Finally! A catgirl who doesn’t end her sentences with “-nya”. She also doesn’t have any of the nervous tics to make her seem excessively cute either. I like that.
In any case: I really must praise the second season by fixing about the only thing that was wrong with the first season: the fact that the stories had no connection to them. The second season so far has been really good at foreshadowing its future stories. It’s a small touch, but it makes this season feel more as a unity than just a collection of random short stories, while avoiding to become a series with a continuous storyline.
The current story was about said catgirl, and it was delightfully close to the horror-stories that we saw in the first season of xxxHolic. The interesting thing is that it never tried to be anything big. The story was just very simple with hardly any unnecessary twists. A really good example of the simple, yet effective episode, and at the same time it foreshadowed Himawari’s arc some more. I suspect that the creators will save her arc for the end of the season.
I’m a bit iffy on the explanation the creators gave, on how the body of the dead girl has sat in her chair for years now, due to the fact that her body won’t decompose due to the chemicals that are in the food we eat. Even preserved meat goes bad if you don’t seal it to prevent outside air from reaching it, so why should a human suddenly become entirely immune to the process? Still, I admit it’s a freaky thought: perhaps the technology to completely preserve our bodies in the future.
Apparently, the creators also seemed to have cut out Tsubasa Chronicle references in this episode yet again. In a way, I’m glad that they did so. xxxHolic is basically a series about modern folklore, not some kind of back-up series for Tsubasa Chronicle. I’ve also heard from various sources that the Tsubasa Chronicle Manga is starting to get more ludicrous with every single volume, so it’s good that the creators have decided to keep things simple. I can imagine how there was a bit of collaboration between the teams that worked on the xxxHolic and Tsubasa Chronicle movie, but I can imagine how with so many references, trying to manage these crossovers will be near-impossible.
Oh man, the Tsubasa manga right now is just so… WTF. Then again, I honestly don’t think this really is above the rest of CLAMP’s WTF in their other stuff… (like incest in Chobits, Clow Reed’s soul in CCS, then entirety of Tokyo Babylon…)
Anyways, yeah you probably picked up on the fact that the water in the Tsubasa OVA were from this episode. And the cat girl is rather delightful as in that she’s a CAT girl, not a girl with ears, tail, and accidently flaunts her boobs everywhere.
Isn’t this the story about getting water? This story IS connected with Tsubasa (manga and the tokyo revelations OVA). I’m happy to know that people can enjoy this episode without knowing the connections though. I have to agree with the fact that CLAMP is going a bit overboard with the revelations in Tsubasa. (By the 16th time the OMGs aren’t as big anymore.) Also, the catgirl is ome of my favorite characters designed by clamp(and that includes code geass too), I love her personality and looks.
You think xxxHOLiC is a series about modern folklore, and not some kind of back-up series for Tsubasa Chronicle, I think so too. I don’t like Tsubasa that much, but I love xxxHOLiC’s feel. The problem is that this is how you and I view this series ; it is not how CLAMP decided to make it.
There WILL be a point where xxxHOLiC will interwine too much with Tsubasa Chronicle to be taken as a stand alone. If it hasn’t already started…
I think where xxxHOLiC Kei‘s writers are going to have some trouble is dealing with Watanuki’s link to Syaoran and Sakura (whatever that link is). Granted, they can make things up and likely will have to (because Yuuko-san is the linchpin for both titles IMO) but for now, the writers can “keep it real” with the manga stories.