Anime DVDs

December 29, 2009
Baccano – Box Set
Blassreiter – Part 2
Case Closed: Captured In Her Eyes
Case Closed: The Last Wizard Of The Century
Dragonaut: The Resonance – Part 2
Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – Season 2 Box Set

Manga

December 29, 2009
Crayon Shin-chan – Volume 10
Fairy Tail – Volume 9
Negima!? neo – Volume 4
Ninja Girls – Volume 2
Only One Wish

December 31, 2009
Bamboo Blade – Volume 3
Crown – Volume 5
Pandora Hearts – Volume 1
Yotsuba&! – Volume 7

While leaving the nursery, Kobato sees a brochure for part time jobs and decides that she’s going to get one. After asking Chitose for some advice, Kobato lands at Tirol, where Kobato once again meets Ueda, as well as his helper Yumi (from Chobits as well). Kobato ends up having a rough first day, but she gets through it.

After work, Yumi notices that Ueda seems tired, and Kobato notices that Yumi seems worried on the way back home, and remarks that she wishes she could help out Ueda more. The next day, Yumi notices that Ueda sighs after looking at her, and fears that perhaps his worries deal with her. Kobato decides to ask Ueda what’s wrong, and he ends up telling Kobato that it’s nothing that Yumi needs to worry about, which just makes Yumi more concerned. Sayaka then enters the store to buy something for Chitose, and Yumi remarks that she remembers Sayaka from when she bought a cake for her husband, but Sayaka seems to be saddened by the remark.

Kobato asks Ioryogi about it later, and he suggests that perhaps Sayaka and her husband are separated, and also tells Kobato that this might not be something she can just go and ask Sayaka about, either. Kobato ponders whether Ueda is having a similar problem, and so she decides to conduct a “secret” investigation. However, as to be expected, Kobato gets off to a rough start in her detective role, and Ioryogi decides to take matters in his own hands. Ioryogi visits Genko once again, but this time Genko refuses Ioryogi’s request as ridiculous.

That evening, Kobato ends up roping in Yumi, and they both trail Ueda to a restaurant, where they see him sitting with a woman. However, Kobato and Yumi end up being so loud outside that Ueda notices them. Yumi runs away, and Kobato chases after her (and Ueda chases them both), until finally Kobato trips and falls.

Ueda finally tells them that he was interviewing a new full time employee for the store. He explains that while Kobato can help on the weekend, he’s never been able to give Yumi any time off, and he was worried that he was working her too hard. However, Yumi says that she likes working with him at Tirol. In the end, Kobato finds one more candy in her jar.

I guess as expected, Kobato starts trying to help out the nursery even more, and I guess she found about as good of a part time job as one could expect for her, and she still found a way to collect more candies in her jar.

I also noticed that Kobato has started suspecting Ioryogi of…something, given that he’s come back with sweets from an unknown place twice now, though Ioryogi was able to keep Kobato from digging too deeply in this episode, though I have a feeling that will eventually change. Speaking of this, we still don’t know where any of these people are from, or why Kobato is collecting the candies, or why Ioryogi was transformed into a stuffed animal, etc.

It’s still kind of odd seeing characters in a same-but-different universe (unlike Tsubasa where characters were basically in completely different situations from their native CLAMP works). If I took this episode alone, I’d say that this was pre-Chobits, but we’ve already seen enough to know that this isn’t the same universe as the “normal” Chobits/Angelic Layer universe, so who knows when they are, or even who is there.

Kobato is spending her Sunday morning singing and cleaning her room, but Fujimoto tells her that she’s being too loud, before leaving. Kobato decides to air out the futons at the nursery as well, but Ioryogi suggests that her time might be better spent healing people’s hearts to get candies. However, Kobato decides that she wants to help out the nursery as long as she can.

At the nursery, Kobato finds Sayaka there, and they air out the futons together. Sayaka asks how life at Kobato’s apartment is, and Kobato says she likes Chitose, Chise, and Chiho. When Sayaka asks about Fujimoto, Kobato says that he sometimes picks on her. Sayaka, however, tells Kobato that despite his appearance, he’s a nice person and has been since he was little, and then offers to show Kobato pictures of Fujimoto when he was small. Sayaka explains that Fujimoto was orphaned as a child, and was taken in my Sayaka’s father, who ran the nursery at the time.

