English Translation: Falsehood
Watanuki is preparing a meal and having trouble at the same time in the kitchen until Yuuko comes by to ask for a sake refill. Not long later, a young woman drops by her shop, and she doesn’t know the reason why she came. Yuuko explains that her store is for granting wishes, so it means the woman must have a wish. The woman tells her that her pinky feels stiff and indirectly expresses her wish of wanting it healed. Yuuko immediately asks her if she has any bad habits, to which she denies. Watanuki then notices black smoke forming around her pinky. Yuuko gives her a ring and tells her she can wear it. Moreover, she warns the woman about her habit and the significance of her pinky.
Fairly noticeable changes to the intro scene. Instead of Watanuki cleaning Yuuko’s treasure storeroom, he ends up making a meal for her. Being a picky person, I’m slightly bothered by this alteration as they left out a lot of tidbits which may have been interesting for fans, especially the part where Watanuki finds a toy Clow Wand, and Yuuko talks about her association with Clow Read (a powerful sorcerer who is the creator of the Clow Cards from another of CLAMP’s series, Card Captor Sakura). Based on this, she also makes a reference to CCS’s Kinomoto Sakura as well as Li Syaoran, and remarks that she will be meeting them quite soon, but in this context she’s talking about Sakura and Syaoran from Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-. Moreover, they also cut almost all of the amusing scenes where Yuuko shouts and throws death glares at Watanuki (as well as Maru and Moro) whenever he describes her as a shrewd con woman behind her back. On the other hand, the scenario where they focused on the woman’s dilemma was faithful to the original and done quite well, but it’s unfortunate that the screen is still in pan and scan format. When Yuuko was stressing on the importance of the pinky, you can actually see Maru and Moro demonstrating an example of this (tying the red string of destiny), but Maru was almost completely cut out from the screen to show anything.
After PE lessons, Watanuki has a chance to talk with Kunogi Himawari (a girl whom he has a huge crush on), and exchange insults with Doumeki Shizuka (his hated rival). He goes off to Yuuko’s shop in an ecstatic mood having spoken to Himawari earlier. Yuuko nonchalantly tells him he may encounter bad fortune today, and explains that it is possible for a person’s luck to change just by having conversation with another. In this case, Himawari is not his “Lady Luck”, whereas Doumeki complements him best.
I initially thought they were going to postpone Doumeki’s debut until later but his early introduction was done quite smoothly by changing the situation of Himawari’s conversation with Watanuki. Manga readers may have noticed that the PE lesson scene was taken from Volume 2 Chapter 5, a different book from the one in which the story about the lying woman was published (Volume 1 Chapters 2 to 4). It seems they’re either rushing through or trying a mixed cut and paste approach to the story (CLAMP’s Ohkawa-sensei has a habit of doing this when she’s part of the staff, but she’s not the script writer for ×××HOLiC’s Episode 2). At the moment, it looks like the former if the preview means anything, but I’m still holding on to hope that they will include the stories in between this one and Ep 3’s later.
Soon afterwards, the same woman returns to the shop. Yuuko realizes she hasn’t rectified her bad habit, and begins to ask her a few questions. Every time the woman answers, more black smoke surrounds her. Yuuko then tells her that her habit is from her mouth and her heart, and proceeds to ask her if she has any other problems. The woman discloses that her pinky is still stiff and furthermore, her arm is starting to feel the same. Yuuko warns her to correct her habit before it is too late. The woman then excuses herself after politely refusing tea, stating that she has an appointment with a person she’s dating. Yuuko remarks to Watanuki that the woman will not be returning to the shop any more, and he asks for permission to leave, seemingly to go after the latter. He sees her leaving a dental clinic, contradictory to what she said earlier, and overhears a conversation between two of her colleagues who reveals that she’s a habitual liar. True enough, every time she lies, the smoke which surrounds her rapidly becomes thicker. After speaking to an old friend in the middle of the road, the smoke has completely consumed her, and her ring has cracked and turned a dirty color. She removes it with the intention of cleaning it but suddenly her whole body freezes, and she ends up getting hit by a truck.
