xxxHOLiC DVD 4

This series is based on a manga by CLAMP; it is the continuing story of Kimihiro Watanuki, a high-school boy who can see spirits. Much to his dismay, the spirits he sees are also interested in him. One day, he finds himself in the shop of Yuuko Ichihara; she claims to be able to grant wishes for a price; her price for helping him is for him to become her housekeeper. He also ends up occasionally dealing with her clients and investigating on his own. The show is episodic; there are several recurring characters and a little bit of character and relationship development, though. The part of the manga that this series covers is only marginally less episodic than the anime; there are only hints of a larger story. The manga is also a crossover with Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, but those parts were not animated; they do appear in the Tsubasa anime, though.

The episodes mostly follow their manga counterparts; there are a few changes due to the omission of the crossover parts, and the order is not the same as in the manga. The art and animation are at best average; the manga is CLAMP does Art Nouveau, and that sort of elaborate style does not translate well to anime (at least, not without a huge budget). The dub is serviceable; I like Yuuko, have gotten used to Watanuki, and don’t mind the rest of the regular cast. I didn’t think the dub voices of the twins in episodes 14 and 15 were quite right; they were supposed to be in college, but sounded younger. Funimation continues to annoy me with the occasional random changes in the dub; the monster in episode 13 is a good example of this: the subs called it “wings” (the Japanese sounded like “hane”, wings) and the dub called it “a fallen angel”. There were other instances of that sort of thing, and food and drink was sometimes less Japanese in the dub than the subtitles. There were a couple of consistency errors in the dub itself that I noticed: the fish that the twins buy was flounder, but Yuuko calls it sole after they leave with it, and Watanuki refers to kimono in the dub (sub is yukata and is defined there) but Himawari refers to yukata later. The use of kimono instead of yukata is vaguely annoying, but not entirely incorrect; it seems like both references should be the same.

This volume had the same sort of extras as the previous volumes: an image gallery, textless opening and ending (Buck-Tick’s “Kagerou” becomes the ending in episode fourteen and is the one here), and trailers (Genghis Khan, Love and Honor, Dragon Ball Z, Vexille, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hana, Tsubasa, xxxHOLiC); the front-loaded trailer was Samurai 7. Funimation seems to be serious about their live-action division; they had three of the trailers this time (Genghis Khan, Love and Honor, and Hana). The DVD had an insert with ads for several of their upcoming series and a release calendar for July through September.

—The Episodes—

Chapters are from the US release by Del Rey.

13. Transfiguration — (v5, c29-30) The girl with the wings; in the manga, it immediately followed the hydrangea and the ame-warashi and started with Watanuki’s first encounter with the pipe fox; he already knows about it here (episode 9). This episode is changed slightly from the manga, though not in a way that really affects the story. In the manga, Watanuki notices that a girl from his art class has wings on her back that no one else can see and she is a little rude to her friends in class; in the anime, she is nice in class and doesn’t yet have the wings, but Watanuki sees her and her friends after school and has the wings and is rude then. At the shop, Yuuko burns the feather he found (manga, in her hand; anime, in his) and gives him a slightly obscure warning. Watanuki continues to run into the girl and notices that she is ruder and the wings are growing. In the manga, the girl notices Watanuki at a festival and confronts him at school the next day; in the anime, the confrontation is at the festival. The pipe fox shows its true form and saves the day (and in the anime shoots fireballs), and Yuuko scolds Watanuki for not heeding her warning.

    The one major change was in the monster itself: Yuuko says it was a parasite, and it destabilized the soul; there was a slight chance the girl could recover. In the manga, Del Rey called it “Ko”, with meanings of vermin/bug/worm/bad temper/bad company. Yuuko said they were vermin, created to take souls, and implied that she knew who was responsible (hints of the plot yet to come); the anime ignored the few references to the plot, so it’s not surprising that there was a change. They could have left it as a soul-eater, though maybe they wanted something with a possibility of recovery; in the manga, Yuuko said the girl would not recover. Surprisingly, they left in Maru and Moro and their inability to leave the shop due to their lack of souls and the description of the shop as different on the inside; the difference in the shop might be mentioned again, but Maru and Moro’s status is not.

14. Seal — (v4, c22-24) part one of two, the twins and the power of words. The season is shifted from the manga; the changes don’t affect anything. In the manga, it starts immediately after Valentine’s Day and continues into the spring (through White day, at least); in the anime, it is later in the year. It’s hot instead of cold, a couple of meals are different, and Watanuki has a different motivation for making candy. There’s also a bit of Tsubasa in these chapters, which was not animated.

15. Release — part two of two; this is the overall plot for both episodes. Watanuki (and sometimes Doumeki) keep running into a set of identical twins; they are second-year college students. The older sister lacks confidence and self-respect and is often clumsy and is generally negative (doesn’t think she can do anything right, says that things never go right for her, that sort of thing); the younger sister is more confident but spends a lot of time worrying about her sister, saying things like “she’s always this way” when something goes wrong and wondering why she took a job as a waitress when she’s too clumsy and too shy to do the work. Watanuki senses a sort of wave from the older sister when she says negative things (their first real meeting, he helped her look for a contact; she told him it was no use before he started looking). Watanuki eventually has a talk with Yuuko about the power of words and how words can bind; he has a conversation with the older sister about the power of positive thinking, which helps a little, but she soon goes back to the way she was before (at the waitress job, mentioned above). Yuuko eventually fixes the problem, for a price.

