xxxHOLiC Manga Chapter 199

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Watanuki apologizes to Himawari-chan for not being able to meet her in person, but she promises to come by on April 4th to celebrate Watanuki’s birthday with the others. He thanks her and she says she loves him. He says he loves her.

Doumeki drops by and Watanuki tells him that he’ll have a delivery for him to make to Himawari. Watanuki goes off with Maru and Moro to prepare dinner so Mokona joins Doumeki to talk about Himawari. Doumeki mentions how Himawari said she’d only to come by the store once a year. Mokona implies that the shop is not a good place for Himawari, which is why Yuuko-san only invited Himawari-chan over once after she became Yuuko-san’s customer. Further, Watanuki had figured this out and he’d tried to discourage her from coming by for her own sake. Since visiting Himawari through dreams is also harmful to her, Watanuki compromised on her visiting once a year.

Himawari-chan had asked Doumeki to feed her every bit of information on Watanuki in the mean time, which Doumeki will do when he next sees her. Since Watanuki and Himawari love each other, Watanuki does what he can to make Himawari-chan’s yearly visits to the store better. Doumeki believes that Himawari knows everything which is why she respects Watanuki’s choice. However, Doumeki still has a decision to make.

Watanuki returns to the trashed apartment with the dirty and injured young woman. He learns that in addition to taking a beating from the person who lives in the apartment, the woman produced the Crimson Pearl and promised it to Jorô-Gumo. A noise has Watanuki turn around to see what is causing it.

Thoughts/Review:

Love? Love?

The term “daisuki” is being used between Himawari and Watanuki, which while not as strong as “aishiteru,” is still a love confession, or at minimum, a strong declaration of how much the care for each other. We always knew that Watanuki had a huge crush on Himawari-chan. I never had a clear indication of how Himawari-chan felt for Watanuki. Clearly, she enjoyed his company and clearly she cared about him as she paid a heavy price for allowing Watanuki to live. However, I never had any real sense that she cared for Watanuki in a romantic sense.

That their relationship has advanced to the point where they openly say that they love each other combined with Himawari clearly wanting to see Watanuki tells me that her feelings are equal to his. Circumstances being what they are, their relationship is actually worse than a long-distance relationship but we’ll see just how close they’ve become once Himawari-chan makes her visit to the shop.

Still, I find it a bit odd that CLAMP did not show Himawari-chan’s face at all during the phone conversation. They do show her (and Yuuko-san) in a flashback and a partial image that I assume is Himawari-chan, but I wonder why they didn’t show her outright. Combine that with the remarks on how the store is harmful to Himawari-chan AND Watanuki visiting her via dream is also apparently harmful to her makes me think that something bad has happened to her because of the store and/or Watanuki attempting to visit her via the dreaming.

Anyway, we should see Himawari-chan soon I hope. If they are romantically linked, then Watanuki’s relationship to Yuuko-san is more like mother-son or maybe more apropos, a mentor-student relationship.

Watanuki’s return to see the woman continues the Crimson Pearl thread. So, just why is this woman taking a beating? What is the Crimson Pearl? Why was it promised to Jorô-Gumo? What is the woman’s connection to the spider queen? Just what is Watanuki about to meet?

An interesting story arc to say the least. Can’t wait to see more. ^_^