Syaoran in Tsubasa

In Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Syaoran is an archaeologist who is excavating ruins in the country of Clow and the adopted son of Fujitaka. In the anime, he is voiced by Miyu Irino in Japanese, and in English by Jason Liebrecht.

He and the princess of Clow (Princess Sakura) are very close childhood friends, though both of them hide their true feelings for each other. One day, Sakura displays mystical powers, but in the process she loses her memories, which are scattered through different worlds in the form of feathers. The loss of her memories put her life at risk, forcing Syaoran to go on a journey across the many dimensions in order to find them and save her, the person who is most important and special to him. In order to travel from dimension to dimension, he must sacrifice his most valuable possession: his current relationship with Sakura. Even if Sakura were to get all her feathers back, she would never remember how she felt about Syaoran before.Before Sakura loses her memories, Syaoran himself was found without any memories and named by his adoptive father. Sakura gave him his birthday, April 1st, which is hers as well.

(clone) Syaoran and Sakura on the cover of the Tsubasa Chronicle 2006 calendar.

In the series, Syaoran is shown to be an excellent fighter, centered around his devastating kicks (taught to him by Seishirou Sakurazuka to compensate for his lack of reliable depth perception due to being blind in his right eye. He was later trained to sense attacks coming from the left by Kurogane). He is also an experienced archaeologist, with the attendant skills and experience of a hardened adventurer somewhat reminiscent of Indiana Jones. In Outo, he receives a sword named Hien ("scarlet flame"), whose blade can be made to burst into flame, and is trained in swordsmanship by Kurogane. In the Tsubasa Character Guide, Syaoran's fighting abilities are given a score of 380/500, only 20 points behind Fay and making him the third-strongest fighter in the series.

A tattooed figure who appears identical to Syaoran can be seen floating in a tank in Fei Wong Reed and Xing Huo's headquarters (who, instead of being blind in the right eye, seems to be blind in the left). In the manga, the tattooed figure escapes and, with the assistance from Xing Huo, is sent to the Witch of Dimensions, Yūko Ichihara. This appearance becomes a cameo in Volume 9 of xxxHolic. It has been revealed that this Syaoran was actually the original Syaoran, but Fei Wong captured him and created a clone, who is the protagonist Syaoran. Fei Wong's intention was to use the copy to collect all of Sakura's feathers for him, but the original Syaoran gave half of his own heart to the clone (his left eye) and put a seal on the clone's right eye. At first Fei Wong did not care if the clone Syaoran had feelings, as long as he had the determination to get the feathers, and let the child go without removing the real Syaoran's alterations. Everything had been going as he had planned until he was met with interference by Yuko.

Once the original Syaoran, a distant relative of Clow Reed, broke free from Fei Wong's hands, the main protagonist's right eye seal also broke (which is the reason why the protagonist's right eye was blind), for the heart did not actually belong to him but the Syaoran who was trapped by Fei Wong. Although the original Syaoran had hoped the clone had developed feelings of his own after his long journey, the copy became a ruthless being apparently without any feelings or heart, hurting his friends mentally and physically (including Fay D. Flourite whose left eye was removed and consumed by the copy, since his eyes are the source of his magic) in order to eliminate anyone from interfering with the collection of feathers. Once he collected all of Sakura's feathers which he could detect in the current dimension, the copy left behind his companions, including his childhood friend and most important person, Sakura.

The original Syaoran continued the journey with Sakura and the others. Sakura was very distant with him though, and did not see him as a new companion. She finally does call him "Syaoran-kun" (which she used to call the clone) at the end of the Infinity Arc, but left for the dream world shortly after, causing Syaoran to think she's leaving because of him. She denied this though. Then Fay, possessed by a curse, stabbed Sakura. It is later revealed by Fei Wong Reed (and Sakura, in xxxHolic), that Fay was supposed to stab the original Syaoran, but Sakura changed the future so that the curse was activated before this event.

Syaoran then traveled to the Celes country to retrieve Sakura's body, where he and the others met Ashura. Ashura used his magic to show Syaoran, Kurogane, and Mokona visions of Fay's dark past. Syaoran developed a severe headache when he arrived in Celes, and collapsed due to it. This headache has some connection with Watanuki, as shown in xxxHolic.

After King Ashura's defeat; the Tsubasa group returns to Nihon Country where Syaoran goes into battle against the former teacher: Seishirō for Sakura's feather. After Syaoran unleashed his ultimate spell (all four of his elemental spells combined) on Seishirō, he reclaimed the feather and was sent into the Dream alone to rescue Sakura's soul. It appears that Seishirō has followed him though; weither or not this is true is still unknown.

Within the Dream, Syaoran finds Sakura and he encounter his clone, who has just entered as well looking for feathers. The clone sences the feather from the him and both Syaorans quickly summon their respected blades and the clone attacks both the him and Sakura, dispite Sakura's pleas for the clone to stop. He then places Sakura in a protective wind barrier and then annouces to his clone that he will end their dispute once and for all.

