xxxHOLiC◆継 Episode 02
xxxHOLiC Kei 02

SPOILER Summary:

Watanuki pays Doumeki a visit at the temple Doumeki resides at, bringing a bento with him. After Doumeki eats and makes his usual request for specific foods, Watanuki decides to help him in the research regarding Watanuki’s eye. As such, Watanuki accidentally finds a secret area where a book written by Doumeki’s grandfather is. Almost too good to be true, the instructions on how to recover an eye taken by a spider is there. However, the book that Himawari-chan lent to Doumeki opens and the letters form a snake-like creature. It immediately goes after the book containing the method for recovering Watanuki’s eye, consuming the words off the page.

Because it is very hostile when they approach it, Watanuki ends up tossing the bento box on the creature. Doumeki points out that this doesn’t help them since the creature is still eating the words of the book. Yuuko-san arrives and wryly observes what is happening and suggests they need to take care of the problem. She receives Doumeki’s permission to use his grandfather’s o-fuda, which Mokona “sucks” from the four corners of the storeroom (that had been used to protect the storeroom magically) and entices the creature to consume them instead. The creature, a bookworm, indeed consumes the o-fuda, and ends up sealing itself up due to the magic on the o-fuda.

Doumeki looks at his grandfather’s book, but the section about the spider and the eye has been consumed. Yuuko-san notices the book from where the bookworm came and inquires as to whose book it is. She learns it is Himawari-chan’s while Watanuki freaks out over her book being destroyed. Yuuko-san decides its time for food and drink, and even has a big bottle of sake to get things started. Doumeki again asks for croquettes, and Yuuko-san agrees. The following day at school, Watanuki apologizes about what happened to the book to Himawari-chan and a promise that Doumeki will buy her a new copy. However, despite his joy at being with Himawari, he can’t help but think about Yuuko-san’s ominous statements regarding Himawari-chan.

Watanuki is walking home when his blind eye again sees a vision. He then sees a flying goldfish, which is caught by a young lady, who consumes it. She recognizes Watanuki and makes mention that there’s currently a fight over his eye in her world. She’d like to get the eye too, but “that girl” would be mad if she did. She’s off to chase more goldfish, so Watanuki goes to Yuuko-san’s place and relays the story to her. He learns this girl is a Neko-Musume (cat girl) . However, Yuuko-san tells Watanuki that if he doesn’t hurry, he’ll lose his eye forever.

Watanuki reflects on this at school the next day, but it is soon forgotten in the high of getting to walk home alone with Himawari-chan. After they part ways, Watanuki again thinks on why Yuuko-san is so ominous about Himawari-chan. He has a vision of a woman passing in front of his blind eye and stops. At the intersection in front of him, a car hits a woman but before he can do anything, the Zashiki-Warashi’s Karasu-Tengu whack him, angry with him. They go to Yuuko-san’s place where they have a wish of Yuuko-san — to remove the barrier that has trapped the Zashiki-Warashi. They offer a Tengu fan as payment, but it is too much. As such, Yuuko-san has a willing Doumeki join the Karasu-Tengu to rescue Zashiki-Warashi. She also has the Kuda-Kitsune (pipe fox) go with Watanuki and though the Kudakitsune aren’t happy with this, they have no choice since even with the barrier gone, they still could not rescue Zashiki-Warashi. With that, Yuuko-san sends them to were the barrier is.

Thoughts/Review:

If Production I.G can keep the changes to the original manga to a minimum (as they’ve done thus far), I won’t have much of an issue with this sequel series. Still, I think to the accident scene in this episode. In the manga, when Watanuki sees the figure pass in front of his blind right eye, he stops and thus avoids being hit from a falling transformer. In this episode, it causes Watanuki to miss being hit. Now, I have no problem with the change as such per se, but it makes it SEEM like the woman getting hit is the one his blind eye saw, and that’s not true. Plus, the manga has Watanuki consider how seeing this apparent woman in his right eye prevented him from getting hit and possibly killed. I didn’t get that same feeling from the anime.

Beyond that, the episode was fine with me. It appears the writers are actually having to deal with Himawari-chan and Watanuki, whereas this was kinda pushed to the side in the first series (as I recall it).

I know Production I.G can do things right if they chose to do so, as seen in Tsubasa Tokyo Revelation. So I’m hoping that things will be better this time around.