XxxHolic: Volume 19

by CLAMP, 180 pages

Watanuki has been waiting for Yûko and selflessly running her wish-granting shop for decades, but now he's suddenly dreaming of a butterfly and doesn't know what it means. Dômeki and his other friends stand by him and do what they can, but the ultimate choice to stay or go is his own. So they wait along with him and watch for the signs. But not even Watanuki knows what the future holds.

*sigh*

This might get a little spoilery, so skip it if you like.

This is both another lovely addition to the series and a sadly disappointing final volume. The wishes that arrive on Watanuki's doorstep are as thoughtful and unique as ever and his companions are as watchful and loving. But that's the problem. I knew, this being CLAMP, that the creators were not likely to outright answer anything and would probably build up to some open-ended, cryptic yet goosebump-inducing, beautifully drawn climax that the reader is happy to believe makes sense in some alternate universe. But there is no climax at all; no action on Watanuki's part to resolve his wait, no opportunity for Dômeki to use the mysterious object he's been holding onto for years now. Instead, Watanuki just decides to continue to wait, even though he's been given permission to go by a dream sent to him long before his vigil began. I was ready to accept incomprehensible conclusions, but not the complete lack of one, comprehensible or otherwise. It makes me sad. Did they run out of ideas? Write themselves into a corner? Lose interest in the characters and story? I still love these characters. I still love this story. But it will live in perpetual limbo now unless CLAMP have plans to tie it back into some future series, which I doubt is the case. I'm more content with this state of affairs now than I was when I first read this volume, but I wish I didn't have to resign myself to it. Unfortunately, that's one wish Watanuki isn't going to be able to grant. Still, lovely. Also, grrr. And, as always, a wee bit of hmmmm. *sigh*

XxxHolic: Volume 18

by CLAMP, 180 pages

Watanuki asks for Dômeki's help with one customer and shoos him away while dealing with another. In both cases, and following a visit from old friends, Watanuki shows himself to have grown stronger, both in powers and spirit, which is a comfort to his loved ones.

It's a good thing Watanuki's built up some confidence and know-how, as only one volume remains and I'm sure it will not be an easy one for him. I don't know how or if CLAMP's going to fit in all the things I want to know, but I'm excited to get whatever they're willing to give me. But I'm also sad at the thought of finally having to leave these characters and their stories behind.

XxxHolic: Volume 17

by CLAMP, 185 pages

Watanuki finds a red pearl for a familiar spider demon, sees what someone unaging like himself has to look forward to (and it's not all pleasant), and gives Dômeki a useful birthday present.

Dômeki is so patient. As he bides his time, waiting for the moment he'll be called to action, he can't help but worry exactly what action he'll be called to. It's a comfort, at least, to know that absent Yûko has clearly planned ahead. But the reader still worries.

XxxHolic: Volume 16

by CLAMP, 180 pages

As payment for his own wish, Watanuki has vowed to wait, never leaving the shop, never aging, until he can see Yûko again. In the meantime, he takes over ownership of the shop (and, so, the granting of wishes and the dangerous business of receiving appropriate payment). Mokona and Maru and Moro are about again, keeping him company and helping keep up the shop (and, in the case of Mokona, helping him consume the saké supply). Kohane comes to visit and, one presumes, so does Himawari-chan. And of course Dômeki comes by most days (and nights, as well) to keep an eye on him and eat his cooking, but it seems he's waiting and watching for something, too.

It's so sad to watch Watanuki grieve and wait, stubborn and pitiful at the same time. He's all alone on the cover this volume, with Yûko on the back at a 1/4 profile mostly obscured by her hair and umbrella--symbolism! The time jump of a few years threw me for a few panels, and I wish we could have seen how Watanuki's early experiences at determining payment for wishes went instead of just hearing them referred to in vague, past tense terms. But I'm glad he's not alone. He'd better not revert to not caring about his own well-being, or we're going to have words!

