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.
Have you seen/read X ?
X is to CLAMP what Hi no Tori is to Osamu Tezuka.
And RG Veda is very good too.
And I just don’t consider Code Geass as CLAMP material. Despite what some fanboys may be thinking.
yeah i think both tokyo babylon and x are clamp best works.
Tokyo Babylon and Holic are my favourite, as well as Clover. Code Geass is just… NO. NEVER. *shudders and scrubs her brain*
Time to be a bit of a heretic, again. My only experience with an actual CLAMP work, though even that was tangential at best, was with the X movie so many years ago. Not exactly a good one, I’d admit.
Haven’t really had the chance to look into their other stuff, all of their manga included.
That said, xxxHolic looks like a fairly good place to start, the first season of which I’ll probably get to watch much later this year, more or less, so any spoilers I may have casually picked up will likely be forgotten by then.
A pity I can’t really comment on the currently airing episodes though.
Yeah, Tsubasa would be perfect if CLAMP didn’t keep throwing the “HA WE GOTCHA” plot at their readers every other chapter. That’s why it’s a shame that xxxHolic is shorter than Tsubasa. Hopefully CLAMP will keep their word and go back to Gohou/Legal Drug after Tsubasa and xxxHolic are done.
X the movie is probably the worst way to get into CLAMP as people who watch it either die from the horrible or the LULZ. The X TV series, while still far from perfect and no where near the level of the manga, is much better and will definitely give more insight into some of the characters of Tsubasa (though the Seishirou/Subaru parts won’t make much sense until you read Tokyo Babylon as X is kind of a semi-sequel to it). The best intro for CLAMP, I think, is still Cardcaptor Sakura as it’s entertaining, cute, funny, touching, and far less disturbing and gory than their other stuff.
I liked X tv a lot, enjoyed it even more than holic and tsubasa, well even though all of Clamp’s works are at good level!