16. Reunion — (v5, c31-32) Returning the pipe fox to its smaller form, and a meeting with the zashiki-warashi. This is another episode that was changed slightly due to moving the events of Valentine’s Day to Obon. The pipe fox in its small form liked to hang on Watanuki, and often hid in his shirt; the pipe fox in large form was very large, but still wanted to hang all over Watanuki. At the beginning, Watanuki finds some fried tofu, which the pipe fox enjoys; it is bad for the pipe fox, causing it to lose some of its energy (?), signified by the markings on its head vanishing. I don’t remember that particular plot point being in the manga (it’s not in these chapters, at least). At some point, Watanuki buys hairpins as a gift. Yuuko says that they need to go to a place where there is a lot of pure energy, and sends them through a vase to another world. The pipe fox changes, there are talking daffodils, and they wander for a bit before meeting the zashiki-warashi, who was the source of the fried tofu. Watanuki gives her the hairpins as a thank-you (in the manga, they were a belated White Day gift); they talk, are chased by her karasu tengu, are rescued by the ame-warashi, and eventually she shows Watanuki how to return.

—The Art—

DVD 1, DVD 2, DVD 3
listing at ANN
Funimation’s official site (actually for both Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC)

xxxHOLiC DVD 3

This is the continuing story of Kimihiro Watanuki, who is a high-school boy who can see spirits; the spirits he sees are very interested in him. Yuuko Ichihara runs a shop that grants wishes for a price; one day Watanuki finds himself there and eventually agrees to work for Yuuko until she feels that his work is equivalent to the price of his wish. For the most part, it is episodic, though there are recurring characters and character and relationship development; the part of the manga this series was based on has vague hints of an underlying plot, though the hints didn’t really make it in to the anime.

For the most part, the episodes are fairly faithful to their manga equivalents, though the overall order is different. This disc is probably the least faithful; I’m not sure where episode nine came from, the ghost story episode (ten) had completely different ghost stories, eleven was shifted from winter to summer (but was mostly faithful otherwise) and twelve was an adapted version of Himawari’s manga ghost story. The dub remained fairly faithful to the subtitles; ranting bits were often a little different, but the general meanings were the same. I didn’t notice as many of the random changes as in some of the previous episodes, though there were still a few. Some of the next episode previews were dubbed accurately, but some were completely different.

Only a few cultural references were removed: references to shochu (Japanese liquor) were removed in the beginning of episode nine; the dub did not mention alcohol at all, though they generally have no problems showing drinking (and it was obvious from the context that that’s what it was). There was a random mention of the southwest corner being unlucky in the subtitles of episode ten that was not in the dub, but it was never really mentioned again (the manga mentioned a lucky corner, but did not explain it or reference it again), and the list of things they should do before telling stories was different. In episode eleven, they left the various food references intact with brief translations in the subtitles, but a mention of potato shochu was changed to Chardonnay.

The menus vaguely annoy me (and have all along); it’s not immediately obvious that the xxxHOLiC logo is what needs to be selected to go from a submenu to the main menu. The extras are the same as the other discs: an image gallery, textless songs, and trailers (Samurai 7 (box set), Yu Yu Hakusho® (first season uncut box set), Dragon Ball Z® (double feature), Glass Fleet (specifically for v6, probably spoiler-y), Shinobi (live action, an older title and trailer, re-released on Blu-ray), Fullmetal Alchemist® (didn’t watch, afraid of spoilers), Vexille (again, though it might be a different trailer), and xxxHOLiC (fourth collection)); the front-loaded trailer was Tsubasa. There was a new advertising insert; it included a release calendar for July, August, and September, which was a nice addition.

—The Art—

—The Episodes—

9. Pinky Promise — (not sure where this story came from; the pipe fox’s introduction in the manga is followed by the girl with wings) discussion of the red string of fate; introduction of the pipe fox; Yuuko gives a ring to another girl with problems with her pinky; Watanuki and the pipe fox follow her one day, and Doumeki joins them the next day. They discover her bad habit was different from the other girl’s, and the pipe fox saved the day.
10. Lamplight — (v2, c12-14, modified) Ghost stories at Doumeki’s temple, and an explanation of Doumeki’s powers. This episode severely diverged from the manga (not bad, just different). It was much earlier in the manga; it immediately followed Doumeki’s introduction and was Yuuko and Himawari’s first meeting. Himawari’s story is very different (man who killed his wife in the anime vs a hotel with a boarded-up room in the manga) and they managed to completely rewrite her story for the dub without losing any of the meaning. Doumeki’s story was also different (his grandfather meeting a ghost in the manga vs a student and a ghost in the anime), as was Watanuki’s (boy at a third-floor window in the manga vs guy at the crossroads in the anime). The connecting bits are the same as in the manga (almost word-for-word), though they moved the discussion of the number four after Watanuki’s story, and changed the first shape on the screen during Yuuko’s story to the guy at the crossroads.
11. Confession — (v4, c21, modified) a look at Watanuki’s home; the introduction of the zashiki-warashi, slightly modified (moved from Valentine’s Day to Obon in the summer), though the basic plot is the same. Watanuki makes holiday food for everyone, tries to give one to Himawari, fails, and gives it to Doumeki instead. The zashiki-warashi shows up looking for a gift, and takes the food from Doumeki, along with his soul. There’s an added appearance of the ame-warashi, who shows up and tells Watanuki about the zashiki-warashi and tells the zashiki-warashi she has the wrong holiday (gifts to boys are Valentine’s Day, not Obon).
12. Summer Shade — (v2, c14, modified) the group takes a summer vacation together. This is a modified version of Himawari’s ghost story, with an added voice waiting and wearing a blue dress and wondering if the blue flower was noticed. Himawari’s story featured a hotel where guests at the end of the hall heard noises from the non-existent room next door; Watanuki’s room is at the end of the hall but he hears weird noises from next door; he looks outside and there should be another room. He investigates and finds a room with words all over the walls and ceiling; the words weren’t subtitled, unfortunately. The random voice looked like a voiceover for the words, but Mokona said the words were something different. The random voice was never explained. I think this is my least favorite episode; everyone seemed slightly out of character. Doumeki seemed meaner than usual and repeatedly called Watanuki an idiot, and everyone expected Watanuki to do all of the work (normal) but acted like that was unusual and only for the sake of their plan.

