October 3rd, 2005
Fye buys a piano for the restaurant, solely so we can have an insert song in this episode - and lo, Oroha (the curly-haired woman who works for the evil dude whose name I’ve forgotten that’s running the show) comes in and uses a magic song to learn everything about Sakura - cue Yui Makino singing, and I still think she’s naff (I was expecting them to pimp her piano playing as well, but we were spared that).
This wasn’t actually the main point of the episode, though - instead, Syaoran and Kurogane go sword shopping and get horribly ripped off before Kurogane basically pounds Syaoran into submission before he even gets his hands on the sword. This is the problem with having a glass eye, I guess.
Oh, and the world isn’t real, ‘cos there’s some kind of sci-fi control centre and Syaoran’s floating in a big pink egg.
Excuse the frivolity, but I find the Yui Makino pimping quite annoying and that pretty much soured my impressions of this episode, which is a shame as it wasn’t exactly bad otherwise. She’s quite good as a seiyuu now she’s got into the swing of things, but her singing voice sounds like she’s a 12 year old caught in the spotlight at a carol concert…
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September 27th, 2005
…it’s been about five minutes since I finished watching this and I can’t really remember what happened. Ho hum.
The episode is mostly about fight scenes. And they’re good, thanks to Bee Train’s awesome inbetweening skills. We’re introduced to two new oni slayers, Ryuuouh and Souma (from RG Veda, I believe), who help defeat a powerful oni that’s after Sakura - Syaoran is useless since he has no weapon skills, and asks Kuro-pyon to train him with a sword. Furthermore, a mysterious figure who knows Syaoran appears to be behind all this…
Tsubasa may be better, but it’s still slow as hell sometimes. It just doesn’t feel like anything really happened this episode, for some reason. Ah well, I like training arcs in shounen fight shows in general, so next episode should be good fun. Plus, that man will be showing up soon…
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September 22nd, 2005
A rather disjointed episode here - Fye gives the group stupid names, Sakura almost remembers Syaoran but gets struck down by Yuuko’s magic so that she forgets once more, the gang discovers that the oni have been acting strangely recently, and whilst Syaoran and Sakura have sappy moments in the cafe Fye and Kurogane are surrounded by oni…
Fye fights! A bit! Hurray! And Sakura worries about not being useful - she can see spirits and get possessed by stuff occasionally, which is usually for some good, but Fye mostly takes the piss out of Kuro-pyon - a valid service, certainly, but not exactly the most pro-active thing to be doing.
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September 15th, 2005
Aaaand straight onto the next world we go after some angsting from Touya and Yukito (remember them?). This one is the Jade Kingdom, where the Sliders (come on, of course it’s Sliders CLAMP-ified) are greeted by some very perky women who direct them to the local town hall - turns out they need jobs. Syaoran and Kurogane sign up to be “Oni Hunters”, facing the demonic creatures that come out by night, while Sakura and Fye get to work on opening a restaurant (with some help from Mokona). Whilst fighting, Kurogane discovers that Syaoran’s right eye is made of glass, so he’s vulnerable to attacks from that side - we also find out that he was an extremely creepy little child, but Sakura taught him to say “thank you”, bless.
Ah yes, the Jade Kingdom. Mostly notable for one part of the plotline in particular which will have me wibbling away with glee when it turns up - for the moment, however, this is a nice beginning, with some decent fight scenes and character stuff. The tone of the series feels much closer to the manga now - I’m sure most of the dialogue and storyboarding is directly lifted from the manga panels anyway, but this arc feels like it’s going to be particularly well adapted from the first episode alone. I just feel it in my gut, ’tis all.
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September 14th, 2005
New country! The gang lands smack bang in the middle of a gladiatorial fight to determine the strongest hero in the land, the winner of which will get a “sacred treasure”
which sets Mokona’s spidey sense a-tingling. While the boys play with swords, Sakura wanders off into a small cottage where there’s a Viking who looks a bit like Syaoran with bad wounds from fending off wolves called Kiefer - he’s all pissy because he’s too wounded to enter the tournament, and his girlfriend Charme suffers from a bad heart since she got zapped with a curse by an evil spirit that can only be cured with - you guessed it - the sacred treasure.
There is fighting, and Syaoran ends up winning the sacred treasure - but Kiefer turns up to try and win it off him. Cue the Insert Song of Bee Train Battling (except it’s sung by Yui Makino, who isn’t realy a very good singer no matter how hard Victor Entertainment try to push her) so it’s not exactly dynamic, but unsurprisingly Syaoran gives Kiefer the sacred treasure when it turns out not to be a feather, The Day Is Saved, and we toddle off elsewhere.
Mmm, I love the smell of anime-only filler in the morning. That said, it’s pretty good filler, as is usual for Tsubasa - while the storyline was ever so predictable, and once more the show neatly divides into the shounen bits where the blokes beat things up and the shoujo bits where Sakura has sappy conversations, it was fairly nicely written (they’ve definitely got the hang of the Kurogane-Fye dynamic now!) and the (as ever, all too brief) fights were well animated. Also, because it was only one episode, nothing got to outstay its welcome, which is always good.
Except the insert song. I like the Engrish version of “Tsubasa” on the first OST, and the Japanese version just isn’t as good. Ho hum. At least it’s better than “Amrita” or whatever the song for the Tsubasa movie is…
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