xxxHOLiC◆継 Episode 04

SPOILER Summary: Watanuki shares his dream of eggplant with Himawari-chan, and she shares her nightmare about being chased with him. Watanuki gives her a bag of Madeleine cookies he made as thanks for sharing her dream with him. He agrees to cover for her after school work, but is frustrated when he learns he has to do papers with Doumeki. He’s frustrated further when he discovers that Doumeki has one of his Madeleine cookies and doesn’t want to hear Doumeki’s dream about Doumeki’s grandfather and a horse.

That night after completing the school tasks, Watanuki heads for home, only to hear footfalls behind him. He’s being chased by a spirit creature and is captured but ends up being rescued by what appears to be Doumeki on a horse, who shoots the creature. The creature is destroyed but the arrow survives. Watanuki then discovers Yuuko-san sitting on him and teasing him about lying on the road. She then reveals that he had a dream, specifically a fulfilling dream, which is a dream that becomes real. This is proven by the arrow, which is still on the road. Yuuko-san then prompts him to remember the origin of both dreams — Himawari-chan and Doumeki respectively. Watanuki paid for them with the cookies he made.

Yuuko-san has Watanuki take the arrow and passing through the small space between an electric poll and a wall, they are suddenly in another dimension and another world. The Dream Buyer arrives, and seeing Watanuki’s arrow, he wants to buy it, paying for the arrow with his special balloon dreams. Watanuki doesn’t know what to make of this and Yuuki-san makes sure that Watanuki gets five balloons in payment. Hearing that the Dream Buyer is going to the Kitsune Ondenya’s place for oden, Watanuki gives the Dream Buyer one of Watanuki’s dream balloons to give to the young kitsune. The Dream Buyer is impressed.

After Yuuko-san extracts a couple of balloons as payment for her services, Watanuki is left with two. Watanuki goes to bed at Yuuko-san’s place and is suddenly aware of a presence. It is Doumeki’s grandfather. After they talk for a bit and Watanuki sees a picture of young Doumeki, he wakes up. Yuuko-san explains that his dream came from one of the balloons, which is now popped. Apparently, Doumeki’s grandfather must have sold it years ago. However, what pleases Watanuki most is learning that Doumeki used to have to wear a female kimono as a child, though he’s disappointed he didn’t bring the picture across with him from the dream world.

Thoughts: I loved the musical choice for the Dream Buyer. *lol* Having a 3/4-time polka played gave things an Italian feel to things, which world on two levels. First, the Dream Buyer was dressed in an almost Italian fashion (or so it seemed to me) and second, Yuuko-san and Watanuki having crossed dimensions meant they weren’t in a normal Japan any longer. So why not play a polka?

While I normally don’t care much for modifications to the original manga story, I do hand it to the writers for the obvious joke dealing with the idol magazine, complete with its pretty young female bikini models. I think the joke worked for me because as soon as Yuuko-san dumped it on Watanuki, it kept being shown in Watanuki’s possession. As such, it was just a matter of time until the joke was sprung. Making me wait for the obvious joke after teasing it for a while works for me.

I’m still not happy with Production I.G’s decision to make Watanuki’s right eye look normal when it should be golden in color. I wonder what they’ll do down the road. The eye was an element of this episode and it would have been more impactful to be a different color.

While the episode was pretty faithful to the manga story, Production I.G had to do some scrambling since the manga story was of the first dreams of the new year, which is why everyone was telling them. That’s because they completely jacked up the time line in the first series and so the story wasn’t set in the new year. I’m hoping that Production I.G gets its act straight regarding time lines because they ruin the cultural significance behind stories when they decide to set them in any time period.