[rating:2]
xxxholic is one of many, many series from the manga collective CLAMP. Like the majority of their works, it’s ongoing, with no indication of when or if it will end (Bitter over them dropping X/1999? Me? Never!). xxxholic seems to have a small but devoted fanbase, so when I received volumes six and seven of the anime series I was interested to find out what the attraction is.
xxxholic (the title is pronounced, simply, holic- yes, CLAMP employs not one but three silent x’s) is about a mysterious shop where wishes are granted, for a price, and not always a financial one. The proprietor of the shop is Yuko, a sexy woman who dresses like a skank and has lots of experience with the supernatural. She lives with a trio of spirit creatures: Maro and Moro, who take the forms of cute little girls, and Mokona, a cat/rabbit/Muppet thing (variations on Mokona also appear in the CLAMP works Magic Knights Rayearth and Tsubasa). None of Yuko’s housemates seems to have a purpose other than looking cute and tormenting Watanuki.
Watanuki calls himself Yuko’s part-time employee, but his job seems more like domestic servitude. He cooks, cleans, answers the phone, and does the shopping. He’s also a high school student, but he’s hardly ordinary; for some reason Watanuki can see spirits and tell if they are good or evil just by looking at them. His best friends, Himewari and Doumeki, are aware of his power and of Yuko’s spiritual connections. Doumeki seems to have a considerable store of occult knowledge himself. Himewari, however, remains cheerfully oblivious to the fact that Watanuki has a crush on her.
Most of the episodes involve Yuko’s clients, though others focus on Watanuki. Episide seventeen, the first one on DVD volume six, begins when Watanuki rescues a young woman who has been hit by a motorcycle. It turns out she deliberately tried to injure herself to avoid an important presentation at work. Watanuki sends her to Yuko, who helps the woman overcome her fear of success. This episode wasn’t a good introduction to the series for me; little happens and a large chunk of screen time is devoted to Yuko making a long, cryptic speech about human psychology.
The second episode on the DVD is more interesting. Watanuki and Doumeki attend the Monster Procession- an annual spirit parade. However, humans aren’t entirely welcome to join, and when Watanuki blows their cover the boys have to fight for their lives. Episode nineteen is a bit of fluff; Yuko organizes a snowball fight in the park. The winner receives a treasure box that can grant wishes. But of course this can’t be an ordinary snowball fight, so when snow mecha get involved no one is really surprised. Episode twenty is relatively dark. A young woman asks Yuko to hold onto a picture for her. Watanuki thinks the photo is harmless, until the woman in the snapshot begins to move…exposing a long-ago crime. But will Yuko turn her client into the police, or does she have something even better in mind?
The next episode is Watanuki-centered. He’s not a big fan of superstitions, but on his day off from the shop he learns the hard way that sometimes there’s truth to the old sayings. The next couple episodes also belong to him: a woman passing the shop one day sees him sweeping. They start a conversation, and Watanuki learns she had a son who died, and he reminds her of him. Like 99% of all anime characters, Watanuki is an orphan, so they embark on a mother-son bonding relationship. But Watanuki soon falls ill, and even after he is told that the woman is causing his sickness, he refuses to stop seeing her. In the end Doumeki has to pony up and save his friend’s butt.
The final episode of season one is a flashback. Young Watanuki thinks he is the only person who can see spirits, but when he finds another boy who can apparently do the same, he’s overjoyed. Of course, this is an anime about the spirit world, so the boy isn’t exactly what he seems.
I’ll be honest: I didn’t like xxxholic. Much of my dislike for the series stems from the lackluster characterization. Yuko is mysterious, drinks like a lush and likes food. This is pretty much all we know about her by the end of the season. Himewari is so mindlessly cheerful that it’s impossible to care about her, and Doumeki so laid-back as to be boring. Watanuki, however, is the exact opposite: this kid is more high-strung than a meth addict on a two-week binge. Almost anything can send him into hysterics- Himewari smiling at another boy, Yuko asking him to clean the attic; even dropping his napkin on the floor is enough to send him into a screaming fit. He must shake constantly, like one of those inbred, bug-eyed little dogs. He might have a good heart and be a domestic god, but he’s annoying as hell.
The art has some interesting quirks; for instance, in crowd scenes everyone but the speaking characters is represented by featureless white outlines. But the actual character design is classic CLAMP taken to an ungainly extreme. Eyes take up more than half the character’s heads, chins are sharp enough to kill and everyone has grotesquely elongated, spidery limbs. It’s an interesting experiment but is ultimately unattractive. CLAMP has mostly abandoned their trademark falling snow/feathers/dandruff, but never fear- there’s at least one episode with swirling cherry blossoms.
Funimation’s dub actually falls a bit short here; in Japanese Yuko sounds sort-of sexy-schoolteacherish, but in the dub Colleen Clinkenbeard makes her sound perpetually bored and a bit creepy. Watanuki is shrill in Japanese, but in English he’s purely unbearable.
The opening and ending themes are great, with an emo-riffic feel. 19sai by Shikao Shuga sounds a little like L’arc en Ciel, while Reason (by Fonogenico) is, amusing, set over animation of Maro and Moro air-guitaring their creepy little hearts out.
In the end, xxxholic is interesting for its exploration of traditional Japanese supernatural themes, but in these last volumes of season one there isn’t nearly enough done with it. The characters are boring and/or annoying, and the stories lack depth. Based on these DVDs, I won’t be looking for xxxholic season two anytime soon.
Details
Publisher: Funimation
Director: Tsutomu Mizoshima
Stars: 2
Running Time: 100 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A
MSRP: $29.98
Release Date: 10/21/2008
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I watched these with my stepbrother. While I agree with you that the story lacked depth, some of the characters were never developed and kind of annoyed me, my stepbrother thought it was great. He has a thing for pretty anime characters, and xxxholic did have that.
Overall I wouldn't recommend it.
-Cynthia