DVD 1, DVD 2
listing at ANN
Funimation’s official site (actually for both Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC)

xxxHOLiC DVD 2

This is the continuing story of high-school student Kimihiro Watanuki, who is working part-time at a wish-granting shop run by Yuuko Ichihara until he has earned enough for her to remove his ability to see spirits. He starts off as her housekeper, but very quickly gets drawn into dealing with clients and the associated weirdness himself. I watched this partially in Japanese with subtitles and partially dubbed with varying degrees of attention; I did check a few things in both to compare, and it’s probably obvious which episode I watched the most closely. This had a bit more explanations in the subtitles than the first volume, which I liked. The subtitles for the shiritori game had the Japanese words used with definitions; the dub version of the game was slightly different (had to use words from a particular category) and unsurprisingly, used completely different words. It lost the impact of the kid’s choice at the end, though; in the dub, he chose a category that Watanuki didn’t like, but in the original he chose oden (an automatic failure, explained in the subtitles).

For the most part, the dub seemed closer to the subtitles this time; it wasn’t exact, but I didn’t really notice many of the random sort of changes from the first volume, though there was a tendency for the rants to be a bit different. Most of the changes I noticed were in the category of making it flow better in English, which could explain the rants; the description of the website where Yuuko and the computer-addicted woman met was a little different, and the shiritori was necessarily very different. I don’t know why the path in episode six is a “[beep]” path (and there is a beep in the original); it’s “Aurora” in the manga, and I don’t remember anything bleeped from the fansubs. In the dub, she just calls it a shortcut.

They did remove some cultural references: the name of the bat in episode six was translated, but the original source (the sword of the legendary thief Goemon Ishikawa; Goemon of Lupin III was supposedly his descendant) wasn’t mentioned. Later in that episode, she quotes Goemon’s catch phrase (“I’ve cut another trifling thing”), but the dub was completely different (“Consider yourself liberated”). In episode seven, they removed the running comparison of Watanuki to Nobita (a character in Doraemon, noted for being a bit of a crybaby) and just called him a crybaby throughout. I can understand why they might have wanted to remove brief pop culture references, though I wish they hadn’t; I am glad they didn’t try to Americanize them.

I think episode seven strayed from the original a bit more than the others, though that could be because it is one of my favorites and I gave it all of my attention. There were a couple of vague references to the zashiki-warashi which were removed; she was introducd earlier in the manga than the anime. I still hate youkai translated as demon (briefly when discussing the ame-warashi). There’s a bit that was presumably accidentally not subtitled (in the Japanese and the dub, Watanuki’s freak-out while Yuuko is discussing payment with the ame-warashi existed but was not subtitled). Watanuki’s rant at the size of Doumeki’s temple is very different (the same basic meaning, though); some of the ame-warashi’s rants were rewritten as well. The dub-writer has apparently never seen a hydrangea; they don’t come in white (only pink to lavender to blue). An ambiguous “she” at the end (referring to the not yet introduced zashiki-warashi in the manga) was changed to “Yuuko” in the dub and the whole line had a different meaning: “Why does she think this guy’s so good” vs “For some reason, Yuuko thinks you’re an exception”, making Watanuki’s rant at the end be completely different.

This had the same sort of extras as the first volume: image gallery, textless songs, and trailers (Glass Fleet, Dragon Ball Z®, One Piece, Samurai 7, Fullmetal Alchemist®, Origin, MoonPhase, and xxxHOLiC). The case was clear, with the inside being a full picture. There was an insert advertising Funimation’s other shows; I think it was the same as in the first volume. It looked like the only front-loaded trailer was Vexille (VLC is my friend, and skips such things). I’d seen that trailer before; I do like the way it says “Music by Paul Oakenfold” with what sounds very much like Boom Boom Satellites playing in the background. I wish they’d put all their trailers in the Extras section, though; I might like the choice to watch them.

