xxxHOLiC◆継 Episode 11

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: Watanuki and Himawari-chan are walking home and talking foods before parting company. For some reason, Watanuki’s pinkie starts hurting him again out of the blue. While serving Yuuko-san dinner, Watanuki’s finger again hurts him so that he drops a sake cup and breaks it. She inquires about his pinkie and he has to think back in order to remember making a yubikiri (pinkie promise) with Himawari-chan. Yuuko-san has Watanuki think back to any other negative events that happened because of Himawari-chan. He starts to say these are coincidences, but recalls Yuuko-san’s words about there being no such thing — hitsuzen.

That night, Haruka-san visits Watanuki in a dream. Watanuki ends up telling Haruka-san about Himawari-chan, the pinkie promise, and the other things as well as the fact that he’s starting to believe in hitsuzen. Haruka-san tells Watanuki to stick near his grandson (Doumeki). The following morning, Watanuki awakes and wants to tell Yuuko-san his dream, but she is indisposed. Moro and Maru tell him to make breakfast just the same, which he does. On the way to school, he meets Kohane-chan and gives her a choux cream desert. She accepts, but then asks whom Watanuki made a pinkie promise with.

At school, Watanuki mentions his dream to Doumeki. Upon entering the school, Himawari-chan taps him on the shoulder. The two slowly walk and talk but after a bit, Watanuki stumbles. As such, he touches the windows on the hall wall, which fall out. This causes Watanuki to fall out of the window and down to the ground amongst the broken glass. He finds himself in a dark place and cries for his mother and father. To prevent him from dying, Haruka-san enters Watanuki’s dream-state and sends him back to the land of the living.

Watanuki wakes up in bed at Yuuko-san’s place. Yuuko-san explains that Doumeki had been nearby and had planned to get Watanuki to a hospital. However, Yuuko-san had dispatched a butterfly messenger, instructing Doumeki to bring Watanuki to her. He did so and Yuuko-san was able to save Watanuki’s life along with Haruka-san. Watanuki weakly jokes about the cost of his salvation, leading Yuuko-san to reveal that the price had been paid by Himawari and Doumeki. Himawari comes to the bed as Yuuko-san departs. Watanuki remembers Haruka-san’s words about not being able to ignore the negative things he sees in Himawari-chan. As such, he starts to mention this to her. She smiles and asks what took him so long to notice.

Thoughts/Review: One of the negative things about the restructuring of the manga plot is that a plot element, like the pinkie promise, has to be swept aside for a while until it can magically be brought back to resume its place as a plot element. That’s the unfortunate thing which has happened with the anime.

In the manga (volume 10), the events of finding the dead woman (because of the pinkie promise with Himawari) are immediately followed by an encounter with Kohane-chan who asks him about his pinkie (and whom he might have made a pinkie promise with) and then an encounter with Yuuko-san about it. After that, Watanuki has his accident.

In the anime, this plot is started, then ends. So a lot of time is spent on the Kohane-chan story. How fortunate that Watanuki’s pinkie didn’t cause him any problems there, eh? Then we wrap up the story and, “Oh yeah. Lets go back and revive the pinkie promise thread.” I’m glad Watanuki has such a good memory. Isn’t it great that Kohane-chan couldn’t detect Watanuki’s pinkie promise earlier? This is why some changes to manga stories just boggle my mind. Would those who have never read the manga care? I’d be curious to hear from them (if they exist).

I was disappointed that Watanuki’s parents (assuming that’s who they were from the manga) didn’t speak with him to try to send Watanuki back. However, I figure that since all of the Tsubasa stuff has been excised from the xxxHOLiC anime, that may be the reason for not including that moment in this episode.

Otherwise, the adaptation is a fairly accurate one from the manga. It is just that the anime writers fail (for me) by having that break between events, as I mention earlier.