Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

xxxHolic: Kei Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, xxxHolic


xxxHolic Kei is the second season of the anime-adaptation of Clamp’s manga about modern Japanese folklore. In contrast to its predecessor, there are only 13 episodes, but to make up for it, the creators have put into these episodes the rumoured best chapters in the manga. The result is a second season that surpasses its first season in quite a few areas; not only in terms of manga, but also the anime staff learned some new tricks.

Without a doubt, the highlights of the second season are the first three and the final three episodes. Both contain rock-solid chapters, where the main characters Watanuki, Doumeki and Himawari (who have already been fleshed out really well by the first 24 episodes of the first season) really come together and get some major character development. The final episode is surprisingly light-hearted, but it does provide a perfect closure for the series.

The rest of the series is filled with stories, more reminiscent of the first season. They range from Yuuko, teasing Watanuki for the umpth time to some really effective standalone horror-stories. What’s interesting is how compared to the first season, the creators make use of much, much more foreshadowing. The stories in the first season always didn’t feel like a part of a whole, and this is fixed really nicely by the second season, which constantly drops hints and characters of stories that are still to come, which brings an interesting sort of unity to a series that consists out of random stories.

The animation has also improved a lot. You can see that the creators got a bigger budget for the second season, which makes especially Watanuki’s ramblings into some great visual comedy. Unfortunately, the animation dulls a bit in the less important episodes. The creators made good use of their CG to support the supernatural aspects of this series, and also the sound department is better than ever, although some tracks may have been played a few too many times.

Unfortunately, I can’t call the second season better than the first season. There’s something that holds it back from doing this, and it’s not just the length. In the second half of the series, there’s one particular multi-episode arc that breaks the flow of this series: the Kohane-arc. The only purpose of this arc is to show a mistreated little girl, and nothing else. Nothing really new gets introduced, and the way this girl gets abused despite her awesome powers have a good chance of breaking your suspense of disbelief. Especially for a 13 episode-series, if two episodes disappoint, it will be much more noticeable than if there were 24 episodes.

Still, xxxHolic Kei definitely carries the highlights of xxxHolic. It’s less consistent than the first season, due to the disappointing Kohane-arc, but to make up for that, it features the Spider Queen and Himawari-arc, along with a number of successful standalone episodes. The art has become better, and the characters also make use of the time that was spent on fleshing them out, so this series has been just as enjoyable as the first season for me.

Storytelling: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 9/10

xxxHolic – 37

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


Aww, such a sweet episode to close off this series. The decision to make the final parts of xxxHolic focus on the heart-warming, rather than the tension was a great one, as it’s provided a wonderful closure to the series. It’s clear that this is the end of the xxxHolic anime, and I’m glad to see that it left on such a positive note.

In this episode, it feels like every character who’s made an appearance in multiple stories returns, and along with that, we sometimes see characters from the stories in the first season return as random by-passers. On top of that, the animation was really good, and the best tracks of the soundtrack were played throughout the episode. Overall, the anime staff did an excellent job for the second season.

Overall, I must say that xxxHolic Kei has done a pretty good job in living up to my expectations. Obviously, my expectations for the second season have been a bit too high, which made the lesser points of this series stand out much more than usual. Despite this, though, the spider queen arc and Himawari-arc were especially worth it.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 12

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


This episode started out strangely straightforward for a regular Himitsu-episode: a number of boys mass-committed suicide, and saw the image of a boy just before they died. It seemed a bit too obvious for them to just have died, while being haunted by a boy whose death they were responsible for. And indeed, this episode turns out to be much deeper. Those who have been waiting for Maki’s background can rejoice, because this episode really gives the details of how he ended up shooting his partner.

It all happened during the investigation of a horrible mass-murderer, who murdered twenty-eight people and left their bodies in the most horrible states. When he was caught, he ended up killing himself. Katsuhiro (Maki’s former partner) was in charge of examining his brains, but when he looked at it, he turned crazy, shot the MRI-device containing the murderer’s brains and when he attempted to shoot Maki as well, Maki was forced to kill him.

In the end, this same murderer turned out to be behind the mass suicides. At the end of the episode, we’re given the reason of hypnotism, but that can’t just be everything. You can’t hypnotize anyone to do something against his will, let alone kill himself, so perhaps he combined this hypnotism along with whatever caused Katsuhiro to go crazy.

Overall though, excellent episode. Can’t wait to see the second half of this story next week.

Kaiba – 09

by psgels, posted in Kaiba


What can I say? This episode was just incredible, no question possible. Spoilers obviously follow.

As it turns out, the memory-guy plays a vital role in the entire story. He never was aligned to Popo, but made it believe like he was. Popo probably ordered him to use the plant Kaiba on Neiro, in order to mask all of her memories and change all appearances of Warp/Kaiba into Popo. Behind his back, the memory-guy put the remains of these memories into Hyohyo. The ostrich was also a servant of the memory-guy, who indeed helped out Popo back in the first episode. That’s why he secretly let Hyohyo join Kaiba without Popo knowing about it.

