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This Week in Anime
Do xxxHOLiC's Vibes Hold Up?

by Nicholas Dupree & Christopher Farris,

It's the spooky season! Before they dive into the shiny new anime this season, Nick and Chris check out CLAMP's supernatural horror classic to see if the vibes hold up.

This series is streaming on Crunchyroll

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.


@Lossthief @BeeDubsProwl @NickyEnchilada @vestenet

Nick
Chris, we're already more than halfway through the month of October and have yet to cover anything spooky. By internet law our lives are sacrifice unless we correct this mistake, so I think it's only fair we start with the ultimate creepy show: The Slender Man anime.
Chris
Horrifying. I've heard of the legendary cult classic Intergalactic Defender Linguini, but I never thought I would get to behold the terrifying visage of an anime about a man made of linguini!
That's right, it's time for both of us to turn over our 12-step chips, because we're no longer xxxHolic xxxnonymous.
Just to get it out of the way, this is one of those cases where the x's in the anime title are silent.

This was something of an celebratory production for the CLAMP's history, tying in and crossing over with sister series Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE in a whole CLAMP Cinematic Universe. The anime version, perhaps understandably, excises much of that baggage to focus on the most important points: Watching this cool witchy woman screw with Dude-y Longlegs here.

Outside of watching several dozen episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura back in the day, I'm pretty unfamiliar with CLAMP's larger oeuvre. So all I knew going into this was that it has some sort of supernatural bent, everyone looks like their parents advertise outside of car dealerships, and Yuko can get it.

Turns out that's all you really need anyway.
She follows a proud line of magical mystery ladies who are both wife goals, and life goals.

Of the six episodes of the anime we sampled for this column, several of them primarily revolve around her lounging around her shop getting wasted, before she remembers some errand or another to send Watanuki to take care of.

A small business owner I know I can trust.
They can pretend all they want that Watanuki and his gradual development into some sort of spirit advisor is the point of this show, but the actual draw is seeing Yuko's new fit every episode. THAT is what's gonna keep people coming back.
It's the natural route to go with a horror anthology series like this. You need a personable hook. Sometimes, your supernatural stories and spooky life-lessons are delivered via a creepy Cryptkeeper, and sometimes they come from a ten-foot-tall hot goth boss.

Not that Yuko needs us to keep going to bat for her, as she repeatedly proves capable of doing that for herself.

She could stand to take a few swings at Watanuki's head sometimes while she's at it.
Dude has no appreciation for the valuable internship opportunity she's extended to him, nor her repeated attempts to wingman for him.
This absolute chump doesn't realize the golden situation he's in. I know people online who would commit heinous crimes to have what he has.
Pictured: Us making our perennial Faustian bargain with Lynzee to get the shows we want for seasonal reviews.
Technically, that's me sacrificing James Beckett's soul, but accurate.
Like I said, though, we only barely scratched the surface of xxxHolic thus far, and I can see the introductions of the ideas Yuko's trying to impart to Watanuki about the world of spirits he was initially so desperate to escape from. In just the first episode, he gets hit with a case that's less "Be careful what you wish for" and more "Be understanding of what other people wish for."


It fits, given that "wishes" are ostensibly the driving force behind most of the plots xxxHolic is trading in. When Yuko remembers that she has a business to run.
I will say, though, it sets kind of a precedent for how a lot of these stories lack closure. Yes, each episode features a new Supernatural Problem of the week, but half of our sample size ends with the story—and characters—just kind of shrugging their shoulders and going "well that'll probably end badly" with not much resolution.

You can tell it's trying to go for a sort of disquieting ambiguity, but personally it just felt like I was missing the last five minutes of the episode.
Sometimes there's a haunting sense of an idea that can be analyzed afterwards, and other times it's just the run-up to catching Truck-kun in one of his earlier roles before he hit it big in the isekai genre.

