Well, in case you haven’t heard yet: they’re planning to make the next xxxHolic OAD, to air in 2010. Aand I guess that this episode is the point where xxxHolic stops being xxxHolic, and starts becoming Tsubasa Chronicle’s back-up show (which I assume to have its next OVA announced soon as well). I expected this episode to deal too much with TC, but in the end there was only a small bit about Sakura, and thank goodness there was still lots of WatanukixDomekixHimawari.

The way in which Domeki kept waiting for Watanuki for about six hours was a bit repetitive, but on the other side we can finally see Himawari’s development kicking off. There is this unique triangle between the three of them, in which Himawari is finally ready to crawl out of her shell. The scene with Sakura was also surprisingly solidly done, and neatly answered some questions that Tsubasa Shunraiki left hanging.

But yeah, there were continuity issues as well. Was I the only one surprised at the Rain Sprite’s sudden change of hair-color, and nobody noticing it? That’s really the big problem with the xxxHolic and Tsubasa anime series: the really bad management. When the decision was made to animate these two series, nobody really bothered to look at the big picture. There was nobody who took charge and thought about how they could make this work best. Instead there were too many parties that took too much assumptions: Bee-Train assumed that CLAMP wouldn’t mind it if they went with their own story since the manga hadn’t finished yet, CLAMP assumed that Bee-Train would simply follow the manga’s storyline for three seasons, Production IG assumed that there were not going to be any Tsubasa Chronicle references, so they left all of those out. And so the continuity became a complete mess when they tried to recover these mistakes. For people who haven’t read the manga like myself, anyway.

In any case, I’m not in the mood of writing a review for all of these different series, OVAs, et cetera, but I will provide this list of my opinion on the various adaptations of the franchise:
- Tsubasa Series 1: solid manga-adaptation with strong characters, although it moved really slooow.
- Tsubasa Series 2: lots of fillers that were really fun to watch at times (my favourite being the chibi-episode), and just okay at others, but really ruined the continuity of the series, up to the point at which Clamp made Bee-Train return to one of the previous worlds to show that dead people can’t be brought back to life.
- Tsubasa Movie: for some reason I rated it really highly, but thinking back it was just a boring filler that really wasn’t anything special.
- Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations: Awesome visuals, though tried to cram a bit too much story in too little time.
- Tsubasa Shunraiki: blatantly skips two very important manga-arcs, making it impossible to follow for non-manga readers like myself, and the chapters that were animated were rather boring and hardly anything developed.
- xxxHolic Movie: awesome mystery-movie that even though it has nothing to do with the continuity, stands out with really imaginative visuals and very naturally evolves and lets the viewer guess what the heck is going on.
- xxxHolic Series 1: excellent series about modern folklore, discussing a wide range of thought-provoking topics.
- xxxHolic Kei: while still about modern folklore, the characters become much more central and this series was an awesome character-study of the three main leads.
- xxxHolic Shunmuki: the weakest part of xxxHolic to be honest, but that’s mostly because the others were simply that good. Mostly building up for future OVAs.

Rating: * (Good)
The plot didn’t really interest me, though I really liked Himawari’s growth.

Short Synopsis: Haruka gives a request to Watanuki, and Syaoran finally appears in xxxHolic.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Am I glad to see this series back or what? This episode was also everything you could expect from this series, and I can only hope that many OVAs will follow after this one. What I especially loved in this series is the first half, which discussed the character-development between the cast, and especially the explanation why Domeki ended up staying with Watanuki in the first place.

In this episode, he claims that he really finds the guy to be annoying and a loudmouth, but the reason why he became friends with him was because he saw Watanuki one day with his deceased pet cat, mumbling about how he was destined to be alone. He still is a huge closed book at this point. To think that he still doesn’t say that he likes to be with Watanuki, like you’d expect after the two of them went through so much. The way he said it made it really sound like he’s just with Watanuki because of pity. It forms a huge contrast with his actions, and the sacrifices he’s willing to take for Watanuki.

And like expected: Syaoran finally makes his appearance. I believe that when the second season aired, the creators were still sorting out the licensing issues between Tsubasa Chronicle and therefore were unable to include the proper references. At this point, I really have no idea what to think of Tsubasa Chronicle. On one hand, it’s going to be very interesting to see the new arc animated, but on the other hand I’m very wary about the rumours that have been going on, that talk about the downright ridiculous plot twists that it has taken recently.

xxxHolic Kei is the second season of the anime-adaptation of Clamp’s manga about modern Japanese folklore. In contrast to its predecessor, there are only 13 episodes, but to make up for it, the creators have put into these episodes the rumoured best chapters in the manga. The result is a second season that surpasses its first season in quite a few areas; not only in terms of manga, but also the anime staff learned some new tricks.

