Okay, so what we have here are two worlds, somehow linked to each other. The first world is where the previous episode took place. The second world is something like the past of the first world, in which the story of Ashura and Yasha takes place. At the beginning of this episode, Mokona teleported our two parties to the second world. What happened to Kurogane and Fye remains a mystery, though Sakura, Syaoran and Mokona end up with Ashura.
Don’t ask me why, there’ll probably be no reason for this at all, but Ashura immediately takes a liking in Syaoran and Sakura, and invites them as guests of honor in her palace. Sure. I’d do that to any stranger who just came popping in from nowhere. In any case, the concept of the world is the following: up in the sky, there’s a huge floating castle. Every night, certain people get transported to that castle. There’s got to be some way of selecting people, but that isn’t really explained. In any case, Ashura’s and Yasha’s armies seem to end up inside that castle. When the moon reaches its zenith, however, all parties are kicked out again. The legend goes that whoever can conquer the castle, gets his deepest desires. Apparently, Ashura and Yasha have been fighting each other for quite a while now (Ashura talks about centuries).
If we look at the overall story for this arc, I have to say that so far, I like it. The thing with the filler arcs is that they’re just too fast. One of the great points of the first season was its mystery which was put in every arc. The Piffle arc was a bit too fast in order to fully develop this (seriously, I read somewhere that the Piffle arc was the longest chapter in the manga. Why would the creators just reserve a mere three episodes for this, only to air three filler episodes afterwards… that makes no sense at all…) though this arc seems to go into the right direction. There is enough material to make this arc last longer than just three episodes, which will really give the mystery a chance to develop.
First of all, it’s clear that Yasha and Ashura love each other. Then were there differences in their statues? Why was Yasha’s statue crying, and Ashura’s not? Why did Ashura’s statue display an eye, while Yasha’s did not? In fact, how did the two of them even fall in love when they only see each other at the castle, in the middle of people fighting? Second of all, the Kurogane and Fye-clones. If they’re really different people with the same soul, then how the heck did Kurogane get his sword? If they actually are our Kurogane and Fye, why the heck aren’t they at least recognizing Syaoran? Third of all: Mokona mentioned a number of really strong powers. That means more than one, with the strongest one being in the castle. Will this be a country with two feathers as well, or is there any other huge power existant? In any case, it’s not Ashura. After all, when Mokona told Syaoran about this, he would’ve immediately poited at Ashura if she actually was one of the strong powers. If we consider Ashura just as strong as Yasha, this means that there really is more to this world than what was actually shown during this episode.
The way the art was managed in this episode was rather strange. On global level, everything looked awesome, though when you start to look at the details, some of the eyes of the characters recieved very little attention and thus looked horribly off. Still, evil-Kurogane looked just totally awesome, Ashura looked just beautiful, and Sakura, getting embarrased looked just so extremely cute. ^^;
Some interesting details which happened at the beginning of this episode:
– Fye calling Kurogane “Kuro-sama”, and not even in his joking way, but in his serious way. That’s a new one.
– Fye smiled in an evil way when he found out that there was something horrible going on at the second world.
– The leader of the circus troupe hopes that Ashura is not the one to blame for what’s happening, otherwise, she won’t be able to see her lover again. This means that the two worlds are linked in some kind of way, other than just future-past.
– The tears of the leader of the circus troupe are the ones who caused the Ashura statue to open up her third eye, after which the portal to the other world allowed Mokona to get in trance (first time he did that, by the way) and teleport the four to the second world.
Some interesting questions which will probably be some errors on the creators’ side:
– Mokona sent the bottle to Yuuko, but doesn’t she have an eye-for-eye tooth-for-tooth-policy? I wonder what she sent back.
– Why did nobody freak out with Syaoran’s crossdressing? I mean, it isn’t that often that you’d run into a guy, dressed up as a girl, now do you? O_o
In the manga, Ashura makes a deal with the dimension witch in which Ashura gives her the wine of immortality and in return Syaoran and Sakura would be sent to that world, so of course Ashura would be more than welcome that they came. It makes more sense in the manga : )
yep, seems that u’ve never read RG Veda, the 1st n the best manga ever from Clamp. ashura n yasha loved each other there. ps: i don’t really like the graf. of them in the TRC. if you look RG V, u’ll see why.