That second episode in particular spends a whole lot of time on demonstrating the exceedingly complex point that "Lying is bad" before Yuko tells us that we aren't supposed to worry about it.

It's... odd. Like, the stated message from Yuko is that ultimately they cannot help somebody who isn't willing to face their own issues. But then it begs the question of why our main characters are even here offering services when all Watanuki accomplishes is watching this lady get reincarnated into a hospital bed.

Even that might be more compelling if Watanuki himself had some more texture. The long-term story is obviously about him developing under Yuko's guidance, but in these early rounds he mostly just exists to be clueless and gush over this demonstrably less hot girl.
My absolute favorite detail is that everyone, including Himawari herself, disregards Watanuki's crush on her to instead focus on his clearly more apparent chemistry with Doumeki, whom Watanuki one-sidedly treats as kind of a arch-nemesis.

It had barely been four episodes and even I could tell they were in love. Why can't they see it?
Doumeki himself is just sorta... there. Yuko explains he has some aura that repels spirits, but I don't know when or how that was established. He's also probably on some kind of downers because dude deadpans his way through every ghost adventure.
They're the archetypal odd couple. Watanuki's ability to attract spirits was an early inciting detail for the story, so he gets paired up with Doumeki, who naturally repels them. Watanuki is Mister Wild-Takes Screamy-Man, so Doumeki is the more reserved counterpart who can't even muster a reaction to a brazen Chobits shout-out.

It generally worked for me, though I can see it getting grating if you're one who finds Watanuki especially irritating, or were hoping for more specifics on how much of the spiritual stuff worked.
It's a simple enough dynamic that I wasn't lost, but I definitely felt like I'd missed an episode where Doumeki helped in some task and that's what gets Yuko to recruit him. Maybe you skim over that by saying she's a witch who sees the future, but it's still an odd choice. Especially factoring in how Doumeki can't see ghosts so for all he knows this was just a weird field trip where the school weirdo almost fell off the roof and came out as a furry.
It is possible that some of the establishing scenes were lost in the adaptational shuffle from manga to anime. This series has more of an anthology feel; there's a sense of being carried by the vibes of this whole exercise, meaning maybe things work better in the episodes where Watanuki just chills and has various supernatural stuff explained to him by Yuko or her cohorts from the Better Business Boo-reau.
Those were certainly my favorite episodes! As somebody very familiar with real-world "supernatural" businesses, it was super interesting just seeing Yuko break down how a bogus medium was cold-reading Watanuki.

Oh yeah, I figured that first fortune-teller was going to turn out to be a fake, but seeing Yuko's take was a cool way to reinforce how generally perceptive she was and, more importantly, dunk on Watanuki for being gullible enough to fall for it.

But then their demonstration of a "real" fortune-teller digs into how such an act might really work in a world like this, implicitly tackling the reasoning behind the old chestnut about why psychics don't just look into their own future to find their optimal paths.


It's idea-based storytelling and fictional world-building, very tidy!

Mostly I just appreciate that Watanuki, and thus we the audience, gets a better understanding of this world and its workings. The draw for these kinds of supernatural tales is always seeing what the creators have to say about the various ideas and emotions they tackle. So when there's some solid direction to the narrative of a given episode, it goes a long way in making it all stick.

It's a testament to how an episode entirely comprised of Watanuki and Yuko walking and talking between a couple of places can be one of the most compelling ones! I feel like xxxHolic is decidedly more suited to these kinds of contemplative episodes, as opposed to wacky comedy or high-stakes supernatural action using these nonsensical noodle-people. The sound design can be extremely on-point, for one, using its score and tones to sell atmosphere where the mid-2000's digital animation (done no favors by the lower resolution) might struggle here and there.
Hell, with the right material you don't even need a narrative. The other best episode of this batch is basically just Watanuki stumbling across a furry food cart and making friends.
Oh yeah, this one was definitely my favorite of the bunch. They try to throw in an attack by spirits later on to spice things up, but I didn't even need that. I was already vibing along perfectly to Watanuki eating fox oden and catering to Yuko's drinking party.

