Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, chapitre 190

[ashurasama]

Cheers for lexi_nyanko for the scans!


Chapitre 190
Those who know the world

-01- (splash: Seishirou and Subaru)

They knew that
the time when they would meet again
was not that far away.

-02-

Sakura: Who~?

Shaoran: I'm
Sha-...

Sakura: Wait...

-03-

Sakura: No!

Sakura: I'm sorry.
Sakura: But
you must not touch me.

-04-

Sakura: I'm sorry.

Sakura: I'm in the middle of cleansing in this water
so no one can touch me.
Shaoran: Cleansing...
Is there some important ceremony coming up?

Shaoran: ... What?

Sakura: Knowing that cleansing is something that comes
before an important ceremony.
Shaoran: It's because there's something I've done many times, too.

Sakura: Ah, that's right!

-05-

Sakura: Those clothes aren't from Clow country, are they?
Sakura: Did you come from another country somewhere?

Shaoran: ... From another world.

Sakura: Another
world...
Shaoran: Yeah.

Shaoran: I came from the country called Japan in a different world than this one.

-06-

Sakura: Japan...

Shaoran: You're not surprised.
Sakura: It's because I heard
Sakura: from the priest...
from my mother

-07-

Sakura: that the world,
to those who know its existence,
Sakura: isn't just one.

Shaoran: ... I was also told that
Shaoran: by my mother.

-08-

Sakura: But it's strange.
Even though Japan and Clow country are in different worlds, we can speak like this.
Shaoran: Such a coincidence...

Shaoran: No.

Shaoran: In this world there are no coincidences.
All there is, is hitsuzen.

Sakura: Was that something your mother...?

-09-

Shaoran: No.
Shaoran: My father.

Sakura: ... Hitsuzen.

Sakura: Could being able to meet you be such a thing too?

-10-

Shaoran: ......

Sakura: Tell me your name.
Shaoran: ... Li Shaoran.

Sakura: I'm Sakura of Clow country.

Shaoran: The same name as my mother...
Sakura: Eh?

-11-

Shaoran: ... Looks like

Shaoran: my mother when she was small.

Nadeshiko: Weren't you in midst of cleansing?

-12-

Sakura: Mother!

Shaoran: This person, too,
Shaoran: looks just like my mother's mother that I saw in a picture.

-13-

Nadeshiko: Looks like you're enjoying yourself, Sakura-hime.

Sakura: I- I'm sorry!
But I'm keeping my oath of purity! (T/N: I couldn't find the word I translated as "purity" in the dictionary, so it could be a bit off.)
I really am!
I just took a little fall in the water,
but... but...!
Nadeshiko: I understand. It's all right.

Nadeshiko: Welcome to Clow country,
Nadeshiko: you who came from another world.

Shaoran: How do you...?

Nadeshiko: A dream.

-14-

Shaoran: Are you a "dreamseer" too?

Sakura: Er, um,
that was...!

-15-

Nadeshiko: It's evening.
The cleansing ritual is over for today, so let's return to the castle.
I've set aside some of your beloved apples, Sakura-hime.

Nadeshiko: Come with us.

Shaoran: But...

Nadeshiko: Of course, I set aside some for you, too.
Nadeshiko: You like fruits, right?

-16-

Shaoran: So this person can also
see the future in dreams after all?

-17-

Sakura: Let's have dinner together!
Right?

Shaoran: O- okay.

Sakura: Ya~y!

-18-

Sakura: This way!

Shaoran: It's really a castle.
Sakura: Is it nothing like Japan?

Shaoran: There's a desert in Japan too, (T/N: This?)
but not where I live, at least.

Fujitaka: Sakura-hime.

-19-

Sakura: Father!

-20-

Fujitaka: Be patient for six days more until the cleansing ritual is over. (T/N: The sentence is a bit weird, I could be off.)
Sakura: Yes,
father.

Fujitaka: Could you introduce us, please?
Sakura: I met him at the cleansing grounds in the ruins.

Shaoran: I am Li Shaoran. (T/N: Rare Shaoran-uses-polite moment.)

