xxxHolic Roundtable: Calling a Spade a Spade

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(A longish comment on xxxHolic Vol. 1-3 and the roundtable so far)

The roundtable so far: Vom Marlowe, Kinukitty, Adam Stephanides on xxxHolic. All posts on the roundtable here.

It’s not difficult to admire the gentle artistry of CLAMP. It’s easy on the eyes and doesn’t deviate significantly from the style readers have come to expect from manga. Still, while there are individual illustrations of some interest every so often in xxxHolic, my eyes were flitting through most of the pages with a general lack of enthusiasm.

My primary feeling upon completing the first 3 volumes of xxxHolic was that of boredom.

An uncomfortable amount of the drawings and panel to panel transitions here function solely as tools to move the story forward, failing to form any sort of pleasant and unique narrative voice. The sparse backgrounds and general lack of variation in page compositions are all typical of deeply commercial stories bound to rapid serialization schedules. These elements are also perfectly suited to the needs of the inevitable anime adaptations. Reading this series was not unlike listening to a relatively agreeable narrator delivering a quick recital of a very forgettable story; no different from the multitude of disconnected, languidly paced, by the numbers dramas we might find on television today.

The frequent repetition of perspectives and pictorial elements (the black fog, the swirling smoke etc. ) inevitably focus attention on the story at hand, and the tales in these initial volumes of xxxHolic present us with so little to latch on to that they become little more than regurgitations of a hodgepodge of  supernatural plot lines. The humor is both typical and predictable, the denouements educational and morally uplifting in the worst possible way.

Those looking for complex or novel ideas will be left wanting. xxxHolic is nothing less than a famine of the imagination. Do we really need another tired story about internet addiction and the harmful effects of lying (so typical of the moral banality present in the EC line)? What about humdrum rehashes of the complications resulting from the use of magic circles, a monkey’s paw and improper channeling? How many times have we seen high school kids getting caught up in the occult high jinks found in volume 3 of xxxHolic? The aborted ghost story session in volume 2 may tickle some readers not familiar with Oriental versions of this genre but this half-baked, poorly considered reiteration left me flipping the pages with a mixture of disdain and irritation, wondering why I was wasting time and money on such artistic inertia when I could be more profitably rereading Lafcadio Hearn’s  Kwaidan or Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi. To cap things off, CLAMP even provides their readers with a sure sign that they have reached a creative dead end as far as xxxHolic is concerned: a token crossover event with the characters of Tsubasa.

While I was reading manga regularly and indiscriminately during the 90s, I quickly came to the realization that  there was just as much crap (certainly >90%) filling the shelves of my manga book store as any English language comic book shop. xxxHolic does nothing to disabuse me of this impression. There’s little doubt, however, that the industry needs as many of these heavily polished turds as possible to keep the tills running over.

For some reason, I’ve found that western readers seem to be far kinder to commercial dreck from the shores of Japan, lacing their reviews with only the mildest of reservations. Is this representative of a certain indifference to the qualities of commercial manga or is there some sort of cultural forbearance and variation in standards at work here? Many, for example, seem to be far more interested in castigating the deficiencies of Dan Clowes and Chris Ware – the idols de jour of the “art comics” scene. Certainly, I’ve never been particularly interested in writing about the glorified rubbish which continues to emanate from the shores of the U.S., and there has been even less need in recent years if only because of the stream of good material both freshly minted and reprinted.

I won’t be quite so kind in my summation. xxxHolic is considerably worse than anything from the hand of Chris Ware. It’s certainly more dreadful and synthetic than Ghost World. Reading the first 3 volumes of this mess from CLAMP is not unlike reading some late 60s DC horror comic only without the attendant nostalgia. It is, quite simply, mediocre.

For a more happy take on xxxHolic read:

Melinda Beasi on “Why you should read xxxHolic“ (Beasi’s reviews of the later volumes in xxxHolic at the same site are also worth reading for their strong emotional connection with the series and its characters)

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Update by Noah: You can read all posts in the xxxholic roundtable here.

28 thoughts on “xxxHolic Roundtable: Calling a Spade a Spade”

  1. I can only speak for myself, of course, but the reason I have fewer reservations about xxxholic than about Ghost World is that I like xxxholic better than Ghost World. I like Clamp’s art a lot better than I like Clowes’, is the main reason. It’s also a genre issue; if I have to choose between gothy adventure and literary fiction, I’ll pretty much go for the gothy adventure every time. I think you basically feel the reverse (literary fiction > gothy adventure).

    That being said…better than Ghost World is not exactly high praise from my perspective….

    I have a really nasty review of a couple of manga volumes coming up on tcj.com shortly, so perhaps that will be cleansing….

  2. Not exactly. There’s another problem. When I think a few hours of light hearted, pulse racing or acutely sentimental entertainment (gothy or otherwise) I almost never reach for my comic book. It would be the next episode of Spooks, a few hours on Final Fantasy, a Korean romantic drama or 2-3 hours watching a summer blockbuster-style movie. When it comes to commercial fare, comics are relatively more expensive, insular and frequently less involving – which probably explains why so few people read DC/Marvel titles (actually mainstream comics in general) nowadays. I wonder whether I would be reading the current crop of superhero titles at all if I wasn’t interested in the medium itself (for reasons of my childhood etc.), something which would never occur to anyone watching a television program.

  3. That’s interesting. I’m pretty sure there’s some significant number of shojo readers in this country and in Japan who don’t put comics at the bottom of their airy entertainment list.

    I always read for edification myself, of course, so I wouldn’t know.