—The Art—

—The Episodes—

5. Game of Letters — (v3, c21 and a modified and expanded version of v6, c39) This was originally titled “shiritori”, which is a game where each person has to give a word starting with the last character of the previous word; a word ending in ん (n) loses (Japanese words can’t start with that; na/ne/ni/no/nu are each their own character). Watanuki and Himawari watch Doumeki win an archery contest; Doumeki gives Watanuki part of his arrow (stuffs it in his bag when he’s not looking); Watanuki finds himself at an oden cart run by foxes (father and son), and ends up giving the arrow to the boy in exchange for oden. The next day (the full moon), Yuuko sends Watanuki back to the cart with a package and what looks like Card Captor Sakura’s backpack as protection; spirits threaten, Mokona is in the backpack, and gets Watanuki to play shiritori for protection. The package is delivered (birds whose silhouettes can only be seen in the light of the full moon), and more oden is eaten. In the manga, the delivery is much later, and is to some random man; the shiritori sequence is shorter, and Mokona is not as mean (in the anime, all words end in “ri’, much to Watanuki’s dismay).
6. Indulgence — (v1, c4-6) starts off with a visit to the drug store from Legal Drug for a hangover remedy for Yuuko, though the minor reference to its plot was removed. After Yuuko recovers, she takes Watanuki via a strange path to buy a red bat and to visit a client with a computer addiction. There is some discussion of the nature of addiction and that the desire to stop must come from within. There is a random added scene in a café where everyone’s computer was affected, which is slightly better than the manga’s implication that Yuuko and Watanuki were waiting on the balcony.
7. Hydrangea — (v5, c27-28) Watanuki is walking home and complaining about the rain when he meets an ame-warashi (a rain-making spirit). She visits Yuuko because she wants to help a hydrangea. Watanuki goes to the temple and gets Doumeki, they visit Himawari and get her hair ribbons, and then they go to the hydrangea, which is extremely large and has a section of blood-red flowers. Watanuki is sucked underneath it, and meets a girl who wants to leave. For whatever reason, this is one of my favorite stories; I think in part because it’s where Watanuki’s perception of Doumeki begins to change. Watching this the first time was when I realized that Doumeki was often deliberately provoking Watanuki.
8. Contract — (v3, c18-20) A woman wanders by the shop and gets an artifact that she promises not to open. It opens (not entirely her fault, which I didn’t notice in the manga, though she was the sort of person who probably would have opened it anyway) and turns out to be a monkey’s paw, with predictable results; monkey’s paws are said to be able to grant a number of wishes equal to the number of fingers. For some reason, the animators decided to change the gender of an extremely minor character.

DVD 1
listing at ANN
Funimation’s official site (actually for both Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC)

xxxHOLiC DVD 1

This is the first disc of the first anime series based on the manga by CLAMP; there is a second series that started this month. Kimihiro Watanuki is a high-school boy who can see spirits; the spirits he sees are very interested in him. Yuuko Ichihara runs a shop that grants wishes for a price; one day Watanuki finds himself there and eventually agrees to work for Yuuko until he has earned enough for her to make him unable to see or interest the spirits. The other main characters are his classmates Himawari (his crush) and Doumeki (his rival/friend). He starts off as her housekeeper and eventually accompanies Yuuko on cases or investigates on his own or with Doumeki. I did write a slightly longer manga overview last year.

The manga crosses over with Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle; the crossover parts were not included (though they were in the Tsubasa anime). There was also a movie (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) released as part of a double feature with a Tsubasa movie; the crossover was a plot point there (an item from the xxxHOLiC portion was the solution to the problem in the Tsubasa portion).

I do like the anime itself, though I like the manga better. Anime Watanuki is considerably more annoying than manga Watanuki; a couple of pictures of him freaking out over whatever weirdness is much less annoying than listening to him. On the other hand, there were parts that were more obvious (to me, at least) when animated; among other things, I didn’t realize that Doumeki was occasionally provoking Watanuki until I saw them interact, and there was something with Himawari that I completely missed in the manga. It’s interesting watching the episodes knowing more about the series and seeing some of the foreshadowing and other details that I missed before.

The DVD contains the first four episodes and a few extras (an image gallery, textless songs, and trailers for the CLAMP Double Feature, Fullmetal Alchemist®, Glass Fleet, One Piece, Dragon Ball Z®, Vexille, and xxxHOLiC). The art in the anime is unsurprisingly not as detailed as the manga art, but is still very nice. I did end up buying the starter set (disc + box); I love the artwork and am a sucker for boxes anyway. The box art is at the end of the post; it is nice, but is not the same as the Japanese release (another random, senseless change). The DVD itself is in a clear case with a picture of Watanuki in a suit standing behind Yuuko lounging (it’s from the manga, somewhere), and the other side is Yuuko lounging. The DVD itself has the cover’s picture on it. The only inserts were a Funimation ad (this is apparently getting volumes released every six weeks; I didn’t know Funimation released any live action) and a survey card (to be sent to rightstuf). There were also a front-loaded trailer for the special edition of Origin, which I skipped and was not in the extras) I hate forced trailers, and have heard they have put spoiler-ish trailers for later volumes of ongoing series in them in the past, so I generally will not watch them.

I watched the dub this time through; I watched all of it originally as it was released in Japan (fansubbed). I like Yuuko’s dub voice better than her Japanese voice, and I think I’m starting to get used to Watanuki’s dub voice. Black Mokona is substantially less annoying than White Mokona, and I don’t have much of an opinion of the rest of the cast yet. Doumeki’s voice reminds me of someone else, but I can’t place who, though it might just be from the movie. He was also Seishirou in Tsubasa, but I haven’t watched that far enough for that to be relevant.

The opening (Suga Shikao, “19sai”) is gorgeously animated; the ending (Fonogenico, “Reason”) is extremely basic (Mokona sleeping in a spotlight on a dark background; Mokona dancing). The second ending (Buck-Tick, “Kagerou”) is also basic (air band with Mokona, Maru, Moro with no background); both endings seem like the sort of thing that could be easily adapted to any song. Coincidentally, one of the anime’s producers was BMG Japan; all of the artists involved are also with BMG Japan (according to amazon.co.jp, anyway).