Somehow, I psychically started reading these at just the right time to have them line up perfectly with my reading of the major concluding crossover events of Tsubasa, which was quite cool. But I've finally caught up to the English language releases, so now I have to wait for the next one to come out in September.... Gah!

XxxHolic: Volume 15

by CLAMP, 179 pages

After failing to persuade his cooking student to taste her own food, a dispirited Watanuki dreams of losing Yûko. When he wakes, she is nowhere to be found. He tells himself she has just gone out on an errand, but he can't find Mokona or Maru or Moro, either. Still, he stubbornly carries on watching over the shop and leaving homemade omisubi (sticky rice balls with different fillings) on his student's door in an effort to gain her trust. After two weeks and no word from Yûko, Dômeki takes the initiative and moves into a guest room at the shop so Watanuki won't be alone with his fears...or when the time comes that he'll need his friend the most.

Owy. When Watanuki cries, I cry. He's losing his family all over again...only this time he remembers them--even if the outside world doesn't. I hope Dômeki's ready to throw him a lifeline, because I think he'll need it soon.

XxxHolic: Volume 14

by CLAMP, 184 pages

Watanuki starts teaching Kohane how to cook and, under orders from Yûko, takes on a shop customer as a student, as well. Both are naturals in the kitchen, but the smiling older woman seems a little empty and detached from what her hands are creating. As Watanuki keeps moving forward for his own sake, he determines to try to help her do the same...as he does for all those around him.

Yay, Watanuki is on the front cover for the first time since Volume 1! (He's usually on the back.) That must mean things are getting Serious. :) I love how the subtle little changes in relationships and outlooks have been building all this time. It's not till someone on the outside asks about it that the reader realizes just how far everyone has come since the beginning of the story. Mmm mmm good.

XxxHolic: Volume 13

by CLAMP, 185 pages

Watanuki and Dômeki intervene on Kohane-chan's part when her situation with her revenge-poisoned mother escalates out of control. At the same time, Watanuki's trying to understand and accept the "reality" of his own circumstances and make a determined effort to take control of them where he can.

Aw, lots of much-needed hugs for the shop's newest customer in this volume. Also, the usual endearing grumbling about who's an idiot and what's for lunch. Hee hee.

XxxHolic: Volume 12

by CLAMP 185 pages

Watanuki is having a harder and harder time differentiating dream from reality and is starting to fear that the latter may not even exist...or at least that he may not exist within it. But he has the love and support of his friends and has learned to value himself for the sake of those he loves. He contemplates all they do for him and decides he wants to return the favor. What wish can he grant one whose life is given to granting the wishes of others?

Even the reader's not sure when Watanuki is asleep and when he's awake...or if there's a difference. But as he realizes what he does and doesn't know, what he does and doesn't experience, the reader is surprised to discover she, too, has missed many obvious clues. Clever, clever, CLAMP.

XxxHolic: Volume 11

by CLAMP, 185 pages

Watanuki's giving nature ties him ever more closely to those who love him, even as he begins to come untethered from existence. Seeing the signs of the coming confrontation, Yûko does her best to maintain the shop's physical and spiritual integrity while preparing Dômeki and the others for the moment Watanuki will need them the most.

CLAMP do cute as well as they do cool. Between the devoted pipe fox spirit, Himawari-chan's safe little bird, the admiring son of the fox spirit who runs the oden cart, and of course Mokona, the urge to cuddle something while reading this series is great. I'm so glad I have a lap cat! But the cute things serve more than just to suck in impressionable readers. The characters need those cuddles to balance out all that is frightening and dead-serious in their lives--and there's a lot of that here. I do not begrudge Yûko and Mokona their boozy parties or Watanuki his silly rants at obnoxiously patient Dômeki or his perpetual swooning bedazzlement at the littlest of Himawari-chan's smiles. We need those giggles as much as they do. And if the sudden influx of cute and the growing background tension seeping out into the foreground are any hint, we're going to have need of them soon. Don't vanish, Watanuki!

