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meimi-haneoka · 2 years ago

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"With hindsight" Part 1 - a Yuna D. Kaito analysis because I won't be over the new chapter for a good while

Alright, I said it in my commentary/translation differences post for Chapter 70, but I'm far from having finished analyzing and saying what I wanted to say about what transpired from this last chapter, and since I need an outlet to vent my thoughts otherwise I'm going to implode, I'll start this post right away. To be honest this is just a collection of scenes from the whole story that I will be revisiting with the hindsight that Chapter 70 finally gave us. Scenes about Kaito, specifically. I'll try to give what I think is the right interpretation, but of course these are just my thoughts on the matter.

Drama CD n. 1

I will start not from the manga, but actually from the Drama CDs. The Drama CDs are "canon" to the manga storyline, because they insert themselves perfectly among the manga chapters, and they show us some "unreleased scenes" in the shape of audio recordings. This above is the extract of the scene that features Akiho coming home right after her first day of school, and her first meeting with Sakura. Now that we know what Kaito wanted to do...this scene takes such a tender connotation.... I mean....he welcomed Akiho home with sakura flavored tea to celebrate her meeting with Sakura....isn't that sweet??? Momo of course had to tease him about it, but for him it was such a pivotal element to his mission. And now I understand why he asked Akiho "it came from you?" when she said she told Sakura she wanted to be friends with her. He never forced anything. He only created the opportunity for them to meet and click together, but he pinned his hopes for them to get along in destiny and in their similarities. Because you know, his plan was perfect in his head, but if Sakura and Akiho couldn't get along it would've been all for nothing. He couldn't force Akiho to become a sister of someone she didn't love to begin with. And he sounds so interested, so eager to listen to Akiho's talk about her first day of school. He's genuinely glad to hear her so excited about her new friend. In this extract we also get glimpses of how Kaito was still learning to laugh properly, and that's another detail that crushes my heart. He has such a dead stare, when he was in the Association. Or we get the mention of how important, fundamental it was for him to obtain Eriol's house. Because he needed it for its magical protection properties. He needed it to protect her. And he was so nervous about finding an hindrance there. I can say thank you to Eriol for not leaving any spell inside that house, hahaha 😅

Drama CD n. 2

More Kaito tring to create "chances" for Sakura and Akiho to meet and bond. Just like tring to give a little "push". Although, Momo lectures him on the fact that there's no need to push things that way, that eventually Akiho and Sakura can become friends even without tricks... And the thing Momo hinted at, before trailing off? Yea, we always go back there. His limited understanding of love and relationships. Especially when they touch him. But he really tried to do his best with what he knew. "I have to make it work, somehow"

This is something different, though. This was one of the first attempts from Momo to make Kaito try to reflect on the reason why he's doing all of this. First, pointing out that he became quite informed on all kind of trivial things that he couldn't give a damn before. She mentions the character bento he made for Akiho. That's definitely something that goes beyond a butler's duty. He shrugs it off with a ridiculous excuse, so Momo tries again. She tries to make him realize that he changed. "No, I'm not that good at this" is a way to negate that. "No, I haven't changed, this is just job". And so Momo insists. He needs to friggin' realize it, he must do it by himself otherwise there's no meaning to it, but he has to. "Is this only because of the forbidden spell?" "Yes" "Just that?" Kaito doesn't answer. And serves the wine. That's when you know Momo made him uncomfortable. He doesn't say "Yes, just that" because something deep down inside of him is kicking and screaming the truth, and looking at how much he adores Akiho, he wouldn't try to deny that. But still, he dodges the question and that makes Momo irritated.

