Sakura (Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle) - Appearances

Appearances

Introduced in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Sakura is the princess of the Kingdom of Clow, who is in love with Syaoran, her childhood friend. In the series' start, a force strips her of her memories and magical abilities, which takes the form of feathers. All the feathers are spread throughout different parallel worlds. To retrieve the feathers and thereby save her life, she and Syaoran are sent to Yūko Ichihara, who gives them the use of Mokona Modoki in exchange for Sakura's memory of Syaoran, which causes him to be absent from any memories restored to her. She is initially confused, and constantly tired, but she grows stronger as she regains her feathers. She becomes very friendly with the group's members, Fai D. Flowright, Kurogane and Mokona and she grows close to Syaoran again. However, even though she notices that she is missing somebody from her memories, when Sakura realizes the one is Syaoran, her memories are reversed to before her thinking. She also starts recover various of her abilities, like seeing spirits of nature, see ghosts, or foresee the future.

As the journey continues, Sakura comes to regard Syaoran as her most important person, but at such time he betrays the group as he is controlled by Fei-Wang Reed, the sorcerer who created him based on another teenager. After learning that Fei-Wang was the responsible for splitting her memories and set up the journey to recover them for his own plans, Sakura still decides to continue it in order to save Syaoran. Since then, Sakura becomes very distant from the group, especially the original Syaoran because of his similarities to the clone. In an attempt to change a future she saw involving Fai killing the original Syaoran as part of Fei-Wang's curse, Sakura is able to take his place, sending at that moment her soul to the Dream World and her body to Celes. Her soul is there destroyed by the Syaoran clone when trying to recover her feathers. Just before her death, Sakura reveals that she is a clone of the original Sakura and requests Syaoran to go back to his previous self. Fei-Wang created her to increase the power from the feathers and needed a back up if the original Sakura would die in the journey. The stored power from her soulless body is then used by Fei-Wang as one of the means to revive Yūko.

As the clones cannot properly die, Sakura is reconstructed by Yūko, along with the Syaoran clone who was killed by Fei-Wang, as Yuko wishes to compensate them for how their existences were used. She makes them reborn as normal humans, and the two eventually meet and start living together. Sakura gives birth to the original Syaoran and they realize they are in the past. They raise him until it is time for him to begin the events of the series, and then they seal themselves in a glass tube in order to await the time where Fei-Wang attempts to shatter reality. Sakura and Syaoran, after breaking free from the tube, reverse Fei-Wang's damage to the dimension using the magic they inherited from the sorcerer Clow Reed when reincarnating. However, both disappear after Fei-Wang's death, leaving behind only a feather which the original Sakura and Syaoran absorbs.

Besides the manga and anime series from Tsubasa, Sakura also appears in the animated film The Princess in the Birdcage Kingdom in which she still travels with Syaoran, Fai, Kurogane and Mokona across dimensions. She is also a playable character in the two Nintendo DS video games from Tsubasa. In the drama CD series, The Matinée of the Palace, the group performs a play that reenacts the series' story while searching for one of her feathers. Outside Tsubasa, Sakura also makes various appearances in Clamp's manga xxxHolic which shows some events happening in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. Additionally, Sakura also appears in later volumes in the Dream World after her soul is separated from her body. There, she meets Yuko's assistant, a teenager named Kimihiro Watanuki, whom she finds similar to the original Syaoran. One of her feathers - that of her memories of Syaoran - appears in Watanuki's world which gives the medium Kohane Tsuyuri the ability to exorcise spirits. After Kohane wishes for the removal of her ability, the feather stays with the black Mokona Modoki. She does not appear in the animated adaptions of xxxHolic until the original video animations series xxxHolic Shunmuki in which she appears in the Dream World talking with Watanuki. The drama CD series Holitsuba Gakuen feature Sakura as one of the students from the fictional school Holitsuba which features characters from Tsubasa and xxxHolic.