And Heck, only now I realize that in Neiro’s memories, Warp’s images are also blackened out! We only saw the evil Warp shoot Neiro, but the rest of it are all images of a black-on-white caricature. I’m getting some strong urges here that Popo was the guy who really ended up killing Neiro’s parents. Why would he want to mask them otherwise? Especially since this episode shows how easily he can just kill people.

A few questions remain with this, mostly: who was the Neiro that evil Kaiba shot, and why is Neiro still alive. In this episode, we also get confirmed that Kaiba wasn’t the Warp that killed everyone, because Neiro addresses him as “Kaiba”. That leaves the biggest question that still needs to be answered: where the heck did Kaiba come from? What also seems strange is how the memory guy seems to think that Warp changed after he met Neiro, because it obviously conflicts with Neiro calling Kaiba Kaiba…

I must say that my biggest fear for Kaiba would be the episodes before the finale, simply because Kemonozume screwed up so badly at that point. It dived way too deep into melodrama for it to remain believable. Still, thankfully Kaiba has managed to avoid this flaw entirely, and this episode really used the building-up of the previous episodes wonderfully.

xxxHolic – 36

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


Now this was an awesome episode! I’m glad to see that the creators were able to play with the manga chapters in such a way to save the best story for last. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if the Himawari-arc would close off the xxxHolic anime, because in this way, the series would leave you in the best way possible, instead of how the first season ended with a random side-story. It’s just like Mushishi: that one stayed episodic until the end, but it did save one of its best stories for last, with great effects.

I really expected this final arc to be even darker than the spider-arc, and what I got was an incredibly heart-warming episode. The bond between Watanuki, Himawari and Doumeki is really something special, and its wonderful to see everything the past thirty-five episodes have been building up for come together.

At this point, I really can say for sure that without taking the manga into account, xxxHolic has been Clamp’s best work for me. Clamp is far from perfect, Tsubasa Chronicle seems to be getting more ridiculous with every plot-twist, Chobits had a lot of boring moments and the character designs of Code Geass are more aimed to attract fangirls and fanboys than some creative masterpieces, but in a series like this one and Cardcaptor Sakura, you can see that they’ve shown their best sides.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 11

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


With an episode title of “Don’t reach for that neck”, I obviously became intrigued as to what this episode could have in store for us. Now that I finished this episode, I understand. This episode is about the thriller-part of Himitsu: a murder has occurred in a small mountain village, Aoki needs to get the victim’s body to headquarters, but the major problem is that there’s a huge typhoon going on. The road is blocked by a landslide, the car he’s in is stuck, and Maki can only pick him up at an open spot, about a mile away. So indeed, he ends up cutting off the head of the victim’s body so that he’s able to carry it to safety in time. *ehrem*

As for the thriller-part: the guy who was killed made an enemy out of the entire village with his arrogant behaviour and how he mistreated a certain woman. There were lots of people who could have killed him: her mother, her brother, a local guy who looked up to her. In the end, many potential victims end up chasing Aoki to make sure that he doesn’t deliver the head. So in the end the real culprit turns out to be the policeman who kept helping Aoki, and the others just acted because of their bonds of living in the same village, not wanting a comrade to end up in prison. I admit: the creators had me really fooled, and I never took that for a possibility.

This episode was really sneaky: it kept and kept throwing all sorts of red herrings over the place in order to mask the identity of the real murderer. Normally it would have been easy to spot the real murderer through this: the one who gets the least amount of attention is the culprit. The interesting twist however, is that the viewer is completely tricked to think that this policeman is just helping out and doing his job. This probably is because the guy had no intention of going against Aoki. Ah, I love how this series likes to play around with irony.

Kaiba – 08

by psgels, posted in Kaiba


It’s been a long wait, but finally my beloved Kaiba is back. And what an episode does it return with! For once, Kaiba doesn’t appear in it at all, and instead it’s all about Popo, and how the bastards killed off his own mother to keep up his appearances. As it turns out, she once changed his body, which is against the rules of the organization Popo works for. That does make me wonder why Neiro was just allowed to change into Ger and all…

In any case, we indeed learn that there is another Warp besides Kaiba. This guy probably was the one who shot Neiro. If I understood things correctly, then Neiro’s body was shot, and she ended up in Hyohyo. It seems that her memory got split in two: one part works for Popo, and the other one went along with Kaiba.

That still leaves the question to: which Warp is the real one? What we know is that the body that Kaiba was in in episode one was the genuine indestructible body of Warp. I believe that the Warp we see in this episode is the real Warp who killed off those hundreds of people. Then at one point, he ran into this “Kaiba”, which stole his body. Kaiba then met Neiro and the two fell in love. Warp then tracked down Kaiba and destroyed Neiro’s body, though what I suspect is Popo’s meddling, Kaiba escaped him, somehow causing Kaiba to lose his body and get that hole through his body, after which episode 1 started.

What interests me the most is the real link between the plant Kaiba and the human Kaiba. We know that that plant has a lot of an appetite and that it eats memory, but what I want to know is how such a plant ended up being turned into actual memory. What I also want to know: who are on Kaiba’s side in this story, and most importantly: why? Why would the ostrich be working for such a plant? What’s the connection to the memory-guy to all of this?