Damn, these hurt. Akiho, thanks to the synchro with Sakura, experienced her same dream and even heard the ominous voice. The one that now we know belongs to the Association, and warned Kaito of his destiny if he dared messing with the artifact. Here Kaito tries to cheer Akiho up because he thinks she's scared that something might happen to that "Alice", aka Sakura. To think that warning was actually for him.....I bet he knew. But since she heard it related to Sakura, he assumed she was scared because of that. Again, he tried to protect the bond between the two girls. And when he says "I will never allow that to happen", that was the biggest clue that he didn't intend to harm Sakura. Through the years I've always thought back to that phrase. He kept her in high regard because she would be the one who would fundamentally save his dear Akiho and make her happy one day. He would've protected her too, if necessary. Momo takes the chance again. The opportunity it's too good because gosh, here he is so serious and so fired up, he needs to realize who he's doing this for and why. And yet, Kaito not only doesn't understand, but also denies any deep involvement passing it off as "just what I decided to do" and then storms off the room with an excuse. When pressured about that matter, Kaito runs. And here my heart breaks because Momo has seen tragedies happening before, because of that book...and she didn't want to see another one. Not with these children in particular, these kids she cherishes so much. Now you understand why she cried in ch. 70?

"It's my job" - vol. 3

Now we switch to the manga. As soon as Kaito gets introduced, CLAMP are set in showing him as a polite, skilled but also distant type of person. So, merely a few panels after we saw how sweetly he told her she's never a bother to him, we see him breaking Akiho's heart by stating that this is job to him. Nothing could be worse for Akiho, who's used to be considered a burden by everyone. And yet. That's a lie that he's first and foremost telling to himself. Cause this is infinitely easier to bear if he pretends he's only doing it because it's his job. I'm not saying he's consciously lying - he doesn't want to peek in his heart, as Momo said later on. He's refusing to. Cause what he might find there might make this impossible to carry out.

"I'm glad about that" - vol. 4

Huge hint here. Kaito goes to pick Akiho up at Sakura's home, and on the way back Akiho tells him how kind Sakura is, and how she cares for everyone. Kaito asks "even for you?" and Akiho confirms happily. While his smile might have looked like it had a streak of shadiness, here, after chapter 70 it magically doesn't appear like that anymore. It's a sincere, kind smile. Kaito is glad that the two girls are bonding, and particularly that Sakura seems very well inclined towards Akiho. His bet with destiny seems in his favor, now. Sakura might indeed become a good sister for Akiho. That also explains his almost exaggerated reverence when he earlier called Sakura "Kinomoto-sama". That was honest respect for her.

"My name is Yuna D. Kaito" - vol. 4

I've always, always wondered about this scene. WHY, why did he go out of his way to introduce himself to Syaoran? Without even masking his powers? Was he challenging him? Wasn't it better if he stayed in the shadows and avoided him at best of his capacity? No. First of all, he wanted to know for himself who this famous "Syaoran Li" was. If he was a decent person, since Akiho would have eventually to be around him a lot, after becoming Sakura's sister. But also because......this meeting set off all of Syaoran's alarms, he contacted Eriol immediately to check on him etc. Kaito villainizing himself with Sakura's entourage was a test to check how efficient their protection network was, in case Akiho needed it in the future. Because, being part of the family, if anything (namely, the Association/Clan) still found the way to harm her, they would at least be there instead of him to protect her. His smile is so kind here....and now we know it's sincere.

Kaito's pocket watch - vol. 4

Leave me alone, I look at this page now and I can't help bawling my eyes out. Akiho of course knew how important that watch was to Kaito. She didn't know why, but probably by the way he always had it with him, she inferred it. And it became basically a symbol of him, for her. So much that she wanted to try recreating the pattern for the decoration of the cake roll that she would give him later. She's so observant, especially with him. To think that now....that watch is in her hands.....all damaged, broken....just like him....and that it will certainly lead her back to him...........OKAY LET'S MOVE ON

"Towards that time" - vol. 4

JESUS CHRIST the expression he's got here. It must be one of the sweetest he's ever had (also, the whiplash from the older character design is big). Momo had just being revealed as "being alive" and asked him if "that time" (WE KNOW NOW what time that was) was coming anytime soon...and while looking tenderly at his watch, he said that the cards (important "ingredient" of the magic he wanted to activate) were gathering more and more, and leading them to "that time". He's so glad, once again, that things are looking good so far. He seems like he's thinking "soon, she'll be free".

