xxxHolic Episode 5 - Shiritori
A month or so of not watching xxxHolic does wonders for my expectations; I enjoyed this episode a lot more than I’ve enjoyed the earlier ones, to be honest, even though the show is just as “nothingy” and not particularly well animated this time round either. I dunno, maybe it’s just my expectations are lower now.
Anyway, you presumably all watched this months ago; suffice it to say, Watanuki buys some oden from a kitsune, then gets chased by evil creatures and is forced to play shiritori (see also: Planetes 26) with Mokona (thanks to Tsukihime and Utawarerumono, I had an extra “ri” word that neither of them thought of; see if you can guess what it was…). Everything ties together of course, with Doumeki’s magic arrows and some shadowy birds all tying in neatly.
Yesterday afternoon I (perhaps foolishly) caught up to the end of volume 7 of xxxHolic (which is where I’d stopped buying the tanks, thus I don’t feel quite so guilty for reading scanlations). I’m slightly disappointed that things aren’t moving a little faster; stuff’s starting to come together now, I suppose, but everything’s still bubbling under the surface; I want a plot to burst forth like some kind of narrative magma to go along with the pretty CLAMP artwork, and soon!
Incidentally; Code Geass? LOVE. CLAMP’s noodle-people (thank you Fencedude of the AoD forums), spindly Kawamori-esque mecha, Sunrise and Goro Taniguchi back together; what more could a boy ask for? Well, decent writing, but we can but hope!
June 11th, 2006 at 8:30 pm
I’ve got bad news for you: Volume 8’s pretty slow too… but at least Watanuki’s starting to grow up. Volume 9 may pick up the pace a bit, however.
July 31st, 2006 at 6:17 am
Well xxxHolic is now up to Ep 16. I don’t know how long this show is, but I would like to see Watanuki end up with the vessel sprit for how this last ep left off. I think that is what she is. I’m sure I’m wrong.
I know that just about everyone hates the animation of this show, and at first I thought it was odd, but then I just gave up as it just being the look for the anime. I’m starting to wonder if I just have far lower standards than most anime watchers.
I did learn last night that the manga’s drawing is far better then the show and that is why most people are so disapointed with how the show looks. I’ve been trying to find a copy of the manga to downlond, but I haven’t found one yet. Translated in english ofcourse.
August 2nd, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Back.
I found the manga. I’m not as impressed as I expected to be. Infact, I’m not impressed at all. Maybe it’s because I’m not holding the manga in my hands, but it seems to match the quality of the show as far as I see.
Sorry, but I don’t see the reason for the mass griping.
August 7th, 2006 at 9:56 am
Back again.
I should bookmark this place, it took me forever to get back here.
I take back some of what I said in my last posting.
I just saw the 17th ep of the show and I just read the last 2 chapers of the manga. The drawings are… clearer then in the anime.
So there is a quality differance. Sorry.
After reading the whole manga I would expect to hear more about how they changed the stories. But for once I’m not going to complaine about that. Normaly I do for other shows. That this wasn’t done in the movie and that isn’t how that is done and so forth.
I think that this might be my last comment here, but I might come back and tell you what I think of the whole thing once it’s all over.
Hey, owner of blog site…. Did you really stop watching the show?
August 7th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
I did indeed stop watching xxxHolic.
Due to being extremely busy this year and general disinterest in most shows that have been airing, I really haven’t had the time to keep up with shows that were even vaguely disappointing me. I had no compulsion to go back to xxxHolic, so I stopped watching it; that’s pretty much it. Until yesterday I hadn’t watched anything for several weeks!
Perhaps someday I’ll get back to it; I keep meaning to get back to Zegapain, for instance, and a few others from April. But I can’t say I’ve missed watching xxxHolic all that much, unfortunately, which is a shame as I had high hopes for the series.
August 9th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Shame, I thought it was a good show.
Either which way, good look with what else you are busy with.
And I noticed that you hadn’t seen anything, or wrote about anything until this new ep of Honey and Clover II. I’ll go back to see what you think of it after I’ve seen it.
See ya.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Are you going to watch xxxHOLIC: Kei now?? It’s been so good! They’re using one overall plot arc for the series and I liked the first season, but this one has been even better so far, so if you liked the better ones from season 1, you should check it out! :)