A woman who has a bad habit, her little finger has been stiff, and smoke has been coming out of it. Seems familiar, no? Still, xxxHolic manages to turn it into something worthwile once more. The main theme of the episode is “pinky”, as all of the rituals and symbols introduced have got something to do with the little finger. The red strings of destiny, the “Pinky Swear”, the Pipe Fox who imitated a red string of destiny and the amusement park attraction which involved a guillotine which would attempt to cut two lovers’ embraced pinkys, but missed (sorry if this sounds a bit vague).

The woman in this episode does tell lies, though her real bad habit is running after too many men at the same time, fakely promising them eternal happiness and “manipulating the red strings of destiny”, as Yuuko tells us at the end of the episode. It’s good that the episode only focused on three of these men, instead of trying to show too many at the same time, so the show can focus on the three individuals.

Domeki and Watanuki are also getting more interesting as every episode passes. On the surface, Watanuki dislikes Domeki, and Domeki finds Watanuki weird. But still, the two of them end up taking the same route homewards. Domeki doesn’t turn his mind on something else when Watanuki suddenly runs off, and Watanuki isn’t scared to tell Domeki about things that happened. Oh, and the little dance that the Pipe Fox made Watanuki perform in front of Domeki was hilarious.

Despite all of the themes introduced in the series, I have one small problem with these. Or rather annoyance. As this show is takes place in Japan and is focused at a Japanese audience. This means that only Japanese customs are being dealt with. I’d love to see some habits and symbols from other countries pass the spotlights. There definately is enough material for it. But then again, this show has specialized like no other on the area of spirituality, so it’s also nice to see such an in-depth explanation of them.

Another little detail I loved: Mokona actually drinking almost half a bottle of liquor. Who ever said that cute and fluffy animals couldn’t enjoy themselves? ^^ I’m also wondering about the price that the woman was supposed to give Yuuko. And what was the meaning of the ring? These parts were a bit neglected, unfortunately, though I loved the way the climax was executed. Nothing was said at all, but you knew that if the knife was to go down, it would be hitting, and cutting their fingers off. Overall, I liked this episode. It’s not the best xxxHolic had to show, but I had a really good time watching it.

Shiurei is just like Haruhi Fujioka!

Okay, maybe ten times more awesome, but still, the two of them do share the same weakness. They both react in a very different way. Haruhi learned to crawl into a closet and wait till it’s over, while Shiurei sought refuge at Seiran.

In any case, a few things which happened at the previous episode became clear. First: Shiurei didn’t come back because Ryuuki wanted her to. In fact, he doesn’t even know she’s in the palace. She just got a good offer for a job as the masked guy from last episode’s assistant. For some reason, Kouyuu finds it a good idea to keep her existance away from Ryuuki. Ensei also serves this guy. I find this a bit strange. After all, Ensei looks like he’s some kind of war hero. Then why wouldn’t he join the royal army?

We start the episode with Shiurei coming back to the masked guy after running one of his errands. His direct assistant praises her, and then the masked guy calls to her. For some reason, he adresses her with “Kou Shuu”. I guess she decided to use a nickname, but doesn’t this seem to obvious? If I remember correctly, women are not allowed to work in the palace, which was the reason Shiurei had to work as Ryuuki’s wife in the first place. But still, the same rule still applies. Could it be that Shiurei was employed as a man, in order to bypass this little problem? But still, Ryuuki remains smart. Why hasn’t he figured it out yet? I mean, one look at her name and she’s discovered, no? *kicks lack of japanese*

In any case, the masked guy seems to be dealing with a lot of books and paperwork, and he gives Shiurei a lot to do, as there are a lot of piles of books and paper which have to be cleaned up. We then switch to Kouyuu and Ran as she walsk by, carrying a pile of books. The two of them talk a bit. I assume that this was about Shiurei, and how it would be troublesome if she was found out. The reason behind this still remains a mystery until I can get my hands on the subbed version of this episode.

That evening, it seemed that Shiurei asked Ran and Kouyuu to join her, Ensei, Seiran and Shouta for dinner at her home. Ensei doesn’t have too many manners, and Shiurei asks Kouyuu to help her continue her studies. Seiran, meanwhile, notices that Ensei keeps wandering off towards some place, which doesn’t seem to be too smart.