"Please...laugh like that again!" Vol. 4

Finally, the confirmation of Kaito's wholesomeness in this scene. First of all, how truly excited he was to open and eat Akiho's cake roll. By now we all know what kind of issues he had with food "previously": he fed himself with energy bars when he was little, couldn't care less how food tasted, and shunned most of Lilie's attempts at making him eat something different. Even when trying to find something he liked, the maximum he reached was "I can eat it". He wasn't excited for anything. But here, here we can see how much he loved to receive something from Akiho, baked directly by her. Even if people surely thought he might have just pretended (believing he had who-knows-what ominous plan to use her in the end), you could actually already find your answers in the shape of his speech bubbles. They're all bubbly and excited, especially when he says "it's delicious". Guys, knowing the flashback of chapter 60 where he couldn't find anything he really liked, this scene takes on a huge meaning. He finally defined something as "delicious". And of course, it came from Akiho. And thanks to how strangely "in tune" he seems with his true self (maybe because Akiho's present sparked true happiness in him?), we also have the rare "laugh scene". This scene often has been mistaken for Kaito laughing at Sakura's troubles, as if her troubles with the Cards amused him in a wicked way. Even here, we get the confirmation there wasn't any sinister kind of vibe to this laugh, it was just the laugh of someone who found the situation involuntarily cute (indeed, he apologizes with a blush right away, and a blush it's not something you normally summon at command, far less with someone who's still learning to manage his emotions). Akiho's "Please laugh like that again!" leaves him speechless, for a moment. It's the same suprised face he will make all the times Akiho will try to express her feelings towards him later on. Always that same, foolish, astounded face. He can't really believe someone would care for him. And his little smile right after, in this scene, suggests the thing warmed his heart and made him happy. ...alas, that also made him even more fired up to bring to completion his plan, as the scene that ensues right after this one suggests.

The dreams - Vol. 4

Same scene, this is the first time that Akiho let the readers know that she's been having dreams based on Sakura's experiences with the Clear Cards (and this is where I'M SURE that everyone thought "Kaito wants to give Akiho Sakura's magical powers, that's why she's dreaming of them"), under the guise of Alice's adventures. But it's definitely not the first time that she tells Kaito about this. It seems like a thing that's been happening for a while. We'll probably find out in the next chapters what these dreams were for in the grand scheme of things, personally I have several ideas but none of them seems to convince me enough, the only thing I know is that Kaito seems pleased that Akiho experiences these dreams so maybe they're connected to his plan (either for the play or for the life after the re-writing of the memories).

"Don't worry...I'll be by your side" - Vol. 5

Dear god, he always looks at her with such kind eyes. Always so full of love. Especially here, after she had her first synchronization with Sakura, so intense that she was about to pass out. Akiho had the opportunity to "channel" the vision Sakura was having in that same moment, and saw someone wearing the robe of her clan (this is how we find out for the first time that robe belonged to a clan and she was part of it). She was visibly distressed, and Kaito gently coaxed her to sleep, to rest. To be honest the situation with the dreams with MCF is yet to be clarified, so I won't push for an interpretation or the other, but I am inclined to believe Kaito wasn't particularly keen on having Akiho experience these kind of dreams. After all, the less she thinks about her abusive clan, the better. What he really was interested in was that she could experience the "Alice" dreams, not these ones that made her only extremely worried.

