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Summary:
-As Syaoran, Fye, and Kurogane get slammed into some rocks by the force of the bird’s wings, Sakura finds herself in an alternate space. Not caring about collateral damage to the town or the castle, the bird starts firing balls of energy at Syaoran. Mokona thinks that Chaos is willing to do anything to defeat Syaoran, but it has very lonely feelings.
-Syaoran wants Fye and Kurogane to save the frozen Sakura while he acts as a decoy. That doesn’t quite work out because Fei Wong Reed’s troops block off Sakura’s frozen body. In addition, Fei Wong Reed has the other Syaoran open its eye, causing the real Syaoran to freeze and start glowing.
-In the alternate space, Sakura’s shadow turns into Chaos, and he asks her to help him. He knows that with the way things are going, he’ll hurt a lot of people, including those precious to her. He shows her his true form, and she is then been able to break free of the ice. Doing this gets rid of the black troops and releases Syaoran because the other Syaoran closes his eye again.
– Sakura reveals that she got out because Chaos lent her his strength. Because of this, she asks Syaoran to help Chaos.
-Watching the battle from a distance, Kurogane suddenly notices that the Touya and Yukito of this world are running towards them. Those two are the swordsmiths that Kurogane asked to repair Syaoran’s sword, and they’ve done just that. Kurogane brings it to Syaoran, allowing him to dual-wield Souhi and Hien.
-Syaoran powers up the two swords and forms them into one larger sword, capable of batting back the bird’s energy blasts. He swings the sword at the bird, but stops just short of cutting its neck. It cries a tear and then changes back into a winged Chaos, who concedes defeat.
-After the battle, Sakura hugs Chaos and tells the others that Chaos is herself. The true form he had shown her earlier had been a sphere of her feathers. Kurogane and Fye hypothesize that Chaos wanted Sakura because of the feathers’ memories. Chaos makes sure Syaoran is going to return all of Sakura’s feathers, and then thanks Sakura before he disappears into a cloud of sparkles and feathers.
-Kurogane had thought that their journey would end, but Mokona knows that there are still many more feathers – Fye and Mokona both want to continue the journey. Syaoran vows to Sakura that someday all the feathers will be recovered.
-Sakura regains a memory of her brother and Yukito not letting her go alone on a journey when she was younger. Sakura wasn’t alone though, and had looked behind her to someone, but no one is standing there in the memory.
-Syaoran and company arrive at the next world, continuing their journey.
Well that was about what I had expected from the ending, even if things didn’t quite go as I had predicted. The overall episode was decent, on about the same level as the rest of this arc has been. Chaos didn’t really turn out to be evil, and Syaoran got some cool fighting moments when he’s dual-wielding Souhi and Hien. I kind of wish that they had involved Fei Wong Reed and company more, but since they probably couldn’t go too far because this is anime-original material. The same goes for the other Syaoran opening the eye and closing it again. We’ll have to wait a bit longer…
Final Thoughts: This second block of episodes certainly had its ups and downs. What surprised me a little was that my favorite episodes – the ChiXFye one and the super-deformed one – came from anime-original ones. It just goes to show that they’re not all mediocre.
Assuming NTV follows their current schedule of Tsubasa reruns, episode 53 should premiere on May 12th, 2007. Hopefully the third series will be better overall. There’s some very good story coming, but we’ll have to wait until next year for the journey to continue.