The next day, the masked guy gives Shiurei and Ensei another job of delivering some papers. When they’re done, they complain a bit about the ridiculously hot weather, and they wonder why the masked guy wears a different mask at each different occasion. For some reason, Ensei keeps calling Shiurei a princess. Even though he had yet to be introduced at the time Shiurei played for queen.

A bit later, Shiurei carries a couple of books, and she runs into Ryuuki. It takes a while for him to notice her, so she quickly hides. Ryuuki meanwhile decides that he’s seeing things again. When Ryuuki has left, a random guy pops up from out of nowhere, and offers to carry the books for Shiurei. He introduces himself as a very weird guy, and he seems to be getting all exited over the strangest things. When the two of they say goodbye, he tells her his name. He does this while making a bishie-pose. The combination that he’s no bishie at all, along with the fact that he carries a pile of books turns this into a hilarious sight. His name seems to be “Ojii-san”, by the way. I think he was kidding when he said that…

When Shiurei returns to the masked man’s office, he seems to be sleeping on a couch. Then, a small thunderstorm starts. It doesn’t take too long (about a minute), but it takes long enough for Seiran to be worried about Shiurei, and Shiurei to scream on top of the masked guy while the masked guy tries to comfort her. This doesn’t end up well when the thunder ends and Ensei the masked guy’s direct assistant enter the room, which results in a totally hilarious scene.

That evening, Shiurei’s still worried about what happened, while she studies a bit. Ensei then brings her some onigiri. The two of them then talk a bit about something my horrible Japanese couldn’t understand, while Seiran and Shouta listen from another room. Shiurei knows that the two of them are listening as well, because one of the onigiri looks horribly deformed (Shouta’s work ^^).

The next day, Kouyuu talks to Ryuuki a bit, surrounded by piles and piles of books. The latter really is down because of his lack of seeing Shiurei. He has some kind of plan, but the episode’s not long enough to show this. We then see “Ojii-san” talking to the masked guy without his mask, indeed laughing at his own performance a couple of days earlier. The two of them are up to something. probably they plan to do something to Shiurei as well, in order to break Ryuuki. I couldn’t understand what that might’ve been, though.

We never get to see the masked guy’s eyes and forehead, by the way. Every time we see him in screen, the screen stops around his nose. He probably has something that the viewer must not see at this point in the show. Then their discussion turns light again, as Ojii-san forces the masked guy to put up a horribly ugly mask, and wear it for the rest of the next day. This mask has a very interesting facial expression. While his normal masks are just emotionless, this mask has a very sad look, almost as if it was crying. The masked guy doesn’t seem to happy with this. ^^

The next day, a startled Shiurei gets a demonstration on how this guy manages to drink his tea without putting his mask off. Later that day, the masked guy apparently unmasks Ensei. Or he at least says something that startles Shiurei and Ensei. Kouyuu, meanwhile is wondering about something related to Ryuuki. That night, Ensei gets caught by Seiran while trying to sneak out again. The two of them talk a bit as well.

Okay, I was wrong in my prediction. The big thing didn’t happen this episode, it’ll happen next episode. I hope. In any case, we haven’t seen any major plot development which will be able to provide material for 24 episodes. At this moment, you’d almost say that we’re dealing with a 13-episode anime if you didn’t know about the fact that there’ll be 24 of them.

I’ve got some issues with the goons, summoned by Ender. If it wasn’t for them, this episode would’ve been totally and incredibly amazing. Ender summons them in order to try and stop The Twillight Brigade for a bit, as they wait for the last virus cores to arrive. But these goons have been horribly executed. They’re just like a bunch of emotionless zombies, who attack one by one, have no skills at all, and just let our main characters have all kinds of conversations. I mean, they were meant to provide some challenge for the Ovan, but they all look like some bunch of pathetic idiots who don’t have any opinion or emotion and who only manage to be convenient for the plot.

