This episode was surreal, even for a Kaiba-episode. I think it has to do with a guy named “Jamie Vickers”, who was listed in the end-credits. His previous work includes a few episodes of Kemonozume, and the animation of the ED of Tokyo Tribe 2. This guy’s sense of style is even messier than that of Masaaki Yuasa.

This episode was all about bodies, and how they’re discarded once they die. The previous episodes have never really shown what happens to a person if he or she dies from a natural reason, but I suspect that the mind and body die together, and the body can’t be used anymore by another mind, so it is discarded and destroyed. In this way, Kai’s body also gets destroyed accidentally. Oh, and Hyo-Hyo mysteriously disappears in this episode without any clue whatsoever as to where… “it” went, apart from the fact that it saw a huge load of Neiro-like bodies with “Neiro” written on them.

Kaiba this time runs into a designer of bodies, who has become quite famous. He’s of the opinion that people shouldn’t walk around with dull bodies, and his vision seems to catch on rather well. Nearly everyone walks around with some kind of strange body. His own body seems to be actually powered by electricity, and his servant, in the body of a dog, just needs to be re-winded once in a while. This dog seems to be a former woman who took care of the… “cat”, though she got too old at one point and separated her mind from her body, just as she was about to die. The two of them also share the same eyes: the designer can only see what the dog sees, and nothing more, and therefore he’s really dependant on the dog, and they’re always together. The dog also takes care of powering this designer.

In this episode, I also noticed a huge difference between this series and Himitsu ~The Revelation in terms of privacy. In Himitsu, Aoki is very much bothered by the fact that he’s intruding the privacy of others, and yet Kaiba just peeks into the minds of others without any second thoughts, in order to find out their stories.

I also have a theory. In this episode, we learn that Kaiba’s original body was some sort of hero, famous enough to warrant his own statue, though at the same time, nobody knows who this guy actually was. I didn’t totally understand the explanation, but it seems that we’re dealing with a king here. My theory is that Kaiba and Warp are two different persons, and Kaiba was just meant to protect Warp’s body as something happened to him, involving the terrorists and Popo. That still makes me wonder what Hyo-Hyo’s purpose was, because the mission of protecting Kaiba’s body clearly failed. Heck, we have no idea where it is now. Or is there more about the locket that it just being a pretty picture?

Okay. That was awesome!

I really admire the balls of the director to cast voice-actors who can’t sing to save their lives, and then force them to put down a passionate song multiple times. At this episode, I was nearly disappointed when the piano started playing and the voices started sounding like they were recorded in a studio, just when the characters were having the time of their lives, singing their lungs out, but as it turns out, this never ruined any of the genuine-ness of the song. Those were probably some of the worst performances to ever have been recorded in such a studio, but it really fun to listen to. :)

Those who’ve been reading some of my entries for Macross Frontier probably know how I kept whining about how the singing-performances in that series have felt too forced. It’s episodes like these that are exactly the reason why. Plays and musicals have always been a double-edged sword: in the hands of a lazy staff they’re terribly predictable and an absolute cheese-fest, but talented writers can turn these things into gold and this episode yet again proves that. There wasn’t much in terms of storyline, and yet this episode was one of the most fun episodes to watch, and at the same time it did a terrific job in fleshing out the characters.

What I also loved was how Kurenai was able to tell Yamie that her singing was a bit off, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to say the same to Yuuno (who sung just as bad, if not worse). Even Murasaki was scared of her. :P

Okay, here’s something I didn’t expect: instead of developing Kohane, this episode decides to ignore her for now and instead focuses on taking care of the spirit we saw in the previous episode that came to live in Doumeki’s sakura trees. It’s basically one big Mah-jong-game (with obvious references to Akagi). While it doesn’t beat the epic snowball-fight of season one, it was quite fun to watch.

There’s nothing much to say, really. This is one of these episodes you need to watch for yourself. While the rain and vestal sprite came rather from out of nowhere, their chemistry with Watanuki was really enjoyable. This is really the beauty of xxxHolic: you’ll never know when it’s going to be serious or laid-back, and it’ll be enjoyable either way.

I do want to use this opportunity to say something about the nature of parodies, though, because I felt that the appearances of Akagi were rather useless. I personally really lke parodies, but they only work when they make the thing they parody look ridiculous. Just including a reference to another series here and there gets boring, especially when overused (yes, I’m talking to you, Lucky Star). Take Master of Epic for example: it did an excellent job in creating an entire setting out of a parody. Or take Ooedo rocket with its FMA-references. It’s quite humorous to see the voice-actors of FMA playing completely different roles, and that’s why these “Nii-san!”-references worked so well. Watanuki’s Akagi-face was actually one of the least funny jokes in this episode, and I see more series that try to just include a reference in an attempt to be funny.

Another rather boring episode, but at least you can see that it’s building up for something. The next episode should prove to be interesting. And is it me, or was Ozma bothered by a rather bad case of constipation this time?

In any case, this episode was mainly meant to develop the love-triangle a bit more, and it was meant to send the Macross crew into space to a place called “Galaxy”, because it was attacked in a recent Varja-assault (it’s going to be pretty bad if Ranka starts singing while that entire fleet is gone :P).

I’m also getting more and more the impression that Ranka saw her parents or other loved ones get killed in front of her eyes. She was even too scared to move when they were just featured on an ordinary video-screen. At the moment, her love-triangle with Alto and Sheryl is more annoying than it is touching, but I do wonder what the creators will be able to do with it once this series hits its second half.

I didn’t quite like Sheryl’s song at the end since I’ve never been a real fan of the ED-song, although I admit that the animation-budget was rock-solid.