xxx-Holic: Kei
And this one time, when I was high...
Review by: M.H. Torringjan
Length: 13 episodes
Genre: Mystery, supernatural
Watched: Entire series, subbed
Being an anime fan, I’m naturally curious about Japanese culture, particularly how real life aspects of the culture are reflected in the anime that I watch. The first season of xxxHolic proved to be an interesting specimen, in which aspects of Japanese mythology were brought to the forefront, making a series like a Japanese literature lesson. While the Japanese culture interested me, the rest of the series seemed to take a bit of a back seat to the mythology. This second season did much to rectify that complaint and improved it greatly from its predecessor.
Plot summary: Watanuki returns in his capacity as the assistant of Yuuko, the magical mystery shop owner (no relation to Mr. Kite) who is troubled by his ability to interact with spirits. Doumeki remains perceived as a constant obstacle to Watanuki’s relationship, but also remains tied to Watanuki through some unseen fate. When a young girl who can really see ghosts is cast as a fake by the real fake seers (read: John Edward), society turns on the young girl and her mother tries desperately to maintain their popularity. Watanuki feels the need to help the girl, but meanwhile, the spirits he finds become more dangerous, to the point of threatening his life.
Artwork: The artwork has changed very little from the previous series, Production I.G. still being the series’ animation studio. The colors are still vivid, although the animation is not as sharp as some other series I.G. has done. The characters still look like Stretch Armstrong had sex with way too many people back in the 70’s. The light art style matches the mood of the series for the most part, lending an air of levity to the funny parts, but still able to become dark and ominous when necessary.
Music: The music is essentially the same as the previous season, still appropriate for the mood of the episode. The opening song is by the same artist, but still has a different feel to it that makes it much more fun to listen to anytime than the first season’s opener. The same is true for the closing theme, which I may just have liked due to the different colored Mokonas marching across the screen.
Characters: Very little has changed since the previous season in terms of the characters, with the characters picking up with their development right where they left off at the end of the previous season. Watanuki is becoming more confident in himself and now isn’t freaked out as much when he sees anything supernatural, Himawari still acts oblivious to Watanuki’s advances, and Doumeki remains loyal to Watanuki and always ready to ignore Watanuki’s insults for Watanuki’s own good. The only new character of note is the young seer, Kohane, who has been made reluctantly into a celebrity by her mother. However, her celebrity becomes short-lived when she begins to tell *gasp* the truth instead of what the people want to hear and going along with what the fake Ghost Whisperers say. She is a reserved girl, shy due to her lack of friends, although she longs to have the life of a normal girl with a happy family. The characters aren’t new or revolutionary, especially since we saw most of them in the previous season, but they do the job of telling the story well enough.
Plot: This is where the series really shines, as the series shows itself to be a story-centric plot. It focuses on Japanese (and likely other Eastern, but don’t quote me on that) mythology and culture. However, as I said in the intro, this season did a much better job of developing a continuous plot than did the first season, which felt extremely episodic. I’m not certain if it was due to just investing as much time as I have into the series, but I found myself actually caring about the characters and what was happening to them much more than in the previous season. However, seeing as how I haven’t read the manga of this series, I can’t say how much of it was due to mirroring the manga’s plotline and having to develop backstories and how much of it was due to better choice of the plotlines that were shown. However, that being said, there were some individual episodes, like one focused on Mah-jong that fell flat in part due to the lengthy explanations required for the viewer to understand what was happening. Also, it felt as though the season had rather an abrupt stop just following a significant plot revelation, which makes me wonder if there’s going to be a third season in the works later on.
Chicks: There were female characters, but none of them seemed particularly interesting as far as characters go. Himawari is oblivious, but she does show unexpected depth towards the end of the season. Anyway, they all have arms that are three times the length of their torsos. That’s just goddamn ridiculous.
Overall: While I was somewhat concerned with respect to my interest level in this second season, due to the great episodicness (is that even a word?) of the first season, my concerns were shown to be empty after just a few episodes. This season tells a much more coherent story and develops the characters much better, resulting in an even more interesting experience than I got the first time around. If you enjoyed the first season, you will likely enjoy this one more, and if you were iffy on the first season, like I was, then you’ll likely have a better time with this one.
In a nutshell:
+ More coherent plot
+ Japanese mythology is fun!
+ Characters drive plot well
-Sometimes too much explanation
- Abrupt stop
Final score: 8/10
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