-21-

Fujitaka: I am the king of Clow-koku, Fujitaka.

Fujitaka: You two must be hungry,
so we'll talk later.
Sakura: Let's go.

Fujitaka: ... It's him, isn't it?

-22-

Nadeshiko: Yes.

Nadeshiko: Sakura-hime's destined person.

Teaser: Their destiny
can even cross worlds
and, now, it speeds up!

---

Page 1: "Meet" there is read まみえる. Looking up that in a dictionary brought in a few laughs.

Page 6: When the spoilers came out, I thought there would be someone other than Nadeshiko as the priest, but that's not the case -- Sakura corrected herself. What a rigid education she must have, for her first reference to Nadeshiko be as "the priest" and not as "mother".

Page 7: What Sakura is saying here is almost an exact quote of that line from the beginning of Holic (chapter 4, I think) that got horribly abused by BWYS and JBC. I'd really like to keep the positional "before" in the translation, but the fact that two different translators just didn't get it back then makes me skeptical.

Page 8: As I already said in the spoiler post, here we have confirmation that the Clow-koku language is actually Japanese (which I had suspected when Sakura-replica guessed the spelling of Watanuki's name outta nowhere in Holic). And the fact that Shaoran calls hitsuzen on it makes the whole thing fishier. What is Clow-koku?

Page 13: Shaoran, where's your well-known tendency to be suspicious now? I know I'd be more than a little freaked out if I got teleported into obviously off-limits holy grounds and not only no one gave it a second thought but also the priest responsible for said holy grounds were all smiles and greetings.

Page 19: What, Fujitaka gets no "he looks like grandpa" comment? (笑)

Page 22: First 189 with the whole Holic-rehash thing, and now we get another rehash scene, this time from chapter 1 of Tsubasa. What the hell is going on here? Did the events in either chapter 1 even actually happen in the first place?

So... Where the hell are Touya and Yukito?

Someone already commented on this, and I forgot to mention it in my 189 post. How exactly did Clow make plans for TRC Shaoran (and other Shaoran by extension) if he didn't foresee Sakura/Shaoran in CCS? Did he cheat even Eriol's memories so that Eriol wouldn't know it? (And why the hell would he need to hide things from Eriol?) Is TRC Shaoran some kind of "invariant" that would have to come into existence by any means available, regardless of who his parents are and even what dimension he would be born in? Actually, I'm kinda wishing Tsubasa had been told like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, so that we'd get to see all averted futures since everyone keeps meddling with the course of events.

Random silly comment: すれ違った時の渦 in the first OP of the anime makes me laugh because it's sounding so much like this arc.

Comments

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

まみえる LOL.

I guess there's no reason not to think that Touya and Yukito are chowing down in the next room, but it does seem slightly odd that they're not in the castle scenes. And there's no mistaking that Fujitaka and Nadeshiko do not look happy when she confirms that "Shaoran" is Sakura's destined person.

Your comment about everyone messing with the course of events got me to thinking that the power to manipulate time and space doesn't actually seem to be so unusual; spacetime seems to get messed with a lot, right? So what is it about Sakura's power that makes it so freaking unusual and desirable that FWR would set this whole damn chain of events (well, I say chain, but it's more like a ball of yarn after a cat's been messing with it) in motion?

It seems clear that both chapters 1 were rehashes of things that had already happened. Clamp dropped us in medias res and didn't let us in on that fact until much later.

I also very much would like to keep 前 in that line about those who know the world. It's freaking important, Clamp even put it on the backpages of one of the Holic volumes. "The world, before those who know its existence, isn't just one." "The world, in front of those who know its existence, isn't just one." I'd like to get rid of the position/time ambiguity, but I suppose it exists in the original as well.

I'm not even going to start to think about the Clow Reed/Eriol/CCS Shaoran/TRC Shaoran ramifications, beyond the fact that TRC Shaoran's existence does seem to be "hitsuzen." Can the same be said for Clow-koku? Or was Clow-koku created? The fact that people there speak Japanese, and that that's hitsuzen, really makes me think it's not an organic world.

