“Platinum Garden Volume 7″

Description:

Marriages ought to be based on trust and understanding, but lately Kazura’s engagement seems to be nothing but secrets and mysteries. First, Shintaro Aguri, a substitute teacher who is really a member of the Magahara family, challenges her to find a former classmate’s mysterious parting gift or else break up with Mizuki. Then Mizuki performs a soul return on a friend’s husband, leaving Mizuki in the hospital, exhausted and wracked by fits, and poor Kazura clueless as to why!

—–From Back of the book,Published by Tokyo Pop, Authour is Maki Fujita——

Art: Nothing to complain about here. Maki does a tremedous job of drawing! I didn’t find anything wrong with her drawing in this volume.

Plot Development: Their were many plot developments in this volume. Mainly in Kazura wanting to offically not leave Mizuki alone,deciding to not give up and have her destiny be changed. We also get to learn what Mizuki thinks and how he feels at the end of this volume. Even tho I do believe he’s in love with her he’s very in denial about it. I hope next volume we get to hear more of his thoughts,because it was nice for a change. Another plot event is Kazura was able to see a bit of the future threw Miya’s eyes,and be able to hear her voice, when only a few people can (cause she speaks telepathically). So that little turn of events shows that Kazura might be closer to the family or something then they all think. The last two things I noticed in plot events are ,a)Kazura&Mizuki are getting way closer. Kazura’s depending more on him when she’s scared,and wants to be more in his life. I sometimes feel threw this series that Mizuki is quite selfish in the fact that Kazura seems to be the only one working at the relationship. B) Mizuki finally did a soul return infront of Kazura,tho I wish this scene was more in detail,cause I kinda got confused,we finally see him doing it. Now Mizuki is very exhausted,and he’s finally going to show what he did out of town,meaning he’s going to show Kazura what happens after a soul return,but not till volume 8.

Overall Thought
I thought this was a good volume. I mean I quite enjoy this series, I mean I’m still reading it after seven volumes of it. This story reminds me of two things. A) Fruits basket. Maybe this series hasn’t gotten as dark as Fruits basket has,but it definatly reminding me of Fruits basket. Mainly with all the secrets and everything.Maybes that why I enjoy this series. I think anyone who likes fruits basket would definatly enjoy this series. B) Edward Cullen from Twilight. I mean has anyone not read Midnight Sun, off of Stephenie Meyers website. In Edwards view he feels like the biggeist moron, and Mizuki kinda feel that way. So Edward And Mizuki.Maybe we should get them to have coffee together,lol.

Tho I definatly enjoy this volume,I do wish their was a bit more. I mean, I wish we could have a more detail look at how Mizuki did the soul returner. I was quite confused at how he did it. I think the only problem this volume had was it had bits of confusion. I mean at the beginning I was quite confused. In the last volume, volume 6, Kazura was only talking to Aguri (the teacher) on the phone, and then in this volume she seems a bit closer. I also forgott who Miya was. Manga volumes only get published every few months,depending on translation and something after four months you fogett alot of things, so when you read the next volume you might be confused, I reread the ending of volume 6,and was a bit less confused. So yah confusion was the only probelm for me. Other then that,this volume was enjoyable,and I definatly can’t wait till volume 8. Hopefully this series will be a long lasting one like Fruits Basket.

Rating:A-

Next review will be of Tsubasa volume 2 *anime*, and The Queens Knight Volume 13

“XXX Holic Volume 1″

So crazy me decides to use the last bit of birthday money and go to her local comic store and buy a volume of some anime. This insane person is craving Star Ocean EX , but just my luck to find out they dont have it. I see Ranma 1/2 sitting on the shelf,not really lonely looking (because it’s other season are sitting all in line next to it),but I know I dont have enough cash, so a crazy anime that I’ve never watched but seen the trailer of. What anime is that? xxxHOLIC. I’ve seen Clamps, Card Captor Sakura before, and Tsubasa too. I’ve liked both of them,and I thought the English dubb trailer to xxHOLIC looked cool, so I thought let just try this out. Excuse me mister, do you have any xxxHOLIC? and of course they do, so I buy volume one and after a week of sitting on my shelf I decided to bring you guys a new review.

