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.
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