mayoraasei | xxxholic review

Over the Christmas holidays I've been telling myself that I should write a manga or anime review on a regular basis in the hopes of improving my writing skills.

This is the latest in my endeavours.

I shall start by writing of the few female anime/manga characters whom I actually like. Despite having been a manga fan for, oh, the last 6 years of my life, overwhelmingly the characters that I like from any series would be male. This is true whether the manga is shoujo or shounen or Japanese or Korean or Taiwanese. If I were to name my favourite 100 anime characters it would be mostly empty and be mostly empty of females.

And I suspect a lot of people agree with me. The characters might be more likeable to a Japanese audience, to people who grew up in a society that ingrained in patriarchy, but to fans outside that community, there's probably no better word to describe those girls than annoying.

This "series" will show that likeable female characters do exist. Or at least, there exists female characters that can be liked by me. LOL.

And who better to start off with than Yuuko from XXXHolic?

CLAMP has never had a problem with characterisation. The plot ploys and the angsting and the set-up might be so hideously blatant, but you end up falling for them anyway. Though their female characters rarely induce the immediate desire to throttle them, they've never really been outstanding either - from cute sweet Sakura to cute sweet Misaki to cute sweet Yuzuriha and to all manners of sweetness in Hikaru and Hokuto and Sue, their female characters fall achingly short of matching up to their more fascinating male characters.

XXXHolic is still guilty of that in Himawari, but Yuuko is a character they've never done before.

In fact, in an age where CLAMP has abandoned all pretence and is directly cloning their own characters, the central characters in XXXHolic are refreshingly different, delightfully un-CLAMP-like.

The story is carried by our hero Watanuki, who in any other series might have been a side character that provides comic relief. Whiny and obedient, bad-mouthed and sensitive, clumsy and capable, comical and tragic, this contradictory hero is so likeable simply because CLAMP doesn't tell us to like him.

Watching over his growth is Yuuko, the "Dimension Witch", a loud, bossy onee-chan who owns a store that can grant wishes, at a price equal to that of the wish.

She prods the orphaned Watanuki into opening his world to others, into allowing people like Doumeki and Himawari to take some of his load off his shoulders.

She watches and guides Sakura et co in the Tsubasa world. Always so impenetrable, invulnerable, immovable, cool...

She's probably the only major female manga character I can think of who is incredibly strong and yet at the same time is also personable, manipulative, mercurial, enigmatic, shrewd, bullying, cocky and always, always, gets the upper hand *___*

The art in XXXHolic is strongly oriental and less anime-like. Lanky limbs, elaborate curls and swirls of smoke and butterflies and oriental motifs. CLAMP has decided on a unique and less mainstream style, but - when - CLAMP envelopes the scenes with intricate details, it loses none of its artistic worth.

As for plot, it has so far taken the episodic approach of most shounen series, but with a strong CLAMP flavour - and as CLAMP goes, it can get a little didatic at times. The plot is better appreciated in conjunction with Tsubasa (especially now that the connection is becoming clearer), but I have unfortunately few good things to say about Tsubasa. As self-contained episodes, the stories are likeable and rarely tiresome, always delivered with well-mastered character interaction. And most certainly, these stories will be an interesting eye-opener into a world of Japanese spiritual myths and superstitions.