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  5. I haven’t read xxxHolic, but concur with your sense that a certain kind of mainstream manga has attained a kind of “hipness” among the more contrarian set of comics critics and afficionados — hi Noah! — and gets treated much more tolerantly than consolidated art comics such as those by Ware and Clowes.

    I’m fine with the latter part of this — the establishment can always do with a little, or a lot, of criticism. Ultimately, however, I often fail to see much edification in this stance. I’ve read some mainstream manga and have found things I liked, but more often than not I’m disappointed by how it’s handled by critics I otherwise admire.

  6. “Hipness”? “Hipness”?!

    Okay, it’s on now.

    You will regret the day you darkened this comment thread, Matthias Wivel. I am coming for you with my xxxholic roundtable post of doom!

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  9. Okay, Bill. You’re on my list as well.

    I can honestly say, though, that I have never given Yoshihiro Tatsumi reverent attention, mainly because I have no idea who he is.

    Or who she is, as the case may be.

  15. I personally enjoy xxxHolic very much. The first few volumes made it as an honorable mention, paired with Petshop of Horrors, on my 2006 TCJ best of lists: at the time, I praised their low-key, late-night cable horror-anthology feel (something that the critics in this roundtable have also identified, as a fault) and wrote, “these are not significant works by any means, but they are good reads and an interesting study in rhythm and narrative structure.”

    I find this rhythm to be key to xxxHolic (I realize that a strong argument can be made that if it doesn’t grab you from the beginning, it’s not worth your time, but xxxHolic, in particular, is quite the slow-burn: as Melinda pointed out, it founders a bit for a while, and shifts gears, but then it begins to build to the show-stopping, stunningly drawn Vol. 12 (though no, the philosophical and existential themes in Vol. 12, and of the work overall, are not particularly novel or complex (one’s ability to affect one’s own destiny, how even our tiniest actions affect ourselves and others, hence the butterfly motif (which: not new)); but I appreciated the getting there. My patience was rewarded).

    There’s a certain coldness, or distance, about the work which is tonally in concert, considering that it’s concerned with the supernatural and the inhuman. Equally, my attachment to xxxHolic isn’t particularly sentimental: it’s the only thing I’ve ever read from Clamp that I liked, and I don’t particularly even care for the characters (well, Yuko is entertaining), even 13 or so volumes in. I also wasn’t able to stomach Tsubasa.

    That’s why I find it somewhat perverse to review only the first three volumes of this series (or for the majority of the critics to have only read the first three volumes). I realize it’s from a practical standpoint, and I realize that a strong argument can be made that if it doesn’t grab you from the beginning, it’s not worth your time, but I do hope that one forthcoming roundtable participant has read the series to date and will look at the first three volumes in retrospect.

    Narratively, xxxHolic is a genre work in which I derive pleasure, as a reader, from seeing the ways in which genre conventions are or are not fulfilled, side-swiped, or discarded in favor of other genres. (Suat explains that there much better works in this genre; I submit that it’s no accident that I followed xxxHolic for as long as I have because I can get it for free at the public library.) And I confess that, after having my eyes assaulted by hundreds of hideous comics with absolutely zero literary or artistic merit, sometimes I find it aesthetically soothing to look at lovely art for art’s sake.

    Then, of course, we have the meta Clowes/Ware/Tatsumi/Clamp critical Mexican standoff. Doesn’t that kind of get into paraliterary critera vs. literary?

  16. Ah, and I should full-disclosure here; Noah invited me to participate in this roundtable, and I declined due to lack of time, which in retrospect is silly, since I can’t help myself from somewhat defending it, apparently.

  18. Kristy: Thanks for taking the time to explain your position on xxxHolic. Melinda Beasi suggests that the series picks up around vol. 7 and then at vol. 10, 12 and 14. I’m hoping that Kate Dacey will be able to explain things in more detail at this roundtable (spoilers be damned).

    Info for non-xxxHolic readers: Scanlations are readily available on-line for those wishing to check out the quality of these later installments though I would encourage people to buy the books if they find them appealing for a variety of reasons.

    And, Noah, your Dr. Doom fist shaking moment above made me laugh.

  19. Man, Spooks is a metric ton of good times. I’ve watched those Adam Carter head butt and Matthew McFayden “Fuck you harry” scenes about 300 times in the past two years.

    Clamp sounds like it’s for girls.

  20. “Clamp sounds like it’s for girls.”

    Your critical acumen is as blinding as ever.

    Which leads me to ask, inevitably and querulously — are you and Marty ever going to finish your best albums of the year list? How can I move on to 2010 if I don’t know the best music of 2009?

  22. Hey, I said “sounds like”. That’s Equivocation 101, plenty of wiggle room to fix my take on it after the roundtable tells me what to think.

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  25. Suat, yes, xxxHolic is published in Young Magazine. A single glance should pretty well clarify the demographic. Heh.

    CLAMP has actually written for most every demographic, including shonen (Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Angelic Layer), shojo (Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon) and seinen (xxxHolic, Chobits, Kobato) and within those, there is some variation as well. For instance, CCS was published in Nakayoshi, which is for elementary and middle-school girls, while Tokyo Babylon was published in Wings, which is for young women from about 16-20.

  26. I’m with you, Kristy. xxxHolic lost my interest in the later volumes as the central story arc started to drag (and really, whoever cared about Watanuki’s girlfriend in the first place?), but I love the early volumes and the art is sublime. But I wrote a damn book about CLAMP, obviously I’m biased.

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