Description:

Watanuki has been haunted by dark spirits his entire life, a curse flowing through his bloodline preventing peace. When his incessant deamons drag him to the ornate door of the Dimensional Witch Yuko, he meets a mystical woman of insight and luxury, quick to help those in a blind…For a fee! One might very well end up paying with their soul! To be free of his visions, Watanuki will work in her shop of dreams and wishes. There is always a price to pay…

—Got Synopthis from Back of dvd by Funimation&Clamp—

Characters Voices&Development

I only watched this in dub, I don’t think I could watch volume 1 again for a while anyways. Maybe episode 3 again,lol. But I only watched it in English dub. Um, I actually liked the dub, the voices were not annoying and they fit,espeically Yuko’s,Watanuki’s,and Himawari. Thier was only one voice I hated and that was domeki. Was his character suppose to sound old? I just thought it didnt sound teenagish,too old for a boy his age.And that bugged me, I mean it totally did. Luckily he wasn’t in many episode,maybe if I rewatch this I’ll do it japanese. Now Colleen Clinkenbeard (voices Yuko) is the main reason I watch this.She did a excellent job,and the trailer of it with her voice of Yuko’s fit. I also like Maru and Moro voice. Now Moro is pronuce identical to my name so haft the time their name was called in my name,I kept thinking “My Name”,”My Name”. Which was funny.

Watanuki in my opinon was the only one who had plot or character development out of the whole volume 1. I mean we learn about his past,and the lost of his parents. And we learn his future is Very interesting to Yuko. Now the whole plot that suppose to develop (if their is one) didn’t really show to me. I mean to me all these episodes were fillers.Yes we learn that Watanuki is interesting and something in his future is interesting,but unless the plot is he’s going to change his destiny all around really hugely,I just don’t see it *Did that make sense?*.I just don’t see any plot development. But I guess that was the same with Hell girl season 1, they didn’t really have any plot till the end.

Drawings&Dvd Extra’s

I just don’t know what it is about Clamp,but do they need to make all their characters so tall or skinny (anorexic looking to me). Is it a trade mark thing? I love thier work&stories&idea’s but I do not like how some characters *mainly the main characters* are so damn tall&skinny. I mean in Tsubasa Yuko was 2 stories high of a building.That’s just not right. So Yah,other then that I like everything else that’s drawn.I just don’t like the skinnies and tallness.I mean, being tall isn’t a bad thing,but every character is tall except for some exceptional few is very unrealistic *but this anime?*, and yah. My friends like to joke about this whenever we watch anything by clamp,except for Cardcaptors Sakura. So I kinda do and Kinda dont like the art style.

Dvd specials is nothing spectacular. Just textless song and image gallery,and trailers. You know with all this big deal of xxxHOLIC, I thought their would be more extra’s. Especially for a dvd that cost 30 bucks. But nope. But the opening song 19 sai is something that everyone must listen to. It’s a awesome song that will keep you dancing and singing alone. At first I didn’t like it,but by the third episode I was craving it. But anyways I thought their could be more specials, I mean Tsubasa volume 2 had more specials then this.

Best parts

I didn’t really enjoy Episode 1,2,4 that much but I did have many favorite parts in this volume:

- In Almost every episode theirs a cooking scene with Watanuki, and I love how haft the time he’s complaing,and not paying attention.Or he’s freaking out or just basically leaving the food to burn or whatever,and usually he always gets told by Mokona,Moro,and Maru.And they all repeat the same thing. He even gets complaints from Domeki

- Episode 3 is probably my all time favorite especially from the refrences it has. The headphones that they wear in it are chobits ears. And I found this a hysterical joke that he had to wear it,and Yuko only did it because she thought it was was funny.It was funny to watch Watanuki suffer so much from These headphones and get made fun of,and in addition Yuko wears a identical pair which was so out of the ordinary,loll.

- The chessboard scene where Mokona&Yuko are playing chess.And the chess pieces of our of Mokona. I mean all the chess pieces of are Mokona,black mokona&white mokona. That was a awesome scene.

- Mokona in itself is the best part of the comedy relief in this show. I love how in tsubasa or anywhere mokona says “I’m not a thing,I’m a Mokona”. And I like how Mokna like “Handshake” in episode four.So that was nice.

-Yuko Playing Baseball

Overall Thought

Out of all the hype that this anime recieves,I didn’t like it much except for episode 3. I found some episodes really hard to watch all the way threw,and I really saw no plot,and felt it was mostly fillers. Ummm I really don’t know if I’ll continue with this series. The description reminded me of Hell Girl in a way,I mean the line of “There is always a price to pay…” is a line Ai Enma says or *I can imagine her saying*. I think thats actually a quote she says in the show. And Yah. I don’t know. It was enjoyable in some parts, but in others it wasn’t.I guess,at least it had good music to back it up,cause without it,I probably wouldn’t have gone on to each episode.