Dialog-wise, they changed some of the woman’s words around a bit, but it still built up towards the climax of her being involved in the traffic accident. Perhaps a more obvious change here would be Himawari’s absence during that scene. It’s just my personal opinion, but I think this has somewhat weakened her role. If you remember Yuuko’s words earlier about Himawari bringing misfortune to Watanuki, this was actually supposed to be the first possible sign of that if they had included her. In the Manga, Himawari chanced upon Watanuki when he was following the woman, and she invited him to have tea with her at a café. Coincidentally, the café is at a location where the woman was heading towards, so they ended up walking after her and witnessing the horrible accident. Yuuko later quietly remarked to herself that Himawari was responsible for indirectly causing Watanuki to see the accident, thus being one of the early signs of bad luck to him. Although this omission doesn’t make much of a difference because Watanuki would most likely have followed the woman anyway regardless of whether Himawari was there or not, but her presence at the site would have placed a bit of emphasis on her role in the story. An instance of this is that in the Manga, Watanuki had to shield and prevent her from looking at the bloody mess. But of course, this isn’t the only concrete evidence of Himawari being a misfortune to Watanuki as we have yet to see the other side of her...
The woman survives the accident though, and is sent to the hospital by Watanuki. Back at the shop, he asks Yuuko why she didn’t tell the woman to stop lying when she already knew about her bad habit. She explains that lies can only be stopped by the person making them. Watanuki then asks Yuuko if she knows everything that will happen from now on, especially to him, but she subtly replies it is up him to think and create his own world as he sees it. She then sends him off to make dinner.
Oh, geez. This is by far the most drastic change they’ve ever introduced to the series. Why the heck did they scrape the original ending? This new outcome is simply a wash out :s. I probably shouldn’t make comparisons between the Manga and the Anime because they can be seen as playing different roles if the writers planned to do so with the latter, but it would have been wiser of them to consider the better choice based on the genre. For a series like ×××HOLiC, they should have followed the original plot if they wanted to deliver the impact of that scene effectively. In the Manga, the woman looks to have been killed (There was blood everywhere and people were gaping at her motionless body), and her death served as a grim moral lesson as well as highlighted the darker themes of the series. Snuffing that considerably dulled the whole “dire consequences” concept when it comes to bad habits and wishes – the two elements which pretty much describes what ×××HOLiC is all about.
Apart from that, I noticed the writers completely left out the Tsubasa parts during Yuuko’s monologue after she sent Watanuki to make dinner. She did mention the world being a very narrow place despite it stretching towards infinity, but in the Manga, she followed up with a remark that although the world is small, it is in fact, a large realm to those who fully understand it, and that there isn’t only one (referring to the notion of many worlds in Tsubasa). Since ×××HOLiC seems to be taking the “no Tsubasa connection” route, my assumption is the writers are trying to stay as far away from anything related to her sister series as possible, thus removing any traces which looks tied to the latter.
On to another topic and to those who may be interested, I find it fascinating how Watanuki seems to have mistaken Yuuko talking about fate and predetermination, when she actually meant something else upon telling him if that is how he imagines it, then it will be so. This is my own observation based on what I’ve read so far and I may be wrong, but I see Yuuko laying quite a lot of emphasis on hitsuzen rather than fate in this context. Hitsuzen according to her, is an inevitable destiny, but that is only the case based on the events the person encounters in his/her life and the sole causality is dependent on the person’s choices as well because other causalities would have created different results. It may sound rather confusing now (coz I plainly suck at explanations :p), but this will be clarified little by little later if they managed to convey the themes properly in future episodes.
Overall, this isn’t as good as the first episode, story-wise and more so, art quality. The animation standard has visibly slipped down a muddy path (Drastic budget cut on Production I.G’s part perhaps?) and probably not worth being noticed at all. However, I’m still curious to see how things will develop later on. Next up, we have the “Angel” game arc.
~Entry by Dav~
No comments:
Post a Comment