xXxHolic 15
Posted: July 7, 2010 Filed under: XxXholic 2 Comments »CLAMP – Del Rey – 2010 – 17+ volumes
It’s good to get a CLAMP palate refresher every now and again. XxXholic is very near to being my favorite CLAMP series, though I do want to see how it ends before calling it for sure (X and Cardcaptor Sakura are still my high water marks).
This volume… I was a little upset initially, because there’s a lot of cryptic foreshadowing amid a story about Watanuki’s first customer that was slow and uninteresting. This series has always been terrible about foreshadowing, but this volume was particularly bad, not only about those maddening dreams, but also because everyone in the shop aside from Watanuki just disappears for an extended period of time, with no explanation. The client story is still the girl who doesn’t like to cook, and after an explanation about what cooking tells about a person, the only exposition is Watanuki going to her house over and over again to convince her to eat his cooking. I was bored to tears.
To add insult to injury, there’s a Tsubasa crossover, too.
As if sensing my desire to give up on CLAMP forever, the book then throws one of the biggest WTF curveballs ever at the very end in order to keep my interest. There were hints, but I promise I did not see that coming. The explanation for what happens is wanky and, again, tied into Tsubasa, but I’m still completely stunned that things went in that direction. I mean… there’s at least two volumes after this, right? I don’t even know where the story could go from here. It will be drastically different. And with the granting of Watanuki’s wish, I wonder if he’ll be able to do as he promises at the very end, anyway.
Once again, incredibly good stuff (the mediocre most-of-the-volume was worth it for the ending), and I am very, very intrigued as to what the next step will be. I’m sad the releases are so slow (I think we’re as close as possible to the Japanese volumes at this point), because I am super curious.
Was it just me, or was it SO sad when Yuuko disappeared? I was definitely depressed, though it makes you wonder what she meant by the ‘I was already dead a long time ago’ part…I think it has something to do with Fei Wang (or however you spell the evil guy’s name in tsubasa)….anyway!
Definitely my favorite Clamp.
Yeah, I was very shocked and pretty sad about that. I didn’t see it coming, especially since I know the series is still running in Japan. Watanuki is one of my favorite CLAMP characters ever, but I don’t know if I trust him to carry the series. He needs Yuko to balance him out. I guess Domeki is meant to balance him, though. Hmm. Well, there’s still enough stuff that I’d love to find out that I’ll keep reading for some time. And it’s still way better than Tsubasa.