Manga Review: xxxHolic #1
Wednesday 28 May 2008 at 12:27 am. Used tags: review, xxxholic
xxxHolic volume 1
By CLAMP
(may contain spoilers)
Watanuki Kimihiro can see the supernatural. Unfortunately for him, this is a problem, as the supernatural likes to bother him.
One day, while he's being bothered by the supernatural, he stumbled upon a strange little shop in the middle of town surrounded by huge skyscrapers. Not so much stumbled upon as to stumbled into. Once in the shop, he is told by the two little girls that met him at the door, Maru and Moro, that the reason he came to the shop is hitsuzen, which, upon explaination by Yuko, the woman running this establishment, means that it was impossible to avoid going into the shop. Yuko further explains, with the help of Maru and Moro, that the shop is to grand people's wishes for a price. To that end, Watanuki is forced to work until Yuko feels he has done enough work to pay for his wish to be granted.
The stories are somewhat episodic in nature, some take place across multiple consecutive chapters, however there is quite a bit of continuity between stories. There's a lot of shout outs to CLAMP's other works contained within the book, such as Sakura's wand from Cardcaptor Sakura. Thankfully, due to Del Rey's excellent handling of their books, a lot of these are mentioned in the back of the book in the Translator Notes. The stories themselves show a great deal of originality, many dealing with unusual phenomenon and physical manifestations of a person's behavior.
The first story is a story about a female with a chronic lying problem. This is also where Yuko first warns Watanuki that Himawari is not lucky for him. The next story has Yuko and Watanuki head to Ginza to get Yuko a red metal baseball bat and to visit a friend/customer from the internet that decided to leave the net. Or at least try to. The first book ends with a crossover with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle.
This was initially a total blind buy for me. I caught this volume on the shelf at a book store with used books, so I grabbed it for $5. The unique artwork and good stories both made this a worthwhile purchase. A very high quality first volume.
Score: 5 (out of 5)
One comment
I’m happy to hear that your blind buy turned out so well! This is one of my favorite series, and I’m having fun these days rereading it.
darla d (Email) (URL) - 15-12-’09 20:53