Confrontation with Eriol - vol. 5

Certainly, the most discussed and criticized scene. Because Kaito here didn't have any qualms in "attacking" directly Eriol. Always at the last moment, of course, because Eriol finished pretty much spilling anything he knew of Kaito to Kero and Yue by the time he interrupted them. Kaito will always be like this, even further along the story, when he decides to intervene. He really needs to be pushed into a corner to do so (and that's also an evidence of how he really doesn't enjoy nor he's inclined to attack people or cause problems). I always reiterated this however I could, in fandom spaces. Of course, he's not here to f*ck around. His goal is serious. He's staking his life on it, so if he needs to use strong methods, he will. However, it's not really clear what he intended to do to Eriol here. My idea is that he was just trying to destroy the communication (which surely must have been highly magically reinforced) between Eriol and the Guardians, but not cause to Eriol directly any harm. We see the staff cracking (cracks that are "healed" as soon as Eriol destroys Kaito's spell - one of the spikes breaking is an anime-only scene), maybe he wanted to break his magic tool to prevent any further intromission, but that's it. We don't see any bolt hitting Eriol or anything like that. He wasn't directly harmed. The fact that we see Eriol so debilitated for months is just because he depleted his magical power in order to counter Kaito's interruption, and that caused extreme exhaustion. Kaito is that strong. But, pay attention, Eriol afterwards will say that certainly Kaito got the same backlash from that attempted interruption too. After all, Eriol got his magic halved, but he's still a pretty formidable magician. So Kaito must have used lots of magic to "break in". But, as Eriol inferred from the rumors he heard of Kaito, he simply didn't show it and didn't care about the backlash. We have seen him faking to be completely ok while having heart attacks, do you think something like this could've fazed him?

Inverse dreams - vol. 5

Right after the confrontation with Eriol (maybe he was exhausted himself, but perfectly pretending he wasn't) he returned immediately to Akiho's side to be there when she woke up. Back then I was so mad at him because he promised to be by her side and then left as soon as she fell asleep, but with hindsight he was just, again, thinking about her and in her interest. She's constantly at the top of his priorities. Interrupting Eriol and ensuring that he wouldn't interfere with his plan would've allowed him to save her. Unfortunately, Akiho had a scary dream. Not "sad", but precisely "scary". And that's when we see for the first time Kaito becoming alarmed. Because Akiho saw her usual Clockland dream turning into something scary and she even heard a voice. Pay attention to her retelling of the dream: Alice meets in Clockland lots of strange creatures and inhabitants, she lives lots of curious experiences...she even sees a mirror capable of copying magic....BUT THEN...Akiho heard a clock's ticking sound growing louder and louder, and heard the sound of something breaking somewhere. Then, a voice (and this is where both Momo and Kaito grow immediately alarmed): "You can't come back anymore". When this chapter was released, it wasn't long that Syaoran and Sakura had that "date in the sky" thanks to the newly created Mirror Card, so we all thought that she simply saw the events that had just occurred with Sakura, as usual. But...pay attention...doesn't it remind you of something? Yes...this is exactly how things went in the story Kaito prepared for Clockland. Alice meets the inhabitants of Clockland, she visits and see curious things, but then there's the whole mess with Kaito and Syaoran using the two Mirror Cards....so what about the clock ticking sound and something breaking somewhere? Did Akiho have a dream of one of the possible outcomes of Clockland? Especially cause from her words and the panel, it's inferred that differently from other times, this Alice looked like Sakura. She doesn't say it aloud (in the very same scene of the Drama CD, she does), but to Kaito it's apparent that Akiho saw someone else other than her, and so it could have only been Sakura. Was something supposed to happen to Sakura? Kaito comforts Akiho in one of the sweetest scenes between the two, cause he can't stand to see her so worried. The smiles between the two, so tender, really tug at my heartstrings. Especially cause...he knows what "you can't come back anymore" refers to. I am just thinking whether Akiho dreamt of a future in which she went berserk in Clockland, and absorbed Sakura, hence the one who could not come back would be her in the end... Momo's warning that this dream could very well turn out to be true does nothing but firing Kaito up even more. I have the impression that he would've protected Sakura too, if necessary.

"Sacrificing something important" - Vol. 6

Momo basically told us Kaito's past here, and it was a big moment of revelation for the story. Finally we got some insight in Kaito's background, ever since he was a very small child. Why? Because it'll be important later. The reason why he acted how he acted, and accepted to take on his shoulders all the burden of such a self-sacrificing mission, is all here. When people accuse him to be "stupid", or ignorant because he doesn't understands Akiho's feelings (nor his own), they have to keep well in consideration what they told us in these pages (and further). This is also the very first time in which Momo confirms to the readers that Kaito is sacrificing something important in order to activate a "dangerous magic". She was meaning his life, of course, but also his relationship with Akiho.

