better analogue would be that this movie was originally a 3 hour feature film that was edited down to 30 minutes, so only flashing visual pictures of plot points were shown. The only reason why I gave this story even a 2 is that the concepts themselves weren't irritating or originally atrocious.

Art: 8

For a 2005 anime movie, the art is quite good. It stays true to the rest of the earlier Tsubasa Chronicle franchise.

Sound: 9

The same OST from the series is used in the movie, so it is excellent. Gorgeous could not be a better word to describe this OST. However, the 10/10 OST is compromised by ill-timing. Songs were either played during inappropriate scenes or choppily edited.

Character: 5

I tried to view the characters independently from the series. Since the characters were slaves to the rushed plot and not allowed to display their typically strong personalities and character development, they came off rather bland. The new characters especially suffered from this, but they were rather uninteresting to begin with.

Enjoyment: 3

Everything was moving so fast and with so little explanation that I found very little enjoyment in this movie. I felt like I was watching the Tsubasa Chronicle characters perform an improvised skit while casually listening to its phenomenal soundtrack.

Overall: 3

One of the worst cases of storytelling that I've ever seen. At least it was Tsubasa Chronicles so it had good art and music, but the shadow characters and atrocious storytelling made it barely watchable.