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Summary:
While Ashura and Yasha are staring at each other across the battlefield, Sakura is having a dream of their past. In it, she sees the two fighting and Ashura injuring Yasha’s face. The scene then changes to sometime after that when Yasha suddenly appeared in front of Ashura when they weren’t on the battlefield. Ashura saw the scar that was now across Yasha’s eye, and the two had kissed under the moonlight. Sakura then sees something streak across the sky – one of her feathers. In the present, the two sides have to stop battle again and Ashura and Syaoran return to her land. Sakura wakes up the next morning knowing that she had a dream but unable to remember it was about. She sees Syaoran returning with all of his wounds. Sakura asks him not to hide his pain from her because she wants him to at least let her worry about him. She gives him a treatment taught to her by her father that uses touch backed up by one’s feelings to help soothe a pain. Syaoran thanks her and then tells her about meeting Kurogane and Fye at the castle in the sky. He thinks that they’re not the same Kurogane and Fye mainly because their eyes were black instead of their normal colors.
In Fei Wong Reed’s lair, his assistant is reporting that Syaoran and company have gone to a world outside the ones he wanted them to go to. It seems that Fei Wong Reed has been controlling where they have been going, sending them to relatively safe worlds. He can’t have them die yet, and his plans ultimately hope to get to the thing beneath the ruins in Clow Country. He’s well aware that one of his biggest problems it the Dimensional Witch (Yuuko). Even his ancestor Clow Reed recognized her power to travel the worlds and send others to different dimensions. However, he’s also confident that he’ll grasp that power soon. Back in Shura, Syaoran’s eye starts to hurt. Sakura leans in and kisses it before she realizes what she’s doing. Mokona suggests that his was a memory of her body as opposed to a memory of her heart – even though Sakura has lost the memories of her heart because of the scattering of the feathers, Mokona says that her body still remembers.
While Syaoran is off in town inquiring about Kurogane and Fye, Ashura is sitting with Sakura and notices how worried she is about Syaoran. Ashura thinks that people with strong desires act with disregard to their own safety – that’s why they are strong. But this can also hurt the people they’re protecting. Sakura doesn’t quite seem to understand what Ashura said, so Ashura changes the subject and sends Sakura off to the bath. Ashura thinks to herself that if Sakura hasn’t noticed, then there’s no need for Ashura to tell her. She turns around and faces Yuuko, who has appeared in the pool behind her. The jar that Mokona swallowed up last time was actually a payment – a wine of eternal youth – for a wish that Ashura made. That wish was for Mokona to send Syaoran and company to Shura. What’s more, it messed up Fei Wong Reed’s arrangements to send them to ideal worlds, breaking his control. Yuuko, however, also says that the price of Ashura’s true wish is too high. Which means that Ashura has to take care of certain things herself.
In town, Syaoran suddenly starts to experience more pain in his eye. In a nearby mirror, he once again sees multiple copies of himself reflected over and over. That night, before the battle, Ashura decides not to take any troops with her. She was going to go with just herself and Syaoran, but Kumara convinces her to take him too. They transport onto the surface of the castle in the sky and find only Yasha, Kurogane, and Fye waiting for them. Kurogane immediately resumes his fight with Syaoran, but Syaoran is able to knock him back. However, he was able to do so only because his arms started moving on their own, mirroring the movements of the boy in the tube back in Fei Wong Reed’s lair. Ashura, meanwhile, heads straight for Yasha. She says that she can fulfill his wish, and then drives her flaming sword straight through his body. The two embrace each other, and the scar reappears on Yasha’s eye. As she kisses the scar, he disappears in a bright light that forms into one of Sakura’s feathers.
Preview:
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Well all the criticisms I had last week about the animation were righted this week. In comparison to then, I don’t have any complaints about how the characters were drawn. What’s more, this is another episode where I think they’re developing the story better than the manga did. Sakura’s dreams about Ashura and Yasha’s past served to flesh those stories out a little better. The general story seems to expand onto a bigger scale than before, because now the people in certain worlds (Ashura in this case) are working with Yuuko to help fight the control that Fei Wong Reed had. And it doesn’t seem like too far into the future that the Syaoran in the tube will come to life.
I think my only problem is that the preview is spoiling a bit too much, particularly that second screencap above. Other than that, I was quite happy with the way this episode turned out. Especially with the inclusion of the part where Sakura kisses Syaoran’s eye; for whatever reason, I had thought they might cut that out. Anyway, next week should be the end of the Shara/Shura arc.
