Compared to the first two episodes, this one was kindof meager. Nothing special really happened, the art looked weird, and everything just seemed to go according to plan. I found myself thinking this after thee quarters of the episode had passed. Then the last part came, and totally waltzed me down with total awesomeness. I felt a huge urge to scream during these scenes.
We start with the crash from last episode. Syaoran and Ryuuoh are indeed out of the race, which makes clear that Sakura was meant to win this race. She manages to catch up to the contestants, and we finally get to see her use some of her power, while she’s aware that she uses this power. For some reason, she’s able to avoid all of the obstacles the other contestants except Kurogane have difficulties with. Kurotan was so cool at that moment.
Anyway, Sakura and Kurogane end up flying next to each other, and the bad guy aims to take out the both of them. Kurogane then sacrifices himself for Sakura, a very noble deed. Syaoran and Ryuuoh, meanwhile, found the location of this culprit. They make clever use of the first-aid zeppelin to bring them there. Kurogane and Fye meanwhile managed to make their way towards Tomoyo, who confesses that she indeed was the one who put nanomachines in the air during the qualification match. She did this in order to make Sakura win, as a certain person told her about the day that our heroes would arrive and about the fact that the feather rightfully belongs to Sakura. Her reasons are quite good, though before Kurogane can ask who this person might be, Tomoyo’s security managed to find out the location of the one who messed with the vehicles in the final round, as there seems to be another party attempting to sabotage the race.
This gets clear once the bad guy attempts to disable Sakura as well. He aims a couple of lasers at her, though Syaoran and Ryuuoh manage to stop him in time. Then it appears that the bad guy is Piffle’s president himself. This explains how he managed to be able to manipulate the race at such a level. His reasons are never given. Though I have a few assumptions. Anyway, Sakura eventually manages to reach the finish in first place, so she wins the feather. Syaoran realizes that there’s still one culprit left, who hasn’t shown himself yet. I wonder how he made that assumption.
Anyway, at that point, my enthusiasm wasn’t really big. The only thing keeping me from getting demotivated were the mysterious person from Tomoyo and the mysterious culprite. The episode had nothing really special, and it felt a bit incomplete. The character art also took a turn for the worse, especially the faces of the characters.
Then, the two missing links got revealed. Holy god, everything suddenly makes sense. The culprit appears to be Dr Kyle from the Jade world. That’s what the woman meant in the first episode when she assumed that he’d be viewed as the same character in a different world. She wasn’t talking about the Syaoran-clone, she was talking about Dr Kyle! My assumptions from last episode were totally wrong as well. Tsubasa Chronicle indeed made a great use of this.
And if things weren’t great already, the one who informed Tomoyo was actually Tomoyo-hime! I found myself having the same reaction as Kurogane at that moment. It really seems that Tomoyo is interfering with Sakura’s quest as well. This also explains why Tomoyo found out about the exact time that our heroes would be showing up, and the fact that Tomoyo trusted Sakura immediately.
Anyway, Mokona demonstrates one of her 108 secret skills: Super Suction Power, in order to protect the feather from Kyle. Sakura gets her feather, Kyle teleports away, the different parties say goodbye and Mokona teleports our heroes to a different world. Then we see the bad guys having a small talk. Cryptic as ever, but we do learn a few things. They are indeed able to direct the world Mokona teleports to. Next time, it’ll be the Spirit World. Sounds scary. Still, what does direct intervention mean? They also begin to see that trying to get the feather for themselves won’t work at all. They also talk about some kind of miracle, what could that be? And why are they so eager to get Sakura to get all of her feathers back, while they try to take the feathers for themselves?
Overall, I liked the Piffy-arc. Especially the first two episodes were great, and the plot twists at the end of this episode also totally made up for the weaker part of the episode.