"No matter where I look for them...I wouldn't be able to find those memories" - Vol. 6

Ah, g*ddammit. This scene hurts like a thousand bricks in the face now. Oof. Let's see...there's a lot to unpack here (and luckily it's the last feature for this first part). Big mess outside Sakura's house, Akiho's book is about to open up, she's already on the brink of losing her conscience and Kaito stopped time to prevent this mess from going any further. We find out that when Kaito picked Akiho up earlier on, he briefly investigated Sakura's house, finding out all the peculiarities about it (Nadeshiko's barrier, which at this time he still didn't know it was her doing) Now we know why he did so. He was checking out the place where Akiho would be living after he activated the forbidden magic. He had to make sure that it was a good place, and it was. This barrier he found was protecting the people inside, so it was perfect. We also find out that with a (questionable but harmless) trick he also checked a bit of Sakura's memories (probably in connection to the fact that he had to record Sakura's memories too, inside the Time Book). Momo makes sure to criticize him for that, and that's mostly where the "your personality is warped" goes to: sometimes he can be quite weird or inappropriate with the way he goes about things, but never to the extent of actually harming people. This will repeat again when he'll choose to use a "smiling" spell on Syaoran, later on. Compared to what this formidable magician is capable of doing, it's rather silly.

But the topic of reading Sakura's memories leads Kaito down a painful road. Because while he could ascertain that Sakura indeed lived a happy life with a wonderful family and lots of lovely people around her (thus making the situation ideal to insert Akiho in there and leave her in safe hands), his dear Akiho never had any of that. And he gets lost in this train of thought. Even if he tried looking for that kind of memories in her mind with the sweets he used with Sakura, he'd never find them. Because they never existed in the first place. No kind family, no happy memories. What he saw in Sakura back then was both reassuring but also a punch in the gut for him. This is another proof that Kaito isn't merely trying to fix a mistake to ease his conscience. He loves her, cares for her, and can't accept how much this poor girl had to suffer by the hands of the same cult that ruined him too. In short, he wants to make her happy. And all of that heartwrenching feeling goes in that hand that slowly, timidly, almost uncertainly tries to caress her face. I am convinced he's suffering along with her because he knows all too well what it means to live your life in loneliness. And even though he pretended he was completely fine with it, that cold, hollow feeling left its mark. Molded him. Conditioned his life and behavior. See, the biggest "irony" of all of this is that he's already making her happy, the happiest she's ever been, but he just can't fathom that because of his self-loathing. It is so heavy that it makes him blind to both her and his own feelings too. Of course, all this storm of feels doesn't go unnoticed to Momo, who takes immediately the opportunity for a comment, hoping to spark in him the understanding of where all those painful feelings come from: "You should see your face, right now". It was certainly something that he never had for anyone else before. Him, the one who couldn't care less about others and forming bonds with them, is now suffering for someone else he holds dear. And this one bond he formed is so powerful that is changing everything of him. I'd daresay that the hardest part of all of this is that, when he accepted the "Seal of D." at the very beginning of the journey because he was just a kid, he had nothing to lose and couldn't find a purpose in life, but now the time he spent with Akiho changed everything of him, included that "I have nothing to lose". No matter how much he fought it, the bond he tried to recoil from still naturally happened by itself. Because that's what happens when you spend time with others and have experiences together.

We'll explore this particular aspect better in the second part on this analysis, when his body will start literally to mutiny against him and his stubborness on its own.

#cardcaptor sakura #card captor sakura #yuna d. kaito #akiho shinomoto #clear card arc #yunaaki #akiyuna #is it too soon to make a retrospective?#I feel like we can more or less make one with all that transpired from chapter 70 #this is mainly to show people that the signs were always there all along and the plot twist makes perfect sense #it wasn't pulled at last minute as I've seen someone say around omg #and I forgot the most important tag #Welcome to the Kaito Educational Channel

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