I love this series and will continue buying it, but there were several minor annoyances:

• I did watch the dub and did not have my full attention on it, but I did notice a few things that were either bad translation or subtitles or random and unnecessary rewrites. I noticed this the most episode two: the girl with the ring is 27 vs 28 in the subtitles; one of her boyfriends is a museum coordinator vs an import sales businessman; in the survey she says 24 but the subtitles say 22; do lunch vs go out for a drink. These changes do not add anything to the dub. Maybe I shouldn’t be so annoyed with them; they don’t really affect the episode. On the other hand, if the changes do not contribute anything to the episode, why not use the correct translation.
• It annoys me to no end that the subtitles use “Yuko”; I can understand them not using Yûko like the US manga, but I would rather have seen “Yuuko”; oddly, Domeki instead of Dômeki or Doumeki doesn’t bother me as much (maybe because I like Yuuko better). I clearly wasn’t paying enough attention when I first watched this; the subtitles used “Doumeki”, which is very inconsistent of them.
• I wish there were some sort of cultural notes; I have the manga, which has notes in the back, and I watched fansubs, which used footnotes, so I know the background, but a casual viewer would not. The most glaring example of something that needed an explanation was the conclusion that Kimihiro Watanuki’s birthday was April 1st; April 1st is apparently a different reading of his name (and was explicitly stated by Yuuko in the manga), but to someone who did not know that, it would seem like a random conclusion. The other that I noticed was why Maru-dashi and Moro-dashi were not actually cute names (the manga’s translation notes indicate they both mean “exposing yourself in public).

—The Episodes—

The episode titles seem to be direct translations of the Japanese. The manga equivalents are listed because I was curious enough to look them up. The chapters are from the US releases; there are a few places where there are splash pages without new chapters, so I don’t know if the US and Japanese chapters are the same.

1. The Inevitable — Chapter 1 (v1). Watanuki finds himself in Yuuko’s shop and ends up working for her in exchange for her promise to remove his ability to see spirits and to remove the spirits’ interest in him. There’s an extra added bit where a spirit leaves Watanuki for a girl, and he freaks out because he doesn’t want to lose the interest of the spirits if losing that will hurt others. The Japanese title of this episode is hitsuzen; that term was not translated in the manga.
2. Falsehood — Chapters 1-3 (v1; she wanders in at the end of Chapter 1 (after a splash page)). A woman comes into the store complaining about being unable to move her pinky; Yuuko asks her about bad habits (she claims none) and gives her a ring to wear. Watanuki follows her and discovers what her bad habit is. This story was toned down for the anime and Himawari’s presence was removed.
3. Angel — Chapters 15-17 (v3); the bit with Himawari talking to Watanuki and Doumeki about the soccer game was moved here (chapter 12 (v2); it was originally followed by the ghost stories at Doumeki’s temple). Someone Himawari knows at another school has a problem; Yuuko sets up a meeting at a park to discuss it, and sends Watanuki to investigate so that Himawari won’t owe Yuuko anything. Doumeki ends up accompanying him. The “Angel” of the title is a game similar to an Ouija board: characters, numbers and symbols are written on a piece of paper, and two people think of a question, and hold a pencil that points to various characters and spells out an answer. It makes some sense that this story was moved up; it is the episode where Watanuki finds himself in Doumeki’s debt.
4. Fortune-Telling — Chapters 9-11 (v2). Yuuko shows Watanuki the difference between real and fake fortune tellers and explains how the fake one worked.

—Skipped chapters—

Chapter 4 (v1) is a brief crossover with Legal Drug, and the purchase of a baseball bat (a generic drugstore + bat purchase in episode 6, despite the bat being used in episode 3)
Chapters 5-6 (v1) are the woman with the computer addiction; I’m not sure if it was animated (yes, in episode 6)
Chapters 7 (v1) and 8 (v2) are the first appearance of the Tsubasa characters (not animated).
Chapters 12-14 (v2) are the ghost story party at Doumeki’s temple; if I remember correctly, it was animated, but some of the stories were changed.
the rest of v3 is the one with the monkey’s paw (animated, episode 8) and the first encounter with the fox-spirit oden (animated as part of episode five)

Mushi-shi, DVD 2

This series follows the travels of Ginko, who is a Mushi-shi (Mushi master). Mushi are some sort of primal being, neither plant nor animal, neither alive nor dead; they can inhabit people or objects, and can occasionally appear human. Ginko wanders, and is generally either following rumors or has been summoned to investigate a problem that might involve mushi. This is an episodic series; there is a collector that has appeared in a couple of episodes, and items (relics of the mushi) have appeared in more than one episode, but so far, there is no sign of any sort of overall plot. The episodes themselves are of all sorts of types: happy endings, tragedies, bittersweet, life goes on, etc. I found the first volume of this to be a bit boring; I liked these episodes better, but still don’t understand the hype. The art is gorgeous, the dub is decent, but the plots are somewhat predictable and the music is bland. I need either interesting characters or involving plot to truly like a series; this has neither. I am indifferent to Ginko, and there are no other recurring characters or overall plot. I do like some of the individual stories, and will continue renting this, though.

