For the fans of Gundam Unicorn who are complaining about slow release dates: the intervals between new xxxHolic episodes is a whole whopping year!
But dear god, was it worth the wait. Unlike what I previously expected, this episode doesn’t really aim to answer any question whatsoever. In fact, it doesn’t even address the cliff-hanger that the previous episode left us with, and no new news about Yuuko appears anywhere. The length of this OVA was about half an hour, and its purpose was completely different from the first xxxHolic Rou.
What this movie did do was incredibly heart-warming, though. It’s an entire episode full of subtle character-building on Watanuki and Doumeki. I mean, the changes that the first xxxHolic Rou episode brought forth were immense. This episode fleshes this out brilliantly by somehow doing the impossible and giving the characters even more depth than they already had. Yeah.
I mean seriously, xxxHolic already was by far my favourite Clamp series, and this episode only made it better. This episode was full of quiet discussions between Watanuki and other side-characters like Mokona, Doumeki and his grandfather. Doumeki’s grandfather is just about the only one who didn’t change significantly, and even he had a wonderful portrayal in this episode, worried about his grandson.
This episode also showed a few flashbacks to Watanuki’s past. And seriously, if there was any series in which such a small recap like that would would, it’s this one. For one thing, it was great to see Watanuki sigh at what a moron he used to be, but it also really reminded how it’s already been five years since I first started watching this series, and it reminded what kind of huge changes the characters went through. If you add all of the pieces of development together here, you really get an amazing cast of characters. And I really don’t hope that this was the last of the xxxHolic OVAs.
OVA Episode Rating: 8.75/10