Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Abandon Shipping - Singularly one of the funniest in any fandom. The very heated Shipping War between the Kuro-Fai fandom and the Kuro-Tomoyo and Fai-Chi shippers came to an abrupt halt post Celes and Nihon Arcs when CLAMP themselves dealt the deathblow to the latter two fandoms, after which the shippers either stayed very very quiet, or jumped onboard the Kuro-Fai ship as quickly as they could. Probably had something to do with realising they'd be pairing Fai with a girl based on his mother, or pairing Kurogane with a girl younger than him. Not to mention that Tomoyo will always love Sakura, and the manga made a lot off effort to establish the connections and symbology between Fai and Kurogane, and Fai-Chi would never work, considering she already has a significant other.
    • In another hilarious Abandon Shipping moment, a large portion of the Syaoran/Sakura fanbase has jumped ship as of the revelation that Real!Syaoran is the son of his and Sakura's reincarnated clones. For a while there was a share bit of confusion about which ship to abandon, but it seems to have settled down now that the manga has ended.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny - Essentially any time the team (sans Kurogane) gets drunk. Plus, any Fai and Kurogane double act (at least in the earlier half) and Kurogane and Mokona double act.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome - If there's anything worth praising from the TV adaptation, it's this.
  • Die for Our Ship - Illogically, Sakura and Tomoyo are occasionally subject to this vis-a-vis the Fai/Kurogane 'ship. Despite Sakura clearly being into Syaoran and Tomoyo being into, well, Sakura. The inverted trope appears in fics that use Sakura as a means of furthering the Fai/Kurogane shipping (often to restore the "happy family" dynamic).
    • This was in large a retaliation from the Kuro/Fai fandom towards the Kuro/Tomoyo and Fai/Chi shippers who felt the need to flame anything the Kuro/Fai fandom posted, despite CLAMP's assertions that people are the same no matter what universe. Needless to say, this lead to insane amounts of Ship-to-Ship Combat that only intensified after the dub came out and one voice actor who hadn't read the manga decided to comment on the shipping wars.
  • Ending Aversion - Both the manga and anime, for different reasons. The manga, especially, mostly because of the final arc.
  • Fridge Brilliance - The anime didn't cast Kumai Motoko and Tange Sakura in the lead roles, despite reusing the same voice actors between in-universe counterparts. Fandom was rather annoyed at this at the time. But, as it turns out in the manga, they aren't really Alternate Universe counterparts of the lead couple of Cardcaptor Sakura...
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment - After you find out what Fai's deal is most of the stuff that happens earlier becomes this.
  • Growing the Beard - The Acid Tokyo arc is considered the moment the series changed from a light-hearted adventure story to something darker and more dramatic, most tellingly revealing that the Syaoran the group had been traveling with was a clone, having Fai lose one of his eyes and show cracks in Stepford Smiler act, introducing crossover characters from the much angstier X 1999 series, and making the role of the Big Bad much more prominent and ominous This was also picked up by watchers of the anime, noting that the OVAs were a different tone altogether, possibly because of CLAMP dropping Bee Train.
    • This was also the point when the plot went from straightforward and understandable to something out of the drug-induced hallucination of a deranged Sigmund Freud.
      • No, Freud could never think of something like this. Only CLAMP.
  • Ho Yay - Fai and Kurogane. Especially once the blood drinking starts. Even if they're not a couple, they're contractually Heterosexual Life Partners at this point.
    • Chapter 185 takes the innuendo to a new high, with Fai arranging for he and Kurogane to have their own room so he can take off his cloak and...yeah.
    • They are not the only source of Ho Yay in this series, you know. The scene where Cloney bites Fay's cheek is also loved by fangirls, even the Kurogane x Fay ones.
    • Let's not forget the scenes in Acid Tokyo where Fay becomes a vampire. Fay seems to have his head very near part of Kurogane... There is NO WAY CLAMP didn't know what that looked like.
    • Also Fuuma and Kamui in Acid Tokyo and, obviously, Subaru and Seishirou, despite the fact we never actually see them together.
      • Although it's not in the actual story, this splash page shows the ill-fated pair together.
    • How about Kamui and Subaru? The pictures CLAMP drew of them are pretty Twincest-y. And pretty.
  • I Knew It! - Some of the fans actually guessed the My Own Grampa thing more than two months before chapter 223 was published. Wow.
    • And some knew the names of the real Syaoran and Sakura a long time ago, too, although most if not all of the people who Knew It only knew one or the other
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible - One hell of a Mind Screw.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs? - The second half of the series.
  • The Woobie - Every main character at some point gets a Woobie moment, but Fai's backstory takes the cake in Woobie points.
    • It's also simply heartbreaking to see the situation Sakura goes through, especially if the reader were to have grown up watching Cardcaptor Sakura: She spends half the story disappointed in herself that she's nothing but a Damsel in Distress that burdens Syaoran and the others, sees her love interest critically injure Fai and essentially be replaced with someone who claims to be the real one, and by the time she actually becomes an Action Girl, she's also clearly a very Broken Bird, not the cheerful and adorable Sakura that readers were most familiar with. And that's not even edging into the Cloning Blues thing...