—The Episodes—

6. Those Who Inhale the Dew
   Ginko investigates a “living god” on a mostly-inaccessible island at the behest of a friend of the girl who was turned into the “living god”. The ending of this was exactly what I expected it to be, though there were a few unexpected events along the way.
7. Raindrops and Rainbows
   While sheltering from the rain, Ginko meets a guy who left home to search for the rainbow that bewitched his father, recognizes the mushi involved, and travels with him in search of it. This episode was not very memorable; I don’t remember the resolution.
8. Where Sea Meets Man
   Ginko wanders into a village where there is a man whose wife went missing in a fog on the sea a few years before. Every few years that fog appears, and people are lost; their boats and luggage eventually wash up on the shore. He is hoping for his wife, but just wants some sort of resolution. Ginko leaves and returns later at the time of the reappearance of the fog; they set out to investigate and see if they can find out what happened to his wife. I liked this one, it was bittersweet but hopeful. I don’t think this one and the one before should have been aired together; Ginko gives the exact same advice to the men in both.
9. The Heavy Seed
   Ginko visits a village that has good harvests in the years when the surrounding villages have bad ones; with each of those harvests, someone in the village grows an extra tooth, loses it, and dies. I didn’t like the eventual resolution of this one; I didn’t think one of the characters deserved the ending he received.
10. The White Which Lives Within The Ink Stone
    I think this has the collector from one of the earlier episodes; some kids get into his collection and try out an ink stone. They all fall sick soon after and are extremely cold. Ginko tracks down the maker of the ink stone; there have been other deaths associated with it, and she has not made any more since then. Ginko identifies the mushi involved and finds a cure.

official English site at Funimation
listing at ANN

xxxHOLiC the Movie: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is half of the Tsubasa/xxxHOLiC double feature, rented from Netflix; like the Tsubasa portion, it is essentially an extended episode with better animation. A young woman visits Yuuko because she can’t enter her house, and gives Yuuko the key; an invitation to an auction arrives, so Yuuko, Watanuki, and Doumeki go there. The auction is at the same house the woman couldn’t enter. There are several people already there; they are all collectors of various things and were sent a message saying that their collections were incomplete. The host is not present, but guides the guests via notes and opening doors. The house itself is large and rambling; Watanuki’s trip to the bathroom is long and odd: up stairs and down stairs and through trapdoors and crawling and down halls and outside and on and on. Between dinner and bedtime, people disappear, and Watanuki is not happy about that or about sharing a room with Doumeki. He wakes up in the middle of the night, and finds the room has turned into a single, and goes in search of Doumeki and Yuuko. His path is extremely surreal, and he meets up with Doumeki and a couple of other guests in a room of random collections (barbed wire, traffic lights, traps, etc). Eventually they find their host and a fight scene in the surreal landscape ensues.

I watched this dubbed with subtitles because there was some discussion in the animeondvd forums about rewrites, and I was curious. Generally speaking, I don’t like dubs with children or young teenagers; there’s something about the generic dub kid voices that grates on my nerves (oddly, I generally don’t have a problem with kids in US-produced cartoons). I was pleasantly surprised by Colleen Clinkenbeard’s Yuuko; I was watching Trinity Blood when it was announced, and disliked Esther (both character and dub voice). She was also Kirara in Samurai 7 and Rose in FMA, so I was associating her with bad teenage-girl voices and didn’t see how she could be a decent Yuuko; of course, I managed to miss that she was also Hawkeye in FMA. She is, in fact, the only one of the main dub voices I like; Doumeki isn’t bad, and the black Mokona is less annoying than the white Mokona, but Watanuki’s voice is even more whiny than the Japanese version (and he is a bit of a whiner).

Most of the changes I’ve noticed so far (about halfway through; I eventually gave up and switched to Japanese) were just random and did not add anything to the show; a couple were a little clearer than the subtitles, but most were irrelevant. For example, one of the men went to look for the missing people, and a woman at the same time said she was going to look for a restroom because she had had too much to drink; the dub had her wanting to go with him to look for a restroom to powder her nose. There were a fair amount of changes like that; some for better English (which is understandable), and some with slight but overall meaningless changes (which is not).

After Watanuki wakes up to find Doumeki gone (the bedroom changed from a double (two beds) to a single), he wanders off, hears a strange noise, and looks for the source. In the dub, he’s just wandering aimlessly looking for Doumeki, and the noise is either muted or removed. Changes to the dub for flow or clarification or more colloquial English are one thing; removal of sound effects is another. This wasn’t the only place I noticed the sound effects were gone (though the only one where it mattered, so far)

The Japanese track is there and the subtitles are presumably faithful to it (it’s not dubtitled, at least), but the changes, especially the removal of sound effects, seemed very random and gratuitous. The sounds add to the atmosphere and I don’t know why they would remove them.

xxxHOLiC is one of my favorite manga series, and I enjoyed watching the TV series and was planning on buying the it (including whatever limited editions they produced). I am now reluctant due to the random changes in this, but I have no willpower, and will probably buy it anyway.

Anime News Network listing

Mushi-shi, DVD 1

aka 蟲師; based on a manga series released in the US by Del Rey, though I haven’t read it. I rented this because it had a lot of hype and sounded interesting. It follows the travels of Ginko, who is the Mushi-shi (Mushi master/expert) of the title. Mushi are some sort of primal being, neither plant nor animal, neither alive nor dead. They can be any size, and the larger/stronger ones can appear human. They occasionally inhabit people or objects and can cause problems, which is where Ginko comes in; he seems to wander, following rumors of incidents that could be caused by mushi, and trying to help the people involved. He does occasionally take relics of the mushi, which he sells to a collector.

