The big improvement, aside from the increased graphics-budget, of the second season is the inclusion of foreshadowing. The first season was very good, but the stories all felt a bit disconnected from each other, aside from the occasional appearances of the Rain and Vestal Sprite. The second season however has cleverly been inserting small introductions of the upcoming arcs in the past few seasons. My guess is that this second season will feature three major arcs: the spider-queen, the current one with the psychic girl and the final one will be Himawari’s background, with in-between small stories like in episode four. It really gives the viewer something to look forward to, and brings more unity to the whole series.
This episode mostly introduced the young girl, and her relationship with her mother. The mother is a typical case of a parent who’s become too obsessed with how famous her daughter has become, and starts seeing her just as a tool, and she’s clearly suffering from a lot of stress. The atmosphere about this episode was just perfect.
In this episode, she was asked to remove the spirit of a dead woman from a sakura-tree. I believe that with the help of Watanuki, she managed to move the spirit to one o the sakura-trees around Domeki’s house. The big questions for the next episode are of course: why does Watanuki feel so drawn towards her and why does she feel so drawn towards Watanuki?
I don’t think the anime will finish the Kohane arc as the manga chapters just concluded it, so unless they start branching off…
Ahh, I love the soundtrack for this season, it’s really setting the mood for a lot of scenes.
(Also, upon a rewatch, I noticed that the Zashiki Warashi in the third episode actually had Watanuki’s present from the first season clipped onto her obi!)
I wonder why they cut out so many of the Tsubasa crossovers from the manga. Did they want to make the show stand alone, or were they just lazy?
I think that the creators consciously decided to keep Tsubasa Chronicle and xxxHolic away from each other, and personally I think that’s the right decision. xxxHolic is good enough without all the tsubasa chronicle-references, and tsubasa chronicle became enjoyable for whole different reasons compared to xxxHolic.
The problem is that there will be a moment where you will NEED to know what’s going on in Tsubasa to fully understand xxxHOLiC.
There’s this weird connexion between Watanuki and Syaoran, tied with their condition with their eye… The two stories will actually become essentially one and I don’t quite understand how they plan to separate them…
Wait and see.
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