xxxHOLiC 163 spoiler translation

[starlady]

I went to the "Shoujo Manga! Girl Power" exhibition last week and the inclusion of CLAMP made me smile. I maintain that T:RC and HOLiC are art (especially volumes 23 and 12, respectively).

splash page: Doumeki

A wonderful chat with Doumeki's grandfather, Haruka-san. [T/N: Best word for "chat" ever...it also means "a lovers' vow".] If "Is there nothing interesting to say?" is heard, as expected, that man comes out.

Whenever I see his face, he demands food. And his stomach brazenly has no bottom.
Watanuki shows anger at that, but Haruka's reply is unexpected:
That thanks to Haruka's training from the start, Shizuka's tongue grew to have good taste, but
Shizuka didn't put anything in his mouth that he himself didn't comprehend.

That Shizuka strikes Watanuki on the shoulder and awakens him. It seems he couldn't wait until Himawari came.
Being watched by Himawari while arguing back and forth just like in a short story is the same as always too.

When he returns to the mansion, Yuuko says this.
At the beginning Watanuki thought about what Doumeki liked and disliked, but
Yuuko says, "That's not it. It's that he won't eat things he can't believe in."
    "To eat is very important and a blessing. And a very frightening thing."

Now then, when he's loitering about trying to find the customer's house.
The black Mokona is hidden in his bag. Thanks to Mokona, he didn't get lost, but
Pushing the black Mokona into his bag, he enters the customer's house. Whereupon...

What awaited was an unexpectedly large mansion. It couldn't be that with Mokona as a fellow pilgrim, the inevitable result of raising the curtain on "Watanuki's cooking class" is huge troubles?
                                                                             

I actually did have a reason for mentioning the shoujo exhibit, which is that it occurred to me after reading about Yamagishi Ryoko's Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi, which portrays Prince Shoutoku as an unhappy cross-dressing homosexual, that we're all being played by market forces in the matter of Doumeki/Watanuki, and for that matter, a good chunk of the relationships in Clamp. Yamagishi has said in interviews that at the beginning of her writing the story, her publishers were begging her to play down the gay themes, but by the end of publication (late 80s), they were begging her to play them up, because stuff without gay themes didn't sell as well by that point. And of course that's right around the time Clamp got started outside of doujinshi (actually, they started in the first year of Heisei, which is another interesting thing to think about). Which isn't to say that the relationships in Clamp are fake--not at all--but it's interesting to think about what their works would be like if the tastes of the shoujo-buying public were different.

All of which is to say that the first part of the spoiler sounds like really obvious innuendo.

Comments

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

Are we in for several chapters of food-based philosophy now? ^o^

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I had the whole bit with the fondant chocolate and Doumeki nearly getting his soul pulled out with the chocolates stuck in my head when I read what Yuuko said. Frightening indeed.

[nokiirat.livejournal.com]

the whole gay theme should definitely be studied more. i know anime/manga fans who can't stand yaoi or boy-love, but love the innuendo in shoujo manga.

*raises hand to volunteer & study smut themes & trends in manga*

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

BL and yaoi bother me for a lot of reasons, or at least most of it. The likes of "Antique Bakery" are an exception, because they're not completely unrealistic like so much of the genres.

The thing is, though, that homosexuality has been deeply implicated with shoujo since the beginning of modern manga, which is really interesting. I think some of the innuendo is just the creators keeping their hand in for the sake of it, but a lot of the innuendo in Clamp, I think, is them trying to be ambiguous about the nature of the characters' relationships.

[lodelco.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which. You know that with the way KuroFay is going along in TRC, relationships like that usually end with them humping each other. Which those two never are and that doesn't make sense. like the rest of the story line @_@

I thought the 'food is a frightening thing' tied in to that woman's wish to learn how to cook. None of the wishes are ever really normal in HOLiC after all.

Yeah! I agree very much that I like CLAMP's art for HOLiC and TRC. No other manga has prettier splash pages and most of their poses are very unique not to mention that I like the imaginative splash pages the make for HOLiC. Oh yes I like them very much! ^^ Especially the covers for HOLiC! Damn DelRey and their acid photoshop!!! +_+

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I was blown away by volume 12 of HOLiC and 23 of T:RC. They're just gorgeous, which is one reason I've been shelling out for the hardcover editions of Tsubasa.

I wouldn't be surprised if you're right about the woman's wish turning weird, maybe even crucial. She was certainly introduced with enough drama.

I've read all of CLamp's published works except "Watashi no Sukina Hito" this year, and I think the Kuro/Fay relationship is fairly typical in that it's so obviously so freaking intense. Most of the emotional bonds in Clamp are amazingly deep and strong, and they tend to occur without much regard to gender. And of course the catch with Kuro-Fay, and many other bonded pairs, is that while Clamp never show any physical elements to the relationship, they never rule it out either--so both the audience and Clamp can have it whichever way they like. They're also quite careful with tossing the word "love" around, particularly in T:RC; I still think it's significant, for instance, that Jr. hasn't (yet) used this word to describe how he feels about the princess. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he did say that as early as next week.