I didn’t like this as much as I expected; it had glowing reviews everywhere, it is the sort of thing that I like (someone wandering around looking for weirdness), and the art is gorgeous. I didn’t dislike it and am planning on continuing to watch it, though. I watched some of it dubbed and some in the original, and found them both listenable; I don’t remember anything about the music (except for wondering why such a Japanese series had an English-language opening). It is extremely episodic and I’m not sure if there’s ever any sort of overall plot; there was one reference to previous episodes in these five (selling to the collector in the fifth episode). Ginko doesn’t have much of a personality, there don’t seem to be any recurring characters so far, and I didn’t really care about any of the episode characters except the girl in the fifth episode. I think the lack of any sort of plot beyond mushi-of-the-week plus the lack of any interesting characters (except the girl) caused my neutral feelings towards this series so far; I adored the fifth episode (I was interested in the episode characters, and Ginko showed a little bit of emotions/personality), but didn’t have strong feelings towards the others. Out of these five episodes, one ended happily, one ended tragically, two ended successfully, and the other was ambiguous (nominally successful, but the very end made me wonder about the future of the people involved).

—The Episodes—

I rented this, but returned it, and didn’t really care enough about the episodes to want to write more about them.

1. The Green Seat
   Ginko investigates rumors of a boy who can create life from drawings and writing.
2. The Light of the Eyelid
   A girl from a noble family becomes excessively sensitive to light and lives in the storehouse of a less-than-noble family due to worry that it is a disease.
3. Tender Horns
   People in a village lose their hearing in the winter; one boy loses more than that.
4. The Pillow Pathway
   A man has prophetic dreams; Ginko gives him medicine but doesn’t really explain why the man needs to take it.
5. The Travelling Swamp
   While traveling through the mountains, Ginko repeatedly encounters a swamp and a green-haired girl. (migratory swamp!)

official English site at Funimation
listing at ANN

tactics, v3 (DVD)

This is an anime series based on the manga by Sakura Kinoshita (Matantei Loki Ragnarok) and Kazuko Higashimiya. The manga had two volumes released by ADV a couple of years ago, but was dropped; Tokyopop acquired the license and retranslated and rereleased the first two volumes (v3 is due in December; the plot sounds like it might be eps 10-11, and ep12 is from v4).

The DVD uses (dub and sub) the same translated terms that ADV’s version of the manga did: goblin for tengu, demon for oni (Haruka is a demon-eating goblin), though they did get Sugino and Muu-chan’s genders correct. I think the Tokyopop translation uses tengu and oni and other such terms; I would much rather have the Japanese terms (with translator’s notes, if necessary) than a not-really-equivalent English term (though a quick poke at the internet shows goblin for tengu occasionally used; I really hate demon for youkai, but everyone uses it).

The art is OK. The character designs are in places very similar to Loki’s; I first heard of this series on a Loki fansite (something that I thought was Freyr and Loki was in fact Haruka and Kantarou). Suzu is an extra added girl who looks exactly like Reiya (but has a different personality); I don’t know why they felt the need to add a random girl to the cast (it’s possible she’s from later in the manga, though she was introduced in the first episode, which was completely different from the manga).

Overall, this series is OK; I will probably keep renting it, but don’t know if I care enough to buy it eventually. Haruka is a generic strong and silent bishonen, I don’t like Kantarou much (he is not a nice person), and the rest of the cast is vaguely annoying. So far there are hints of a plot somewhere, but it’s mostly generic monster-of-the-week episodes: something weird happens, Kantarou investigates and avoids work and hits on wealthy women, Haruka broods and protects Kantarou (or vice-versa), Youko worries about money, Suzu tags along, and occasionally Sugino and Muu-chan show up. The source of the disturbance is taken care of somehow (the disco exorcism theme is very out of place), and everyone goes home and maybe Kantarou writes an article about the relevant form of supernatural phenomenon. If I wasn’t somewhat interested in anime (or anything else) based on folklore/mythology, I wouldn’t have made it this far (it would have stayed in the bottom of my queue).

11. Will of the Winds – Part Two

This didn’t make much sense to me; I watched v2 when it was released last September (2006), so I don’t remember much about Part One (this was released in January, but Netflix didn’t have it until recently). It had twins, one with more powers than the other, the powerful one was ill, people were dying, one or both were in love with Haruka. I thought the person responsible for the killing did not face enough consequences, but was glad that the plot did not take the easy way out (sacrifice as atonement).

12. Of Roses and Goblins

Kantarou is hired by a wealthy and beautiful woman to find the source of the spirits infesting her house; Haruka and Youko are acting as servants. There are art-smugglers in the background, and beings who are interested in the demon-eating goblin. There are random philosophical musings about youkai/human relationships.

13. Woodland Nightmare

A missing warship is found in a forest near Mount Fuji; the members of the military who found it start dying, and blame a demon-eating goblin. The military approaches Kantarou, and he goes to investigate with Haruka, suspecting a plot against Haruka (something happened before with the military, I think); Youko and Suzu follow, more people die, and the culprits have appeared before (it was indeed a trap). This was a decent episode (not so much of the parts that annoy me) and it was nice to see some semblance of plot.