Without a doubt, the highlights of the second season are the first three and the final three episodes. Both contain rock-solid chapters, where the main characters Watanuki, Doumeki and Himawari (who have already been fleshed out really well by the first 24 episodes of the first season) really come together and get some major character development. The final episode is surprisingly light-hearted, but it does provide a perfect closure for the series.

The rest of the series is filled with stories, more reminiscent of the first season. They range from Yuuko, teasing Watanuki for the umpth time to some really effective standalone horror-stories. What’s interesting is how compared to the first season, the creators make use of much, much more foreshadowing. The stories in the first season always didn’t feel like a part of a whole, and this is fixed really nicely by the second season, which constantly drops hints and characters of stories that are still to come, which brings an interesting sort of unity to a series that consists out of random stories.

The animation has also improved a lot. You can see that the creators got a bigger budget for the second season, which makes especially Watanuki’s ramblings into some great visual comedy. Unfortunately, the animation dulls a bit in the less important episodes. The creators made good use of their CG to support the supernatural aspects of this series, and also the sound department is better than ever, although some tracks may have been played a few too many times.

Unfortunately, I can’t call the second season better than the first season. There’s something that holds it back from doing this, and it’s not just the length. In the second half of the series, there’s one particular multi-episode arc that breaks the flow of this series: the Kohane-arc. The only purpose of this arc is to show a mistreated little girl, and nothing else. Nothing really new gets introduced, and the way this girl gets abused despite her awesome powers have a good chance of breaking your suspense of disbelief. Especially for a 13 episode-series, if two episodes disappoint, it will be much more noticeable than if there were 24 episodes.

Still, xxxHolic Kei definitely carries the highlights of xxxHolic. It’s less consistent than the first season, due to the disappointing Kohane-arc, but to make up for that, it features the Spider Queen and Himawari-arc, along with a number of successful standalone episodes. The art has become better, and the characters also make use of the time that was spent on fleshing them out, so this series has been just as enjoyable as the first season for me.

Aww, such a sweet episode to close off this series. The decision to make the final parts of xxxHolic focus on the heart-warming, rather than the tension was a great one, as it’s provided a wonderful closure to the series. It’s clear that this is the end of the xxxHolic anime, and I’m glad to see that it left on such a positive note.

In this episode, it feels like every character who’s made an appearance in multiple stories returns, and along with that, we sometimes see characters from the stories in the first season return as random by-passers. On top of that, the animation was really good, and the best tracks of the soundtrack were played throughout the episode. Overall, the anime staff did an excellent job for the second season.

Overall, I must say that xxxHolic Kei has done a pretty good job in living up to my expectations. Obviously, my expectations for the second season have been a bit too high, which made the lesser points of this series stand out much more than usual. Despite this, though, the spider queen arc and Himawari-arc were especially worth it.

Now this was an awesome episode! I’m glad to see that the creators were able to play with the manga chapters in such a way to save the best story for last. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if the Himawari-arc would close off the xxxHolic anime, because in this way, the series would leave you in the best way possible, instead of how the first season ended with a random side-story. It’s just like Mushishi: that one stayed episodic until the end, but it did save one of its best stories for last, with great effects.

I really expected this final arc to be even darker than the spider-arc, and what I got was an incredibly heart-warming episode. The bond between Watanuki, Himawari and Doumeki is really something special, and its wonderful to see everything the past thirty-five episodes have been building up for come together.

At this point, I really can say for sure that without taking the manga into account, xxxHolic has been Clamp’s best work for me. Clamp is far from perfect, Tsubasa Chronicle seems to be getting more ridiculous with every plot-twist, Chobits had a lot of boring moments and the character designs of Code Geass are more aimed to attract fangirls and fanboys than some creative masterpieces, but in a series like this one and Cardcaptor Sakura, you can see that they’ve shown their best sides.

Ah, thankfully this episode managed to restore my faith in this series. The Kohane-arc just disappointed, but this episode was a terrific foreshadowing of the final two episodes of xxxHolic Kei.

The creators really know the key of good horror: build-up. During this build-up, the attention of the viewer is grabbed as much as possible, after which the major revelations and plot twists get unleashed. xxxHolic has also had the advantage of having spent many episodes already on fleshing out and developing its different characters, and the result worked perfectly.

The end of this episode also goes back to the major climax of the first season, where Watanuki met the woman. The guy is just so damn stubborn around the ones he loves, that he forgets all about himself.

I’m wondering: are there enough stories without Tsubasa Chronicle left in the manga for a third season, or does the manga basically become the back-up manga for TRS after this arc?

After the previous episode destroyed my suspense of disbelief, I just have to wonder why Watanuki never thought about contacting some kind of child welfare agency. The media were also portrayed as a bunch of idiots who blatantly use their own opinion. Thankfully though, this episode was much better than the previous one, and after the introduction it focused more on the relationship between Kohane and her mother than it was about “feel sorry for this little girl!!”