XxxHolic: Volume 10

by CLAMP, 185 pages

Watanuki and Dômeki make a series of trips across the wall of a private garden to draw water from a certain well for one of Yûko's mysterious plans. But something about the silent, unmoving woman watching them from behind a second-floor curtain isn't "right." A tiny incident of bad luck shows them the grim truth. And then an even greater misfortune befalls Watanuki, revealing an even greater unhappy truth about someone very close to him.

Aaaaahhhhh, so that's how it is. So much makes sense now! Watanuki has an uncommonly good heart, which only encourages those around him to hold him even closer to their own. A well done, slow boil of a sub-plot.

The further one reads into XxxHolic, the more the links with Tsubasa pay off for readers of both series. But even without them, I'd love these.

XxxHolic: Volume 9

by CLAMP, 185 pages

Watanuki learns about buying and selling dreams and then helps a harmless cherry-tree-haunting ghost and the lonely young girl brought in to exorcise her.

Little by little, Watanuki is making and maintaining connections (even the ones he complains about but is honest enough to acknowledge he appreciates). And all the while, Yûko's encouraging him to question his perceptions of both himself and others and see what's true with his own eyes (well, his own eye and part of Dômeki's...hee hee).

XxxHolic: Volume 8

by CLAMP, 182 pages

Still bearing the spider's grudge--and seeing some weird things out of his absent right eye--Watanuki learns that the spirit who gave him chocolate on Valentine's Day has put herself in danger in an attempt to help him. A whiner Watanuki may be, but he's also as selfless as they come, and so he throws himself into her rescue with no concern for his own well-being. But spider spirits can be fickle beings with shrouded motives, and Watanuki finds that sacrificing himself may not be enough.

Aw, Watanuki learns a lesson--volumes in the making--about loving himself enough to allow other people to love him. Sharing the burden is a good thing and he should do it more often...as Yûko and Dômeki have been trying to tell him all along. :)

XxxHolic: Volume 7

by CLAMP, 183 pages

Dômeki incurs the wrath of a spider and finds himself the recipient of an arachnid grudge. But Watanuki, for whose sake he offended the spider, won't let him carry the burden and makes a deal with Yûko to transfer the grudge to himself. This in turn ticks off Dômeki who decides to research how to reverse the reversal or, better still, undo the grudge all together. Watanuki joins him in hitting the books, but their unusually cooperative efforts are interrupted by an inconvenient interloper.

Aw, the fellas get so mad at each other when they're trying to be nice. I love bickering buddy stories. And that inconvenient interloper's presence is awfully...convenient.... Yûko has dropped any number of what could be hints about a particular character's character, but she's never seemed especially worried about it, so I wasn't either. But now I'm not so sure....

XxxHolic: Volume 6

by CLAMP, 183 pages

Watanuki and Dômeki join a mystical moonlit procession in Yûko's stead. Later, while Yûko's out of town, Watanuki starts spending time talking in the park with a lonely woman who long ago lost her son. Dômeki is less than pleased with this development and its repercussions, but Watanuki has never been good at taking orders from that quarter.

Aw, a sweet volume where the characters make hard choices for all the right reasons and learn to face the consequences with understanding.

XxxHolic: Volume 5

by CLAMP, 186 pages

White Day has come and gone but Watanuki hasn't been able to find the spirit who "gave" him chocolate on Valentine's Day. As he looks for her so he can return the gesture, he runs into a different spirit who demands that he help her regarding a poisoned hydrangea that turns out to be suffering a greater contamination than he expects. Later at school he starts to see what look like tiny wings on the back of a classmate who's been acting strangely belligerent lately. When she suddenly latches onto the belief that Watanuki is an unbearable irritant, he finds himself in yet another precarious position. Being able to see spirits is all well and good, but not being able to actually do anything about them is becoming a problem.

