XxXholic 8
December 28, 2006
I looked and looked and looked for this volume ALL MONTH. Of course I found it at the Mall Entrance mall in the tiny B Dalton kiosk filed away in their meager manga section under C.
Anyway, this is another that suffers from a slow release schedule. This time, it’s because we’ve more-or-less caught up with the Japanese release. Nothing to be done about that except end the Japanese release in the most awesome way possible. I’m DYING to read some of the more recent developments where things are finally revealed. I could go for an awesome ending, but I can put up with a slow release if it means the series will run at a consistent quality until the end of time.
Seriously. This is still one of my favorite manga series of all time. My favorite from CLAMP used to be Cardcaptor Sakura. This is pretty even at the moment… all it needs is a little romance to push it over the edge, and it doesn’t matter where it comes from. I’m not saying I want it to turn into a romance, or even a series about love as they’re so fond of doing, but having a relationship slowly develop that gets fully realized at the end wouldn’t be too much to ask. Himawari doesn’t look like a likely candidate at this point, but if CLAMP wants to pair up Domeki and Watanuki like they seem fond of doing, fine, so be it, just make Kimihiro whine a little less. Domeki would be the better match, but I don’t care who it is, just give the kid a little love before the series is over.
Oh my GOD though, this series is so good. It does wonderful things with Japanese folklore, but unfortunately I’m not familiar with a lot of it and am forgetting what I’ve learned from previous volumes, so it was hard for me to recall who the little people were and remember what it was that they had lost. The Spider Prostitute was nice, though. I liked the “lesson” that Kimihiro learned, too. I would have preferred he not be offered a way out of his mess, but that’s what Yuuko does.
When I was thinking about how much Japanese folklore was crammed into this series, I tried to imagine what American folklore figures could be conjured in the same way. I then imagined a fistfight between Paul Bunyan and Bigfoot, then promptly moved on with my life.
The Pipe Fox spirit is awesome, also. It’s cool that he’s Kimihiro’s little sidekick and does all these things for him. Kimihiro doesn’t really seem to have any powers of his own, so it’s nice to see the Pipe Fox standing up for him. I also like that Kimihiro walks into these dangerous and weird situations himself now and can solve them.
Really, I just love Kimihiro. If he freaked out a little less, he would be my absolute favorite CLAMP boy. As it stands, he hovers near the top with Kamui, Subaru, and Akira.
We got the extreme kindness of this volume not ending on a cliffhanger. After the Spider Lady arc (which was awesome, and I hope the Spider Lady comes back), we get a few one-shot stories, one about the Lightening God and one about “it” that comes with the snow. No customers for Yuuko this time outside Domeki, but perhaps we’ll get either more of that or more plot next time. Here’s hoping I’ll be ready for more in May.
March 21, 2007 at 9:56 pm
I Love thins series too!, I’m short on cash and i’m only on the fifth volume, but i was in despair when i found out that Watanuki looses his eye! *_*
March 25, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Yeah, that happened last volume. It was probably my favorite part in the series so far, and I liked the followup in this volume, but as I said, I would have preferred Watanuki as a cyclops :p He still sorta is, though. Here’s hoping you can catch up to the current releases soon. Volume 10′s out in May, so I can’t wait.
July 18, 2007 at 7:02 pm
May or /July/. I’ve had volume 9 on pre-order with Amazon since April and only today did it finally get delivered.
July 19, 2007 at 5:12 am
I know, I still haven’t gotten mine yet. I thought maybe it was just the Right Stuf being slow about stocking it, but it looks like Del Rey may have just been late with this one.
September 16, 2007 at 3:46 am
i can’t remember if it’s vol 8 or vol 9. but when the other syoran shows up…it really threw me for a loop. it’s so out of context for us considering how far behind the american release of tsubasa is.
September 16, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Yeah, it’s volume 9, I just read it last night. The English version of Holic’s only caught up because Holic comes out so slowly in Japan. I prefer it to Tsubasa, but it suffers from the same “Oh my God when do we find out what the plot is” syndrome. I can’t believe that by volume 9 we have not had an explanation for the connections between the three main characters.