Book Review: XXX Holic vol.1 by CLAMP

Title: XXX Holic Vol.1
Author: CLAMP
Genre: Manga, Mystery
Subject: Spirits, Paranormal
Publisher: Del Rey
Release date: April, 2004
Length: 176 pages
I got this book: Bought it a few years back

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"Watanuki Kimihiro is haunted by visions of ghosts and spirits. Seemingly by chance, he encounters a mysterious witch named Yuuko, who claims she can help. In desperation, he accepts, but realizes that he’s just been tricked into working for Yuuko in order to pay off the cost of her services. Soon he’s employed in her little shop—a job which turns out to be nothing like his previous work experience!"

Personal opinion:
I re-read this manga because of the Hello Japan challenge since the theme was mystery and I wanted to share this series with others. I took a break from my current read, to refresh my memory for the review. I have to say that when reading manga, CLAMP manga are one of my favorites. However it did took me a bit to warm up to XXX Holic. In the beginning, I only started to watch the anime because it crosses over with Tsubasa Chronicles, another one of CLAMP's works. But I have to say that after a while, this series grew on me. I think that I needed to get used to the style in the beginning. Because the anime left things unfinished, I picked up the manga later. The strong point about XXX Holic for me are the characters. Watanuki is really outspoken and has a short temper, which makes his interactions with the other characters often funny. The other characters do make fun of him and he gets angry a lot and the interaction makes me grin. Every character has something mysterious about them. It isn't really noticeable in the first volume yet, but everyone is surrounded by it and as the story progresses their fates are tied more and more. Next to the close interaction, I also think that the characters are quite unique. In the first volume, we only meet a few of them though and it is more an introduction volume. I have to say that I am not really into mystery a lot, but I came to appreciate this series. I haven't read the whole series yet, so I have no idea where it all ends but I can tell you that it gets more interesting after a few volumes so I would advice not to judge this series by the first volume alone, since there isn't happening that much yet. This series needs time to build up and that is not possible to do within one volume with this story. Also: if you are going to pick this up, I do advise you to pick up Tsubasa Chronicles along side it. They can be read separate, but they are more fun together. A nice little extra is that Del Rey took their time to include explanations after the story about typical Japanese customs or references to other CLAMP works. I personally liked this a lot.

I liked it!

Purchase links: The Book Depository
From the same group: Kobato
Other reviews: Puss Reboots
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)
Also part of the manga challenge 2011.

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