Customer Reviews

xxxHOLiC: Fourth Collection

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...the less tight this rendition becomes.

And that's a shame, as I love xxxHolic to death. It has become one of my overall favorite manga and, for the most part, the anime I've most looked forward to the past year or so.

Its not as if volume 4 of the anime disappoints all that much. There's plenty of your typical Watanuki/Domeki comedy routinage... as well as Watanuki/Himiwari swoonage, but there are several flaws inherent to the overall presentation that often stifle the mood.

One obvious issue is the reworking of major series relationship points. The most prevalent in this volume being the reunion with the Zashiki-warashi. Instead of adapting the "white day" gift return from the manga as they did in the previous volume by getting the Ame-warashi to goad Watanuki into giving the love-struck spirit girl a faux "white day" gift, they instead make it a thank you gift for junk food given to the pipefox (that goes against the timid spirit girl's character) which endangers the cute not-so-little-anymore guy (a plot point not in the manga).

Another is the crossover-replacement plot point of the soul-stealing wings... in the manga, the angel-wings are devices of the malevolent Fei Wong Reed, of the manga/anime Tsubasa:Reservior Chronicles, who is gathering souls to feed his machinations, from which the girl never will recover. Here, the angel-wings are just spirits... and the girl will recover, eventually... which is a betrayal both to the source material the the overall tone of the manga AND anime. Tragedies happen in xxxHolic, that's a fact... and serve to contrast with the happy endings. This deviation in particular really got my back up.

Apart from that, there're a few moments where the overal pacing is off... such as when the Angel-wings chase Watanuki and his just lies there after his first dodge instead of immediately getting up or even reacting. It's times like that which make me wonder if the animators/director needed to fill a few more seconds and just repeated the basic animation instead of doing anything that might be construed as dynamic (which would take more time and cost more money).

Bah...

I've really gotten my hate on here, haven't I. You shouldn't, for a second, think that I didn't enjoy the volume... just that little things here and there really bugged the overzealous story purist in me.

The fact of the matter is, xxxHolic: the animation will still rate a purchase from me despite these little annoyances... and will continue to do so, methinks, as I am quite a fan.

Still, caveat emptor... and enjoy.

I know the plots in Season One are are occasionally a bit repetive, but the characters are so wonderful I overlook that. In Season Two the plots get a bit wilder, and the characters are still wonderful. I have watched Season Two online and only wish I could buy them. The Shumaki OVA episodes are also great, but I can't buy them either. I'm just glad I recently got high-speed internet so I can watch them all online, but I still want to buy all the episodes, to carry around with me. If you aren't familiar with the show, Watanuki is a Japanese High-school student and orphan who is cursed with the ability to see and be affected by spirits. Yuko, a saki-obsessed but very attractive witch offers to cure him for a price. Watanuki's love interest is Himawari, a really nice girl at school who bears a strange curse, and his best friend, whom he hates, but who protects him in every instance is Doumeki, who lives in a Buddhist temple. I can't really explain it. ;) Five stars aren't really near enough.

Watanuki and Domeki's partnership is growing stronger as the 4th volume of xxxHolic opens, even if Watanuki wants Domeki out of the way when it comes to his would-be romance with Himawari. He always seems to pop up as the third wheel just when he's about to get Himawari by herself. But first things first. Watanuki notices a girl at school with a strange feature on her back. She has a pair of small wings! At first he thinks they might be cosplay or something but they are real. Does it have something to do with the girl hanging out on the school roof, gazing at flying birds?

Then it's on to a two parter involving two very weird twins. Well, maybe it's all in Watanuki's imagination. When he's around the the two girls, he feels a strange sort of wave effect that does not portend anything good usually. In some way the twins are impacting each other through a psychic link or by the things they say to each other.

A comedy element of xxxHolic these days is the nine tailed fox spirit that mostly appears in a cute sort of small furry eel form that is always clinging to or wrapped around Watanuki's body. Don't get this spirit confused with Naruto's evil entity. This fox spirit is more like an affection starved dog. He starts causing trouble for Watanuki when he is changed into his full size on this volume.

xxxHolic is an anime that always falls just a tiny bit short of being a really good show. It succeeds admirably at creating a comedic but always otherworldly atmosphere that at times can creep you out. But its Twilight Zone-like endings never seem to shock or surprise. Because the writing is a bit subpar, you can always figure out what is going to happen long before it does. So the "punchlines" at the end very rarely have the impact the writers intended. This seems to be a problem that CLAMP has a lot. They are very good at designing characters and of concocting interesting plot setups, but do not do a good job with the execution of their stories. Tsubasa is a good example of this. They had awesome characters jumping across time and space but all the worlds they visited seemed so cliched and boring! I think they would be a greater force if they just set up scenarios and supplied the art and let someone else do the actual writing. I really like the characters in xxxHolic and the comedy bits are quite good. The supernatural elements are where inconsistencies popped up. It probably didn't help that I had already read some of the stories in manga form before watching the dvd. Even though it doesn't live up to its potential and the beautiful art from the manga is simplified a bit, xxxHolic is well worth watching.

Anyone who likes ghosts, mysteries, love, humor and the crazy involvement of all will love this series. A great series to own for all anime fans.

Once again I find myself torn on how much I actually like xxxHolic. While the characters are continuing to encourage curiosity on what will ultimately happen to them, I'm still not excited to see more. With its very slow story pacing and yet more overreliance on sight gags, xxxHolic has so far not lived up to the hype. With the second half now completely underway though, the series has at least earned enough passing notice to pull me in for the rest. Recommended but with very little enthusiasm.