Overall, it was a nice conclusion, even though I’d have liked to see a bit more about how Kohane and her mother changed, but I guess that that’s left up to the viewer’s imagination. What especially caught my attention was how strong Kohane actually was, and how easily Watanuki seemed to think that he could just take care of Kohane for the rest of her childhood.

Still, this has been the weakest arc of the second season of xxxHolic, unfortunately. I still can’t quite figure out the point it was trying to make. It never really introduced new stuff, nor was it as thought-provoking or fun as the other episodes of this series. Let’s hope that Himawari’s arc won’t disappoint, after all the hype it’s gotten.

Edit: I’ve read now that manga-readers are angry at this arc, because the creators completely changed it. I must say that the parts that were changed were ironically not the ones that disappointed me in this story, and in a way, it makes sense to portray Kohane as a strong girl, who just needed the courage to stand up to her mother, instead of making her go to Yuuko and just ask for help.

Hmm, for the first time in the second season, an xxxHolic episode disappointed me a bit. It surprises me a bit, since this episode goes back to Kohane’s arc, but somehow this episode felt off and among the least interesting episodes of xxxHolic, along with the one about superstition.

I think my biggest problem was with how it just felt that Clamp tried to shove down it’s message through the viewer’s throat. The usual subtlety in this series was gone entirely, and instead we get an obvious story with an obvious message: “Here is Kohane! She’s hated and disliked by both her viewers, colleagues and mother! She receives death threats and gets beaten up! But she has special powers, and she’s always right! Now feel sorry for her!” Sorry, but I’m not buying it.

One series that I can think off that successfully dealt with the topic of psychics and the media was Ghost Hunt. Okay, Ghost Hunt had its own problems, but none of those lied in its themes and messages. The arc about the spoon-benders was really good at showing the relationships between kids who claim to bend spoons and the media, and the people who watch it.

I really hope that the next episode will offer a clever twists to the whole story, because I really know that the creators can do better than what they’ve shown here.

Another very solid episode from xxxHolic. This one too goes back to the first one, and is another one in the collection of “stories about girls and women with mysterious problems” that were featured in many of the episodes of the first season. It’s episodes like these which are especially important for this series, because they take the focus away from Watanuki and instead are all about their characters. This makes the viewer both enjoy the character in question more, and look forward to seeing the next serious story about Watanuki. Besides, I love it when main characters end up taking the roles of mere spectators.

The case this time is about a girl whose house is being haunted. She can hear sounds, as if people were living there. What’s actually happening is that she’s the ghost, and doesn’t realize that she’s dead. In the end, Yuuko gives the girl a number of bells that would amplify her presence in the house. In this way, the real residents would be so freaked out that they’d call an exorcist.

I must say that that was a very interesting way to exorcise the ghost. Yuuko refused to let the girl know that she was a ghost, and she refused to exorcise the ghost herself, and I wonder why she did that. Is this called “thou should never kill thy customers”, or something? Or did she decide to just leave things to the professional exorcists, who know how to properly get rid of a ghost?

Finally! A catgirl who doesn’t end her sentences with “-nya”. She also doesn’t have any of the nervous tics to make her seem excessively cute either. I like that.

In any case: I really must praise the second season by fixing about the only thing that was wrong with the first season: the fact that the stories had no connection to them. The second season so far has been really good at foreshadowing its future stories. It’s a small touch, but it makes this season feel more as a unity than just a collection of random short stories, while avoiding to become a series with a continuous storyline.

The current story was about said catgirl, and it was delightfully close to the horror-stories that we saw in the first season of xxxHolic. The interesting thing is that it never tried to be anything big. The story was just very simple with hardly any unnecessary twists. A really good example of the simple, yet effective episode, and at the same time it foreshadowed Himawari’s arc some more. I suspect that the creators will save her arc for the end of the season.

I’m a bit iffy on the explanation the creators gave, on how the body of the dead girl has sat in her chair for years now, due to the fact that her body won’t decompose due to the chemicals that are in the food we eat. Even preserved meat goes bad if you don’t seal it to prevent outside air from reaching it, so why should a human suddenly become entirely immune to the process? Still, I admit it’s a freaky thought: perhaps the technology to completely preserve our bodies in the future.

Apparently, the creators also seemed to have cut out Tsubasa Chronicle references in this episode yet again. In a way, I’m glad that they did so. xxxHolic is basically a series about modern folklore, not some kind of back-up series for Tsubasa Chronicle. I’ve also heard from various sources that the Tsubasa Chronicle Manga is starting to get more ludicrous with every single volume, so it’s good that the creators have decided to keep things simple. I can imagine how there was a bit of collaboration between the teams that worked on the xxxHolic and Tsubasa Chronicle movie, but I can imagine how with so many references, trying to manage these crossovers will be near-impossible.