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

Sakura also appears in CLAMP's crossover series, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and Tsubasa Chronicle. Her character is similar only in looks and personality to her Cardcaptor Sakura counterpart. Tsubasa Chronicle takes on a new story with new histories for each of its characters.

Sakura as seen in Tsubasa Chronicle

At the start of the series in both manga and anime, Sakura is the princess of the Kingdom of Clow who has feelings for Syaoran, her childhood friend.

When she is about to confess her feelings, a mysterious force causes her own dormant magical powers to manifest in the form of feathered wings. When her feathers are scattered across time and space, Syaoran vows to recover all of them because each feather represents a memory Sakura has had since birth and are connected to her heart; without the feathers, she will die.

Fei-Wong Reed (the mysterious villain in the series) reflects on the ability of people like the High Priest Yukito, Princess Tomoyo of Nihon, and Yūko to cross dimensions and comments that the power concealed within Sakura and the ruins in Clow Country surpasses them all.

In order to cross dimensions, Sakura must pay Yūko the thing most important to her and she pays Yūko in an indirect way but her price is pretty much the same as Syaoran - her memories of him. When she awakes in the Hanshin Republic the first person she sees is Syaoran, but she does not remember anything about him, asking "Who are you?"

At times, such as in Ōuto, Sakura comes extremely close to remembering Syaoran but it is quickly erased once more from her memory. Syaoran, having known this would happen previously, will never tell her anything about their previous relationship. At most, all Sakura knows about Syaoran is what she has relearned from the adventures together with Mokona, Fay, and Kurogane, although she knows she knew him previously and he was very important to her. It is also clear that she is falling in love with him once more.

Sakura possesses unnaturally good luck; both Chun Hyang and Yūko call her "a favored daughter of the gods". This is what allowed her to travel dimensions safely until Yūko asks for her good luck as a price. According to Yukito and Syaoran, Sakura also has the ability to "hear" the voices of those who cannot be heard, such as spirits of nature, and to see ghosts. Such as the time in the Country of Jade, she can see Princess Emeraude while others couldn't. She can also see the future in visions, though this ability is unreliable and nothing she has control over.

In the anime, at some points when she is asleep, she will unknowingly go out and search for her feathers. She will seem to be awake, talking and interacting with others and her surroundings, yet is actually completely out of it, like she is unconsciously searching for her own feathers.

In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle anime, Sakura's personality is passive and weary, exhausted from her loss of memories. However as the series goes on, she becomes more stronger and independent. Syaoran states, even though she's lost most of her memories, she'll never change. She helps the group whenever she can, whether it's washing dishes or saving their lives.

However in the manga, her personality undergoes a change after the clone Syaoran leaves her. As she voices to Fay, no matter how identical the two Syaorans may be, the real Syaoran is still not the one she knows. Subsequent chapters show Sakura with a much darker personality, and wearing gothic clothing.

In the Infinity Arc, the group spent a few months fighting in a tournament, supposedly wanting to use the prize money to restore a world the clone Syaoran destroyed. However, the truth is that she was after the real prize - a robot (who is identical to Freya from Chobits) who can let one person and one person alone travel across dimensions.

It is later revealed that Fay is under a curse that forces him to kill if he ever meets a person that is stronger than him. And in volume one, you can see that Yūko was not hit by the rain, nor did she touch any of the people directly; this was because she was in another dimension to prevent Fay's curse from being activated. But when Sakura receives two feathers in the Infinity Arc, she was made stronger than Fay's halved magic and so he stabbed her, seemingly possessed. Sakura had a vision that after killing her, he would go insane and kill everyone else, eventually committing suicide, but she used the robot to transport her soul to a dream world, thus saving herself and stopping Fay from going insane.

Later, it's revealed that she was not the original target of the curse, as the real Syaoran was. This is explained further in her appearance in xxxHolic; she changed the future so that Syaoran would not be killed. As she explains to Watanuki (Xxxholic chapter 140), her coldness to the real Syaoran was because she was trying to follow the dream as close as possible up to that near fatal event. It's later learned that Sakura can still be saved. The two places where her body and her soul went contains two feathers. Her soul went to the world of dreams, where it will be aided by the other Syaoran. So the real Syaoran, Fay, Mokona and Kurogane went to Celes Country to rescue the body of Sakura, as Yūko told them it's the body they should rescue first, then the soul. Her body has recently been saved by the group, but they have yet to start making any progress to save her soul. In chapter 173, the real Syaoran had went to the dream world, to try to rescue Sakura. On the final page of this chapter (chapter 173), a hand is seen reaching out towards Sakura in the dream world. In chapter 145 of xxxHolic, while walking to school Watanuki suddenly falls into the dream world and sees the exact same thing. In chapter 146 of xxxHolic it is shown that the hand belongs to Syaoran.