If he's going to be relying on Dômeki so much to save his behind, Watanuki had better learn to say "thank you." And Yûko, still complaining about not getting enough White Day gifts, herself, turns momentarily serious as she contemplates the closeness of Watanuki's latest close call and the plots of those behind it.

XxxHolic: Volume 4

by CLAMP, 185 pages

Watanuki is so put upon that he has to make Valentine's Day chocolates for Yûko to distribute (in Japan, women give men chocolates on February 14th; guys don't give reciprocal gifts until March 14th on White Day) and, later on, his own birthday meal. And the one chocolate he actually tries to give to the girl he likes is eaten by his perceived rival, Dômeki. A stolen soul and several chocolate exchanges later, Watanuki learns about the power of words from a pair of identical twin sisters who are perhaps not so alike as they first appear.

Hahahaha! Every time you think Dômeki might actually say something kind and not-sarcastic to Watanuki, he undercuts it with mockery. Some day, they'll get caught being nice to each other--they'll deny it ever happened, of course, but the reader will know....

XxxHolic: Volume 3

by CLAMP, 182 pages

Watanuki and Dômeki investigate Himawari's concerns about unsettling events at another school. And the shop has a new customer, who decides--contrary to Yûko's recommendation--to walk away with what turns out to be a monkey's paw. Anybody's who's read the W. W. Jacobs story knows that's not going to end well.

I'm enjoying the addition of Dômeki to the story. His calm, quiet demeanor is a nice contrast with Watanuki's high-strung, manic nature. Yay for frenemies! Also, sheesh, lady--hello? monkey's paw? baaaaaad idea? *sigh*

XxxHolic: Volume 2

by CLAMP, 190 pages

Yûko decides that Watanuki needs to see what a real fortune teller is like, so after crossing paths with a charlatan she takes him to see an old friend. The old woman sees more clearly into Watanuki's soul than he does himself and she and Yûko share some secret smiles while they talk about him. Annoyed but impressed, Watanuki shrugs it off and goes about his schoolday and working at the shop, always looking out for a chance to talk to Himawari-chan, the sweet girl he's crushing on. He finds he might have some unwanted competition in his classmate, archery club star Shizuka Dômeki, with whom he's always arguing, and tries to avoid him as much as possible. But when Yûko decides they all need to have a ghost "story" party at Dômeki's family's temple, Watanuki has good reason to worry he'll be seeing a lot more of Dômeki in the future, whether he likes it or not.

Hmm, Yûko always seems to know more than she says, that sneaky space-time witch. She and Mokona (the black counterpart to Tsubasa's white fluffy bunny dimension gate creature of the same name and personality) really like their booze. I want to see their next customer. And I want to see another glimpse of the bigger story beneath the story. Yûko does actually say the words, "I wish...." in this volume as she sees the Tsubasa kids off on their journey--nobody says anything about it, but was that a contract, too? If so, what is she going to make herself pay to fulfill it? Sneaky, sneaky, I tell ya.

XxxHolic: Volume 1

by CLAMP, 185 pages

When unhappy spirit-magnet Watanuki's legs carry him into beautiful Yûko's wish-granting shop, the young man just wants to turn right back around and leave. But his legs, and apparently fate, have other ideas and before he knows it, he's made a wish...and agreed to pay its price. Now he's got to work for Yûko until his efforts are equal to the cost of his wish. In the meantime, he has to cook, clean, and help this weird woman who invades everyone's personal space--physical and psychological--as she runs her shop and goes about her own mysterious business.

In just this first volume, the creators set up a rich, complex tale and intriguing characters, even without the title's crossover elements with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. What's the story with Watanuki's mentioned but as yet unseen home life? And does Yûko have a personal agenda, in addition to helping her regular clients? Strange and mystical artifacts from who knows how many worlds spill over every surface in her tapestry-draped, fragrant smoke-filled shop, and the reader feels, even if she hasn't read other CLAMP titles, that each item has a story.

Coolness. More, please. :)