Like I said: apart from this little flaw, the episode was just amazing. This time, not because of Haseo, but because of all of the different characters interacting and fighting each other. Haseo himself was more of a side-character in this episode. It’s shown that Ovan’s the only one he looks up to and respects, and that he really wants to make Ovan content. It’s also very good to see that he isn’t an emotionless fighting machine, as after he defeats Goad, he shows some sympathy.

Ender herself also was great. She’s the one who fights Ovan, and he indeed is stronger than she is. Though it is her task to lure him into some kind of trap on the top level. This brings up some interesting issues, when you take a look at the end of the episode. At that point, the virus cores were activated and the Twillight Brigade gets teleported to the castle up in the air at that field. This means that the trap has still to come, which means that the trap is in this castle, which means that TaN knew about the secrets of the virus cores all along, and may even have access to the secret inside of it.

Naobi indeed plans to do something at the time that the other characters are fighting each other. He’s accessing some strange place, which certainly has got something to do with the castle up in the sky. So if you combine these things together, this means that if this was a simple quest about who gets his hands on the Key of the Twillight first, there still is a step left for both parties to perform. It could be something inside of Ovan. After all, the entire purpose of TaN is capturing Ovan’s character data. This means that both parties have each other’s remaining piece of a duplicate puzzle, and it’s just a matter who can get their missing part first, without sacrificing their own part.

Tabby also had a great, though minor role. As she’s just new, and apparently hasn’t trained as much as Haseo, she indeed has trouble with the zombie-goons. But she still is determined to pay Shino back for her kindness. Shino also showed that she can do more than just talk and heal, as she’s able to hold off the zombie-goons as well without getting injured. Still, the focus didn’t fall too much on the two of them on this episode.

B-Set had a small, yet awesome role in this episode. She first tries to stop Goad from interfering with Ovan, though she fails. For a large part of the remaining episode, she spends her time on the bridge wondering whether to go or not. It’s been on her face for the entire anime that she had her doubts when she left the Twillight Brigade, and these doubts only increase as time goes further. Phyllo then finally manages to convince her to go.

Goad also was amazing. After ignoring B-Set, he set off to get revenge on Ovan, but Ender&co manage to beat him to it. He watches from a distance for a while, but then he decides to turn Haseo into a victim. After a small fight at which Haseo’s barely able to hold Goad back (still, Haseo must’ve trained for a whole damn lot if he’s able to do that with Goad), though Goad flinches when he sees that B-Set has come back. Haseo then manages to get him back on the side of the Twillight Brigade.

Ovan was acting as strange as always, but we really saw him smile at times. When he was fighting Ender, for example. it also seems that he knew that Goad and Sakisaka were to deliver him the last two of the Virus Cores. During his fight against Ender, for some strange reason Ender hides, and he, instead of helping his comerades, he stands in the circle of glowing towers and waits while all of them start glowing for no apparent reason. Ender seems to be really happy with this. In any case, it seems that he’ll play a huge role in the next episode, at which his plans most probably go wrong in some way.

Though the real stars of this episode were Sakisaka and Tawaraya. Sakisaka wants Ovan to acknowledge him as well, so he finally decides to go back to Tawaraya to get the Virus Core. Tawaraya isn’t the same optimist as he was at the beginning of the series, so he gets a bit gloomy when he sees that Tawaraya plans to PK him in order to get back the Virus Core. This plan turns into at total failure when it seems Tawaraya’s incredibly strong. Though he gets really unconfortable when he sees Sakisaka struggle to keep going. After all, what would you do when you were suddenly attacked by something incredibly weak about a thing you don’t even care about? Tawaraya indeed did the same thing I’d do in such a situation, I think. I SO like the direction the two of them are going: Sakisaka begins to open up more and more, while Tawaraya begins to get more and more gloomy by the minute. I’m so curious about how the two of them will be ending up in the end.

Those individual characters may indeed not seem so worthwile. But remember: all of this happened in just 20 minutes. Everything just almost happened at once, turning this into a near-amazing episode. The already amazing music also was used perfectly, and not to mention the amazing graphics. It seems that the mystery-department also got a nice dose, with a bit of help from Naobi and the strange dude who appeared at the beginning of the episode.