Fujimoto was very unsociable as a child, not wanting to talk to anyone, even Sayaka or the other children in the nursery. Then one day a pair of high schoolers accidentally kicked a soccer ball into the nursery, and ended up crushing some sunflowers while climbing over a fence to retrieve it. Watching Sayaka be courageous in confronting the boys inspires Fujimoto to try to play the organ like he’s been secretly interested in for a while, which was the start of his opening up.

Sayaka then tells Kobato that Fujimoto is working so many part time jobs so that he can help pay off even a little bit of the nursery’s debt, but Sayaka remarks that she’s afraid that he’s working himself too hard.

On her way back home, Kobato walks by Kohaku’s house, who offers Ioryogi some beer she got from Fujimoto (whose job it was to hand out free beer samples, along with Misaki and Tomoyo from Angelic Layer), which Ioryogi gladly accepts since he has been sitting in the hot sun all day. Then Kohaku and Kobato talks about how it’s good to help out people you care about, which makes Kobato all that more determined to help out the nursery.

This was a pretty good episode, and finally we got some confirmation about Fujimoto’s past that had been hinted at in the past, namely that he was an orphan. We get to see that, despite how anti-social he is now, Fujimoto is a lot more open than he was when he arrived at the nursery after Sayaka’s mother brought him in, and of course it seems like Kobato is helping open him up a bit more.

Kobato also seems as determined as ever to help the nursery as well; though I’m not sure how successful she would be at trying part time jobs like Fujimoto does, considering her ditzyness. I have a feeling that in the end, she’s going to end up saving the nursery in her own way (and earning a lot of the candies in the process).

We also had our first CLAMP crossover sighting in a while in this episode, when we saw Misaki and Tomoyo from Angelic Layer show up at Fujimoto’s part time job. Though, Misaki, for better or for worse, didn’t have quite as high, squeaky voice in this episode as she had in Angelic Layer.

I also seem to be having a problem of accidentally clicking the wrong thing and taking nearly-duplicate screenshots with my laptop.  I’ve noticed in a couple of there reviews where that’s happened.  Oh well I guess at this point…

Kobato is washing Ioryogi when she sees a flyer for a summer festival in her mailbox. Kobato grabs it, but it blows away. A girl, Natsuki, ends up catching it and gives it back to Kobato (along with a handkerchief to dry her hands off). Soon another girl, Yukino, from the same school comes by (and falls down since she was texting and running), and the first girl, Nat, just gives her a terse comment and runs off.

Later that day, Fujimoto tells Kobato that the girls go to Seinan Girls’ Academy, a large all girls school that Sayaka and Chitose both attended. Kobato decides to go visit Seinan Academy to go find Nat, and eventually finds her classroom just as she’s receiving an award and finds that her full name is Natsuki Mizuhashi. However, as class lets out, a teacher pulls Kobato aside before she can get to Natsuki, and Ioryogi tells Kobato to run for it. Kobato hides in some bushes, but Yukino ends up finding her while shooting some pictures out a window. Yukino leads Kobato to Natsuki, where Kobato returns her handkerchief. However, the relationship between Yukino and Natsuki still appears to be strained.

Later, Natsuki treats Kobato to a drink back at her house. There, Kobato sees an old picture of Yukino and Natsuki when they were younger. Natsuki then tells Kobato that they used to be close, but Yukino seems to be avoiding her now, and now that Yukino hangs out with the photography club, they’ve hung out even less. Kobato decides that she wants to help Natsuki, and figures that the place to start is to visit Yukino. Yukino tells Kobato how they got matching cell phone and each bought each other a charm for their phone – with Natsuki getting Yukino a watermelon charm. However, Yukino no longer has that charm on her phone. But Yukino also says that she wants to stay friends with Natsuki.

