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starladyUtena's seiyuu, Kawakami Tomoko, died of cancer over the weekend at the ridiculously young age of 41. Utena was my first anime and will always be one of my absolute favorites, and Utena herself one of my favorite characters. Kawakami and her talent will be missed.
CLAMP. xxxHOLiC. 19 vols. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2003-2011.
In the end, this was one of CLAMP's less well-crafted manga, I think, which is saying something for a group that's well-known for their inability to consistently deliver satisfying endings (they should try to take a page out of Arakawa Hiromu's book for next time).
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things I love about HOLiC, starting with the art and the characters. The art! The art is gorgeous, and it only gets better as the series progresses; I would hold up volume 12 as an example of manga that is art, no qualifications. I've never seen dreamscapes evoked better than they are in that volume, and they are so, so beautiful.
I like the characters a lot, too, and I do appreciate that by the end of the manga they have all perceptibly come a long way, particularly Watanuki and Kohane, but especially, of course, Watanuki, as the protagonist and the viewpoint character. I recently reread volume 4 before I read volume 19, and it's striking to compare his earlier volubility and utter lack of knowledge about magic with his self-assurance and power by the end.
But oh, the price.
I think this is perhaps the manga in which CLAMP's own--misogyny is probably too strong a word, but sexism will work for our purposes here--shows through clearest. Every single one of Yuuko and then Watanuki's clients, with the exception of the TRC characters, is either a woman or a non-human. I said in the comments to one of my translations at some point that this is in some sense social commentary--consciously or unconsciously, CLAMP's narrative indicates that men have the power to grant their own desires in society, while women are reduced to beseeking supernatural agency, sometimes at a cost greater than they really want to pay, whether their problem is external or internal. And as much as I love Yuuko, for her power and her sexiness and her mystery, ultimately she too is a victim of CLAMP's inability to give adult women of (magical) ability a happy ending; instead, she's fridged to motivate Watanuki and, ultimately and recursively, Fei Wong Reed of TRC.
So, all in all, a somewhat frustrating but ultimately worthwhile manga, I think.
CLAMP. xxxHOLiC. 19 vols. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2003-2011.
In the end, this was one of CLAMP's less well-crafted manga, I think, which is saying something for a group that's well-known for their inability to consistently deliver satisfying endings (they should try to take a page out of Arakawa Hiromu's book for next time).
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things I love about HOLiC, starting with the art and the characters. The art! The art is gorgeous, and it only gets better as the series progresses; I would hold up volume 12 as an example of manga that is art, no qualifications. I've never seen dreamscapes evoked better than they are in that volume, and they are so, so beautiful.
I like the characters a lot, too, and I do appreciate that by the end of the manga they have all perceptibly come a long way, particularly Watanuki and Kohane, but especially, of course, Watanuki, as the protagonist and the viewpoint character. I recently reread volume 4 before I read volume 19, and it's striking to compare his earlier volubility and utter lack of knowledge about magic with his self-assurance and power by the end.
But oh, the price.
I think this is perhaps the manga in which CLAMP's own--misogyny is probably too strong a word, but sexism will work for our purposes here--shows through clearest. Every single one of Yuuko and then Watanuki's clients, with the exception of the TRC characters, is either a woman or a non-human. I said in the comments to one of my translations at some point that this is in some sense social commentary--consciously or unconsciously, CLAMP's narrative indicates that men have the power to grant their own desires in society, while women are reduced to beseeking supernatural agency, sometimes at a cost greater than they really want to pay, whether their problem is external or internal. And as much as I love Yuuko, for her power and her sexiness and her mystery, ultimately she too is a victim of CLAMP's inability to give adult women of (magical) ability a happy ending; instead, she's fridged to motivate Watanuki and, ultimately and recursively, Fei Wong Reed of TRC.
Let's talk about Fei Wong Reed, shall we? I think he's probably the single weakest element of TRC, which otherwise was a pretty great (if complicated) manga, and that's entirely because we never get to know his motivation for what he does. We are told at the end, however, that he wants to resurrect the space-time witch, i.e. Yuuko, and coffeeandink has a theory that FWR is, in fact, Watanuki from long after Doumeki's descendant used the egg on him. It makes a hugely creepy amount of sense, and I don't think that I can personally make sense of either manga any other way. It's fucked up in that painful and cruel way that CLAMP love, and just for that reason I'd be inclined to subscribe to it, but there are other things too. Both FWR and Watanuki wear glasses (though, I suppose, Clow did too), and I can easily see Watanuki's longing for Yuuko, deprived of his memories of her, sliding into exactly that sort of ruthless desperation that characterizes FWR.
Which puts the egg, and Doumeki's descendants' refusal and ultimate burden to use it, in another light. I think it's one of the single creepiest plot elements CLAMP have created, actually, especially since the manga--and Yuuko--seem to treat it as a matter of course. Of course Watanuki will want to forget one of the people he loves best, for the sake of his emotional quietude! Ugh, it's such a horrible thought; the last thing I would want is to forget the memories I have of the people I've lost, precisely because the memories are all that I have left of them. And the idea that Watanuki becomes FWR because he forgets Yuuko seems to me to indicate that forgetting is not, in fact, the path that we should desire. If anything, it's a powerful warning against it.
At this point people will say that very little of this is textually based, and I will say that you are right. But particularly TRC and xxxHOLiC have an interstitial relationship to each other, in which important parts of the story of each are never fully told in the other, and for that reason I don't think this sort of pontificating is wholly unwarranted. If anything, it's almost required.
coffeeandink has a theory that FWR is, in fact, Watanuki from long after Doumeki's descendant used the egg on him. It makes a hugely creepy amount of sense, and I don't think that I can personally make sense of either manga any other way. It's fucked up in that painful and cruel way that CLAMP love, and just for that reason I'd be inclined to subscribe to it, but there are other things too. Both FWR and Watanuki wear glasses (though, I suppose, Clow did too), and I can easily see Watanuki's longing for Yuuko, deprived of his memories of her, sliding into exactly that sort of ruthless desperation that characterizes FWR. Which puts the egg, and Doumeki's descendants' refusal and ultimate burden to use it, in another light. I think it's one of the single creepiest plot elements CLAMP have created, actually, especially since the manga--and Yuuko--seem to treat it as a matter of course. Of course Watanuki will want to forget one of the people he loves best, for the sake of his emotional quietude! Ugh, it's such a horrible thought; the last thing I would want is to forget the memories I have of the people I've lost, precisely because the memories are all that I have left of them. And the idea that Watanuki becomes FWR because he forgets Yuuko seems to me to indicate that forgetting is not, in fact, the path that we should desire. If anything, it's a powerful warning against it.
At this point people will say that very little of this is textually based, and I will say that you are right. But particularly TRC and xxxHOLiC have an interstitial relationship to each other, in which important parts of the story of each are never fully told in the other, and for that reason I don't think this sort of pontificating is wholly unwarranted. If anything, it's almost required.
So, all in all, a somewhat frustrating but ultimately worthwhile manga, I think.