I must say, that this series knows EXACTLY what makes a good mystery-series. I totally forgot about this, since 2007 was a bad year for mystery-series, but a good mystery-series doesn’t just ask questions, but it forces its viewer to form his own theories about what happened. This is what sets the genre apart from series that have to rely on some obscure side-story that you can only understand if it’s spelled out in front of you.

And indeed, even though I originally thought that Crystal Blaze would be a mystery-series, its mystery turned out to be just a simple back-story and the story focused on storytelling and characters instead. Instead, Shion no Ou’s mystery-plot was simple, yet it knew how to make its viewer guessing about the identity of the murderer, and most viewers already knew exactly what happened when facts were finally revealed. Nijuu Mensou no Musume is about to do the same: the simple question is: what happened to Nijuu Mensou, and there are several theories possible, and enough clues to keep you guessing.

Another great approach to mystery is the one used in Himitsu: it offers you the pieces of the puzzle for each episode, and they only really fall into place when you connect these pieces. Ergo Proxy and Boogiepop Phantom are yet another story: they just provide a few clues here and there and apart from that they make no attempt to help the viewer figure out what happened.

I now see that the series that just feature a huge setting, but withold some of this information at the start aren’t necessarily good mystery-series, and rather use the appeal of the unknown to create tension. I personally loved Dennou Coil, but it was excellent because of its plot, characters and the amount of imagination that was put into the setting. Not because of its mystery, and I’m surprised it took me so long to realize this.

At the moment, I’m wondering whether Real Drive will be able to pull off good mystery. Right now, it relies a lot on the appeal of the unknown, and it’s definitely got my attention about its concept, but interestingly enough, it hasn’t started asking focused questions yet. When this’ll happen, I wonder whether it’ll allow the viewer to speculate about the setting, or whether it’ll just carry the viewer along with its revelations.

xxxHolic – 35

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


Ah, thankfully this episode managed to restore my faith in this series. The Kohane-arc just disappointed, but this episode was a terrific foreshadowing of the final two episodes of xxxHolic Kei.

The creators really know the key of good horror: build-up. During this build-up, the attention of the viewer is grabbed as much as possible, after which the major revelations and plot twists get unleashed. xxxHolic has also had the advantage of having spent many episodes already on fleshing out and developing its different characters, and the result worked perfectly.

The end of this episode also goes back to the major climax of the first season, where Watanuki met the woman. The guy is just so damn stubborn around the ones he loves, that he forgets all about himself.

I’m wondering: are there enough stories without Tsubasa Chronicle left in the manga for a third season, or does the manga basically become the back-up manga for TRS after this arc?

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 10

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


Another excellent episode from Himitsu. This time, it’s about mass murderers who have been arrested and have gone crazy ever since. In this episode, one of these guys gets murdered during a power outage. Because the security-cameras weren’t working at the facility where he was kept, there was no evidence except for his own brain.

As it turns out, it was a suicide. Being confined has a strange effect on mass murderers, and most of them will end up haunted by the people they killed. This particular guy has found emotional support in a white mouse, who he keeps talking to. When the power went out, his eyes blackened out, and he thought that the mouse was gone and on a whim he killed himself.

This was also a means to test out the capabilities of the MRI-team by a rather ambitious and annoying guy who was in charge of the facility, and as it turns out, the entire suicide murder was set up for this reason. This again brings up the question: these people are utterly useless to society, so do we have the right to just kill them off? I also couldn’t help but think “why don’t they kill the mouse and look at its brains”? This episode really showed how convenient it can be for someone to die, even though it’s morally unacceptable. It’s amazing how critical this series is of modern-day society.

xxxHolic – 34

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


After the previous episode destroyed my suspense of disbelief, I just have to wonder why Watanuki never thought about contacting some kind of child welfare agency. The media were also portrayed as a bunch of idiots who blatantly use their own opinion. Thankfully though, this episode was much better than the previous one, and after the introduction it focused more on the relationship between Kohane and her mother than it was about “feel sorry for this little girl!!”

Overall, it was a nice conclusion, even though I’d have liked to see a bit more about how Kohane and her mother changed, but I guess that that’s left up to the viewer’s imagination. What especially caught my attention was how strong Kohane actually was, and how easily Watanuki seemed to think that he could just take care of Kohane for the rest of her childhood.

Still, this has been the weakest arc of the second season of xxxHolic, unfortunately. I still can’t quite figure out the point it was trying to make. It never really introduced new stuff, nor was it as thought-provoking or fun as the other episodes of this series. Let’s hope that Himawari’s arc won’t disappoint, after all the hype it’s gotten.

Edit: I’ve read now that manga-readers are angry at this arc, because the creators completely changed it. I must say that the parts that were changed were ironically not the ones that disappointed me in this story, and in a way, it makes sense to portray Kohane as a strong girl, who just needed the courage to stand up to her mother, instead of making her go to Yuuko and just ask for help.