The next day, Kobato decides to go to the camera sale that Yukino was going to, and Natsuki ends up going to it as well. Natsuki runs into Yukino and her photography club friends and ends up going off on them, and especially Yukino. Yukino runs off and Kobato, who had just arrived on the scene, chases after her, but Yukino ends up wanting to be alone. Meanwhile, Natsuki is regretting what she said to Yukino, but Natsuki soon realizes that her cell charm is missing and rushes out to search the trash for it, when Kobato arrives and helps her find it.

Afterward, Kobato says she thinks that Natsuki might have been afraid of Yukino because of how hard working and driven she is. Natsuki basically agrees, saying that she started focusing on her studies and other things to keep up, and that that’s probably when they started drifting apart. Natsuki then goes and apologizes to Yukino and all becomes well, and Kobato gets two more candies in her jar.

I guess this was a pretty good episode, I guess. I mean, it was a good episode, but something about it seemed to be a bit dull, I thought. I don’t know if it was just the problem she had to solve was kind of ordinary or what. I guess it’s just the “best friends misunderstanding and drifting apart” seems to be such an old and common plot line, and there wasn’t necessarily anything in this episode that made it particularly memorable. At least Kobato got two more candies out of it.

In any case, the way this series is going, I won’t be surprised if we end up seeing Natsuki and maybe even Yukino later in the series, especially since they go to the same school that Sayaka and Chitose went to as well.

Kobato sees a cat left out for someone to take and, feeling sorry for the cat, she decides to bring it home. Fujimoto passes her at the apartment, and tells Kobato that if she doesn’t have the resolve to see something through to the end, then she shouldn’t get involved to start with. Kobato soon discovers what he means when the cat gets hungry, and she rushes down to Chitose’s room, where Chiho and Chise are studying, and they give it some milk. But Chiho and Chise also tell Kobato that having pets in the apartment is prohibited.

Kobato thinks of asking Sayaka the next day at the nursery. Unfortunately, one of the kids at the nursery is allergic to cats, so keeping the cat at the nursery is out of the question. Fujimoto also goes off on Kobato, telling her that her thoughtlessness just causes trouble for others. As a result, Kobato goes off to think by herself, but Sayaka eventually finds her. She tells her that Fujimoto didn’t really mean any harm, and might have been projecting himself on the kitten, though Sayaka quickly realizes that she might have said too much.

Kobato, Chiho, and Chise try to find an owner for the kitty, but without luck. At the end of the day, they return back to the apartment, where Kobato finds the old lady from the first episode leaving. Kobato asks her what she was doing there, and the old lady says that she had heard that someone was trying to find a home for a kitten and she was wondering if she could take it home, since she only has one grandchild and thought a kitten would be nice to have as a companion. Kobato asks if the baby will be OK, and the woman said that the pizza delivery boy who told her about the kitten asked the same thing, but the woman says that it’ll be OK (and Kobato realizes that Fujimoto was out trying to help as well).

Back in her room, Kobato sees the dish they fed the kitty with and goes to return it to Chiho and Chise, but Chitose tells her that they’re on the roof. On the roof, Kobato tells them about how she sang for the old lady’s grandchild to help it go to sleep, so they ask her to sing for them. Kobato does, but when Fujimoto returns home, he recognizes the song Kobato is singing. Later, Kobato knocks on his door to think him for finding a home for the kitten.

The next day, Kobato finds not one, but two new candies in her jar, and wonders why. Ioryogi explains that her telling the story about singing for the old woman’s grandbaby helped put Chiho and Chise’s minds to rest when they worried about the kitten.

This episode was great if you’re a Chiho and Chise fan, since we get to see a lot of them, as well as more Chitose and the return of the old woman from the first episode. This suggests that past actions by Kobato might start building up in this series towards later and perhaps bigger actions later. That’s something I’ve always rather liked about CLAMP series – the tendency to have actions and events build up over time so that everything is in some way interconnected.

We also see for the first time in this episode that Kobato can get more than one candy from the same action – in this case, singing to Chiho and Chise. That might provide some hope for Kobato to fill up her jar, though she still needs a lot of candy, and I’m not sure what she could do to heal so many hearts that fast, even if she can do several at a time. The only question now is whether healing a single person can yield her more than one candy or not.

This episode also continued to soften Fujimoto’s facade, even if he’s still outwardly harsh to Kobato.