14. The Woman Who Loved Books

This focuses on Kantarou’s editor Reiko, her issues being a career woman in this era, her love of books, and the ability of objects to eventually acquire spirits. It was a bland episode; Reiko’s (extremely) mini-skirt annoys me (inappropriate for the time period). Kantarou used the events of this episode to fulfill his obligation to Reiko (he had an overdue manuscript).

15. The Fading Song of the Summer Cicadas

The group goes to stay at a villa rented by Suzu’s father, but nobody is there at first. The wife of the owner (who Suzu remembered from a visit several years before) might be dead (the husband claims it was his fault, but Suzu met her and said she seemed real). Overall, this episode has a dream-like atmosphere (very soft, faded, occasionally black and white, sunset). If more of the show was like this episode (except for the random “comedic” interlude with Kantarou vs Sugino for the watermelons), I’d like the show more; this was weird and creepy and did not follow the generic episode plot.

info at ANN

Hellsing Ultimate III

This is the third in a series of anime OVA adaptations of the Hellsing manga by Kouta Hirano, intended to be extremely faithful to the manga. There was a thirteen episode TV series in 2001; it diverged from the manga halfway through. I’ve heard both the unfinished state of the manga and reluctance on the part of the producers to tell a story about Nazis as reasons for the divergence.

The point where the manga and the TV series diverged was reached in this episode; it covers the hiring of the mercenaries, the temporary alliance between the Hellsing organization and the Vatican (though the Vatican is tempted to sit back and hope that Hellsing and the Nazis destroy each other), the discovery of Millennium and its link to the Nazis, and the trip to South America (Millennium fled there after WWII). In the hotel, Alucard and Seras wake up to discover that they are accused of being terrorists and murderers and are attacked by SWAT teams. Half of this episode is the slaughter of the SWAT teams and other police (complete with impaled corpses outside the hotel) and Alucard’s fight with Tubalcain Alhambra (the leader of the South American section?) and discovery of the Major’s involvement. Alucard was involved with WWII and had some contact with the Major (a Nazi) then.

I ended up watching the dub; the main cast was the same as in the TV series (also true for the Japanese). Several characters had some sort of accent; they were mostly slight accents (noticeable but not overwhelming). This is extremely violent and gory; it was way past my threshold for violence. Such things were easier to ignore in black and white on a manga page than animated in color on screen; I knew this beforehand, and watched it anyway. The quality of the animation is excellent; the music isn’t very interesting, though. I liked the music from the TV series better and wish they had hired him for this or used some of that music; occasionally there were bits that were reminiscent of it.

Hopefully Geneon will have resolved their issues one way or another by the time the fourth OVA is released (no release date in Japan yet; the official site says 2007.XX.XX, and amazon.jp doesn’t have it listed at all). Volume 9 of the manga is apparently being released in Japan next week; hopefully we’ll see it here sometime soon, though I still haven’t read v8.

update: v9 of the manga was indeed released in Japan on 2007.11.09; Hellsing IV now has a release date of 2008.02.22 (two versions, ￥7,875 or ￥5,985).

Anime News Network listing
official site (Japanese)

The Story of Saiunkoku, DVD 1

aka Saiunkoku Monogatari/彩雲国物語

I rented this from Netflix; it had some hype when it ran. I’m using the DVD names, despite the fact that Shurei’s name sounds like Kou, but is written Hong, which is distracting when watching the subtitles. This was a deliberate choice to distinguish between two families who were both pronounced ‘Kou’ but used different kanji; Hong is apparently a Chinese pronunciation of her last name. The names of the various clans are apparently all colors; unfortunately, there was nothing to indicate this. The introduction of the first episode says that:

In the time of demons, a young man tried to beat back the rampaging demons; eight enlightened beings came to his aid, using colors as their names. They became known as the Eight Colored Enlightened Ones. The young man, whose name was Sogen, became the first ruler of Saiunkoku, the Kingdom of the Colored Clouds.

This is the story of Shuurei Hong, who is from a noble but poor family, who accepts an extremely well-paying job without first hearing the details, and ends up as consort to the king. The king ended up as king because one of his brothers was exiled, and the others killed each other in a fight for power eight years ago. He has been king for six months, but does not seem to care about ruling; and at 19, has never been out of the palace, and there is a rumor that he prefers men. Shuurei studied for and wanted to take the exams and become a court official, but women are not allowed to do that; one of her odd jobs is teaching the children at the temple. After hearing about the king’s non-involvement with the government, she is determined to convince him to take an interest and teach him what she knows about the government; both of them end up taking classes from Koyu Ri, one of the king’s advisors.

I did enjoy this, though I found Shuurei annoying half the time; she bounced between smart and competent and generic teenage anime overly loud and cheerful girl. I was interested in the plot; everything looked peaceful on the outside, but there were obviously darker things happening behind the scenes. One of the plot points in these episodes was blatantly obvious (the missing brother), but others were not. Any number of people were clearly not what they seemed to be, though in some cases it was not immediately apparent what they actually were.

I actually watched this last month (I have a lot of half-finshed drafts), and so don’t remember as much about it as I should, and don’t know if it’s worth the effort to try to remember any more about it, due to Geneon’s problems; volume two will be released, but there is no news yet about what will happen after that. I hope to be able to see more of this someday.

There were not a lot of extras on this disc, just the textless opening and previews (Paradise Kiss, Rozen Maiden, Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales — I think everything I’ve rented from Geneon lately has had the Rozen Maiden trailer on it and one of the other two).

More information at Geneon’s official site and at animenewsnetwork.com