xxxHolic Vol. 3 Review

            The theme that surrounds this volume is fate and the one that you are figuratively tied to. In the first episode of the volume, a young woman wanders into Yuko’s home. While she doesn’t seem to have a wish that needs to be granted, Yuko does notice that she has a very bad habit that needs correcting and Watanuki learns just how powerful a pinky promise can be.

            In the next three episodes, we’ll make out way up to episode twelve and the focus will remain on Watanuki and Doumeki. With summer in full swing, Watanuki is depressed that he won’t get to see Himawari. To fix this, Yuko invites them both out for a night of ghost stories… at Doumeki’s temple. This is followed by an episode taking place on the day of the Oban festival. When Yuko suggests that he give a treat to someone special, Watanuki heads out only to have things go nowhere near how he expected. Instead of finding Himawari, he has to chase after a sprite to save Doumeki from an eternal sleep.

            In episode twelve, Yuko takes Watanuki, Doumeki and Himawari out to a summer rental home so that everyone can relax. Strange things begin to happen after they arrive though and the house has another resident that no one knew about before. While on the other side, everyone seems very intent on getting Watanuki to ask Doumeki for help doing something. Anything.

Good and the Bad

            In these four episodes, xxxHolic delivers solid development between Doumeki and Watanuki is very well done on this volume. While it still refuses to actually tell the audience what their overall goal is, these episodes really work hard at making the audience see these two as a team. With an emphasis placed on the powers Doumeki has, this volume really played up the pairing. It will be very interesting to see where this series finally leads these two characters.

            What is the most frustrating about this revelation though is that in order to tell it, many of the supporting characters felt pushed aside. Beyond episode nine, Yuko seemed to serve in a facilitator role. Instead of having episodes that seemed to focus on her and the guidance that she gives Watanuki, she more appeared to be around purely to keep things moving along with occasional suggestions.

            The addition of more bit characters is also proving to be another frustrating part of xxxHolic. Every volume more bit characters are added and while this is normally not a big deal in any series, this one challenges that. In the previous episodes, a number of one time characters have appeared at various times and while enjoyable I haven’t spent a lot of time memorizing who each of them were and why they appeared to begin with. These episodes will challenge the memory of the audience though as previous characters will either be referenced or appear for return visits. Luckily the characters on these episodes were easier to remember but it makes me wonder if I’m going to remember other characters when they appear later.

Music

While most of the music on this volume fit into the standard mold of melting nicely into the background the music that plays during the Zashikiwarashi’s introduction during episode eleven is quite nice. The soft strings really capture the sad moment of the scene and provide a very memorable introduction for the character. During episode ten, the very soft music that plays during the storytelling adds to the ambiance of the scene. While the soft gong pattern would be boring out of context, it led a very eerie feeling to the scene.

Dub vs. Sub

            J. Michael Tatum is still doing a great job with Doumeki. The character has such a flat personality and very few facial expressions but Tatum is really finding a way to keep the character interesting. As we approach the end of the first half, the series has yet to really show the character break out but audiences have something to look forward to the day that this character finally shows a facial expression.  

Extras

            An image gallery and clean animations.

Overall

            There is still more than half of xxxHolic season one to go and so I am not convinced that the character development on this volume is a sudden trend. I assume that as we start working out way through the middle of this season, the series will continue its slow hinting style until the audience is much closer to the conclusion. Still, the series manages to redeem itself with these episodes by proving that the production staff does have something that resembles a plan so far. While I am hoping that we will at least get more frequent hints, this volume proves far more entertaining than the previous two and has regained my interest.