Unlike all those malevolent spirits they've dealt with up 'til now, this one sells the idea of "There are mystical mysteries around every corner, and some of them are pretty cool to stumble upon!"
Even the evil spirits stuff sprinkled in is fun because it offers another incidental detail about how this all works, with Watanuki and Yuko's pet mogwai playing Shiratori to ward off their assailants.

Also, nobody who knows CLAMP stuff better try to correct me. I don't care if there's a proper name for whatever the hell Mokona is. I'm calling it a gremlin and you can't stop me from feeding it after midnight.
Nah, they explain it perfectly fine at the beginning.
Fuckin' plague rat Pikachu.
I'm much more onboard for fun fox food-cart owners that can make tutorials to fix my shadowbanned Twitter account.
Instructions unclear, accidentally shot an arrow into the Twitter offices.
Aw shit, maybe it's time to log off and lay low for a while then.
Uhhhhh boy. Right. We still gotta talk about this episode. I'll need to borrow a bottle from Yuko.
It is pretty funny to me that even all the way back in 2006, CLAMP had presciently figured some people might need to be driven to Stop Posting.

There's been a million cartoons about social media addiction since then. What had they seen back in the day that resulted in them composing this one about someone spending too much time posting on anime and tokusatsu forums?

...Okay, when I put it that way, I feel a bit personally called out.
I mean, they basically just took a drug PSA and replaced every instance of "drug" with "computer" and called it a day.

Which ends up turning the whole thing into a comedy when this lady starts reaching for a laptop like a junky in an After School Special reaching for a spoon of heroin.
Oh yeah, there's a ton of unintentional hilarity in shots that would've been prime reaction meme fuel had this series aired in 2016 instead of 2006.

"Must... not... post... take!"
It's just so weird to me that this is the angle they take on a woman browsing message boards.


She's not even online gambling or anything. Her great sin is sharing some gossip on LiveJournal, but we're acting like she's in the really bad part of Requiem for a Dream.
It's like they never even conceived of the possibility of moderation as opposed to cold turkey. To say nothing of the fact that a criticism of addictive behavior feels a bit disingenuous from a show starring a woman who consumes an entire BevMo's worth of booze each episode.

That goes double when you remember that Yuko met this woman in the first place browsing the same forums online.
God forbid a fulltime mom and housewife have any amount of time spent talking with friends or just not taking care of her family all day every day. The only solution is to take away seemingly her only direct access to the world outside of the apartment we never see her leave.

Honestly, if this episode didn't have Yuko's best look yet, it'd be a total deal breaker.
Credit where it's due, her Goemon Ishikawa homage there was one of the highlights of this episode for me.

My take on the episode was that it was trying to be about too many different things. Telling a plot about addiction, as well as interrogating Mama Hanahana on her commitment to her family or her online world, and which she could be more genuine about. It's supposed to fit with Yuko's previously stated philosophy of helping people who wish to help themselves, but in practice it just comes off as similar to the shaggy-dog story of Episode 2's lying lady, but even more muddled and with an inexplicable 2000's demonization of net addiction.

It's a real weird note that we had to leave on, unfortunately, and I don't know that I'll be interested in watching any more of the series. For all the charming bits, there's just too much disharmony and too many awkward choices to make me curious.
For my part, I did come away curious about more. I can see, with so much series left to go (as well as a whole second season that just, apparently, never got officially translated/released here), how things might develop more depth and texture in the long term. It's an unfortunate acknowledgement of how a slow-burn approach like this might not do its overall story any favors. Especially in a season like this one where I'll have plenty of current shows to stay caught up on.
Godspeed to ya. If nothing else, I can say that for all my issues and misgivings about this series, one thing remains undeniable: Yuko can still get it.
I, and she, will absolutely drink to that!
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