Yes, The Third is great. Most likely one of the best series of the season. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Honoka is an amazing character. The anime really delves in her mind. It shows exactly what kind of person she is, all of her different sides, how she reacts at the things thrown at her and how these affect her. I have yet to see an anime who featured a character at whom the creators spent so much time and details. It’s just brilliant.

The episode begins with another example of the strictness of The Third. If you live a good life, you’re fine. Though when you break the law, they sometimes send their ultimate weapon to take care of them, which mostly means that you won’t be able to live much longer. It’s never mentioned, but I’m quite certain that this “ultimate weapon” is the Blue Breaker, who was mentioned at the previous episode.

Honoka’s right hand, meanwhile, still hasn’t fully healed. She really notices this when she practices swordfighting a bit. She and Ikus are in the desert again, heading for Oyaji in order to collect the PSP she ordered. We also see a little flasback of the one who taught her her fighting-skills. At least, the silhouette of the one who taught her her fighting skills. It appears to be a tall, long-haired person. It would’t surprise me if this guy is with The Third now. Then Ikus arrives, and the two of them talk a bit about each other’s special powers. Ikus holds a little speech, about things Honoka never really thought about. She begins to feel a bit lonely at that time (thanks to the narrator, again).

The next day, they arrive at Oyaji, and we get to meet another one of Honoka’s personalities: her immensely enthusiastic one. At the sight of her PSP, which seems to be an armoured suit, she immediately gets all giddly, wanting to check it out. However, she’s not exactly happy with the suit she has to wear in order to be able to use this PSP, though it appears that she needs to wear it anyway. She spends the rest of the day trying out all of the different functions, and playing a bit with Millie.

That evening, Bogie and Oyaji talk a bit about Joey, and his maintenance-work. It seems that he needs a lot of work, though he has potential. Millie and Honoka also talk a bit, and Honoka reveals that Oyaji’s the one responsible for fixing her Sand Tank, after she bought it, and she really owes him for all the work he’s done for her.

I like Bogie. Even though he’s just artificial intelligence with a voice, I just love his sarcastical comments. This personality seems to fit him perfectly. It’s so much better than just the same recorded tape which gets played over and over again. Anyway, during the night, the two parties break up again. After a couple of minutes have passed, Honoka suddenly realizes that the Blue Breaker’s heading towards Oyaji’s vehicle, in invisible-mode. She speeds up in order to be able to save them, but she arrives too late, and Oyaji’s vehicle catches fire. She then attempts to use the PSP, and thank goodness, she can’t operate it to its full extend yet. That only adds up to the awesomeness of these scenes. Eventually, she manages to hit the Blue Breaker, and manages to send it crashing to some place about a mile away.

It then seems that Millie managed to survive the attack, though Oyaji’s nowhere to be found. And to think that the best of the episode had yet to be shown. Honoka dashes out of her PSP, in order to meet up with Millie, who seems to bewildered to notice what actually happened. Then, it seems that Blue Breaker managed to survive the crash, and attempts to attack them again. Still invisible. During these attempts, Honoka’s headband falls off, and reveals some kind of third eye on her forehead. With this, she disables Blue Breaker’s invisibility mode, who flees afterwards, only laughing at her. On a side-note: Honoka looked really beautiful at these moments. This really was an amazing fight.

The goodness only continues when Millie sees the thing on Honoka’s forehead. For some reason, she gets incredibly paranoid, and faints. Ikus manages to catch up to them, and the episode ends. I’m really curious about what will happen in the rest of the series. It’s getting so amazing now.

Tsubasa Chronicle seems to be reluctant to introduce new characters or something. During the entire season, all we’ve seen is either the same characters as in the first season, or copies of those characters, wearing the same soul but existing in a different world. Especially now, that it has been carried over the top, it’s beginning to bother me more and more. It’s a great concept, though the creators really need to look at series like Noein and Higurashi.

Why? Because they seem to have the strange idea that a person remains the same person, and that certain occurrences in his life don’t have any effect on this person, and he or she will just continue living on like he or she was destined to. They made a good attempt at fixing this with the magician, who appeared as a friendly captain on a ship, but he really has been the only copied character who experienced such a change. All other characters just share the same personalities, while they all have experienced different things, which turned them into the characters they are. When you see people like the king and his advisor in the desert world walking right next to each other in another world, then you could blame this on the fact that these were destined together, but what if the two grew up in an entirely different neighborhood? Then they never met each other in the first place. How would they act when a thing like that happens? And I haven’t even started about the physical appearances of the characters. Why does everyone have the same haircut, in all of his or hers different bodies with the same souls? And how about some scars that some characters might have encountered, while their counterparts have not?

This episode also showed me another flaw in this concept. Apparently, characters in different worlds with the same soul can differ from age. What we have here, is a genious concept. But why the heck is Syaoran’s father the only one whose age is different? The creators’d better have a very good reason for this, because at the moment, I’m blaming it on laziness. Another thing is: why haven’t we seen any copies of Syaoran? Or Sakura? Kurogane? Fye? The bad guys? The guys associated with Fye? Clow Reed? The creators can blame this on luck for a single season, though it’s beginning to bother me that they haven’t shown up yet.

Tsubasa Chronicle remains an entertaining anime, despite this. This is mostly because of the individual stories to be told, the great looking art (whenever it’s not suffering from low budgets) and some great characters and character interaction. Still, the fact remains that there’s extremely little time spent on the main storyline, which seems to be the most worthwile story of all. It’s great to see different worlds like that, I’m enjoying the creativity put in it, but I’d also love to see some more time being put into the main story. And I’m also hoping that this show will actually end at with the third season. Obviously, it’s been building up, though I wonder if you can build up too much.

Anyway, rants aside, the episode was an intermezzo again, in which Syaoran meets up with a child-version of his father. Despite their predictable reactions, the rest of the episode was enjoyable to watch. Especially Kurogane played a great part again. No bad guys this time, though. It seems they took a coffee break. The only thing is that the creators wasted yet another potentially good scene. The fact that Syaoran’s father isn’t really Syaoran’s father never gets questioned. I would’ve loved some interesting debates about this. After all, Syaoran is getting all hopeful on just an illusion. His father remains dead, though during the episode, he seems to have forgotten this. Is it really true that you can just replace an important person with someone from another world, who just happens to share the same soul? Then what value does this important person have? Interesting questions, which never seem to surface.