[ashura-sama.livejournal.com]

And there's no mistaking that Fujitaka and Nadeshiko do not look happy when she confirms that "Shaoran" is Sakura's destined person.
Indeed. I wonder, though, whether this means that Sakura was already doomed and it would be painful for her "destined person", or it means that Sakura, while not doomed herself, will cause her "destined person" a lot of pain, a la RGV junior Ashura.

I'd like to get rid of the position/time ambiguity, but I suppose it exists in the original as well.
The way I see it, that 前 wasn't supposed to be ambiguous, unless you completely ignore what's between 知る and it, but still! "Before" kinda feels to me like it makes the sentence heavier on the "perception" issue, and I feel that's important, since the theme comes up often in Holic (and the opening monologue was related to perception, too).

I'm pretty convinced that Clow-koku was created. The fact that we keep seeing Sakura's CCS family repeated in Clow-koku is also weird in my opinion, especially since what I consider to be the strongest family bond in CLAMP got cut in Tsubasa. It's almost like Clow-koku is centered around her existence -- Fei Wang needs her power to attempt to use the ruins, she has a family that has been proven to work in another dimension, she "just" happens to be a princess...

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I agree that the 前 is purely positional, but I don't think there's any way to communicate that in English to those who don't know the Japanese, unless you throw in a ton of extra words, whereas just "before" is ambiguous, particularly out of context.

See, I was thinking that it was King Fujitaka and Queen Nadeshiko who were doomed, but you're right, Sakura seems to be pretty much doomed as well: cloned soul dead, cloned body captured, real body and soul MIA, and when she was seven something terrible happened. She's certainly caused "Shaoran" a lot of pain, but Ashura Jr. died as well.

I take it you mean the Kinomoto family? I'd have to agree that Clow-koku doesn't have much of a point besides Sakura being in it (though we do know that it can continue to exist without her presence thanks to that one Touya/Yukito scene). Certainly none of her circumstances in Clow-koku are coincidental. But who would have made Clow-koku in the first place? Who could? And what was their purpose? There's no real way to know at this point, I guess.

[ashura-sama.livejournal.com]

My image of doomed Fujitaka and Nadeshiko is smiley to the point of creepiness (which could or could not be backed up by the fact post-rewind Fujitaka is said to have died happy). That's why my first reaction was to think that their expressions are for Sakura and Shaoran.

Yes, the CCS-approved Kinomoto family. (笑)

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one thing I've noticed about Clamp is that their manga don't actually have very much speech. Almost nothing is in there just to be in there. If it was said he died happy, that certainly means something significant.

You're probably right about them being worried not for themselves but for the other two.

[rave-chick.livejournal.com]

One point I must be make (from the many):- We've ALWAYS seen the time-travelling and crossing dimensions from day 1, so from our point of view, it might seem like an everyday-thing, not so unusual etc... but Yuuko has built a reputation on being one of the FEW who can send people across different dimensions repeatedly. Fai explained that people like Yukito and Tomoyo may have just enough power to do it once - and that's it. Of all the magicians we know, only three seemed to be able to do it on demand - FWR, Clow and Yuuko (even Xiang Hau said she could do it once only) - all three of them have reputations as very powerful magicians, Clow the most powerful of them all.

Maybe the reason Sakura's power is amazing is because she is so powerful even when she's so small and when her power grows, it could SURPASS that of Clow's?

[vorathiel.livejournal.com]

Fai did say that some peole pnly had the power to do it once. But didn't he later admit that we was lying when he help the group go to celes?

[rave-chick.livejournal.com]

I think Fai's a bit of a special case - he was so powerful, the whole country feared him (though that might have been because of the curse of twins thing..) *shrugs*

Regardless, we've seen his powers in out-of-control mode, so he's obviously very powerful, but his powers came with stipulations - I can't remember exactly but something about getting closer to death the more he used the powers? The three magicians I mentioned earlier have no such life-threatening restrictions.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Good point. I'd buy it. The Sakura in CCS certainly wound up being pretty powerful.

Damn, it's still difficult to realize that they're two completely different people. Who aren't actually that different.